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Airs   /ɛrz/   Listen
Airs

noun
1.
Affected manners intended to impress others.  Synonym: pose.



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"Airs" Quotes from Famous Books



... window, and went back to find the doctor and Helen all smiles, and ready to joke instead of scold. Then he went to the piano, and turned over the music, the airs and songs making him feel more and more sad, and again and again ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... ordered immediately to be carried into my chamber. Before we went to bed, I went to his lordship to know why he would make us both look so little among our own servants, as to part, bed and board, so suddenly. He only said, "My Lady Roxana knows the airs of quality too well to be informed that a scandal among nobility does not consist in parting of beds; if you cannot lie by yourself, you may send a letter to my Lord ——, whom you lived with as ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... the party was enlivened by the sound of music; and a band, consisting of the harp, lyre, guitar, tambourine, double and single pipe, flute and other instruments, played the favorite airs and songs of the country. Nor was it deemed unbecoming the gravity and dignity of a priest to admit musicians into his house, or to take pleasure in witnessing the dance; and seated with their wives and family in the midst of their friends, the highest functionaries of the sacerdotal ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... just as the last low tints of the long twilight had disappeared and the cool, dewy airs began to move among the pines, a long, deep, fearful cry was heard issuing from the timber. Mrs. Woods started up from her bed and ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth

... are admirably suited for the violin and other musical instruments;" and our readers will learn, not without surprise, that through the instrumentality of the gloomy Calvin, these compositions were set to most beautiful and simple airs. He wisely took advantage of popular feeling to spread his religious opinions, through the means of melody, and, in furtherance of this plan, he engaged the most celebrated composers of his time to furnish tunes to these Psalms. At first, the scheme was not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various

... fair Licia, on the shore, Or colored flowers, garlands of the spring, Or as the frosts not seen, not felt before, Or as the fruits that autumn forth doth bring; As twinkling stars, the tinsel of the night, Or as the fish that gallop in the seas; As airs each part that still escapes our sight, So are my sighs, controllers of my ease. Yet these are such as needs must have an end, For things finite none else hath nature done; Only the sighs, which from my heart I send, Will never cease, but where ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher

... always put on airs if they are the least bit pretty,—so absurd!" said Miss Ellery, pulling up her long gloves as she glanced at the brown arms of ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott

... character seems to have been softened by Scott's courtesy, and perhaps even more by the joint facts that he had as yet attained no literary reputation, and neither at this nor at any other time gave himself literary airs. He also made the acquaintance of George Ellis, who became a warm and intimate friend. These were the three men of the day who, since Warton's death, knew most of early English poetry, and though Percy was too old to help, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... wander much about the lanes with a book. In the summer he could be met with at all hours of light and dusk. Howpaslet was a land of honeysuckle and clematis. The tendrils clung to every hedge, and the young man wandered forth to breathe the gracious airs. One day in early June he was abroad. It was a Saturday, his day of days. Somehow he could not read that morning, though he had a book in his pocket, for the stillness of early summer (when the buds come out in such numbers that ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... Blucher, "you put on such solemn airs as almost to frighten me. It is true, my disease is very powerful, and this soreness of my eyes has already rendered me ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... timorous neither, nor yet assoomin' airs,' this yere Billy says to me when he brings it up himse'f how he don't go over to 'Doby's, 'but I'm never no hand to set 'round an' visit free an' easy that a-way with the posterity of a gent which I has had cause to plant. This yere ain't roodness; it's scrooples,' says ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis

... Sabbath day was perfect of its kind, a dreamy, drowsy day, a day when genial suns and hazy cool airs mingle in excellent harmony, and the tired worker, freed from his week's toil, basks and stretches, yawns and revels in rest under the orchard trees; unless, indeed, he goes to morning church. And to morning church ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... and some favored young ladies of their own age, took their seats. The other children found places around the table, and a merrier fete champetre never was seen. The band continued to play lively airs from time to time, and I really can give you my word as an author, that nobody looked ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks. Part Second - Being the Second Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow

... "No airs!" Lady Cynthia warned her. "You two are not properly engaged yet. It may devolve upon ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... hand can touch the strings so fine? Who up the lofty diapason roll Such sweet, such sad, such solemn airs divine, And let them down again ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... thus described her in 1776:—'She is extremely lively and chatty; and showed none of the supercilious or pedantic airs so scoffingly attributed to women of learning or celebrity; on the contrary, she is full of sport, remarkably gay, and excessively agreeable. I liked her in everything except her entrance into the room, which was rather florid and flourishing, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... passengers, who seemed indisposed to listen to him, and the latter part of the journey he said little, being in fact regularly sent to Coventry by us all. He afterwards amused himself much to our annoyance by whistling airs and singing snatches of songs, which caused one of the passengers, a lady, to leave the diligence at the next change of horses. He was quite an adept at whistling the air of "Yankee doodle." This want of deference to the sex, which I must say is an exception to the general behaviour of ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... O just Nature, thou Who, if men's hearts be hard, art always mild; O fields and streams, and places undefiled, Let your sweet airs be ever on his brow, Remember still your child. Thou too, O human world, if old desires, If thoughts, not alien once, can move thee now, Teach him not yet that idly he aspires Where thou hast fail'd; not soon let it be plain, That all who seek in thee for nobler fires, For generous passion, ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps

... education in the highest sense, as the best discipline and expansion of the mind by classical and scientific study; or in the utilitarian sense, as the acquisition of useful knowledge, and a practical acquaintance with men and things; or in the fine lady sense, as the mastery of airs, and graces, and drawing-room accomplishments; or in the moralist's sense, as the curbing of our mischievous propensities, and the energizing of our good ones—in every case, we are more of gentlemen than the Southerners. If the mere possession of wealth, and progress in the grosser ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... female assuming airs of instant intimacy. She had gone up to the last remaining spare chamber, donned a costume all of crackling white linen, and had introduced herself, entirely uninvited, into the dim privacy of Mary's mother's room, whence ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly

... power? That was indispensable for the grand opera. But in three years—perhaps four—with fine teachers her voice might be very rich, very charming. Now it was harsh, crude, unformed. Yes, it wanted the soft, mellowing airs of Italy. Where had madame been living—what ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... in with his mood at all. He did nothing but wait for the moment when the bell should ring. At last the aristocratic lady arrived with her pale daughter. He seated them, drew forward the canvas with skill, and some efforts of fashionable airs, and began to paint. The sunny day and bright light aided him not a little: he saw in his dainty sitter much which, caught and committed to canvas, would give great value to the portrait. He perceived that he might accomplish something good if he could reproduce, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... his health was poor. He was epileptic, his strength undermined by incessant debauches; yet let a nation fancying him months away put on insurgent airs, and on that nation he descended as the thunder does. In his campaigns time and again he overtook his own messengers. A phantom in a ballad was not swifter than he. Simultaneously his sword flashed in Germany, on the banks of the Adriatic, ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... songs to which half a century ago, in another war for Freedom, men marched to battle, and, even if by ways of defeat and death, to ultimate Victory. How many there were that April day for whom the sight of the Stars and Stripes was blurred with tears. How the familiar airs and simple words pained us with the memory of our distant homes. Perhaps for the first time we understood the solemn significance of this dedication to war of what we hardly ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... on sporting airs and curiously cut overcoats on two days in each year. The weather for the occasion is nearly always cloudless, and the townsfolk have begun to think that either they are very clever in arranging the date of their local function, or that the clerk of the weather ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... she saw our high-born airs through our shabby clothes," said Alice. "It's always happening, especially to princes. There's nothing so hard to conceal ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit

... sported its airs of mystery and importance, its languishing leers undisguisedly, so long as her brother Rupert's place was empty; and though her visits to the rector's grave were now almost quotidian, she departed upon them with looks of wrapt importance, and, returning, sought ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... I know it!" was the hearty response. "I lack Aunt Temperance to keep me straight. Otherwise I should have nought save soft south-west airs playing around me, and she is a cool north breeze that shall brace me to my duty. But how quick, Hans, canst thou get free of Mr Leigh? for we must not tarry Grandmother at her years, and in this summer weather when journeying ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... of the 99th regiment attended and played a variety of beautiful airs, which, in addition to a number of excellent songs given in the coarse of the evening, seduced the party to remain until the "little ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... I may add that she was as gentle and amiable as she was pretty. All the Shepard family were very pleasant people, invariably kind to the ship's company; and though the Colonel was a very wealthy man, none of them ever "put on airs" in ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic

... the fitliest manner, by forming again the chief ornament of a church, and then driving under the arch of the Great Western Railway, and feeling the strange vibration of some monster train passing over our heads,—a proceeding which never fails to make my pony show off his choicest airs and graces, pricking up his pretty ears, tossing his slender head, dancing upon four feet, and sometimes rearing upon two,—we arrive at the long, low, picturesque old bridge, the oldest of all the bridges that ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... of her from other airs, And Being's guarded doors Are open wide for journey free Where wait my chosen stars; And o'er me, O what lustres break Of that desire, Reality, That burns a thousand suns to make One nightingale to sing for me, ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan

... something independent of material and cut and even of the individuality of the wearer; there is a spirit of caste. If the lady dons her maid's dress, some subtle essence of the menial permeates her, even to her blood, her mind, and heart. The maid, in madame's dress, putting on "airs," is merely giving an outlet to that which has entered into her from her clothes. Thus, Arthur assumed again with his "grande toilette" the feeling of the caste from which he had been ejected. Madelene, come herself to open the door for him, was in a summer dress of no pretentions ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... was conspicuous as the champion of economy. He rivaled Holman as the "watch-dog of the treasury" and the enemy of land-grants. He was a man of force, and rendered valuable service to the country, but he assumed such airs of superior virtue, and frequently lectured the House in so magisterial a tone as to make himself a little unpopular with members. This was strikingly illustrated in 1868, in his controversy with Donnelly of Minnesota against whom he had made some dishonorable ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... himself to the comfortable vulgarity of popular airs. He played selections from Handel, Mozart, Wagner, and I don't know whom; while the time passed unnoticed by both of us. At length he laid the violin across his knees, and, after a pause, his voice rose in one of the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... himself tremendous airs. Probably he was proud of having ridden the hunter, and so pretended to be very tired. Perhaps, also, he had too much hard-headedness and too little imagination fully to enjoy the game of Robinson. It ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy

... signed by one hundred thousand men and women, who unite in this unparalleled number to support its prayer. They are from all parts of the country and from every condition of life. They are from the sea-board, fanned by the free airs of the ocean, and from the Mississippi and the prairies of the West, fanned by the free airs which fertilize that extensive region. They are from the families of the educated and uneducated, rich and poor, of every ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... ways of reaching this windowless room, with its low ceilings and dank airs. If one had the secret in his possession, he could go down through the mysterious trap door in the workshop of William Spantz, armourer to the Crown; or he might come up through a hidden aperture in the walls ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... I to do, to take upon me lady-airs, and to resent? But, my dear ladies (let me, in this instance, bespeak the attention of you both), I should be inexcusable, if I did not tell you all the truth; and that is, that I not only forgave the poor wretch, in regard to his commands, but from my own inclination also. If I am ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... With frowns as well as smiles by turns; And hearts have been as aft with sullen 915 As charming looks surpriz'd and stolen. Then why should more bewitching clamour Some lovers not as much enamour? For discords make the sweetest airs And curses are a kind of pray'rs; 920 Too slight alloys for all those grand Felicities by marriage gain'd. For nothing else has pow'r to settle Th' interests of love perpetual; An act and deed, that that makes one heart 925 Becomes another's counter-part, And passes ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... done to me—that I know not what they may do to you! They have done to me—that among us simple, kindly folk they have introduced new fashions, the Blackbird of being funny, the Peacock of putting on airs! Fashions which the latter in his grotesque bad taste picked up parading on the marble terraces of the vulgar rich, and the former—Heaven knows where! along with his cynicism and his slang. Now the one, travelling salesman of blighting corrosive laughter, ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand

... how to act. She had intended, when she left home, to do a good deal of strutting back and forth in her pen, with now and then a pause to preen herself, to make sure that she looked her best. But somehow she no longer cared to put on grand airs, as of old. She remembered that some of the other hens at the fair had been haughty and proud and had smoothed their feathers, declaring boldly that they expected to ...
— The Tale of Henrietta Hen • Arthur Scott Bailey

... she was all'as puttin' on airs tew the Basins, 's if they was beneath her; and when they'd first begun to live over there to the Neck, she sent a man deown t' me, 't said Mis' Garrison had 'ordered' a pair o' partridge ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... them right. Away the fair detractors went, And gave by turns their censures vent. She's not so handsome in my eyes: For wit, I wonder where it lies! She's fair and clean, and that's the most: But why proclaim her for a toast? A baby face; no life, no airs, But what she learn'd at country fairs; Scarce knows what difference is between Rich Flanders lace and Colberteen. [2] I'll undertake, my little Nancy In flounces has a better fancy; With all her wit, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... but told his partner he should look out and not get in the same set with Matilda again; she was as disagreeable as ever. "Just because her grandmother was French, she gives herself great airs. She is no better than the ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... ideas of the various sentiments. Talent in love, as in every other art, consists in the power of forming a conception combined with the power of carrying it out. The world is full of people who sing airs, but who omit the ritornello, who have quarters of an idea, as they have quarters of sentiment, but who can no more co-ordinate the movements of their affections than of their thoughts. In a word, they are incomplete. Unite a fine intelligence with a dwarfed intelligence ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... minutes after despatching my answer, he appeared. I need not repeat our conversation. He extorted from me, without much difficulty, what I had heard through my mother, and—methinks I am ashamed to confess it—by exchanging his boisterous airs for pathetic ones, by appealing to my sisterly affection and calling me his angel and saviour, and especially by solemnly affirming that Frazer's story was a calumny, I at length did as he would have me: yet only for three hundred; ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... on into a rivulet, and a rivulet swells into a brook; and before one has time to say, "What are you at?"—before the first tree it ever spoke to is a dummy, or the first hill it ever ran down has turned blue, here we have all the airs and graces, demands and assertions of ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... rising of the sun the small draught of air that still remained to us fell dead; and we had it calm the whole day and well on into the succeeding night. Then the weather became unsettled and thundery, with light baffling airs interspersed with fierce squalls from all quarters of the compass, during which we made scarcely sixty ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... a certain refinement. He could not have been more than forty-five. There was worry on every inch of him. Possibly he thought that he might die. B. said "He's a Belgian, a friend of Count Bragard, his name is Monsieur Pet-airs." From time to time Monsieur Pet-airs remarked something delicately and pettishly in a gentle and weak voice. His adam's-apple, at such moments, jumped about in a longish slack wrinkled skinny neck which was like the neck of a turkey. To this turkey the ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... at last, with his head aching, and a dull, weary sense of depression, he went up to the bedroom which he shared with his cousin, jumped into his own bed as soon as he could to rest his aching head, and lay listening to a street band playing airs that sounded depressing and sorrowful in the extreme, and kept him awake till he felt as if he could never drop off, and cease hearing the ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... great trick . . ." He emitted a short, hollow guffaw, familiarly . . . "I didn't make the law—but there it is; and I am an active young fellow! I quite hold with your ideas; I know your ways by this time, Mr. Massy. I wouldn't try to give myself airs like that—that—er lazy specimen of an old man ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... and lovingly down the aisle with my sweet wife upon my arm, through a mist of half-seen people, pulpits, monuments, pews, fonts, organs, and church windows, in which there flutter faint airs of association with my childish church ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... ain't you? Hoity-toity and white-faced and late, all at once, ain't you? Say, them airs don't get across with me. Come on! ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... strange fires or pestilences, that had moulded to whatever shape they chose his originally supple skin, and left it pitted, puckered, and seamed like a dried water-course. But though dire catastrophes or the treacherous airs of remote climates had done their worst upon his exterior, they seemed to have affected him but little within, to judge from a certain robustness which showed itself in his ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... generations earlier. But in Annie's day the ideal of social service had been laid down by fashion, and she was consequently a tremendously independent and energetic person, with small time for languishing airs. She headed committees and boards, knew hundreds of working girls by name, kept a secretary and a stenographer, and mentioned topics at big dinners that would not have shocked either old Goodwife Melrose ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... rivalry between them, although the wife of the high priest considered it nothing short of insolence that the wife of one inferior to her husband's rank should venture to compete with her; while upon the other hand, the little airs of calm superiority her rival assumed when visiting her excited the deepest indignation and bitterness in the heart of the wife of Ptylus. She, too, was aware of the enmity that her husband bore to Ameres, ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty

... this north wind was a treat; especially coming, as it did, after a week of light airs and calms that had spoilt most of the yacht-racing. Some time in the afternoon I heard talk that our skipper—well, I won't mention names—and, as it turned out in the end, everyone was implicated. Anyhow, at six o'clock or thereabouts the gig was ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... and made creamy by a touch of Irish brogue. "One has to do both in New York. I was so hungry all the time, if the girls left a crust on their plates I used to hide it. I expect the way I'd look to see if there'd be anything left gave them the idea I was a sly piece. They thought I put on airs, too. Me! P'raps it was my not knowing their kind of slang. And it's true I did steal once, or almost the same thing as steal. There was a dollar bill on the floor under a table one afternoon. 'Stead ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... Twinkle, walking along the hall and feeling her way by keeping her hand upon the smooth sides of the passage. "I hope you won't go to any trouble, or put on airs, just because we've come ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum

... a man's—not out of sight of each other like a hen's. His plumage was fine—none of the half-mourning style of your ostrich—more like a cassowary as far as colour and texture go. And then it was he began to cock his comb at me and give himself airs, and show signs of a nasty ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... the same to Meekin and Griffith and Price; he laid all the partiality with which they charged him on his aunt, and said he only wished he could have his way with him, and he would soon bring down his airs, and teach him ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood

... enduring than the pyramids, statues more godlike and sublime than ever crowned Grecian Parthenon, or adorned with Parian marble the temples of Augustan Rome. The press would glow with enthusiasm, and the procession of nations march in the grand ovation, not to national airs, or under national banners, but under the world's new flag, and to the music of the world's new anthem of universal ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... I was familiar enough with the Archipelago by that time. Extreme patience and extreme care would see me through the region of broken land, of faint airs, and of dead water to where I would feel at last my command swing on the great swell and list over to the great breath of regular winds, that would give her the feeling of a large, more intense life. The road would be long. ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad

... make almost any music agreeable. That which I have heard these people sing is often plaintive and pretty, but almost always has some resemblance to tunes with which they must have become acquainted through the instrumentality of white men; their overseers or masters whistling Scotch or Irish airs, of which they have produced by ear these rifacciamenti. The note for note reproduction of 'Ah! vous dirai-je, maman?' in one of the most popular of the so-called Negro melodies with which all America and England are familiar, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... humming with life those days. The May weather was lovely, softly blue with cool airs and little white clouds like swollen pin- cushions drifting lazily from point to point. The gardens were dazzling with their flowers, the Cathedral Green shone like glass, and every door- knob and brass knocker in the Precincts glittered ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... sentiment, not appearance, not enamel, not languishing airs. But it is asked, why make this disturbance? Why not let a woman, if it is desired that she should be a student, inquire of her husband? Suppose she hasn't got one. Young gentlemen that are so fond of talking ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... presented to successive governors—Sherbrooke, Richmond, Dalhousie, Kempt, Aylmer, Gosford. All in turn addressed themselves to the work of pacification, and all retired baffled by that racial egotism which granted favours with airs of patronage, or met continued concessions with ever increased demands. The English were naturally apprehensive of a French dominance, which might prove dangerous to the security of constitutional union; the French Canadians were too keenly alert for signs of tyranny, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... to the village another arch stood, and a third was set up near the tavern. From the steeple floated the yellow and white banner, salutes were crashing on the hill behind the Stackel Farm, and the Aufhausen band pealed out its ringing airs. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... before us—a garden in perfect bloom, girded about with creaming waves; within its coral cincture pendulous boughs trailed in the glassy waters; from its hidden bowers spiced airs stole down upon us; above all, the triumphant palm trees clashed their melodious branches like a chorus with cymbals; yet from the very gates of this paradise a changeful current swept us onward, and the happy isle was buried ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... worst of all, she discovered that she was not satisfied with half confidences, and quite pined to know all about "David's trouble." The little needle-book with the faded "Letty" on it haunted her; and when, after a pleasant evening below, she heard him pace his room for hours, or play melancholy airs upon the flute, she was jealous of that unknown woman who had such power to disturb his peace, and felt a strong desire to smash the musical confidante into whose responsive breast he poured ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... of whom you may very well be proud, and I have no mortal manner of doubt but what you are. He comes up here very often, where he is a great favourite with my ladies, and sings me "the melancholy airs of my native land" with much acceptancy. His name has recently become changed in Vailima. Beginning with the courteous "Mr. Meiklejohn," it shaded off into the familiar "Hughie," and finally degenerated into "the Whitrett."[85] I hear good reports of him abroad and ashore, and I scarce need to add ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... too, felt the pang. We were comrades for better or worse from the day she put her hand in mine, and never was there a more loyal and faithful one. If, when in the twilight she played softly to herself the old airs from home, the tune was smothered in a sob that was not for my ear, and shortly our kitchen resounded with the most tremendously energetic housekeeping on record, I did not hear. I had drunk that cup to the dregs, and I knew. I just put on a gingham apron ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... that, Louis? Look at her, your Vaurois! She's got the airs of a superannuated barmaid! Make her ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... "I should think an 'up' would be better. What did you say, Hosy? A rough passage? I guess that won't bother you and me much. This little mite of water can't seem very much stirred up to folks who have sailed clear across the Atlantic Ocean. But there! I mustn't put on airs. I used to think Cape Cod Bay was about all the water there was. Travelin' does make such a difference in a person's ideas. Do you remember the Englishwoman at Bancroft's who told me that she supposed the Thames must remind ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... thing he cried for, spoilt boy as he was from his birth. I tell you truth, m' Aminta, I grieve to lose him. What with his airs of the foreign-tinted, punctilious courtly gentleman covering a survival of the ancient British forest boar or bear, he was a picture in our modern set, and piquant. And he was devoted to our sex, we must admit, after the style of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... her," Rosie said. "She's too much of a smarty-cat. She loves to get people over there and then show off before them. And then she puts on so many airs. I won't have anything to ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin

... is anything that will endure The eye of God because it still is pure, It is the spirit of a little child, Fresh from His hand, and therefore undefiled. Nearer the gate of Paradise than we, Our children breathe its airs, its angels see; And when they pray, God hears their simple prayer, Yea, even sheathes His sword, ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... mebby that to preeserve a distance is likely to swell reesults at the Bird Cage door. Boggs, however, ain't to be stood off by no coldness, carin' no more for a gent's bein' haughty that a-way than a cow does for a cobweb. Which you bet it'll take somethin' more'n mere airs ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... taste; but it is certain that a very large number of people, who, like myself, are neither rich nor in a position which justifies them in giving themselves airs, consider quiet, comfort, and the absence of petty cares the most essential conditions of a holiday. These views necessitate some expense and generally limit the excursions of those who entertain them to their native land; but, on the other hand, they have their advantages. They ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... himself these airs, he was alarmed with the noise of some huntsmen and a pack of hounds that had been just laid on upon the scent, and were making ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various

... enough for me was not good enough for him, he must go his own way and suffer accordingly. In fortune and in station I was so immeasurably superior to him that it nettled me a little to see him put on airs at the table to which I had invited him. But Rounders was Rounders, and I did not allow my irritation ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... Titania to sleep all through the winter at the Savoy, was the most popular, with its ring of a dozen dancers, hands joined, running together into the centre of their circle, as if to honour some imaginary deity—possibly Mr. Cecil Sharp, director of the Society, who has collected and revived the airs to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various

... The sickly airs had died of damp; Through huddling leaves the holy chime Flagged; I, expecting Mrs. Gamp, Thought—"Will the woman come in time?" Upstairs I knew the matron bed Held her whose name confirms all joy To me; and tremblingly ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... urgent as he sees no sign of sympathy in her] Look here, Kitty: youre a sensible woman: you needn't put on any moral airs. I'll ask no more questions; and you need answer none. I'll settle the whole property on her; and if you want a checque for yourself on the wedding day, you can name any figure ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... there to execute the projects he had formed for the conquest, the union, the consolidation of the provinces he was resolved to weld into an empire. His reign, indeed, in the sense of ruling alone without a minister who assumed the airs of a master, commenced really from this date. The Atalik, who had monopolised the power of the State, was gone, and the future of the country depended now entirely upon the genius of ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson

... by her excessive beauty. From the moment she came on board with her father, clad in her simple white gown, with a deep crimson hood drawn over her fair hair, and tied under her rounded chin, she had taken them all captive—they were her abject slaves in heart, though they put on very creditable airs of manly independence and nonchalance. Each man in his different way strove to amuse or interest her, except, strange to say, Errington himself, who, though deeply courteous to her, kept somewhat in the background ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... would lift him out of the walk-up, out of Harlem and cold veal, was the one excuse for her voyage to Cytherea. The voyage had been eminently respectable. Undertaken with full ecclesiastical sanction, Aphrodite and her free airs had had nothing to do with it. None the less it was to Cytherea that she had gone—and to Lampsacus also, for all she and her geography knew to ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... reflected, with a glare scarcely more supportable than the heat, from the massive gold ornaments which glistened in every direction. More than a hundred bands burst at once on our arrival, into the peculiar airs of their several chiefs; the horns flourished their defiances, with the beating of innumerable drums and metal instruments, and then yielded for a while to the soft harmonious breathings of their long flutes, with which a pleasing instrument, like a bagpipe without the drone, was ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... clover-fields are white, Through the woods the happy children go: As gay are our hearts as flowers swinging light, When balmy airs of Springtime blow. ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay

... this band was so loud, emphatic, and obvious, that I actually recognised one or two of the tunes. And I noticed that quite a formidable proportion of them were Jacobite tunes; that is, tunes that had been primarily meant to keep George V out of his throne for ever. Some of the real airs of the old Scottish rebellion were played, such as "Charlie is My Darling," or "What's a' the steer, kimmer?" songs that men had sung while marching to destroy and drive out the monarchy under which we live. ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... called, lived many hundreds of men and women, who were stifled in summer for want of the breezes which swept across our heights, cold in winter because the wall of our plateau shut down upon them the icy airs from the frozen river, and cut off the afternoon sun. We were sorry for them, and we sent them cold meat and flannels sometimes; but their life was as remote from our life as if they never crossed ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... sings his very loudest, in justice to himself; if his brethren want physical power, that's no fault of his, he don't. Professional singers indulge in small portions of classic lore: among the necessary acquirements is, "Non nobis," &c. &c.; that is, they consider they ought to know the airs. The words are generally delivered as follows:—Don—dobis—do—by—de. A clear enunciation is not much cultivated among ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... bay. We went up the beach, by the sandy down Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall'd town; Through the narrow paved streets, where all was still, To the little grey church on the windy hill. From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers, But we stood without in the cold blowing airs. We climb'd on the graves, on the stones worn with rains, And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes. She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear: "Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here! Dear heart," I said, "we are long alone; The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan." But, ah, she ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... Germany, holds a higher place in public estimation than among us. These men wore a sort of uniform, namely, high-crowned white hats, with flowers in the front, gray frocks, and half-boots; and their performance, I am bound to add, was by no means contemptible. They played one or two airs very sweetly under the burgomaster's window, which, as the said window looked out into the square, enabled us, as well as a multitude of the town's-people, to share ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... exceptional occasions, the exhilarating "cheat," formed the staple for saltatorial performance, until the hour of eleven brought the concluding country dance, when a final squad of roysterers bobbed "up the middle and down again" to the airs of "Sir Roger de Coverly" ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England." Perhaps a mere rhetorician might consider superfluous the word "whole," as applied to "globe," and "unbroken," as following "continuous"; yet they really add to the force and majesty of the expression. It is curious that, in Great Britain, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... Lyster with a smile of derision. "You must be pretty near twenty-eight years old—aren't you, Dan? and just about five years older than myself. And what airs you do assume in consequence! With all the weight of those years," he added, slowly, "I doubt, Mr. Dan Overton, if you have really lived as ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan

... arisen. I remember how in years gone by, I and my daughter paid them a visit. The second daughter of the family was really so pleasant and knew so well how to treat people with kindness, and without in fact any high airs! She's at present the wife of Mr. Chia, the second son of the Jung Kuo mansion; and I hear people say that now that she's advanced in years, she's still more considerate to the poor, regardful of the old, and very fond of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... deepening effect of nature on the human spirit begin with Dante. Not only does he awaken in us by a few vigorous lines the sense of the morning airs and the trembling light on the distant ocean, or of the grandeur of the storm-beaten forest, but he makes the ascent of lofty peaks, with the only possible object of enjoying the view—the first man, perhaps, since the days of antiquity who did so. In Boccaccio we can do little more than ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... voices in every assembly and gathering. They strut about in vain-glorious conceit, and flaunt their gaudy apparel in indecent boldness. They claim what does not belong to them and meddle with what does not concern them. They do not blush to cloud the precious jewel of modesty with the selfish airs of passion. Nothing is said which they do not hear, nothing occurs which they do not see. They become ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... room he snatched off his coat and, with a gesture that would have turned Hackett or Faversham as green with envy as a processed stringbean, flung it aside and prepared to enter. It was plain that he proposed to put on no airs before the simple children of the desert wilds. He would eat his antelope steak and his grizzly b'ar chuck in his shirt-sleeves, the way Kit Carson and Old Man ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... alighted here yesterday;* like a winged Mercury, bringing "airs from Heaven" (in a sense) along with his news. I understand very well your indisposition to write; we must conform to it, as to the law of Chronos (oldest of the gods); but I will murmur always, "It is such a pity as of almost no other man!"—You are citizen of a "Republic," and perhaps fancy ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... you think of my wife? Did you ever see such distinguished manners before? My dear fellow, I have taken a fancy to you. Shake hands. I'll tell you another little anecdote. Where do you think my wife picked up her fashionable airs and graces? Ho! ho! On the stage! The highest branch of the profession, sir—a tragic actress. If you had seen her in Lady Macbeth, Mrs. Vimpany would have made your flesh creep. Look at me, and feast your eyes on a man who is above hypocritical objections to the theatre. ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins

... though less liable to loss of motive power, must still turn round to get from van to rear, losing many valuable seconds; but it is specially true of sailing vessels, and above all in the light, baffling airs which are apt to mark the change of monsoon at the season when this fight was fought. Nelson emphasized his contempt of the Russians of his day by saying he would not hesitate to attack their van, counting upon throwing the whole line in confusion from their want of seamanship; but ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... are remarkable for their veracity and love of music: their ear is so delicate, that they readily learn to play the most difficult and complex airs on any instrument. They are remarkable also for their superstition, and people their forests, caves, and mountains with numerous invisible beings of their own creation. I will quote two instances of whimsical superstition, which took place in Java about thirty years ago. The skull ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... are read again to us in these days, even as we listen to the simple, grave, artless airs into which those rural peoples threw all their young heart, we cannot help marking a great inspiration; and we are moved to pity as we ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... it?" she said one day; "there is no bearing with this gentleman since ladies have taken to visiting him. You cannot think what airs he gives himself. I am afraid that the next time I go to the Grange he will make me wait ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... bells were charming; the week's wash hung out to dry had its picturesqueness by day, and by night the spectral play of the search-lights along the waves and shores, and against the startled skies, was even more impressive. There was a band which gave us every evening the airs of the latest coon- songs, and the national anthems which we have borrowed from various nations; and yes, I remember the white squadron kindly, though I was so glad to have it go, and let us lapse back into our summer silence and calm. It was (I do not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... that nephew and aunt had been content to exchange careless nods—and Lady Richard made him nearly his worst. He knew that she did not like him, but refused to accept the defeat; he plied her more and more freely with the airs and affectations that rendered him odious to her; he could not help thinking that by enough attention, enough deference, and enough of being interesting he must in the end conciliate her favour. When May joined the group, his manner appealed from her friend to her, bidding Lady ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... it destroys the need of itself by lifting men up into the eternal kingdom! Would that I and all her servants lived pervaded with the sense of this her high end, her one high calling! We need the church towers to remind us that the mephitic airs in the church below are from the churchyard at its feet, which so many take for the church, worshipping over the graves and believing in death—or at least in the material substance over which alone death hath power. Thus the church, even ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald

... defeat the suffragists gathered in front of the State House and with colors flying and band playing martial airs marched two by two around the Capitol, receiving many cheers and good wishes from the spectators. A brief meeting was then held at which resolutions of appreciation were passed for all the brave men who had fought so ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... up—strokes his beard—and complains of feeling some trifling inconvenience, such as a dropped acorn on his head, a fallen leaf, or a little moss shaken from the boughs. Finally, he takes leave of them,—points out the way to Utgard Loke's palace, advises them not to give themselves airs at his court,—as unbecoming "such little fellows" as they were, and disappears in the wood; "and"—as the old chronicler slyly adds—"it is not said whether the OEsir wished ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... offered no reply, studying the girl's pretty face, her eager, blue-gray eyes widely opened and fixed upon mine. She was not of the neurotic type, with her clear complexion and sun-kissed neck; her arms, healthily toned by exposure to the country airs, were rounded and firm, and she had the agile shape of a young Diana with none of the anaemic languor which breeds morbid dreams. She was frightened; yes, who would not have been? But the mere idea of this thing which she believed ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... the southward, gliding quietly over the oil-smoothness of the ocean under airs so light as hardly to ruffle the surface. Sometimes at high noon the shimmer of the ocean floor blended into the shimmer of the sky at the horizon, and then it was no longer water and blue heavens; the little craft seemed to be poised in a vast crystalline sphere, ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... a great deal on odd, delicate, sheer materials where narrowness and length ruled proportions, and where there seemed to be required much lace and many little ribbons. Also she hummed to herself as she sewed, singing under her breath endless airs which had slipped into her head she ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... catastrophe, one of the chief forces of his college. The invalid-chair on which he wheeled himself, recumbent, from room to room, and from which he gave his lectures, was, in the eyes of Oxford, a symbol not of weakness, but of touching and triumphant victory. He gave himself no airs of resignation or of martyrdom. He simply lived his life—except during those crises of weakness or pain when his friends were shut out—as though it were like any other life, save only for what he made appear an insignificant ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Rowlatt wore and submitted them for Jane's approval. She thought them vastly genteel. He also entertained her with whatever jargon of art talk he managed to pick up. Thus, though the urchin gave himself airs and invested himself with affectations, which rendered him intolerable to all of his own social status, except the placid Mrs. Seddon and the adoring Jane, he was under the continuous influence of a high ambition. It made ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... immortals,—which, taken into consideration a speech suggestive every time it resounds of calm heights and stately circumstances, is not strange. Alberich hates him, hates them all. This is his exposition of his plan: "You who, lapped in balmy airs, live, laugh, and love up there, with a golden fist I shall catch you all! Even as I renounced love, all that lives shall renounce it! Ensnared and netted in gold, you shall care for gold only! You immortal revellers, cradling yourselves on blissful heights in exquisite pastimes, you despise ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... riots on at its common pace, and is now come to the pass that vice is scarce worth the pain of concealing. Yet when it becomes the general rule, sure there is nothing so stale! Its facility damns it, and it then must simulate some of the airs of virtue to be alluring. Indeed, I conclude it not wholly imaginary that, if it was made easier to be virtuous than vicious, the whole moral balance of the universe would shift and our present monarch and Madame Walmoden be the saints of ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington

... him catch a mackerel, but that they might flirt and dance to the best advantage. "You can't suppose that any girl will like to be drenched with sea-water when she has taken so much trouble with her starch," said Kate. "Then she shouldn't come fishing," said Mr Cheesacre. "I hate such airs." ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... judges, for I see them continually walking hand-in-hand, and engaged in the most friendly conversation with Corneille, Racine, and Moliere. Our dramatic writers seem, in general, not so fond of their company; they sometimes shove rudely by them, and give themselves airs of superiority. They slight their reprimands, and laugh at their precepts—in short, they will be tried by their country alone; and that ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... in. This vault of heaven with its spotless blue, this wide land that laughs in festive summer, these winds that lift my hair and come heavy with odors,—these do not fit with me, I burlesque the fair face of creation. O invisible airs, that softly sport round the castle-towers, why do you not woo my soul forth and bear it and lose it in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... after dinner.... They had never got quite so far as this before: some quarrel had congealed the surface again. But now, with a desperate disagreement just behind them, and the unusual luxury of a taxi just in front, the vernal airs continued blowing in the ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... bearers were at hand with his palanquin; he got into it; the men set off at a swinging pace, warning the bystanders with their cry of "Tok! Tok!" and Desmond walked by the side of the chair, amused to watch the self-important airs of the peon who went in front. They passed the fort and the Company's house, and arrived at length at a two-story flat-roofed house with a veranda, the windows filled, not with oyster shells as at Bombay, but with ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... Normandy, there were no such grievances then as we have now. There were troubles with bad roads and bad agriculture. There were quarrels about this right and that privilege. The cures didn't like the grand airs of the Church dignitaries. The squires (hobereaux) were conceited very often and ignorant and arrogant. We have not got rid of conceit and ignorance and arrogance, though, by cutting off the heads of a few squires a hundred years ago! No! as to Eu, at least, take my word for it, the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... those present, and the faces of most of those present were familiar to Master Griveau, and Master Griveau nodded and bowed and smirked and smiled, and showed in a hundred little ways with a hundred little airs and graces that he was quite the man of the world and quite at home in fashionable circles. He was accompanied by two of his clerks, who seemed as anxious to efface themselves as their master was to assert ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... attention. I have seldom seen a young man more pleased with himself. He was entirely too cocky for me. He began talking. He said he was a Syrian and was worth a thousand dollars. Soon he would be worth a million, he said. He was already putting on his million-dollar airs. ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... gates of Angers. It was Catherine de Medicis, who arrived there with rather a large suite. They sent to tell Bussy, who rose from his bed, and went to the prince, who immediately got into his. Certainly the airs played by the trumpets were fine, but they had not the virtue of those which made the walls of Jericho fall, for the gates did not open. Catherine leaned out of her litter to show herself to the guards, hoping the sight of her would ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas

... "My lady's airs and graces shan't keep us out of Essex for all that," said Robert, as he twisted the letter into a pipe-light for his big meerschaum. "I'll tell you what we'll do, George: there's a glorious inn at Audley, and plenty of fishing in the neighborhood; ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... Beric; I never want to enter their town again save with a sword in one hand and a torch in the other. It enrages me to see the airs of superiority they give themselves. They scarce seem even to see us as we walk in their streets; and as to the soldiers as they stride along with helmet and shield, my fingers itch to meet them in the forest. No; I promised ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... other, she had cajoled herself into the notion, that whoever steered the brigantine, for that period was captain. Wherefore, she gave herself mighty airs at the tiller; with extravagant gestures issuing unintelligible orders about trimming the sails, or pitching overboard something to see how fast we were going. All this much diverted my Viking, who several times was delivered of a laugh; a loud ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville



Words linked to "Airs" :   affectedness, pose



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