"Aplomb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... books that have the thrill of excellent pleasure on every page, then "Candide" certainly bears away the palm. One would like to have watched Voltaire's countenance as he wrote it. The man's superb audacity, his courage, his aplomb, his god-like shamelessness, ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... not doubt it. Ditmar's aplomb, his faculty of getting what he wanted, had amused and distracted her. She was growing calmer, able to scrutinize, at first covertly and then more boldly the people at the other tables, only to discover ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... hard glitter of such a jewelled fabrication, as well as its splendor. Cecilia Ingles, who could not but admire her beauty and her readiness, thought that her tone was a little too hard, and that in her excess of aplomb she pushed self-possession to the verge of self-assertion. Rosy, in fact, entered society not with the tentative step and slow advance of one who cautiously feels an unaccustomed way, but by a single confident and intuitive leap. As she stood there ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... before Marion and Hillyer, leaping from the automobile, were able to reach him, he sat up, and began to straighten out his crushed sombrero, eyeing it critically. He was covered with dust, and one end of his white collar, torn from the button, stuck out above his coat. But his aplomb was perfect. ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... fragrance—let those name it better who can. At least I sat, smiling to myself in my purple-amber shadow, now in no very special hurry. And now again she smiled, thoughtfully, rather approving my own silence, as I guessed; perhaps because it showed no unmanly perturbation—my lack of imagination passing for aplomb. ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... says Tommy, breaking into the conversation with great aplomb. He has been holding on vigorously to Mr. Dysart's right hand for the last five minutes, after a brief but brilliant skirmish with Mabel as to the possession of it—a skirmish brought to a bloodless conclusion by the surrender, ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... could have recorded his wise sayings and valuable criticism of men and things. He was more of an idealist than Doctor Johnson, and at the same time like Doctor Johnson in personal solidity, his English aplomb of character. They were both men of sterling quality. He was in all things especially human. His sympathies equalled the breadth of his mind. There was scarcely a subject in which he did not take an interest, and ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... This incredible event took place even while it seemed most impossible. The Prime Minister took it with his usual aplomb. I asked him what he thought of the matter a week later, at a house party in Hertfordshire. He said, 'I consider it most unfortunate. This Leader of theirs is an inherently nasty individual. Therefore he'll make nastiness the avenue to distinction ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... and a compress of sterilized cotton bound on with surgical bandages completed the operation. Then, when it was all over with, the young mother, who had gone through everything with the aplomb and deftness of a surgeon, quietly sank back in a faint. On the instant Blake was reaching for ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... owned a motor car; you couldn't get around that. Maybe Bulger wouldn't open his eyes if he knew it. Bulger was an authority on cars, and spoke in detail of their strange insides with the aplomb of a man who has dissected them for years. He had violent disputes with the second bookkeeper about which was the best car for the money. The bookkeeper actually owned a motorcycle, or would, after he had paid five dollars a month a few more times, but Bulger would never allow this minor contrivance ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... our experience, remember seeing a prince—or a mere man for the matter of that—leave a room with greater suavity, discretion, or aplomb. It was a revelation of breeding, of race, of long slavery to caste. And yet, with it all, it seemed to have a touch of finality about it—a hint that the entire proceeding was deliberate, planned, not to be altered by circumstance. He did not ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... first found her aplomb. She smiled her rare smile of mingled amusement and mischief at Sam, and then ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... me to tell them that their rooms had been let, three months ago, to another family. She has an APLOMB!" ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... nations; and secondly, her intimacy with the English people was practically confined to us three, who had been in America nearly seven years, and who, in consequence, had shrouded our more salient insularities beneath a cloak of cosmopolitan aplomb. Neither our speech nor our outlook upon life could be taken as typical of our great and noble-hearted nation. Yet she did take us in that sense, with the result that in her conception of the United Kingdom it was a rather fantastic and clumsily-fashioned small-scale ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... importance, and they were by no means certain how they would emerge from the ordeal. To put it plainly, they were just a little afraid that at the critical moment they might fail to exhibit that superlative coolness and aplomb, the slightest lack of which would cause each to feel for ever humiliated and disgraced in the eyes of the other. Besides, there were the natives, keen of eye, and quick to observe the smallest sign of anything approaching to perturbation; it would be awful beyond words to fail before them! By ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... for bed, the elder man instructed his companion in all the details of duelling, that he might be prepared to play his part on the morrow with confidence and aplomb. ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the fundamental ones, on the organs of respiration, circulation, and on the form of the nervous system. The reasons he gives for his classification are sound and philosophical, and presented with the ease and aplomb ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... of all his aplomb and matter-of-fact practicality, he felt a strange thrill curdle through his blood, while on the back of his neck the hair ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... himself had been ridiculously deceived. The mystery of his fair companion's costume, which he had accepted as part of the "show"; the inconsistency of her manner and her evident occupation; her undeniable wish to terminate the whole episode with that single interview; her mingling of worldly aplomb and rustic innocence; her perfect self-control and experienced acceptance of his gallantry under the simulated attitude of simplicity—all now struck him as perfectly comprehensible. He recalled the actress's inimitable touch in certain ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte |
