"Arrant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... marry, and an arrant knave; And, sirrah, by old Master Arthur's leave, Though I be weak and old, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... Not I my Lord by heauen. Mar. Nor I my Lord. Ham. How say you then? would hart of man Once thinke it? but you'l be secret. Both. I by heauen, my lord. Ham. There's neuer a villaine dwelling in all Denmarke, But hee's an arrant knaue. Hor. There need no Ghost come from the graue to tell you this. Ham. Right, you are in the right, and therefore I holde it meet without more circumstance at all, Wee shake hands and part; you as your busines And desiers shall leade you: for looke you, Euery man hath busines, and desires, ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare
... breath. "Ah, it is gone at last, thank God!"—and then aware of the strange effect my unaccountable incoherence must have had on the skipper, I thought to brazen it out by trying the free and easy line, which was neither more nor less than arrant impertinence in our relative positions. "Why, I have been heated a little, and amusing myself with sundry vain imaginings, but allow me to take wine with you, Captain," filling a tumbler with vinde—grave to the brim, as I spoke. "Success to you, sir—here's to your ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... arrant denier must admit that a man often furthers larger ends than he is conscious of, and that while he is transacting his particular affairs with the narrow pertinacity of a respectable ant, he subserves an economy larger ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... My folks will think I'm dead ef I don't get along home, sence the horse and sleigh have gone ahead empty. I've done my arrant and had my joke; now I want my pay, Tilly," and Gad took a hearty kiss from the rosy cheeks of his "little sweetheart," as he called her. His own cheeks tingled with the smart slap she gave him as she ran away, calling out that she hated bears and would ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... impudence to propound such an unnatural and monstrous absurdity as a great philosophical principle, would be a mystery, if we did not know how infidelity perverts men's understandings, and, while puffing them up with infinite conceit of their own wisdom, transforms them into the most arrant and outrageous fools. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... himself. He wasn't like other boys one bit, she always said. He had such a queer, topsy-turvy way of looking at things; would express the most outrageous opinions with an innocent unconsciousness that made her long to box his ears, and support the most arrant absurdities by arguments that conveyed not the smallest meaning to her intellect. Look at him now, for instance; a cripple for life, and pretending to see nothing in it but a joke, and expressing as much admiration for his horrible ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... pre-concert of any, as he himself in a letter declares; yea, with a design to bespatter the Presbyterian church of Scotland, a most scurrilous pamphlet was published at London, not only reflecting on our excellent reformers from popery, publishing arrant lies anent Mr. Alexander Henderson, abusing Mr. David Dickson, and breaking jests upon the remonstrators and presbyterians (as they called them), but also, in a most malicious and groundless kind of ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... would) to heed her neither by word or look, bearing all her scorns and revilings patiently, making no answer, and enduring all her tyranny to the uttermost. All of which fine conceits were but the most arrant folly and quickly brought to nothing, as you shall hear. For even now as I sat with these high-flown notions buzzing in my head, I started to ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... because, if you take large holster pistols and load them up to their muzzles, you can't risk anything. They are SURE to fire wide of the mark, and both parties can retire from the field with honor. Let me manage all that. Hein! 'sapristi,' two brave men would be arrant fools to kill each other for ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... go and flaunt my felicity in their faces? Wait till I get used to it a trifle. I have done them a palpable wrong, but I can at least forbear to add insult to injury. I may be an arrant fool, but, for the moment, I have taken it into my head to be prodigiously pleased. I should n't be able to conceal it; my pleasure would offend them; so I lock myself up as ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... example of the influence of heredity. If the law which she so contemptuously brushed aside is to be aborted by the influence and position of her family, the precept will be a bitter and dangerous one. Much arrant nonsense is vented concerning the 'class-hatred' stirred up by any criticism of the rich. One such instance as the running-down of Miss Cleary bears within it far more than the extremest demagoguery the potentialities of an unleashed hate. It is a ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... His wounded ears complaints eternal fill, As unoil'd hinges, querulously shrill. "You went last night with Celia to the ball." You prove it false. "Not go! that's worst of all." Nothing can please her, nothing not inflame; And arrant contradictions are the same. Her lover must be sad, to please her spleen; His mirth is an inexpiable sin: For of all rivals that can pain her breast, There's one, that wounds far deeper than the rest; To wreck her quiet, the most dreadful shelf Is if her lover dares enjoy himself. ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... Erica an uncomfortable experience. The elders of the party being out for the evening, Rose and Erica had the drawing room to themselves, and Erica was really enjoying the rare novelty of talking with a girl of her own age. Rose, although the most arrant little flirt, was fond, too, of her girl friends, and she really liked Erica, and enjoyed the fun of initiating her into all the mysteries ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Carlier, and I'm glad to see it," responded the commissary in a softer tone. "Your friend is an arrant blackguard to have treated his wife as he has, and to have betrayed you because you took her part. But you surely knew how unscrupulous he was, and also that he was a most dangerous character. We know of one or two of his exploits, and I may tell you ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... under the influence of a mutual friendship. Some, I know, in their desire to render our peace (11) abortive accuse us falsely, as though we were come hither, not seeking friendship, but because we dread the arrival of some (12) Antalcidas with moneys from the king. But consider, what arrant nonsense they talk! Was it not, pray, the great king who demanded that all the states in Hellas should be independent? and what have we Athenians, who are in full agreement with the king, both in word and deed, to fear from him? Or is it conceivable ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... long time there had been a feud between Pritchard and another man of the name of Wynne, a platelayer on the line. The object of their quarrel was the blacksmith's daughter in the neighbouring village—a remarkably pretty girl and an arrant flirt. Both men were madly in love with her, and she played them off one against the other. The night but one before his death Pritchard and Wynne had met at the village inn, had quarrelled in the bar—Lucy, of course, being the subject of their difference. ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... blow, and bluster, but not speak; No holy rage or frantic fires did stir Or flash about the spacious theatre. No clap of hands, or shout, or praise's proof Did crack the play-house sides, or cleave her roof. Artless the scene was, and that monstrous sin Of deep and arrant ignorance came in: Such ignorance as theirs was who once hiss'd At thy unequall'd play, the Alchemist; Oh, fie upon 'em! Lastly, too, all wit In utter darkness did, and still will sit, Sleeping the luckless age out, till that she Her resurrection ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... Times, i. 556. Swift has appended a note, "an arrant rascal," but Finch's great offence with the dean was probably his advancement by George I. rather than his conduct of state ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... poys and the luggage! 'Tis expressly against the law of arms; 'tis as arrant a piece of knavery, mark you now, as can be offered in ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... like to think that Wullie's an example of the law of compensation and, by losing physical strength and beauty, has gained a beautiful soul. But for the Lord's sake don't go telling anyone I—a doctor—talked such arrant nonsense," he added with a laugh as he puffed ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... black death which ravaged Avignon in 1348, shortly after his arrival in the Papal City, would have been sufficient of itself to attest. The occurrence of the plague in a city usually gave rise to an exhibition of the most arrant cowardice, and all who could, fled. In many of the European cities the physicians joined the fugitives, and the ailing were left to care for themselves. With a few notable exceptions, this was the case at ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... he says, speaking the words most softly, as if they greatly pleased him, and replacing with carefullest fingers a stray and arrant lock that has wandered from its fellows into my left eye. "What has come to you? Had I forgotten what you were like? How pretty you are! How ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... supposed magnetic battery, produced no results. Altogether twenty-nine experiments were tried, which convinced every one present, except Dr. Elliotson, that Animal Magnetism was a delusion, that the girls were of very exciteable imaginations, and arrant impostors. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... fifteen thousand pounds—by the very man who had robbed him of his ancestral fields? He dwelt on the double grievance till it nearly frenzied him. But he could do nothing: it was his fate. His only hope was that Sir Charles, the arrant flirt, would desert this beauty after a time, as ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... other transgressions of those limits the States appropriately may punish.' * * * It is not within our competence to confirm or deny claims of social scientists as to the dependence of the individual on the position of his racial or religious group in the community. It would, however, be arrant dogmatism, quite outside the scope of our authority in passing on the powers of a State, for us to deny that the Illinois legislature may warrantably believe that a man's job and his educational opportunities and the dignity ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... of the Americans at first appear to a stranger to be so incomprehensible and so puerile that he is at a loss whether to pity a people which takes such arrant trifles in good earnest, or to envy the happiness which enables it to discuss them. But when he comes to study the secret propensities which govern the factions of America, he easily perceives that the greater part of them are more or ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... wealth and such surroundings do the talking for them and do it more effectively. He would have preferred even a vulgar glitter to the unobtrusiveness of those rooms. But he knew that Susan was right, and he was a very human arrant coward about admitting that ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... (we read) so much hunted on account of religion! These sports are too brutal to think of; but there are amusing accounts of lion-baiting both by bears and dogs, in which the beast who figures so nobly on the escutcheon nearly always proved himself an arrant coward, and escaped away as soon as he could into his den, with his tail between his legs. The spectators were once much disgusted when a lion and lioness, with the dog that pursued them, all ran into the den, and, like good friends, stood ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... man who kills one runs some danger of his life, if the crime is discovered. It is hardly to be wondered at that the hyaenas in the "Kikuyu" country are far bolder than in other parts. Elsewhere and by nature the hyaena is an arrant coward. Here, however, he will bite the face off a sleeping man lying in the open, or even pull down a woman or child, should they be alone; elsewhere he only ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... Lord, cut out the rotten from your apple, Your apple eats the better. Let them go. They go like those old Pharisees in John Convicted by their conscience, arrant cowards, Or tamperers with that treason out of Kent. When ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... gamekeeper both, for a time, set their faces against the whole plan of education; Christy having been nettled at hearing what he terms a wild-goose chase put on a par with a fox-hunt; and the gamekeeper having always been accustomed to look upon hawks as arrant poachers, which it was his duty to shoot down, and nail, ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... two as arrant fanatics as ever breathed"[7]—John Endicott, who was governor for thirteen out of fifteen years following Winthrop's death, and John Norton, an able and upright but narrow and intolerant clergyman. The persecuting spirit ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... Parson Dale were a penny the poorer, he would do a pennyworth's less good; and comparing one parish with another, such as Rood Hall and Hazeldean, he is dimly aware that there is no greater CIVILIZER than a parson tolerably well off. Then, too, Squire Hazeldean, though as arrant a Tory as ever stood upon shoe-leather, is certainly not a vampire nor blood sucker. He does not feed on the public; a great many of the public feed upon him: and, therefore, his practical experience a little staggers and perplexes Lenny Fairfield as to the gospel accuracy of his ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... assure the reader—and perhaps if we have ever been able to afford him amusement, it is owing in a great degree to this cause—that we never found ourselves in company with the stupidest of all possible companions in a post-chaise, or with the most arrant cumber-corner that ever occupied a place in the mail-coach, without finding, that, in the course of our conversation with him, we had some ideas suggested to us, either grave orgay, or some information communicated in the course of our journey, which we should have regretted not to have learned, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... house and reign of Pelias brought. She—while in various forms she tries Her furious spirit to disguise, At one place in her flight bestow'd Her brother's limbs upon the road; And at another could betray The daughters their own sire to slay." How think you now?—What arrant trash! And our assertions much too rash!— Since prior to th' Aegean fleet Did Minos piracy defeat, And made adventures on the sea. How then shall you and I agree? Since, stern as Cato's self, you hate All tales alike, both small and great. Plague not too much the man ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... but an arrant humbug to affect to despise the honor that the world seems disposed to bestow upon us. I say us, for I cannot and will not take it all to myself. I may have been the originator of the idea, but I could have done nothing without your co-operation, ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... little debars him, Nor sickness nor age, no treachery-sorrow Becloudeth his spirit, conflict nowhere, No sword-hate, appeareth, but all of the world doth Wend as he wisheth; the worse he knoweth not, 90 Till arrant arrogance inward pervading, Waxeth and springeth, when the warder is sleeping, The guard of the soul: with sorrows encompassed, Too sound is his slumber, the slayer is near him, Who with bow and ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... which had been believed by pious men for untold ages must necessarily be true. Science, in the garb of philosophy, with cold, dispassionate criticism, proved that these hitherto accepted truths were arrant fallacies. The poets and writers then took up the subject, and finally the people fell into line, so superstitious, bigoted, dogmatic mythology died, intellectuality took its place, and higher civilization took a ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... Liberty of Prophesying [22] Taylor turns this way into mere ridicule. I love thee, Jeremy! but an arrant theological barrister that thou wast, though thy only fees were thy desires of doing ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... brother. He is worse than a dissenter. Dissenters try to be gentlemen; but George has no misgivings about himself on that score; so he gives his undivided energy to his efforts to be parsonic. He is an arrant hypocrite." ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... nigh upon forgot my arrant. Here's a letter they giv' me fur Lurindy, at the post-office; ev'rybody else's afeard ter come up here";—and by-and-by she brought it up from under all she'd stowed away there. "Thet ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... see none for heresy, or sacrilege, or calling the Pope and his cardinals gross impostors, and you two worthies are arrant rogues and fools, or we might have become purchasers to a large amount!" exclaimed the captain indignantly. "Heave this trumpery overboard, and you, Senhores priests, may be thankful that you have been deprived of the means of cheating your ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... glance about to mark the effect of his insolent words. For the instant I believed Cassion's first thought was murder, for he gripped a pistol in his hand, and flung one foot forward, an oath sputtering between his lips. Yet the arrant coward in him conquered even that mad outburst of passion, and before I could grasp his arm in restraint, the impulse had passed, and he was staring after the slowly receding figure of De Artigny, his ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... Arrant sentimentalist, born and trained flirt, as this confession shows her to have been, it also shows that she lived to rue it. She rued more than that, for she was the mother of Lady Caroline Lamb; and if anything more need be said of her misfortunes, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... is the fact. When we have read a thousand times that Y's flour has cured the most illustrious persons of the most obstinate maladies, we are tempted at last to try it when suffering from an illness of a similar kind. If we always read in the same papers that A is an arrant scamp and B a most honest man we finish by being convinced that this is the truth, unless, indeed, we are given to reading another paper of the contrary opinion, in which the two qualifications are reversed. Affirmation and repetition ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... fifth order." Two of Thackeray's own drawings in the "Book of Snobs"—in chapters three and nine—show men, one civil the other military, smoking cigars out of doors; but as these were no doubt arrant snobs, the drawings may be accepted as proof of Mr. ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... moments belonging to his life, when his curdled affections yearn for something that they have not,—when his avarice oversteps all the commandments,—when his pride builds castles full of splendor; and yet put this before his eye, and he reads with the most careless air in the world, and condemns as arrant fiction, what cannot be ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... love hath inspired me to write this sarcastical panegyric on thee; but thou art deceived: I value thee not of a farthing; nor will it give me any pain if thou shouldst prevail on the reader to censure this digression as arrant nonsense; for know, to thy confusion, that I have introduced thee for no other purpose than to lengthen out a short chapter, and so I return to ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... I leave such ideas to the ignorant and uneducated. I should be unworthy of the progressive teachings of my time if I believed such arrant nonsense." ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... gurgle of the bottle in the next room, and I heard you drinking, and then you have betrayed yourself to me, as Solomon in the Song of Songs betrayed himself to his beloved, by your breath." "You are an arrant rogue," he said; "now take yourself off," and he brought the candle to light me out. But I sprang in front of him and knelt upon the threshold of the room. "Now I shall see if I can shut you in, and whether you are a good spirit or an evil one, like the rat ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... yourself, good Roderic," said the voice of Erland the Old; "we had better have tarried till daylight. It may be that they have already discovered what you have done. Truly you were an arrant simpleton to leave the weapon in your brother's breast. 'Twould have served our further ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... Dean say, 'Well, I've no time to waste, Palmer. If you think this'll satisfy Southminster people, I'll permit it to be done; but I must say this, that never in the whole course of my life have I heard such arrant nonsense from a practical man as I have from you. Don't you agree with me, Henslow?' As far as I could hear Mr. Henslow said something like 'Oh! well we're told, aren't we, Mr. Dean, not to judge others?' and the Dean he gave a kind of sniff, and walked straight up to the tomb, and took ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... the Squire, with an explosive snort of contempt. "An arrant set of vagabonds and tramps,—of ranting, strutting, apish creatures, with neither local habitations nor names of their own. And what does Zelma know about them? Out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... bestowed upon this mere page aroused the jealousy of Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a foolish, rejected lover of hers, who at that time was staying at her house with her merry old uncle Sir Toby. This same Sir Toby dearly loved a practical joke, and knowing Sir Andrew to be an arrant coward, he thought that if he could bring off a duel between him and Cesario, there would be rare sport indeed. So he induced Sir Andrew to send a challenge, which he himself took to Cesario. The poor ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... as he considered the consequences should he refuse to go with them. Strong as he was, he had a fear of ridicule. To be laughed at, to be ostracized by the set he admired, was more than he could endure. Like many another brave fellow, fearless in every respect but one, he was an arrant coward before that one overpowering fear ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... remained, subsisting on wild oranges, and then swam across again on a raft of sticks, in spite of the alligators and many fierce fish which abound in Paraguay. He got well, and, though lame, was, when I knew him, as arrant a little scrivening knave as you could hope to meet in ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... his arms, "here's the truth on't. I found a poor wretch bent on vengeance, murder, and a rogue's death, which was pure folly. I offered you riches, the which you refused, and this was arrant folly. I took you for comrade, brought you aboard ship with offer of honest employ which you likewise refused and here was more folly. Your conduct on board ship was all folly. So, despite yourself, I set you on a fair island with the right noble ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... poked her with the pole. "Take 'nother picture." But kitty suddenly whirled, with fur and tail erect, a most surprising and brave and assured front, then ran at Takahashi. I yelled: "Run George!" Pell-mell everybody fled from that beautiful little beast. We were arrant cowards. But Takahashi grasped up another and longer pole, and charged back at kitty. This time he chased her out of camp. When he returned his face was a study: "Nashty thing! She make awful stink! She no 'fraid a tall. Next time I kill ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... said; "but I hope to enjoy next year." And then I took half an hour to tell her that, in spite of the fact that she was the most arrant, deceitful, unreliable, two-faced and scuttling politician in the world, she was almost incredibly nice. She listened quite patiently, and at the end she held up her fingers. They'd ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... stamp itself that it had not been in existence on the date impressed on the envelope, then the fraud would be quite apparent. And if there had been such fraud, then would the testimony of all those four witnesses be crushed into arrant perjury. They had produced the fraudulent document, and by it would be thoroughly condemned. There could be no necessity for a ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... without title! Lord Ronsdale told himself Miss Jocelyn Wray was no better than an arrant coquette, but the next moment questioned this conclusion. Had she not really been a little taken by the fellow? Certainly she seemed not averse to his company; when she willed, and she willed often, she summoned him to her ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... commonwealth must have necessarily fallen to pieces, had not Sulla by his intervention in Asia and Italy saved its existence. It is true that the constitution of Sulla had as little endurance as that of Cromwell, and it was not difficult to see that his structure was no solid one; but it is arrant thoughtlessness to overlook the fact that without Sulla most probably the very site of the building would have been swept away by the waves; and even the blame of its want of stability does not fall primarily on Sulla. The statesman builds only so much as in the sphere ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... proves that he is an arrant knave. For here is proof of a conspiracy against Mr. Hamilton, who was booked to sail with Captain Annis, and Keith is in it." Denham read the letter to Benjamin, explaining its meaning as he went along, for he was well posted about Keith ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... sobriety,—Steele reeled his way through life, and died with the reputation of being an orthodox Christian and a (nearly) habitual drunkard; the most affectionate and most faithless of husbands; a brave soldier, and in many points an arrant fool; a violent politician, and the best natured of men; a writer extremely lively, for this, among other reasons, that he wrote generally on his legs, flying or meditating flight from his creditors; and who embodied ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... a man, without being rated a lord or a baron, or what d'ye call um, d'ye see, may n't take to the highway in the way of a frolic, d'ye see?—Adad! for my own part, brother, I'm resolved as how to cruise a bit in the way of an arrant—if so be as I can't at once be commander, mayhap I may be bore upon the books as a petty officer or ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... dullish company to himself, he thought he would have a good time with Souter John and Tam O'Shanter, otherwise called Somnus and Morpheus, two very good fellows, though one was not very bright, and the other an arrant rattlebrain, who, though much listened to by some, no wise man ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... suddenly thoughtful and morose. In truth, he was an arrant and amusing humbug. It has been said that children are all given to lying in some degree, but seeing the folly of it in good time, if, indeed, they are not convinced of its wickedness, train tongue and feeling into the way of truth. The respect for truth that is the beginning of ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... that that has also been tried, and has signally failed. Have we not heard how many hundreds of so-called black converts in this and in other colonies are arrant hypocrites, or at all events give way ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... fairly considered and disposed of according to law. When the inn-keeper, station-holder, posting-master, alderman, or other proper functionary on the premises, fails to present this book and require the traveler to sign his name in it, he (the arrant violator of laws) is fined; but the traveler need not flatter himself that the rule does not work both ways, for he also is fined if he refuses or intentionally neglects to write his name in the said book. The number of horses to be kept at fast stations is fixed by ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... arrant folly to send her there. How do we know she has any more talent for elocution ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... chemistry, philosophy, theology, and music; and he found amusement in examining gardens and collections of all sorts of virtuosities and antiquities. He had 'much discourse of chymical matters' with Sir Kenelm Digby; 'but the truth is, Sir Kenelm was an arrant mountebank.' Here, too, he wrote his second literary composition, The State of France, as it stood in the IXth yeer of this present monarch Lewis XIIII, which was published in England in 1652. Apart from these occupations, his time was chiefly spent in the pleasures and ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... refusing to enter the League of Nations (now already established by twenty-nine nations) and bearing and deserving the contempt of the world, would submit an entirely new project. This act would either be regarded as arrant madness or attempted ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... travellers had found their way to Cathay. There was Friar Odoric, of Pordenone, who, during the years 1316-30 visited Hindustan, Sumatra, Java, Cochin China, the Chinese Empire, and Thibet.[335] It was from this worthy monk that the arrant old impostor, "Sir John Mandeville," stole his descriptions of India and Cathay, seasoning them with yarns from Pliny and Ktesias, and grotesque conceits of his own.[336] Several other missionary friars visited China between 1302 and 1330, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... heart Snell was an arrant coward, and he knew that Hodge was really longing for a challenge. Wat felt sure that he would receive a severe drubbing at the hands of the dark-haired boy whom he had angered, and the thoughts of such punishment filled ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... silken flattery. Your good guide, your dear guide, your pet guide, whom Neighbor So-and-so, going abroad, must look up immediately on his arrival, this invaluable creature, depend upon it, is an arrant flatterer. He does not go out of his way for you; he does not tell it you to your face; but, somehow or other, (if he knows his vocation,) he makes you believe, that, of all the travellers he ever escorted, (and he has been a travellers' ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... a curious laugh, "I must be an arrant fool, for I thought you did." They walked for a minute or two in silence, and suddenly he turned to her, looked at her, and exclaimed: "I don't believe you, Mary. You're not ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... under jaw, his body relaxing in fear. He was an arrant coward like the most of his downtrodden race. Then something shifted through his thick brain, and he ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... now that twenty years of self-abnegation were at last finding their reward, now that the King had come into his own, and the King's faithful friends were being compensated in accordance with the length of the King's purse, would it not be arrant cowardice and disloyalty for her—an only child—to oppose her father's will in the ordering of her own future, to refuse the rich marriage which would help to restore dignity and grandeur to the ancient name and to the ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... which have had the effect of ruining a large number of the country gentry of Ireland, driving them from their native shores, impoverishing the landlords without any perceptible benefit to the tenants, who appear to be no better off than ever. What surprised him most was the arrant nonsense talked by the English Gladstonians, and the blindness and apathy of the English people generally, who in his opinion were being gradually led to the brink of a frightful abyss, which threatened to swallow up the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... imagined. This I have lately understood to be the case in this quarter, from men who are of no party, but well disposed to the present administration. How should it be otherwise, when no stone has been left unturned that could impress on the minds of the people the most arrant misrepresentation of facts; that their rights have not only been neglected, but absolutely sold; that there are no reciprocal advantages in the treaty; that the benefits are all on the side of Great Britain; and, what seems to have had ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... fingers on teeth, when Barnaby asked me a question I could not very well answer. Then, in some trifling difference with Delia, I clasped my hand to my brow. And I pranced through my social transactions at times singularly like an actor! I tried not to—no one could be more keenly alive to the arrant absurdity of the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... permanent set of scenery, so dwarfed the figures of the actors that buskins and padding were used in order to make the persons of the players more in keeping with their surroundings. With submission, I hold that this theory is arrant nonsense. Even on stilts ten feet high the actors still would have been, in one way, out of proportion with the background. If used at all in tragedy, buskins and pads probably were used to make the heroic characters of the drama literally greater ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... She was talking arrant nonsense in self-defence, for every fibre of her being was quivering at his presence. The old hushed cry awoke in her heart "Christopher and Love—Love and Christopher." If she looked at him he must see it, her eyes must needs betray ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... forgotten by most of my absent friends, and in this number, I fear, Sir, that I must consider you; for I have long expected the pleasure of a letter from home to no purpose. Olivia and Sophia too, promised to write, but seem to have forgotten me. Tell them they are two arrant little baggages, and that I am this moment in a most violent passion with them: yet still, I know not how, tho' I want to bluster a little, my heart is respondent only to softer emotions. Then tell them, ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... coast-races, the Vai seem to be arrant cowards. The headmen salute their visitors Arab-fashion, with flourishes of the sword; but swording ends there. Of late they were attacked by the savages of the interior, Gallinas, Pannis, and Kusus. The ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... pleasurable emotions in the beholder, or to become objects of human interest and affection. The kingbird is the best dressed member of the family, but he is a braggart; and, though always snubbing his neighbors, is an arrant coward, and shows the white feather at the slightest display of pluck in his antagonist. I have seen him turn tail to a swallow, and have known the little pewee in question to whip him beautifully. From the great-crested to the little green flycatcher, their ways and general habits ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... our throats with huzzas for the 'star-spangled banner' and the American eagle? And a caviller might perhaps go farther, and ask the significant question, Are we not known all over the world as a race of arrant braggarts? ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... undertook to pervert the truth. The causes of their enmity are their chagrin at the events of the Exodus and the difference of their religious ideas."[1] Josephus deals with Manetho's description of the going-out from Egypt, and undertakes to demonstrate that "he trifles and tells arrant lies." He dissects the charge that the Hebrews were a pack of lepers exiled from the country, and insists upon its absurdity and the lack of consistency in the details. He offers ingenuously as a proof of the falsity of the allegation that Moses was a leper the Mosaic legislation ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... the other side of you go elsewhere, make him restore me a pair of saddle-bags whereof he hath saith indeed he did it not; but I saw him, not a month ago, in act to have them resoled.' Ribi on his side cried out with all his might, 'Believe him not, my lord; he is an arrant knave, and for that he knoweth I am come to lay a complaint against him for a pair of saddle-bags whereof he hath robbed me, he cometh now with his story of the boothose, which I have had in my house this many a day. ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... was quickly captured, and not long afterwards twenty-five of her crew were tried, convicted, and hung near Newport, Rhode Island. But the arrant Low escaped without injury, and continued his career of contemptible crime for some time longer. What finally became of him is not set down in the histories of piracy. It is not improbable that if the men under his command were not ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... wearing the Feather, tho our Friend took him for an Officer in the Guards, has proved to be [an arrant Linnen-Draper. [1]] ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... crow." He is handsomer and has such an air. He is nice in his habits and is said to have likable traits. A tame one in a Shoshone camp was the butt of much sport and enjoyed it. He could all but talk and was another with the children, but an arrant thief. The raven will eat most things that come his way,—eggs and young of ground-nesting birds, seeds even, lizards and grasshoppers, which he catches cleverly; and whatever he is about, let a coyote trot never so softly ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... the sitting-room I was surprised, however, to find the self-styled Kearney quietly seated on the sofa, the gentle May Sylvester, the "Lily of Lone Valley," sitting with maidenly awe and unaffected interest on one side of him, while on the other that arrant flirt, her cousin Kate, was practicing the pitiless archery of her eyes, with an excitement that ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... attempted to get near enough to one of these wary animals to warrant a shot. It is only by great good luck that anybody ever shoots a coyote, although in countries where they abound every man's hand is against them; they are such arrant thieves, ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... Not only did he carry on familiar conversations with her, on his part, but it appeared that the cow made him her confidant in return. If he began to murmur something to himself as he sat by the chimney corner, they would inquire what he was talking about. It was generally arrant nonsense that he told them. Once ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... Jove! You don't suppose I'm such an arrant donkey as to set any store by fame!" cried Lovelace, a broad smile lighting up his face and eyes. "Why, because a few people read my books and are amused thereby,—and because the Press pats me graciously on the back, and says metaphorically, 'Well ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... the other, 'as arrant a poltroon as ever I met. I tell you, you must either fight him, or publish a statement of your own unparalleled disgrace. Don't think you shall ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... by spear and crozier, All know the arrant cheat, And shun the square of pavement Uncertain at his feet! Yea, spare the wretch, each brooding And secret-leaguers' chief, And make no pistol-target Of stars ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... his part, thought that fear of the terrors he had held up before him would cause Jackson—whom he knew to be an arrant coward—to refrain from adventuring himself again ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... the table at Mr. Seven Sachs, as who should say: "And have you too allowed yourself to be dragged into this affair? I really thought you were cleverer. Don't you agree with me that we're both fools of the most arrant description?" And under that brief glance Mr. Seven Sachs's calm deserted him as it had never deserted him on the stage, where for over fifteen hundred nights he had withstood the menace of revolvers, poison, and female treachery through three hours and ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... matter, there were unmistakable signs in Sandy himself of what would have been called arrant terror in any other man. His face was so bloodless that the pallor showed even through the leathery tan; one eye stared wildly, the other being sheltered under a clumsy patch which could not quite conceal the ugly ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... a coward, an arrant cur, yet he infinitely preferred having to tackle flesh and blood, ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... early, before the sun was up, I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup; But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, Had stayed at home behind me and was fast ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various |
