"Bluster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Together with the stage's glory, stood Each like a poor and pitied widowhood. The cirque profan'd was, and all postures rack'd; For men did strut, and stride, and stare, not act. Then temper flew from words, and men did squeak, Look red, and 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 ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... of anger and his magnetism overawed courtiers and politicians as they did the gladiators whom he slew in the arena. The strain of madness in his blood provided cunning that could mask itself beneath a princely bluster of indifference to consequences. He could fear with an extravagance coequal to the fury of his love of danger, and his fear struck terror into men's hearts, as it stirred his mad ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... prolonged, but the end could not be doubtful. Mrs. Blake could scold and bluster, but Lottie was determined. The mother was in bondage to Mrs. Grundy: the daughter played the trump card of her utter recklessness and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... terrible speech, Villiers had crouched on the ground, half terrified, while his wife towered over him, magnificent in her anger. At the end, however, he recovered himself a little, and began to bluster. ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... there's it now; I thought so: kneel'd and wept! a Pox upon thee—I took thee for a prettier Fellow— You shou'd have huft and bluster'd at her door, Been very impudent and saucy, Sir, Leud, ruffling, mad; courted at all hours and seasons; Let her not rest, nor eat, nor sleep, nor visit. Believe me, Charles, Women love Importunity. Watch her close, watch her like a ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... Commons. Fergus O'Connor dissuaded them from any collision with the authorities. In a speech full of bombast and egotism, he declared that he was personally marked out for slaughter by the authorities. Thus, after all the bluster of this great tribune, as his followers called him, he showed the white feather. He was not prepared, like Smith O'Brien, gallantly to go out, with his life in his hand, and verify, by exposing himself to every peril and penalty, the words ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... London theatres was present. He was on the lookout for something that might be got up as a prodigy. The theatre, it seems, was in desperate condition—nothing but a miracle could save it. He pitched upon me for that miracle. I had a remarkable bluster in my style, and swagger in my gait, and having taken to drink a little during my troubles, my voice was somewhat cracked; so that it seemed like two voices run into one. The thought struck the agent to bring me out as a theatrical ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... is a fearful storm, the heavens seem As if they would vent themselves in streams of fire; So thick the darkness which usurps the day, That one might see the stars. The angry winds Bluster and howl like spirits loosed from hell. The firm earth trembles, and the aged elms Groaning, bow down their venerable tops. Yet this terrific tumult, o'er our heads, Which teacheth gentleness to savage beasts, So that they seek the shelter of their caves, Appeaseth not the bloody strife of men— ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... need to bluster in this fashion. Take up the poker and go and break into the door quiet and decent, like anyone else would do. And girls—off for your bonnets this ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... his head. There was only one instinct or desire in his being—the instinct which drives the wounded rat back to its hole to die, the instinct of self-preservation working in its meanest range. His swagger and bluster had been hopelessly crushed out of him by the vigour of Palmer Billy's attack; and to have been, as he considered, twice deserted by his own comrades, rendered his subjugation even ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... just decision, as most well-informed Canadians knew at the time. The troublesome question was settled; the time-honored friendship of two great peoples had suffered no interruption; and Roosevelt had secured for his country its just due, without public parade or bluster, by merely being ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... Milsom, savagely; "who's afraid of a hunchback's bluster? I dare say he wanted the ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... to have fascinated Haydon. Harlan saw him shrink back, the bluster gone out of him, his face the color of ashes. He kept stepping back, until he brought up against the rear wall of the ranchhouse; and there he stood, watching Woodward, his eyes bulging ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... it here." Stanley began to bluster. "I remember distinctly putting it in this corner. Now, who's had it? There's no time to lose. Look sharp! The stick's got to ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... and in Conjunction with some that were not qualify'd by Law, but meerly Voluntarily, call'd in the Moon by a hard long Word, in English signifying PROJECTORS these erected Stocks in Shadows, Societies in Nubibus, and Bought and Sold meer Vapour, Wind, Emptiness and Bluster for Mony, till they drew People in to lay out their Cash, and then laught ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... to know that he was going to run in?" said Gymbert, trying to bluster. "He crossed my horse, and it is his own fault if he was in the way of ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... cares for anything but the show and bluster which are threatening our ruin? English food, not long ago the best in the world, is falling off in quality, and even our national genius for cooking shows a decline; to anyone who knows England, these are facts significant enough. Foolish persons have prated ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... to the veiled hostility that met him everywhere, faced Steptoe Service and made his request, that dignitary felt a chill go down his spine. Like Old Pete he felt the man beneath the surface. He met him, however, with bluster and refused all reopening of a matter which he declared settled with the burial of the snow-packer in the sliding canyons where ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... the people is most closely restrained, there it gives the greatest shocks to peace and order; therefore would I say to all kings, let your demagogues lead crowds, lest they lead armies; let them bluster, lest they massacre; a little turbulence is, as it were, the rainbow of the state; it shows indeed that there is a passing shower; but it is a pledge that there shall ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sure, I say was, because one never sees it now-a-days, though fifty years ago, under the one designation or the other, it was played annually by the Hogmanay guizards, who, dressed for the occasion, set it forth with deliciously unsophisticated swagger and bluster in every house they visited that had a kitchen floor broad and wide enough for the operation. It formed the material of a chap-book which was regularly on sale at the "Johnnie-a'-thing" shops in the middle of last century, though now, I suppose, a copy could scarcely be had for ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... over his work, without bluster or self-gratulation, for very joy at having work to do. There is a keen practical insight about him, rarely combined, in these days, with his single-minded determination to do good in his generation. His eye is single, and his whole ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the chair-arm, his fingers were set, tips on his chin, and over them he surveyed his listeners with calmness. He did not raise his voice. It was his mild manner that made what he said sound so balefully savage. Bluster would have weakened it. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... "That's regular clap-trap: Don't bluster any more. Now DO be cool and take a nap! Such a ridiculous old ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... career he never left any man, save a Roundhead, penniless upon the road; nor was it his custom to strip the master without giving the man a trifle for his pains. His courage, moreover, was equal to his understanding. Since he was afraid of nothing, it was not his habit to bluster when he was not determined to have his way. When once his pistol was levelled, when once the solemn order was given, the victim must either fight or surrender; and Hind was never the man to decline a combat with any ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... the rough Torre began to heave and move, And bluster into stormy sobs and say, 'I never loved him: an I meet with him, I care not howsoever great he be, Then will I strike at him and strike him down, Give me good fortune, I will strike him dead, For this discomfort he hath ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... administration is furnished in the story told by Colonel Henderson. The fearful trials to which the United States were subjected expose the folly and self-deception of which even well-meaning party leaders are too often capable. Ministers bluster about fighting and yet refuse to spend enough money on the army to make it fit for use; and on both sides of the Atlantic the lessons taught by the Peninsula, the Crimea, and the Secession War are but ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... "Your bluster won't serve you, sirrah. If you be a gentleman, which you make incredible, you may proceed in order and I'll consider if I may do you ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... yes. The volcano itself is harmless enough. It smokes unpleasantly now and then, splutters and rumbles as if about to obliterate all creation, but for all its bluster it only manages to spill a trickle or two of fresh lava down its sides—just tamely subsides after deluging Leavitt with a shower of cinders and ashes. But Leavitt won't leave it alone. He goes poking into the very crater, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... hardly civil, Fletcher," said Sandford, gravely, "and rather forgetful, besides. If I were you, I wouldn't bluster until a certain piece of paper was ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... long waiting, and of sitting dumb Upon his charger; so with greenest leer He vented his impatience in a sneer. "Is this," he said, "the glorious Table Round, And is its glory naught but empty sound? Braggarts! I put your bluster to the test, And find you quail before a merry jest!" Then the great king himself stood up in ire, With clenched hand raised, and eyes that gleamed dark fire, And fronting the Green Knight he cried: "Forbear! For by my sword ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... be guided and led into their sensuall lustes and appetites: for ill successe faileth not in a beginning, the grounde whereof abhorring reason, is planted and layed vppon the sandie foundacion of pleasure, which is shaken and ouerthrowen, by the least winde and tempest that Fortune can bluster against ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... Morton, laughing. "Just that one act shows the man's character to a T. Bluster, and then retreat. But suppose it should come to fighting, my boy. Hadn't you better go back to school, and stay till the ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... not unreasonable. Like every one else, they will "try it on," but if handled courteously, kindly, with geniality, and, above all, with complete candour, they will generally see reason. And remember one thing. In spite of all that has happened, our mistakes, our bluster, our occasional lapses from complete disingenuousness, the Afghans still like us. Moreover, their hereditary mistrust of Russia still inclines them to lean on us. We have lately concluded a treaty with Afghanistan—not ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... himself, and strokes of his own eloquence." So runs the complaint of Joseph Warton.[38] The distrust was not without ground. The danger that the method of Longinus in the hands of ungifted writers would become a cloak for critical ignorance and degenerate into empty bluster was already apparent.[39] Only rarely was there a reader who could distinguish between the false and the true application of the method. Gibbon did it in a passage which impressed itself upon the younger critics of Hazlitt's generation. "I was acquainted ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... mentioning Luther's name to John almost before it was out of her mouth. John's instincts made him bluster and get off the subject of business and on to that of personalities at once. She did not reply to the taunt, but went quietly back to ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... (68) first served this Rump in with mustard - The sauce was a compound of courage and custard; Sir Vane bless'd the creature, Noll snuffled and bluster'd, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... in spite of that feeling of sharp practice toward himself—nay, because of it; it was impossible to use the weapon that a former kindness had placed in his hand. He looked at Leverich now with an expression which the latter quieted himself to meet. This was a situation, not for bluster and rage, but to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... think it—'twas hard, 'twas bitter hard, Dannie, t' be engaged in that dirty business. I'd not have ye black your soul with it; an' I was 'lowin, Dannie, afore the parson left us, t' teach un how t' manage the Honorable, t' tell un about the liquor an' the bluster, t' show un how t' scare the Honorable on the Water Street pavement, t' teach un t' threaten an' swear the coward's money from his pocket, for I wasn't wantin' you, Dannie, t' know the trial an' wickedness o' the foul ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... I worry about it?" he said to Grace. "When the North gets angry enough to put its foot down, all this bluster about State- rights, and these efforts to foist slavery on a people who are disgusted ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... sudden pallor he was taking fright again, and he began to bolster up his courage with bluster and noise, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... beginning to bluster;" said Trysail, who had witnessed the descent of his commander, at that moment and on such an errand, with great dissatisfaction. "Although his shot fell short, it is too much to let a Frenchman have the credit of ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... (apparently) bent on promoting animosity, and on convincing us that they will rather rush into civil war than endure a Parliament in Dublin supreme over all Ireland: but however much this may be suspected as the bluster and cunning of a minority in Ulster, to ignore it totally may be unjust as well as unwise. And besides, I think that Ireland needs the practice of Local Government, varying locally, before that of a Central Irish Parliament. This forbids my desiring a complete ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... to his feet and began to bluster considerably in Portuguese; but poor Barney seemed awfully crest-fallen, arid the deep concern which wrinkled his face, and the genuine regret that sounded in the tones of his voice, at length soothed the indignant Brazilian, who frowned gravely, and waving his hand, as if to signify that ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... that they use burning words to others, whose words to them are never even warm. So it was with this man when he spoke to himself in his solitude of his purpose of resigning the titled heiress. To the arguments, the entreaties, or the threats of others he would pay no heed. The Countess might bluster about her rank, and he would heed her not at all. He cared nothing for the whole tribe of Lovels. If Lady Anna asked for release, she should be released. But not till she had heard his words. How ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... had been entirely non-plussed, the cut in the speech was lost in amazement; then bluster had ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... joy assumed, while sorrow dimm'd the eyes, The forced sad smiles that follow'd sudden sighs; And every art, long used, but used in vain, To hide thy progress, Nature, and thy pain. Too eager caution shows some danger's near, The bully's bluster proves the coward's fear; His sober step the drunkard vainly tries, And nymphs expose the failings they disguise. First, whispering gossips were in parties seen, Then louder Scandal walk'd the village—green; Next babbling Folly told ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... bluster, I saw that old Katchiba was in a great dilemma, and that he would give anything for a shower, but that he did not know how to get out of the scrape. It was a common freak of the tribes to sacrifice the rainmaker, should he be unsuccessful. ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... needlessly exacerbate the feelings of those who disagreed with him. Now, a different order of things prevailed. Boulton was simply unendurable. His capacity was barely such as to enable him to discharge his official functions, and what he lacked in ability he made up for in bluster. He had an abominable temper, and a haughty, overbearing manner. He was always committing blunders which he refused to acknowledge, and he roared and bullied his way through one complication after another in a fashion ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... than the cherry! O sweeter than the berry! O nymph more bright Than moonshine night, Like kidlings blithe and merry! Ripe as the melting cluster! No lily has such lustre; Yet hard to tame As raging flame, And fierce as storms that bluster! ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... nigh exhausted the slender stock of evidence with which he had started. For a few minutes longer he tried by sheer bluster to conceal the poverty of the case, and last of all he handed one of Cobham's confessions to the Clerk of the Crown to be read in court. It entered into no particulars, which Cobham said their lordships must not expect ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... fairness, and respect. Such a point of view precludes the use of satire, invective, or harsh epithets. These never carry conviction; in fact, they invariably destroy the effect that an otherwise good argument might produce. Ridicule and bluster may please those who already agree with the speaker, but with these people he should be little concerned; a debater worthy of the name seeks to change the opinions of those who disagree with him. For this reason he ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... bluster all you please, but it won't do you any good," answered Dave, and his voice had a more positive ring to it than before. "You thought you could play this trick on me and get away with it, but I am going to show you it can't be done. I am going to hand you over to the authorities and see that ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... second and more gratuitous Crimea. But it was not only in Eastern Europe that his saving influence was felt. In Africa and India, and wherever British honor was involved, he was the resolute and unsparing enemy of that odious system of bluster and swagger and might against right, on which Lord Beaconsfield and his colleagues bestowed the ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... lego, to bring together, and latro, to bark or bluster; possibly from lex, law, and latens, unknown. Hence, a company of men brought together to bluster, or a company of law makers who know ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... win the Vermonters over to the British cause. He seems to have assured Haldimand's agent that "I shall do everything in my power to make this state a British province.'' In March 1781 he wrote to Congress, with characteristic bluster, "I am as resolutely determined to defend the independence of Vermont as congress that of the United States, and rather than fail will retire with the hardy Green Mountain Boys into the desolate caverns of the mountains and wage ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... have gone on," said he, "throwing shells into the town till they sent me out 400 hostages." The simple truth is that in spite of his long pedigree and good blood Bismarck was not quite a gentleman in our sense of the word; and as this accounts for his ferocious bluster and truculent bloodthirsty utterances when he was in power in the war time, so it was the keynote to his more recent undignified attitude and howls of querulous impatience of his altered situation. It must be said of him, however, that he was a man of cool and undaunted courage. ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... some cold meat if you can. I'll go on to the baker's. We'll meet again opposite the church. If I'm not there in twenty minutes go back without me; I'll wait that long for you. Walk in as if you owned the shanty. There's nothing starts suspicion as quick as looking frightened. Bluster a bit if they look crooked at you, and ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... no desire that the old man should again take his stand behind the impenetrable screen of threat and bluster from which he had ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... them, and then they began to threaten and bluster. I was beginning to get frightened, but I made up my mind I wouldn't give in to them. And then—well, you came along, and I guess I never was so glad to see you, Jack! But, of course, they really did me no harm. ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... confirmation, which he assuredly never intended, to the Prussian ideal of a State. Nietzsche was too much averse from politics to intend such an application of his teaching, which is essentially individualistic, and he had nothing but contempt for the bluster and philistinism of the Prussian State in particular. We must admit, however, that in this unintentional way he contributed to the formation of that German temper which led to the war. General von Bernhardi's admiring references to ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... semblance of Diana, or of Danae for whose sake he became a shower of gold, seeing that in the telling thereof I should waste too much time. Nay, even the savage god of war, whose strength appalls the giants, repressed his wrathful bluster, being forced to such submission by this my son, and became gentle and loving. And the forger of Jupiter, and artificer of his three-pronged thunderbolts, though trained to handle fire, was smitten by a shaft more potent than he himself had ever wrought. Nay I, ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... this fellow merely means to make a little bluster, and try if he can pick up a little money. There is nothing whatever actionable in the paper.... The article on Hazlitt, which will commence next number, will be a most powerful one, and this business will not deprive it of any ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... of such testimony it seems a bold thing to assert that there was a vast amount of noise and bluster which caused a temporary panic, but little else, and that after all Hurd's view of the matter was nearer the truth. 'The truth of the case,' he writes, 'is no more than this. A few fashionable men make a noise in the world; and this clamour being echoed ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... discrimination as you have. Tell you to be gentle, and you think we want you to dissolve into milk-and-water; tell you to be polite, and you infer hypocrisy; to be neat, and you leap over into dandyism, fancying all the while that bluster is manliness. No, Sir. You may make shoes, you may run engines, you may carry coals; you may blow the huntsman's horn, hurl the base-ball, follow the plough, smite the anvil; your face may be brown, your veins ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... stands on the opposite side of the road, with its barns; and these are all the buildings in sight of the railroad station. On the Concord rail, in the train of cars, with the locomotive puffing, and blowing off its steam, and making a great bluster in that lonely place, while along the other railroad stretches the desolate track, with the withered weeds growing up betwixt the two lines of iron, all so desolate. And anon you hear a low thunder running along these iron rails; it grows louder; an ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... penetration in any one conversant with the ways of that wise but windy potentate, the sovereign people, to discover that not withstanding all the warlike bluster and bustle of the last chapter, the city of New Amsterdam was not a whit more prepared for war than before. The privy councillors of Peter Stuyvesant were aware of this; and, having received his private orders to put the city in an immediate posture of defense, they called a meeting of the oldest ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... giant I met in Canaan was one Mistake, a large, loose-jointed fellow, who, I found, made a tremendous bluster but was as weak as a pygmy. Really he is not a true Anakim, but a Gibeonite, who are foes until they are conquered, and then they become hewers of wood and drawers of water for us—they become our servants betimes [Joshua 9:21]. ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... was there anywhere sign of timber. Foliage, of course, there was none. Cottonwood and willow in favored nooks along the Platte were just beginning to shoot forth their tiny pea-green tendrils in answer to the caressing touch of the May-day sunshine. April had been a month of storm and bluster and huge, wanton wastes of snow, whirling and drifting down from the bleak range that veiled the valley of the Laramie from the rays of the westering sun; and any one who chose to stroll out from the fort and climb ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... or two, and came quite close to the screen. I cowered behind it in alarm. I could see he was terrified. For a minute or two you talked with him, and urged him to confess. Bit by bit, as you went on, he recovered his nerve, and began to bluster. He didn't deny what you said: he saw it was no use: ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... Mr. Rabbit, "you know the road that leads to Brag is the shortest route to Bluster. Brother Buzzard and Brother Crow were quarreling because they had been bragging, and a little more and they'd have had a regular pitched battle then ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... Malvey, red-headed, bluff and huge, of a gaunt frame, with large-knuckled hands and big feet. Malvey tossed a coin on the bar noisily, and in that one act Pete read him for what he was—a man who "bullied" his way through life with much bluster and profanity, but a man who, if he boasted, would make good his boast. What appeared to be hearty good-nature in Malvey was in reality a certain blatantly boisterous vigor—a vigor utterly soulless, and masking a nature at bottom as treacherous as The Spider's—but in contrast squalid ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... man blankly, "what a ridiculous old humbug it is! And how he used to frighten me in the old days with his confounded cavalry bluster! I rather think I will look him up: and I'll dine with him three times a week if he likes. Meanwhile, it's time for me to go and meet old Rainham, and take him round to ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... ascendancy over the disposition and passions of her father. The latter, like many another country squire—especially of that day—when his word and will were law to his tenants and dependants, was a very great man indeed, when dealing with them. He could bluster and threaten, and even carry his threats into execution with a confident swagger that had more of magisterial pride and the pomp of property in it, than a sense of either light or justice. But, on the other hand, let him meet a man of his ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... me here," said Brunow, throwing himself savagely into an arm-chair. "I won't bluster with you, but I decline to explain or justify a word I've said, and you can take what course ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... a small, mild gentleman, unassuming in manner, cautious, careful, quiet, precise, and, whilst attending to his duties regularly, he makes no bluster about them. He was ordained at the Church of the English Martyrs, in September, 1868. In the pulpit he is earnest, clear, and regular in his remarks. He makes no repetitions, flings himself into no attitudes, assumes no airs, but proceeds on to the end steadily and calmly. Both the priests ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... He was looking intently. As soon as the tones of O'Shea's voice were carried away by the bluster of the wind, as far as the human beings there were concerned there was perfect stillness; the surf and the wind might have been sweeping ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... father no' offer to send him home in the spring-cart? It's sair wet for him to be walking in the wind and the rain the day.' Or: 'He had a fine bloom on his cheeks, I'll warrant, when he came in through this morning's bluster of wind.' Or again: 'He'll be riding to the hunt with my father to-day; have they put their pink coats on, ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... father which the veteran's honour might not brook. However, there was something in the old soldier's dignity and long service that kept the arrogance of the younger man in check, and repressed all bluster ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... used dialect for dynamite to blow the front off hypocrisy or to shatter the cotton commercialism in which the New England conscience was encysted. Robert H. Newell, mirth-maker and mystic, satirized military ignorance and pinchbeck bluster to an immortality of contempt. Bret Harte in verse and story touched the parallels of tragedy and of comedy, of pathos, of bathos, and of humor, which love of life and lust of gold opened up amid the unapprehended ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Vienna and London was not unlike that of the sun and the wind in the proverbial saw. Viennese suavity induced Bonaparte to take off his coat and show himself as he really was: while the conscientious bluster of Grenville and Pitt made the First Consul button up his coat, and pose as the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... sepulchred on all sides round: Then canst thou know their mighty masses, then Canst view their caverns, as if builded there Of beetling crags; which, when the hurricanes In gathered storm have filled utterly, Then, prisoned in clouds, they rave around With mighty roarings, and within those dens Bluster like savage beasts, and now from here, And now from there, send growlings through the clouds, And seeking an outlet, whirl themselves about, And roll from 'mid the clouds the seeds of fire, And heap them multitudinously there, And in the hollow furnaces within Wheel flame around, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... much-ado-about-nothing would end in a month. The Northern people are simply invincible. The rebels, a mere band of ragamuffins, will fly like chaff before the wind on our approach." Thus the wretched farces of bluster continued on either side until in blood, agony, and heartbreak, Americans learned to ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... Arizona," said Jean, slowly. "I know little about ranchers or sheepmen. It's true my father sent for me. It's true, I dare say, that he bragged, for he was given to bluster an' blow. An' he's old now. I can't help it if he bragged about me. But if he has, an' if he's justified in his stand against you sheepmen, I'm goin' to do my best to ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... "Why, Brookes," he said, "you seem to think forever of these men showing fight. You don't know them as I know them. They have a deal of bluster and make a deal of noise, but when you seize them and hold them with a strong hand, there's naught of fight left in them. 'Tis like enough there'll not be so much as a musket fired to-day. I've had to do with 'em often enough before to know my gentlemen well by this ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... puckered his lips as though he was pretending to kiss her. Babbitt had so strong an impulse to go to Paul that he could feel his body uncoiling, his shoulders moving, but he felt, desperately, that he must be diplomatic, and not till he saw Paul paying the check did he bluster to the piano-salesman, "By golly-friend of mine over there—'scuse me second—just say ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... Murden, looking after him; "I have half a mind to tie him up and scar his back, and see if it will not make him a little more energetic." But with all of the bluster of the officer, I saw that he did not suspect the man's honesty, and I was ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... than to show that the early Edinburgh articles were very far from perfect. Of Jeffrey we shall speak presently, and there is no doubt that Sydney at his best was, and is always, delightful. But the blundering bluster of Brougham, the solemn ineffectiveness of Horner (of whom I can never think without also thinking of Scott's delightful Shandean jest on him), the respectable erudition of the Scotch professors, cannot for one single moment be compared with the work which, in Jeffrey's own later days, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Creek, after dinner, and in a little while the performance begins. There is nothing of the gentle pattering shower about a rain and wind storm on these elevated plains; it comes on with a blow and a bluster that threatens to take one off his feet. The rain is dashed about in the air by the wild, blustering wind, and comes from all directions at the same time. While you are frantically hanging on to your hat, the wind playfully unbuttons your rubber coat and lifts it ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... was all bluster and impotent defiance. I was as helpless as a squirming puppy held by the neck. I ran like a madman, but I ran the wrong way. The invisible crew passed me, and their voices faded. I heard them melt, melt into nothing. A sound, an impression,—that ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... to say that it was a good thing for him Dick was not there. But partly the sense that this would be unbecoming bluster, and partly the suffocating resentment of the fellow's impudence, limited his response to a formless gasp, and Bittridge went on: "But I'm glad to find you here, judge. I didn't know that you were in town. Family all well in New York?" ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to meet socially. I can hear a host saying "Shake hands with the Captain." One quite loses his taste for dinner parties. There is a sabre cut across the Captain's cheek. He is even more disreputable in appearance than his followers, with a bluster ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... the old man, his fury suddenly changing to a white heat of passion, which was more terrible than the bluster that had gone before. "Silence, lest I strike thee to the ground where thou standest, and plunge this dagger in thine heart sooner than hear thee blaspheme the Holy Church in which thou wast reared! How darest thou talk thus to ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... begins to bluster before his Virginie, Madame lays a finger on her lips and he is silent. He smokes his pipes and his cigars in a kiosk fifty feet from the chateau, and airs himself before he returns to the house. Proud of his subjection, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... d——d Yankee," said the planter. "You're welcome to your opinion, old Blowhard," responded Lemon. "This is a free country; I am a Yankee—all but the d——d—and now what do you propose to do about it?" (All this in an assumed tone of bluster, as the best adapted to the situation.) "We'll see! we'll see!" rejoined the planter, and at once started in a direct line for his house. Lemon lost no time, but returned as quickly as possible to his comrade, and without any deliberation they evacuated the enemy's ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... they had condemned Jesus—that of blasphemy in calling Himself 'the Son of God'—was not a crime known to Roman law, and to allege it would probably have ended in the whole matter being scornfully dismissed. So they stood on their dignity and tried to bluster. 'We have condemned Him; that is enough. We look to you to carry out the sentence at our bidding.' So the 'ecclesiastical authority' has often said to the 'secular arm' since then, and unfortunately the civil authority has not always been as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... prescribed it, and it was your crowning act of kindness to me, dear Mrs. Ormonde. It is possible that I have grown coarser; indeed, I know that I associate on terms of equality and friendliness with men from whom I should formerly have shrunk. I can get angry, and stand on my rights, and bluster if need be, and on the whole I think I am no worse for that. My ear is not offended if I hear myself called 'boss;' why should it be? it is a word as well as another. Nay, I have even felt something like excitement when listening to political speeches, in which frequent mention was made of 'the ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... she was sad and sorry and ashamed, because of the futile bustle and bluster and cheerful courageous activity about her. Not a cheek had blenched; not a hand had trembled; not a voice had been lifted to protest or counsel surrender, despite their meagre capacities for defense and their number, but a handful. What would these men say ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Gazette eight years before. If Froude had made such an astonishing slip, there would have been more ground for imputing to him an incapacity to distinguish between truth and falsehood. Freeman's "Last Words on Mr. Froude" show no sign of penitence or good feeling, and they end with characteristic bluster about the truth, from which he had so grievously departed. But Froude was never troubled ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... said the Blue-gum, when the darkness came to the mountain, "I am going to have a good sleep tonight. I'm a match still for old Daddy Wind, in spite of all his noise and bluster. And there are ways of dealing with white-ants, too. I've lived upon this mountain, tree ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... one gets clear at last, and we have to run to overtake the rest of the company. We begin to pant and complain, and bluster against those who are leading. Our feet go down haphazard; we stumble and hold ourselves up by the wails, so that our hands are plastered with mud. The march becomes a stampede, full of the noise of metal things and ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... (HEINEMANN), a series of lectures developing phases of the argument of the Great Illusion, Mr. NORMAN ANGELL incidentally deals with this greengrocery business. Nobody with knowledge of his shrewd and vigorous method will be surprised that without bluster or rhetoric he establishes a very clear verdict of acquittal. One has always the impression that the rationalist in him is deliberately repressing the mystic, lest his case be weakened by a suspicion of sentimentalism. For it must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... else could I do?" blustered Milo—though under the bluster ran a thread of placating timidity. "He saved my life, didn't ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... stage manager and, in presence of all assembled, curtly ordered him to leave "her theatre" immediately. At first he stood dumfounded, and, on her repeating her injunction more vehemently, he began to bluster back at her. A pretty scene ensued, he, with much Billingsgate, lustily demanding his money, she insisting he must come for it at the right time and place. In the end, she sent for the police, and the astonished stage manager found himself forcibly ejected. ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... brave to cover shame wi' bitter words, Tam Lorrigan. 'Tis the way of ye to bluster and bully until the neighbors all are affrighted to face ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... 'Don't bluster, Lukashka, but listen to me,' she answered, not pulling away her hands but holding the Cossack at arm's length. 'It's true I am a girl, but you listen to me! It does not depend on me, but if you love me I'll tell ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... not usually a formidable opponent, and though he will sometimes charge home he is much more apt to bluster and bully than actually to come to close quarters. I myself have but once seen a man who had been hurt by one of these bears. This was an Indian. He had come on the beast close up in a thick wood, and had mortally wounded it with his gun; it had then closed with him, knocking ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... as far back as 1860 passed every week on its northward way up along the coast of Norway, was of a very sociable turn of mind. It ran with much shrieking and needless bluster in and out the calm, winding fjords, paid unceremonious little visits in every out-of-the-way nook and bay, dropped now and then a black heap of coal into the shining water, and sent thick volleys of smoke and ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... a humbleness that seemed strangely gentle after all his bluster and brag, "will you look at this and tell me ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... thing, almost, but the integrity of the Constitution, and the essential interests of the country—to the cause of mutual harmony and mutual conciliation, no ground can be granted, not an inch, to menace and bluster. Indeed, menace and bluster, and the putting forth of daring, unconstitutional doctrines, are, at this very moment, the chief obstacles to mutual harmony and satisfactory accommodation. Men cannot well reason, and confer, and take counsel together, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... leader, recognizing the force of the murmur which greeted this outburst. "It is not any of these powers that I fear. They might bluster, and still not fight; and indeed they lack any rational cause for war. But what I fear, what all of us fear, gentlemen, is the danger here, inside our own ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... gift, O best of monarchs, add, to crown Thy bounty to the Dardans,—one, beside These many, nor let bluster bear thee down. A worthy husband for thy child provide, And peace shall with the lasting pact abide. Else, if such terror doth our souls enslave, Him now, in hope to turn away his pride, Him let us pray his proper right to waive, And, pitying, deign to yield what king ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... the sound political economy of obtaining the most for the least, but in the words and stern face of the child he saw how his act must appear to a mind unwarped by interest and unhardened by selfish years. Moreover, he could not bluster in the presence of death, and the thought that his greed had caused it chilled his heart with a sudden dread. He caught at the extenuation her words suggested, and said gravely, "You are right; I did not know. I would send food from my own table rather than any one should ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... fortnight Colonel Faversham had felt almost a boy again. The spring was in his blood! Moreover, he flattered himself that he had not begun to look old! Still, he was sensitive lest Carrissima should fancy he was making an ass of himself, and, as usual at such times, he began to bluster. ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... their tone, they began to boast and to bluster. Then Wattawamat advanced with a stride in front of the other, And, with a lofty demeanor, thus vauntingly spake to the Captain: "Now Wattawamat can see, by the fiery eyes of the Captain, Angry is he in his heart; but the heart of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... style, I have endeavored neither to creep nor to bluster, for no author is so likely to betray his translator into both these faults, as HOMER, though himself never guilty of either. I have cautiously avoided all terms of new invention, with an abundance of which, persons of more ingenuity ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... of an immediate breach with Austria, to make his ulterior aims so clear as to carry the Parliament with him in the policy of military reorganisation. Words frank even to brutality were uttered by him, but they sounded more like menace and bluster than the explanation of a well-considered plan. "Prussia must keep its forces together," he said in one of his first Parliamentary appearances, "its boundaries are not those of a sound State. The great questions of the time are to be decided not by speeches and votes of majorities but ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... direction it has stagnated in the sunless swamps of a theosophy, from which a cloud of sedulous ephemera still suck a little spiritual moisture. In another it led to the sacramental and sacerdotal developments of Anglicanism. In a third, among men with strong practical energy, to the benevolent bluster of a sort of Christianity which is called muscular because it is not intellectual. It would be an error to suppose that these and the other streams that have sprung from the same source, did not in the days of their fulness fertilise and ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... challenged Church for talking openly about the story that the Holland Land Company had, for legislative services rendered, cancelled a bond against him for twenty thousand dollars; but the world doubts Burr's bluster as it doubts his word. At present he is in a desperate way because Alexander Baring, in behalf of a friend, I.I. Augustine, is pressing for payment on a bond given to secure the price of land bought by Burr and Greenleaf, and he has been offering worthless ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... to have written the letter, and if I could only have been sure Wallop's threat was mere idle bluster I should ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Stoddard," began the old man, between bluster and whine, "I talked about them chaps to the superintendent of yo' mill, an' you-all said you didn't want none of that size. And one o' yo' men—he was a room boss, I reckon—spoke up right sassy to me—as sassy as Johnnie Consadine ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... intervening years that he was prepared to see a man who would intimidate him by his severity and awe him by the manifestation of his greatness. In fact, associating business success with his father's manners and methods, Allen had come to believe that force meant noise and bluster, and that firmness stood for an intolerance of discussion. But here, in the midst of his family, Robert Gorham displayed a side of his nature which Stephen Sanford had never seen; yet Allen was no less conscious of the man's power. The boy was more quick to sense than he was to analyze, ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... and bluster, the building and destruction, the teasing and torture so often perpetrated by the boy. He is saying that he is here and must be reckoned with, and he wishes to make his presence as significant as possible. If home, school, and community conditions are such ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... which he strives to render his dumb Instinctive Doings presentable when they are done. Such philosophies will arise; be preached as Mammon-Gospels, the ultimate Evangel of the World; be believed, with what is called belief, with much superficial bluster, and a kind of shallow satisfaction real in its way:—but they are ominous gospels! They are the sure, and even swift, forerunner of great changes. Expect that the old System of Society is done, is dying and fallen into dotage, when it begins to rave in that fashion. ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... That was nature. A man, with all of his bluster, cannot get away from nature. Don't the winters freeze and kill him? Doesn't water drown him, fire burn him? Love had no place in nature; hatred was a part of the one law, the primal law. The wolf kills the rabbit in hot rage; the black ant tears down the soft-bodied caterpillar not so ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... lift, Ma'am! No danger at all, no discomfort, no dirt! You love Sweetness and Light? They are both in my gift, Ma'am; I'll prove like a shot what I boldly assert. Don't heed your Old Flame, Ma'am, he's bitterly jealous, 'Tis natural, quite, with his nose out of joint; You just let him bluster and blow like old bellows, And try me instead—I will not disappoint! Old Flame? He's a very fuliginous "Flame," Ma'am; I wonder, I'm sure, how you've stood him so long; He has choked you for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... Marker. "Nothing is lost, and nothing will be lost. But I fear these two men. They do not bluster and talk at random like the others. They are so very quiet that they may ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... Martin. "The more you treat 'em like boys, the better they think you use 'em. They always want motherin', an' somebody to come to. I always tell folks I've got five child'n, counting Mr. Martin the youngest. The more bluster they have, the more boys they be. Now Marthy knew that about brother Isr'el, an' she always ruled him by love an' easin' of him down from them high perches he was always settin' upon. Everything was always right with her an' all wrong with him when they was young, but she could ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... should felicitate ourselves on the sacred privileges we enjoy—should pay the tribute of our respect to those whose courage crowned us with sovereignty and made us masters of our fate; but we should not, as too often happens, make it the occasion for senseless bravado and foolish bluster. We should rather employ it to promote good will among the nations of the earth, to link together in a kindlier brotherhood the various families of the great Caucasian race, to beat the barbarous sword into peaceful ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann |
