"Strut" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their own opinion, the Be-All and the End-All of everything! ... as if the Supreme Creative Force called God were incapable of designing any Higher Form of Thinking-Life than their pigmy bodies which strut on two legs and, with two eyes and a small, quickly staggered brain, profess to understand and weigh the whole foundation and plan of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... mumming; they fancy themselves as somebody else, dead or living. Yet these seem happy in this nonsense. The indolent days appear to have deadened hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. They shall strut and fret their hour upon this little stage. Let that sprightly girl forget the sudden death which made her an orphan; the nervous broker his faithless wife; the grey-haired soldier his silly and haunting sins; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... you may believe, I was taught a manner of entering, in the way, by the hints of Sir Harry and the philosophy of the noble Lord Chesterfield, of a gentleman. It had to do with squared shoulders, the lift of the head, a strut, a proud and contemptuous glance. Many a night, as a child, when I fair fainted of vacancy and the steam and smell of salt pork was an agony hardly to be endured, I must prance in and out, to please my fastidious uncle, while he sat critical by the fire—in the unspeakable detachment ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... which was a long and tedious process, Caesar showed no inclination to leave the homestead. He used to strut about the back yard, and frequent the kitchen door, very much after the fashion of a house-dog. He was, indeed, as valuable as a watch-dog, for the appearance of any stranger was the signal for a volley of shrieks and chatter, sufficient to alarm any household. However, Caesar's ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... the shaft. One end of the assembled framework of aluminum alloy dragged loosely on the ground; the other end swung out and projected above the shaft, swayed for an instant—and then came the first direct knowledge of the enemy's presence. The end of a metal strut, though nothing visible was touching it, grew suddenly white hot, sagged, then broke into a shower of molten, dazzling drops that rained down ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... air combats was when Holt, single-handed, and armed only with a rifle, lashed to a strut of his machine, attacked ten Germans near Dunkirk, causing them to drop their bombs in the field and make off to their ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... cruel life, by the wise decrees of an all-seeing Providence, was suddenly cut short. He fought against his disease (small pox) with that rashness that had been his ruling spirit through life, and thus ingloriously terminated his days. The pride of this man was to strut through the Mexican towns and gloat over his many crimes. To the gazing crowd, he would point out the trophies of his murders, which he never failed to have about him. To his fringed leggins were attached the phalanges (or finger bones) of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... Belgian. "But philosophy is like courage—easy to assume. We strut and talk big; we call the politicians sharks, the soldiers fools; but does it do any good? The war will go on; the enemy will destroy our homes, separate our families, take away our bread and leave us to starve; ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... says of the Arabs, "Above all their qualities, personal conceit is remarkable; they show it in their strut, in their looks, and almost in every word. 'I am such a one, the son of such a one,' is a common expletive, especially in times of danger; and this spirit is not wholly to be condemned, as it certainly acts as an incentive ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... nearly in front of the camping-place, at a spot where the sand lay loose and dry, above the reach of the ordinary tidal influx, all made a stop at the summons of one who, from the superior style of his plumage and the greater grandeur of his strut, appeared a very important individual of the tribe—in all likelihood the ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... hasn't got any more use for plain folks, Polly. She's going to do herself proud shoppin', so she can go to Boston and strut about like a frilled peacock. You'll have to be satisfied with your mother, Polly; Pawliney doesn't ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... his wife the Princess. His merriest time was when the Grand Vizier visited him in the afternoon; and when the Caliph was in particularly high spirits he would condescend to mimic the Vizier's appearance when he was a stork. He would strut gravely, and with well-stiffened legs, up and down the room, chattering, and showing how he had vainly bowed to the east and cried 'Mu...Mu...' The Caliphess and her children were always much entertained by this performance; but when the Caliph went ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... by very light but most effective bas-reliefs of jesting subject:—two cocks carrying on their shoulders a long staff to which a fox (?) is tied by the legs, hanging down between them: the strut of the foremost cock, lifting one leg at right angles to the other, is delicious. Then a stag hunt, with a centaur horseman drawing a bow; the arrow has gone clear through the stag's throat, and is sticking there. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Luther to the lessons he learned in childhood from his experience of poverty at home, in his remarks in later life, on the sons of poor men, who by sheer hard work raise themselves from obscurity, and have much to endure, and no time to strut and swagger, but must be humble and learn to be silent and to trust in God, and to whom God also has given good ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... the inclination. I cannot fortune-hunt, nor afford to marry without a fortune. My parliamentary schemes are not much to my taste—I spoke twice last Session, [1] and was told it was well enough; but I hate the thing altogether, and have no intention to "strut another hour" on that stage. I am thus wasting the best part of life, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... is happening in the air, Charging the very texture of the gray With something luminous and rare? The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire, And, as one lights a candle, it is day. The extinguisher that fain would strut for spire On the formal little church is not yet green Across the water: but the house-tops nigher, The corner-lines, the chimneys—look how clean, How new, how naked! See the batch of boats, Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam! And those are barges that were ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... please. I seem admitted ad eundem. I fetch up past opportunities. I can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that it rings for me. In moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much unlike that respectable character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles, drop a bow or curtsy, as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... baby for his mother's neglect. Almost without a notion how even to take him in his arms, he would now send for him the moment he had had his tea, and after a fashion, ludicrous in the eyes of the nurse, would dandle and caress him, and strut about with him before his wife, glancing up at her every now and then, to point the lesson that such was the manner in which a parent ought to behave to a child. In his presence she never made any active show of her dislike, but her look seemed all the time fixed on something ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... his hands and let me slip from his knee; and then I began to strut the floor, my chest puffed out to ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... went, Sholto's step slowed, and lost its braggart strut and confidence. Behind him Laurence chuckled and laughed, smiting his ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... M. Chebe became a terrible trial. He could not work in the garden. On Sundays the fortifications were deserted; he could no longer strut about among the workingmen's families dining on the grass, and pass from group to group in a neighborly way, his feet encased in embroidered slippers, with the authoritative demeanor of a wealthy landowner of the vicinity. This he missed more than anything else, consumed as he was by the desire ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... Margaret Fenn, when he felt the pride of conquest of another soul and body strongly upon him, that Judge Thomas Van Dorn began to acquire—or perhaps to exhibit noticeably—the turkey gobbler gait, that ever afterward went with him, and became famous as the Van Dorn Strut. It was more than mere knee action—though knee action did characterize it prominently. The strut properly speaking began at the tip of his hat—his soft, black hat that sat so cockily upon his head. His head was thrown back as though he had been pulled by a check-rein. His shoulders ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... you say?" cried Vallombreuse, contemptuously. "What! a man of birth and condition mingle voluntarily and on terms of equality with these low buffoons of actors, paint his nose red, and strut about the stage, receiving cuffs and kicks from everybody? Oh no, Vidalinc, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... by the Thames; I've seen it oft through beechen stems In leafy Summer weather; We've moored the punt its lawns beside Where peacocks strut in flaunting pride, The Muse and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... is this magnificence? Oh! what a sentence dire will God the Judge pronounce Upon the day of doom, when from His throne so loudly It sounds, how shall they seem who strut and boast so proudly! ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... figure ascending the flight of steps to the veranda. Could that be he? If so, he was bolder in his wooing than Grace had been prepared for. But surely that was a strange costume that he wore; nor did the unconscious harmony of the gait at all resemble the senor's self-conscious strut. And whither ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... feasible," Mr. Dick said in a relieved voice, getting up and beginning to strut up and down the room. "It isn't as though I'm beyond call. You can come out here and consult me if you get stuck. And then there's Minnie; she knows a good ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... quietly, stole her hand into his own, feeling the pulse as if merely caressing the slender wrist. Then he began to describe his bailiff's cottage, with woodbine round the porch, the farm-yard, the bee-hives, the pretty duck-pond with an osier island, and the great China gander who had a pompous strut, which made him the droll est creature possible. And Sophy should go there in a day or two, and be as happy as one of the bees, but not so busy. Sophy listened very earnestly, very gravely, and then sliding her hand from the Mayor, caught hold of her grandfather's arm firmly, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that time there was a great army of Danish men west there, whose chief was Heming, the son of Earl Strut-Harald, and brother to Earl Sigvaldi, and he held for King Knut that land ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous
... remembered. "Blessing her! And his hand did not tremble, when he signed this. To deprive her, to deprive them both, of everything, all on account of those hated people? But now—it should never be! On no account! Your down-at-the-heel pedagogue shall not strut about in peacock's feathers! Olga and I ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... a shadow, yet somehow men persuade themselves that their own pursuits are greatly serious. Was our life any less than that, and were not our hopes and sorrows and tremulous joy as full of meaning to us as theirs to the creatures who strut upon the stage of the world? Again I say, I do not know: Only I am troubled that so fair an image as yours should prove after all a dream, a shadow's dream, ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... Chateaubriand because of the many beauties, the veritable grandeurs of their styles, we cannot quite learn to love yours. For in you the disease was aggravated by the presence of another powerful incentive to strut and posture and externalize and inflate your art. For you were the virtuoso. You were the man whose entire being was pointed to achieve an effect. You were the man whose life is lived on the concert-platform, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... strut as she made this assertion, shaking her head in a bronco gesture which dashed the dark hair from her eyes and made her look like an unbroken thoroughbred. Never in all his life, even in the magazine pictures of stage beauties which form a conspicuous mural decoration in those parts, ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... bundles under their arms, each one making direct for his own front door. "Every woman in Riverfield will have to put down needle and fry-pan and butter-paddle to feed them so plum full of compliments that they'll strut for a week. Bless my heart, honeybunch, we have all got to turn around twice in each track to get ready, and as I'm pretty hefty I must begin right now." With this remark, Aunt Mary departed from the back ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... hopeless gesture with his hand, took two little steps as though he would run into the hedge amongst the soldiers and hide there, then suddenly walked past me, quickly, towards the wagons, with his own absurd little strut, with his head up, giving his cough, looking, after that, neither to the ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... hat down over his eyes, whirls around and offers his arm to DAISY. They strut into the store, DAVE gazing contemptuously at JIM as he passes. Crowd roars with laughter, much to ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... should set him in the pillory, that he may be punished in a way that would disgrace him.' I observed, that the pillory does not always disgrace. And I mentioned an instance of a gentleman who I thought was not dishonoured by it. JOHNSON. 'Ay, but he was, Sir. He could not mouth and strut as he used to do, after having been there. People are not willing to ask a man to their tables who ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... Dignitaries and judges, professors and generals stood about the farmers—led by the farmer-in-chief, morning-coated, carefully groomed, plainly nervous but sustained by the dignity of it all. His voice was firm; his manner that of a very circumspect bridegroom. The old smug strut and case-hardened pomp of legislature inaugurals was lacking. An undercurrent of deep sincerity stayed many a tremorous hand. Drury was the least nervous of all. I imagine that in the morning he had sung to himself some ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... The first two books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read since, were The Life of Hannibal, and The History of Sir William Wallace. Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn, that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bag-pipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut in ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... his Excellency's dancers![21] Adieu to Peter—whom no fault's in, But could not teach a colonel waltzing; Adieu, ye females fraught with graces! Adieu red coats, and redder faces! Adieu the supercilious air Of all that strut en militaire![22] 20 I go—but God knows when, or why, To smoky towns and cloudy sky, To things (the honest truth to say) As bad—but ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... Here are you and I, dashing blades, who have been doing penance by trying to be fine gentlemen at watering-places, when it wasn't at all in our line. I began to think we looked as much like fops as the rest of the scented and bearded dress-coats, who strut about, and imagine the world is looking at them. This would throw us into quite another rank of life, and give us new ideas. How shall we manage it though, my fine fellow?" "Nothing easier in the world. Let us rent a small house, somewhere near the Bowery—that's ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... something too much of the magnifico in his demeanour. If people grow presuming and self-important over such matters as a dukedom or the Holy See, they will scarcely support the dizziest elevation in life without some suspicion of a strut; and the dizziest elevation is to love and be loved in return. Consequently, accepted lovers are a trifle condescending in their address to other men. An overweening sense of the passion and importance of life hardly conduces ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fellow with a tuft on his head. They arrive at the water suddenly and unexpectedly from behind rocks and trees, and stand about considering; then one, more venturesome than the rest, runs quickly down to drink, and is followed by a string of others; then they run up again ever so fast, and strut about cooing and spreading their crests—one seldom sees them fly; when they do they rise straight up, and then dart away close to the ground and drop suddenly within a few yards. Of all birds the crow ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... Nation. I hear men debate peace who understand neither its nature nor the way in which we may attain it with uplifted eyes and unbroken spirits. But I know that none of these speaks for the Nation. They do not touch the heart of anything. They may safely be left to strut their uneasy ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... Strut, in his "Sports and Pastimes", chap. 1, sects. xv. and xvi., mentions a MS. in the Cotton Library, originally written by William Twici, or Twety, Grand Huntsman to Edward II, who ascended the ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... no fashion plates in that day, nor were there any "living models" to strut back and forth before keen-eyed customers; but fully dressed dolls were imported from France and England, and sent from town to town as examples of properly attired ladies. Eliza Southgate Bowne, after seeing the dolls in her shopping ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... always play. I'd rather any day get up and strut over the stage, shrieking 'Is that a dagger that I see before me?' than sit down and keep my fingers on the right keys," ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... out. I recalled the exaggerated military styles for men that came in with the Spanish-American and the South African wars. Those enormously padded shoulders and tight-shaped waists and swelling trouser legs, and the strut and the stoop that went with the whole ugly ensemble, roused my anger. My feelings remained unchanged until some time after the Russo-Japanese War, and then one day it came to me that I must have a suit of military cut. It was like the sudden awakening of the unregenerate ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... forth in a spontaneous manner to see who I am and look at the bicycle, he pays me a ceremonious visit at the chapar-khana half an hour later. In this visit he is preceded by his farrash, and he walks with a magnificent peacock strut that causes the skirts of his faultless roundabout to flop up and down, up and down, in rhythmic accompaniment to his steps. Apart from his insufferable conceit, however, he tries to make himself as agreeable as ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the parrot. Bewailing his misfortune, he was railing at the revolutions of the skies; and, wringing the hands of chagrin, was lamenting his condition, and saying: "What an unpropitious fate is this; what ill-luck, and untoward fortune! Could they any way suit the dignity of me, who would in my day strut with my fellow-crows along the wall of a garden:—It were durance sufficient for a good and holy man that he should be made the companion of the wicked:—What sin have I committed that my stars in retribution of it have linked me in the chain of companionship, and immured me in the dungeon ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... of high ceremonial was relaxed, and elements taken directly from life were introduced. In his "Corpus Christi," Gentile Bellini paints not only the solemn and dazzling procession in the Piazza, but the elegant young men who strut about in all their finery, the foreign loungers, and even the unfailing beggar by the portal of St. Mark's. In his "Miracle of the True Cross," he introduces gondoliers, taking care to bring out all the beauty of their lithe, comely ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... Rabbit done make way wid ole Brer Lion, all de yuther creeturs say he sholy is a mighty man, en dey treat 'im good. Dis make 'im feel so proud dat he bleedz ter show it, en so he strut 'roun' like a boy when he git his fust ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... I was awakened next morning by the sun shining brilliantly in at my bed-room window, my apprehensions had vanished, my enthusiasm was again at fever-heat, and I panted for the moment—not to be very long deferred—when I should don my uniform and strut forth to sport my glories before an ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... the Daughter of the House, who had been listening very eagerly, "what made you talk like that, and strut about, and pound the deck? That's not like you. I would not have supposed that you ever could have ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... out the ring, he found in the sawdust an envelope unwritten upon, and tolerably clean. It was a prize: and that evening, when the public were shrieking with laughter over the capers of a clown arm-in-arm with a tame bear, followed by a couple of monkeys skilfully mimicking their very strut, Ned was behind one of the vans scribbling with pencil a few frantic, ill-spelt words that, when the crumpled envelope arrived at the Bunk, were wept over and laughed over in tumultuous joy. The penny thrown him went for a stamp; the letter was pushed, with ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... they parted, her manner and behavior, her sweetness, and the prettiness which would have been beauty had it been on a larger scale, had begun to fill what little there was of Corney's imagination; and he left her with a feeling that he knew where a treasure lay. He walked with an enlargement of strut as he went home through the park, and swung his cane with the air of a man who had made a conquest of which he ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... at the foot of the hill of the Alhambra, and here was always a bustle and parade of guards, and domestics, and city functionaries. A beetling bastion of the fortress overlooked the palace and the public square in front of it; and on this bastion the old governor would occasionally strut backward and forward, with his toledo girded by his side, keeping a wary eye down upon his rival, like a hawk reconnoitering his quarry from his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... beaver hat and gold headed cane and march out, while de baliffs holler: 'Make way! Make way for de honorable judge!' Everybody took up dat cry and keep it up long as de judge was on de streets. Oh, how dat judge twirl his cane, smile, and strut. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... divided into three (I think) probationary classes of "volunteers," instead of being at once advanced to a warrant. Nor will you fail to remark, when you see an English cutter officered by one of those volunteers, that the boy does not so strut and slap his dirk-hilt with a Bobadil air, and anticipatingly feel of the place where his warlike whiskers are going to be, and sputter out oaths so at the men, as is too often the case with the little boys wearing best-bower ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... must be reckoned as the foundation stone of the British Empire in India. It sprang from the character of Sirajuddaula. That prince was a cruel despot, but weak-willed, vacillating, and totally unable to keep a friend. One day he would strut in some vainglorious semblance of dignity; the next he would engage in drunken revels with the meanest and most dissolute of his subjects. He insulted his commander-in-chief, Mir Jafar: he offended the Seths, wealthy ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... and friend of Baudelaire went about dressed in a shabby military frock-coat. He had no longer a nodding acquaintance with the fashionable lions of Napoleon the Little's reign, yet he abated not his haughty strut, his glacial politeness to all comers, nor his daily promenade in the Bois. A Barmecide feast this watching the pleasures of others more favoured, though Guys did not waste the fruits of his observation. At sixty-five ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... possession will vanish, and we shall feel more keenly the pressure of responsibility while we feel less keenly the grip of anxiety. We are for the time being entrusted with a tiny piece of the royal estates. Let us not strut about as if we were owners, nor be for ever afraid that we shall not have enough for our needs. One sometimes comes on a model village close to the gates of some ducal palace, and notes how the lordly owner's honour prompts its being kept up to a high ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... pageantry was not so far past that it did not appeal powerfully to the imaginations of the frequenters of the Globe, the Rose, and the Fortune. They had no such feeling as we have in regard to the pasteboard kings and queens who strut their brief hour before us in anachronic absurdity. But, besides that he wrote in the spirit of his age, Shakespeare wrote in the language and the literary methods of his time. This is not more evident in the contemporary poets than in the chroniclers of that day. They ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... tight-lipped determination. He was not trying out a business venture so much as he was trying out himself. Previously he had always figured success and failure as his performance reacted on his audience. He was learning that one could impress a stupendous crowd and really fail, or strut upon the boards of an empty playhouse and still succeed. He began to realize just what was meant by the term self-esteem—how hard and uncompromising and exacting it was. To disappoint another was a humiliation; to disappoint oneself ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... that the goldfinch and the kingfisher are not often seen except in picture-books; but our own little robin is a real beauty, is he not? And what can be gayer than the feathers of some of our cocks, which strut about so proudly? Then, the more you notice the songs of birds, the more you will admire them. The sweet notes begin before daylight in the spring-time, and the cock-bird seems never tired of singing to his mate as she sits on her eggs. By and by, when they are busy with family ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... of frightful augury, so the author was conscious in the midst of the ball of a demon who would strike him on the shoulder with a familiar air and say to him: "Do you notice that enchanting smile? It is a grin of hatred." And then the demon would strut about like one of the captains in the old comedies of Hardy. He would twitch the folds of a lace mantle and endeavor to make new the fretted tinsel and spangles of its former glory. And then like Rabelais he would burst into loud and unrestrainable laughter, and would trace ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... a group of wounded soldiers were just entering. With them was a woman in a man's uniform. Her hair was curly and short, and her chin pointed. Her feet looked ridiculously small in the heavy, high, soldier's boots, and in spite of a strut her knees knocked together in an unmistakably feminine manner. But the men treated her quite as one of themselves. One soldier, who had had his leg cut off up to the thigh, supported himself by her shoulder. I have seen several women soldiers in Kiev, ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... STRUT—The upright braces between the upper and lower wings of a machine are called struts. They take the compression of the truss frame of the biplane or triplane. Each wing is divided ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... when we in our viciousness grow hard, O, misery on't! the wise gods seal our eyes: In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us Adore our errors, laugh at us while we strut To ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... are opened, disclosing often the dull green mosquito net hung from corner to corner of the low-ceiled sleeping rooms. Children, in brilliant night robes, run to the verandas to see the early sun; cocks strut in pigmy gardens. Now, from along the streets rise the calls of flower peddlers, of venders of fish, bean-curd, vegetables, and milk. Thus the day comes to modern Tokyo, which the old folks ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... the old.... In my day, it is true, we waited until a man was sixty before we called him an old man. They are going faster, nowadays.... Wireless telegraphy, aeroplanes.... A generation is more quickly exploded.... Poor devils! They won't last long! Let them despise us and strut about in the sun!" ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... (goat's beard) and Pfauentritt (peacock-strut), were nicknames given to the leaders of the guilds who rebelled against the patrician families in Nuremberg, from whom alone the aldermen or town-council could be elected. This patrician class originated in 1198 under the Emperor Henry IV., who ennobled 38 families of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Ripley Hall formed in twos in short order, and, escorted by their opponents, proceeded down the road to Percy's field. Ike Smith, who was in his element, led the procession, and his proud strut was something comical ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... be distinguished "the September murderers, whom" says an observer[33104] in a position to know them, "I can compare to nothing but lazy tigers licking their paws, growling and trying to find a few more drops of blood just spilled, awaiting a fresh supply." Far from hiding away they strut about and show themselves. One of them, Petit-Mamain, son of an innkeeper at Bordeaux and a former soldier, "with a pale, wrinkled face, sharp eyes and bold air, wearing a scimitar at his side and pistols at his belt," promenades the Palais-Royal[33105] "accompanied or followed ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... were a leonine magnanimity of courage, a vulpine subtlety of cunning, or a pavonine strut of vanity. The spirit, freed from its fallen cell, "Fills with fresh energy another form, And towers an elephant, or glides a worm, Swims as an eagle in the eye of noon, Or wails, a screech owl, to the deaf, cold moon, Or haunts the brakes where serpents hiss and glare, Or hums, a glittering ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... will walk upright, and strut with fine canes, Stalking in towns, 'stead of roaming in lanes, Misfortunes they'll meet with, no doubt, such as Jack's, Getting shots through their ears, and kicks on ...
— Surprising Stories about the Mouse and Her Sons, and the Funny Pigs. - With Laughable Colored Engravings • Unknown
... the great oaks, that throw Tangles of light and shade below, On roofs and doors and window-sills. Across the road the barns display Their lines of stalls, their mows of hay, Through the wide doors the breezes blow, The wattled cocks strut to and fro, And, half effaced by rain and shine, The Red Horse prances ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... no right," continued Blackbeard, "to strut about on the quarter-deck of that fine vessel, the Revenge; you have no right to hoist above you the Jolly Roger, and you have no right to lie right and left and tell people you are a pirate. A pirate, forsooth! you are no pirate. ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... son of Strut-Harald, sometime King of Skaney, and at the time of his meeting with Olaf in Wendland he was lord over the great company of vikings who had their stronghold in Jomsburg. He was a very mighty man, and his wealth and personal prowess were such that Burislaf's daughter Astrid encouraged ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... of Mrs. Siddons. She was a goddess of the age of fret and fume, of stalk and strut, of trilled R's and of nodding plumes. If we had Siddons now I fear we should hiss; I am quite sure we should yawn. She must have ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... give 'em leave to match him, if they can; It's fun to see him strut about, and try to be a man! The gamest, cheeriest little chap, you'd ever want to see! And then they laugh, because I think the child resembles me. The little rogue! he goes for me, like robbers for their ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... to all men. They set their minds on worldly glory, and spent their money on extravagant dress. "The men," said he, "wear capes reaching down to the ground, and their long hair falls down to their shoulders; and the women wear so many petticoats that they can hardly drag themselves along, and strut about like the Pope's courtezans, to the surprise and disgust of the whole world." What right had these selfish fops to call themselves Christians? They did more harm to the cause of Christ than all the Turks and ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... my little Nannie? Does she still keep a menagerie for sick dogs and lost cats? And how's the parson-gull with the broken wing, and does he still strut like Parson Kis-sack in his surplice? I was at Westminster Hall yesterday. It was the great trial of Mitchell, M. P., who forged his father's will. Stevens defended—bad, bad, bad, smirking all the while ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... officer of the fourth century. The papyri of this period are full of the high-flown titles and affected phraseology which was so beloved of Byzantine scribes. "Glorious Dukes of the Thebaid," "most magnificent counts and lieutenants," "all-praiseworthy secretaries," and the like strut across the pages of the letters and documents which begin "In the name of Our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, the God and Saviour of us all, in the year x of the reign of the most divine and praised, great, and beneficent Lord Flavius Heraclius (or other) the eternal Augustus ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... Oxford fop With Cravat large and Brutus Top And when young Stag his coat has slipt on He'll strut ...
— Life and Adventures of Mr. Pig and Miss Crane - A Nursery Tale • Unknown
... of a member of the opposite sex. A high liver, and a good fellow every inch of him, he could be natural, racy, charming, and without vanity, when in the midst of men; but let so much as the rustle of a petticoat sound on the pavement, and he would begin to strut and plume himself as instinctively as the cock ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... flooding. The superstructure strikes most travellers as having somewhat the look of a chalet, although Proyart compares it with a large basket turned upside down. Two strong uprights, firmly planted, support on their forked ends a long strut-beam, tightly secured; the eaves are broad to throw off the rain, and the neat thatch of grass, laid with points upwards in regular courses, and kept in site by bamboo strips, is renewed before the stormy season. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... juice warmed his vitals and his breath. Good drop of gin, that was. His frocktails winked in bright sunshine to his fat strut. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... shamelessly given to the practice of "wieldin' a pencil" until he discovered that he could make folk laugh. After that he was an abandoned soul, with a naughty strut on the roads. For folk laughed with flattering amazement, and they clapped Terry Lute on his broad little back, and much to his delight they called him a limb o' the devil, and they spread his ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... lighthearted-and lightheadedness for which sober, literal, decorous English has no synonym. As we went, she danced and sang, and laughed out joyously at everything and at nothing, and talked the most fascinating nonsense—all in the role of "Cousin Burwell." She could imitate him to perfection; her strut and swagger and slang threw me into paroxysms of delight. We picked huckleberries, and dived into the woods to feast upon wild plums that had ten drops of syrupy juice between tough skins and flinty stones encased in the pulp of bitterness, and gathered handfuls ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... had boasted that he would stop and find out all about it if he happened to meet it, he didn't have the least intention of doing anything of the kind. He was just idly boasting and nothing more. You see, Reddy is one of the greatest boasters in the Green Forest or on the Green Meadows. He likes to strut around and talk big. But like most boasters, he is a coward ...
— The Adventures of Prickly Porky • Thornton W. Burgess
... dozen times in a day, the Judge and the baby may see some Italian society parading through the street. Fourteen proud sons of Italy, clad in magnificent new uniforms, bearing aloft huge silk banners, strut magnificently in the rear of a German band of twenty-four pieces, and a drum-corps of a dozen more. Then, too, come the religious processions, when the little girls are taken to their first communion. Six sturdy Italians struggle along under the weight of a mighty temple or pavilion, all made ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... different ways to-day how she can beat that game. And anyway, no matter what happens, unless you're cruising deep, it's only a few feet to the top. Not like a crazy aeroplane a thousand feet up in the air! Something happens in an aeroplane, and where are you? With a busted stay or bamboo strut and you a mile in the air, where are you? Volplane? Maybe. But if you didn't—down you'd come atumbling like a hoop out of the clouds. That's 90 per cent—yes, maybe 99 per cent—of the submarine game: See that everything is right mechanically with your sub, then get a competent ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... shall, unless you assure me that I have mistaken de l'Estorade's meaning, find occasion to let him and others of his kind know that one can, if so disposed, climb over the walls of their little parks and strut ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... tail, and reported all well. The other dog was only a small pup, a Skye terrier, like a bunch of tow, a present from Tommy Traddles. Pup's early days were made very miserable by Maggie, the magpie. That wicked bird used to strut around Philip while he was digging in the garden, and after filling her crop with worms and grubs, she flapped away on one wing and went round the hut looking for amusement. She jumped on Pup's back, scratched him with her claws, pecked at his skull, and pulled locks of wool out of it, the poor ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... against the clock, When Avon waters upward flow, When eggs are laid by barn-door cock, When dusty hens do strut and crow, When up is down, when left is right, Oh, then I'll break the troth I plight, With careless eye Away I'll fly And ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... very annoying to the King of the Cats. He used to strut up and down saying to himself over and over again, "I'm Cock-o'-the-Walk, I'm Cock-o'-the-Walk." Sometimes he would come into the Forge and say it to the horses. The King of the Cats wondered how the human beings could ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... famed Cassibelan, who was once at point (O giglot fortune!) to master Caesar's sword, Made Lud's town with rejoicing fires bright, And Britons strut ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... fine baby faces, That strut in a garter and star,— Have they, under their tambour and laces, The kind honest heart ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... trouser-leg he had left, gazing eagerly between at the advancing masterpiece. Occasionally the triumph of expectation would exceed his control, when he would spring from the floor, and caper and strut about like a pigeon—soft as a shadow, for he knew his father could not bear noise in the morning—or behind his back execute a pantomimic dumb show of delight, in which he seemed with difficulty to restrain himself from jumping ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... now what good-for-nothings you are! Why do you strut and turn up your noses as if you were the lords of creation? Well, I am going to give you orders. Go up and dress. Get some travelling money, ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... Turkey Proudfoot. He loved to strut about the farmyard and spread his tail, which he claimed was the most elegant one ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey
... stay Awhile. What grace, What finery! I do declare It pleases me. Now walk away A little space. 35 So: I trow shoes are now thy need With a pair from Valencia, fair to see, I thee endow. Now beautiful, as I decreed, Art thou indeed; Now fold thy arms presumptuously: Ev'n so; and now 36 Strut airily, show off thy power, This way and that and up and down Just as thou please; Fair now as fairest rose in flower Thy beauty's dower, And all becomes thee as thine own: Now take ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... Cock who had a whole farmyard of hens to look after and manage; and among them was a tiny little Crested Hen. She thought she was altogether too grand to be in company with the other hens, for they looked so old and shabby; she wanted to go out and strut about all by herself, so that people could see how fine she was, and admire her pretty ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... the atmosphere, inhale the delicious air, and talk over their little domestic affairs. The various shaped leaves of the forest all around their village and near their nestlings are bespangled with myriads of dewdrops. The cocks crow vigorously, and strut and ogle; the kids gambol and leap on the backs of their dams quietly chewing the cud; other goats make believe fighting. Thrifty wives often bake their new clay pots in a fire, made by lighting a heap of grass roots: the next morning they extract salt from the ashes, and so two birds ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... plump shoulders gave to Peter in his perplexity the not inaccurate notion that the fat little man had enjoyed his joke and was giggling to such an extent that it almost interfered with his dignified strut. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... her that love had brought. As Grizel came up the path on that bright afternoon, she could no more have helped strutting than the bud to open on the appointed day. She was obeying one of Nature's laws. I think I promised long ago to tell you of the day when Grizel would strut no more. Well, this is the day. Observe her strutting for the last time. It was very strange and touching to her to remember in the after years that she had once strutted, but it was still more strange and ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... be as well up to it as ever ye will be," he said. "Not that such mumming would have passed in our time. Harry as the Saracen should strut a bit more, and John needn't holler his inside out. Beyond that perhaps you'll do. Have you got all ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... speak sharply, the wound must be subjected to the actual cautery. But was virtue the cause of all this interest? Was it devotion to a young and innocent girl that made me willing to undertake so difficult and so delicate a task? Doubtless these motives went for something, but I will not attempt to strut in borrowed plumes, and must freely confess that if she had been ugly and stupid I should probably have left her to her fate. In short, selfishness was at the bottom of it all, so let us say ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and to humanity. Very true, religion has operated mainly with precatory rites for the purpose of deflecting God's wrath, or, as Mr. James would say, with some sneaking design upon His bounty. And morality has been the starched buckram in which men walk and strut for distinguished consideration. But religion in its true and native meaning is that which binds man to God in loving unison, and morality covers all the relations which bind a man to his neighbor, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that mine is the most plotting heart in the world. Thou dost me honour; and I thank thee heartily. Thou art no bad judge. How like Boileau's parson I strut behind my double chin! Am I not obliged to deserve thy compliment? And wouldst thou have me repent of a murder before I have ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... ease and independence which Chase had held out to her in the brief season of his adroit courtship. The meanest men sometimes turn out to be the nimblest cock-pheasants during that interesting period, and, like those vain birds of the jungles, they strut and dance and cut dazzling capers before the eyes of the ladies when they want to strike ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... is, the man of this pair—can strut and parade with the utmost freedom from his responsibility for the result of his act that Nature has made to be pre-eminent among his desires. But the female—that is, the woman of this pair—must for nine months (just think of it!) carry and develop the germ of this child in the fertile ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... the message Turkey Proudfoot's tail drooped and he forgot to strut. He even shook slightly, as if something had frightened him. And then, to the Muley Cow's astonishment, he began to gobble ...
— The Tale of the The Muley Cow - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... with the square, and from the ends of the mark run lines towards the end at an angle of 45 degrees. Cut along these lines, and lay one of the edges just cut up against C, and flush with the outer edge of L1 (Fig. 5). Tack the strut on temporarily to both legs, turn the trestle over, and draw your pencil (which should have a sharp point) along the angles which the strut makes with the legs. This gives you the limits of the overlaps. Detach ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... devil he is! trust him, and hang him. Why, he cannot speak a good word on him to my old master; and he does so ruffle before my mistress with his barbarian eloquence,[153] and strut before her in a pair of Polonian legs, as if he were a gentleman-usher to the great Turk or to the devil of Dowgate. And if my mistress would be ruled by him, Sophos might go snick-up: but he has such a butter-milk face, that ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... How woman smites your souls? Whatever dress Of thought you take to royalize your nature,— Gorgeous shawls of kingship, a world's fear, Or ample weavings of imagination, Or the spun light of wisdom,—like a gust Of flame, that weather of impersonal thought You strut beneath, that hanging storm of Love, Strikes down a terrible swift dazzling finger, Sight of some woman, on your clothed hearts, And plucks the winding folly off, and leaves Bare nature there. And hear another likeness. Look, if the priests have ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... paying tribute to his importance, and he again went suddenly out of my control. He began to strut and caper and pose with the air of knowing that he was ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... and bright eyes, as I remember, but it was also extremely given to quarrelling. It used frequently to "get mad." It made nothing of twitching away books and balls. It often pouted. Sometimes it would bite. If it wore a fine frock, it would strut. It told lies,—"whoppers" at that. It took the biggest half of the apple. It was not, as a general thing, magnanimous, but "aggravating." It may have been fun to you who looked on, but it was death to us who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... three of their best Towns, the Nation dispirited, and Credit sunk, and nothing but a dismal Scene of Poverty and Misery: And yet in the midst of all this Misery, (as the Spanish Beggars are said to strut about in their Cloak and Bilboes at their Side) so this Gasping Monarch had the Assurance not only to talk of making a Descent, but actually equipp'd a small nimble Fleet with a Body of Men, and persuaded ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... luxury item to the galaxy. You know how every super-jet big shot on twenty-five planets wants to say he's hunted on Khatka. And if he can point out a graz head on his wall, or wear a tail bracelet, he's able to strut with the best. To holiday on Khatka is both fabulous and fashionable—and very, very profitable for the natives and for Combine who sells ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... great boots, shall strut and shout, Keep my locks curled. The fame of my name shall go ringing about Over ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... of the fact that a connecting rod functions as a strut, it is considered that this part should be only stiff enough to prevent any whipping action during the running of the engine. The greater the fatigue-resisting property that one can put into the rod after this stiffness is reached, the longer the life of the rod will be. This is the reason for ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... intelligibleness illumines the universe. The arbitrary and cruel Creator who inflicts pain and pleasure at will then disappears from the stage; and it is well, for he is indeed an unnecessary character, and, worse still, is a mere creature of straw, who cannot even strut upon the boards without being upheld on all sides by dogmatists. Man comes into this world, surely, on the same principle that he lives in one city of the earth or another; at all events, if it is too much to say that this is so, one may safely ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... debate peace who understand neither its nature nor the way in which we may attain it, with uplifted eyes and unbroken spirits. But I know that none of these speaks for the Nation. They do not touch the heart of anything. They may safely be left to strut about their uneasy hour and ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... in a partial manner; and that we must take the whole of society to find the whole man. Unfortunately the unit has been too minutely subdivided, and many faculties are practically lost for want of use. "The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.... Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things.... The priest becomes a form; the attorney a statute book; the ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... he will put aside the welfare of a nation for the miserable sake of party popularity? Are we to stand here in the guise and manner of free men, knowing that we are driven together like a flock of sheep into the fold by the howling of the wolves outside? Are we to strut and plume ourselves upon our unhampered freedom, while we act like slaves? Worse than slaves we should be if we allowed one breath of party spirit, one thought of party aggrandizement, to enter into the choice we are about to make. Slaves are driven ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... Mr Hobhouse, "strut very much when they walk, projecting their chests, throwing back their heads, and moving very slowly from side to side. Elmas (as the officer was called) had this strut more than any man perhaps we saw afterwards; ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... such a polite element abroad on polling day. Men are so respectful and hurl such affectionate terms at one another. Even the dogs are upset, and strut about in quite a different manner than on ordinary days, so puffed out with vanity are they, on account of their decorations. The members' wives and their friends are all taking part in the scene too, bringing voters along in their carriages, ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... we will absorb it with the rest: we have absorbed many others! I just laugh at the air of triumph they assume, and the pusillanimity of some of my fellow-countrymen. They think they have conquered us, they strut about our boulevards, and in our newspapers and reviews, and in our theaters and in the political arena. Idiots! It is they who are conquered! They will be assimilated after having fed us. Gaul has a strong stomach: in these twenty centuries she has digested more than one civilization. We ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... chirping, and scratching vigorously. A tuft of green leaves waved upon his crest, a larger tuft of brakes made an umbrageous tail, and a shawl of many colours formed his flapping wings. A truly noble bird, whose legs had the genuine strut, whose eyes shone watchfully, and whose voice had a ring that evidently struck terror into the catterpillar's soul, if it was a catterpillar. He squirmed, he wriggled, he humped as fast as he could, trying to escape; ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... pride exalts Thyself in other's eyes, And hides thy folly's faults, Which reason will despise? Dost strut, and turn, and stride, Like a walking weathercock? The shadow by thy side Will be thy ape, ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... behind their visitors, gazed with admiring eyes at every motion of his grandfather. To one who had from earliest infancy looked up to him with reverence, there was nothing ridiculous in the display, in the strut, in all that to other eyes too evidently revealed the vanity of the piper: Malcolm regarded it all only as making up the orthodox mode of playing the pipes. It was indeed well that he could not see the expression upon the faces of ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... of his capture at Lurin and of his all night ride on mule back. The Dictator sent for the officer, who, thinking he was going to be rewarded for his cleverness, entered the reception room with a peacock strut that was admirable. By the time Don Nicholas finished a reprimand, he slunk away like a whipped cur and it is likely he was more careful to investigate thereafter when ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... responsible for the money. And lastly, she loathed and condemned him for the reason that he was so obviously unequal to the situation. He could not handle it. He was found out. He was disproved, He did not know what to do. He could only mouth, strut, bully, and make rude noises. He could not even keep decently around him the cloak of self-importance. He stood revealed to Mrs. Maldon and Rachel as he had sometimes stood revealed to his dead wife and to his ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... John's pockets are an integral part of his personality. He feels after his pocket instinctively while yet in what corresponds in the genus homo with the polywog state in batrachia. The incipient man begins to strut as soon as mamma puts pockets into his kilted skirt—a stride as prophetic as the strangled crow of the cockerel upon the ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... (Nationalists) believed in it, for they issued a placard on which they called Borghese a traitor and threatened him with death. "He who after November 1918 returns to the martyred town," writes Signor Zanella, "is simply stupefied in beholding that those personages who now strut on the political scene, burning with the most ardent Italian patriotism, are the same who until the eve of Vittorio Veneto were the most unbending, the most eloquent and the most devoted partisans and servants of the reactionary Magyar regime." ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... National man, or an Anti-Slavery man and a Temperance man and a Woman's-Rights' man, and still be very little of a man. There is, indeed, no more ludicrous sight than to see Mediocrity, perched on one of these resounding adjectives, strut and bluster, and give itself braggadocio airs, and dictate to all quiet men its maxims of patriotism or morality, and all the while be but a living illustration through what grandeurs of opinion essential ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... in; It's the cruellest team will win. So hold your nose against the stink And never stop too long to think. Wars don't change except in name; The next one must go just the same, And new foul tricks unguessed before Will win and justify this War. Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage Once more with pomp and greed and rage; Courtly ministers will stop At home and fight to the last drop; By the million men will die In some new horrible agony; And children here will thrust and poke, Shoot and die, and laugh at the joke, With bows and arrows and wooden ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... of the spring." In anger Juno heard, And cried, "Shame on you, jealous bird! Grudge you the nightingale her voice, Who in the rainbow neck rejoice, Than costliest silks more richly tinted, In charms of grace and form unstinted— Who strut in kingly pride, Your glorious tail spread wide With brilliants which in sheen do Outshine the jeweller's bow window? Is there a bird beneath the blue That has more charms than you? No animal in everything can shine. By just partition of our gifts divine, Each has its full ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... now and see this long train of camels coming up to the king's gate, and the ox-trains from Egypt, gold and silver and precious stones, and beasts of every hoof, and birds of every wing, and fish of every scale! See the peacocks strut under the cedars, and the horsemen run, and the chariots wheel! Hark to the orchestra! Gaze upon the dance! Not stopping to look into the wonders of the temple, step right on to the causeway, and pass ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... ineffably superior and certain of himself; a well-graced actor. It was presently suggested that he should appear in his war costume; he gracefully consented; and returned in that strange, inappropriate and ill- omened array (which very well became his handsome person) to strut in a circle of admirers, and be thenceforth the centre of photography. Thus had Moipu effected his introduction, as by accident, to the white strangers, made it a favour to display his finery, and reduced his rival ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which is supported by bayonets is always repugnant, wherever it comes from, and under whatever name it may strut. It can have nothing in common with Socialism, which is not only a doctrine of economic necessity, but also a doctrine of ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... their beauty was not increased by this beastly carousal, and thus be a means of blessing. It may be asked, Can the savage be possessed of pride and of self-esteem? I unhesitatingly answer yes, as I have had abundant opportunity of seeing. They will strut with peacock pride when wearing a specially gaudy-colored headdress, although that may be their ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... the great day came when old Mother Nature arrived to inspect the kingdom of old King Bear. All the little meadow people and all the little forest folk hastened to pay their respects to old Mother Nature and to strut about in their fine clothes—all but Mr. Toad. He was so busy that he didn't even know that old Mother ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... pleased the favored ones are, who have a soldier to show them the way. I see a distinct difference in their walk from that of the others, don't you, Natalie? They seem to be saying 'We were invited—and by this splendiferous creature at our side!' See how they strut! And look at the soldierless ones, how timidly they go—just as if they had found their tickets in the street, or had crept in through the basement windows. 'Please, kind Mr. Soldier-man, let us stay and see the ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... the step of gosling, Strut thou with the feet of duckling, In the yard that's washed so cleanly, On the smooth and level grassplot, Where the father rules the household, And the mother holds dominion, To the workplace of the brother, And the sister's ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... Never offered you money? For God's sake! Did you want to be paid for Lura's body?' And he says, 'You know damn' well I didn't want to be paid for Lura's body, Pros Passmore,' he says. 'But do you reckon I'm a-goin' to let them mill men strut around with money they got that-a-way in their pockets? No, I'll not. I'll see 'em cold in hell fust,' he says—them Dawsons is a hard nation o' folks, Johnnie. I talked to 'em for a spell, and tried to make 'em see that the Hardwick folks hadn't never sold no dead body ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... Ole Miss? Huh! She des th'ow up her haid en low, 'Well, Marse Lightfoot, I'm glad you kep' Abel—en we'll use de ole coach agin',' sez she—en den she tu'n en strut right ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... proper station in life, he does not gape after things beyond it. Man, what do you wish to happen to you? I am satisfied if I desire and avoid conformably to nature, if I employ movements towards and from an object as I am by nature formed to do, and purpose and design and assent. Why then do you strut before us as if you had swallowed a spit? My wish has always been that those who meet me should admire me, and those who follow me should exclaim, O the great philosopher! Who are they by whom you wish to be ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... first constituent is obedience: a soldier is, of all descriptions of men, the most completely a machine; yet his profession inevitably teaches him something of dogmatism, swaggering, and sell-consequence: he is like the puppet of a showman, who, at the very time he is made to strut and swell and display the most farcical airs, we perfectly know cannot assume the most insignificant gesture, advance either to the right or the left, but as he is moved by his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... chain. Without saying a word, the bright and too willing mechanic who was assisting, mainly by looking on, took the new chain into his shop and cut off a link. A wanton act done because he "thought the chain a little too long," and not discovered until the machine had been cramped together, every strut and reach shortened to get the chain in place; meanwhile the factory was being vigorously blamed for sending out chains too short. During it all the mechanic was discreetly silent, but the new link on the vise in the shop betrayed him after the harm ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... men. I grant that this has the air of a highwayman's attack, but, after all, the uniform covers a host of civil sins, and, really, I do not see a better way to have done with the youth. It will never do to have him strut about Paris boasting that he snatched the sword away from an officer and drubbed him with a ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... for us to live for the present in just a shade "better style" than we do; but we have mean ambitions in other directions than style. Style is not for those who are placidly indifferent to display; and before whom on a comely, scornful Isle shall we strut and parade? "You and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's fashions," for do we not proclaim and justify our own? Are we not leaders who have no subservient, no flattering imitators, no sycophantic copyists? The etiquette ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... for men,) you'll cry, Presume too much upon your secrecy. There's not a fop in town, but will pretend To know the cheat himself, or by his friend; Then make no words on't, gallants, 'tis e'en true, We are condemn'd to look and strut, like you. Since we thus freely our hard fate confess, Accept us, these bad times, in any dress. You'll find the sweet on't: now old pantaloons Will go as far as, formerly, new gowns; And from your own cast wigs, expect no frowns. The ladies we shall not so easily please; They'll ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... strong lungs with which to shout; hence a piece of delicate pathos or varied passions would probably receive scant justice at his hands. But even the town-crier is tolerable—he is nature's product— compared with the workmanship of nature's journeymen—those who strut and bellow. "They imitate humanity so abominably" that their delivery touches the extremest limit of all that is reprehensible ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... old—and yet 'tis true, Though they be old, the thing is something new; Each new, quite new—(except some ancient tricks), New white-sticks, gold-sticks, broom-sticks, all new sticks! With vests or ribbons, deck'd alike in hue, New troopers strut, new turncoats blush in blue; So saith the muse! my ——, what say you? Such was the time when Waltz might best maintain Her new preferments in this novel reign; Such was the time, nor ever yet was such: Hoops are no more, and petticoats not ...
— English Satires • Various
... him—he is up to the sharps, down upon the flats, and not to be done. But in looking round you may perceive men booted and spurred, who perhaps never crossed a horse, and some with whips in their hands who deserve it on their backs—they hum lively airs, whistle and strut about with their quizzing-glasses in their hands, playing a tattoo upon their boots, and shewing themselves off with as many airs as if they were real actors engaged in the farce, that is to say, the buyers ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... stove went out into the airy kitchen, and a larger flock of geese squawked in the weeds and ditches. Again Andy and Jim drove the cows, Andy of a morning with a dreamy stroll, and Jim of an evening with a strut that was intended for a military gait. Who had told little Jim of West Point, the family did not know. But he had been told ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... but neither does Scott's dialogue bear criticism. His lords brave each other in smart epigramatic speeches, but the dialogue is in costume, and does not please on the second reading: it is not warm with life. In Shakspeare alone the speakers do not strut and bridle, the dialogue is easily great, and he adds to so many titles that of being the best-bred man in England and in Christendom. Once or twice in a lifetime we are permitted to enjoy the charm of noble manners, ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... medals, God give me loud honors, That I may strut before you, sweetheart, And be worthy of— The love ...
— War is Kind • Stephen Crane
... I let Froggy forget that L10 he owes me, and he begins to strut about like a peacock, his mother declares "He shall not go ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... left him alone, watching him, I fear, over the top of her novel, he disappointed himself. For five minutes or so everything would go well; he looked as dejected as possible; but as he fell he was succeeding he became so self-satisfied that he began to strut. A pleased expression crossed his face, and instead of allowing his head to hang dismally, he put it well back. Sometimes, when we wanted to please him, we said he looked as glum as a mute at a funeral. Even that, however, defeated his object, for it flattered ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... delivered a sermon, these personages made what the manuscripts technically call "their boast." They are the masters of the universe; they wield the thunder; everybody obeys them; they swear and curse unblushingly (by Mahomet); they are very noisy. They strut about, proud of their fine dresses and fine phrases, and of their French, French being there again a token of power and authority. The English Herod could not claim kinship with the Norman Dukes, but the subjects of Angevin ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand |
