"Braggart" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the guilty, not the free; Suits tyrants, plunderers, but suits not me: Shall I, the terror of this sinful town, Care, if a liveried lord or smile or frown? Who cannot flatter, and detest who can, Tremble before a noble serving-man? O, my fair mistress, Truth! shall I quit thee For huffing, braggart, puffed nobility? Thou, who since yesterday hast rolled o'er all The busy, idle blockheads of the ball, Hast thou, oh, sun! beheld an emptier fort, Than such who swell this bladder of a Court? Now plague on those ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... Says he, 'Burlman Rennuls,' dat's me, you know, Bushie; 'Burlman Rennuls,' says he, 'you's 'tirely welcome to de skelps, ef you kin take 'em widout cuttin' an' spilin' de skin.' H-yah, h-yah, h-yah!" And the black braggart laughed as sincerely as if he were for the moment self-deceived into thinking that he was dealing in facts. But quickly recovering his lofty air, which had vanished while he laughed, the Fighting Negro thus proceeded with his observations ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... taunting degenerates into a scurrilous tirade. Hunferth calls Beowulf a 'mudscow'; Breca and Beowulf swim like two 'dead herrings.' In like manner the character of Hunferth is cheapened. In Beowulf he is a jealous courtier, but he is always heroic. In Grundtvig he is merely a contemptible braggart, 'with his nose high in air,' who will not allow himself to be 'thrown ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... for your people's welfare keep your love! My heart is true: I know that braggart nation, Whose sordid instincts, cold and pitiless, Would cut you off, and drown your Council-Fires. I would defend you, therefore keep me here! My love is yours alone, my hand I give, With this good weapon in it, to ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... dull hide in a time of trial, whether of war or social suffering, he cannot see, nor a people hardening to Spartan lineaments in the fire, iron men to meet disaster, worshippers of a discerned God of Laws, and just men too, thinking to do justice; he has Bull on the eye, the alternately braggart and poltroon, sweating in labour that he may gorge the fruits, graceless to a scoffer. And this is the creature to whose tail he is tied! Hereditary hatred is approved by critical disgust. Some spirited brilliancy, some persistent ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bound to be that!" said the man, with a braggart laugh and swagger. "I tell ye, mar, we're going to have the greatest ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... Justice! . . Lo, between Him and the judgment-seat there rose The Sword of Menace, ever keen To smite the braggart War-Wolf's foes! ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... relief given by tears is exquisitely expressed, but the relief itself is a feminine experience; men usually find that tears humiliate them, and take refuge from their scalding shame in anger. The deathless phrases of the poet's grief must be contrasted with the braggart mouthings of the captain at the end in order to realize how impossible it was for Shakespeare to depict ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... me by blood. Winning over to-day the beauteous Damayanti of faultless features, I shall regard myself fortunate, indeed, since she it is that hath ever dwelt in my heart.' Hearing these words of that incoherent braggart, Nala in anger desired to cut off his head with a scimitar. With a smile, however, though his eyes were red in anger, king Nala said, 'Let us play. Why do you speak so now? Having vanquished me, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Queenston Heights Sheaffe succeeded Brock in command of the British, and Smyth succeeded Van Rensselaer in command of the Americans. Sheaffe was a harsh martinet and a third-rate commander. Smyth, a notorious braggart, was no commander at all. He did, however, succeed in getting Sheaffe to conclude an armistice that fully equalled Prevost's in its disregard of British interests. After making the most of it for a month he ended it on November 19, and began manoeuvring round his headquarters ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... other, "do not play the braggart. I know the whole story and if I did not, I could ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... such a needed and salutary lesson," said Viola. "I have heard my father say that a braggart is generally a coward. My mind commends your course, Mr. Very, of walking boldly up to danger and daring it to do its worst; but my woman's heart shrinks from the presence ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... satisfactorily, yet he could not forego an opportunity to indulge his pride by following up the threat he had hung over Agricola to kill whosoever should give Palmyre to a black man. He referred the subject and the would-be purchaser to him. It would open up to the old braggart a line of retreat, thought the ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... Disgrace for guide, Earned to the full the hateful traitor's meed, And bade his hordes advance Through Belgium's cities towards the fields of France; And when at last our patient island race, By the attempted wrong Made fierce and strong, Flung back the challenge in the braggart's face, Oh then, while martial music filled the air, Clarion and fife and bagpipe and the drum, Calling to men to muster, march, and dare, Oh, then thy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... lady, was the talented Peire Vidal. On one occasion he caused himself to be sewn into a wolfskin and ran about the fields; but he was set upon by dogs and so badly mangled that he nearly succumbed to his wounds. He was an insufferable braggart, but never had any success in love. The prince of caricatures, however, was the German knight and minnesinger, Ulrich of Lichtenstein. He is responsible for a novel in prose, entitled The Service of Woman, which ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... abundantly that animals have no souls. The employment of a lover is that of a mountebank, of a soldier, of a quack, of a buffoon, of a prince, of a ninny, of a king, of an idler, of a monk, of a dupe, of a blackguard, of a liar, of a braggart, of a sycophant, of a numskull, of a frivolous fool, of a blockhead, of a know-nothing, of a knave. An employment from which Jesus abstained, in imitation of whom folks of great understanding likewise disdain it; it is a vocation in which a man of worth is required to spend ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... an Americano—a runaway, with some ill-gotten gold," said Miguel, sullenly, yet with unmistakable fear of the old man. "Besides, it was only to frighten him, the braggart. But since thou fearest to touch a hair ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... bravest, but in vain, Can'st thou sit tamely, with the field unfought, And see this braggart glory in his gain? Where is thy god, that Eryx? Hath he taught Thine arm its vaunted cleverness for naught? To us what booteth thy Trinacrian name, Thy spoil-hung house, thy roof with prizes fraught?" Entellus said: "My spirit is the same. Fear hath not quenched my fire, nor checked ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... fortunes, everything, In sacred trust for knighthood and his king, And in the battle-field or tilting-yard He met his foe full-fronted, and struck hard. But now it seemed a foolish thing to throw One's whole life to the fortune of a blow. True valor breathes not in the braggart vaunt; True honor takes no shame from idle taunt; So let this wizard, if he wants to, scoff; Why should our hero have his ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... burned in on his own soul. He had lied to his mother, to his conscience, to his God. How could he bear it? And then the poor little weak boy, whom he had pitied and almost scorned for his weakness, had done that which he, braggart as he was, dared not do. The first dawn of comfort came to him in swearing to himself that he would stand by that boy through thick and thin, and cheer him, and help him, and bear his burdens, for the good deed done that night. Then he resolved to write home next day and tell his mother all, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... living," said Paul, with a smile—and when Paul smiled it was as if Eros's feathers had brushed the cheek of a Praxitelean Hermes; and then with an outburst half sincere, half braggart—"I've been on my own ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... The bard his answer waits at home, But lo! his braggart neighbour hath Triumphant with the answer come. Now for the jealous youth what joy! He feared the criminal might try To treat the matter as a jest, Use subterfuge, and thus his breast From the dread pistol turn away. But now all doubt was ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... complaints. Englishmen were fretting under their enforced abstinence from the exciting struggles on the Continent. There was no want of Dugald Dalgettys returning from the wars to afford models for the military braggart or the bluff honest soldier, both of whom go swaggering through so many of the plays of the time. Clarendon in his Life speaks of the temptations which beset him from mixing with the military society ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... tortured out of their proud and tyrannous existence! ... their strength made strengthless, their arrogance brought to naught, their egotism and vain-glory beaten to the dust! Ah, ah! thou that wert the complacent braggart of love,—the self-sufficient proclaimer of thine own prowess, where is thy boasted vigor now? ... Writhe on, good fool! ... thy little day is done! ... All honor to the Silver Nectar whose venom ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... his large, bony right hand, in uncouth gestures, as if he would clutch him and shake him. He would often use invectives, which he took care should never appear printed in the official reports, and John Randolph in his braggart prime was never so imperiously insulting as was Mr. Stevens toward those whose political action he controlled. He was firm believer in the old maxim ascribed to the Jesuits, "The end justifies the means," and, while he set morality at defiance, he was an early and a zealous ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... I am positive," said Chase, insistent in spite of his dejection. They drank their coffee in silence. He knew that the others—including the native who served them—were regarding him with the pity that one extends to the vain-glorious braggart who goes down ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... no, Princess, not here, not here!... You know I love you; in an unreasoning moment I dared tell you so; and you may think me passion-blind, and that I hung the vow to defend you upon my soul's neck, thinking it light as this favor you were pleased to give me; that love being a braggart, therefore I am a braggart. Let me set myself right in your opinion—your good opinion, O Princess, for it is to me a world of such fair shining I dream of it as of a garden in Paradise.... If you do not know how hardly I have striven in this war, send, I pray, and ask any ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... to the rescue! Here is a desperate young ruffian seeking to murder the Queen's subjects in broad daylight! Help, I say, and take the young braggart before the magistrates! Cannot peaceable citizens walk the streets without being set upon by such bullies ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... set a braggart quailing with a quip, The upstart I can wither with a whim; He may wear a merry laugh upon his lip, But his laughter has an echo that is grim. When they've offered to the world in merry guise, Unpleasant truths are swallowed with a will - For he who'd make his fellow-creatures wise Should always ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the tone of a braggart, but of a man who knew what he was talking about. Hooker did not return to California, but in a few weeks Captain Hooker received from the President a ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... Burr—follow! overtake and pass him! He has a tarnished name and fifty years,—a supple rapier but a shrunken arm. He's daring; but I can be that and more. He plans; I can achieve. I am no dreamer and no braggart when I say that in the West I can play the Corsican. What can I do here? Become, perhaps, Governor of Virginia; wait until Mr. Jefferson is dead, and Mr. Madison is dead, and Mr. Monroe is dead, and then, if the world is yet Republican, become President? The governorship I do not want; the ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... typicality of Pinney. "He hasn't the least chance in the world of working up into any controlling place in the paper. They don't know much in the Events office; but they do know Pinney. He's a great liar and a braggart, and he has no more notion of the immunities of private life than—Well, perhaps it's because he would as soon turn his life inside out as not, and in fact would rather. But he's very domestic, and very kind-hearted to his wife; it seems they have a baby ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... himself in the office. As may be imagined the Officer went through an anxious moment, not quite knowing what to do. However, he looked the man over, summed him up to the best of his judgment and ability, and coming to the conclusion that he was a bully and a braggart, said that he might do what he liked. The man swallowed the contents of the bottle, exclaiming that he would be dead in a few minutes, and a pause ensued, during which the Officer confessed to me that ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... of the high walls, and some in the moonlight, the serving-men held their parliament. They discoursed of these things, and some said that it was a great pity that T. Culpepper was come to Court. For he was an idle braggart, and where he was disorder grew, and that was a pity, since the Queen had made the Court orderly, and servants were little beaten. But some said that like sire was like child, and that great disorders there were in the Court, but quiet ones, ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... and golden as they went by, an army of white geese marched aside in braggart protest. Ursula was light as a white ball of down. Skrebensky drifted beside her, indefinite, his old from loosened, and another self, grey, vague, drifting out as from a bud. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... announcement of the death of the king of France ends the embassy, and the lovers are put on a year's probation of constancy. In the subplot, or minor story, the play is notable for the burlesquing of two types of character—a pompous pedantic schoolmaster, and a braggart who always speaks in high-flown metaphor. These two, happily contrasted with a country curate, a court page, and a country clown with his lass, make much ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... governor, bidding him by all means rake and scrape together as much as he could, for that you would swill it all down your throat? Don't you remember, eh?—don't you remember?' O you good-for-nothing, miserable braggart! that was speaking like a man, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... disagreeable flirt of the tail, always quarreling with their neighbors and with one another, no birds are so little calculated to excite pleasurable emotions in the beholder, or to become objects of human interest and affection. The kingbird is the best dressed member of the family, but he is a braggart; and, though always snubbing his neighbors, is an arrant coward, and shows the white feather at the slightest display of pluck in his antagonist. I have seen him turn tail to a swallow, and have known the little pewee in question to whip him beautifully. From the great-crested to ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... as a nun is she, One weak chirp is her only note, Braggart and prince of braggarts is he, Pouring boasts from his little throat: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; Never was I afraid of man; Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... have been more written about and fought over than those of Amerigo Vespucci. Some will have it that he went only two voyages, and say he was a braggart and a vainglorious fool if he said he went more. Others think that he went at least four voyages and probably six. And most people are now agreed that these last are right, and that he who gave his name to the great double Continent ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... forlorn the Damsel, crowned with rue, Lactiferous spoils from vaccine dugs, who drew Of that corniculate beast whose tortuous horn Tossed to the clouds, in fierce vindictive scorn, The harrowing hound, whose braggart bark and stir Arched the lithe spine and reared the indignant fur Of Puss, that with verminicidal claw Struck the weird Rat, in whose insatiate maw Lay reeking malt, that erst in Ivan's courts we saw Robed in senescent garb that seems in sooth Too long a prey to Chronos' ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... thick, As Sisyphus the dwarf, will call him 'chick!' If crooked all ways, in back, in legs, and thighs, With softening phrases will the flaw disguise. So, if one friend too close a fist betrays, Let us ascribe it to his frugal ways; Or is another—such we often find— To flippant jest and braggart talk inclined, 'Tis only from a kindly wish to try To make the time 'mongst friends go lightly by; Another's tongue is rough and over-free, Let's call it bluntness and sincerity; Another's choleric; him we must screen, As cursed with feelings for his peace too keen. ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... a ruler am I to this people, Their tongues are all too bold—nor have they yet Been tamed to due submission, as they shall be. I must take order for the remedy; I will subdue this stubborn mood of theirs, This braggart spirit of freedom I will crush, I will proclaim a new law through ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... words, shaggy Hanak whirled his knobby bludgeon above his head, and shied it frantically at the officer, who warded off the blow with his sword, and the same instant a young private transfixed the braggart so vigorously that the end of his bayonet stuck in the ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... selected some lady as the object of his dutiful devotion. She disdained the attentions of the most potent prince if his addresses were not honorable. Nor would she bestow her love on one of whom she was not proud. She would not marry a coward or a braggart, even if he were the owner of ten thousand acres. The knight was encouraged to pay his address to any lady if he was personally worthy of her love, for chivalry created a high estimate of individual merit. The feudal lady ignored ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... for his groat a day with rations. And once when a Spanish soldier came strutting forward between the lines, flourishing his weapon, and defying all persons in general—Ben stept forth, as I hear; fenced that braggart Spaniard, since no other would do it; and ended by soon slitting him in two, and so silencing him! Ben's war-tuck, to judge by the flourish of his pen, must have had a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... to be appeased in this fashion. Something in Lagardere's carriage, something in his voice, convinced the little marquis that his enemy was speaking the truth, and that he was, indeed, a gentleman. "Braggart!" he cried, and, drawing his sword, he struck Lagardere across the breast with the flat ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... charming blindness which keeps them from seeing when they are whipped in the battle of life. The man of success has usually a greater sense of the value of a ten-dollar note than his clerk who, like the braggart Pistol, has got the world for his oyster, and expects to open that tough old mollusk with his rusty sword. The man of success sees each young helper around him given better opportunities than he himself had to begin with. His astonishment that inexperienced young men should ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... of Georgia played some such part to the Northern imagination as Phillips or Sumner to the Southern. He was regarded as the typical fire-eater and braggart. He was currently reported to have boasted that he would yet call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill monument. But in truth this ogre was made of much the same human clay as the Massachusetts Abolitionists. He is well pictured, together with Alexander H. Stephens ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... susceptible and is, to that extent, interested in the Force, and critical of their behavior. The sight of a soldier annoyed him, for he saw a conqueror, trampling vaingloriously through the capital of his country, and the inability of his land to eject the braggart astonished and mortified him. Landlords had no bowels of compassion. There was no kindliness of heart among them, nor any wish to assist those whose whole existence was engaged on their behalf. He saw them as lazy unproductive gluttons who cried forever "Give, give," and who ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... were known, Joseph Bumble proved to be somewhat of a braggart. He was forever boasting of his connection with the Bumblebee family. And Betsy couldn't say anything to him without his remarking that his cousin Buster Bumblebee's mother, the well-known Queen, ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... like to know?" said Amyas, recovering himself. "Look here, brother Frank! I've thought it all over in the garden; and I was an ass and a braggart for talking to you as I did last night. Of course you love her! Everybody must; and I was a fool for not recollecting that; and if you love her, your taste and mine agree, and what can be better? I think you are a sensible ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... to convict the poor soul, suspicion, that is worse than conviction, must so fix upon him that he's afraid to sleep his nights in his bed at home, but must go where never a braggart loon of Wythburn dare ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... seldom deigns to notice his noisy and furious antagonists, but deliberately wheels about in that aerial spiral, and mounts and mounts till his pursuers grow dizzy and return to earth again. It is quite original, this mode of getting rid of an unworthy opponent,—rising to heights where the braggart is dazed and bewildered and loses his reckoning! I am not sure but it is worthy ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... meeting and pass resolutions to the effect that Cooper had rendered "himself odious to a greater portion of the citizens of this community," and why should Fraser's Magazine, three thousand miles away, call Cooper "a liar, a bilious braggart, a full jackass, an insect, a grub, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... course I knew. But what are threats between brothers? I knew they were but the idle boastings of a braggart. You would not dare harm me, or mine. You are a great coward, Rene, and it is to laugh and not to fear. You strut about like a cock partridge in the springtime, you clothe yourself with the feathers of the bluejay, and speak with ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... to his feet, stalked about the room, and put on all the disgusting airs of a drunken braggart. Even his father saw the ridiculous figure ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell' (Psalm xxvii. 2). Is it fanciful to hear in that triumphant chant an echo of Goliath's boast about giving his flesh to the fowls and the beasts, and a vision of the braggart as he tottered and lay prostrate? Observe, too, the contemptuous reiteration of 'the Philistine,' which occurs six times in the four verses (48-51). National feeling speaks in that. There is triumph in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and resolute he had a restless spirit. Fearless, without a touch of the braggart, his courage was of the valiant order, the quality that accompanies a lofty soul in a strong body. For his constant courtesy and habit of making sacrifices for his friends, he was in danger of ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... rank exists between us, my lord," I answered, "and I claim the right to cross swords in an affair of honour with all save those of royal blood. Grant me the satisfaction I demand, or I will brand you as a braggart and a coward throughout every town of ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... came down, like the braggart he was, And of winning the fight was peculiarly "poz;" And the voice of his backers was loud in their glee;— "We shall lick him in two ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... the usual exploits and suffer the usual inconveniences, but at the end it is still undecided whether the Count of Blois or the Soldan of Persia—a good knight, though a pagan, and something of a braggart—deserves the priceless prize of Melior's hand with the empire of Byzantium to boot. The "election" follows, and after some doubt goes right, while Melior now offers no objection. But the Soldan, in his ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... a pompous, fantastical Spaniard, a military braggart in a state of peace, as Parolles (3 syl.) was in war. Boastful but poor; a coiner of words, but very ignorant; solemnly grave, but ridiculously awkward; majestical in gait, but of very low ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Young and handsome, they are possessed of great strength. As regards this thy ever dear friend, this one who is always boastful of his skill in battle, this one who always urgeth thee, O king, to fight with the Pandavas, this vile braggart, Karna, the son of Surya, this one who is thy counsellor, guide, and friend, this vain wight who is destitute of sense, this Karna, is neither a Ratha nor an Atiratha. Without sense, this one hath been deprived of his natural coat of mail. Always kind, he hath also ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... mistaken in me, my dear relatives! They shall be forced some day to acknowledge that the Elector of Brandenburg is self-sustaining, and stands erect without the aid of foreign supports. You look at me doubtfully, and perhaps think me a braggart, promising great things which I may never be able to perform? It would seem so, indeed, now, for where are the means for accomplishing such aims? Wretched and in the process of dissolution is all about me, nowhere do I ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... who hath obtained it? If a man is of high degree, adulation and envy almost kill him; if poor, everybody is ready to trample and despise him. If one would prosper, he must set his mind upon being an intriguer; if one would gain respect, let him be a boaster or braggart; if one would be godly, and attend church and approach the altar, he is dubbed a hypocrite, if he abstain from doing so, he becomes at once an antichrist or a heretic; if he is light-hearted, he is called a scoffer, if silent, a morose cur; if he practises ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... whispered to himself, "I want me this braggart hewn to pieces, and then the rest beaten;" and added, aloud: "Ax! ax! chop! chop! and work for my profit!" Whereupon the ax leapt forward, and dealt such a blow upon Sir Paul that it pierced through his helmet, and clave him to the saddle. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... first effect, as we all know, was a universal cockiness, a rise in pretensions, a comforting feeling that the Republic was a success, and with it, its every citizen. This change made itself quickly obvious, and even odious, in all the secular relations of life. The American became a sort of braggart playboy of the western world, enormously sure of himself and ludicrously contemptuous of all other men. And on the ghostly side there appeared the same accession of confidence, the same sure assumption of authority, though at first less self-evidently and offensively. The religion of the American ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... should endeavor to secure variety of interest in roles. At first, assignments are likely to be determined by apparent fitness. The quiet boy is not required to play the part of the braggart. The retiring girl is not expected to impersonate the shrew. In one or two appearances it may be a good thing to keep in mind ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... manners, habituated to all the soft elegances and refined enjoyments that attend high birth and fortune. Her mind alone was formed for such trials.' But in very many cases heroines have been women from whom few would have expected heroism. The blustering braggart does not often prove to be a hero in time of danger, and the gentle, unassuming woman is the type of which heroines are frequently made. The aristocracy the middle and the lower classes, have each given us many heroines of ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... for the world Sure no braggart hath like thee: Thou art not the chosen chief— Thou hast not the champion's fee:— Without action, without force, Thou art but a giggling page; Yes, thou trembler, with thy heart Like ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... revive it at once. No proclaimer of "manifest destiny" ever had more faith than he in the imperial greatness and grandeur to which the republic was to attain. All that in vulgar minds took the shape of braggart boasting, was in his idealized and glorified by his lofty conception of the majestic part which his country was to play in deciding the destinies of mankind. In spite of short-comings he deplored, of perils that he feared, firm in his ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... ritual of prayer; but they are all so sound asleep, that you might conclude they were dead." He replied: "O emanation of your father, you had also better have slept than that you should thus calumniate the failings of mankind.—The braggart can discern only his own precious person; he will draw the veil of conceit all around him. Were fortune to bestow upon him God's all-searching eye, he would find nobody ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... acquainted with the prince, and could recognise him anywhere. Accordingly, after a few bottles of wine had been drunk, the whole company proceeded uproariously to Radau's, where Bois-Ferme (who was a notorious liar and braggart) effusively proclaimed the stranger to be the hereditary Prince of Modena. The disclosure thus boisterously made seemed to offend, rather than give pleasure to, the self-styled Count de Tarnaud, who, while not repudiating the title applied to him, expressed his dissatisfaction ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... do, indeed? And what would you have done? Bring the horns and tail he must, or perish in the adventure. Otherwise, how could he meet his lady?—why, she would think him a mere braggart. ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... legislature 'full justice for Ireland,' or to provide for the contingency of a perseverance in the refusal of that legislature to right the people of Ireland." Accordingly, a large concourse of people assembled at the Corn-exchange, and were addressed by the demagogue in that braggart style which he well knew would win its way to their feelings. In his speech Mr. O'Connell intimated his intention of forming a new association, the exertions of which were to be directed to obtain for Ireland a greater share in the representation ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... pessimism has obtained the preponderance in literature. Gorki's conception of life is expressed in the words of the engine-driver Nil, in "The Bezemenovs" . . . a sympathetic figure, even if he be something of a braggart. Nil, who is almost the only cheerful and courageous man amid a handful of ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... before been at sea. He was a big hulking fellow; and as he had a certain amount of cleverness about him, he tried to make it appear that he knew a great deal more about things than he really did. True Blue instinctively discovered that he was a braggart and inclined to be ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... one braggart, "if they want us to rebel, let's go ahead!" But he was cuffed and kicked into silence, the women pinching him as though he had been the ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... adventure during his life on the continent, which would not do to write down here, he was as little of a boaster as any man I ever met, and, while I am in the truth-telling business, I was as great a braggart of my inches as ever drew the long-bow—in that line, I mean. Gods! I flush up hot, even now, when I think of it. So I talked a great deal and found myself infinitely pleased with Brandon's conversational powers, which were rare; being no less than the capacity for ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... unmanageable and extravagant. On the bench there were but four prelates who were on the moving side,—Cranmer, Latimer, Shaxton, and Barlow,[528]—and among these Cranmer only approved the policy of the government. Shaxton was an arrogant braggart, and Barlow a feeble enthusiast. Shaxton, who had flinched from the stake when Bilney was burnt, Shaxton, who subsequently relapsed under Mary, and became himself a Romanist persecutor, was now strutting in his new authority, and punishing, suspending, and inhibiting in behalf ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... this queer unknown was popular. Nat was a great bully and braggart, and many of them had suffered insult at his hands. Therefore, when the beggar went to fetch his prize from the Sheriff's own hands, there was great cheering and applause. He found Monceux seated in a handsome booth, with his daughter ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... ambition or that he should face the world with a permanent grin, but that he should to the best of his ability follow that wonderful motto of Roosevelt's, "Do what you can where you are with what you have." No man can control circumstances; not even the braggart Napoleon, who declared that he made circumstances, could control them to the end; and no man can shape them to suit exactly his own purposes, but every man can meet them bravely as a ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... Long Island, all things incline to a natural somnolence. There are no ambitious mountains, no braggart cliffs, no hasty torrents, no hustling ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... of the household of Marie de Medicis, directed Corneille to the Spanish drama. The Illusion Comique, the latest of his tentative plays, is a step towards the Cid; its plot is fantastical, but in some of the fanfaronades of the braggart Matamore, imported from Spain, are pseudo-heroics which only needed a certain transposition to become the language of chivalric heroism. The piece closes with a lofty eulogy of the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... him: "The exquisite of the family, and the braggart of the orchard, is the Kingbird, a bully that loves to strip the feathers off its more timid neighbors like the Bluebird, that feeds on the stingless bees of the hive, the drones, and earns the reputation of great boldness by teasing ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... like Damocles' sword over the head of every samurai and often assumed a morbid character. In the name of Honor, deeds were perpetrated which can find no justification in the code of Bushido. At the slightest, nay, imaginary insult, the quick-tempered braggart took offense, resorted to the use of the sword, and many an unnecessary strife was raised and many an innocent life lost. The story of a well-meaning citizen who called the attention of a bushi to ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... Parasite and the Captain. If this is a fault, the fault is the ignorance of the Poet; not that he intended to be guilty of theft. That so it is, you will now be enabled to judge. The Colax is {a Play} of Menander's; in it there is Colax, a Parasite, and a braggart Captain: he does not deny that he has transferred these characters into his Eunuch from the Greek; but assuredly he does deny this, that he was aware that those pieces had been already translated into Latin. But if it is not permitted {us} to use the same characters as others, how can it ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... blotted paper! Gentle lady, When I did first impart my love to you, I freely told you, all the wealth I had Ran in my veins,—I was a gentleman: And then I told you true: and yet, dear lady, Rating myself at nothing, you shall see How much I was a braggart: When I told you My state was nothing, I should then have told you That I was worse than nothing; for, indeed, I have engag'd myself to a dear friend, Engag'd my friend to his mere enemy, To feed my means. Here is a letter, lady; The paper ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... more truly witty in putting down a young braggart whom he met at dinner at a country-house. There are still to be found, like the bones of dead asses in a field newly ploughed, in some parts of the country, youths, who are so hopelessly behind their age, and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... a while they suffered it to stay; But with such insolence it flourished there, That, out of patience with its braggart's air, They bade it ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... (God) have created some men in such poverty and distress as to need the help of others. What does that braggart man mean when he says, "None shall prevail over me; I have and have scattered riches boundless"? Does he not know that there is a Divine eye that sees him? Have not We created him with a capacity of distinguishing between the two highways, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... will use the world, and sift it, To a thousand humors shift it, As you spin a cherry. O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry! O all you virtues, methods, mights, Means, appliances, delights, Reputed wrongs and braggart rights, Smug routine, and things allowed, Minorities, things under cloud! Hither! take me, use me, fill me, Vein and ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... had been painted without flattery. There he sat—Lilliputian on the great charger! At that moment Van Alen hated him—that Hop-o'-my-Thumb of another age, founder of a pigmy race, who, by his braggart will, had that night brought upon this one of his descendants the scorn of ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... Schamyl rode down the Cossacks, plundered the stanitzas, and left behind the forts which were not carried amid the whirlwind of his first coming. There was no stopping; and before the garrisons along the line knew that Schamyl had come, he was gone; and when the Kabardians believed that the braggart who had threatened their land with plundering was shut up in his mountains six hundred wersts away, he ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... presenting the necklace, though unauthorized by Shakespeare, had the full approval of the company, and set them in good humour to receive Major Camperton as Armado the braggart. Nothing calculated to stimulate jealousy occurred again till the fifth act; and then there arose full ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... one,' retorted Gotthold roughly. 'When I see a man, come to years of wisdom, who speaks in double-meanings and is the braggart of his vices, I spit on the other side. "You, my friend," say I, "are not even a gentleman." Well, ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the strange dog, Tommy Fox became more of a braggart than ever. He thought that he knew just about all there was to know. But with the coming of winter Tommy found that he had many things to learn. It was almost like living in a different world, for the ground was white everywhere. And though Tommy Fox loved to ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... In all such matters, we of this country allow ourselves to be misrepresented by a comparatively few impudent people, with their own ends to serve. This book is somewhat open to like objections. Its title is too pretentious; its style is braggart, and tainted with the vulgarity of an English flash reporter; and yet this is tempered by a certain constraint, as if the writer could not but occasionally think how ill such a style was suited to his subject. The portrait ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... eaten scores of dinners at Captain Bragg's charge, yet his hospitality is so insolent, that none of us who frequent his mahogany feel any obligation to our braggart entertainer. ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray |
