"Fire-eater" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Hello, old fire-eater!" cried Cressey. "Some little hero, aren't you! Bully work, my boy. I'm proud to know you.... What; quarters? Easiest thing you know. I've got the very thing—just like a real-estate agent. Let's see; this is your Monday at ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... are you going to do with your gallant warrior—with the furious fire-eater who wanted to bring my humble career to a ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... talking the Dutch of Holland, which Peter, who had forgotten his school-days, found a bit hard to follow. He was unfit for active service, because of his eyes and a weak heart, but he was a desperate fire-eater in that stuffy restaurant. By his way of it Germany could gobble up the French and the Russians whenever she cared, but she was aiming at getting all the Middle East in her hands first, so that she could come out conqueror with the practical control ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... over, and the Egyptian fire-eater had left the town. But the poor fellow did not go far. In the city where he exhibited his skill he was recognized and arrested, because he had avoided service in the army. To be sure, he was set free again after a few weeks as unqualified; ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... old fire-eater snorted. "I'd be obliged just the same, Mr. Weaver, if you'd transact your business and then ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... chap," he said, "let's get out before we're torn to bits. There's no pleasure in staying with such a disagreeable fire-eater, anyhow. Come up to my room, and ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... refuge of silence. Though this was only a bit of the conversation, we soon found out that he was an avowed pacifist. Garretson, on the other hand, was an ardent militarist, a good deal of a fire-eater. I wondered whether there might not be a good deal of the poseur ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... along, a lively discussion of slavery ensued. Lieutenant Howard of the provost guard was a learned champion of the "peculiar institution," and I was a pronounced abolitionist. He was an ardent "fire-eater," to use the term then in vogue, and I, who had lost my position as principal of the Worcester High School by my defense of John Brown, was equally intense. Both were pretty well "posted" on the subject. He seemed ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... fussy, so fearfully piteous, so distraught, so inconsolable. I was glad therefore that, the revolution being put down, they could retire in peace to their coffee, their picquet, and their metaphysics. Doubtless Thalermacher (some Hebrew millionaire, perhaps) and Kugelblitz (a fire-eater, for certain) had headed a frightful band of anarchists; who, but for the indomitable energy of the authorities, would peradventure have changed the destiny of the entire Duchy, of Germany, of Europe itself! Nothing but so illimitable an apprehension could ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... daughter of Jove, and Telemachus lost no time in doing as the goddess told him. He went moodily home, and found the suitors flaying goats and singeing pigs in the outer court. Antinous came up to him at once and laughed as he took his hand in his own, saying, "Telemachus, my fine fire-eater, bear no more ill blood neither in word nor deed, but eat and drink with us as you used to do. The Achaeans will find you in everything—a ship and a picked crew to boot—so that you can set sail for Pylos at once and get ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... "Listen, you fire-eater! and I will make you a hero, though you could not manage to make yourself one. There were four shots fired; now, take your gun, and remember that the two first, those ghastly holes in the chest, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... time we'd get used to such terrible things," Rob pursued in a reflective way, "for even the fellow who nearly swoons away in his first fight, they say, becomes a regular fire-eater after a while; but, so far as I'm concerned, I'll be a happy boy when I see good old peaceful Long Island again, with its sandy beaches, and the ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... nun. Whether these in Kate's original MS. were entitled "Autobiographic Sketches," or "Selections Grave and Gay," from the military experiences of a Nun, or possibly "The Confessions of a Biscayan Fire-Eater," is more than I know. No matter: confessions they were; and confessions that, when at length published, were absolutely mobbed and hustled by a gang of misbelieving (that is, miscreant) critics. And this fact is most remarkable, that the person who originally headed the incredulous ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... cried the Cavalier, "what a fire-eater it is. Here, I don't wonder that we are shut up helplessly here. I say, Roundhead, will you have a glass ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... hammer, and the young men of twenty-three States sprang to arms. What astonished the South most of all was the attitude of Douglas, and the Northern Democrats, who had been confidently counted upon to stand by secession. One Southern fire-eater had said that "Douglas and the Democrats will fight Lincoln and the Republicans, and it will be another case of the Kilkenny cats, leaving the South in peace to build up a great empire." But the first thing that Stephen A. Douglas did ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... held in line. Scores of Democratic newspapers turned against him. Save the legislature of Illinois, no Northern assembly, representative or other, that could speak with any show of authority, dared to support him. No Southern fire-eater was ever half so reviled. He could have traveled from Boston to Chicago, so he afterwards declared, by the light of his ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... be alarmed, it is all over. It is all over, everybody may go to bed and sleep comfortably. Barnes need not get up in the morning to punch Jack Belsize's head. I'm sorry for your disappointment, you Fenchurch Street fire-eater. Come away. It will be but proper, you know, for a bridegroom elect to go and ask news of ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Hal," said he, in the same melting tone as before—"How your imagination does run upon rows, and broils, and duelling rencontres," (he, the speaker, be it known to the reader, was the fire-eater of the regiment,) "as if life had nothing better to offer than the excitement of a challenge, or the mock heroism ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... it was universally agreed that, had they not been French chorus-singers, they would have been quite a miracle. But the Lapland sisters were the true prodigy, who danced the Mazurka in the national style. There was also a fire-eater; but some said he would never set the river in flames, though he had an antidote against all poisons! But then our Mithridates always tried its virtues on a stuffed poodle, whose bark evinced its vitality. There also was a giant in the ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... Mr. Tarkington's more serious plots—and not merely those earlier ones which he constructed a score of years ago when the mode in fiction was historical and rococo. Van Revel in The Two Van Revels, convinced and passionate abolitionist, nevertheless becomes as hungry as any fire-eater of them all the moment Polk moves for war on Mexico, though to Van Revel the war is an evil madness. In The Conquest of Canaan Louden plays Prince Hal among the lowest his town affords, only to mount with a rush to the mayoralty ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... from my apartment a few minutes ago, that fire-eater, Victor de Mauleon, who always contrives to know what passes at headquarters. He told me that preparations are being made for a great sortie. Most probably the announcement will appear in a proclamation tomorrow, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Dextry, the fire-eater, had assumed an Oriental patience quite foreign to his peppery disposition, and spent much of his time in the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... day of the Battle of Arbroath. No doubt, Miss Gray," continued the lieutenant, turning to Minnie with an arch smile, "no doubt you have heard of that more recent event, the threatened attack on Arbroath by the French fire-eater, Captain Fall, and the heroic part played on that occasion by an Ogilvy—an uncle, I am told, of ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... making pilgrimages to the churches. I hope it may do them good. I hear the cures of Paris have divided the ramparts between them, and are on the fortifications—bravo! cures. By-the-bye, that fire-eater, Paul de Cassagnac, has not followed the example of his brother Imperial journalists. He enlisted as a Zouave, fought well, and was taken prisoner at Sedan. He is now employed by his captors in making bread. I hope his bread will be better ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... men, sahib—and many good horses—but no man or horse who could come at that pace after traversing those leagues of desert! That is Mahommed Gunga, unless a new fire-eater has been found. And what new ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... hints of the Major's duels and affairs of honour, which he had rather scorned before, not wholly believing them, poured like a red torrent into his mind, and he found that now he believed them with a passionate sincerity. Why had he ever attempted (and with such small success) to call this fire-eater a hippopotamus? ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... counsellor in the world, and has carried more friends through scrapes and prevented more deaths than any member of the Humane Society. British never bought a single step in the army, as is well known. In '14 he killed a celebrated French fire-eater, who had slain a young friend of his, and living, as he does, a great deal with young men of pleasure, and good old sober family people, he is loved by them both and has as welcome a place made for him at a roaring bachelor's supper at the "Cafe Anglais," ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was not the world he knew. He perceived that it was sundown on the 8th of August, 1215, that he was no longer plain Bowles, but rather Sir Bors the Bowless, Knight of the Artful Arm, and known to his intimates as "The Fire-eater"; that he had just been challenged to fight his seven hundred and forty-seventh fight, and (for the seven hundred and forty-seventh time) he had accepted. He soon added to the stock of his information the fact that, as the challenged party, he had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... The showman Fire-eater—for that was his name—looked, I must say, a terrible man, especially with his black beard that covered his chest and legs like an apron. On the whole, however, he had not a bad heart. In proof of this, when ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... wisdom," said his father. "An' shore that reminds me of the uncle you're named after. Jean Isbel! ... Wal, he was my youngest brother an' shore a fire-eater. Our mother was a French creole from Louisiana, an' Jean must have inherited some of his fightin' nature from her. When the war of the rebellion started Jean an' I enlisted. I was crippled before we ever got to the front. But Jean went through three ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... "My, what a fire-eater my little Harvey has become," she said. He barely heard the words. "Your new wife must be scared half out of ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... gave me of the short epistle, it was filled with sentenced couched in the same spirit throughout; "for," said he, "that rabid fire-eater has been treated in a manner too mild. He needs something more nearly like ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... lauded President Jackson and his policies with as much fervor as he had with virulence and vehemence denounced the humbugging Whigs, as he had characterized them. The village paper, a Whig publication, had sat upon him. It had dubbed him a turkey gobbler, a little giant, a Yankee fire-eater. But Douglas gave no quarter to any one. He returned blow for blow. He had become a terror. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... it appears that this young man is a fire-eater," said Louis, in order to sharpen the sentiment which he ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... oaths, and an immense stick, I keep up nevertheless a character for courage. I swear fearfully at cabmen and women; brandish my bludgeon, and perhaps knock down a little man or two with it: brag of the images which I break at the shooting gallery, and pass among my friends for a whiskery fire-eater, afraid of neither man nor dragon. Ah me! Suppose some brisk little chap steps up and gives me a caning in St. James's Street, with all the heads of my friends looking out of all the club windows. My reputation is gone. I frighten no man more. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... do with it, and I have no intention of picking a quarrel. I am not a bully nor a fire-eater. I simply wish to make a point ...
— The American • Henry James
... Southerner he was not familiar with the psychology of the northern Irish; the sectarian narrowness popularly attributed to them outside their province was wholly alien to his character; he was as far removed by nature from a fire-eater as it was possible for man to be; he was not fond of unnecessary exertion; he preferred the law to politics, and disliked addressing political assemblies. In Parliament he represented, not a popular constituency, ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... you said the same in crusading times—Sir Guy de Chevenix, for instance, who was the Lord, perhaps, of your very Manor, and an amazing fire-eater—but—see the gentle irony of it—there his bones lie, at peace for ever, in the rotten place, with his effigy over them cross-legged and his dog at his feet, and his wife by his side. I think he must sometimes look out of Heaven's gate down on the cathedral and feel ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... etc.,—every imaginable species of property coming into the market. Sometimes, as matters of very dubious value turned up, great laughter was the result. In this very national pastime, a Mr. Miles Bodkin, a noted fire-eater of the west, was a great proficient; and it is said he once so completely succeeded in despoiling an uninitiated hand, that after winning in succession his horse, gig, harness, etc., he proceeded seriatim to his watch, ring, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... We were about to have an explosion. Evidently the young fire-eater's blood was up. He was bent on having "a scene;" and, while his hand was in, he would quite likely make up for all the long months of peaceful inaction. All the tiger within him ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... the General Election made him impatient. By the way, Dalrymple is a fine upstanding personage, with just the coloured hair the lady novelists dote on, and eyes in harmony; but despite his handsome placid bearing Dalrymple is a fire-eater ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... Hightrehight, the fire-eater, ate burning coals, swallowed flaming brimstone, and sucked a red-hot poker, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the worst, who predicted a long and bloody struggle and a doubtful result, had no question about the duty of the citizen; shared the common burden and submitted to the individual sacrifice as readily as the veriest fire-eater,—nay, as they claimed, more readily. The most intimate friend I ever had, who fell after heroic services, was known by all our circle to be utterly at variance with the prevalent Southern view of the quarrel, and died upholding a right which was ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... he'll bear watching. He's capable of putting her on a train and running away with her. Between you and me, I don't blame him. What's the matter with sicking the Barone on him? He's the best man in Southern Italy with foils and broadswords. Sic 'em, Towser; sic 'em!" The old fire-eater chuckled. ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... in the mess after my remarks, and I felt that I had been indiscreet when I saw the glances that were cast at me. The colonel especially was furious, and a great major named Olivier, who was the fire-eater of the regiment, sat opposite to me curling his huge black moustaches, and staring at me as if he would eat me. However, I did not resent his attitude, for I felt that I had indeed been indiscreet, and that it would ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... never before suspected what a fire-eater you could be, Step Hen. Why, nothing fazes you, nowadays. I believe you'd be ready to snap your fingers in the faces of a dozen of the worst rascals that ever hid up here in the piney woods of Maine. ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... unwell, but whose illness was patently only diplomatic. The good pastor expressed the hope that his early recovery would permit the admiral to continue his noble work of obliterating England. Pastor Falk, of Berlin, is a typical fire-eater. His Whitsuntide address was an attack upon Anglo-Saxon civilisation and the urgent German mission of smashing Britain and America. The Easter sermons of hate, one of which I heard at Stettin, were especially bloodthirsty. Congregations are larger than ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin |
