"Pompous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "disturbing element." Hon J. Quinn Thornton was chairman of that committee. In his report he declared all delegations to be satisfactory (including those from the penitentiary) except the women whom he styled "setting hens," "belligerent females," etc., after which he subsided with pompous gravity. All eyes were turned upon me, and I felt as I fancy a general must when the success or failure of an army in battle depends upon his word. "Mr. President," I exclaimed, as soon as I could get ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the fact of his astonishment at a religious princess refusing to confer a bishoprick upon one that had treated the Trinity, and all the profoundest mysteries of Christianity, not with mere scepticism, or casual sneer, but with set pompous merriment and farcical buffoonery. This dignitary of the church, Dean of the most conspicuous cathedral in Ireland, had, in full canonicals, made himself into a regular mountebank, for the sake of giving fuller effect, by the force of contrast, to the silliest of jests ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... can make the kind of weapon of it you do. I don't mean of course that one shouldn't be rationally persuaded. But that's a different thing. 'Influence' makes me think of canting clergymen, and stout pompous women, who don't know what they're talking about, and can't argue—who think they've settled everything by a stale quotation—or an appeal to 'your better self'—or St. Paul. If Mr. Winnington tries it on with ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... received of the extreme severity with which Ferdinand treated their Protestant brethren in his hereditary dominions; and as it was natural to consider his actions as the surest indication of his intentions, this diminished their confidence in those pompous professions of moderation, and of zeal for the reestablishment of concord, to which his practice ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... blight him, as the Lord liveth; as the Lord liveth, I will blight him..." he said repeatedly, his draperied arms spread in pompous imprecation. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... Trident three-fork'd, trident strong: And ye Nereids fair and gay, Fairer than the rose in May, Nereids living in deep caves, Gently wash'd with gentle waves; Nereids, Neptune, lull asleep Ruffling storms, and ruffled deep; All around, in pompous state, On this richer Argo wait: Argo, bring my golden fleece, Argo, bring him to his Greece. Will Cadenus longer stay? Come, Cadenus, come away; Come with all the haste of love, Come unto thy turtle-dove. The ripen'd cherry on the tree Hangs, and only hangs for thee, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... A pompous eulogy of Rashi was written by Moses ben Nahman, or Nahmanides,[147] in the introduction to his commentary on the Pentateuch; and the body of the work shows that he constantly drew his inspiration from Rashi and ever had Rashi before his eyes. At ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... into active business, which brought him into rough contact with politicians and men of business of all classes. The result was that he formed a manner calculated to shield himself and keep his interlocutors at a distance. It might be called pompous, and was at any rate formal and elaborate. The natural man lurked behind a barrier of ceremony, and he rarely showed himself unless in full dress. He could unbend in his family, but in the outer world he put on his defensive armour of stately politeness, which even for congenial minds ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... his profession did not allow him to accompany us in learning to defend the happy land we were enjoying. Indeed, my life, the promise of our dear children does me more good than the purest of pure air." Observe how this pompous and formal statement is framed so as to please the mother. The writer does not say much about himself; but he knows that his wife is longing to hear of her darlings, and he tells her the news in his high-flown ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... grand parade, With marching train-band, guild, and trade: The burgomaster in robes arrayed, Gold chain, and mace, and gay cockade, Great keys carried, and flags displayed, Pompous marshal and spruce young aide, Carriage and foot and cavalcade; While big drums thundered and trumpets brayed, And all the bands of the canton played; The fountain spouted lemonade, Children drank of the bright cascade; Spectators of every rank and grade, The young and merry, the grave ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... fact, was always able to view his friend with clear eyes. In a letter to Manning, enclosing "all Coleridge's letters" to himself, he says that in them Manning will find "a good deal of amusement, to see genuine talent struggling against a pompous display of it." No criticism could be sounder. But Coleridge never wavered from the belief that he was in no phase of his being an ordinary man. If his thoughts were not ordinary thoughts, his imaginings not ordinary imaginings, then his stomach-aches were not ordinary stomach-aches, but strokes ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... mighty in important dogmas and sententious jokes, pompous anecdotes and oracular discourses, dealt out for the edification of the whole assembly in general, and of the admiring Mrs. Markham, the polite Mr. Lawrence, the sedate Mary Millward, the quiet Richard Wilson, and the matter-of-fact Robert ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... older, but as black and pompous as ever, stood in the doorway, and a portly figure, with yellow, shining face, on the step ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... his horse, he cantered heavily away, not forgetting to wave a pompous farewell to Angele. De la Foret was smiling as he turned to Angele. She looked wonderingly at him, for she had felt that she must comfort him, and she looked not for this sudden change ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... have been too much even for the infernal powers. As they greatly exaggerated what had passed, perhaps, with a view of excusing themselves, the steward wrote to the duke, who was then at Pisa, an account still more pompous and more replete with the marvelous than that which ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... in here at a good salary and let you keep on with this March Hare job? Not, of course, in precisely its present form but along the same general lines. We could make a paying proposition out of that paper, I am sure of it. It would need a good deal of improving," continued the great man in a pompous, patronizing tone, "but there is an idea there that could be developed into something worth while, unless ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... cord that strangled Nundcomar. This murdered not only that accuser, but all future accusation; and not only defeated, but totally vitiated and reversed all the ends for which this country, to its eternal and indelible dishonor, had sent out a pompous embassy of justice to the remotest parts ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... rather late, Awarding Jove arrives in state; O'er yawning graves looks many a league, Then yawns himself from sheer fatigue. Lifting its finger to the sky, A marble shaft arrests his eye— This epitaph, in pompous pride, Engraven on its polished side: "Perfection of Creation's plan, Here resteth Universal Man, Who virtues, segregated wide, Collated, classed, and codified, Reduced to practice, taught, explained, And strict morality maintained. Anticipating death, his pelf He lavished ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... ran to the rebuilt fire. The little man reposed by it calmly smoking. They sprang at him and overwhelmed him with interrogations. He contemplated darkness and took a long, pompous puff. "There's only one of me—and the devil ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... Providence, Rhode Island. He had come to the frontier to teach it the error of its ways and bring a message of sweetness and light to the unwashed barbarians of the Rockies. He was not popular. This was due, perhaps, to an unfortunate manner. The pompous little man strutted and ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... to their adopted kingdom, which was just emerging from barbarism. They enriched the libraries by the books which they had rescued from the barbarism of the Turks, and contributed much to the eclat of the court of Moscow by the introduction of the pompous ceremonies of the Grecian court. Indeed, from this date Moscow was often called a second Constantinople. The capital was rapidly embellished with palaces and churches, constructed in the highest style of Grecian and Italian architecture. From Italy, also, mechanics were introduced, who established ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... care to learn the Greek tongue; and on this occasion, and by this means, the Egyptians began to have a correspondence with the Greeks, and, from that era, the Egyptian history, which till then had been intermixed with pompous fables, by the artifice of the priests, begins, according to Herodotus, to speak with greater ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... if he needed one hundred and one spear-casts to lay out those hundred bears limp, flabby and utterly dead. This appeared so utterly an impossibility that Aufidius Fronto offered to put up two million sesterces against him. The pompous sham philosopher, who feigned the profoundest contempt for riches, could not resist what looked like enormous gains. He made the wager, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... evidently doesn't like me interfering. Silly old pompous ass!" Nevertheless his attitude towards the huffy landlord, if ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... came again to the corner of Ludgate Hill, there stood Mr. O'Rapley, looking very pompous and dignified, as became ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... and half black, etc.; he incorporates in his narrative the fables of Ctesias, Agatharchidas, and other writers. His blunders in geography and natural philosophy may be added, as far as they arise from the desire of describing wonders, etc. See also his pompous description of the wonders of Babylon, which were not then in existence.—Prideaux, Connection, Part 1. Book viii. For his inconsistencies, see Eusebius and Brucker. It must be remembered, that in the age of Philostratus the ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... was a very pompous and stately man. He had not been honoured with his true title since he left school, and was therefore a good deal taken aback by the plain-speaking of his friend. He attributed the words, however, to the weak condition of Mr Stuart's ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... the pompous ignorance sometimes exhibited by theatrical managers is afforded in the following anecdote, which has appeared in England, but which we are sure will be relished by our readers. It may seem extraordinary that a manager should be such an ignoramus; ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... and pompous vanity were aroused. "Tink dis nigger can't shoot, eh? You-alls just watch an' Chris ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... "And there again is another sign of wisdom. Your ponderous fool talks pompous sense always. He sees life in only one facet. Your lover sees its many sides, its infinite variety. He can laugh and weep; his imagination lights up dry facts with whimsical fancies; he dives through the crust of conventionality to the ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... here; your eyes that smiled into mine—and drove home the colonel's request that I and my sister should accompany you. God! I was weak then! You smile, senora; you think you have succeeded—you and your pompous colonel and your clever governor! You think you have compromised me, and perjured ME, because of this. You are wrong! You think I dare not speak to this puppet of a baron, and that I have no proofs. You ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... have meditated an expedition to Britain at the time of his pompous ovation at Puteoli, mentioned in c. xiii.; but if Julius Caesar could gain no permanent footing in this island, it was very improbable that a prince of Caligula's character would ever seriously attempt it, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... anonymous contributor to its pages. This journal was called the Barfield Advertiser, and Quarry-moor, Church Vale, and Heydon Hay Gazette; but it was satirically known in the Armstrong household as the Crusher, and its leading articles (which were certainly rather turgid and pompous) were food for weekly mirth. But one day ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... had such a charm for them that they promised David they would stop awhile, if he would promise not to shout and awake the echo. David readily promised this, and so they sat down. David proposed to keep a school, and cut a hazel wand from a bush, and began to lord it over his two scholars in a very pompous manner. The two sisters pretended to be much afraid, and to read very diligently on pieces of flat stone which they had picked up. And then David became a sergeant, and was drilling them for soldiers, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... am safe till next summer; but last evening I met a lady who had been taken in to dinner by the American a few days ago. "A little bit pompous, perhaps," she said, "but he told me such a delightful story about MARK TWAIN that I should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... dispute her title to that honor." Mrs. Bazalgette smiled agreeably. She wanted to stay a day or two at Font Abbey. The senior flourished out his arm. "Let me show you what we call the garden here." She took his arm graciously. "I shall be delighted, sir [pompous ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... nor navigable rivers. Armies were maneuvered and victories won upon the maps in the office of the Secretary of War. Generals were selected by some inscrutable process which decreed that dull-witted, pompous incapables should bungle ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... both. Caesar was the more able, accomplished, and magnanimous, but he was the more unscrupulous and dangerous. He had ventured to cross the Rubicon,—the first general who ever dared thus openly to assail his country's liberties. Pompey was pompous, overrated, and proud, and had been fortunate in the East. But then he sided with the Constitutional authorities,—that is, with the Senate,—so far as his ambition allowed. So Cicero took his side feebly, reluctantly, as the least of the evils he had to choose, but ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... gate itself made of a whale's skin, polished and studded with shark's teeth as white as ivory. The little man stopped before the gate, which was shut, and the sword-fish came forward in the most pompous manner, and knocked with his sword ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... Mr Blurt," said Sir James, who was slightly, though perhaps unconsciously, pompous in his manner. "My acquaintance with him has been slight—in fact only two letters have passed between us—but I entertained a strong regard for his father, who in schoolboy days saved my life. In after years he acquired that passion for spirits ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... conducted by our guide—an ancient and somewhat pompous individual—to a large and very pleasantly situated room in the north wing of the castle, from whence, through an opening between the trees, a glimpse of the sea was to be obtained; the foreground being occupied ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... private property exist, as follows. The governor delivers an address in which he demands submission. The excited crowd, generally deluded by their leaders, don't understand a word of what the representative of authority is saying in the pompous official language, and their excitement continues. Then the governor announces that if they do not submit and disperse, he will be obliged to have recourse to force. If the crowd does not disperse even on this, the governor gives the order to fire over ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... pompous equipage, Or such like things sublun'ral, Nor music sweet with charms engage Those ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... and without taking any pains to acquire it, I soon understood it so as to talk with them. The sufferings of the women and children, especially during the winter season, appealed to my heart. Their humility in asking for assistance contrasted strongly with the pompous begging of the men. Late in a winter's afternoon, Wenona, wife of a chief named the "Star," came to my room. Undoing a bundle that she took from under her blanket, she approached and showed it to me. It was an infant three days old, ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... and fifty-four feet in length, and one hundred and seventy-four in width; but it extends, under another title, for a much greater distance. This is the summer evening's ramble of your true Berliner, and not a little proud and pompous he is as he parades himself and family beneath the leafy canopy; and here, in the snowy winters, when the city lies half buried in the snowdrift, the gaily dressed sleighs go skimming under the leafless branches, filling ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... the deed they had done. In order, however, to satisfy the people too, as far as possible, they decreed divine honors to Caesar, confirmed and ratified all that he had done while in the exercise of supreme power, and appointed a time for the funeral, ordering arrangements to be made for a very pompous ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... his head proudly on one side, and spread himself in a very pompous manner; then, as he had seen his master do, broke the finest rose from the bush, and put the stem in his bill; then looked at his gay-colored coat in the glass, and felt as grand ...
— The Nursery, No. 103, July, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... knew. He then begged Chopin to study three years with him—only three!—but Elsner in an earnest letter dissuaded his pupil from making any experiments that might hurt his originality of style. Chopin actually attended the class of Kalkbrenner but soon quit, for he had nothing to learn of the pompous, penurious pianist. The Hiller story of how Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt and Heller teased this grouty old gentleman on the Boulevard des Italiens is capital reading, if not absolutely true. Yet Chopin admired Kalkbrenner's finished technique despite his platitudinous ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... weakens it in the wrong; whereas had the right been silent, the wrong, in his judgment, would thereby have been proved victorious. This will justify us at times in talking over the heads of our readers and hearers, and in not sparing sonorous polysyllables, abstruse technicalities, or even the pompous parade of syllogistic arguments with all their unsightly joints sticking out for public admiration. Some hands may be too delicate for this coarse work; but there will always be those to whom it is easy and congenial; and its utility is ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... do a trifling service here and there by ridiculing the pompous and deflating the prigs, but there is no permanence in such work, unless—which is seldom the case—it is totally ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... of burning shame rising to her cheeks as she passed the shop. She was about to turn back, when whom should she see standing in the doorway but the prosperous owner himself! He recognized her immediately, and called out to her in his full, pompous ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... grounds, he saw Garman, the Senator and a man in long black coat and broad-brimmed black hat in conference upon the verandah. At his appearance Garman, lolling in a lawn chair, chuckled lazily; the Senator became as cold and pompous as the statue he hoped some day would commemorate his services to the Republic, and the black-hatted stranger closed his ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... balls in its day; but it is now converted into a superb mansion; very grand, and still more curious than grand; for it is full of relics of the olden time, portraits of the old warriors of Hungary, armour and arms, and all the other odd and pompous things which turn an age of barbarism into an age of romance. The prince and princess are hailed and received at the castle as king and queen. A guard of soldiers of the family, which the Esterhazy have the sovereign right to maintain, form the garrison of this palatial fortress, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... this, how poor Religion's pride, In all the pomp of method and of art, When men display to congregations wide Devotion's every grace, except the heart! The Power, incensed, the pageant will desert, The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole{23}; But, haply, in some cottage far apart, May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul; And in His book of life ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... great joy to me, and I get more than I give by the bargain. It's a shameless bribe, to secure the company of a charming nephew for a sociable old woman. Some time I shall want to tell you more about the people here—but I won't bore you; and let us just get quietly used to it all. One must not be pompous about money; it is doing it too much honour; and the best of it is that I have found a son." Howard smiled, kissed the hand which held his, ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... philosophical, and he ridicules those who reject without examination still more than those who believe with docile credulity. Jean Baptiste Rousseau (1670- 1741), the lyric poet of this age, displayed in his odes considerable energy, and a kind of pompous harmony, which no other had imparted to the language, yet he fails to excite the sympathy. In his writings we find that free commingling of licentious morals with a taste for religious sublimities which characterized the last years of Louis XIV. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... taken before a pompous individual with an extra large moustache and a double allowance of gold lace on his cap and charged not only with defrauding the revenue, but with forcibly resisting an officer in the execution of his duty. ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... on. It did go on! Their voices were monotonous, thick, emphatic. They were harshly pompous, like men in the smoking-compartments of Pullman cars. They did not bore Carol. They frightened her. She panted, "They will be cordial to me, because my man belongs to their tribe. God help me if I ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... kneeling, and then they all rose and there was the solemn buzz of voices repeating the Creed with a curious lulling sound to her ear. There was old Mr. Danforth with his spectacles on, reading with a pompous tone, as if to witness a good confession for the church; and there were Squire Lewis and old Ma'am Lewis; and there was one place where they all bowed their heads and all the ladies made courtesies—all of which ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... gratification to an Englishman, who has been used to contemplate the natural style which distinguishes the pleasure grounds of his own country. At the head of the centre walks stands a menagerie, on which, as well as the garden, many pompous eulogiums have been passed, though in my own judgment, considering the local advantages possessed by the Company, it is poorly furnished both with animals and birds; a tyger, a zebra, some fine ostriches, a cassowary, and the lovely crown-fowl, ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... of the Peregrinus Proteus is as follows: It professes to be a letter from Lucian to Cromius narrating Peregrinus's death. Peregrinus had gone to Olympia, with the pompous design of displaying his death before the assembly at the games. Lucian lets us hear the speeches, descriptive of Peregrinus's life, delivered before the decisive act. A certain Theagenes, an admirer of Peregrinus, delivers a bombastic eulogy, 3-7, repelling the ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... for this most appropriate remark, the party ascended the church toward the altar-rails, where Father Shannon was awaiting them. Large, pompous, and arrogant, he stood on his altar-steps, and his hands were crossed over his portly stomach. On either side of him the plaster angels bowed their heads and folded their wings. Above him the great chancel window, with its panes of green ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... consequence than being delayed, we are desirous of waiting for the safest opportunity, and when you hear not so often as you wish, remember our silence means our safety. Acquainted as we are, with the situation and condition of the enemy, we well know, that the pompous paragraphs in the London papers are not the news, which the Ministry hear from their army; but the news ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... the vicinity of Perth, was also "buried in the Charterhouse Church of Saint Johns Towne, by [beside] the tombe of King James the First. The King himself and many Nobles of the Realme were present at the funeralles, which were kept in most solemne and pompous maner."—(Holinshed's Chronicles, Scotland, p. 445; Chronicle of ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... fellows would have knocked them off, so I did for you an act of greatest kindness, for every one removes his hat when the Governor General passes." He also informed us that the special occasion for this rather pompous parade was the execution of some criminals at a park or prison not far away, and that this was done by ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... disdain of those whose families are not as "old" as their own is oftentimes amusing, and subjects them to ridicule, which they bear with true Dutch stolidity. They improve in their peculiar qualities with each generation, and the present pompous Knickerbocker who drives in the Park in solemn state in his heavy chariot, and looks down with disdain upon all whose blood is not as Dutch as his own, is a very different personage from his great ancestor, the original Knickerbocker, who hawked fish about the streets ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... The pompous cortege of the Cardinal halted at the beginning of the camp. All the armed troops were drawn up in the finest order; and amid the sound of cannon and the music of each regiment the litter traversed a long line of cavalry and infantry, formed ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... was thinking of something her father had once remarked in her presence on the same subject: "I have observed," he had said, in his pompous way, "that the clergy carry off all the nicest girls. You will see some of the finest, who have money of their own too, marry quite commonplace parsons. But the reason is obvious. It is their faith in the superior moral ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... we are!" he exclaimed, with a touch of irony. "We have not thrown off the yoke, by any means—at Mr. Adams', for instance, I could believe myself in England. How exclusive is the pompous little Minister! What respect for office! What adoration for landed gentry! What supercilious tolerance for tradesmen! Oh, indeed, it confounds me! But why should I trouble myself? I, who have the most adorable mistress in the world to think about! What are the kings, presidents, ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... Columbia river are worked out by Boas; the transformation from the hunting to the agricultural mode of life was accompanied by changes in belief and worship quite as radical. These have been carefully studied by Cushing, Stevenson and Fewkes. The pompous ceremonials of the civilized tribes of Mexico and the Cordilleras in South America, when analysed, reveal only a higher grade of the prevailing idea. Im Thurn says of the Carib: "All objects, animate and inanimate, seem exactly of the same nature, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... having nothing to do with drink, was that of poor Captain B-. He used to suffer from sick headaches, in his young days, every time he was approaching a coast. Well over fifty years of age when I knew him, short, stout, dignified, perhaps a little pompous, he was a man of a singularly well-informed mind, the least sailor-like in outward aspect, but certainly one of the best seamen whom it has been my good luck to serve under. He was a Plymouth man, I think, the son of a country doctor, and both his elder boys were studying medicine. ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... moitie de sa course tenebreuse," etc., etc. The historic present is constantly battling with the more ordinary tenses—the very same sentence sometimes contains both. And this half-blown bladder of a style conveys sentiments as feebly pompous as itself. The actual story, though no great thing, is, if you could strip it of its froth and fustian, not so very bad: as ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... in the birth of Buddha, we note that the old joyousness of life manifested in the Vedic hymns is past, their fervor and glow are gone. In the morning of Hindu life there was no caste, no fixed priesthood, and no idols; but as wealth, civilization, easy and settled life succeeded, the taste for pompous sacrifices conducted by an hereditary priestly caste increased. Greater importance was laid upon the detail of the ceremonies, the attention of the worshipper being turned from the deities "to the minutiae ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... necessity, this scale of measurement, to an American, if he happens to be a thoughtless man, must sound ludicrous. Accordingly, I remember a case in which an American writer indulges himself in the luxury of a little fibbing, by ascribing to an Englishman a pompous account of the Thames, constructed entirely upon American ideas of grandeur, and concluding in something like these terms:—"And, sir, arriving at London, this mighty father of rivers attains a breadth of at least two furlongs, having, in its winding course, traversed ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... overcome by exposure, died at the Polish village of Zarnowiec on the 24th of December 1812. In 1807 he had published in a sumptuous volume the Columbiad, an enlarged edition of his Vision of Columbus, more pompous even than the original; but, though it added to his reputation in some quarters, on the whole it was not well received, and it has subsequently been much ridiculed. The poem for which he is now best known is his mock ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... at all the pompous, conceited man that the girls at Lakeview Hall had come to think him, looked after Cora for a moment in surprise, then turned smilingly back to the two girls and asked Linda to ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... and engross us by his revelations as to the secret springs of conduct. I know not by what hallucination I forebore to look at the picture I most desired to see,—that of Lucy, Countess of Carlisle. I was looking at something else, and when the fat, pompous butler announced her, I did not recognize her name from his mouth. Afterward it flashed across me, that I had really been standing before her and forgotten to look. But repentance was too late; I had passed the castle ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... logically correct. Every successive sentence heralded by a repeated "how," or "there," or "I," adjusts itself into its proper line without an effort of thought on the reader's part. It is not graceful; it is pompous, and distinctly rhetorical. But it is eminently clear, emphatic, orderly, and easy to follow or to remember. Hence it is unpleasing to the finely-attuned ear, and is counted somewhat vulgar by the trained lover of style, whilst it is immensely popular with those who read but little, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... the high seas as piratical hazard would permit. His house in Philadelphia was one of the finest that the town possessed; he drove about in a carriage and four; he entertained with excessive luxury and a large retinue of servants; he revelled in all sorts of pompous parade. Such ostentation would have roused adverse comment amid the simple colonial surroundings of a century ago, even if he had merely been a citizen of extraordinary wealth. But being an officer intrusted with the most important dignities in a country ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... village to inquire. The headman, evidently one of a former Casembe school, came to us full of wrath. "What right had we to come that way, seeing the usual path was to our left?" He mouthed some sentences in the pompous Lunda style, but would not show us the path; so we left him, and after going through a forest of large trees, 4-1/2 hours south, took advantage of some huts on the Kifurwa ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... to know these things, and so when Brownwell, who, since his marriage, had taken up his abode at the Culpeppers', hinted at his "extravagant family," the town refused to take him seriously. And the strutting, pompous little man, who referred grandly to "my wife," and then to "the madame," and finally to "my landlady," in a rather elaborate attempt at jocularity, laughed alone at his merriment along this line, and never knew that no one cared ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... appeared over the wall—this time to announce what the Comandante believed would be glad news to his wretched petitioner. With all the pompous importance of one who grants a great favour he ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... the baptistery, which at first served as a church, a sort of octagonal temple surmounted by a cupola, built, doubtless, after the model of the Pantheon of Rome, and which, according to the testimony of a contemporary bishop, already in the eighth century projected upward the pompous rotundities of its imperial forms. Here, then, in the most barbarous epoch of the Middle Ages, is a prolongation, a renewal, or, at least, an imitation of Roman architecture. You enter, and find that the decoration is ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... for plundered provinces. Oh, wealth ill-fated! which no act of fame E'er taught to shine, or sanctified from shame; What greater bliss attends their close of life? Some greedy minion, or imperious wife. The trophied arches, storeyed halls invade And haunt their slumbers in the pompous shade. Alas! not dazzled with their noontide ray, Compute the morn and evening to the day; The whole amount of that enormous fame, A tale, that blends their glory with their shame; Know, then, this truth (enough for man to know) "Virtue alone is happiness below." The only point where ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... been his charge; and he had entrusted the stewardship to Patricia. Between them—that Patricia might have her card-game, that he might sit upon a platform for an hour or two with a half-dozen other pompous fools—they had let Agatha die. There was no mercy in him for Patricia or for himself. He wished Patricia had been a man. Had any man —an emperor or a coal-heaver, it would not have mattered—spoken as Patricia had done within the moment, here, within arm's reach of the ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... of farmers, obedient to his command, turned and looked at the speaker, while from behind the stove which, hot weather or cold, held the place of honor in the centre of the store, a shrill voice ventured to question the pompous owner of so great ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... parliament, he sent not to the primate, as to the other peers, a summons to attend it. Stratford was not discouraged at this mark of neglect or anger: he appeared before the gates, arrayed in his pontifical robes, holding the crosier in his hand and accompanied by a pompous train of priests and prelates; and he required admittance as the first and highest peer in the realm. During two days the king rejected his application: but sensible, either that this affair might be ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... to tell John Barton," said a pompous, careful-speaking man, "and I should like him for to lay it afore the Honourable House. My mother comed out o' Oxfordshire, and were under-laundry-maid in Sir Francis Dashwood's family; and when we were little ones, she'd tell us stories of their grandeur: and one thing ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... place! Jewellers' windows gleamed along the path with remarkable frequency. Florist shops, furriers, haberdashers, confectioners—all followed in rapid succession. The street was full of coaches. Pompous doormen in immense coats, shiny brass belts and buttons, waited in front of expensive salesrooms. Coachmen in tan boots, white tights, and blue jackets waited obsequiously for the mistresses of carriages who were shopping inside. The whole street bore the flavour of riches ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... set afloat, was a pompous, lordly-looking demijohn, but old and reverend withal, that sailed about, consequential as an autocrat going to be crowned, or a treasure- freighted argosie bound home before the wind. It looked solemn, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... a pompous spectacle, that midsummer night, upon those narrow seas. The moon, which was at the full, was rising calmly upon a scene of anxious expectation. Would she not be looking, by the morrow's night, upon a subjugated ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and scorn the bourgeois)—that I was curious to see how he would bear himself there; and rather nervous, for it would have grieved me that he should look down on people of whom I was getting very fond. It was his theory that all successful business people were pompous and purse-proud and vulgar. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... foster trade and cultivate good will, for it brought them pompous trappings as well as useful goods. "Grandy King George" of Old Calabar, for example, asked of his friend Captain Lace a mirror six feet square, an arm chair "for my salf to sat in," a gold mounted cane, a red and a blue coat with gold lace, a case of razors, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... "If large possessions, pompous titles, honourable charges, and profitable commissions, could have made this proud man happy, there would ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... my duty to inform you, Count Nobili"—Guglielmi is speaking with pompous earnestness—he anxiously notes the effect his words produce upon Count Nobili—"that, unless you remain under the same roof with your wife to-night, the marriage will not be completed; therefore no separation between you ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... vaguely uncomfortable in her presence. There was, perhaps, not enough humility in her clear eyes, and they worked her to the breaking point. Yet so impeccable and businesslike was her conduct that they could never convict her of any infringement of rules. Little did these pompous invaders suspect how this slender capable girl with the hazel eyes was spicing the hours behind their backs, and drawing with nimble and irreverent pencil portraits of her captors, daring caricatures which she exhibited in secret to the terrified ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... asserting that the authority usurped by the general government as but a partial sovereignty, and limited to the occupation, for purposes exclusively military, of the certain tracts of land now pending in this novel court of chancery. This highly enigmatical exposition of State rights, pompous and inflated though it was, failed to convince or convert Captain Lyon, who, being unable to detect, in his occupancy of the arsenal, any exaggeration of the rights vested by the Constitution in the general government, declined to abandon his post, and proceeded to call out the Home Guard, then awaiting ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... moment had not yet arrived! Then he bade Sporus begin to sing his funeral song, and begged some one to show him how to die. Even his own intense shame at his cowardice was an insufficient stimulus, and he whiled away the time in vapid epigrams and pompous quotations. The sound of horses' hoofs then broke on his ears, and, venting one more Greek quotation, he held the dagger to his throat. It was driven home by Epaphroditus, one of his literary slaves. At this moment the centurion ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... greatly diminished; were at breakfast, when the servant entered, as usual, with the letter-bag. Mr. Beaufort, who was always important and pompous in the small ceremonials of life, unlocked the precious deposit with slow dignity, drew forth the newspapers, which he threw on the table, and which the gentlemen of the party eagerly seized; then, diving out one by one, jerked first a letter to Camilla, next a letter to Vaudemont, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that Virtue here in place Arrived is, her silly court to hold; And therefore I am come with faster pace, T'encounter her, whose countenance is so bold. I doubt not but by this my pompous shew, By vestures wrought with gold so gorgeously: By reverence done to me of high and low: By all these ornaments of bravery, By this my train, that now attends me so: By kings, that hale my chariot to and fro, Fortune is known the queen of all renown: That makes, that ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... and weakness and everything else but that search for self and above all that pompous blowing of a horn before such empty things, such big sounding ambitions, that mock glory, that swelling in noble pride upon such fictitious hallucinations, that poor mesquin grandness. It is exasperating. ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... on in "calm peace and quiet," but now and again it was stirred into special activity, when Haydn had to put forth his efforts in various new directions. Such an occasion came very early in his service of Prince Nicolaus, when that pompous person made triumphant entry into Eisenstadt. The festivities were on a regal scale and continued for a whole month. A company of foreign players had been engaged to perform on a stage erected in the large conservatory, and Haydn was required to provide them with ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... and sportsmen to whom fighting is a religion and killing an accomplishment; whilst political power, useless under such circumstances except to militarist imperialists in chronic terror of invasion and subjugation, pompous tufthunting fools, commercial adventurers to whom the organization by the nation of its own industrial services would mean checkmate, financial parasites on the money market, and stupid people who cling to the status quo merely because they ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... circumstances:—in fact all the modern authors represented in the present book may be said to have been prolific as writers. Gumundur Frijnsson was equally versatile as a writer of short stories and poems. He has a rich command of imagery and diction, and his style, at times a little pompous, is often powerful though slightly archaic in flavour. The ancient heroic literature doubtless fostered his manly ideas, which, however, sprang from his own experience in life. One must, he felt, be hard on oneself, and on one's guard against the vanity of newfangled ideas ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... colonies. The natural beauties surrounding the home of the Delavels at Sydney are not less delicately and poetically described than the village life they have left behind in the mother country—the patriarchal rule of an old-fashioned, rather pompous house, over a people retaining the hereditary respect of vassals for their feudal lord; but the view given of Australian society is, in keeping with the relation to it of Richard Delavel and his household, ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... arrival in this country; which modifications (I suppose it need no longer be a secret) secured to her—besides the original stipulation of one thousand dollars for every concert, attendants, carriages, assistant artists, and a pompous and extravagant retinue, fit (only) for a European princess—one-half of the profits of each performance. You may also remember the legal advice I gave you on the occasion referred to, and the salutary effect of your following it. You must remember the extravagant joy you felt afterwards, in Philadelphia, ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... day that is coming, and, God willing, is now so near, when a ministering angel of tenderness and strength will he passing through them like a gleam. But I am more than ever sure that you do well to avoid for the present the pompous joys of life in London, where for one happy being there are a thousand ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... too; but if she had, such was the greatness of her Grief, that sure she would have soon grown Blind with weeping. In short, after a great many soft Vows, and Promises of an inviolable Faith, they parted with a pompous sort of pleasing Woe; their Concern was of such a mixture of Joy and Sadness, as the Weather seems, when it both rains and shines. And now the last, the very last Adieu's was over, for the Farewels of Lovers hardly ever end, and Frankwit (the Time being Summer) reach'd Cambridge ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... be either less polished and more vigorously dramatic than in that intended for publication, or else more fervid and elevated in tone. In this latter respect, however, the best platform speaking of today differs from the models of the preceding generation, wherein a highly dignified, and sometimes pompous, style was thought the only fitting dress for a public deliverance. Great, noble and stirring as these older masters were in their lofty and impassioned eloquence, we are sometimes oppressed when we read their sounding periods for any great length of time—even ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... upon the first program illustrate the breadth, impassioned force, and vigor of Chopin's idea to a marked degree, as well, perhaps, as anything he ever composed. The first, commonly known as the "Military Polonaise," is one of those pompous pieces which inevitably suggest some kind of great ceremonial. The movement begins in stately march-like rhythmic swing, and goes on with interruptions of brilliant effect, as if where the cannon and drums add their noisy emphasis. ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... account. With the death of Mr. Whately he had assumed control, refusing to allow any investigation of affairs until, to put it briefly, he was now in entire possession. Poor Mrs. Whately hardly knew what was her own, while her husband's former clerk waxed pompous and well-to-do. Being a vain man, he thought the best should come to him in social affairs, and being a man of medium intellect, he lacked self-control ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... shocking to his common sense. And he had no love for the people. And, in addition, he had no courage. This big, bulky, corpulent young man, with his clean-shaven pinkish face, his short breathing, his pleasant, pompous, and rather childish way of speaking, with a chest like the Farnese Hercules, (he was a fair hand at boxing and singlestick), was the most timid of men. If he took a certain pride in being taken for a man of a subversive temper by his own people, in his heart of hearts he used ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland |
