"Swagger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... newly sowed wheat field we pass through, and we pause to note their graceful movements and glossy coats. I have seen no bird walk the ground with just the same air the crow does. It is not exactly pride; there is no strut or swagger in it, though perhaps just a little condescension; it is the contented, complaisant, and self-possessed gait of a lord over his domains. All these acres are mine, he says, and all these crops; men plow and sow for me, and I stay here or go there, ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... Porthos, the melancholy nobility of Athos: Honour, Chivalry, and Friendship. I declare your characters are real people to me and old friends. I cannot bear to read the end of "Bragelonne," and to part with them for ever. "Suppose Porthos, Athos, and Aramis should enter with a noiseless swagger, curling their moustaches." How we would welcome them, forgiving D'Artagnan even his hateful fourberie in the case of Milady. The brilliance of your dialogue has never been approached: there is wit everywhere; repartees glitter and ring like the flash and clink of small-swords. ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... down together to dinner. Two chambermaids came into her room and prepared it without a single word to her about her journey or on any other subject, and when they had gone, 'They are two haughty misses,' said my mother with spirit. But what she most resented was the waiter with his swagger black suit and short quick steps and the 'towel' over his arm. Without so much as a 'Welcome to Glasgow!' he showed us to our seats, not the smallest acknowledgment of our kindness in giving such munificent orders did we draw from him, he hovered around ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... face a supercilious yet not ill-humoured expression; the third was many years younger than his companions, strikingly handsome in face and figure, altogether of a better taste in dress, and possessing a manner that, though it had equal ease, was not equally noticeable for impudence and swagger. ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... able to pitch since joining the Camdens, and so he was covering first base. Mower was a professional, and a good man when he attended to business. He played short. Bascomb, a little fellow, with a swagger and a grin that showed some very poor teeth, was change pitcher ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... describes the scene at the examination at the beginning of September last. The streets, he says, are thronged with long-robed, large-spectacled gentlemen, who inform the world at large by every fold of drapery, every swagger of gait, every curve of nail, that they are the aristocracy of the most ancient empire of the world. Wuchang had from 12,000 to 15,000 bachelors of arts within its walls, who came from the far borders of the province for the examination for the provincial degree. About one-half per cent. will ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... one thousand five hundred crowns a year, with the keep of three brave and daring companions (tre compagni bravi e facinorosi), and a palace worth fifty crowns on lease. But Lorenzo had just taken another on the Campo di San Polo at three hundred crowns a year, for which swagger (altura) Pietro Strozzi had struck a thousand crowns off his allowance. Bibboni also learned that he was keeping house with his uncle, Alessandro Soderini, another Florentine outlaw, and that he was ardently in love with a certain beautiful Barozza. This woman was apparently ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... and I was delighted to meet him one day at Kolatschek's lodgings. The vicissitudes which had brought him to Zurich came to my knowledge afterwards in a somewhat offensive and aggressive manner. For the present, Herwegh put on an aristocratic swagger and gave himself the airs of a delicately nurtured and luxurious son of his times, to which a fairly liberal interpolation of French expletives at least added a certain distinction. Nevertheless, there was something about his person, with his quick, flashing eye and kindliness of ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... upon the deck, gazing in wonder at all they saw, "here's for you;" and he handed them a tray of broken biscuit and a can of water. Then, thrusting his hands into his pockets, he walked up and down the deck with an enormous swagger, whistling vociferously. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... near the entrance to their shack watching the eddying currents of almost naked humanity they saw Pud-Pud detach himself from his companions and swagger ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... questions as to their wounded comrade, and peace reigns. About eleven o'clock Clay comes up from the works hurriedly and gives a whistle, and from one of the bedroom doors emerges Jones, looking rather like a schoolboy who has been in disgrace and means to carry it off with swagger. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... sand to wait for the putting ashore of the freight, he strolled up the beach toward the old trading-post. He did not swagger, though he noticed that many of the be-revolvered individuals did. A strapping, six-foot Indian passed him, carrying an unusually large pack. Kit swung in behind, admiring the splendid calves of the man, and the grace and ease with which he moved along under ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... was suddenly opened. Fenn entered and received a little chorus of welcome. He was wearing a rough black overcoat over his evening clothes, and a black bowler hat. He advanced to the table with a little familiar swagger. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... served long ago in the Chasseurs d'Afrique, and had risen, he said, to the rank of sergeant; but the fumes of absinthe clouded his brain, and he could only swagger and boast of old exploits as a soldier, crying from time to time "Vive l'entente cordiale," and assuring the Englishmen that they could trust him to the death. It was Stephen who, by virtue of his amateur soldiering ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a great swagger. 'Well yer needn't be funny in this waggon,' says he. 'The pair of yer spongin' a ride! Yer needn't be gay—yer ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... directness and an entire absence of parade. The negro troops are marching steadily, soberly, with high seriousness of purpose, and their white leader rides beside them, drawn sword in hand, but with no military swagger, courageous, yet with a hint of melancholy, ready not only to lay down his life but to face, if need be, an ignominious death for the cause he believes to be just. And above them, laden with poppy and with laurels, floats the Death Angel ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... a necessity of all great nations to hate meanness, and nothing under God's heaven ever was so mean as American slavery. Think of it. Men who swagger around with pistols and bowie-knifes to avenge their insulted honor, if any one should question it,—imagine one turning up his sleeves to horsewhip an old woman for burning his steak, or pocketing her wages, ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... apt to be egotistical and jealous. They were cautious and reserved with Emil because he had been away to college, and were prepared to take him down if he should try to put on airs with them. The French boys liked a bit of swagger, and they were always delighted to hear about anything new: new clothes, new games, new songs, new dances. Now they carried Emil off to show him the club room they had just fitted up over the post-office, down in the village. They ran down the hill ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... come home from our first voyage sick of it all.... Would give up but for pride.... Afraid to be called 'stuck sailors' ... of the sneers of our old schoolmates.... So we come home in a great show of bravery and swagger about in our brass-bound uniform and lie finely about the fine times we had ... out there! ... And then nothing will do but Jimmy, next door, must be off to the sea too—to come back and play the same game on young Alick! That's the ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... or girl is becoming conscious of himself as a person, and resents being treated as a child; the only way he knows of asserting his personality is by affecting an air of disdain toward those who presume to treat him as a child. This swagger is more likely to be put on when there is a third person present. It is therefore always safer to reserve your discussions and corrections to the time when you are alone with your girl or boy, and can place your conversation on ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... tapestry, we find flowers. The flowers of nature, they are, a simple nature at that, and never to be thought of in the same day as the gorgeous, expansive, proud flowers of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century decoration. Those splendid later blossoms flaunt their richness with assured swagger and demand of man his homage, quite forgetting it is the ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... of mind with him to live by his own self-respect and the consciousness that he had done his duty. Like all shy men, he was habitually silent; but his shyness sprang by no means from timidity; it was a kind of modesty in him; he found any demonstration of vanity intolerable. There was no sort of swagger about his fearlessness in action; nothing escaped his eyes; he could give sensible advice to his chums with unshaken coolness; he could go under fire, and duck upon occasion to avoid bullets. He was kindly; but his expression was haughty and stern, and his face gained him ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Jack," and took up her position behind the bar where, if Rance had been looking, he would have seen her start on hearing a voice in the next room and fix her eyes in a sort of fascinated wonder, on a man who, after parting the pelt curtain, came into the saloon with just a suggestion of swagger ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... And he did it. He left off his uneasy swagger and his rocking. He met the heroic and beautiful faces of the Thesigers with his engaging twinkle. He sought out and ministered to two young girls who had been brought there by the minor confraternity and were hiding in a corner ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... art of reading as one likes is the most difficult, perhaps the most impossible, of all the arts in modern times, constitutes one of those serio-comic problems of civilisation—a problem which civilisation itself, with all its swagger of science, its literary braggadocio, its Library Cure, with all its Board Schools, Commissioners of Education and specialists, and bishops and newsboys, all hard at work upon it, ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... he said, and laid a finger on the side. His presence rather hindered their efforts, but they succeeded in spite of it. William, however, was under the impression that his strength alone had wrought the miracle. He put on an outrageous swagger. ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... some of his accustomed swagger began to return. "I don't know what the flowery phrases are all about, but the symbols refer to common proteins, lipins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and biomins," he said. "What ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... all right, you can trust Jake Shaggam," replied Gouch, with a swagger. Liquor had deprived him ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... as if he had not a word on his tongue. "If you think you can frighten me,—" he said. Then, without ending his sentence, he swaggered out of the shop. But to Maida his swagger seemed like something put on to conceal ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... desolating braying began. "If you love Swagger Literature, put your telephone on to Bruggles, the Greatest Author of all Time. The Greatest Thinker of all Time. Teaches you Morals up to your Scalp! The very image of Socrates, except the back of his head, which is like ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... availed nothing. His whole candidature had been carried in the face of that. 'I think we shall do pretty well,' he said to the clerk. His very presence in Abchurch Lane of course gave confidence. And thus, when he came home, something of the old arrogance had come back upon him, and he could swagger at any rate before his wife and servants. 'Nor Lord Alfred,' he said with scorn. Then he added more. 'The father and son are two d—— curs.' This of course frightened Madame Melmotte, and she joined this desertion of the Grendalls to her own ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... friends looking out of all the club windows. My reputation is gone. I frighten no man more. My nose is pulled by whipper-snappers, who jump up on a chair to reach it. I am found out. And in the days of my triumphs, when people were yet afraid of me, and were taken in by my swagger, I always knew that I was a lily liver, and expected that I should be found ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Jock goes with more swagger down Princes Street than Johnny Gurkha down the bazaar of Darrapore, particularly in the evening, when he doffs khaki for the mufti suit of his clan—the spotless white shorts, coat of black sateen, little cocked cap and brightly bordered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... also too large for him, he was wearing very much on the back of his head, and he was smoking a very black cigar, from which he had failed to remove the band. He frowned when he saw Wrayson, but followed the Baroness into the room with a pronounced swagger. ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... struts the limelit boards: With false moustache, set smirk and ogling eyes And straddling legs and swinging hips she tries To swagger it like a soldier, while the chords Of rampant ragtime jangle, clash, and clatter; And over the brassy blare and drumming din She strains to squirt her squeaky notes and thin Spirtle of sniggering ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... so much, as the queen's dwarf, who being of the lowest stature that ever in that country (for I verily think he was not full thirty feet high) became so insolent at seeing a creature so much beneath him, that he would always affect to swagger, and look big, as he passed by me in the queen's ante-chamber, while I was standing on some table, talking with the lords or ladies of the court, and he seldom failed of a smart word or two upon my littleness; against which I could only revenge ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... I'm 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
... was this idea which later in the afternoon induced him to swagger forward to shake hands with me with a flash insolent leer on his face. I took pains to be especially nice to him, treating him with deference, and making remarks upon the extreme heat of the weather ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... chum," he said, with a suggestion of swagger. "We can manage those dubs down there alone. The rest of you can sit down and tell stories; we'll let you out in ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... corsage of orchids. Merlin started and then gazed at her fearfully. For the first time in the eight years since his marriage he was encountering the girl again. But a girl no longer. Her figure was slim as ever—or perhaps not quite, for a certain boyish swagger, a sort of insolent adolescence, had gone the way of the first blooming of her cheeks. But she was beautiful; dignity was there now, and the charming lines of a fortuitous nine-and-twenty; and she sat in the car with such perfect appropriateness and self-possession that ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... familiarly to all who approach their tables. John Morrissey is occasionally to be seen, walking through the rooms, apparently a disinterested spectator. He is a short, thick-set man, of about 40 years, dark complexion, and wears a long beard, dresses in a slovenly manner, and walks with a swagger. Now and then he approaches the table; makes a few bets, and is then ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... then. Possibly it took on a little swagger; certainly he lost the dignity that he had shown under stress of feeling; he was now more like a cowboy about to boast or affect some stunning maneuver. Walking off the porch, he stood before ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... Perhaps sometimes we are inclined to droop apologetic heads, because we know that some women are sentimental, that they don't all "look at things in the large," as men invariably do. In view, however, of the record of this youthful movement of ours, we have a right rather to swagger than ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... no God but God: is it possible that four or five Franks can use all these things to eat, drink and sleep on a journey?' (N.B. I fear the Franks will think the stock very scanty.) Whereupon master Achmet, with the swagger of one who has seen cities and men, held forth. 'Oh Effendim, that is nothing; Our Lady is almost like the children of the Arabs. One dish or two, a piece of bread, a few dates, and Peace, (as we say, there is an end of it). But thou shouldst see the merchants of Escandarieh, (Alexandria), ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... with painstaking detail. Too late she had discovered that she didn't possess a dress fit to wear at any one's wedding, not to mention her own. From time to time she had dreamed of a swagger tailored suit, but the paradox of a swagger tailored suit in San Pasqual had been so apparent always that Donna could not bring herself to the point of submitting to a measurement in the local dry-goods emporium, having the suit made in Chicago and sent out by express. Instead ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... turned across Hyde Park, where a big company of girl guides was drilling, watched by a crowd of curious on-lookers. Across a belt of grass some boy scouts were performing similar evolutions, marching with all the extra polish and swagger they could command, just to show the guides that girls were all very well in their way, but that no one with skirts could really hope to do credit to a uniform. Cecilia ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... trenches—to which they replied "Oh, boy!" with great smacking of tongues and shaking of heads. Some one took a piece of chalk and scrawled on the side of the train, "We won the war—now we're going home," and the officers laughed and let it stay. They were all getting what swagger they could out of this ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... figure. The city was found to be in no little confusion on the arrival of the Movable Column, mutiny being rampant among the troops, and the military authorities taking scarcely any precautions to prevent an outbreak. In the streets it was apparent from the swagger of the native soldiers that they believed the ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... England from the indelible disgrace of a second and more gratuitous Crimea. But it was not only in Eastern Europe that his saving influence was felt. In Africa and India, and wherever British honor was involved, he was the resolute and unsparing enemy of that odious system of bluster and swagger and might against right, on which Lord Beaconsfield and his colleagues bestowed ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... rarely sees. Sometimes a latchkey is heard about half-past six. The man is thick, strong, common; his jaws are heavy; his eyes are expressionless; there is about him the loud swagger of the caserne; and he suggests the inevitable question, Why did she marry him?—a question that every young man of refined mind asks a thousand times by day and ten thousand times by night, asks till he is five-and-thirty, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... to spend the winter down in St. Augustine with the Charles K. Wilmarths, and she knows I hate them. She wanted to go because, as you know, she thinks she's not at all well, and also because the Charles K. Wilmarths are rather swagger. Either because she wished to get rid of me, or because I raised such a fuss, she compromised. I'm to be allowed to stay here for the next four months and take painting lessons from Jorgensen. I intend ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... some profit, and a little snatching up of a few loose trifles such as the Society Islands, which we had, according to our custom, carelessly or benevolently left to gleaners), French arms, despite a great deal of brag and swagger, obtained little glory, while French diplomacy let itself wallow in one of the foulest sloughs in history, the matter ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... art, Bear due proportion to his outer part, As once 'twas said of Macklin in the Jew, 'This is the very Falstaff Shakspeare drew.' To you, with diffidence, he bids me say, Should you approve, you may command his stay, To lie and swagger here another day. If not, to better men he'll leave his sack, And go as ballast, in a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... frame, all his physical powers were shown only to his fellow-men; a form of flattery which women appreciate, nay, which so intoxicates them, that every man with his mistress on his arm assumes a matador swagger that provokes a smile. Very well set up, in a closely fitting blue coat with solid gold buttons, in black trousers, spotless patent evening boots, and gloves of a fashionable hue, the only Brazilian touch in the Baron's costume was a large diamond, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... of the Lecture Bureau may be found in a swagger Club any evening with a Bourbon H. B. at his Right, a stack of Student Lamps at his Left and Two Small Pair ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... tried to hide the fear that fed upon him with a tinge of swagger. This in the White House—the palace of their President! Storri was more and more convinced that the Americans were a rabble and ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... for Jack, with his cavalry swagger and a white weal all round his sunburned face to show where his chin-strap hung, looked the most unbusiness-like ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... stood watching them haul up to the Adams Street curb. His heart was tired of tall buildings and the endless grimace of windows. Here was a chariot out of another world. Motor vagabonds. Scooting into a city with a swagger to their dust-caked wheels. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... interesting; I could imagine she had lost parents, natural protectors—could conceive even she had inherited money. I was at a pass of my own fortunes when keeping hansoms at doors seemed to me pure swagger. As a trick of this bold and sensitive girl, however, it became romantic—a part of the general romance of her freedom, her errand, her innocence. The confidence of young Americans was notorious, and I speedily arrived at a conviction that no impulse could have been more ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... and humbly born, at that, but she liked extreme Americanism never the more. Perhaps she was a bit of a snob, though fate was getting ready to beat the snobbery out of her. And hers was an unintentional, superficial snobbery, at worst. Some people said she was affected and that she aped the swagger dialect. But she had a habit of taking on the accent and color of her environments. She had not been in England a month before she spoke Piccadilly almost impeccably. She had caught French and German intonations with equal speed and had picked up music by ear with the same ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the coon and come down. Whether they would have done so had they known the weakness of Diebitch may be questioned; but again it may be questioned whether, that weakness unknown, he could not have occupied Constantinople on the swagger. His master was prepared promptly to reinforce him; Constantinople was perhaps nearer its fall in 1828 than in 1878, and certainly Diebitch was much smarter than were the Grand Duke Nicholas, his fossil Nepokoitschitsky, and his ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... Americans don't embroil us in a war before long it will not be their fault. What with their swagger and bombast, what with their claims for indemnification, what with Ireland and Fenianism, and what with Canada, I have strong apprehensions. With a settled animosity towards the French usurper, I believe him to have always been sound in his desire to ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... now, Herbinger, you know who I mean, the fellow who's in one of the jobbers' offices; yes, of course, you must know him, he's one of the best-known men in Paris, that great big fair-haired boy who wears such swagger clothes; he always has a flower in his buttonhole and a light-coloured overcoat with a fold down the back; he goes about with that old image, takes her to all the first-nights. Very well! He gave a ball the other night, and all the smart people in Paris were there. I should have ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... vividness the Italian soldiers of adventure of his day. We see before us the long-haired followers of Braccio and the Baglioni; their handsome savage faces; their brawny limbs clad in the parti-coloured hose and jackets of that period; feathered caps stuck sideways on their heads; a splendid swagger in their straddling legs. Female beauty lay outside the sphere of Signorelli's sympathy; and in the Monte Oliveto cloister he was not called upon to paint it. But none of the Italian masters felt more keenly, or more powerfully represented in ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... contained very little water. So with a quick heave he sent a shining spout in the direction of the spy, who was drenched from knee to shoe-buckle. Then he caught up the pails with a clash of their iron handles and with the easiest swagger in the world took the direction of the spring, his spurs jingling as he went. A sailor on guard behind the rock would have aided him to fill them, but he told the man to keep his station, and dipped for himself. He brought them back brimming and with a courtly bow inquired of Patsy if she had ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... Japp. He might brag about his knowledge of how to deal with natives, but to my mind his methods were a disgrace to a white man. Zeeta came in for oaths and blows, but there were other Kaffirs whom he treated with a sort of cringing friendliness. A big black fellow would swagger into the shop, and be received by Japp as if he were his long-lost brother. The two would collogue for hours; and though at first I did not understand the tongue, I could see that it was the white man who fawned and the black man who bullied. Once when japp was away one of these fellows came ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... marvellously akin; and such differences as you will see in them are superficial merely. I spoke of Whistler's vanity in life, and I spoke of his timidity and reverence in art. That contradiction is itself merely superficial. Bob Acres was timid, but he was also vain. His swagger was not an empty assumption to cloak his fears; he really did regard himself as a masterful and dare-devil fellow, except when he was actually fighting. Similarly, except when he was at his work, Whistler, doubtless, really did think of himself as a brilliant effortless butterfly. The pose ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... was worth a little inconvenience, and quite a little risk to see those chiefs arrive at the castle gate, toss their reins to a brother cut-throat, and swagger in, the poorest and least important timing their arrival, when they could, just in advance of an important man so as to take precedence of him and ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... gentleman. Not the swagger of the dude nor the cringing of a scapegoat, but the manners of a being permeated with ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... was going to work in his garden, where his vegetables were coming forward very well. Nothing could have been better than his manners—quiet, manly, civil, without the rather aggravating slyness of the ordinary French peasant, and with absolutely nothing of the infantine swagger of the small French bourgeois. These miners here wear a picturesque and practical costume, something between the garb of a sailor and the garb of a fireman, and as their life—like the life of a fireman or a sailor—is lived a good deal apart from the lives of other men, and has a constant spice ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... to-morrow.—Well; I never saw such a letter in all my life; so saucy, so journalish, so sanguine, so pretending, so everything. I satisfied all your fears in my last: all is gone well, as you say; yet you are an impudent slut to be so positive; you will swagger so upon your sagacity that we shall never have done. Pray don't mislay your reply; I would certainly print it, if I had it here: how long is it? I suppose half a sheet: was the answer written in Ireland? Yes, yes, you shall have a letter when you ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... Viktor Hlopakov, a little, thinnish, dark man of thirty, with black hair, brown eyes, and a thick snub nose, is a diligent frequenter of elections and horse-fairs. He walks with a skip and a hop, waves his fat hands with a jovial swagger, cocks his cap on one side, and tucks up the sleeves of his military coat, showing the blue-black cotton lining. Mr. Hlopakov knows how to gain the favour of rich scapegraces from Petersburg; smokes, drinks, and plays cards ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... never put so much impetuosity, so much daring to the square inch, into any day before. He lounged back a little in his chair, put his hands in his pockets and tried to feel swaggering and at ease. Madame Beattie, he knew, wouldn't object to swagger. And if it would help him dramatically, so much the better. "Madame Beattie," he repeated, "I've a proposition to make to you. I thought of it ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... Colebyville that morning in the new buggy, rather pleased to be the centre of observation and remark. He quite liked to swagger before these country people whom he chose otherwise to ignore. He was well dressed, his buggy was the admired of all admirers, and he was newly married. Country gossip had some pleasing qualifications. When he had arrived at Colebyville, however, John Hunter had found that country people had ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... driven their wagons to the place of voting, on the prairie, and hitched their horses to their wagons, and were quietly going about their business, when with a great whoop and hurrah, which frightened their horses and made them break loose from their wagons, a company of men came in sight, and with swagger and bluster, took possession of the polls, and proceeded to do the voting. Meantime whisky flowed like water, and the men, far gone in liquor, turned the place into a bedlam. In utter humiliation and disgust many of the squatters went home. Caleb May did not get into the neighborhood till ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... wasn't afraid you'd think I swagger, I should say—than anybody! If you leave your place there, where shall you go?" he more ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... dark hours of each night, Dick managed to abstract small quantities of goods from their pack, in room of which he stuffed in pieces of leather to keep up the size and appearance. The goods thus taken out he concealed about his person, and went off with a careless swagger to the outskirts of the village, with Crusoe at his heels. Arrived there, he tied the goods in a small piece of deerskin, and gave the bundle to the dog, with the injunction, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... soldier's pistol was whipped out—a flash, a report, and Jim George fell dead at his feet, a victim to his own swagger and an innocent jest of his companions. So dumbfounded were the innocent "foragers," that they allowed the cavalryman to ride away unmolested ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... more erect and even assumed a military swagger and spoke somewhat contemptuously of the line and mobiles, whose discipline was as lax as their own, and among whom drunkenness was rife, for whatever else failed, the supply of wine and spirits appeared inexhaustible. Cuthbert went not unfrequently ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... pegs, with Barcelonas and comforters, and damp travelling caps of seal-skin, and blue cloth, and tartan, arranged above the same. Nevertheless, such a society in my juvenile estimation, during my short escapade from the middy's berth, had its charms, and I was rolling in with a tolerable swagger, when Mr. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... find these anapaests in the Elizabethan or in the seventeenth-century poets, or most rarely. They were dear to the eighteenth century, and, much more than the heroic couplet, are the distinctive metre of that age. They swagger—or, worse, they strut—in its lighter verse, from its first year to its last. Swinburne's anapaests are far too delicate for swagger or strut; but for all their dance, all their spring, all their flight, all ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... but what nation on the face of the earth is free? My youth is still like a blue and cloudless sky. If I set myself to obtain wealth or power, does it mean that I must make up my mind to lie, and fawn, and cringe, and swagger, and flatter, and dissemble? To consent to be the servant of others who have likewise fawned, and lied, and flattered? Must I cringe to them before I can hope to be their accomplice? Well, then, I decline. I mean to work nobly and with a single heart. I will work ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... of the richest capitalists in Paris one day met an extremely pretty little working-girl. Her mother was with her, but the girl had taken the arm of a young fellow in very doubtful finery, with a very smart swagger. The millionaire fell in love with the girl at first sight; he followed her home, he went in; he heard all her story, a record of alternations of dancing at Mabille and days of starvation, of play-going and hard work; he took an interest in it, and left five thousand-franc ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... success in life is a knowledge of people. This the wise men helped their students to obtain. Let us sit for a while beside one of them and look through his eyes at the people who pass by. Here comes young Mr. Know-it-all. He wears a very fine garment, and walks with a swagger. His father and mother and all his aunts and uncles have always told him that he is the most clever person in the world. And, of course, he agrees with them. He will listen to advice from nobody. The wise man watches him pass, then says to ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... conspiracy. As a matter of fact, I saw little of it and confessed to nothing. Certainly he was what some might call handsome, of a pictorial, exuberant style of beauty, all attitude, profile, and impudence: a man whom I could see in fancy parade on the grand stand at a race-meeting, or swagger in Piccadilly, staring down the women, and stared at himself with admiration by the coal porters. Of his frame of mind at that moment his face offered a lively if an unconscious picture. He was lividly pale, and his lip was caught up in a smile that could almost be called ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into a cardboard box by the clerk, and wrapped in heavy paper to be stowed away in the car. She confronted Gratton smilingly in her new garb, her hands in her pockets, her face saucy, her slim body boyish in its swagger and richly feminine in its unhidden curves. Gratton's eyes shone, quick with admiration. She laughed and a flush came into her cheeks as he gravely paid for her clothing and his own. When they went to their ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... his chair close to mine, and as he knew my weak side, the scamp continued: 'Just think what a swagger thing it will be to do, and how amusing to tell about; the whole army will talk about it, and it will give you a ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... that was well acquainted with the ground it was moving over; the step showed no doubt or apprehension, it could hardly be called stealthy, but it glided on firmly and cautiously, without haste, or swagger, or unevenness.... The oftener you heard him speak, the more his speaking gained upon you.... He never seemed occupied with himself. His effort was evidently directed to convince you, not that he was eloquent, but that he was right.... He seemed rather to aim at gaining the doubtful, than mortifying ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... drinkers of the inn had his own individuality of swagger, his truculent independence of mien, which suggested a man by no means habitually used either to receive commands or to render unquestioning obedience. Each of the men resembled his fellows in a certain flamboyant air of ferocity, but no one of them resembled the others ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... an idiot of myself," he went on. "I'd no right to come down here like that. I just want you to forgive me now, that's all. I didn't mean to swagger about being rich. I'm not enjoying it a bit till ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... series of unsteady footbeats, and the door of my study was flung back. In the opening, staring at me with quiet dignity, stood a young, careless fellow, about five feet ten in height and decidedly dark of complexion. The swagger of his entrance branded him as an adventurer. The ghastly pallor of his face, which was almost colorless, branded him as a man who has found something ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... said—"tramp steamers, coasting schooners, collier brigs, and timber barques; and those aren't the sort of craft that rub neatness into a man. Our motto in the little drogher yonder is to keep her afloat with the least possible bother to ourselves. We never lie in swagger harbours to be looked at. There isn't a burgee or a brass button on board. Strict Spartan utility is very much the motto of the ship's company. Hence, for example, you find the decks brown and not white, and yet I can assure you ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... a crest was not conspicuous. He spoke with a very good imitation of the accent of the officers he had served with, and in his alertness, his well-trained movements, his upright carriage, and his personal cleanliness, he came so near to looking like a gentleman that he escaped it only by a certain swagger, which proved an ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the praise bestowed upon him and gave his shoulders a swagger. "Speakin' of that, boss," he said, "reminds me of a chap who rode into Cabin Gulch a few weeks ago. Braced right into Beard's place, where we was all playin' faro, an' he asks for Jack Kells. Right off we all thought ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... and his left foot hacked off in the marketplace. No more were marriages to be celebrated with pomp and feasting, no more was the youthful warrior to swagger with flowing hair; henceforth, the believer must banquet on dates and milk, and his head must be kept shaved. Minor transgressions were punished by confiscation of property or by imprisonment and chains. But the rhinoceros whip was the favourite ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Arthur had seen her in such a sorry plight. She wished he might see her at a better advantage. For instance, galloping up on a spirited mount, in a modish riding-habit—a checked one with flaring-skirted coat and shining boots and daring but swagger breeches, perhaps!—galloping insouciantly up ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... a bit, Harriet, but 'tis not an offensive swagger. As to his hat: 'tis a standing joke of the army as to how he keeps it on in battle. The hotter the fight the further on the side it gets. I saw a letter that General Greene writ to His Excellency in which he declared that Drayton fought with it on his right ear all through ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... tenders is a good one and should be acted upon. As it is now, the justice there dispensed is so mixed and doctored that it satisfies only the vitiated taste of the roughs. The proceedings in the McFARLAND and JACKSON case show that swagger, not study—bullying, not brains, are in a fair way to become the important qualifications of a counsel. The lawyers should organize in their own defence and classify themselves. Mr. PUNCHINELLO suggests the following method ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... pride or vanity. He wanted to show off his courage before his followers, who were mostly does; many of them his wives too—for the old antelopes are shocking polygamists. It would never do to appear timid in the eyes of the fair does; and he was determined to cut a swagger. Under this impulse, he walked boldly up, until his sharp snout touched the hair of one of ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... ready to his hand that would have added one of the most amusing and interesting portraits to his gallery. He faintly suggests a moral Falstaff, if we can imagine a Falstaff without vices. As a narrator he has the swagger of a Captain Dalghetty, but his actions are marked by honesty and sincerity. He appears to have had none of the small vices of the gallants of his time. His chivalric attitude toward certain ladies who appear in his adventures, must have been sufficiently amusing ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... up the crooked little staircase with a who's-afraid kind of swagger, but he took his hat ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... went, twirling his club with many intricate and artful movements, turning now and then to cast his watchful eye adown the pacific thoroughfare, the officer, with his stalwart form and slight swagger, made a fine picture of a guardian of the peace. The vicinity was one that kept early hours. Now and then you might see the lights of a cigar store or of an all-night lunch counter; but the majority of the doors belonged to business places that ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... with peculiar heartiness all attempts at realizing history, by evolving its romantic element, and thus demonstrating to the languid and lazy readers of ninepenny nonsense, that the actual heroes and heroines of the world have surpassed in romantic daring the fictitious ones who swell and swagger in most novels and poems. Mr. Gayarre's work is more interesting, both as regards its characters and incidents, than Jane Eyre or James's "last," for, in truth, it requires a mind of large scope to imagine as great things as many men, in every country, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... we hear of others that they have been toiled, nor be tickled at the thoughts of our own manhood; for such commonly come by the worst when tried.[258] Witness Peter, of whom I made mention before. He would swagger, aye, he would; he would, as his vain mind prompted him to say, do better, and stand more for his Master than all men; but who so foiled, and run down ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... old gentleman at the end of the table—Bullding his name is. He will tell you confidentially that he simply hates the place. Yet he's been here for six years, and he's as much a fixture as that sham mahogany sideboard. Everyone will grumble to you confidentially—Miss Ellicot, she's our swagger young lady, you know—up there, next to Miss White, she will tell you that it is so out of the world here, so far away from everyone one knows. Old Kesterton, choleric-looking individual nearly opposite, will curse the cooking till he's black in the face, but he never misses a dinner. The Semitic ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tow, Begins to jow an' croon; Some swagger hame the best they dow, Some wait the afternoon, At slaps the billies halt a blink, Till lasses strip their shoon; Wi' faith an' hope, an' love an' drink, They're a' in famous tune For crack ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... his eyes and a little to one side, and strolled on, humming an old Mexican air. His walk was the swagger of a young Mexican gallant, and in the dimness they would not notice his Northern fairness. Several pairs of eyes observed him, but not with disapproval. They considered him a trim Mexican lad. Some of the men in the doorways took up the air that he was whistling ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... all—all the emotions that a real desperado could feel. He had experienced the impulse to swagger, to pose—really to live the part that ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... sat entranced. Then she was all woman, and the magic of sex kidnapped the irritations of the day and made him forget the big revolver, the Baden-Powell, and all the rest. But what right, the next thought in his brain would whisper, had such a girl to swagger around like a man and exult that adventure was not dead? Woman that adventured were adventuresses, and the connotation was not nice. Besides, he was not enamoured of adventure. Not since he was a boy had it appealed to him—though it would ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... who were running speedily drew near. Most of them were out of breath, and all looked very much excited. The leader, who was quite a character in the Southern town, and a fierce appearing individual, with a military swagger, which Phil believed to be wholly assumed, immediately addressed himself to the two young Northerners on the new-fangled motor boat, which had been the wonder of the townspeople ever since it was dropped ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... realised anew the significance of that still figure at his feet, and tried to shake some of the swagger back into his wretched, ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... whether it was a trait of madness or of nobility. I could have told her with absolute confidence that it was neither the one nor the other, but a sort of epicurean selfishness with perhaps a little dash of swagger away down at the bottom of it. What had I ever had from my chronometer like the quiet thrill of satisfaction when the fellow brought me the pawn ticket and told me that the ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... sue to be despised than to deceive so good a commander with so slight, so drunken, and so indiscreet an officer. Drunk? and speak parrot? and squabble? swagger? swear? and discourse fustian with one's own shadow? O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... which Nutty had thrown at Eustace had missed the latter, but it had hit the wall, and was now lying in many pieces on the floor, and the air was heavy with the scent of it. The remains seemed to leer at her with a kind of furtive swagger, after the manner of broken bottles. A quick thrill of anger ran through Elizabeth. She had always felt more like a mother to Nutty than a sister, and now she would have liked to exercise the maternal ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... silent agitation, or a softer kind of lateral motion; as sway, swag, to sway, swagger, swerve, sweat, sweep, swill, swim, swing, swift, sweet, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... he was sneaking away struck him like a blow. Sneaking away! He stopped. With a careless, cocky swagger he had always, before this, stood up ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... white tie and the much-cherished whiskers of the fifties, which was only redeemed by that other touch of devilry that he had shown me in the corridor. By the rich brown of his complexion, as well as by a certain sort of swagger in his walk, I should have said that he was a naval officer ashore, had he not told me who he was ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... two small parcels which apparently belonged to the girl at his side. He was a handsome man, tall and rather spare, with dark eyes and a soldierly look. His movements were quick and forceful, but a hint of what Mrs. Keith called swagger somewhat spoiled his bearing. She thought he allowed his self-confidence to be seen too plainly. The girl formed a marked contrast to him; she was short and slender, her hair and eyes were brown, while her prettiness, for one could not have, called her beautiful, was of an essentially ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... a-half of road, with little galvanised-iron-roofed cottages at intervals of a quarter of a mile or so, that constituted the township. She watched Conroy, the policeman, resplendent in breeches and polished boots, swagger out from the court-house yard, leading his horse to water. The town was waking to its daily routine; Garry, the butcher, took down the clumsy board that passed for a window-shutter, and McDermott, ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... from the table with a little swagger, ruffling it gaily in his triumph over me; and so young, so small he seemed, to be boasting of his manhood and his prowess in the warfare of love, that I ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Clinkumbell, wi' ratlin tow, Begins to jow an' croon; Some swagger hame, the best they dow, Some wait the afternoon. At slaps the billies halt a blink, Till lasses strip their shoon: Wi' faith an' hope, an' love an' drink, They're a' in famous tune ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... be American, English, French or German. His voice had been quiet and deferential, but by no means genteel; nor had it any hint of the roystering joviality of a sailor. More than anything else his gait, in its sedate unobtrusiveness, seemed to me utterly at variance with the rolling swagger which we conventionally associate ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... red-nosed man, and the red-nosed man could not move. The red-nosed man heard all the questions and the landlord's answers, and could not even pretend that he did not hear them. "I am my cousin's clerk," said he, putting on his hat, and coming up to Mr Toogood with a swagger. "My name is Dan Stringer, and I'm Mr John Stringer's cousin. I've lived with Mr John Stringer for twelve year and more, and I'm a'most as well known in Barchester as himself. Have you anything ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... example, at any rate, of what a man—and such a man!—might make of a woman. She could see how the Condrip pair pressed their brother's widow on the subject of Aunt Maud—who wasn't, after all, their aunt; made her, over their interminable cups, chatter and even swagger about Lancaster Gate, made her more vulgar than it had seemed written that any Croy could possibly become on such a subject. They laid it down, they rubbed it in, that Lancaster Gate was to be kept in sight, and that she, Kate, was to keep it; so that, curiously, or at all events sadly, our young ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... hoard hidden under the floor of a men's lodging house—that could only be stolen money. Where had he stolen it from? Was he some kind of gentleman burglar, such as plays and novels had been built around? It was a plausible explanation. He looked the part so well; lots of swagger and side, and the whole thing a trifle overdone. What a story! Crowder licked his lips over it, seeing it splashed across the front page. At that moment the parcel Jim had given him slipped off his knee ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... stretched on a bed of rose-leaves; [51] or Vatinius, darting forward to speak, his eyes starting from his head, his neck swollen, and his muscles rigid; [52] or the Gaulish and Greek witnesses, of whom the former swagger erect across the forum, [53] the latter chatter and gesticulate without ever looking up; [54] we see in each case the master's powerful hand. Other descriptions are longer and more ambitious; the confusion of the Catilinarian conspirators after detection; [55] the character of Catiline; ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... mind would swagger him into droll ideas of attempting to chastise his Imperial prisoner, at another, his childish fear of the consequences of his chastisement was pathetic, and when one droll farce after another broke down, he shielded himself ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... only too apt a pupil in the lessons in the midst of which his childhood had been passed. He had at his tongue's tip all the slang of the stables and all the blackguardisms of the betting-ring; and boy—almost child—as he was, he affected the swagger and habits of a "fast man," like a true son ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... Bob in twenty-four hours), but usually so slowly that they saw it resting on the way, and then, when they listened intently, they could hear the thud of Hogmanay. The last halfpenny was a special aggravation, strolling about, just out of reach, with all the swagger of sixpence, but at last Elspeth had it, and after that, the sooner Hogmanay ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... with a swagger and a rustle of his silk gown, and proceeded to set forth the theory of the defence. He said he did not purpose to call many witnesses. The hypothesis of the prosecution was so inherently childish and inconsequential, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... met the fixed gaze of his eyes and was lost. With the ghost of a swagger in her gait she crossed to the red plush sofa upon which Paul was seated and lounged upon the end of it, one foot swinging in the air. She had a trick of rubbing the second finger of her left hand as if twisting a ring, and Paul ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... he learned in childhood from his experience of poverty at home, in his remarks in later life, on the sons of poor men, who by sheer hard work raise themselves from obscurity, and have much to endure, and no time to strut and swagger, but must be humble and learn to be silent and to trust in God, and to whom God also has given ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... features showed the alternating play of a sympathy evidently more selfish than good-humored, and his eyes, in almost glassy clearness, for the first time distinctly showed the expression of that unrestrained ambition and tendency to swagger which afterwards revealed itself as so strong a motive ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... was heard; and it was found that he had gone below, and had eaten up all the servants' dinner; so they all joined together to punish him, and after some trouble, contrived to kick him out of the house; and very foolish he looked, in spite of his tipsy swagger. ...
— The Dogs' Dinner Party • Unknown
... departure the receipt, and time alone can say, whether your bargain has been a good or a bad one. He has certainly no assumption—it is one of his few good traits; he walks with his arms in motion, but attempts not a swagger; his knock is unassuming, and his words, though much attended to, are few, and to the point. Why, then, abuse him? We know not, but believe it originates in fear. An intuitive feeling of dread—a rushing presentiment of evil—crosses our mind, as our ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... breakwater frames along in the calms; and that we of the screws found our steam vessels all we could wish, somewhat o'er lively, mayhap,—a frisky tendency to break every breakable article on board. But there was a saucy swagger in them, as they bowled along the hollow of a western sea, which showed they had good blood in them; and we soon felt confident of disappointing those Polar seers, who had foretold shipwreck and disaster ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... back legs and begging you with his front paws to come and do something—a trick entirely of his own invention, for no one would think of teaching him anything; his funny nautical roll when he walks, which is nearly a swagger, and gives him always the air of having just come back from some rather dashing adventure; beyond all this there is still something. And whatever it is, it is something, which every now and then compels you to bend down and catch hold of his long silky ears, to look into his honest eyes ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... said Dick, chuckling with delight at being completely understood. "I couldn't resist one little bit of sheer swagger. It's a French trick, and you wouldn't understand; but it's got at by slewing round the head a trifle, and a tiny, tiny foreshortening of one side of the face from the angle of the chin to the top of the left ear. That, and deepening the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... trying to gather from them what their words might mean. They, deep in their conversation, did not notice her. Then, with a feeling of extraordinary relief—she hardly knew why—she saw a familiar, substantial person coming along the promenade with a sort of friendly swagger. She went forward to meet him, still feeling as though she were walking in ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... stepped from the store he met an old acquaintance from Pinnacle. There was only one thing to do in a case like that, and Casey did it quite naturally. They came out of The Club wiping their lips, and the swagger in Casey's shoulders ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... Salem, and without any hesitation—for I must move while my resolve was high—I galloped out to the Dale house. The low sun extended my shadow to a grotesque length as I flung myself from the saddle and with an attempt at a bold swagger advanced to find the maid. I am sure my bearing suggested confidence, but it was ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... meritorious parish-priest, of fair repute too as a preacher, who has striven for years, hard but unavailingly, to divest himself of the martial air he brought with him out of the K.D.G. He strides down the village street with a certain swagger and roll, as if the steel scabbard were still trailing at his heel, acknowledging rustic bows with a slight quick motion of the finger, like troopers' salutes; on the smooth shaven face is shadowed forth the outline ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... And all the lines Are stranger to my lips, and alien quite To car and eye and mind. I tell thee, Cosimo, This play of thine is one in which no man Should swagger on, trusting the prompter's voice; For mountains tipped with fire back up the scene, Out of the coppice roars the tiger's voice: The lightning's touch is death; the thunder rends The very rocks whereon its anger lights, The ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... Reuben Ring; still it hath much of the swagger of the other, though their stature be nearly equal—the manner of carrying the musket is much the same with all the borderers too—one cannot easily tell the form of man from a stump by this light—and—yet do I think it will prove ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... o' sunshine over the sea! Ah-ha, the glory o' that time! Sixteen—an' as yet no adventure beyond the waters of our parts! A nobbly time off Mad Mull in a easterly wind—a night on the ice in the spring o' the year—a wrecked punt in the tickle waters; but no big adventure—no right t' swagger—none t' cock my cap—an' no great tale o' the north coast t' tell the little lads o' Rickity Tickle on the hills of a Sunday afternoon. But now, at last, I'd a berth with Davy Junk, a thing beyond belief, an' I was ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... dull rage against the other two. How dared they pretend not to be afraid? It was all swagger—he knew that very well. Various unpleasant recollections began to rise in his mind. He remembered how that Indian spy had stalked the settler's cabin at Earl's Court. He could see him now, stealing over the sand, then listening with his ear ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... how Joe Bradley stared: and as they rounded the corner of the hedge he remarked suddenly "I say! There's that swagger ayah of yours walking with Lady Despard. She's jolly smart, for an ayah. Did you bring her from India? You never said you'd ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... soldier individually. He is clean, civil, good-tempered, and with a far closer resemblance to Englishmen in what we regard as essentials than any other Continental. The officers are in the truest sense gentlemen free from swagger, and not over-bearing towards their men and their civilian compatriots. They represent a genuine type of manhood, free from artificiality or falsehood. One feels instinctively that they say what they ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough |
