"Swaggering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The firelight sheds quaint shadows on their piled-up arms and on their uncouth forms. The children of the town steal round to watch them, wondering; and brawny country wenches, laughing, draw near to bandy ale- house jest and jibe with the swaggering troopers, so unlike the village swains, who, now despised, stand apart behind, with vacant grins upon their broad, peering faces. And out from the fields around, glitter the faint lights of more distant camps, as here some great lord's followers lie mustered, and there false John's ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... alike ending,—and die as fools die. Long has this lasted, and still lasts. But now it would seem as if in an august Assembly itself, traitorous Royalism, in its despair, had taken to a new course: that of cutting off Patriotism by systematic duel! Bully-swordsmen, 'Spadassins' of that party, go swaggering; or indeed they can be had for a trifle of money. 'Twelve Spadassins' were seen, by the yellow eye of Journalism, 'arriving recently out of Switzerland;' also 'a considerable number of Assassins, nombre considerable d'assassins, exercising in fencing-schools and at pistol-targets.' ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... enough," replied Alice, who had seemed ready to laugh outright, during this encomium. "I think I see one of those paragons now, in a Bloomer, I think you call it, swaggering along with a Bowie knife at her girdle, smoking a cigar, no doubt, and tippling sherry-cobblers and mint-juleps. It must be a ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a few minutes to the hour of four. The tides of trade were not yet loosed, and they found a quiet corner of the cafe. Kernan, well dressed, slightly swaggering, self-confident, seated himself opposite the little detective, with his pale, sandy mustache, squinting eyes and ready-made ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... said Hamet, swaggering into the skiffa, where Angela chanced to be at work at the time.—"Ha! thou hast a pretty daughter," he added, with a ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... turn, he sat with an assumed look of swaggering indifference. "Mr. Bingham," said Bart very ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... its saucy tail curved over its back, ran lightly up an oak, perched on a bough and gazed at him with a challenging, red eye. Henry gave back his look, and laughed in the silent manner of the border. He had no wish to hurt the swaggering little fellow. His heart was bare of ill will ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... symmetrical instruments. Large feet, whose toes were usually turned in, like those of the Indian, were wielded by limbs whose vigor and activity were in keeping with the figure they supported. Imagine, with these peculiarities, a free, bold, rather swaggering gait, a swarthy complexion, and conformable features and tones of voice: and—excepting his costume—you have before your fancy a complete picture of the early ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... burly, unwashed brute, swaggering truculently before me. "And who are you who would have ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... affairs by a body of interested gentlemen-investors has been, and perhaps still is, just as well at home in the affectionate preconceptions of the nineteenth-century British as the corresponding German usufruct by self-appointed swaggering aristocrats has been among the underlying German population, or as the American arrangement of national control by business men for business ends. The British and the American arrangements run very much to the same substantial effect, of course, inasmuch as the British gentlemen ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... "what is the meaning of this? We'll have no swaggering, youngsters! Are you come from the wars abroad to stir up ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... There was no resemblance in him to his brother, the Alderman. He was a tall, spare, fresh-coloured man, apparently about fifty years of age, well-bred of feature, carefully groomed; something in his erect carriage, slightly swaggering air and defiant eye suggested the military man. Closer inspection showed Brent that the grey tweed suit, though clean and scrupulously pressed, was much worn, that the brilliantly polished shoes were patched, that the linen, ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... small rooms which are mostly negligible now occur. Longhi is here, with his little society scenes; Tiepolo, with some masterly swaggering designs; Giambettino Cignaroli, whom I mention only because his "Death of Rachel" is on Sundays the most popular picture in the whole gallery; and Canaletto and Guardi, with Venetian canals and palaces and churches. For Tiepolo at his best the Labia Palace must ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... chops: "I wanted drink, I now find meat as well!" He shows the red interior of his vast jaws fringed with teeth. There is a brief further exchange of threats and jeers, then Fafner bellows: "Pruh! Come on, swaggering child!" Siegfried shouts: "Look out, bellower, the swaggerer comes!" and, Nothung in hand, leaps to the assault. Vainly Fafner spouts flame to blind and terrify him. The fight ends as it must. The dragon falls beneath ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... said Tyrrell, "leave me alone, and busy yourself about your own affairs." After so tart a reply, Thornton thought it useless to say more; he remounted, and with a silent and swaggering nod of familiarity, soon rode ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I said to the portly, well-fed, swaggering cockney upstart; but there was so much in it uncomplimentary to himself and his driving, that the crowd already assembled cheered, as all crowds will cheer profane and personal language; and he was glad enough to gather up his reins and ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... war of the schools came a fact at last, and its bearer was a gorgeous figure of a man-at-arms (who, later, got into trouble by talking too much), who came swaggering down the road from the New Inn, blowing smoke into the air, with his hat on one side, and his breast-piece loose; and declared in that strange clipped London-English of his that he had been on guard at the ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... boy, steadies himself on his right leg, and diving deep in his left hand pocket, draws forth a large bill or poster. With both hands he manages to spread this out, and swaggering up to the wall near the window he hangs it on two pegs that are there to ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... of political excitement, crowded with a feverish army of workmen, cheering, groaning, swaying to and fro, under the speeches of their favourite orators. Then in this Pagan temple may be seen a living specimen of a Brummagem Jupiter, with a cross of Vulcan, lion-faced, hairy, bearded, deep-mouthed swaggering, fluent in frank nonsense and bullying clap-trap, loved by the mob for his strength, and by the middle classes for his money. The lofty roof ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... comment than she, and of a different kind. His rose-pink pugree, with the egret and the diamond brooch to hold the egret in its place—his jeweled sabre—his swaggering, almost ruffianly air—were no more meant to escape attention than his charger that clattered and kicked among the crowd, or his following, who cleared a way for him with the butt ends of their lances. He rode ahead, but every other minute a mounted sepoy would reach ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... the ladder, followed by Knowlton. Jose, with a swaggering stare at the wide-shouldered man, who stared straight back without facial change, also went up. Tim came fourth and last, for Pedro stopped beside his ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... surprised himself at his gallant feeling of liberty: a feeling of bravado and almost swaggering carelessness which is Italy's best gift to an Englishman. He had crossed the dividing line, and the values of life, though ostensibly and verbally the same, were dynamically different. Alas, however, the verbal and the ostensible, the accursed mechanical ideal gains day by day over the spontaneous ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... sublime magnanimity of their victim—well knowing his own continual danger, but refusing to evade it by any arts of tyranny or distrust—when they had gone through their little scenic mummery of swaggering with their daggers—cutting '5,' '6' and 'St. George,' and 'giving point'—they had come to the end of the play. Exeunt omnes: vos plaudite. Not a step further had they projected. And, staring wildly upon each other, they began to mutter, 'Well, what are you up to next?' We believe that no ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... were hundreds of similar cases around. Notwithstanding their terrible plight not a hand was moved by the authorities on their behalf. They were even spurned and roughly moved out of the way by the swaggering officials. It was not until the British colony got busy the next day that they received the slightest alleviation, and the majority, being strangers in a strange land, were sent back to England, the Germans mutely concurring in the task. The wild rush ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... into a fit of laughter, at this remark. It struck me as infinitely droll, and as somewhat silly. I knew my precise position in society, perfectly; had none of the silly swaggering about personal merit, and of "one man's being as good as another," that has since got into such general use among us; and understood perfectly the useful and unavoidable classifications that take place in all civilized communities, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... the Widow, brushing Virginia away again and swaggering up to his bed. "I thought you ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... fanatically muttering through the streets of Paris, alternately hiding and swaggering throughout the loveliest month of May, when he thrust his murderous dagger through the royal coach, not only gave a death blow to Henri IV, but to many of these industries that the king had cherished for his people against the ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... ask,' said Bradley, after casting his eyes on the ground, 'because he is capable of making any representation, in the swaggering levity of his insolence. I—I hope you will not misunderstand me, sir. I—I am much interested in this brother and sister, and the subject awakens very strong feelings within me. Very, very, strong feelings.' With a shaking hand, Bradley took out his handkerchief ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... exulted, some of the bolder of them even swaggering out to the Gringo camp; but Martin drove them back again, saying he would not allow them to bully men who could not retaliate, which was right and fair. Then, afraid to go away and leave the mad cow-punchers so close to town, he ordered them to drive their herd farther east, nearer to Dent's ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... balm, Trembled within the squeezing of thy palm; And how a cheek grew flushed and peachy-wise At the frank lifting of thy cordial eyes? Ah, me! that night there was one gentle thing, Who, like a dove, with its scarce feathered wing, Fluttered at the approach of thy quaint swaggering! ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... fervor. He was the head and front of the old-time feudalism of birth and blood; Napoleon was the incarnation of the modern spirit which demolished thrones and set an iron heel upon crowned heads, giving the sacred titles of king and prince to soldiers who, even in palaces, still showed the swaggering brutality of the camp and the stable whence they sprang. Yet, just because an alliance with the Austrian house seemed in so many ways impossible, the thought of it inflamed the ardor of Napoleon all ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... stranger," burst in the American, "I'm a man who can stand a deal, but you can go too far. You come swaggering here with a boat-load of your men and think that you're going to frighten me, sirr— but you're just about wrong, for if I like to call up my men they'd bundle you and your lot back into your boat—for I ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... contents the saucy street urchins, or, handing round, amidst the startled wayfarers, pyramids of horse cakes, trays of barley-sugar and peppermints, like real princes dispensing the coin of the realm. Where are those noisy gangs of swaggering raftsmen—those voyageurs from the pays d'en haut, with their glittering costumes—hats festooned with red or blue ribbons, sashes of variegated colors, barred shirts— tightly wedged, three by three, in caleches, like Neapolitans— patrolling the streets—interlarding a French ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... reviewers call his scalpel) is that he cuts into the heart of life; but he makes a very shallow incision if he only reaches as deep as habits and calamities and sins. Deeper than all these lies a man's vision of himself, as swaggering and sentimental as a penny novelette. The literature of candour unearths innumerable weaknesses and elements of lawlessness which is called romance. It perceives superficial habits like murder and dipsomania, but it does not ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... we swaggering here? So near the cradle of the fairy queen? What, a play toward! I'll be an auditor; An actor, too, if ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... at any rate, and be civil!" cried the older man. "You seem a swaggering sort, with your talk of love and luck, and such are sure to get their combs cut early enough here among Englishmen. I'll not tolerate your allusion to a lady you have never met, and one I honor deeply, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... door, swaggering a little. His kpi was cocked defiantly. His legs, in the cavalry boots, showed a faint bend. He unconsciously fell into a sort of indefinable, flat, stumping gait, barely noticeable to one who had never seen it before, but recognizable, instantly, to any one who had ridden ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... his salutation, and watched him thoughtfully after he shut the door and went swaggering down the street, looking in at every window he passed, in regular ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... reflected. He had been used to regarding his comrade as a blatant child with an audacity grown from his inexperience, thoughtless, headstrong, jealous, and filled with a tinsel courage. A swaggering babe accustomed to strut in his own dooryard. The youth wondered where had been born these new eyes; when his comrade had made the great discovery that there were many men who would refuse to be subjected by him. Apparently, the ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... reckless and truculent of those who form that ruffianly gang, but they had chiefly used their position to carry on their love intrigues with greater freedom and daring. Both were handsome, dashing, fearless, swaggering, gaily-dressed boys, and many were the girls within the palace, and the town which lay around it, who cast loving eyes upon them. Awang, however, cared little for this, for, by the irony of that Fate which always directs that men should fall in love ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... to mine, and as he knew my special weakness, the scamp continued: "Just think what a swaggering thing it will be to do and how amusing to tell about; the whole army will talk about it, and it will give ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... instruments of noise to which duty would compel him at eight o'clock in the evening hung over him like a hideous doom. Sweet singers of the female sex were powerless to console. He passed them by, and haughty tenor and swaggering basso again took ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... Drusenin with kindness. The Russian keeps his sentinels as {91} vigilant as ever pacing before the doors of the hut; but he goes unguarded and unharmed among the native dwellings. Perhaps, poor Drusenin was not above swaggering a little, belted in the gay uniform Russian officers loved to wear, to the confounding of the poor Aleut who looked on the pistols in belt, the cutlass dangling at heel, the bright shoulder straps and colored cuffs, as insignia of a ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... moment, a party of young and dissipated nobles came swaggering along the road, with their ungirded tunics flowing down to their heels, their long sleeves fringed with purple falling as far as to their wrists, and their curled ringlets floating on their shoulders. Among them, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... On arriving at the room, a large sala in the neighbourhood of the Plaza, we found it filled with hunters, trappers, traders, and teamsters, all swaggering about in their usual mountain rig. Mixed among them were some two or three score of the natives, with an equal number of senoritas, all of whom, by their style of dress, I recognise as poblanas, or persons of the lower class,—the only class, in fact, to be met ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... daze. Syme, who had now taken the lead as Bull had taken it in London, led them along a kind of marine parade until he came to some cafes, embowered in a bulk of greenery and overlooking the sea. As he went before them his step was slightly swaggering, and he swung his stick like a sword. He was making apparently for the extreme end of the line of cafes, but he stopped abruptly. With a sharp gesture he motioned them to silence, but he pointed with one gloved finger to a cafe table under a bank of flowering ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... With a swaggering sea roll he came striding across the wide arid space between the wharf side and the buildings, puffing at a big black cigar as he walked, and glancing about him curiously, as though he could not quite understand the utter ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... to him the image of a "gay French lady," dropped, with straightened limbs, into the silent ocean of death; while the Hungarian Tokay (Tokayer Ausbruch), in its concentrated strength, seems to jump on to the table as a stout pigmy castle-warder, strutting and swaggering in his historic costume, and ready to defy twenty men at once ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... with a revised Program. "You are now Fifteen Years of Age," said the Wonderful Guide with the glittering Suit. "It is High Time that you planned a Noble Career, following a Straight Course from which there shall be no Deviation. The Pirate is a mere swaggering Bravo and almost Unscrupulous at times. Why not be a great Military Commander? The Procedure is Simple. Your Father gives the Finger to the Congressman and then you step off the Boat at West Point. Next thing you know, you are wearing ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... for this feeling which one has when about to receive holy communion? Although proud at the victories of our arms, we scrupulously hide this pride, we treasure it in our hearts as our most precious possession, and we hate all swaggering and self-adulation. Not with the haughtiness of a righteous pharisee do we approach the altar, but with a prayer of penitence: "like a murderer ...
— The Shield • Various
... pointed across the square to the court-house. It was an old square brick-and-stucco building, sombre and stilted and very dirty. Out of it filed a stream of men—some black and shackled; some white and swaggering and liberal with tobacco-juice; some white and shaven and stiff. "Court's just out," pursued Mr. Caldwell, "and them niggers have just been sent to the gang—young ones, too; educated but good for nothing. They're all ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... movement of a feature. On the contrary, he appears perfectly indifferent to the character of the reception given him. Not that his manner betrays anything like swagger—for he is evidently not one of the swaggering sort. Rather is his behaviour characterised by a cool, quiet effrontery—a sort of sarcastic assurance—ten times more irritating. This is displayed in the laconic style of his salutation: "Morning girls! father at home?"— in the fact of his dismounting without waiting ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... not even wash up for lunch, but picked her fodder from her pail with her companions. She smoked a convivial cigarette with the gang and was proud as a boy among grown-ups. She even wanted to be tough and was tempted to use ugly words in a swaggering pride. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... with dignity and swaggering towards the Jew with a Frankish elegance which the depth of his potations made unsteady, seized the landlord by the breast of his gaberdine. He ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... hostilities. For the temperament which is so plain in the best of his writings must have been present in his life—an unobtrusive, because a never directly implied, superiority and an ironical humour. The picture of swaggering snobbishness which Thackeray was inspired to make of him is proved bad by all that we know. A swaggerer could not have made a fast friend of Dryden—grown mellow, indeed, but by no means beggared of his fire—on his first coming to town, ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... even rob Imperial Messengers. A pretty state of affairs when my couriers are fair game alike for impostors and robbers. I'll make the slyest and the boldest quail at the idea of interfering with one of my despatch riders and I'll exterminate all highwaymen. I'll have no one swaggering up and down Italy, now in Liguria, now in Apulia, mocking the law and its guardians, looting as he pleases, uncatchable, untraceable, hidden and helped by mountaineers and farm-laborers and farmers, even welcomed secretly in villages ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... and Little-Faith would have had their revenge and satisfaction upon Christian and Hopeful had they seen those two so Pharisaical old men taken in the Flatterer's net. For it was nothing else but the swaggering pride of Hopeful over the pitiful case of Little- Faith, taken along with the hard and hasty ways of Christian with that unhappy youth Ignorance, that so soon laid them both down under the small cords of the Shining One. ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... he entered with a swaggering air, attended by two of the most dissolute and reckless of his boon companions. She stretched out her arms to him, but they seized hold of her, and one of the three—none other than the accursed Benedetto exclaimed,—'Put ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... under the additional cargo of drinks imbibed as toasts to the undertaking, and again, as draughts of defiance to the enemy who would dare question his courage, buttoned his coat about him, and, boasting, cursing, and swaggering, reeled out into the night. Out into the night that ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... its savagery intensified rather than mitigated by a bluff, boisterous bonhomie. Jules Favre complained to him that the German cannon in front of Paris fired upon the sick and blind in the Blind Institute, Bismarck in those days of swaggering prosperity had a fine turn of badinage. "I don't know what you find so hard in that," he retorted, "you do far worse; you shoot at our soldiers who are hale and useful fighting men." It is to be hoped that Favre had a sense of humour; he needed ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... Culture: to hold up one's head, and assert oneself as an honorable element in the nation—was not this catholic gathering a proof of the feasibility of such an ideal? Good sense! What true self-estimate as well as wit in the sage's famous retort to the swaggering German officer who asked him what commodity he dealt in. "In that which you appear to need—good sense." Maimon roused himself to listen to the conversation. It changed to German under the impulse of the host, who from his umpire's chair controlled it with ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... dirty, and he had about him all the airs and manners of a man. He wore a man's coat which reached nearly to his heels, and he had turned the cuffs back half-way up his arm to get his hands out of the sleeves. Altogether he was as roystering and swaggering a young gentleman as ever stood four feet six in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... relationships with the matrons and males of her immediate set. She had no place for old-fashioned notions; she was determined to keep up with the herd and the calf might fare as best it could. So they rambled from day to day; she swaggering along with the set, but turning now and then to send an impatient moo toward the small brown body stuck on four long, ungainly legs,—legs which had an unfortunate habit of folding up, after the fashion of a jack ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... "is it so? Have a care, Napoleonder! You are swaggering too much. You lie when you say a man can live without pity. To have a soul, and to feel compassion, are one and the same thing. You have a soul, ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... Grandmama's head had nodded approvingly, and her thin old lips had half smiled at the valiant child with his swaggering lies about bears and lions, at the gallant ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... by flouting the poor swain as he loitered about the prison for glimpses of his dear. Tip asserted the family gentility, and his own, by coming out in the character of the aristocratic brother, and loftily swaggering in the little skittle ground respecting seizures by the scruff of the neck, which there were looming probabilities of some gentleman unknown executing on some little puppy not mentioned. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... move when Patsy came toward him and delivered his oration. At its conclusion he turned his livid face toward where, above him, Patsy was swaggering and heaving his shoulders in a consummate display of bravery and readiness. The Cuban, in his clear, tense tones, spoke one word. It was the bitter insult. It seemed fairly to spin from his lips and crackle in the air ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... knaves—the two— Belonging to Terzky's carabineers, Who've lain in these quarters now for years; The worst are they of the worthless crew. Strutting, swaggering, proud and vain, They seem to think they may well disdain With the peasant a glass of his wine to drain But, soft—to the left o' the fire I see Three riflemen, who from the Tyrol should be Emmerick, come, boy, to them will we. Birds of this feather 'tis luck to find, Whose trim's so ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... bright rays fell upon her closed eyes and stung her cheeks. She awakened with difficulty, and looked around wonderingly. She saw the sunlight move along the wall and then drift back again. She felt the boat teetering and swaggering. She looked out of the window and saw a distant wood across the familiar, glassy yellow surface of the Mississippi. With a low whisper of dismay she started out to look around, and found that she was ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... he was proud and swaggering. But at night he tumbled and tossed upon his bed and could not ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... bona tam sequitur, quam bona prima fuit; he need not despair, so long as the same master is to be had. But was she good? Had she been so tired peradventure as that Ephesian widow in Petronius, by some swaggering soldier, she might not have held out. Many a man would have been willingly rid of his: before thou wast bound, now thou art free; [3915]"and 'tis but a folly to love thy fetters though they be of gold." Come into a third place, you shall have an aged father ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... some pretensions to architectural display, namely, unnecessarily projecting eaves, giving it a mushroomy aspect, wooden mouldings at various available points, and a grandiose arched portico. It looked a little swaggering by the side of one or two of the mansion-houses that were not far from it, was painted too bright for Mr. Bernard's taste, had rather too fanciful a fence before it, and had some fruit-trees planted in the front-yard, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... made in their speeches a sort of swaggering declaration, something, I rather think, above legislative competence; that is, that there is no difference in value between metallic money and their assignats. This was a good, stout proof article of faith, pronounced under an anathema, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... word.—/American Note/.] great confidence was entertained; which he very soon managed to gain from me also. By way of introduction, I began to speak with him on subjects of jurisprudence; and he wondered not a little at my swaggering: for, during my residence at Leipzig, I had gained more of an insight into the requisites for the law than I have hitherto taken occasion to state in my narrative, though all I had acquired could ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... promised to go down and read my "Christmas Carol" to the little Sherborne Institution, which is now one of the few active objects he has in the life about him, that I came out with that promise in a bold—I may say a swaggering way. Consequently, on Wednesday, the 20th of December, I am going down to see him, with Kate and Georgina, returning to town in good time for Christmas, on Saturday, the 23rd. Do you think you could manage to go and return with us? I really believe there ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... long period while the outlaws were swaggering down Tombstone's streets, defying the leaders of the law-and-order movement, the two-gun man managed to cling to the good graces of the Earp faction; just as in these days you may have seen a crooked ward-heeler hanging to the skirts of a good-government crusade. Nobody loved him, but there were ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... my mind made up long ago," cried Peterkin, swaggering about the deck with his hands thrust into his breeches pockets. "The fact is, Jack, I don't believe that Tararo will be so ungrateful as to eat us; and I'm quite sure that he'll be too happy to grant us whatever we ask, so the sooner we go in and ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... he said, "is only that particular great donkey, Hellmuth. He came swaggering to-night along the New Neckar-Bridge as full of beer as the Heidelberg tun is empty of it. He met your Herr under the lamps where there were many students of the corps. Now, Hellmuth is a beast of the Rhine corps, so he thought he might gain some cheap glory by ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... pleased me much, were the river Thames, and the hall and church of Westminster, where there are brave things to be seen, and braver still to think about. But whenever I wandered in the streets, what with the noise the people made, the number of the coaches, the running of the footmen, the swaggering of great courtiers, and the thrusting aside of everybody, many and many a time I longed to be back among the sheep again, for fear of losing temper. They were welcome to the wall for me, as I took care to tell them, for I could stand without the wall, which perhaps ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... knows that we are remarking on them now, and he is holding his head as high as if he had sought and won a queen. He is right; she will prove a sensible, cheerful wife to him. Bourhope will have the cleverest, best wife in the county, for all your swaggering. And that is something, when a man comes to be old and has an old wife like me. Not old, Balquin? away with you. I wish the Provost heard you. Do you think to flatter me because I am in spirits about my cousin's match? No, it is not lost that a ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... came swaggering up, and Roylance winced, the scissors with which he was cutting the ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... we to do with honour?" said Simon Glover. "If thou wouldst remain in my service, thou must think of honesty, and leave honour to the swaggering fools who wear steel at their heels and iron on their shoulders. If you wish to wear and use such garniture, you are welcome, but it shall not be in my house or in ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... in the opening of the fireplace. I do not know how I then found the courage to speak, but I did so without much hesitation. I got up, and, walking up and down the room, observed in a careless tone, with that swaggering manner characteristic ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... of course there were, and are always—those happy beings in whom Nature has implanted a love of slang: who loitered about the horsekeeper's stables, and drove the London coaches—a stage in and out—and might be seen swaggering through the courts in pink of early mornings, and indulged in dice and blind-hookey at nights, and never missed a race or a boxing-match; and rode flat-races, and kept bull-terriers. Worse Snobs even than these were poor miserable wretches ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... long to wait. From the bend in the ravine came three men, the central figure a man of great stature. He walked proudly, with long, swaggering strides and swinging arms. His long black hair, bearded chin, and beady eyes set under heavy eyebrows, gave a ferocity to his appearance which Ellerey did not find attractive. He looked like a man in whom the barbarian was still active, whose laws of right and wrong and honor were likely ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... standing here for? Make way for your betters!" said a gruff voice behind them, and, turning, the children found themselves face to face with a German officer dressed in a resplendent uniform and accompanied by a group of swaggering young soldiers. Too frightened to move, the children only looked up at him and did ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... daimyo of Hikone in the province of Mino. On account of the youth of the shogun he was created regent. He was a man of great resolution and unscrupulous in the measures by which he attempted to carry out the policy to which he was committed. By his enemies he was called the "swaggering prime minister (bakko genro)." Assured that the foreign treaties could not be abrogated without dangerous collisions with foreign nations, he sought to crush the opposition which assailed them. The daimyo of Mito, who had been the head of the anti-foreign ...
— Japan • David Murray
... we swaggering here, So near the cradle of the fairy queen?" (Midsummer Night's Dream, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... enough to brave the sneering waiter, you have to pay ten shillings for a bottle of claret; and whence, if you look out of the window, you gaze on a view which is so rich that it seems to knock you down with its splendor—a view that has its hair curled like the swaggering waiter: I say, I quitted the "Rose Cottage Hotel" with deep regret, believing that I should see nothing so pleasant as its gardens, and its veal cutlets, and its dear little bowling-green, elsewhere. But the time comes when people must go out of town, and so ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... James de la Cloche—rejecting the gaudy lure of three crowns—lived and died a saintly Jesuit; or whether, on the other hand, he married beneath him, was thrown into gaol, was sentenced to a public whipping, was pardoned and released, and died at the age of twenty-three, full of swaggering and impenitent impudence. Was there but one James de la Cloche, a scion of the noblest of European royal lines? Did he, after professions of a holy vocation, suddenly assume the most secular of characters, jilting Poverty and Obedience for an earthly bride? Or was the person who appears to have ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... not man-nature to be mewed up as she does us," said Angel, swaggering, "and, I don't know what you mean to do, Mary Ellen, but we mean to take a day off, so there!" He nodded his curly head ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... part, dwarf him into the meanest insignificance: he slinks out of the way of the humblest petticoat, happy if he be poor enough to be pushed out of the house to outface his ignominy by drunken rejoicings. But when the crisis is over he takes his revenge, swaggering as the breadwinner, and speaking of Woman's "sphere" with condescension, even with chivalry, as if the kitchen and the nursery were less important than the office in the city. When his swagger is exhausted he drivels into erotic poetry or sentimental uxoriousness; and the Tennysonian King Arthur ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... Then will I be made an Eunuch, and learn to sing Ballads. I do not deny, but my father may have as much patience as any other man; for he used to take physic, and oft taking physic makes a man a very patient creature. But, Signior Prospero, had your swaggering Epistle here arrived in my father's hands at such an hour of his patience, I mean, when he had taken physic, it is to be doubted whether I should have read "sweet villain here." But, what? My wise cousin; Nay then, ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... three sworn deputies were loading his "corpse" into a spring wagon. Then he sat up suddenly and Sam Moore and his deputies fled gibbering into the dark, while Purdy drove the team back to Wolf River. Swaggering into the dance hall, he found that the news of his demise at the hand of the pilgrim had preceded him—found, also, a marked lack of enthusiasm over his escape from death. Some countenances registered open disappointment, and the men whom he invited to drink, ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... his hat proudly upon his head again, and turning on his heel marched away in a swaggering fashion, while Lancelot slipped down again into the shelter of the house. In a few minutes Jensen's red coat had disappeared among the trees, and then we all turned and stared at ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... father confessor. Mindful of the native weakness in this respect, Carrapatam Bunga bears his sorrows from door to door, confident that his affliction and his damaged foot will command pity wheresoever he wanders. But he is impudent, and a boisterous, swaggering fellow. Hear him as he demands compassion, with his swarthy, fat face upturned to the blazing sun, and with a long cigar between ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... father's tavern, a great resort for horse-jockeys, cattle-dealers, and frequenters of State and County fairs, Dely still objected to marry him. But the more she objected, the more her mother talked, her step-father swore, and the swaggering lover persisted in his attentions at all times, so that the poor girl had scarce a half-hour to herself. She grew thin and pale and unhappy enough; and one day George Adams, stepping in unexpectedly, found her with her apron to her eyes, crying most bitterly. It took some persuasion, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... Monty, and showed his own steamer ticket in proof of it. That settled Hassan for the time but Georges Coutlass was not so easy. He came swaggering upstairs and thumped on Monty's door with the air of a bearer of ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... telling him haughtily that a great cause made one indifferent to discomfort; and he nearly laughed aloud. He looked across the hall at her and just caught her switching her gaze from him to the platform. He felt a curious swaggering triumph at the flight ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... philosophy—all are subservient to the purpose of explaining how it was that Remington was driven into the net of sex, and Isabel was enabled to "darn his socks." Parturiunt montes. Is it thus that Remington will make himself immortal in literature, the twentieth-century Benvenuto Cellini, swaggering, in a self-conscious, twentieth-century way, through the tale of his glorious peccadilloes? Or is it to be a Jonathan Wild, memorable as the hero of a hundred magnificent felonies with which a Fielding or a Wells could glorify a sturdy vagabond? ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... a sensation she was creating; she arched her back and lifted her head, and walked down the street, swaying her body from side to side, and swaggering along as though the ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... wisely thought he would employ his spare time, and increase his revenue. He became a director of the Cornaro Life Insurance Company, of the Tregulpho tin-mines, and of four or five railroad companies. It was amusing to see him swaggering about the City in his clinking boots, and with his high and mighty dragoon manners. For a time his talk about shares after dinner was perfectly intolerable; and I for one was always glad to leave him in the company of sundry ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... interval of remorse for his manifold errors and shortcomings; and is not half punished enough before the great prize of fortune and love falls to his share. I am angry with Jones. Too much of the plum-cake and rewards of life fall to that boisterous, swaggering young scapegrace. Sophia actually surrenders without a proper sense of decorum; the fond, foolish, palpitating little creature,—"Indeed, Mr. Jones," she says,—"it rests with you to appoint the day." I suppose ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... her children were brought in almost daily contact, for my father, being an all too generous man, kept open house. But although she was always sweet-tempered and sometimes merry with the hard-drinking old Peninsular veterans, and the noisy and swaggering subalterns of the ill-famed 102nd Regiment (or New South Wales Corps), she always shuddered and looked pale and ill at ease when she saw among my father's guests the coarse, stern face of the minister, and her dislike ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... him blundering by, With his eyes astare, and his rumpled hair, and his hat cocked over his eye. Blind, in his pride, to his shoes untied, he went with a swift jig-jog, Off on the quest, with a strange unrest, hunting the Feasible Dog. And this is the song, as he dashed along, that he sang with a swaggering swing— (Now how had I heard him singing a song if he ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... Captain E—, of the Artillery, a very good-looking man. After dinner, Mrs. Aston took us as far as Tortoni's, on her way to the Opera. On entering the cafe, Captain E— did not touch his hat according to the custom of the country, but behaved himself, a la John Bull, in a noisy and swaggering manner; upon which, General, then Colonel J—, went up to E— and knocked off his hat, telling him that he hoped he would in future behave himself better. Aston, Bathurst, and I, waited for some time, ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... interrupted by her brother-in-law, who came swaggering toward them. With the sight of land and safety, Bennie D.'s courage returned; ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... had acquaintances but no friends. He despised the swaggering beachcombers who had flung off the decencies of civilisation along with the habiliments of civilisation and who found a marrowy sweetness in the husks of the prodigal. Even more he despised the hectoring Germans ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... 'mong the jovial crowd, Where merry comrades boasting loud Each named with pride his favourite lass, And in her honour drain'd his glass; Upon my elbows I would lean, With easy quiet view the scene, Nor give my tongue the rein until Each swaggering blade had talked his fill. Then smiling I my beard would stroke, The while, with brimming glass, I spoke; "Each to his taste!—but to my mind, Where in the country will you find, A maid, as my dear Gretchen fair, Who with my sister can ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... job what difference does it make?" he asked himself. He stopped at a saloon and had a drink of whisky. When he got to the shop he began to scold his employer, to threaten him as though he were his apprentice. Swaggering suddenly in, he walked to where Joe was at work and slapped him roughly on the back. "Come, cheer up, old daddy," he said. "Get the gloom out of you. I'm tired of your muttering and growling ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... drunk—grow pot-valiant—enlist over-night, and repent next morning. If I am to dismiss all those who pretend to have been trepanned, we should have few volunteers remain behind. Every one has some idle story of the promises of a swaggering sergeant Kite—It is impossible to attend to them. But let ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... approaching them. It was easy to see by their dress and general appearance that he who rode at their head was their lord, with two companions of inferior rank, and that the rest were his retainers. They had a particular swaggering look which showed that they belonged to a class of persons common in those days, who followed the fortunes of any lawless noble who could employ them, and were ever ready to commit any deed of violence their master might command. Eric kept as close to one side of the road as he could ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... nowhere in the United States have we found the true America or the real American. Except as abstractions, they do not exist; it is only by looking carefully at each eccentric and irregular America—at Irish New York, at Puritan New England, at the rowdy South, at the rough and swaggering Far West, at the cosmopolitan Pacific States— that we come to reject the anomalous features, and to find America in the points they possess in common. It is when the country is left that there rises in the mind an image ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... him come down the slope, carrying himself with a swaggering air of braggadocio, but plainly watchful and suspicious. Terry had come out upon the ledge and she too watched him. He came down swiftly and swung up into the saddle of the horse ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... curious cavil. The name is used by Milton, Spenser, and Robert of Gloucester for an early king of Britain, the grandfather of King Lear; and by Ben Jonson—from whom Butler evidently adopted it—for a swaggering fellow in the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... had the wish or the means to buy themselves out of the adventure, were allowed to do so: for the Earl was much disgusted with the raw material out of which he was expected to manufacture serviceable troops. Swaggering ruffians from the disreputable haunts of London, cockney apprentices, brokendown tapsters, discarded serving men; the Bardolphs and Pistols, Mouldys, Warts, and the like—more at home in tavern-brawls or in dark ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... happened to be walking. So I reined in and asked these engineers what they were doing. The leader, who was that same bold fellow who had followed me, seemed much pleased at being addressed. He was swaggering—too friendly; not my idea of a gentleman at all. He said he was glad to tell me he was going to run water all over Altar Valley. Dad, you can bet that made me wild. That was Dick's plan, his discovery, and here ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey |
