"Boastful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disputed as to which was the most beautiful. When their strife was at its height, a Bramble from the neighboring hedge lifted up its voice, and said in a boastful tone: "Pray, my dear friends, in my presence at least cease from such ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... especially with the French mixed-bloods, who inflamed his prejudices against the Americans, all had their influence in making of the wily Sioux a determined enemy to the white man. While among his own people he was always affable and genial, he became boastful and domineering in his dealings with the hated race. He once remarked that "if we wish to make any impression upon the pale-face, it is necessary to put on ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... prairie around it being very fertile, the population latterly had been growing rapidly. When first the disturbance broke out, it was feared that there would be trouble with the Stoney Crees in this region; for Poundmaker, a great brawling Indian chief, is always ready, like his boastful brother, Big Bear, to join in any revolt against authority, Poundmaker, for many a year, has done little save to smoke, drink tea among the squaws, and tell lies, as long as the Saskatchewan river, about all the battles he fought when he was a young man, and how terrible was his name over ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... another bad names over the sad case of Little-Faith, had tried to tell one another why that unhappy pilgrim's faith was so small, and how both their own faith and his might from that day have been made more. Hopeful, for some reason or other, was in a rude and boastful mood of mind that day, and Christian was more tart and snappish than we have ever before seen him; and, altogether, the opportunity of learning something useful out of Little-Faith's story has been all but lost to us. But, now, since there are so many of Little-Faith's ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... dear. Adieu, adieu! Oh dear, oh dear, what ever shall I do? Adelma urged me to my boastful prating— She always is so very aggravating; I'd like to drop a lump of deadly pison In her next cup of "best strong-flavoured Hyson." I do declare my brain's all in a fuddle— Fo-hi, do help me out of this sad muddle! I'll sacrifice another guinea-pig, ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... trickles down that third and darker thought,—the thought of the things themselves, the confused, half-conscious mutter of men who are black and whitened, crying "Liberty, Freedom, Opportunity—vouchsafe to us, O boastful World, the chance of living men!" To be sure, behind the thought lurks the afterthought,—suppose, after all, the World is right and we are less than men? Suppose this mad impulse within is all wrong, some mock ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... this boastful statement with interest. She not only believed it, but had observed that as Montgomery neared his climax his stammering became less pronounced. This coincided with the Cyclopedia and suggested the first lesson she should give. But she ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... to Queen Meav. And she, full of anger, decided to make good the boastful words of her messenger and take ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... have not died in vain; and carry home to your rejoicing families the assurance that you have not lived in vain. For more than that homes shall be peaceful, more than that hearts shall be happy, is it that religion shall be free. But one thing let us remember: strong hearts are not boastful; not in our own might do we go forth to this battle. 'Christo duec,'—'with Christ for our leader,'—this is our courage. Our flag, whose motto ends with this, may well begin, 'Nil desperandum—'Never despair.' We never have despaired; we have known only hope, and ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... Hunt's unmoral nature that this Maggie, through whom he was trying to symbolize so much, he knew to be a petty larcenist: shoplifting and matters of similar consequence. She had been cynically frank about this to him; casual, almost boastful. Her possessing a bent toward such activities was hardly to be wondered at, with her having Old Jimmie as her father, and the Duchess as a landlady, and having for acquaintances such gentlemen as Barney Palmer and this returning ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... yes, even more significant, all measures of deception and boastful "ruses de guerre," and even all attempts to hush up the news of German accomplishments and whenever possible to suppress it completely—all these efforts have been futile. Our results surpass the expectations that had been cherished. Who knows how many accomplishments other than those ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... and boastful son of Mars, at heart a bully, if not a coward, is represented as ever aching for a fight, in which his domineering spirit and rough-and-tumble ways for a time gave him the advantage over abler, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... isolated in a dug-out, holding the reins of his wires over a section of line adjoining the section we had just left. Before we proceeded we must look over his shelter from shell-storms. The only time that British generals become boastful is over their dug-outs. They take all the pride in them of the man who has bought a plot of land and built himself a home; and, like him, they keep on making improvements and calling attention to them. I must say that this was one of ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... soon became a little boastful of his precocious pupil, and when there came a public concert for the benefit of the poor, we find reference made to Chopin thus, "A child not yet eight years of age played, and connoisseurs say he promises to replace Mozart." In reality the boy was nearer twelve than eight, but ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... absolutist divine- right monarchy, and this at the very time when Louis XIV was holding majestic court at Versailles and all the lesser princes on the Continent were zealously patterning their proud words and boastful deeds after the model of the Grand Monarch. In that day a mere parliament was to become ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... came a burning of fish panniers defective in measure; while in the reign of Edward III. some false chopins (wine measures) were destroyed. This was rough justice, but still the seizures seem to have been far fewer than they would be in our boastful epoch. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... villain, but all my agony of mind centered on the imminent danger confronting Dorothy Fairfax, and those unsuspecting men. All my preconceived impressions of Sanchez had vanished; he was no longer in my imagination a weakling, a boastful, cowardly bravado, a love-sick fool; but a leader of desperate men, a villain of the deepest dye—the dreaded pirate, Black Sanchez, whose deeds of crime were without number, and whose name was infamous. Confronted by Fairfax's ill-guarded ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... sunset when, according to promise, the Yankees came on board, and spent a long evening with us. They were a free, open-hearted, boastful, conceited, good-humoured set of fellows, and a jolly night we had of it in the forecastle, while the mates and captains were enjoying themselves and spinning ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... party was under the command of Major Grant, a conceited, overbearing officer, who was as ignorant of Indian tactics as a baby. Besides, his extreme self-confidence made him boastful and reckless, as he subsequently found to his sorrow and shame. One of ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... slaying a human, although he was a savage; and how do I know that he was a just Injin; and that he has not been taken away suddenly to anything but happy hunting-grounds. When it's onsartain whether good or evil has been done, the wisest way is not to be boastful—still, I should like Chingachgook to know that I haven't discredited the Delawares, or ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... rifles and common and lots of nice crisp Bolshevik money and with boastful stories of how they had whipped the invading foreigners on other fields in the fall and with invective against the invaders these leaders soon excited quite a large following of fighting men from the numerous villages. With growing power they rounded up unwilling men and drafted them into the ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... the hosses, suh, who have been a glory to our state,' he says, 'but one otheh had as game a heart as this superb creature. I refer to Sweet Alice, suh—a race mayah of such quality that the world marveled. Not in a boastful manner, suh, but with propah humility, let me say that I had the honor to breed and raise Sweet Alice, and that she bore my colors when she won the tenth renewal ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... sympathy. He was at once taken into the house and the doctor sent for. What poor Tom suffered for the rest of that day and all the night, only those who have broken a leg can tell, and added to his pain was the feeling that he had shown all Allan's friends what a boastful fellow he was. ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... old overseer cordially, in a half drunken endeavor to be natural. The old man glanced sadly up at the bloated, boastful face, and thought of the beautiful one it once had been. He thought of the fine, brilliant mind and marveled that with ten years of drunkenness it still retained its strength. And the Bishop remembered that in spite ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... is so equivocal, and his grouping of the Central and South American Republics so prominent, and the boastful allusion to the "inexhaustible" resources of the United States, may be considered as a premeditated threat to ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the interest of society. It would capacitate men of moderate abilities to practise the art of healing with real advantage to the public; it would enable every one of literary acquirements to distinguish the genuine disciples of medicine from those of boastful effrontery, or of wily address; and would teach mankind in some important situations ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... tongues were loosened. He spoke of the happiness that was now certainly theirs, of the folly of not breaking sooner out of that magnificent prison of latter-day life, of the old romantic days that had passed from the world for ever. And then he became boastful. He took up the sword that lay on the ground beside him, and she took it from his hand and ran a tremulous ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... No boastful splendour round thy bier, No blazon'd trophies o'er thy grave; But thou had'st more, the soldier's tear, The heart—warm offering of ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Apes, With laughter wild and gay; They tried to catch that boastful one, But he always got away; So they yelled at him in chorus, Which he minded not a whit; And they pelted him with cocoanuts, Which didn't seem to hit; And then they gave him reasons, Which they thought ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... the while a defiant self-assertion? And on the side of individualism, what do we see? Paltry meanness in abundance, embroidered selfishness, idle self-absorption, the craving to be conspicuous at all costs, repulsive hypocrisy, lack of courage despite all boastful talk, a lukewarm attitude towards all spiritual tasks, but the busiest industry ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... was a shower of blows on the door, so heavy that the whole building shook beneath them, and Alric almost wished that his boastful threat had been left unsaid. He recollected at that moment, however, that there was a hole under the eaves of the roof just above the door. It had been constructed for the purpose of preventing attacks of this kind. The boy ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... water supply, the sanitation, the Huns and Hunnesses and a few other beastlinesses. One can admire even the statue of Wissmann, the great explorer, that looks with fixed eyes to the Congo in the eye of the setting sun. He is symbolical of everything that a boastful Germany can pretend to. For at his feet is a native Askari looking upward, with adoring eye, to the "Bwona Kuba" who has given him the priceless boon of militarism, while with both hands the soldier lays a flag—the imperial flag of Germany—across ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... that for interest and genuine worth is equal to any of the lines penned by Mr. Samuel Smiles, is The Autobiography of Peter Taylor, just issued by Mr. Gardner of Paisley. It is the story of a self-made man, related in no boastful spirit, but abounding with homely touches and delightful reminiscences.... It is a most notable little book, abounding with capital stories, the pawky humour of which will be ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... the fact that the Austrians had not been beaten—that Napoleon had been compelled to fall back with his army and to take refuge on the island of Lobau, was regarded as a victory, which was announced in the most boastful manner. But if it was a victory, the Austrians did not know how to profit by it. Instead of uniting their forces and attacking Lobau, where the French army was encamped, huddled together, and exhausted by the long and murderous struggle—where the ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... of aspiration, no pandering of his gift and genius to please the world, no surrender of art for the sake of fame or filthy lucre, no falseness to his ideal, no base pessimism, no slavery to science yet no boastful ignorance of its good, no morbid naturalism, no devotion to the false forms of beauty, no despair of man, no retreat from men into a world of sickly or vain beauty, no abandonment of the great ideas or disbelief in their ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... With a boastful laugh he repeated his assertion that it didn't take much courage to open a sealed door, especially when there might be a fortune concealed behind it. In his opinion it was cowardly to let oneself be frightened ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... intolerance which once pervaded all slaveholding communities, in whatever State of the Union, was here rampant to an unusual degree. The rural inhabitants were marked by the strong characteristics of the frontier,—fondness of adventure, recklessness of exposure or danger to life, a boastful assertion of personal right, privilege, or prowess, a daily and hourly familiarity with the use of fire-arms. These again were heightened by two special influences—the presence of Indian tribes whose reservations lay just ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... overconfident and boastful, I think," said Corinne gravely. "They like to win their battles before they fight them, and beat back the foe before he appears. But we shall ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... shucking a given heap of corn or cutting (with sickles) an allotted patch of wheat. Among the men the bravos or bullies often were dandies also in the backwoods fashions, wearing their hair long and delighting in the rude finery of hunting-shirts embroidered with porcupine quills; they were loud, boastful, and profane, given to coarsely bantering one another. Brutally savage fights were frequent; the combatants, who were surrounded by rings of interested spectators, striking, kicking, biting, and gouging. The fall ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... conceited, boastful old thing, and even misfortune could not humble her. I was so annoyed that I felt coldly even toward Antonia and listened unsympathetically when she told me her father ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... sighed. "Sire," said he, "old age is boastful; and it is pardonable for old men to praise themselves when others no longer do it. It is very possible I said that; but the fact is, sire, I am very much fatigued, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... there might be anything worse. She pressed her hands to her eyes and tried to force a calm steadiness into her soul. Somehow she had an utter distaste for going back into that library and hearing their boastful chatter. Yet she must go. She had been hoping all the afternoon for her cousin's arrival to send the other two away. Now that was out of the question and she must use her own tact to get pleasantly rid of them. With a sigh she opened her door and ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... declared war against Greece, all his courtiers encouraged his boastful temper, which forgot how unsubstantial his grounds for confidence were. One declared that the Greeks would not endure to hear the news of the declaration of war, and would take to flight at the first rumour of his approach; another, that with such a vast army ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... her. Cocksure he was, and before long she knew him boastful; but competence sat on him, none the less. She thought she could see why he was held to be the most deadly bloodhound on a trail that even Arizona could produce. That he was fearless she did not need to be told, any more than she needed a certificate that on ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... himself, and of hitting hard at whatsoever seems to him hateful and mean; but at the core of him there is genuine gentleness and honest sympathy, brave humanity and sweet kindliness. Perhaps it is boastful for us to think that these characteristics which we see in Mark Twain are characteristics also of the American people as a whole; but it is pleasant to ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... that he had been conducted to the spirit world." As an orator, he is said to have been even more powerful than Tecumseh himself, and his great influence in after years among the various tribes would seem to bear that statement out. However, he was boastful, arrogant, at times cruel, and never enjoyed the reputation for honesty and integrity that his more distinguished brother did. In personal appearance he was not prepossessing. He had lost one eye, "which defect he concealed by wearing a dark veil or handkerchief over the ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... factor's eyes she was a sight that weakened the knees beneath him and set him quaking with a new fear. He dared not speak and bring her gaze upon him, the memory of his boastful words in the ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... firesides of the Dakotas of today, we recognize the very texture of the thought of a simple, grave, and sincere people, living in intimate contact and friendship with the big out-of-doors that we call Nature; a race not yet understanding all things, not proud and boastful, but honest and childlike and fair; a simple, sincere, and gravely thoughtful people, willing to believe that there may be in even the everyday things of life something not yet fully understood; a race that can, without any loss of native dignity, gravely consider ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... it in future with elder-stalk squirts charged with rosewater? Would you deal lighter blows rather than heavier ones? Would you give up the contest leaving any available means unapplied? I am in no boastful mood. I shall not do more than I can, and I shall do all I can, to save the government, which is my sworn duty, as well as my personal inclination. I shall do nothing in malice. What I deal with is too vast for ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... manner half mocking—half patronising—and made no effort whatever to be agreeable to him. She was preoccupied; and the stout, shy man in his new suit only bored her. As for him, he sat and watched her; his small, amazed eyes took in her ways with Cecile, alternately boastful and tyrannical; her airs towards Lucy; her complete indifference to her brother's life and interests. When he got up to go, he took leave of her with all the old timid gaucherie. But if, when he entered the room, there had been anything left in his mind of the old ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Very boastful was Iagoo; Never heard he an adventure But himself had met a greater; Never any deed of daring But himself had done a bolder; Never any marvellous story But himself could ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... courage to live my life, and the endurance to overcome the disappointments that may come to me. May I not be neglectful of the great opportunities of which I am privileged to take advantage. May I not be pretentious of what I have not done, or boastful of what I am, but with my best ability live ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... is not reasonable I should continue our engagement to its denouement, since by that boastful parade of skill I have inadvertently turned you into a blind man. Can you not stanch your wound sufficiently to make possible a renewal of our exercise ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... a kind of boastful sincerity about the man which convinced me. But his words put me in ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... which burst without any warning, like a pair of gigantic hands clapping. Sometimes a few 'Little Willies' would strike Anton's Farm, which was included in our trench line, but no attempt was made to level this valuable ruin, which concealed patient and boastful snipers. The Warwicks on our left expiated the sins of the whole Division, and on most days it was possible to watch with a feeling of complete security a variety of shells bursting among them a few hundred yards away; while overhead ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... coveted favors, they are consequently, for the most part, very prone to credulity. The human mind is readily swayed this way or that in times of doubt, especially when hope and fear are struggling for the mastery, though usually it is boastful, ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... modified them to suit his own notions. Far from taking the scrupulous care to be exact which distinguishes modern editors, he exaggerated facts; and, dwelling too much on the personal qualities of the traveller, he gave to the narrative of the journey a boastful tone ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... to sail at daylight The troops went aboard to-night. We waited until it was signalled that it was so. You must not fail. The biggest of those transports once belonged to Germany. You must teach these boastful Americans their lesson. That one boat you must destroy for certain. Beside the transports to-night lie five vessels of war, two battleships, three cruisers. Them you must destroy also, if there is time. To each transport, two bombs, to each warship, two bombs—twenty you carry. ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... wherever men have been superior in character, as well as in gift or rank, to those about them, something of this spirit of the good eldest child in a family is bound to be manifested. But just as such a child may be veritably boastful and vain at other times,—however purely now and then, in crises of apparent difficulty or danger, its vaunt and strut may spring from real kindness and a considerate wish to inspire courage in the younger and weaker;—so ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... I hate a swift death! Jack, I be a sinner—I will confess: I lied to thee yesterday—never kiss'd the three maids I spoke of—never kiss'd but one i' my life, an' her a tap-wench, that slapp'd my face for 't, an' so don't properly count. I be a very boastful man!" ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... I wonder well how you can do this thing when I am here to say you nay. And when my sword is even more severe in keeping you from boastful attempt." ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... being myself the cause that the execution of yesterday's contract is postponed, I would fain keep it suspended over your head for an indefinite term of years. No one resigns willingly such rights as yesterday gave me; and, let me speak a boastful word, sooner than yield them up to man of woman born, I would hold a fair field against all comers, with grinded sword and sharp spear, from sunrise to sunset, for three days' space. But what I ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... peoples of the free countries would not suffer it. Germany cannot make peace, for she is bound by heavy promises to her people, and she cannot deliver the goods. She is tied to the stake, and must fight the course. Emaciated, exhausted, repeating, as if in a bad dream, the old boastful appeals to military glory, she must go on till she drops, and then at last there will ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... offend me," he said gravely. "I have told you this in good faith and you reward me with disbelief and boastful talk. Your enemies are more powerful than you think, and your own people utterly defenceless ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... rather boastful, and due in a great measure to the fact that they all, himself included, felt that, for the present at any rate, they had no danger to ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... from exacting vengeance on some occasions, he had scarcely a trait whereon the mind can rest with any satisfaction. Weak and easily led, puerile in his gusts of passion and his complete abandonment of himself to them—selfish, fickle, boastful, cruel, superstitious, licentious—he exhibits to us the Oriental despot in the most contemptible of all his aspects—that wherein the moral and the intellectual qualities are equally in defect, and the career is one unvarying course of vice and folly. From Xerxes ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... is Despotism intact in the Law, but unparalleled crimes and cruelties against the people have been encouraged and even after boastful admissions and clearest proofs, left unpunished. The spirit of unrepentant cruelty has thus been allowed to permeate ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... endurance, his hair-raising escapes, or his astounding prowess with musket and fishing-line. Stories grew in terms of prodigious achievement as they passed from tongue to tongue, and the scant regard for anything approaching the truth in these matters became a national eccentricity. The habitant was boastful in all that concerned himself or his race; never did a people feel more firmly assured that it was the salt of the earth. He was proud of his ancestry, and proud of his allegiance; and so are his descendants of today even though their ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... one of those young men who find pastime in flirtations with nursery maids or kitchen girls. The very thought of it offended his good taste. Once, in listening to the boastful tales of a modern Don Juan, who was relating his gallant adventures with a handsome waiter girl at a hotel, Preston had remarked, "I would as soon think of using my dinner napkin for a necktie, as finding romance with a ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... continued, with a furtive scowl at Johnson, whose face beamed with gratification, "you have had your day, and, blind bat as you are, you were beginning to see it just for a moment, but this fine speech of yours has thrown you off your guard again. You doubtless think that with a few empty boastful words you have recovered your lost position, but you are mistaken, my good friend, as you will find out when you return from your next cruise—if indeed you ever return at all. Well, enjoy your own opinion while you can; rejoice in the ease with ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... self-control. The wise commander knows the weak and strong points of his fort. Too much self-inspection leads to morbidness; too little, conducts to careless, hasty action. The average American does not know himself well enough; he proceeds with a boastful confidence, and is always in the right, so he thinks. If we are conscious of a failing we naturally strive ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... and greatly stimulated our discourse. Yet, I must confess, it was drunk chiefly by the Frenchman and Jordan; for Wells barely touched his glass, while I had never acquired a taste for such liquor. De Croix waxed somewhat boastful, toward the last; but we paid small heed to him, for I was deeply interested in Captain Wells's earlier experiences among the savages, which he related gravely and with much detail. Jordan proved himself a reckless, roistering young fellow, full of ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... pine-tree shillings," prompted boastful Johnny in a whisper, and Peace plunged boldly into the half-heard story, wondering within herself how she was going to end it respectably when she did not know the true ending because her mind had ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... much," went on Olaf. "He was boastful. The Russian pressed him to show this thing. After a while the red one went out and came back with a little golden box. He and the Russian went into the garden. I followed them. There was a lille Hoj—a mound—of stones in ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... himself occurred to him. At first, the fresh air had increased the heady effect of the brandy he had drunk; but afterwards his mind grew clearer than it had been since morning. And the clearer it grew, the less final did his boastful self-assurances become, and the firmer his conviction that, when all explanations had been made, there remained something that could not be explained. His hysteria of an hour before had passed; he grew steadily ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... what this young fox may mean! False, wily, boastful, are these Tartar boys. For if I now confess this thing he asks, And hide it not, but say: Rustum is here! 350 He will not yield indeed, nor quit our foes, But he will find some pretext not to fight, And praise my fame, and proffer courteous ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... boastful, gold-withered, shrivelled up old man, pause? How dare he throw such defiance in the face of Almighty God over his unrighteous gains!—yes, unrighteous gains, for mammon held them in trust. None had ever gone into the treasure-house of God to relieve the suffering, ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... a decisive blow, and stops. He does not dare (by continuing his operations) to assert and complete his mastery. He will strike the blow, but will be on his guard against being vain or boastful or arrogant in consequence of it. He strikes it as a matter of necessity; he strikes it, but not ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... sounds humble when he says, "If it is open to me, I will enter and we will reason together"; but he puts on the garment of humility only that he may be believed. And the virtue in which pride cloaks itself is really boastful. ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... movements are indications of the inward disposition, and this regards chiefly the passions of the soul. Wherefore Ambrose says (De Offic. i, 18) that "from these things," i.e. the outward movements, "the man that lies hidden in our hearts is esteemed to be either frivolous, or boastful, or impure, or on the other hand sedate, steady, pure, and free from blemish." It is moreover from our outward movements that other men form their judgment about us, according to Ecclus. 19:26, "A man is known by his look, and a wise ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Persian king was more likely to admire a muscular than a mental giant. Milo meant more to him than Homer or any hero of the pen. Democedes did marry Milo's daughter, paying a high price for the honor, for the sole purpose, so far as we know, of sending back this boastful message to his friend, the king. And thus ends all we know of the story of ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... differed from the ordinary Benedictine monk of the thirteenth century." [Footnote: Croly, "Promise of American Life," p. 90.] He was not, like Jackson, simply a large, forceful version of the plain American trans-Alleghany citizen; he made no clamorous, boastful show of strength, powerful as he was physically and intellectually. He shared genuinely, with no consciousness of his own distinction, the "good-fellowship of his neighbors, their strength of will, their excellent faith, and above all their innocence." But ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... continued to the Sentry, who, with his boastful spirit crushed, stood trembling in the Sentry-box; "as for you, you have seen too much of the world and its ways. It would be better for you to see a little less of it for ...
— Adventures in Toyland - What the Marionette Told Molly • Edith King Hall
... 'Tis a better palace than this of mine here.' He shook his finger heavily and uttered with a boastful defiance: 'Shalt not say I shower no gifts on her. Shalt not say she has no state. I ha' sent her seven jennets this day. I shall go bring her golden apples on the morrow. Scents she has had o' me; French gowns, Southern ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... purpose. He is bold. He shrinks from nothing. Like Danton, he may cry, "l'audace! l'audace! toujours l'au-dace!" but even his audacity cannot compass this work. The Senator copies the British officer who, with boastful swagger, said that with the hilt of his sword he would cram the "stamps" down the throats of the American people, and he will meet a similar failure. He may convulse this country with a civil feud. Like the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... sex. Women liked that sort of thing. It aroused at once their emulation and their condemnation of each other. He seized the opportunity, but—for some reason, he knew not why—awkwardly and clumsily, with a simulated pathos that was lachrymose, a self-assertion that was boastful, and a dramatic manner that was unreal. Suddenly ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... to lay hands on his prize, just as though the big greenback might recover, and hop into the pond before his very eyes, that possibly Steve was not quite as careful as his boastful words would indicate. ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... been sent out as a sort of guard for Parker. He had lost him at the very beginning of the fight. He might report that he had shot down an enemy hunter machine and killed its pilot, but surely that would sound very bare and very boastful. ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... of them—who made their way from group to group, drinking wherever the chance offered, shouting obscene songs, and making themselves insufferably offensive whenever a man more quietly disposed than his comrades happened to be met. Boastful and quarrelsome, these two, with a few dragoons of different regiments, at length attached themselves to Sempil's Regiment, amongst whom it chanced that a group of men, more quiet and well-behaved ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... Orient. We have undertaken to protect our citizens from proper treatment in foreign lands. We continue steadily to insist on the application of the Monroe Doctrine to the Western Hemisphere. Unless our attitude in these and all similar matters is to be a mere boastful sham we can not afford to abandon our naval programme. Our voice is now potent for peace, and is so potent because we are not afraid of war. But our protestations upon behalf of peace would neither ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... ignorant, boastful quack petted, caressed and patronized by people of culture and refinement, wrote he, such as members of the learned professions, statesmen, philosophers, shrewd merchants and bankers, as well as by worthy mechanics ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... of which she was the mistress. As she finished speaking, he sprang up from his chair, caught her in his arms, and drew her passionately to his breast. But Cicily avoided the kiss he would have pressed on her lips. With her mouth at his ear, she whispered, plaintively now, no longer boastful, only a ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... is incompatible with the craving for those direct and unmixed sensations which were so sought after by some restlessly active gentlemen of the good old days. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch would, perhaps, have looked down on L—n, and have called him a boastful cock-a-hoop coward; it's true he wouldn't have expressed himself aloud. Stavrogin would have shot his opponent in a duel, and would have faced a bear if necessary, and would have defended himself from a brigand in the forest as successfully and as ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... fitting emblem of the English woman, but now, since the world has grown so wise and made such progress in the art of running rapidly downhill, is even the aristocratic British peer quite easy in his mind regarding his fair peeress? Can he leave her to her own devices with safety? Are there not men, boastful too of their "blue blood," who are perhaps ready to stoop to the thief's trick of entering his house during his absence by means of private keys, and stealing away his wife's affections?—and is not she, though a mother of three or four children, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... had he taken such pleasure in a recruit. He swaggered about the room, recounting in boastful tones his influence ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... "pacified." So ran the boastful bando of the captain-general. And this was no exaggeration, as any one could see from the number of beggars there. Of all his military operations, this "pacification" of the western towns and provinces was the most conspicuously successful ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... received help from the kings of Pontus, Arabia, Judaea, Lycaonia, Galatia, and Media. Thus Octavianus held Rome, with its western provinces and hardy legions, while Antony held the Greek kingdom of Ptolemy Phila-delphus. Cleopatra was confident of success and as boastful as she was confident. Her most solemn manner of promising was: "As surely as I shall issue my decrees from the Roman Capitol." But the mind of Antony was ruined by his life of pleasure. He carried her with him into battle, at once his strength and his weakness, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... her brother's boastful triumph. "Do you suppose," she said, wistfully, "that he is like that ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... A little boastful, perhaps. He too had found the head of a statue, digging in his father's orchard. Man or woman?—asked Mrs. Burgoyne. A woman. And handsome? The handsomest lady ever seen. And perfect? Quite perfect. Had she a nose, for instance? He shook his young head in scorn. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... no preaching in mine; there's nothing in it. In law you always have a chance to get into politics and be the president of your ward club or something like that, and from that on it's an easy matter to go on up. You can trust me to know the wires." And so the tenor of his boastful talk ran on, his mother a little bit awed and not altogether satisfied with the new 'Rastus ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Davidson, M.E.C.V.S.,[A] says: 'The treatment described, if carefully carried out and details attended to, will be found a success in dealing with the majority of cases of quittor. If I may be permitted to say so, without being considered boastful, I have yet to see the first case that has ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... boastful fool, who seeks any such thing from you? Do you think that your good looks win you the love of the very flies in the air? Nay, if you were presumptuous enough to address yourself to me, I would show you that I love, and seek to ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... fro declaring his musical powers in his boastful way. If he chose he could rip out the hearts of a dead Municipal Council with a violin, and could set a hospital for paralytics a-dancing. He would have fiddled the children of Hamelin away from the Pied ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... great flourish about his fidelity to Massachusetts. I shall make no profession of zeal for the interests and honor of South Carolina; of that my constituents shall judge. If there be one State in the Union, Mr. President (and I say it not in a boastful spirit), that may challenge comparison with any other for a uniform, zealous, ardent, and uncalculating devotion to the Union, that State is South Carolina. Sir, from the very commencement of the Revolution up to this hour there ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... Notwithstanding his learning, he had stopped short at the ideas he had learned at school. To him the French were a clever people, skilled in practical things, amiable, talkative, but frivolous, susceptible, and boastful, incapable of being serious, or sincere, or of feeling strongly—a people without music, without philosophy, without poetry (except for l'Art Poetique, Beranger and Francois Coppee)—a people of pathos, much gesticulation, exaggerated speech, and pornography. There were not words strong enough ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... responded to my love could give herself to another regardless of me. But have I still a choice? If I love such a woman, even unto madness, shall I turn my back to her and lose everything for the sake of a bit of boastful strength; shall I send a bullet through my brains? I have two ideals of woman. If I cannot obtain the one that is noble and simple, the woman who will faithfully and truly share my life, well then I don't want anything half-way or lukewarm. Then I would rather ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... Rensselaer sent a thousand men across the Niagara to Queenstown to be killed and captured within sight of four thousand troops who refused to go to the help of their comrades. Disgusted and defeated, Van Rensselaer turned over his command to Brigadier-General Alexander Smith, a boastful Irish friend of Madison from Virginia, who issued burlesque proclamations about an invasion of Canada, and then declined to risk an engagement, although he had three Americans to one Englishman. This closed the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Liberty! with profitless endeavour Have I pursued thee many a weary hour; But thou nor swell'st the victor's train, nor ever Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power. Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee, (Nor prayer, nor boastful name delays thee,) Alike from priestcraft's harpy minions, And factious blasphemy's obscener slaves, Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions, The guide of homeless winds, and playmate ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... the resources of the University is not to check the natural history department, but to stimulate all the others? not that the zoological school grows too fast, but that the others do not grow fast enough? This sounds invidious and perhaps somewhat boastful; but it is you and not I who have instituted the comparison. It strikes me you have not hit upon the best remedy for this want of balance. If symmetry is to be obtained by cutting down the most vigorous growth, it seems to me it would be better to have a little irregularity here and there. ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... say that he had known few men without envy, few wits without ill-nature, and no poet without vanity; and I believe his remark is a pretty just one. Vanity has been immemorially the charter of poets. In this, the ancients were more honest than we are. The old poets frequently make boastful predictions of the immortality their works shall acquire them; ours, in their dedications and prefatory discourses, employ much eloquence to praise their patrons, and much seeming modesty to condemn themselves, or at least to apologise for their productions to the world. ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... boastful words when the door fell with a crash, and Frank Merriwell himself, with his friends behind him, stood in the doorway. He had cast aside the wig and a part of his disguise, and the startled trio of rascals ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... noble and affectionate praises and appreciations of our old boastful big Standard-Bearer, now gone silent forever, his real and imaginary battles all fought, his work done, his life honorably ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... victorious army. It had never been defeated. It had faith in its ideals. Those ideals were neither selfish nor arrogant. It wore no boastful "Gott mit uns" on its belt. It desired only the opportunity of striking low that nation which dared to dictate terms to the Almighty as well as to men. It braved three thousand miles of submarine peril to meet such ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... at this time but lately returned from his triumphs in South Carolina, and he was more boastful and arrogant than ever. After Washington he was second in command, but he had no doubt in his own mind that he ought to be first. Now he was not slow to let others know what he thought. And while Washington, noble and upright gentleman as he was, trusted Lee as a friend, ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... land, in the bustle of preparation and the excitement of novelty, all was sunshine and promise. The Canadians, especially, who, with their constitutional vivacity, have a considerable dash of the gascon, were buoyant and boastful, and great brag arts as to the future; while all those who had been in the service of the Northwest Company, and engaged in the Indian trade, plumed themselves upon their hardihood and their capacity to endure privations. If Mr. Astor ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... aristocracies and democracies in the sliding scale of human development. There is a common though wholly unfounded belief knocking about the world, that the aristocrat is better in intelligence, in culture, in arts, in manners, than the ordinary plebeian. The fact is, being, like all barbarians, a boastful creature, he has gone on so long asserting his own profound superiority by birth to the world around him—a superiority as of fine porcelain to common clay—that the world around him has at last actually begun to accept him at his own valuation. Most ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... surname, which he had inherited from his father, and then his Christian name, which his mother had chosen for him at his baptism. These names were sacred to him, and although there may have been a little boastful sound about them, he had always ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... and easy touch and the grace and humour of a Claude Duval? Let us be honest with ourselves. How many of us really wish to be corsairs? Which of us would not have been a reiver in the old reiving days? Have we not noticed in ourselves and other Borderers an undeniable complacency, a boastful pride in a mask of apology that would not deceive an infant, when we say, "Oh yes; certainly a good many of my ancestors were hanged for lifting cattle." And, however "indifferent honest" we ourselves may be, which of us does not lay aside even that most futile mask and boast unashamedly when we ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... our main advantages in the conflict. Out of hundreds of outposts like the one we were just in, for example, only four others have ever been discovered, and the Zards still have no clue where our fortress is." This he said in a boastful manner, but as he did a faint spirit of sorrow spread across his face for an instant, as if in memory of one of the raids ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... the minimum to himself, as anyone may go on repeating. Probably the remark of the New Zealanders in answer to the commander's praise would be, "Thank you. Why not?" as if this were what the New Zealanders expected of themselves. They take much for granted about New Zealand, without being boastful. ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... mirth. Men hung helplessly to other men or flapped their hands and staggered about, choking with their merriment. The savageness of the punishment administered to the boastful Kyle might have shocked persons with squeamish dispositions; it was wildly humorous in the estimation of those men o' the forest. They were used to having their jokes ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... Edouard's slightly boastful account of his prowess. Then she looked at him with that deep and holy sorrow of mothers to whom fame is no compensation for the blood it sheds. Oh! ungrateful indeed is the child who has seen that look bent upon ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... after that. He dominated the conversation, much more so than on the previous evening, when there had been some little difficulty in extracting any account of his exploits from him. Now he was willing to talk of them, and he talked well, not exactly with modesty, but with no trace of boastful quality, such as would certainly have aroused the prejudices of his listeners ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... tractable, and as spick and span as if they had just been taken out of a band-box. As to what exactly happened to them during their manipulation in this same military band-box not one of them was ever known to allude in a boastful spirit; but the lay mind had a very strong suspicion that not much time was wasted inside ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... bloodshed. Tradition says that there was once a Chinese kingdom at the north of Borneo, whose chiefs married into the families of the principal Dyak chiefs; but it is the misfortune of the Chinese character to be both boastful and cowardly, and when they had irritated the Malays by their big words, they stood no chance of prevailing against them in war. If their enemies did not run away after the first attack and discharge of firearms, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... to part with O'Neal, in spite of the poor fellow's entreaties to be allowed to remain with him. Miss Macdonald had only passports for three and the danger was urgent. He was a faithful and affectionate friend, this O'Neal, if a little boastful and muddle-headed. He could shortly afterwards have escaped to France—as O'Sullivan did—in a French ship, if he had not insisted on going to Skye to try to fetch off the Prince. He missed the Prince, and fell into the hands ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... somewhat boastful discourse these had ceased, When came in hosts a crowd around the Pole, Parting on each side to make way for one, A stranger, craving audience of their Queen. What saw those weird and piercing eyes, full turned To meet the ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... little boastful laugh delayed his movements, and Goodine was upon him. Two or three terrible short-arm blows were exchanged, and ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... excuses, or of declaring that life an essentially happy one. The good Father chose Grief and clave to her as a bride; he chose the sights and sounds of grief as his surroundings and he wrought on silently under his fearful burden of holy sorrow until the release was given. He spoke no boastful words of contentment save when he thought of the rest that was coming for him; he gallantly accepted the crudest and foulest conditions of his dreadful environment, and he uttered no craving for sympathy, no wish for personal aid. If we think ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... he appears before the public. The unworthy singer, on the other hand, is ignorant and indolent. What he learns he will not communicate to others. His voice is hoarse and untrained, and he is at once envious and boastful."[9] ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... exerting myself exceedingly to accomplish this purpose. Undoubtedly this must have made me a very undesirable person to contend with in a fight. Luckily for me, I have never been afflicted with a quarrelsome or vindictive mind. This is not a boastful or frivolous assertion, but is uttered in the spirit of thankfulness to the allwise Creator ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... usurpation; against modest, single-minded, righteous, and brave resistance to encroachment is arrayed boastful, double-tongued, selfish, and treacherous ambition to possess. God ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... of stones in my rescue. While gathering fruit, they found me asleep, went home, held a council, came the next day with their elephants and horses, overwhelmed the few giants watching me, and carried me off. Jubilant over their victory, the smaller boys were childishly boastful, the bigger boys less ostentatious, while the girls, although their eyes flashed more, were not so talkative as usual. The woman of Bulika no ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... presided at a Town Hall meeting of the local branch of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and took advantage of the occasion to slander a considerable section of his fellow citizens. With a pious arrogance which is peculiar to his boastful faith, he turned what should have been a humanitarian assembly into a receptacle for his discharge of insolent fanaticism. Parentage is a natural fact, and the love of offspring is a well-nigh universal law of animal life. It would seem, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... little sumacs, in lonely places, Bowed all summer with dust and heat, Like clean-clad children with rain-washed faces, Are dressed in scarlet from head to feet. And never a flower had the boastful summer, In all the blossoms that decked her sod, So royal hued as that later comer The ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... he said, with a grave smile, "we men of the south are rather boastful of our hospitality. But true hospitality consists in something besides eating and drinking with those whose companionship is a sufficient recompense for all that we do for them. It clothes the naked, feeds the hungry, shelters the distressed. ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... not for a moment allow weight to the topic, that "it is dangerous to disbelieve wrongly;" for I felt, and had always felt, that it gave a premium to the most boastful and tyrannizing superstition:—as if it were not equally dangerous to believe wrongly! Nevertheless, I tried to plead for farther delay, by asking: Is not the subject too vast for me to decide upon?—Think how many wise and good men have ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... seemed the son of Ecglaf {14a} in boastful speech of his battle-deeds, since athelings all, through the earl's great prowess, beheld that hand, on the high roof gazing, foeman's fingers, — the forepart of each of the sturdy nails to steel was likest, — heathen's "hand-spear," hostile warrior's claw uncanny. 'Twas clear, ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... the house," he informed her with a boastful air. "I had need to begin to feel my feet again. You are pampering me here, and to pamper an invalid is bad; it keeps him an invalid. Now I ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... Lincoln, there are other respects in which this chapter-house surpasses all its rivals. In size, in richness of decoration, in boldness of outline, and in aerial lightness it is unequalled. Above all, it still contains six windows of magnificent stained glass. Even now it seems to justify its boastful inscription: ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... SLAUGHTER cease? A while he crouch'd, O Victor France! Beneath the lightning of thy lance; With treacherous dalliance courting PEACE—[163:A] But soon upstarting from his coward trance The boastful bloody Son of Pride betray'd His ancient hatred of the dove-eyed Maid. A cloud, O Freedom! cross'd thy orb of Light, And sure he deem'd that orb was set in night: For still does MADNESS roam on GUILT'S ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... life of the Italians, though much reduced in vigor, was therefore still, as formerly, concentrated in cities marked by distinct local qualities, and boastful of their ancient glories. The Courts of Ferrara and Urbino continued to form centers for literary and artistic coteries. Venice remained the stronghold of mental unrestraint and moral license, where thinkers uttered their thoughts with tolerable ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... unsympathetic, harsh, insolent, domineering, based upon the arrogant assumption that the Hungarians were incapable of managing their own affairs without the guidance of Austrian wisdom and the support of Austrian steadiness. But the Hungarians, united among themselves, putting their trust, not in boastful, vapouring, and self-seeking agitators, but in honest, truthful, high-minded, and capable statesmen, persevered in a course of firm, but temperate and constitutional, national self-assertion, until the Austrians were compelled to put away from them their supercilious airs of natural ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... Even that taken from us! The American Vice-Consul has been here, and still thinks that we may get away in a fortnight. We are sick with hoping and being disappointed. The German Press full of the most virulent abuse of England, "treacherous," "hypocritical," "lying," "cowardly," "boastful," there is no bad name they don't call her! Russia and France and Belgium get no lashings of scorn and fury and hatred such as England does! At last the account of Sir Edward Goschen's interviews with Von Jagow and ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... Supper which is now but a shadow on the wall of S. Maria delle Grazie. And above all, we may see how the true splendour of Titian exposes the ostentation of Rubens, as the sun will make even the greatest fire look dingy and boastful. Gradually Vandyck, shy and of a quiet, serene spirit, becomes aware of this, and, led by the immeasurable glory of the Venetians, slowly escapes from that "Flemish manner" to be master of himself; so that, after he has painted in the manner of Titian at Palermo, he returns ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... boastful courages. Theodorus answered Lysimachus, who threatened to kill him, "Thou wilt do a brave feat," said he, "to attain the force of a cantharides." The majority of philosophers are observed to have either purposely anticipated, or hastened ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... under compulsion, and caused a feeling of dislike to the person honoured, and of absolute hatred against those who enforced them, but showed no gratitude or desire to honour the dead. They were mere displays of barbaric pride and boastful extravagance, which wastes its superfluity on vain and useless objects; whereas, here was a private citizen who died in a foreign land, without his wife, his children or his friends, and, without any one asking for it or compelling them to it, he was escorted to his grave, buried and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... producer into line and often makes it a matter of business life and death that one should make progress in method and quality. That his shoes wear is a matter of pride to the shoe manufacturer. "Blank tires are good tires" is not to be regarded as merely a boastful advertisement. If it was it would ...
— Creating Capital - Money-making as an aim in business • Frederick L. Lipman
... the blue-black night, and it was not so very long until he could discern a flickering patch of darkness sweeping the sky before him. The Cardinal flew steadily in a straight sweep, until with a throb of triumph in his heart, he arose in his course, and from far overhead, flung down a boastful challenge to the king and his followers, as he sailed above them and ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... disaffection to rally round. A pamphlet which was at the time disseminated amongst the people openly called him the heir of Holland; and his engraved portrait, which was publicly exhibited, bore the boastful inscription:— ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Hygiene has done its part; and other circumstances have conduced to the same result. Though neither Dr. Koch nor any other man living has been able as yet positively to meet and vanquish consumption in open battle, yet the goblin has in a measure been robbed of his terrors. He is no longer boastful and victorious over the ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... our losses by enabling us to attack in open formation. Every animal will fight when forced to do so. The cowardly wolf will attack only in packs; and one of the main reasons for the wholesale holocausts of mass attacks seems to have been that same lack of real courage in the boastful and militarist element. He dare not ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... offered they would find a passage at the point of the sword. Gallus hesitated, but his men induced him to risk an engagement. Three thousand legionaries, some hastily recruited Belgic auxiliaries, and a mob of peasants and camp-followers, who were as cowardly in action as they were boastful before it, came pouring out simultaneously from all the gates, hoping with their superior numbers to surround the Batavians. But these were experienced veterans. They formed up into columns[298] in deep formation ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... the common mind, Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined. 150 Boastful and rough, your first son is a squire; The next a tradesman, meek, and much a liar; Tom struts a soldier, open, bold, and brave; Will sneaks a scrivener, an exceeding knave: Is he a Churchman? then he's fond of power: A Quaker? sly: A Presbyterian? sour: A smart free-thinker? ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... with giving their children the old Christian names which were carved on the headstones, and which, in time, added a still more profound darkness to the anti-heraldic memory of the Morgesons. They had no knowledge of that treasure which so many of our New England families are boastful of—the Ancestor who came over in the Mayflower, or by himself, with a grant of land from Parliament. It was not known whether two or three brothers sailed together from the Old World and settled ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... turning my head back at every other step in the hope that a cab with its flag up might suddenly materialise; but hoping against hope. It was miserable, it was depressing, and it was really rather shameful: by the year 1919 A.D. (I thought) more should have been achieved by boastful mankind in the direction ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... propagation of his own. It does not seem to have been the "vanity" of Hakem which induced him to introduce a new religion. The curious point in the new faith is that Hamza, the son of Ali, the real founder of the Unitarian religion, (such is its boastful title,) was content to take a secondary part. While Hakem was God, the one Supreme, the Imam Hamza was his Intelligence. It was not in his "divine character" that Hakem "hated the Jews and Christians," but in that of a Mahometan bigot, which he displayed in the earlier years of his ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon |
