"Boasting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into months, bits of harmony and snatches of melody became more and more frequent in Penelope's lessons, and the "exercises" were supplemented by occasional "pieces"—simple, yet boasting a name. But when Penelope played "Down by the Mill," one heard only the notes—accurate, rhythmic, an excellent imitation; when Hester played it, one might catch the whir of the wheel, the swish of the foaming brook, ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... for serpents he was punished for his great crimes by the return of the enemy, who again laid siege to the capital. This happened at the very moment when he was surrounded by his guests, and was boasting of his possession of the air-car, the magic golden ring, and the rest ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... vagabonds had come, too much to the exclusion of mechanics and laborers. For relief from the turbulence and external dangers of this period, the colony owed much to Captain John Smith, who, after all allowance for his boasting, certainly displayed great courage and energy in emergencies. He, too, it was who did most to explore the country up the James ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... with thee at its head, and sedition was uttered, with much vain-boasting of what the fleet of the Lagunes could perform against the fleet ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Astoria, and, veering about, the two parties encamped together for the night. The leaders, of course, observed a due decorum, but some of the subalterns could not restrain their chuckling exultation, boasting that they would soon plant the British standard on the walls of Astoria, and drive the Americans ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... fellow citizens were left exposed to the fury of an ungovernable mob, made up of the base, the ignorant, and vile, the very dregs of society; and probably led on by slaveholders, who of all men are the most execrable; while boasting of liberty, he tramples on the dearest rights of men and in the greatest robber of ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... was wishing her good-night under the porch. She forgot her cue for a moment, and became natural. "I feel so very, very tired," she said. I remember how drearily she said it, and how the tears glittered in her weary eyes. I remember, too, how, ten minutes later, I heard that amiable youth boasting of what had happened, and giving a hideous travestie of her attempts to captivate him, till at last my wrath was kindled, and, to his great confusion (for he was of a timid disposition), I spoke, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... crossing a river on a ferry-boat, he overheard a man cursing Peter Cartwright and threatening dire vengeance against him, and boasting that he could "whip any preacher the Lord ever made." This roused our preacher's ire, and accosting the man, he told him he was Peter Cartwright, and that if he wanted to whip him he must do so then. The fellow became confused, and said ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... for we were getting rather hungry, but as they did not give us the chance, we walked on. Galashiels was formerly only a village, the "shiels" meaning shelters for sheep, but it had risen to importance owing to its woollen factories. It was now a burgh, boasting a coat-of-arms on which was represented a plum-tree with a fox on either side, and the motto, "Sour plums of Galashiels." The origin of this was an incident that occurred in 1337, in the time of Edward III, when some Englishmen who were retreating stopped here to eat some wild plums. ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... up and down Fifth Avenue. Fifth Avenue had trees then instead of shops and on the trees were such funny little worms. They used to hang down and crawl on you. The houses, too, were so nice. They all had piazzas and on the piazzas were honeysuckles. But I fear I am boasting. I don't really remember all that. It was my father who told me. Those must have been the ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... told of it, and no one ever knew since I was alone, and it would have been boasting—but once—I—fought single-handed with that great Christopher Little, whom I met by chance when I was out in the woods, and 'twas two years since, and I, with scarce my full growth, and he pleading for mercy at the second round, with an eye like a blackberry and a nose like a gillyflower, ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... about their own importance, and the value of their own possessions, are disagreeable. We all know such people: and they are made more irritating by the fact, that their boasting is almost invariably absurd and false. I do not mean ethically false, but logically false. For doubtless, in many cases, human beings honestly think themselves and their possessions as much better than other men and their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... grand-aunt, Pisana Renier, married to the Procuratore Vendramin, was a patrician of the old school, of the style that was getting rare a hundred years ago. Her virtue and her pride rendered her unapproachable. Zaffirino, on his part, was in the habit of boasting that no woman had ever been able to resist his singing, which, it appears, had its foundation in fact—the ideal changes, my dear lady, the ideal changes a good deal from one century to another!—and that his first song could make ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... and to thoughts of Anne—to romantic thoughts of worship and service; of becoming worthy of her regard; of immense faithfulness to her image when confronted with the most provocative temptations; to thoughts of self-sacrifice and bravado, of humility and boasting; of some transcending glorification of myself that should make me ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... Morning Post, was boasting to Westmacott of his intimate connexion with the aristocracy. "The area-stocracy, more likely," replied the ex-editor of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... ought to have tempered this; but you are an American, and strong enough at this moment to know the truth. I may pull you through. Without boasting, there is not another man in America, or Europe either, who would ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... "That sounds like boasting," said she, "but it isn't. Reddy Fox is one of the few animals who has succeeded in holding his own against man, and he has done it simply by using his wits. There is no other animal as large as Reddy Fox who has succeeded as he has in living close to the ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... blaming Jesus, for refusing to answer him—boasting of his power, and appealing to our Lord, that he possessed it. Speakest thou not unto me? Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... not a few perfect phrases that made him the power that he was, but an habitual wit that never failed to strip any situation of its vulgar pretense. When a canon of Strassburg Cathedral was showing him over the chapter house and was boasting of the rule that no one should be admitted to a prebend who had not sixteen quarterings on his coat of arms, the humanist dropped his eyes and remarked demurely, with but the flicker of a smile, that he was indeed honored to be in a religious company so noble ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... him and took up his abode in Lag Lane Wood, where his friends joining him, they lived a wild life together, hunting game and making many expeditions through the country. On one occasion he entered Ayr in disguise; in the middle of a crowd he saw some English soldiers, who were boasting that they were superior to the Scots in strength and feats of arms. One of them, a strong fellow, was declaring that he could lift a greater weight than any two Scots. He carried a pole, with which he offered, for a groat, ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... froth of high-sounding ideas and principles. It is a policy, nevertheless, which appeals most strongly to the instincts of self-interest and to the illegal appropriation of other people's property. It revels in the lust of boasting, so deeply ingrained in human nature. In a word, it is a policy which is in direct opposition to the true spirit of religion, to the altruistic ideals of humanity, and to that sentiment of humility and moderation which is the ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... was not a suitor of either Serafina's or Isabelle's; fortunately for them he aimed higher, and was always hoping that some grand lady, who saw him on the stage, would fall violently in love with him, and shower all sorts of favours upon him. He was in the habit of boasting that he had had many delightful adventures of the kind, which Scapin persistently denied, declaring that to his certain knowledge they had never taken place, save in the aspiring lover's own vivid imagination. The exasperating valet, malicious as a monkey, took the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... but I was far too anxious to do justice to the good things placed before me, nor could I keep my mind from dwelling on the sad work I believed then going forward. I soon found that the object of the captain's visit to the shore was no secret. He had been boasting the evening before of what he had done in the duelling way, and congratulating himself on at length being able to reap the revenge he had so long sought, swearing at the time that he would shoot Captain Ceaton through the head, as he would any man who dared to impugn his veracity. ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... Roscius—who without doubt was Edward Alleyn—as contending with Tully, who is Peele. "Among whom," he writes, "in the days of Tully, one Roscius grew to be of such exquisite perfection in his faculty that he offered to contend with the orators of that time in gesture as they did in eloquence, boasting that he would express a passion in as many sundry actions as Tully could discourse it in a variety of phrases. Yet so proud he grew by the daily applause of the people that he looked for honour or reverence to be done him in the streets, which conceit when Tully entered into with a piercing insight, ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... patriotism ran to a low ebb. He knew no Latin, and therefore could not say, "sic vos non vobis," &c., yet he thought it. But after he obtained his little annuity, the love of country of the Horatii or Curiatii was frigid to his. He was never weary of boasting of its freedom, of its greatness, and of General Washington. It was observed that as he grew older his stories became longer and more incredible, and his patriotism hotter. His own personal exploits too, occupied a wider space in his narratives. To believe him, the number of British and Hessians ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Sodom of all its goods and victuals, and took Lot, boasting, "We have taken the son of Abraham's brother captive," so betraying the real object of their undertaking; their innermost desire ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... semi-oriental countries; coquetries in which men are cradled by their mothers, with which they are tormented by their sisters, and enchanted by those they love; and which cause the coquetries of other women to appear insipid or coarse in their eyes; inducing them to exclaim, with an appearance of boasting, yet in which they are entirely justified by the truth: NIEMA IAK POLKI! "Nothing equals the Polish women!" [Footnote: The custom formerly in use of drinking, in her own shoe, the health of the woman they loved, is one of the most original traditions of the enthusiastic ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... skin" (Kratylos, 411), seems to show that he knew the fable of an animal or a man having assumed the lion's skin without the lion's courage. The proverb onos para Kumaious seems to be applied to men boasting before people who have no means of judging. It presupposes the story of a donkey appearing in ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... as he was proud of boasting, had a perfect horror of simplicity; and, wherever he discovered a vacant space as big as his hand, he hung a picture, a bronze, or a piece of china, any ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... the war, yet the experience which the Greeks obtained in them was of great advantage; for thus, by actual trial and in real danger, they found out, that neither number of ships, or riches and ornaments, nor boasting shouts, nor barbarous songs of victory, were any way terrible to men that knew how to fight, and were resolved to come hand to hand with their enemies. This, Pindar appears to have seen, and says justly enough of the ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... off from the hulk, took up her moorings in the middle of the harbour. Of the new-comers, two small midshipmen, who had never before been to sea, Paddy Desmond immediately designated one "Billy Blueblazes," in consequence of his boasting that he was related to an admiral of that name, while the other was allowed to retain his proper appellation of "Dicky Duff," Paddy declaring that it required no reformation. An old mate who was always grumbling, and two ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... commiseration. "I don't believe that was because he wasn't suffering, though. I'm sure it was only because he felt his business was so important. Mary told me he seemed wrapped up in his son's succeeding; and that was what he bragged about most. He isn't vulgar in his boasting, I understand; he doesn't talk a great deal about his—his actual money—though there was something about blades of grass that I didn't comprehend. I think he meant something about his energy—but perhaps not. No, his bragging usually seemed to be not so much a ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... I do not know of any quarrels. But I shall find out. It begins to look bad for somebody. After he left that charco there is—nothing. Where did he go? Whom did he encounter? Rosa will ask me those questions. I am not given to boasting, senor, but I am a devilish bad man ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... and her son, and willingly crowned John, making a dangerous and disloyal speech, in which he pronounced the kingdom elective, and to be conferred on the most worthy of the royal family. He accepted the chancellorship from John, and was so fond of boasting of its riches and dignities, that he drew on himself a rebuke from Hugh Bardolfe, one of the rude barons. "My Lord, with your leave, if you would consider the power and dignity of your spiritual calling, you would not undertake the yoke of lay ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... to the thatched roof and the mud floor and the Scotch American engineer and the mulatto girl was rather striking. I never had more luck in any trip than I have had on this one and the luck of R. H. D. of which I was fond of boasting seems to hold good. That man of war, for instance, was the only American one that had touched at Puerto Cortez in TEN years and it came the day we did and left the day we did. We saw a big lithograph of Eddie Sothern in a palm hut here so we went before a notary and swore to it and had three seals ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... parents of the boy ought to know what chances he had been taking; but the conditions were rather peculiar just then. If he told, it would seem as if he might be trying to "draw the teeth" of his enemy, Buck Lemington, by boasting how he had saved the latter's little brother, of whom the bully was especially fond. And Fred's pride rose at the idea of his being considered ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... said, dryly, "you have established the fact that the Southerners come here for the summer and live in great luxury; but what has that to do with the cheapness of living in New York, which you began by boasting?" ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... that," said Madame de Mirepoix, "is in the style of Louis XIV.—such dignified proceedings are very unlike those of our master." Mademoiselle Romans lost all her influence over the King by her indiscreet boasting. She was even treated with harshness and violence, which were in no degree instigated by Madame. Her house was searched, and her papers seized; but the most important, those which substantiated the fact of the King's paternity, had been withdrawn. At length she gave ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... and authority. It had functioned in the mountains as well as elsewhere through the South, but it had been, in its beginnings, a secret body of regulators filling a void left by the law's failure, and one boasting some colour ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... against—had arrived in Paris to conspire against him. This name was pronounced quietly, but was overheard by a soldier on guard, that is to say, by a man who should be regarded as a wall—deaf, dumb, and immovable. However, that man repeated this name in the street with a noise and boasting which attracted the attention of the passers-by and raised quite an emotion; I know it, for I was there, and heard and saw all, and had I not placed my hand on his shoulder to stop him, he would have compromised such grave interests, that, had he not been quiet at my touch, I should have been ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... small Maltese squadron. This officer had hitherto fought with no less success than skill, and had already captured four Turkish galleys. The Viceroy of Algiers had, the year before, captured three galleys of Malta, and was fond of boasting of being the peculiar scourge and terror of the Order of St. John. The well-known white cross banner, rising over the smoke of battle, soon attracted his eye and was marked for his prey. Wheeling ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... evidence also of Monsieur de Merri's unfortunate habit of boasting of conquests. But I was convinced that it could not have been of her that he had boasted. These thoughts, however, were but transient flashings across my sense of the plight in which I had put this unhappy woman by killing Monsieur de Merri. I tried ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... New York had poked not a little fun at the "Boston man," chaffing him because they thought the New England newspapers "slow" and "out of date in methods." They fully expected that Carleton's despatches would be far behind theirs in point of time as well as in general value. Their boasting was sadly premature. Carleton beat them all, and their humiliation ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... nobility! I never shall account it marvelous, That our infirm affection here below Thou mov'st to boasting, when I could not choose, E'en in that region of unwarp'd desire, In heav'n itself, but make my vaunt in thee! Yet cloak thou art soon shorten'd, for that time, Unless thou be eked out from day to day, Goes round thee with his shears. Resuming then With greeting such, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... decidedly. "No, he would not," and finding a chip among the apparently inexhaustible stores of his pockets, he next produced a knife boasting an inch of blade and went to ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... little discourse On the Desire of Admiration, he warns the philosopher "not to walk as if he had swallowed a poker" or to care for the applause of those multitudes whom he holds to be immersed in error. For all display, and pretence, and hypocrisy, and Pharisaism, and boasting, and mere fruitless book-learning he seems to have felt a genuine and profound contempt. Recommendations to simplicity of conduct, courtesy of manner, and moderation of language were among his practical precepts. It is refreshing, too, to know that with the strongest and manliest good sense, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... had gone on slowly increasing. In the year 1840, seventy years from the Spanish occupancy, it had risen to nearly six thousand; but it was a population the spiritual character of which gave little occasion of boasting to the Spanish church. Tardy and feeble efforts had been instituted to provide it with an organized parish ministry, when the supreme and exclusive control of that country ceased from the hands that so long had held it. "The vineyard was taken away, and given to other ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... give it me, Rose? Do you think I shall go about boasting "This is Miss Jocelyn's handkerchief, and I, poor as I am, have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... man, who was thus coolly boasting of his exploits, and then at the silent girl, whose eyes sullenly gave back their challenge. What did it all mean? Why were they calmly telling him these things? Was it merely the egotism of crime, pride of achievement? ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... a dying system that, to be sure. Woe to Toryism and the Church of England, and everything else, when it gets to boasting that its stronghold is still the hearts of the agricultural poor. It is the cities, John, the cities, where the light dawns first—where man meets man, and spirit quickens spirit, and intercourse breeds knowledge, and knowledge sympathy, and sympathy enthusiasm, combination, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Around him, other boys were going in for football, making records on the track team, getting occasional leaves to run in to Boston for an odd half-holiday. Then they came back, hilarious and triumphant, to discuss their experience at mealtimes, boasting, chaffing, wrangling merrily in the intimacy known to boyhood, the world over. They never thought to pay any especial attention to the other boy who brought them things to eat, a boy with luminous gray eyes and clothes which were in sore need of pressing. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... booty, spoils. bveda f. arch, vault, cavern. bramador, -a roaring, bellowing, raging. bramar roar, rage, bluster, bellow. bramido m. howling, roaring. bravo, -a wild, fierce. bravo, -a brave. bravura f.. bravado, fierceness, ferocity, boasting. brazo m. arm, embrace. breve adj. brief, short. bridn m. steed, bridle. brillante adj. brilliant, bright. brillar glisten, shine. brindar drink to one's health, offer, pledge. bro m. strength, courage, mettle, spirit, resolution. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... between four and five hundred. Such was our squadron, and such the formidable army with which Bonaparte had resolved, as he wrote to the divan of Cairo, "to annihilate all his enemies." This boasting might impose on those who did not see the real state of things; but what were we to think of it? What Bonaparte himself ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... irritation of the whole baronage is well expressed in the story of how Earl Warenne, unsheathing a rusty sword, declared to the commissioners: "Here is my warrant. My ancestors won their lands with the sword. With my sword I will defend them against all usurpers." Nor was this mere boasting. The return of the king's officers tells us that Warenne would not say of whom, or by what services, he held his Yorkshire stronghold of Conisborough, and that his bailiffs refused them entrance into his liberties and would not suffer his tenants to answer or ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... which practical politicians were familiar had their bearing upon the outcome. In New York State, where occurred the worst tug of war, Governor Hill and his friends, while boasting their democracy, were widely believed to connive at the trading of Democratic votes for Harrison in return for Republican votes for Hill. At any rate, New York State was carried ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... no means transparent, so that all the time we are continually deceiving ourselves and making clouds between us and others. We are all the time grasping things from other people, and, if not in words, are mentally boasting ourselves against others, trying to think of our own superiority to the rest of the people around us. Sometimes we try to run our neighbors down a little, just to show that they are not quite equal to our level. ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... Colwood recalled the morning—Miss Merton's late arrival at the breakfast-table, and the discovery from her talk that she was accustomed to breakfast in bed, waited upon by her younger sisters; her conversation at breakfast, partly about the prices of clothes and eatables, partly in boasting reminiscence of her winnings at cards, or in sweepstakes on the "run," on board the steamer. Diana had then devoted herself to the display of the house, and her maid had helped Miss Merton to unpack. The process had been diversified by raids made by Miss Fanny ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Alpheios, and in established Aipy, and were inhabitants of Kyparisseis and Amphigeneia and Pteleos and Helos and Dorion—where the Muses met Thamyris the Thracian, and made an end of his singing, as he was faring from Oichalia, from Eurytos the Oichalian; for he averred with boasting that he would conquer, even did the Muses themselves sing against him, the daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus; but they in their anger maimed him, moreover they took from him the high gift of song and made him to forget his harping—of all these was ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... Proudfoot. He's making himself miserable because the Peacock has a tail that sticks up higher than his. How absurd," she cried, "to be proud like Turkey Proudfoot, just because your tail happens to stick up in the air. Why, yours and mine stick up. But we don't go around boasting about them. And if somebody else has a stickier-up tail, why worry about it? And if somebody else with a louder voice can wake Farmer Green better than you can, why worry about that? Let the Peacock ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... not by bloodshed, nor by pompous titles, but by labour and the personal merit of each one; a free society where no egoism shall exist—where no personal politics shall overflow and crush, nor envy nor partiality debase, nor vain boasting nor ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... clearing. Immediately in front of us stood the masonry of which we had caught glimpses; a low, squat, square tower, some forty feet in height, ruinous as to the most part, but having the side facing us nearly perfect and still boasting a fine old doorway which I set down as of Norman architecture. North of this lay a mass of fallen masonry, a long line of grass-grown, weed-encumbered stone, which was evidently the ruin of a wall; here and there in the clearing were similar smaller ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... "Oh, they've been boasting about doing some such thing for ages," Darquelnoy told him. "But there was never any indication that they were finally serious about it. They have all sorts of military secrecy, of course, and so you never know a thing is going to happen ...
— They Also Serve • Donald E. Westlake
... the crown except the first of all—proper kingly courage. We have already described the man—with his effort to be at once loyal republican and master of Rome, with his vacillation and indecision, with his pliancy that concealed itself under the boasting of independent resolution. This was the first great trial to which destiny subjected him; and he failed to stand it. The pretext under which Pompeius refused to dismiss the army was, that he distrusted Crassus ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Having already conquered, without boasting, a certain success before the reading public, and having persuaded an author of renown to sign his name to my bantling, my Expectation and Hope have long been to surpass that trifling production. You may think ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... at Gondokoro, who would return it to Khartoum. I intended to wait until Koorshid's party should march, when I resolved to follow them, as I did not believe they would dare to oppose me by force, their master himself being friendly. I considered their threats as mere idle boasting to frighten me from an attempt to follow them; but there was another more serious cause of danger ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... who assemble there to pursue their gambols beyond the heat and dust of the town; or to watch with eager eyes the young men of the place engaged in the manly old English game of cricket, with whom it is, in their harmless boasting, "Belleville against ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... and deride it, as if boasting themselves to be the only men who observe nature and custom as it ought to be, and who at the same time adapted reason to each man by means of aversions, desires, appetites, pursuits, and impulses. But custom has received ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... 'Fine ear for the haspirate'—that's what my darter Maria 'ave and what I, for one, 'ave not. I'm not above confessing of it; 'tain't given to all of us to 'ave everything, as the ant said to the helephant when 'e was boasting about 'is trunk. Some there is as ain't got no ear for music—same as Joe Mangles, the grocer down the street, as 'as caught a heavy cold in 'is 'ead with taking 'is 'at off every time as 'e 'ears 'It's a long long way to Tipperary.' ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... bamboo. It is the women also who serve out the tuak, a spirit prepared from rice and spiced with various ingredients, tobacco being one. The men must drink at these feasts; they are very temperate generally, but on this occasion they are rather proud of being drunk and boasting the next day of a bad headache! The women urge them to drink, but do not join in the orgies, and disappear when the intoxicating stage begins. I trust that this description belongs only to the past; at any rate, we know that ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... chace, I can boldly declare From my speed, as I follow, in vain flies the Hare; Nay, while like the wind, I bound over the course My master comes lagging behind on his Horse. 'Twixt friends, I could laugh, at beholding the fuss And boasting men make of success due to us; The truth is so obvious 'tis scarce worth enforcing; Without our assistance they could ...
— The Council of Dogs • William Roscoe
... constantly pour upon them their worthless population. They, therefore, destroyed their farms and their bridges; and collecting their horses and cattle, they retreated upon the Red River among their own people. The Cherokee campaign is a topic of much boasting among the Texians, as they say they expelled the Indians from their country; but a fact, which they are not anxious to publish, is, that for every Cherokee killed, twenty ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... of those Indians who are filled with conceit, and boasting loudly their pretensions as medicine men, without any success, only bring upon themselves an unnecessary amount of embarrassment and ridicule. Yet there is one quality always possessed by such persons, among a savage people as elsewhere—namely, great perseverance and tenacity in their self-assertion. ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... said Miranda, "were an almost immense number then, being divided in three bodies—London cut-purses, Hounslow Heath highwaymen, and assistant-coiners, but all owning him for their lord and master. He told me all this himself, one day when, in an after-dinner and most gracious mood, he made a boasting display of his wealth and greatness; told me I was growing up very pretty indeed, and that I was shortly to be raised to the honor and dignity, and bliss ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... occurred. Arthur and I having examined the head of the snake, to assure ourselves that John was right, cut it off and threw it into the river, while True breakfasted off the body, which we cooked for him. Domingos did not discover the truth till some time afterwards; and we heard him frequently boasting of the certain cure he knew for snake bites. I cannot, however, say that his ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... he was boasting again, but he was stating facts, as she subsequently discovered. At practically every Society function she attended during the next few weeks, save for a few private parties, Don Carlos de Ruiz was a fellow guest, and invariably ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... what our brother Kierkegaard has to say. "The danger of abstract thought is seen precisely in respect of the problem of existence, the difficulty of which it solves by going round it, afterwards boasting that it has completely explained it. It explains immortality in general, and it does so in a remarkable way by identifying it with eternity—with the eternity which is essentially the medium of thought. But with the immortality of each individually ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... natives of the Belezma were tried at a court of assizes for the massacre, last April, of twelve French colonists. The affair was a sequel of the French-Prussian war. The natives, for a long time past on good terms with strangers, became insolent, boasting that France was ruined, and that all the French would soon disappear from Algeria. Some of the tribes, however, remained, if not friendly, at least less hostile. The revolt had become almost general, and on the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... falling inflection. "Then I must say I feel sorry for you. . . . Now, why have you that little amused twinkle in your eyes? I used to see it sometimes at the table on the Tampico when Reggie was boasting, and—and sometimes when I was trying to be very brilliant. Do you know, sometimes I felt like boxing your ears, you seemed ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... Vain boasting! The gates of knowledge have been opened, but we have merely got a peep at what lies within. And man, so far from being king of the universe, is but as a speck on the fly-wheel that controls the mighty machinery of ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... declines] Volumnia, in her boasting strain, says, that her son to kill his enemy, has nothing to do but to lift his hand ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... Sting fled, and went boasting Amongst his fellows—Doris toasting; And as his burgundy he sips, He showed the sugar on his lips. Away the greedy host then gathered, Where they thought dalliance fair was feathered. They fluttered round her, sipped her tea, And lived in quarters ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... 1886 three parties contested, the Labor party, Tammany Hall and the Republican party. Steeped in decades of the most loathsome corruption, Tammany Hall was chosen as the medium by which the Labor party was to be defrauded and effaced. Pretending to be the "champion of the people's rights," and boasting that it stood for democracy against aristocracy, Tammany Hall had long deceived the mass of the people to plunder them. It was a powerful, splendidly-organized body of mercenaries and selfseekers which, by trading on the principles of democracy, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... convicted from their own declarations, in which they had frequently condemned episcopacy, as contrary to Christianity; nor durst they deny it, because they might have been confuted, and must, at once, have sunk into contempt. The soldiers, seeing their perplexity, insulted them; and went away, boasting of their victory; nor did the presbyterians, for some time, recover spirit enough to renew their meetings, or to proceed in the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... in boasting of his favours, boasted also of his engagement, no harm perhaps might have come of it. The sweet good-nature of the widow might have overlooked that offence. But he had boasted of the favours and pooh-poohed the engagement! "Hinc illae lacrymae." And who shall ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... profession with the same contempt, he had decided to do nothing. Spoilt by his father, he took some little interest in poetry and music, and lived in an extraordinary circle of artists, low women, madmen and bandits; boasting himself of all sorts of crimes and vices, professing the very worst philosophical and social ideas, invariably going to extremes, becoming in turn a Collectivist, an Individualist, an Anarchist, a Pessimist, a Symbolist, and what not besides; without, however, ceasing to be a Catholic, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... himself for the slight inflicted by her refusal of the first, and that he himself had confessed so much to her on their way from church. At the time when, as the reader has seen from his own honey-moon letters, he was, with all the good will in the world, imagining himself into happiness, and even boasting, in the pride of his fancy, that if marriage were to be upon lease, he would gladly renew his own for a term of ninety-nine years,—at this very time, according to these veracious chroniclers, he was employed ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... immediately engage the enemy either I am unacquainted with military affairs, with this kind of war, and the character of the enemy, or another place will become more celebrated than the Trasimenus by our disaster. Neither is this the season for boasting while I am addressing one man; and besides, I have exceeded the bounds of moderation in despising rather than in courting fame. But the case is really this. The only way of conducting the war against Hannibal is that ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... blame the dog! For want of a better vent for his irritation, Bob took up the belt and again examined it. He had been quite safe in boasting that the bauble should be returned to its owner as good as new, for although he did not confess it, on its silver clasp he had discovered the manufacturer's name. If the buckle could not be repaired, another of similar pattern should replace it. Unquestionably he was a fool to go to this trouble ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... about with them, he found that for all their boasting (and they often boasted) they really knew little about the wild folk. Many times they would pass Wa-poose the Rabbit sitting unseen on his form within a few feet of them. Mother Mit-chee the Ruffled Partridge ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... slabbered as is the custom in England." With all his coarsenesses this blunt Scot was a pioneer and fugleman of the niceties. Between times most nations are gibbetted in this slashing epistle. The ingenious boasting of the French is well hit off in the observation of the chevalier that the English doubtless drank every day to the health of the Marquise de Pompadour. The implication reminded Smollett of a narrow escape from a duello (an institution he reprobates with the utmost trenchancy ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... grief was the mood of the hour. Sydney was evidently full of awe. He seemed hardly to like to come into the parlour. Margaret had to go to the door, and laugh at him for his shyness. His mother's ideas were as much deranged as his own, by the gaiety with which Hester received them, boasting of the thorough ventilation of the room, and asking whether Sophia did not think their bonfire surpassed the famous one at the last election but one. Sophia had not seen anything of the fire of last night. She had been so much agitated, ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... little time, and they will produce an instrument for full verification of these statements regarding the lunar inhabitants; and we may realize more than we have imagined or dreamed. We may obtain observations as satisfactory as those of a son of the Emerald Isle, who was one day boasting to a friend of his excellent telescope. "Do you see yonder church?" said he. "Although it is scarcely discernible with the naked eye, when I look at it through my telescope, it brings it so close that I can hear the ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... least, would pass before the railroad reached them. Meanwhile, the quarter-section should be properly filed upon for possession and farmed for a living. Now, as she brushed the hearth clean with the wing of a duck, she listened quietly to her father's confident boasting. ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... "And trust a noble brother to his hands, Boasting no dearer pledge, the pact to bind: And next, victorious o'er the German bands, Give his triumphant ensigns to the wind: To the afflicted church restore her lands, And take due vengeance of Celano's kind. Then die, cut off in manhood's early flower, Beneath the ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... onset. Under God, for to him alone are we indebted for protection, we are still left to bear our testimony to the truth. Our consciences are in this matter void of offence. In cheerful serenity of spirit, and not in the tone of menace or boasting, we declare our faith in the principles of emancipation unfaltering—our zeal undiminished—our determination to persevere unaltered. Our confidence in the triumphant and glorious issue of the present ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... the coordination of diverse wills. I remember an astute English visitor, who had been a guest in a score of American cities, observed that it was hard to understand the local pride he constantly encountered; for in spite of the boasting on the part of leading citizens in the western, eastern, and southern towns, all American cities seemed to him essentially alike and all equally the results of an industry totally unregulated by ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... Jasmin, that he was never carried off his feet by the brilliant ovations he received. Though enough to turn any poor fellow's head, he remained simple and natural to the last. As we say in this country, he could "carry corn" We have said that "Gascon" is often used in connection with boasting or gasconading. But the term was in no way applicable to Jasmin. He left the echo of praises behind him, and returned to Agen to enjoy the comforts ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... careless sort of way—for what was the use of telling this little girl that his pictures had been hung in the Salon and the Academy, or that he had hopes of one day rising to fame and fortune in his recently adopted profession? He was not given to boasting of his own success, and besides, this child—with her saucy face and guileless eyes—would not understand either his ambitions ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... club the other night just frantic with delight: they said wheat had risen and they'd cleaned up four cents each in less than half an hour. They bought a dinner for sixteen on the strength of it. I don't understand it. I've often made twice as much as that writing for the papers and never felt like boasting ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... come from, do you think? Praeneste, probably, to judge from his boasting. I don't think the town's fame is ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... eighteen years old Torrigiano came to Florence to engage artists to go to England to aid him in some works he was to execute. He wished to have Cellini in the number; but Torrigiano so disgusted Benvenuto by his boasting of the blow that he had given Michael Angelo, that though he had the natural youthful desire to travel, he refused to be employed by such a man as Torrigiano. We can safely assume that this predisposed Michael Angelo in Cellini's ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... record of wrestling occurs in the sixth year of the Emperor Suinin (24 B.C.), when one Taima no Kehaya, a noble of great stature and strength, boasting that there was not his match under heaven, begged the Emperor that his strength might be put to the test. The Emperor accordingly caused the challenge to be proclaimed; and one Nomi no Shikune answered it, and having ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... incontinently to boasting. This was his first moose, but he—he, Joachim Barboux, was a sportsman from his birth. He still contended, but complacently and without rancour, that had the Indians taken up the trail he had advised ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... literature, mere sloughs of despond that yawn across the pages of many a heathen dog, poet and orator, that I could mention, the more reasonable it is that a large allowance should be served out of boasting and self-glorification to all those whose merits upon this field national governments have neglected to proclaim. The Scaligers, both father and son, I believe, acted upon this doctrine; and drew largely by anticipation upon ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... enjoyed her boy's youthful enthusiasm. Mother of the race, ancient tribal woman, medieval chatelaine, she was just now; kin to all the women who, in any age, have clapped their hands to their men's boasting. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... death of Jesus caused his disciples, and the new life which the resurrection brought to their hearts. The resurrection was the fundamental theme of apostolic preaching, the supreme evidence that Jesus was the Messiah. Hence the cross early became the object of exultant Christian joy and boasting; and in this the church entered actually into the Lord's own thought, for through the cross he looked for his exaltation and glory (Mark viii. 31; John xii. 23-36). From the time of the confession at Caesarea Philippi, he had had his death avowedly in view, and had repeatedly ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... and his favorite studies, those in which he most excelled, and which appeared almost intuitive to him, were those connected with figures. The old Squire, who idolised his handsome sullen boy, was never weary of boasting of his abilities, and his great knowledge in ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... a dying breast, Then be it so: Heauens keepe old Bedford safe. And now no more adoe, braue Burgonie, But gather we our Forces out of hand, And set vpon our boasting ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... laughed lazily as he ended it. He was just boasting, as usual, but his hawklike eyes were on Nash. And it was certain that ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... rural districts, in the state, and in the nation, has certainly been far less successful as applied to cities. Accordingly our cities have come to furnish topics for reflection to which writers and orators fond of boasting the unapproachable excellence of American institutions ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... degraded panderer to crime and folly. He is beneath notice, so far as he himself concerned; I devote the space to him, because it is well worth while to understand how base an imposture can draw a steady revenue from a nation boasting so much culture and intelligence as ours. It is also worth considering whether the authorities must not be remiss, who permit such odious deceptions to be constantly perpetrated ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... boasting did Cyrus allow himself on the eve of action, though he was the last man to boast ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... the 9th, was that of the insolent Boer Ultimatum of 1899 which brought Kruger and his lot to ruin; to-day and to-morrow a year ago (10th and 11th October), the Boer forces were mobilizing at this very place, Sandspruit; and on the 12th they entered Natal full of bumptious boasting. They were going, as they said, to "eat fish in Durban" within a month, and many of them carried tin cases containing dress suits and new clothes in preparation for that convivial event. And they ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... "to thwart the projects of these murderers and to have vengeance upon them. None have thought of me. I was an old man, too insignificant for notice, and I have passed the day in my chamber lamenting the kindest of lords, the best of masters. Last evening I heard the soldiers boasting that today they would capture the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and I determined to foil them. They have been feasting and drinking all night, and it is but now that the troopers have fallen into a drunken slumber and I was able to possess myself of the key ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... on to philosophise on erotics in general. He, the Don Juan without arms, read Frederick a lecture on the art of handling women. This led to his boasting, which detracted markedly from his quality of fineness. His intellect also shrank in direct proportion to the increase of his vanity. Something seemed to be working in him impelling him to impress people at all costs with his ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... We ought not even to tell others of our good deeds. He who confers a benefit should be silent, it should be told by the receiver; for otherwise you may receive the retort which was made to one who was everywhere boasting of the benefit which he had conferred: "You will not deny," said his victim, "that you have received a return for it?" "When?" asked he. "Often," said the other, "and in many places, that is, wherever and whenever you have told the story." What need ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... looked down upon Peloponnesus, and beheld Cynuria, {176a} I reflected with astonishment on the number of Argives and Lacedemonians who fell in one day, fighting for a piece of land no bigger than an Egyptian lentil; and when I saw a man brooding over his gold, and boasting that he had got four cups or eight rings, I laughed most heartily at him: whilst the whole Pangaeus, {176b} with all its mines, seemed no larger than a grain ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... for them there and then, and was very much put out when their owner insisted on having them back. However, shortly afterwards a pair was got for him; and with these on his nose he galloped about the country, exhibiting them to all his neighbors, and boasting of the miraculous power they imparted to his eyes of seeing the world as no one else ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea! Jehovah hath triumphed, His people are free! Sing, for the pride of the tyrant is broken; His chariots, his horsemen, all splendid and brave— How vain was their boasting, the Lord hath but spoken, And chariots and horsemen are sunk ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... the cunning Cid, "are given to much talking, and at this moment they are with the King Don Alfonso their lord, boasting of what they have done, for they love big words. If it be God's will, their joy of to-day shall be turned to grief, and if it please Him, sir, you shall regain honor." Now it befell as the Cid had hoped. In the early morning, ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene |
