"Airs" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... educated in Belgium, came and ordered a bottle of champagne, and shyly begged me to drink a glass, whereupon we talked of crops and the like; and an excellent specimen of a colonist he appeared: very gentle and unaffected, with homely good sense, and real good breeding—such a contrast to the pert airs and vulgarity of Capetown and of the people in (colonial) high places. Finding we had no carriage, he posted off and borrowed a cart of one man and harness of another, and put his and his son's riding horses to it, to take Mrs. D- and me home. As it was still early, he took us a 'little ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... hated me, dear lady, I'd not believe it," he once said. "Mistress Margaret is too unversed in city ways and shallow coquetries to play a part—and 'tis for that I love her so." And though it angered me to have him praise my innocence and country airs, I knew he spoke the truth, and that a time would come when I would own my love for him. And so ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... seen before, and which upon examination proved to be a whole-length of the celebrated Mr. Garrick. Though I would not go so far with some good Catholics abroad as to shut players altogether out of consecrated ground, yet I own I was not a little scandalized at the introduction of theatrical airs and gestures into a place set apart to remind us of the saddest realities. Going nearer, I found inscribed under this harlequin figure the ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... harmonizes and strengthens it. Perhaps no opera, in Europe, could afford, to a natural and unsophisticated ear, so rich a treat as that which may be enjoyed in Cuzco, Arequipa, and other cities, where the ancient Peruvian airs are sung in the rich and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... the benefit of the Chancery. I can hear them laughing all the way from here when Reggie is doing what he calls one of his 'stunts'. But you—why, he can see in your face the whole of London, the London which he respects and appreciates in spite of his cosmopolitan airs. He can see himself introducing Miss Yae Smith in Lady Everington's drawing-room as ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... and simple, and his election to the Academy was very exceptional in the way it came about. Most Academicians had graces and airs and good fellowship to commend them, as well as their works, but Turner had none of these things. He had given no dinners, nor played a social part in order to get the membership. When the news was brought him that he was elected, ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... form in the sanctuary and dishonors worship with its cold formality. Everywhere it is a godless tyrant. To develop our strength of body and mind we want freedom. Genius expands its wings in freedom's airs. Health blooms in freedom's prairie-fields. Wisdom grows in the hermit-cells of individual thought where no binding chains of custom cramp the mental powers. Love is always truest and sweetest and noblest where it is freest. Nature ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... manners, to see anything like natural expression in a man's face. There is one set form for every man's face in female society: a sort of serious comedy walking gentleman's face: but the moment the creature falls in love he begins to give himself airs, and plays off all the varieties of his physiognomy from the Master Slender to the Petruchio; and then he ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... to where Marlowe was pacing slowly upon the lawn. The young man seemed relieved to talk about the coming business of the day. Though he still seemed tired out and nervous, he showed himself not without a quiet humour in describing the pomposities of the local police and the portentous airs of Dr Stock. Trent turned the conversation gradually toward the problem of the crime, and all ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... them as if in the king's palace. 'Joe Howe came to our house last night,' bragged a little girl as she skipped along to school next morning; 'he kissed mamma and kissed me too.' The familiarity was seldom rebuked, for his heartiness was contagious. He was as full of jokes as a pedlar, and had as few airs. A brusqueness of manner and coarseness of speech, which was partly natural, became thus {26} ingrained in him, and party struggles subsequently coarsened his moral fibre. From this absence of refinement flowed ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... put in the Sub-Pacha, "with the airs of a god. I thought to risk losing my arm when I cuffed him on the ear, but lo! 'tis stronger than ever." And he ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... talk, in the course of which he expressed great aversion to me and even to her, who, [sic] he said, he once thought well of.' Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 339. Baretti, in the Eur. Mag. xiii. 398, told his story. He said:—'Madam took it into her head to give herself airs, and treat me with some coldness and superciliousness. I did not hesitate to set down at breakfast my dish of tea not half drank, go for my hat and stick that lay in the corner of the room, turn my back to the house insalutato hospite, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... sighs, With hallow'd airs and symphonies, My spirit takes another tone, And sighs ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... fair-haired, frail slip of a girl, near enough the twenties to patronize me and too much of the young lady to find pleasure in an awkward lad. That meant an end to our rides and walks and sails down the St. Lawrence and long evening talks; but I took my revenge by assuming the airs of a man of forty, at which Hamilton quizzed me not a little and his wife, Miriam, laughed. When I surprised them all by jumping suddenly from boyhood to manhood—"like a tadpole into a mosquito," as my Uncle Jack facetiously remarked. Meanwhile, a son and heir came to my friend's home and ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... fortune was acquired. Philotas was proud, boastful, extravagant, and addicted, like Alexander his master, to every species of indulgence and dissipation. He was universally hated. His father, out of patience with his haughty airs, his boastings, and his pomp and parade, advised him, one day, to "make himself less." But Parmenio's prudent advice to his son was thrown away. Philotas spoke of himself as Alexander's great reliance. "What would Philip have been or have done," said he, "without my father ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... four days he feasted hilariously upon these dainties until he was ill. He also practised all the airs and graces of dandyism that he could think of, because he knew that the old folks, with ill-judging taste, admired them. When he had explained to them how great a man he should be when he had been abroad, and how economical ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... and scowled blackly. They all laughed, but offered Nick no more wine; instead, they picked him choice morsels, and made a great deal of him, until his silly young head was quite turned, and he sat up and gave himself a few airs—not many, for Stratford was no great place in which to ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... girl-mother wandered a little way on the path of| |the Magdalenes. | | | |She was an interloper who had no gospel sanction in | |the world, no visible parents other than a | |foster-father and a foster-mother. Perfectly | |respectable little girls began to inform her so with| |self-righteous airs and with the expertness of | |surgeons to dissect her from the social scheme that | |governs puss-wants-a-corner with the same iron rule | |that in later life determines who shall be asked to | |play bridge and who shall be outlawed. ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... become us, students and shop-boys, to give ourselves airs! No; but I am astonished ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... many rebuffs she momentarily encountered Involuntary satisfaction at some apparent obstacle to my path Jaunting-cars, with three on a side and "one in the well" Least important functionaries took the greatest airs upon them Levelling character of a taste for play Listen to reason, as they would call it in Ireland Memory of them when hallowed by time or distance Might almost excite compassion even in an enemy Misfortune will find you out, if ...
— Quotes and Images From The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer • Charles James Lever
... transported too by (for example) Handel's largo in G, by the Prayer in Mose in Egitto, the Lost Chord, Rossini's Tell, Weber's Freischutz and Oberon, Tannhauser, Semiramide, and all manner of marches, choruses, ballads, and national airs. In fact, I really do like music, especially if tuneful and melodious, in spite of Wagner's apothegm, but some symphonies might be better if curtailed,—except only Schubert's,—but then his best is the Unfinished, and so ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... relics for his load, Supposed the worship on the road Meant for himself alone, And took on lofty airs, Receiving as his own The incense and the prayers. Some one, who saw his great mistake, Cried, "Master Donkey, do not make Yourself so big a fool. Not you they worship, but your pack; They praise the idols on your back, And count ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... offered no reply, studying the girl's pretty face, her eager, blue-gray eyes widely opened and fixed upon mine. She was not of the neurotic type, with her clear complexion and sun-kissed neck; her arms, healthily toned by exposure to the country airs, were rounded and firm, and she had the agile shape of a young Diana with none of the anaemic languor which breeds morbid dreams. She was frightened; yes, who would not have been? But the mere idea of this thing which she believed ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... under his breath, as he went down the stairs of Studio Building. "He puts on damned high-headed airs; but I'm not done ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... wonder," continued the elderly woman, "if people think I'm putting on airs. Really, Jane told me of some woman who said 'old Mrs. Carpenter was mighty upraised, dressing like a young girl.' It's funny, isn't it, what dress will do. But I should look young for I'm so happy to have Alice here again, and to think that we shall be together ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... EXERCISE of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting DESPOTISM on the one part, and degrading submission on the other..... The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, GIVES LOOSE TO THE WORST OF PASSIONS; and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... extreme from which this abuse has shrunk; perhaps the worst form of it is the setting of sacred hymns to popular airs, which are associated in the minds of the singers with secular, or even comic and amatory words[8]: of which it is impossible to give examples, because the extreme instances are blasphemies unfit to be quoted; and ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... admiration which he commands. Look at the most inventive spirits of this country,—those whose intellects have achieved the most memorable triumphs. Take, for example, Leslie in physical science, and what airs of majesty does he ever assume? What is Samuel Coleridge compared to such a man? What is an ingenious and fanciful versifier to him who has, like a magician, gained command over the very elements of nature,—who has ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... non-slave-holding white population of Tennessee which was vastly larger than the slave-holding population, the proportion indeed being twenty-seven to one. With these a "good fellow" ranked all the higher for not possessing the graces or, as they would term them, the "airs" ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... boy of sixteen, and this weird, shaky flaxpole. The doors of my deserted home were often opened for this strange guest, who made me play my compositions to him while he ate bread and cheese. In return, he once arranged one of my airs for wind instruments, and, to my astonishment, it was actually accepted and played by the band in Kintschy's Swiss Chalet. That this man had not the smallest capacity to teach me anything never once occurred to me; I was so firmly convinced of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Copperheads—rises the haughty contempt toward the crowned, the official, the aristocratic, and the flatfooted (livery stable) part of Europe. Good and just! Marshy, rotten rulers and aristocrats who scarcely can keep your various shaky and undermined seats, you and your lackeys, you take on airs of advisors, of guardians, of initiators of civilization! Forsooth! I except Russia. In Russia the sovereign, his ministers and nine-tenths of the aristocracy are in uni sono with the whole nation; and all are against slavery, against ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... meditation), created through sheer force of will a third eye on his forehead, he is for that reason called the Three-eyed. Whatever of unsoundness there is in the bodies of living creatures, and whatever of soundness there is in them, represent that God. He is the wind, the vital airs called Prana, Apana (and the others) in the bodies of all creatures, including even those that are diseased. He who adoreth any image of the Phallic emblem of that high-souled God, always obtaineth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... already picture the dear girl putting on airs with those guileless rural folk who know no more about the architectural and the decorative arts than an unclouted Patagonian knows of the four houses of the Jesuitical order. Nor do I know much about those ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... more French, I think—a girl with airs and graces," said Ethel, who had herself more airs and graces than Lesley had ever donned in all her life; "nothing so Puritan as ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... us, Ivan," he said, in a kind tone. "Sing us one of your wild Russian airs—Zara loves them, and this young lady would like to hear ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... songs. The good people of Columbia were quite accustomed to such "stunts" on the part of the students, especially when there was a day of sport close by. At such times the thriving town on the bank of the Harrapin was wont to assume all the airs of a college ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... when you put on airs like that, but naturally your voice is a cross between a locomotive whistle ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it. . . . The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of small slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... be performed with greater propriety. In Picardy, as late as 1743, the relatives threw themselves on the corpse and with loud cries called it by name, and up to 1855 the Moravians of Pennsylvania, at the death of one of their number, performed mournful musical airs on brass instruments from the village church steeple and again at the grave [Footnote: The writer is informed by Mr. John Henry Boner that this custom still prevails not only in Pennsylvania, but at the Moravian settlement of Salem, North Carolina.] This custom, however, was probably ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... should insist upon taking Dora home with them, and secretly exulting as she thought how she should again work in the dark kitchen at Locust Grove, as she had done before. "That'll remove some of her fine airs, I reckon," she thought, as, with bitter hatred at her heart, she watched her young cousin, who, throughout the entire evening, continued to be the ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... sorts of sketches, memorials, autographs, and other such matters. What interested me more, she was making a collection of Scottish ballads, words and tunes. I told her that I had noticed, since I had been in Scotland, that the young ladies seemed to take very little interest in the national Scotch airs, and were all devoted to Italian; moreover, that the Scotch ballads and memories, which so interested me, seemed to have very little interest for people generally in Scotland. Miss S. was warm enough in her zeal to make up a considerable ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... crowded round underneath her, like so many kneeling courtiers, but they were not taken out of their pots; they were only shrouded in moss. They had no Sevres vases. And they had always thought so much of themselves and given themselves such airs, for there is nothing so vain as an azalea,—except, indeed, a camellia, which is the most conceited flower in the world, though, to do it justice, it is also the most industrious, for it is busy getting ready its next winter buds whilst ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... like that when you're newly engaged! What the country was like? Well, there was a schoolmaster—you know, an old bachelor, sly, and amusing. Said he knew me, and put on the most extraordinary airs the first day. And of course I returned the compliment and said I had come exclusively to meet him. 'Impossible!' he said. 'Why should it be?' I said; 'forty years a schoolmaster, a respected man, permanent churchman, chairman, indispensable everywhere!' Well, then I attended his ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... has been decisively proved that the existing demarcation and rivalry in England is a false and needless thing; and that working together can be a real, unselfconscious and wholly profitable matter. Our English airs are poisoned by past history and old social cleavage: in France, the past is forgotten, and social barriers do not exist. It is a matter of atmosphere, and there it is clear and bracing. Nobody sacrifices conviction or principle, but they love ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... snorted Jessup. "He sure gets my goat, with them dude clothes, an' that misplaced piece of eyebrow on his lip, an' his superior airs. I wouldn't of thought Miss ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... Stephen and Dennet. The alderman saw no reason to repent his decision, hastily as it had been made. Stephen gave himself no unseemly airs of presumption, but worked on as one whose heart was in the business, and Dennet rewarded her ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... there I learnt a little that I shall not soon forget. In that way I had many a draught of knowledge, as it were, by stealth. Having a strong taste for music, I was much attracted by choral singing; and on Sundays and in the evenings I tried to copy out airs from different books, and accustomed my hand a little to writing. This tendency was, however, choked within me by too much work with the cattle, and by other farm labour. In a word, I had but little fair weather in my search ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... Ann. When they've put you to school, and made you a Ward in Chancery, or something, and taught you airs, and graces, and dressed you up"—a pang traversed his heart, as the picture of her in the future flashed for a moment upon his inner eye—"why, by that time, you'll be a different Mary Ann, outside and inside. Don't shake ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... of Mississippi declared nullification and secession to be treason. The contest was conducted by Mr. Walker by speeches in every county, with the banner of the Union waving over him, and to the music of our national airs. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... cheeks, and his voice grew almost inaudible, as rocking to and fro, for some time he seemed in a very stupor of grief; when at last, in a faint, subdued tone, he broke into one of those sad and plaintive airs of his country, which only need the moment of depression to make them wring the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... characteristic of Central American architecture. The Guatemalan Pavilion houses a display of the products of the forests, fields, and mines of the country, with coffee as its most notable exhibit. A native marimba band playing Guatemalan airs makes complete the Central American spirit of this pavilion. The Pavilion of Honduras, which might have been brought entire from Central America by a genie, contains a display of laces, woven ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... Pennsylvania day, "The Star Spangled Banner;" on Kentucky day, "My Old Kentucky Home;" on Maryland day, "Maryland, my Maryland;" on Georgia day, "The Girl I Left Behind Me;" on colored people's day, the airs of the old plantation; on newsboy's day, "The Bowery" and "Sunshine of Paradise Alley;" then "Nearer, my God, to Thee," "Rock of Ages, Cleft For Me," soothed the tired Christian heart. One afternoon she took two of her boys into the belfry-tower; ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... indignation as Cecily could feel, "and I don't think she need shut me out of everything. When I wanted to stone the raisins for the mince-meat she said, no, she would do it herself, because Christmas mince-meat was very particular—as if I couldn't stone raisins right! The airs Felicity puts on about her cooking just make me ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... saluted every resolution of the meeting with a volley. A wooden pillar, with a cap of liberty on top, was erected, and dedicated to Papineau. At the end of the proceedings Papineau was led up to the column to receive an address. After this all present marched past singing popular airs; and each man placed his hand on the column, swearing to be faithful to the cause of his country, and to conquer or die for her. All this, of course, was comparatively innocent. The resolutions, too, were not more violent than many others which ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... staff which had been poured into the town might have led the thoughtful to suspect the Kaiser's presence, even if it had not been announced in the largest type in the papers, and marchings and counter-marchings of troops and sudden bursts of national airs proclaimed the august presence. He held an informal review of certain Bavarian troops not out for manoeuvres in the morning, visited the sculpture gallery and pinacothek in the afternoon, and when Hermann and Michael went up to the theatre they found ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... breaks the tip of an icicle, to bestow upon those whom she ought cordially and kindly to recognize, proclaims the fact that she comes not merely of low blood, but of bad blood. Consciousness of unquestioned position makes people gracious in proper measure to all; but if a woman puts on airs with her real equals, she has something about herself or her family she is ashamed of, or ought to be. Middle, and more than middle-aged people, who know family histories, generally see through it. An official of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... debut at the last concert, which was to be a peculiarly interesting one, as all the orphans were to be present and were expected to plead their own cause by the sight of their innocent helplessness as well as touch hearts by the simple airs they were ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... defection in June, the conduct of Charles Hardy had been in the highest degree satisfactory. His character seemed to be radically changed. He did not "put on airs," nor aspire to high places. His pride had been lowered, and he was modest and gentle; therefore my young friends will not be surprised to learn that his associates had rewarded his endeavors to do well by electing him ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... errand boy in the office of the eminent lawyer, and, of course, had practically experienced the kindness of his nature and the gentleness of his manner. Fitz "felt big," and put on airs, even when he was a smaller boy than now. Mr. Choate appreciated genuine humor, and it is more than probable that he enjoyed the "big talk" of the office boy. Perhaps he was more familiar with him on this account than he ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... comes from a plethora of life? But seriously, I can quite see that you are not the least what I thought you would be before I saw you. You are not critical, or experienced, or—much to mind. That's why I don't mind singing airs to you that I only half know.' Finding that by this confession she had vexed him in a way she did not intend, she added naively, 'I mean, Mr. Smith, that you are better, not worse, for being only young and not ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... to speak vulgarly, practising on Mr. Keene. He was her first visitor since she had entered upon rule, and she had a double satisfaction in subduing him with airs and graces. She did not trouble to reflect that under the circumstances he might think her rather heartless, and indeed hypocrisy was not one of her failings. Her naivete constituted such charm as she possessed; in the absence of any deep qualities it might be deemed ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... at such a height that those who were unable to accomplish distant journeys, but had only crossed over into France and Italy, gave themselves great airs on their return. "Farewell, monsieur traveler," says Shakespeare; "look, you lisp, and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... melody; nor even melodies already extant, round which, as round a framework of pure music, their thoughts and images might crystallize themselves, certain thereby of becoming musical likewise. The best modern song writers, Burns and Moore, were inspired by their old national airs; and followed them, Moore at least, with a reverent fidelity, which has had its full reward. They wrote words to music and not, as modern poets are wont, wrote the words first, and left others to set music ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... treads thy sacred sands, Thy pines give shelter to his bands, Thy sons stand by with idle hands, Carolina! He breathes at ease thy airs of balm, He scorns the lances of thy palm; Oh I who shall break thy craven calm, Carolina! Thy ancient fame is growing dim, A spot is on thy garment's rim; Give to the winds ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... first-class places of amusement, are now quite common. The music consists of masses, and other sacred airs, varied with selections from popular operas. The performers are famous throughout the country for their musical skill, and the audiences are large and fashionable. No one seems to think it sinful thus to desecrate the Lord's ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... moorland. My window looks out upon unsullied nature. Everything around is fresh and pure and wholesome. Through the open casement, the scent of the pines blows in with the breeze from the neighbouring firwood. Keen airs sigh through the pine-needles. Grasshoppers chirp from deep tangles of bracken. The song of a skylark drops from the sky like soft rain in summer; in the evening, a nightjar croons to us his monotonously passionate love-wail ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... best to follow the advice. But it is not easy for a man who has slept two successive nights in the open, who has had no opportunity of shaving, and who has crawled in ditches for several miles, to assume the airs of an opulent and self-contented tourist. Neal was painfully conscious that he must look like a disreputable tramp. Nevertheless he squared his shoulders, held up his head, and jingled his money in his pocket as he passed through the door. ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... month at Saratoga with Mrs. Nicoll and the maid. The old lady was a good deal entertained by the airs and graces and bright ways of her grand-niece. Lily made several conquests; but the desirable offer of marriage ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... mind seemed to run more upon the scene which had just passed, than on her own approaching death. "There were three of them set upon him—I brought the twasome—but wha was the third?—lt would be himself, returned to work his airs vengeance!" ' ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... my house—do you understand? My servants have orders to call you Master Harry Richmond, according to your christening. You were born here, sir, you will please to recollect. I'll have no vagabond names here'—he puffed himself hot, muttering, 'Nor vagabond airs neither.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not he hated me from the first, misconstrued every word and deed, though I have tried, striven earnestly, to be his friend,—borne, as not another soul would have done, with his impertinent interference and intolerable patronizing airs! But he has seen the last of it! anything but this might be forgiven; but sowing dissension between me and the Edmonstones—maligning me there. Never! Knowing, too, as he seems to do, how I stand, it is the very ecstasy of malice! Ay! this very night it shall be exposed, and he ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and the soldiers, and the big-wigged lawyers, and the merchants, and the doctors, and the ''plomatics'—them who goes abroad to desave the furriners, and takes up so much room and gives themselves such airs aboard ship; but what, just let me ax, is the best on 'em when you puts him alongside a right honest, thorough-bred seaman? What's the proudest on 'em, when it comes to blow half a capful of wind? What's the boldest on 'em in a dark night, on a lee ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... and haughty; if she found it impossible to answer the piles of letters sent her, she was neglectful of her duty to the admiring public; and if she preferred the privacy of home to the pedestal upon which she was requested to pose, 'the airs of literary ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... said Phil, showing a pair of cuff links, while Joe made every one laugh by assuming dandified airs as he stuck in his tie a pretty scarf-pin. Arthur peacefully attached a silver pencil to his watch-chain, Bert transferred his small change to a pigskin purse, and Jack slashed imaginary villains with ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... all about himself! Everyone had heard of his disgrace, and almost everyone cried "Serve him right!" They said that the airs he gave himself were quite unendurable—that nothing was more rude than to be always in the right—that cleverness might be carried far too far—that it was better even to be born stupid ("Like the rest of you," thought the prince); and, in fact, ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... 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 superiority, and to concede the principle of international equality and ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... there had been hardly a drop of rain. The wind had been almost continuously north-west, and from that to east. Occasionally there were light airs from the south-west, and vapour rose, but there was nothing in it; there was no true south-westerly breeze, and in a few hours the weather-cock returned to the old quarter. Not infrequently the clouds began to gather, and there was every ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... persons. I walked one evening towards the town (for I was boarding in the outskirts), and passed an encampment of soldiers, who in their gay uniforms glittered among the lighted tents like soldier fays. The band in the shadow of the camp was playing very sweetly airs proper for that fading light, half-mournful, half-tender and hopeful. I passed by the houses brilliantly lighted and filled with finely dressed people, who also thronged the streets. Before one of the principal hotels was ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... seemed to cure her instantly of her wish. She had tried having a confidant and it had brought her to this; henceforward let her keep her own counsel. (So she mused, walking homeward in the brilliant sunshine and light airs with J. Forsythe Avery, who had just conquered his pique over his rejection last January.) That her one confidant's honorable silence expressed his trust that she herself would "tell" was possibly true; but that, in this no-quarter conflict between them, was merely so much the worse ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Straight from the Sun I sank with gifts to bless The world with living tongue and burning wing. I came, and Man sat caverned with the brute; I nursed him and he rose into a god; I leave him and he withers with the fruit Of ages on the ground his splendour trod. Farewell, you airs and skies from whence I fell, Fond Earth, farewell, and all thy beauty past— And thou, old pulseless Ocean foe, farewell!— All dead! I too shall die, ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... working in the mine offices in the Pennsylvania town and folding a five dollar bill sent it to her in a letter. "I will begin to take care of her now," he thought and with the rough sense of equity in such matters, common to labouring people, had no intention of giving himself airs. "She has fed me and now I will begin to feed ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... Iras is ugly and ungenteel, but has Wit and good Sense: If Caelia would be silent, her Beholders would adore her; if Iras would talk, her Hearers would admire her; but Caelia's Tongue runs incessantly, while Iras gives her self silent Airs and soft Languors; so that 'tis difficult to persuade one's self that Caelia has Beauty and Iras Wit: Each neglects her own Excellence, and is ambitious of the other's Character; Iras would be thought to have as much Beauty as Caelia, and Caelia as ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... there are scoffers who maintain that it has fallen, that all dogma lies on the ground—nay more, that it is at its last gasp. But to speak seriously, there are good grounds for hoping that all dogmatizing in philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusive and decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noble puerilism and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand when it will be once and again understood WHAT has actually sufficed for the basis of such imposing and absolute philosophical edifices as the dogmatists have hitherto reared: perhaps ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Europe; and volumes could be compiled of extracts from English literature, from Shakespeare downwards, in abuse of British fog and mist and rain. But because Nice and Naples are entitled to give themselves airs, under what patent do Chicago and Pittsburgh claim the same right? Why should Englishmen submit uncomplainingly when Milwaukee and Duluth arrogate to themselves the privilege of sneering at them which was conceded originally and willingly enough to Cannes? Riverside ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... school-days, and I am persuaded that my natural vocation was that of an opera dancer. Far into middle life I never saw beautiful dancing without a rapture of enthusiasm, and used to repeat from memory whole dances after seeing Duvernay or Ellsler, as persons with a good musical ear can repeat the airs of the opera first heard the night before. And I remember, during Ellsler's visit to America, when I had long left off dancing in society, being so transported with her execution of a Spanish dance ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... it is to be disposed to like neither false wit nor pedantic science; it is to know how to recognize at first sight our Trissotins[6] and our Vadius even under their rejuvenated jaunty airs; it is, not to let one's self be captivated at present any more than formerly by the everlasting Philaminte, that affected pretender of all times, whose form only changes and whose plumage is incessantly renewed; it is, to like soundness and directness of ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... picnics at which his presence was claimed in various places. Not the cumbrous affairs which called into requisition all the baskets, and boxes, and available conveyances of the invited guests—parties of which the aim seems to be, to collect in one favoured spot in the country, all the luxuries, and airs, and graces of the town—but little impromptu efforts in the same direction in which Mrs Grove had all the trouble, and her guests all the pleasure. Very charming little fetes her guests generally pronounced them to be. Arthur enjoyed them vastly, and all the more that it never ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... of the Fraser girls," said the woman, in a tone of contempt—"those newcomers, who have not been settled in the place above a year. For my part, I don't hold with lady-nurses. I am told they are all stuck-up and full of airs, and that they need a sight more waiting on than the patients themselves. When you get a lady-nurse into the house you have to think more of the nurse than of the patient, that's what I ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... the same to Meekin and Griffith and Price; he laid all the partiality with which they charged him on his aunt, and said he only wished he could have his way with him, and he would soon bring down his airs, and teach him ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... estimation by the rest of the Spaniards, even those in opulent circumstances finding some difficulty at Madrid in procuring admission into respectable society, where, if they find their way, they are invariably the objects of ridicule, from the absurd airs and grimaces in which they indulge,—their tendency to boasting and exaggeration, their curious accent, and the incorrect manner in which they speak and pronounce the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... you've got your fine coat, ain't you, and your pretty airs! Darn me if I don't take you down a ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... the less of turtle soup for it? had she deprived herself of anything in the hateful overflowing of her superfluous luxuries? No. She had added to it a vanity, a luxury, a good action like a ring on her finger, the relief of a man of wit, the patronization of a clergyman. She could give herself airs: say, "I lavish kindness; I fill the mouths of men of letters; I am his benefactress. How lucky the wretch was to find me out! What a patroness of the arts I am!" All for having set up a truckle ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... this apple tree? Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, And redden in the August noon, And drop, when gentle airs come by, That fan the blue September sky, While children come, with cries of glee, And seek them where the fragrant grass Betrays their bed to those who pass, At the foot ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... dry and difficult books: for example, though nothing would have induced me to read the budget of stupid party lies that served as a text-book of history in school, I remember reading Robertson's Charles V. and his history of Scotland from end to end most laboriously. Once, stung by the airs of a schoolfellow who alleged that he had read Locke On The Human Understanding, I attempted to read the Bible straight through, and actually got to the Pauline Epistles before I broke down in disgust at what seemed to me their inveterate crookedness of mind. If there ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... shutter. They chattered and giggled and bustled in, rattling the chairs about, and begging one another's pardon vociferously, with that insistent politeness which marks a sharply defined stage in the social evolution of the young girl. They irritated her excessively—these little airs and graces. She opened her book with a snap, and began to call ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam
... announced my engagement to himself only last night assumed no airs of proprietorship, but was placidly content to let me sit and talk to Mr. Johnson, who was holding forth on the merits of our Rhode Island Reds as against either barred Plymouth Rocks or White Leghorns, and the variety of vegetables and small fruits ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... patient. Sundry "nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles," and sundry eloquent glances of his bright black eyes, were covertly bestowed upon his fair cousin; anon, with ludicrous solemnity, he felt the pulse of Perez, shook his head, and, in short, imitated with inimitable exactness all the technical airs and graces of a regular graduate of Salamanca.—"Cousin," cried he at length, with a sly look at Juana, "I pity your plight—from my soul I do; but your case is, I am grieved to say, desperate, unless I am informed of the cause of these monstrous ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... Brown-Smith had insisted on such dissimulation, as absolutely necessary at this juncture of affairs. So Matilda bloomed again, like a rose that had been 'washed, just washed, in a shower.' The Vidame went about humming the airs of the country which he had honoured by adopting it as the cradle of ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... next day you fish again; and that's all, except tennis. Winnie and I do nothing else. In the evening Beauty sings to us, and there's beautifully she sings. You'll be charmed with her voice—sweet, old Welsh airs, you know—" ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... please, on the largest possible scale. Compare the uneducated savage with his civilized brother. His form has never been bent by confinement in the school-room. Overburdening thoughts have never wasted his frame. And if unremitting exercise amid the free airs of heaven will alone make one strong, then he will be strong. Is the savage stronger? Does he live more years? Can he compete side by side with civilized races in the struggle for existence? Just the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... eglantine doth her garlands twine For the blithe hours as they run, And balmily sighs the meadow-sweet, That is all in love with the sun, Whilst new-mown hay o'er the hedgerows gay Flings odorous airs afar; Yet sweeter than these on the passing breeze Is the scent of ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... Rodney had no social airs and graces, no parlor tricks. If he had been formally sitting on a chair, holding his hat, he would have been a self-conscious and unhappy young man. As it was, with hands and eyes busy, and wholly at his ease, he ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... he can inflict a wound which a perch or a trout knows how to estimate at its full value. But that is not all the good parent's duty. He takes the eggs out of the nest every now and then with his snout, airs them a little in the fresh water outside, and then replaces and rearranges them, so that all may get a fair share of oxygen and may hatch out about simultaneously. It is this question of oxygen, indeed, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... the great news that the white men were coming to make whole the injured man, and the occupants of the huts, to the number of about two hundred men, women, and children, swarmed out to gaze upon the strangers. The guide, who was inclined to put on airs, upon the strength of being the bearer of the white men's muti, would fain have made the most of the occasion by pausing in the centre of the village and haranguing his fellows, but Dick nipped the intention ruthlessly in the bud by repeating several times, in an imperative ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... Ruthenian songs resembling the Polish mazurkas. [Ostrowski states that these are popular airs that are sung and danced at the same time. Naganowski adds that the first word is derived from the town of Kolomyja in Galicia. Mazurka is "merely the feminine form ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... his head, and ejaculated, "Brackish, brackish!" as he began to put the bit in Doll's patient mouth. He was thinking, with a passion of loyalty, of the clear, ice-cold water at home, which had never been shut out, by a pump, from the purifying airs of heaven, but lay where the splashing bucket and chain broke, every day, the image of moss and fern. His throat grew parched and dry ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... their own debts and earn the things they need in their churches. And 'services of song' are delightful if well done, as I am sure this will be if Lady Ingleby's people are in it. Lawson outlined it to me this morning, and hummed all the principal airs. It is highly dramatic. Robinson Crusoe—no, of course not! What's the beggar's name? 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'? Yes, I knew it was something black. Lawson is Uncle Tom, and the vicar's small daughter is to be little Eva. Miss ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... the inflammable and dephlogisticated airs, the airs unite with violence—become red-hot—and, on cooling, totally disappear. The only fixed matter which remains is water; and water, light, and heat, are all the products. Are we not then authorised to conclude that water is composed of dephlogisticated and ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursel's as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us And foolish notion: What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... at which Flurry and I made our dinners, where Flurry sat in state at the bottom of the table and carved the pudding, and gave herself small airs of consequence, and then the long quiet afternoons with ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... thanks; Our rivers roll exulting, and their banks Send up hosannas to the firmament! Fields where the bondman's toil No more shall trench the soil, Seem now to bask in a serener day; The meadow-birds sing sweeter, and the airs Of heaven with more caressing softness play, Welcoming man to liberty like theirs. A glory clothes the land from sea to sea, For the great land and ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... continued in a tone of reproof to her daughter,'What are you thinkin' of, wishin' you earned your own livin' like Naomi? A nice one you'd be if such a dreadful thing 'appened to you, wi' your 'aughty airs an' scornful ways that no one would put up wi', let alone that you could never earn a penny ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... her an annual stipend for her services, finding that she had great influence with the Indians.—Some years afterwards she married the Reverend Mr. Bosomworth; and then she put on airs, and united with him in a vexatious claim for a large tract of land. See McCALL, Vol. I. p. 213. Bosomworth had been a Chaplain in the Regiment of the General; had received many favors from him personally; and a salary from the Society for propagating ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... contented herself with remarking that the proceeding was out of place. The line of misconduct to which she most objected was an undue assumption of gentility; she had no patience with boarders who gave themselves airs. "When people come chez moi, it is not to cut a figure in the world; I have never had that illusion," I remember hearing her say; "and when you pay seven francs a day, tout compris, it comprises everything but the right to look down upon the others. But there ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... Who could refrain from making an attempt upon Carthage and Libya when he was so close to them, countries which were all but conquered by Agathokles when he ran away from Syracuse with only a few ships? and if we were masters of these countries, none of the enemies who now give themselves such airs at our expense will dare to resist us." "Certainly not," answered Kineas; "With such a force at our disposal we clearly could recover Macedonia, and have the whole of Greece at our feet. And after we have made all these conquests, what shall ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... following century both these countries were added to the possessions of Great Britain. Then, as Daniel Webster said, her "morning drum beat, following the sun and keeping company with the hours," literally circled "the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England." ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... CONTAT changes the principal characters in comedy into those of chambermaids, Mademoiselle DEVIENNE does the contrary, and from the same motive, namely, because she is deficient in the requisites for her cast of parts, such as warmth, comic truth, and vivacity. Yet, while she assumes the airs of a fine lady, she takes care to dwell on the slightest equivoque; so that what would be no more than gay in the mouth of another woman, in hers becomes indecent. As she is a mannerist in her acting, some think it perfect, and they ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the voice are generally very faithful; I do not pass over expressions that displease me. I put this interpretation upon Louise's conduct. I do not feel an insuperable dislike to M. Edgar de Meilhan. Sure of the meaning of my text, I acted upon it, but Louise assumed such imposing and royal airs, such haughty and disdainful poses, that unless I resorted to violence I felt I could obtain nothing from her. Rage, instead of love, possessed me; my hands clenched convulsively, driving the nails into my flesh. The ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... till the end of February or March, on and off, and the establishment is kept up with extraordinary splendour. In the morning we are roused by the strains of martial music, and the band (of his regiment of militia) marches round the terrace, awakening or quickening the guests with lively airs. All the men hunt or shoot. At dinner there is a different display of plate every day, and in the evening some play at whist or amuse themselves as they please, and some walk about the staircases and corridors to hear the band, which plays the whole evening in the hall. On ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... the jovial huskers, Love stole in at Labor's side, With the lusty airs of England, Soft ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Middleton, with her horror of impropriety; Miss Steele, who can always be made happy by being teased about the Doctor; Lucy Steele, pretty, clever, not over-fastidious in her principles, and abominably weak in her grammar; Robert Ferrars, whose airs are justly punished by his marriage to Lucy; Mrs. Ferrars, who contrives to be uniformly unamiable; Mrs. John Dashwood, fit daughter to such a mother; and Mr. John Dashwood, fit husband to such a wife—together ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... little Lamb wished that he had not boasted so much. Now, when the others passed him, he did not put on airs. Now he wondered why they couldn't have short tails in the beginning. He asked his uncle, an old Wether Sheep, why this was and his uncle laughed. "Why, what would you have done all these days if things happened in that way? What would ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... crowd that stood round them on the quay, I saw it all. Her black eyes flashed, she stamped and bit her lips at him, her full bosom heaved as though it would burst her laced bodice. She was only a market-girl, but she gave herself the airs of a queen. 'I am tired of you!' she said to him. 'Go! I wish to see you no more.' He was tall and well-made, a powerful fellow; but he staggered, his face grew pale, his lips quivered. He bent his head a little—turned—and before any hand could stop him he sprung from the edge of ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... the 22nd of February a very singular spectacle was got up on the Serpentine. Late in the evening a fine "brass band," attended by near a thousand torchbearers, suddenly marched on to the ice on the ornamental water in Kensington Gardens, and struck up popular airs; as by a signal, large fires were lighted on the ice, tents were erected, and barrels of beer were broached. Suddenly, several hundred skaters, each bearing a lighted lamp at his waist-belt, emerged from the crowd, and shot under the bridge on to the Serpentine, and commenced ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... love spoken, will bring back the answer of love,—the kind deed will bring back a kind deed in return,—till the hearts in the family-circle, instead of being so many frozen, icy islands, shall be full of warm airs and echoing bird-voices answering back and forth with a constant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... preserves its richest treasures of beauty and fruitfulness without relaxing our nerves by its hot breath. These shady yet cheerful forests, these crystal streams leaping everywhere through the flower-perfumed land, these balmy airs which almost uninterruptedly float down from the near icefields, and on their way through the mountain-gorges and higher valleys get laden with the spicy breath of flowers,—all this must be seen and enjoyed in order ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... marched down to the transport ships at Leith by torchlight. All the town was out to see them. They passed in military procession through the principal streets, singing as they marched along their revolutionary airs, "Ca lra" and "The Marseillaise." The wild enthusiasm of these haggard-looking men, lit up by torchlight and accompanied by the cheers of the dense crowd which lined the streets and filled the windows, made an impression on my mind that I ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... moment," said Arndt, as he felt the breezes of earth playing on his cheek. How sweet they were, even after the fragrant airs of elfin-land! ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... who was able to give him any light in his investigations, because the guests at the hotel, most of them, on account of their position, thought of nothing but amusing themselves and of giving themselves airs. ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... the music rooms, with their old, second-hand pianos, some with rattling keys and tinny sound, on which we were supposed to play our scales and exercises for an hour, though we often slyly indulged in the 'Russian March,' 'Napoleon Crossing the Rhine,' or our national airs, when, as slyly, Mr. Powell, our music teacher, a bumptious Englishman, would softly open the door and say in a stern voice, 'Please practice the lesson ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton |
