"Aplomb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my only thought, But then this all-important step was fraught With seen and unseen dangers everywhere, Suppose I met Miss Gradient on the stair, Or Jane—for this I candidly confess I did not the required aplomb possess. Besides I dreaded now to rouse the house; No, I would dress, then wait, still as a mouse, For early dawn, a note to Harry write, Which would my wronged position soon make right. Yes, I would go before the servants were, Or any of ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... and logical man; and it is only a pity that he had not some Boswell of a friend who could have recorded his wise sayings and valuable criticism of men and things. He was more of an idealist than Doctor Johnson, and at the same time like Doctor Johnson in personal solidity, his English aplomb of character. They were both men of sterling quality. He was in all things especially human. His sympathies equalled the breadth of his mind. There was scarcely a subject in which he did not take an interest, and was not ready to converse on. As soon as ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... Fulkeward; she smoked cigarettes; she laughed like a child at every trivial thing—any joke, however stale, flat and unprofitable, was sufficient to stir her light pulses to merriment; and she flirted—oh, heavens!—HOW she flirted!—with a skill and a grace and a knowledge and an aplomb that nearly drove Muriel and Dolly Chetwynd Lyle frantic. They, poor things, were beaten out of the field altogether by her superior tact and art of "fence," and they hated her accordingly and called her in private a "horrid old woman," which perhaps, ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... with cool aplomb. "Don't you worry about me, Ned. I travel at a good lick myself. She'll break ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... charming?" laughed my uncle. "Just look! he has made his little flourish and thinks he's a very clever fellow! I do like that—upon my soul I do! What youthful aplomb, what life in that foolish flourish! And what boy is this?" he asked, suddenly turning ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... table again amidst a storm of crockeryware, cutlery, and provisions, and each article as it descended was caught with an astonishing dexterity and set in its proper place with a swift exactness which looked like magic. The artist had a perfect aplomb, and he put off the catching of each article till the last fraction of the inevitable second, so that he seemed secure in perfect triumph and yet on the edge of instant failure. The house howled with excited laughter and applause, and Paul roared as loud as any. He was as sober as a ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... spirits for the moment. Loiseau, nonplussed at first, soon regained his aplomb and burst into a roar of laughter. "Sour grapes, old ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... felt itself put upon its mettle. The first move was made by Miss Martha Hopkins. It was understood that if anybody could clear the way, carry a difficult position with skill and aplomb, that somebody ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... all those present were used to living in a palace, and took all the splendor quite as a matter of course. Was there no envy? Was there nothing said about the airs of a country school-ma'am, the aplomb of an adventurer? Were there no criticisms afterwards as the guests rolled home in their carriages, surfeited and exhausted? What would you have? Do you expect the millennium ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... standing at ease in Nature, Master of all or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of irrational things, Imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent as they, Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than I thought, Me toward the Mexican sea, or in the Mannahatta or the Tennessee, or far north or inland, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... on working with his chisel with just as much zest if his creations had been doomed to meet no mortal eye but his own. This indifference to the popular reception of his dream-figures lent him a curious artistic aplomb that carried him through the gusts of opinion without suffering them to disturb ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... daily Taube as much as a matter of course as their daily cafe. They cannot help exclaiming in admiration "quel aplomb!" It is now the fourth day that a German aeroplane has passed over the French armies, eluded the French machines, and braved a murderous fire from the ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... countess happened to be standing with her back to the door, and did not see her come in; but she felt the sudden silence and turned to ascertain the cause. For a moment she was rooted to the spot, and the color left her face. It says much for her aplomb that she did not cry out. Her confusion lasted only for a moment, then she went toward Lady ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... particular which included within the same circumference himself and a certain frail fairy of the Robiniere who had always regarded him with disdain. Now all that was to be changed! So he greeted Collins with a self-assurance and aplomb quite removed from ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... he had acquired aplomb in his journeys round the globe, but he gave her a glance of sad reproach, while ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... "... This incredible event took place even while it seemed most impossible. The Prime Minister took it with his usual aplomb. I asked him what he thought of the matter a week later, at a house party in Hertfordshire. He said, 'I consider it most unfortunate. This Leader of theirs is an inherently nasty individual. Therefore he'll make nastiness the avenue to distinction ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... arresting way, with dark eyes capable of expressing much, and full, red lips parted upon slightly prominent teeth. She looked as if she could be extremely fascinating, but there was something about her that did not inspire Honor with confidence,—though she freely admired her grace and aplomb,—and she thought she looked more like an actress than a nurse. Surely the stage would have better suited one of her type! ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... he'd kept back from them," replied Thrush, with just a little less than his usual aplomb. "It was a surprise he sprang on them after waking; it will probably surprise you still more, Mr. Upton. You may not believe it. I'm not certain that I do myself. In the morning he had spoken of the Australian voyage as though you'd opposed it, but withdrawn your opposition—one moment, if you ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... answers, so like each other in verbal form, were utterly dissimilar in the manner of their utterance. Suddenly, and for the first time in all her knowledge of him, his cynical aplomb had fallen from the man like a garment. One moment he was brazening past deceit with a smiling face; the next, he was in earnest, even he, and that mocking voice vibrated ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... shoot; the wife sat in a far corner watching us. I think we were worth looking at. We grumbled over the misfortune of La Fere; we forecast other La Feres in the future;—although things went better with the Cigarette for spokesman; he had more aplomb altogether than I; and a dull, positive way of approaching a landlady that carried off the india-rubber bags. Talking of La Fere put ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lawyers, and intensely practical old politicians;—all these he had lived through not once, but often, and had always piloted the Guardian's bark to port in safety. In fact, he had done this with such aplomb that long ago he had dismissed from his mind such a thing as the possibility of ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... spite of all his aplomb and matter-of-fact practicality, he felt a strange thrill curdle through his blood, while on the back of his neck the hair ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... with the English people was practically confined to us three, who had been in America nearly seven years, and who, in consequence, had shrouded our more salient insularities beneath a cloak of cosmopolitan aplomb. Neither our speech nor our outlook upon life could be taken as typical of our great and noble-hearted nation. Yet she did take us in that sense, with the result that in her conception of the United Kingdom it was a rather fantastic ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... flushed to his throat, turned abruptly on his heel, and began to talk with Ryan. The hillman wanted it clearly understood that the feud he cherished was only temporarily abandoned. But even Roy noticed that the young Admirable Crichton had lost some of his debonair aplomb. ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... echo this, but again his teeth were tightly locked, and he made but a meaningless squeak far back in his throat. He used this for the beginning of a cough, which he finished with a decent aplomb. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... Don't lose you head, Dubois, at this tight time: Your furthest skill can work but what it may. Fancy that you are merely standing by A shop-wife's couch, say, in the Rue Saint Denis; Show the aplomb and phlegm that you would show Did such a bed receive ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the better," said I, with great aplomb. Jasper, Jr., stuck out his chest modestly, and said: "Oh, piffle, Colly." But just the same I hadn't the least doubt in my mind that Jasper could "put it all over me." It was a rather sickening ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... God"—the bride was heard to murmur to her attendant, "Jacky, pull my train out straight." Thereafter, she fixed her eye upon a certain flintlock rifle over the mantel-piece, which had won the first Kentucky Kildare his way into the virgin wilderness, and went through the ceremony with the aplomb of a general directing his forces into battle. The mother wondered what the girl was thinking of, staring so fixedly at the old rifle. Perhaps she was vowing to be worthy of it in the new wilderness ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... lunches packed in billies; and she had seen the caves and rocky holes where blackfellows were said to have hidden themselves in early times; but neither this particular excursion, nor the exciting incident which she described with all the aplomb of an eyewitness, had ever taken place. That is to say: not a word of her narration was true, but every word of it might have ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... some of my patients were allowed wine, beer, or spirits, and some were not. "Burgundy, Sir?" "Whiskey-and-soda, Sir?" I ran round the table of the sitting-up patients, displaying (I was pleased to think) the complete aplomb and nimbleness of a thoroughbred Swiss garcon, pouring out drinks—with concealed envy—placing and removing plates, handing salt, bread, serviettes.... After which, back to Mrs. Mappin and her renewed ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... our experience, remember seeing a prince—or a mere man for the matter of that—leave a room with greater suavity, discretion, or aplomb. It was a revelation of breeding, of race, of long slavery to caste. And yet, with it all, it seemed to have a touch of finality about it—a hint that the entire proceeding was deliberate, planned, not to be altered by circumstance. ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... dealer. The cramped side pavements of the town failed to accommodate the ceaseless promenade of those whose sole business lay in criticising the companion promenade of horses in the narrow street. They haled horses before them with the aplomb of a ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... doubt, partly fills the place of the departed court in presenting new fashions to the public eye, doing it with the graceful aplomb that has carried many a doubtful innovation on to sure success. Those beautiful and trained artists take pleasure in first presenting the style other women are to follow, and yet they share the honour (?) with another class, whose most audacious ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... which I have never seen more faithfully presented on the stage. And there is M. Brasseur. He is a kind of French Arthur Roberts, but without any of that extravagant energy which carries the English comedian triumphantly through all his absurdities. M. Brasseur is preposterously natural, full of aplomb and impertinence. He never flags, never hesitates; it is impossible to take him seriously, as we say of delightful, mischievous people in real life. I have been amused to see a discussion in the papers ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... aplomb was equal to most situations, but it failed him here; for a moment he could only stare. The contrast between the picture in his mind's eye, of the plain, square-toed, high-principled and rather pathetic champion of the Cause—pathetic in ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... two shots with impressive aplomb—only to be absolutely ignored twice more by Number Seven. Then he rose to his feet and saluted ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... They were so easily led into traps. They bunched together when under fire instead of scattering for cover. They did not know how to read sign on the warmest trail. These range-riders were different. If they were not as wary as the Utes, they made up for it by the dash and aplomb with which they ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... Ladies and Gentleman, I have the pleasure to announce that Miss CONNIE COCKLE will now appear. Don't curtsey till the Orchestra gives the chord. (Chord from the harmonium—the Child advances, and curtsies with much aplomb.) Oh, lor! call that a curtsey—that's a cramp, that is! Do it all over again! (The Child obeys, disconcerted.) That's worse! I can see the s'rimps blushin' for yer inside their paper bags! Now see Me do it. (Bones executes a caricature of a curtsey, which the little Girl ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... under the above title in the issue of Punch for January 14th, the setting of the nautical episode, in which the subject of the story conducted himself with so much aplomb and resourcefulness, was derived from a personal experience related to the author; but Mr. Punch has his assurance that Reginald McTaggart was not intended even remotely to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... faithful, affectionate dependant, and I—well! I myself fallen into a mere admiration of so much impudence, that transcended words, and had very soon conquered animosity. I took a fancy to the man, he was so vast a humbug. I began to see a kind of beauty in him, his aplomb was so majestic. I never knew a rogue to cut so fat; his villainy was ample, like his belly, and I could scarce find it in my heart to hold him responsible for either. He was good enough to drop into the autobiographical; telling me how the farm, in spite of the war ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... With the aplomb of a general disposing his forces, Sims indicated the rising hill on which Rubino should bed his flock down, and watched critically as they went ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... said the baron, who was fast losing his aplomb, "was to warn you, was to beg you—as I have been told you have had the charity to take this foundling—to continue the good work by protecting, sheltering and educating her, and when it is necessary to punish her will you do so with kindness, ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... moment, however, there was no jury at hand—only Pixie O'Shaughnessy, feeling very small and snubbed in her corner of the sofa, and robbed for the moment of her accustomed aplomb by the blighting consciousness that she ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... at the barrier (yes, he held me up in the first moment of our acquaintance) while he fumbled for his pass. He had given the word "Press" with an exaggerated aplomb that showed he was young to his job, and the gate-keeper challenged him. It was, in fact, the exquisite self-consciousness of the little man that made me look at him. And he caught me looking at him; he blushed, caught himself blushing and smiled to himself with the most delicious ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... as deep or strong or wise as is patient furrowed earth and her blundering children. A rough earth-hint, a Rabelaisian ditty, a gross amazing jest, a chuckle of deep Satyric humour;—and the monstrous "thickness" of Life, its friendly aplomb and nonchalance, its grotesque irreverence, its shy shrewd common-sense, its tough fibres, and portentous indifference to "distinction"; tumbles us over in the mud—for all our "aloofness"—and roars over ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... impress you in his favour; his dress was a blue braided frock, decorated with the cordon of the legion; but neither these, nor the clink of his long cavalry spurs, were necessary to convince you that the man was a soldier; besides that, there was that mixture of urbanity and aplomb in his manner which showed him to be perfectly accustomed to the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... we were going to try it!" Rachael answered with equal aplomb as the train ran through Quaker Bridge without stopping, and went on with only slightly decreased speed. And a moment later she began to gather her possessions together, and the conductor remarked amiably: "Here we are! But she surely is raining," he added. "Well, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... lui cloua ses phrases menteuses sur les lvres. Et dans ce regard qui le fixait d'aplomb, en face, le misrable dut lire bien des choses, car je le vis tout coup plir, balbutier, perdre contenance; mais ce ne fut que l'affaire d'un instant: il reprit aussitt son air flambant, planta dans mes yeux deux yeux froids et brillants comme l'acier, et, ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... no very special hurry. And now again she smiled, thoughtfully, rather approving my own silence, as I guessed; perhaps because it showed no unmanly perturbation—my lack of imagination passing for aplomb. ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... its lemon groves and lush grass. A battery wheeled before them over the ancient bridge -a flight of short, broad cobbled steps up as far as the centre of the stream and a similar flight down to the other bank. The returning aplomb of the travellers was well illustrated by the professor, who, upon sighting this bridge, murmured ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... Mr. Hicks, driving four horses and the "grub-wagon," and leading the procession. He handled the lines with an aplomb reminiscent of the coaching days of Reginald Vanderbilt, together with the noble bearing of the late Ben Hur tooling his chariot. Mr. Hicks dignified the "grub-wagon" to such an extent that it was a treat to ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... under the Persimmon's protruding yellow stare, but finally, when the roustabout was gone, he shrugged, regained his aplomb, and remarked that some niggers spent their time in studyin' 'bout things they hadn't no info'mation on whatever. Then he strolled off up the crescent in ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... instead of red. During the interim year my father made frequent journeys to Berlin. Once, say, in the month of November, the sunset colors were already gleaming through the trees on the city ramparts, as I stood down in our doorway watching my father as he put on his driving gloves with a certain aplomb and then suddenly sprang upon the front seat of his small calash. My mother was there also. "Really the boy might go along," said my father. I pricked up my ears, rejoiced in my little soul, which even then longed eagerly for anything a little out of the ordinary and likely ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... aplomb, his lack of self-consciousness, seemed to be gone; and Neeland made some reply which seemed to him both obvious and dull. And hated himself because he found himself so unaccountably abashed, realising that he was afraid ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... washing and a compress of sterilized cotton bound on with surgical bandages completed the operation. Then, when it was all over with, the young mother, who had gone through everything with the aplomb and deftness of a surgeon, quietly sank back in a faint. On the instant Blake was reaching for ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... ribbon on the skirt and corsage, and a cluster of roses in her belt, she was as inconsistent and incongruous to the others as a fashion-plate would have been in the dry and dog-eared pages before them. Yet she carried it off with a demure mingling of the naivete of youth and the aplomb of a woman, and as she swept down the narrow aisle, burying a few small wondering heads in the overflow of her flounces, there was no doubt of her reception in the arch smile that dimpled her cheek. Dropping a half curtsey to the master, the only suggestion of her ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... Miss Josephine who first found her aplomb. She smiled her rare smile of mingled amusement and mischief at Sam, and then at ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... husband, to lend dignity to his descendants, and to himself a title, when he should be called upon the Bench. On the side of Jean, there was perhaps some fascination of curiosity as to this unknown male animal that approached her with the roughness of a ploughman and the APLOMB of an advocate. Being so trenchantly opposed to all she knew, loved, or understood, he may well have seemed to her the extreme, if scarcely the ideal, of his sex. And besides, he was an ill man to refuse. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all Mr. Prohack's vanished aplomb. That at the end of the greatest war in the history of the earth, amid decapitated empires and cities of starvation, braces should be made to measure,—this was too much for Mr. Prohack, who had not dreamed ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... de M. Thiers, qui a dit avec aplomb 'Je ne change jamais,' et qui aujourd'hui est a la fois le protecteur et le protege de ceux qu'il a passe une partie de sa vie a fusilier, ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... Her wonderfully arranged, fair hair was ablaze with diamonds, her gown was more suitable to a London drawing-room than the deck of a steamer. And yet she seemed neither over-jewelled nor over-dressed. She had all the marvellous "aplomb" of her countrywomen, who can transgress all laws of fashion or taste, and ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... you to hear," she said, with all the aplomb she could muster. "These things will happen. I've often told him he ought to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... tricks—affectations like "I don't know what they did next" and the others noted above: while the famous rhetorical beginnings of chapters appear not only at the very outset, but at the opening of the second volume, "Le Soleil donnant aplomb sur les antipodes,"—things which a century later Fielding, and two centuries later Dickens, did not ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... white-breasted nuthatch which goes scudding up and down the tree trunks with as much ease and aplomb as a fly gliding over a window-pane. I have already told you something about him. I had long been aware that he wedged grains of corn, sunflower seeds, and kernels of nuts in the crannies of the bark; ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... and watch her bend over her cardboard, with eyes half-closed the better to see her work, or rolling, between her fingers, little bread-pellets. As to the piano, the more quickly her fingers glided over it the more he wondered. She struck the notes with aplomb, and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the other end of the village when the window was open, and often the bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... The lad's aplomb and dignity deserted him. He blushed furiously, and hung his head in shame of his ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... League to be kept waiting? (She passes him contemptuously and sits down with impressive confidence in the chair next the fireplace. Lady Corinthia takes the chair on the opposite side of the table with equal aplomb.) ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... into the conversation with great aplomb. He has been holding on vigorously to Mr. Dysart's right hand for the last five minutes, after a brief but brilliant skirmish with Mabel as to the possession of it—a skirmish brought to a bloodless ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... angrily at his smiling ones. The unabashed impudence, the unfluttered aplomb, but above all the uncanny prescience of this youth disturbed him because he could not understand them. Moreover, it happened that his suspicious mind had lingered on the chance of a betrayal at the hands of his chief. For which very reason he ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... man of twenty-five, a curious mixture of knowledge, cynicism, energy, and affectionateness. I found Rose a very congenial companion, though I never felt sure what he thought, and never aired my enthusiasms in his presence. He had great aplomb, and was troubled by no shyness nor hesitation. There was a touch of frostiness at times between him and Father Payne. Rose was paradoxical and whimsical, and was apt to support fantastic positions with apparent ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... aplomb, his good-humored familiarity on first acquaintance, delighted most of his visitors, it offended many. It was lacking in tact. Often it was a clumsy attempt to be jovial too soon, as when he addressed Greeley ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... tried to prepare himself to meet her with some remnants of aplomb. He decided that he would keep on looking straight ahead, and lift his hand toward his hat at the very last moment when it would be possible for her to see him out of the corner of her eye: then when she thought it over later, she ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... Beatrix Esmond, for whom I could certainly have challenged His Grace of Hamilton, had not Lord Mohun done the work for me. Wandering down the street in London one night, in a moment of weak admiration for her unrivalled nerve and aplomb, I was hesitating—whether to call on Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, knowing that her thick-headed husband was in hoc for debt—when the door of her house crashed open and that old scoundrel, Lord Steyne, came wildly ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... drawn, and for forty-eight hours held his peace with the aplomb of a veteran. Then Bowers ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... said with aplomb. "There's a call for you in the upstairs booth. A long-distance ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... adopted country. His plans were grandiose, and included Constantinople as capital. "Pourquoi pas?" he asked. It would prevent the Great Powers from quarrelling over it, and therefore make for peace! His curled mustachios, his perfumes, his incomparable aplomb, his airs of a "Serene Highness" formed a magnificent stock-in-trade. But even the fact that he offered me a magnificent salary to be Maid of Honour or Lady-in-Waiting (I forget which) at the Court of Albania did not persuade me to espouse his cause, which disappeared into ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... aplomb which Isaacson remembered almost enjoying in the Savoy Restaurant one night, when they were grouped about a supper-table. Quietly then she had handed him out the lies which he knew to be lies. She had made him presents of them, and as he had received her presents ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... on the world as an arena; and as the occasion and the audience arose, he suited himself with the utmost aplomb to the part he intended to play, so that under the costume and the paint the real Balzac is often difficult to discover. Sometimes he would pretend to be rich and prosperous, when he thought an editor would thereby be induced to offer him good terms; and sometimes, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... advance you study curiously; and are quite amazed at the precocity of certain youths belonging to it, who are apparently about your own age. The Juniors you look upon with a quiet reverence for their aplomb and dignity of character; and look forward with intense yearnings to the time when you too shall be admitted freely to the precincts of the Philosophical chamber, and to the very steep benches of the Laboratory. This ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... music until I play; that's a good fellow." I hate to be considered a "good fellow," but what could I do? Edith, who seemed to have recovered her aplomb, continued her conversation ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... porch, and at the door, which Mary Louise held open for her, paused and looked about her in indecision. She was a buxom creature, of the type that the Negroes about the station would call a "High Brown," but without the poise and aplomb that conscious membership in ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... Larinski." He blessed the microscope, which enfeebled the sight of old women; he blessed Count Abel Larinski, who had made of him his twin brother. Before the end of the repast he had recovered all his assurance, all his aplomb. He began to take part in the conversation: he recounted in a sorrowful tone a sorrowful little story; he retailed sundry playful anecdotes with a melancholy grace and sprightliness; he expressed the most chivalrous sentiments; shaking his lion's mane, he spoke of the prisoner at the Vatican with ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... so, she would have failed to catch Wilfrid, whose soul thirsted for poetical refinement and filmy delicacies in a woman. What she had, and what he knew that he wanted, and could only at intervals assume by acting as if he possessed it, was a victorious aplomb, which gave her a sort of gallant glory in his sight. He could act it well before his sisters, and here and there a damsel; and coming fresh from Lady Charlotte's school, he had recently done so with success, and had seen ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... aesthetic taste of Benham. Accordingly, he yielded. The lecture was delivered a few weeks later and was a marked success, for Littleton's earnestness of theme and manner was relieved by a graceful, sympathetic delivery. Selma, whose social aplomb was increasing every day, glided about the rooms with a contented mien receiving felicitations and passing chocolate. She enjoyed the distinction of being the God ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... Billy and his room-mate insisted upon their friends remaining to tea, and the men needed but little urging. They made themselves generally agreeable, assisting in the entertaining; passing tea and sandwiches with ease and aplomb. ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... press was concerned, the harvester was better off than the gentleman, for while the former could dress as he pleased, the latter was often obliged to dress as he could, and in this lay an element of danger. So long as his clothes were as good as the blood he boasted, and he wore them with an aplomb suggestive of position and influence, the gentleman was safe; but let his pretensions to gentility lie more in the past than in the suit on his back, and woe betide him! In spite of his protestations the gang took him, and he was lucky indeed if, like the gentleman who narrates ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... la Reine deux fois, je l'ai vue seule, et je l'ai vue dans la societe du soir, et avec son Premier Ministre. Elle a un aplomb, un air de commandement, de dignite, qui avec son visage enfantin, sa petite taille, et son joli sourire, forment certainement le spectacle le plus extraordinaire qu'il soit possible de se figurer. Elle est d'une extreme reserve dans ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... you, Dan,' asks Texas, after they gets headed for Boot Hill, an' Texas has regained his aplomb, 'that women ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... vantage for the men with trays who were very persecuting there. Lindsay and Alicia stood together beside the roses, her hands were deep in them, he perceived with pleasure that their glow was reflected in her face. "No," she exclaimed with dainty aplomb to the man who sat cross-legged in muslin draperies on the table. "These are certainly of yesterday. There is no scent left in them—and look!" she held up the bunch and shook it, a shower of pink petals and drops of water fell upon the round of her arm above the wrist where the laces of her sleeve ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... she is not what one would call a cute girl. She isn't a girl, she is a mature woman with all the freshness of a girl. She has the carriage, the attitude of mind, the aplomb of a woman, and yet she cannot be described as being in the slightest degree stately. She is generous, dependable, sensible—yes, and sensitive; and her superabundant vitality, the vitality that makes her walk so gloriously, discounts the ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... know,' said Nevil, brooding on the finished tone and womanly aplomb of her language. It made him forget that she was a girl entrusted to his guardianship. His ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... looked at each other in blank dismay; even Marcelle's aplomb yielded under this unforeseen strain, and her agitation showed itself in ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... preliminary indignity of open repentance. They avoided meeting the velvet-eyed glances of Miguel, and at the same time they were plainly anxious to include him in their talk as if that had been their habit from the first. A difficult situation to meet, even with the fine aplomb of the Happy Family to ease ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... she told him, with the simple aplomb of a well-bred woman of the world, that she had just arrived by the train from Buluwayo and was going on to a place called Selukine for a week or two. It was not necessary for her to tell him that she was recently from home, for ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... smuggle in America," returned the colonel, with an aplomb that might have done credit to Vidocq himself; "in our republican country the laws ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper |
