"Arrant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Well, brother Prospero, by this good light that shines here, I am loth to kindle fresh coals, but an you had come in my walk within these two hours I had given you that you should not have clawed off again in haste, by Jesus, I had done it, I am the arrant'st rogue that ever breathed else, but now beshrew my heart if I bear you ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... head in dismay at such arrant folly. "Young stripling, be warned," he said. "Know what is good for thee. Greek ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... to pass unchecked. It is certainly of great service to a public man, and it largely increases the estimation in which he is held, to establish such a character. It is no small detriment to Brougham that he is accounted an arrant coward; and it is remarkable that Peel never was known to deal in the insolence, and bullying, and offensive personalities in which the other has so copiously indulged, both in ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... peculiarly disgusting. They were found to be comparatively harmless, however. If they had chanced to catch a man asleep they would have seized him no doubt, and dragged him into the water, but being arrant cowards, they had not the pluck to face even a little boy when he was ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... leave such ideas to the ignorant and uneducated. I should be unworthy of the progressive teachings of my time if I believed such arrant nonsense." ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... are often stigmatized as arrant cowards, who run away at the slightest provocation, their first thought being for the safety of their own skins. No doubt Chinese soldiers do run away—sometimes; at other times they fight to the death, as has been amply proved ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... only did he carry on familiar conversations with her, on his part, but it appeared that the cow made him her confidant in return. If he began to murmur something to himself as he sat by the chimney corner, they would inquire what he was talking about. It was generally arrant nonsense that he told them. ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... Todd's usual half-holiday. Feeling no heart for any serious work for the Perry, he had spent it in reading half a worthless novel, and skimming through a magazine, and feeling muddled and discontented in consequence. He had the uneasy feeling that he was an arrant ass in thus fooling time away, but had not sufficient self-denial to seize upon a quiet afternoon ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... was an arrant coward where trouble was concerned. He doesn't think of other people and how bad it is for them. He leaves me when I want ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... don't mean the Keely motor man?" cried Jennie, laughing. "That arrant humbug! Why, all the papers in the world have exposed his ridiculous pretensions; he has done nothing but spend other ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... they were well deserved, Chauliac's conduct during the black death which ravaged Avignon in 1348, shortly after his arrival in the Papal City, would have been sufficient of itself to attest. The occurrence of the plague in a city usually gave rise to an exhibition of the most arrant cowardice, and all who could, fled. In many of the European cities the physicians joined the fugitives, and the ailing were left to care for themselves. With a few notable exceptions, this was the case at Avignon, ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... number of the country gentry of Ireland, driving them from their native shores, impoverishing the landlords without any perceptible benefit to the tenants, who appear to be no better off than ever. What surprised him most was the arrant nonsense talked by the English Gladstonians, and the blindness and apathy of the English people generally, who in his opinion were being gradually led to the brink of a frightful abyss, which threatened to swallow up the prestige and prosperity of the British ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... house, it was highly necessary to afford an example to traitors and satisfaction to the people. And the people were thoroughly satisfied, according to the governor, and only expressed their regret that three or four members of the States-General could not have their heads cut off as well, being as arrant knaves as Henlart; "and so I think they ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... loses one. The boy to whom I allude won all the marbles of the school. Of course he had some principle of guessing; and this lay in mere observation and admeasurement of the astuteness of his opponents. For example, an arrant simpleton is his opponent, and, holding up his closed hand asks, 'Are they even or odd?' Our schoolboy replies, 'Odd,' and loses; but upon the second trial he wins, for he then says to himself, 'The simpleton ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... clouds, sky and moon, the force and direction of winds, etc., there may have been some real observation to found them on. But it is very clear that such a conception, if carried out consistently to extreme lengths and applied indiscriminately to everything, must result in arrant folly. Such was assuredly the case with the Chaldeo-Babylonians, who not only carefully noted and explained dreams, drew lots in doubtful cases by means of inscribed arrows, interpreted the rustle of trees, the plashing of fountains and murmur ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... those who go down South and steal slaves away from their owners and report that they whip men and women and sell husbands and wives apart, and separate children from their mothers, and all that sort of thing, when it's all an arrant black-hearted lie." ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... him, said Burbo; 'meanwhile, I say, keep a sharp eye on the cups—attend to the score. Let them not cheat thee, wife; they are heroes, to be sure, but then they are arrant rogues: Cacus was nothing ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... and with one another, no birds are so little calculated to excite pleasurable emotions in the beholder, or to become objects of human interest and affection. The kingbird is the best dressed member of the family, but he is a braggart; and, though always snubbing his neighbors, is an arrant coward, and shows the white feather at the slightest display of pluck in his antagonist. I have seen him turn tail to a swallow, and have known the little pewee in question to whip him beautifully. From the great-crested to the little green ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... "I tell you, man, there's a blunder in the returns. Look, man, look!" snatching up the report from the Flats. "Isn't that arrant nonsense on the face of it? The Flats, mind you; our own little pocket borough of the Flats! Don't talk to me about the Poles muddling things; those inspectors of election can give them cards for stupidity and take every trick. ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... my dear madam," said the admiral; "but we must take into consideration what human nature really is. Monks in many instances proved themselves to be arrant knaves, and among every assemblage of mortals such will ever be found in time to leaven the whole mass. These and friaries and convents were not abolished a day too soon; and, advanced as the present generation esteems itself, I am very sure that ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... appeared to me rather embarrassed. He has sent for the most prudential persons on change to ask their advice concerning this addition, which he considers arrant folly. Another person, very much displeased with this addition, says, that if Amsterdam persists firmly in demanding the strict observance of the treaties, and a perfect neutrality, she can counteract this manoeuvre. Otherwise ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... immediately matched by a thrice marvellous adventure of Brom Bones, who made light of the Galloping Hessian as an arrant jockey. He affirmed that on returning one night from the neighbouring village of Sing Sing, he had been overtaken by this midnight trooper; that the had offered to race with him for a bowl of punch, and should have won it too, for Daredevil beat the goblin ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... that some would gladlier post off to another than the charge and care of their religion. There be—who knows not that there be?—of Protestants and professors who live and die in as arrant an implicit faith as any lay Papist of Loretto. A wealthy man, addicted to his pleasure and to his profits, finds religion to be a traffic so entangled, and of so many piddling accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep a stock going upon that trade. What ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... was he—smiled. He had made his horse rear purposely, in order to frighten the old man, whom he knew to be an arrant coward. ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... early, before the sun was up, I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup; But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, Had stayed at home behind me and was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... certainly four as arrant ruffians as I had ever seen before me, and I saw I must not hesitate. 'Two or none, M. Fresnoy,' I said firmly. 'I gave you a commission for two, and two I will take—Matthew and Mark, or Luke and ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... calls for more. His wounded ears complaints eternal fill, As unoil'd hinges, querulously shrill. "You went last night with Celia to the ball." You prove it false. "Not go! that's worst of all." Nothing can please her, nothing not inflame; And arrant contradictions are the same. Her lover must be sad, to please her spleen; His mirth is an inexpiable sin: For of all rivals that can pain her breast, There's one, that wounds far deeper than the rest; To wreck her quiet, the most dreadful shelf Is if her lover ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... altogether behind the curtain after all. The worst foes of what you call the 'Union cause' have not been those who declared themselves secessionists. Some of your leading officials, it may be pleasant to you to know, are as arrant 'rebels' as even Virginia can furnish; and with them and the correspondence carried on through their offices, we have worked more effectively than in almost ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... our boat," says the narrative, "we found more than seven hundred natives, who had assembled from all directions. They began by demanding stuffs and iron in exchange for their wares, and soon some of them proved themselves arrant thieves. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the ground." It was in vain that they attempted to get near enough to one of these wary animals to warrant a shot. It is only by great good luck that anybody ever shoots a coyote, although in countries where they abound every man's hand is against them; they are such arrant thieves, ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... Fortune. "Don't you waste your time talking any more such arrant nonsense. Now, the two of you are as cold and shivery as can be, and I doubt not, as hungry also. Come straight away to the house. This thing has got to be ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... least before they dance. Say, does thy blood rebel, thy bosom move With wretched avarice, or as wretched love? Know, there are words and spells, which can control Between the fits this fever of the soul: Know, there are rhymes, which fresh and fresh applied Will cure the arrant'st puppy of his pride. Be furious, envious, slothful, mad, or drunk, Slave to a wife, or vassal to a punk, A Switz, a High Dutch, or a Low Dutch bear; All that we ask is but a patient ear. 'Tis the first virtue, vices to abhor; And the first wisdom, to be fool no more. But to the world no bugbear ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... spot or that; hinting that here there was a weakness, and there . . . something worse. Every advanced thinker, and the majority of theorists, could count on finding a sympathetic listener in him: and not infrequently they found in him an advocate also; such an arrant anti-optimist was the pestilent fellow. As if Civilization, after thousands of years of travail, had produced nothing better than a clumsy abortion with the claws of an animal and the tastes of Jack-an-ape! Why, the man must be mad, to have ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... the hands of my own countrymen, was cruelly judged by the Times, and most severely treated. What I said to Mr. Owen about the spread of the English language in Wales being quite compatible with preserving and honouring the Welsh language and literature, was tersely set down as 'arrant nonsense,' and I was characterised as 'a sentimentalist who talks nonsense about the children of Taliesin and Ossian, and whose dainty taste requires something more flimsy than the strong sense and sturdy morality of his ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... masters, let us share, and then to horse before day. An the Prince and Pointz be not two arrant cowards, there's no equity stirring: there's no more valour in that Pointz than ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... of their best and most dashing officers, for the express purpose of hunting Morgan. It was completely disorganized and shattered by this defeat. A great deal of censure was cast at the time upon these men, and they were accused of arrant cowardice by the Northern press. Nothing could have been more unjust, and many who joined in denouncing them, afterward behaved much more badly. They attacked with spirit and without hesitation, and were unable to close with ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... sentimentalizing. To protest against the intrigue, bribery, and corruption of public life, to desire that her sons might follow some business that did not involve lying, cheating, and a hard, grinding selfishness, would be arrant nonsense. In this way man has been moulding woman to his ideas by direct and positive influences, while she, if not a negation, has used indirect means to control him, and in most cases developed the very characteristics both in him and herself that needed repression. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... one quality to be perfect. He should have been an arrant coward. He was a blustering braggart, always boasting of the men he had slain, and the odds he had contended against; filled with stories of his own valour, but alas! he shot straight, and rarely missed his mark, unless ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... to propound such an unnatural and monstrous absurdity as a great philosophical principle, would be a mystery, if we did not know how infidelity perverts men's understandings, and, while puffing them up with infinite conceit of their own wisdom, transforms them into the most arrant and outrageous fools. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... for it, but to me it was a very jolly time, though I suppose I was an ingredient in your troubles. Yes, we brought ourselves up; but I maintain that it was better alternative than being drilled so hard as never to think of anything but arrant idling ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been subjected to the powers of a supposed magnetic battery, produced no results. Altogether twenty-nine experiments were tried, which convinced every one present, except Dr. Elliotson, that Animal Magnetism was a delusion, that the girls were of very exciteable imaginations, and arrant impostors. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... may match with that monarch of fluids; {840} Each supples a dry brain, fills you its ins-and-outs, Gives your life's hour-glass a shake when the thin sand doubts Whether to run on or stop short, and guarantees Age is not all made of stark sloth and arrant ease. I have seen my little lady once more, Jacynth, the gypsy, Berold, and the rest of it, For to me spoke the Duke, as I told you before; I always wanted to make a clean breast of it: And now it is made—why, my heart's blood, that went trickle, Trickle, but anon, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... so betwixt a lawless, mighty chief And a rude outlaw, or an arrant thief, Knight arrant or thief arrant, all is one; Difference, as Alexander learnt, there's none; But for the chief is of the greater might, By force of numbers, to slay all outright, And burn, and ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... others undertook to pervert the truth. The causes of their enmity are their chagrin at the events of the Exodus and the difference of their religious ideas."[1] Josephus deals with Manetho's description of the going-out from Egypt, and undertakes to demonstrate that "he trifles and tells arrant lies." He dissects the charge that the Hebrews were a pack of lepers exiled from the country, and insists upon its absurdity and the lack of consistency in the details. He offers ingenuously as a proof ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... ample; abundant &c. (enough) 639 full, intense, strong, sound, passing, heavy, plenary, deep, high; signal, at its height, in the zenith. world-wide, widespread, far-famed, extensive; wholesale; many &c. 102. goodly, noble, precious, mighty; sad, grave, heavy, serious; far gone, arrant, downright; utter, uttermost; crass, gross, arch, profound, intense, consummate; rank, uninitiated, red-hot, desperate; glaring, flagrant, stark staring; thorough-paced, thoroughgoing; roaring, thumping; extraordinary.; important &c. 642; unsurpassed &c. (supreme) 33; complete &c. 52. august, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to wages which have accrued since her last payment. If discharged unjustly and without sufficient cause before the expiration of her term, she is entitled to her wages in full; but if discharged without notice because of intoxication, immorality, dishonesty, arrant disobedience, or permanent incapacity from illness, she can claim nothing. It is customary with some housekeepers to start the new maid on a comparatively low salary, with the promise of an increase of perhaps fifty cents per month, in case ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... knew that they had done this expressly, deliberately. But at the moment when head and body were severed, and fell into the trough, I groaned, and apprehended, not with my mind, but with my heart and my whole being, that all the arguments which I had heard anent the death-penalty were arrant nonsense; that, no matter how many people might assemble in order to perpetrate a murder, no matter what they might call themselves, murder is murder, the vilest sin in the world, and that that crime ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... grant that the Creator never yet communicated directly with the creature; that man has not seen with mortal eyes beyond the veil that shrouds the two eternities, it does not follow that religious faith is but arrant folly, that God is non-extant and man but the pitiful creature of blind force. The dumb brute knows many things it was never taught, and might not man, the greatest of the animal creation, be gifted with a knowledge not based upon experience? ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the Spanish nation—for as for the country, it is so much impassible matter, so much rock and sand, chalk and clay—with which we have for the moment nothing to do. It has pleased her to play an arrant jade's part, the part of a mula falsa, a vicious mule, and now, and not for the first time, the brute has been chastised—there she lies on the road amidst the dust, the blood running from her nose. Did our readers ever peruse the book of the adventures of the ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... It was thought at the time a startling experiment to appoint a man so young—and who had given no proof of peculiar proficiency in philosophical lore—to such an important chair; and was no doubt stigmatised as one of those arrant 'jobs' by which the history of Scotch Colleges has been often disgraced. In Beattie's case, however, as well as in the kindred one of Professor Wilson, the issue was more fortunate than might have been ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... what, Miss Charlecote, the way he is going on is enough to ruin the best children in the world. That little Cilly is the most arrant little flirt I ever came across; it is like a comedy to see the absurd little puss going on with the curate, ay, and with every parson that comes to Wrapworth; and she sees nothing else. Impressions! All she wants is to be safe shut up with a good governess, and other children. It would do her ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fellow to be an arrant harbourer of smugglers and rebels, I took his lamentation for what ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... fruitful, and good for feeding of cattle; but Moses, supposing that they were afraid of fighting with the Canaanites, and invented this provision for their cattle as a handsome excuse for avoiding that war, he called them arrant cowards, and said they had only contrived a decent excuse for that cowardice; and that they had a mind to live in luxury and ease, while all the rest were laboring with great pains to obtain the land they ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... must learn to understand me better or I shall have to run away in self-defence. When you talk in that style I feel like an arrant hypocrite. I give you my word that I've been swearing ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... would carry you to Japan." "If your ramble," says Swift, in another letter, "was on horseback, I am glad of it, on account of your health; but I know your arts of patching up a journey between stage-coaches and friends" coaches—for you are as arrant a Cockney as any hosier in Cheapside. I have often had it in my head to put it into yours, that you ought to have some great work in scheme, which may take up seven years to finish, besides two or three under-ones that may add another thousand pounds ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of concentration, to familiarise itself with just this aspect, so that in time its instinct will be to think first, and not last, of just this aspect. When he has arrived at that point he is saved. No man who, at the very inception of the fire, is visited with a clear vision of himself as an arrant ass and pitiable object of contempt, will lack the volition to put the fire out. But, be it noted, he will not succeed until he can do it at once. A fire is a fire, and the engines must gallop by themselves out of the station instantly. This means the acquirement of a mental ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... arrant dissembler? No, indeed: before I guessed how it was with them, I had found out—Oh! Aunt Kitty, shall I ever get Mary to believe in me, after the ridiculous way in which I have ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a man of wit; To all things fitted, though for nothing fit; Scourge of the world, yet crouching for a name, And honour bartering for the breath of fame: Born to command, and yet an arrant slave; Through too much honesty a seeming knave; At all things grasping, though on nothing bent, And ease pursuing e'en with discontent; Through Nature, Arts, and Sciences he flies, And gathers truth ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... to enable me to take up a corresponding tone as I expressed my gratitude to her for her condescension, and my extreme pleasure at having met with them. To say the truth, the compliment was so expressed, that the lady might easily appropriate the greater share of it, for Thorncliff seemed an arrant country bumpkin, awkward, shy, and somewhat sulky withal. He shook hands with me, however, and then intimated his intention of leaving me that he might help the huntsman and his brothers to couple up the hounds,—a purpose which he rather communicated by way of information ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... impudence enough to venture from my concealment; indeed, I felt like an arrant poacher, until I read one or two of Ovid's Metamorphoses, when I pictured myself as some sylvan deity, and she a coy wood nymph of whom I was in pursuit. There is something extremely delicious in these early awakenings of the tender passion. I can feel, even ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... is a trifle wide, perhaps, and rather full-lipped, and somewhere at one corner—I can never be quite certain of its exact location, because its appearance is, as a rule, so very meteoric—but somewhere there is a dimple. Now, if ever there was an arrant traitor in this world it is that dimple; for let her expression be ever so guileless, let her wistful eyes be raised with a look of tears in their blue depths, despite herself that dimple will spring into life and undo it all in a moment. So it was now, even as I watched it quivered ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... radical change apparently effected in her mental attitude to the established ecclesiastical system, since she had in the preceding December discovered the monks, of whatever color their cowl might be, to be arrant "hypocrites" and the most "dangerous generation of human kind"—if, indeed, any such change in her mental attitude had really taken place at all, and her present zeal was not altogether assumed from political motives—we have not the means of determining with ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... deed was his only, without the knowledge or pre-concert of any, as he himself in a letter declares; yea, with a design to bespatter the Presbyterian church of Scotland, a most scurrilous pamphlet was published at London, not only reflecting on our excellent reformers from popery, publishing arrant lies anent Mr. Alexander Henderson, abusing Mr. David Dickson, and breaking jests upon the remonstrators and presbyterians (as they called them), but also, in a most malicious and groundless kind of rhapsody, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... of the company may be assumed to be arrant rascals—rascals male and rascals female—chevaliers d'industrie, the offscourings of all the shut-up gambling-houses in Europe, demireps and lorettes, single and ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... to assail me at the Crown and Anchor meetings, for the purpose of preventing the truths that I delivered being heard there, he might have told the truth; but to swear that he or any of his gang had ever dared to lay hands on me, either at a public or a private meeting, is as arrant a falsehood as ever was uttered ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... it is gone at last, thank God!"—and then aware of the strange effect my unaccountable incoherence must have had on the skipper, I thought to brazen it out by trying the free and easy line, which was neither more nor less than arrant impertinence in our relative positions. "Why, I have been heated a little, and amusing myself with sundry vain imaginings, but allow me to take wine with you, Captain," filling a tumbler with vinde—grave to the brim, as I spoke. "Success to you, sir—here's ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... glance across the table at Mr. Seven Sachs, as who should say: "And have you too allowed yourself to be dragged into this affair? I really thought you were cleverer. Don't you agree with me that we're both fools of the most arrant description?" And under that brief glance Mr. Seven Sachs's calm deserted him as it had never deserted him on the stage, where for over fifteen hundred nights he had withstood the menace of revolvers, poison, and female treachery through three hours and four acts ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... I had given all the money I could spare to Flora; I had thought it glorious that the hunted exile should come down, like Jupiter, in a shower of gold, and pour thousands in the lap of the beloved. Then I had in an hour of arrant folly buried what remained to me in a bank in George Street. And now I must get back the one or the other; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an arrant ring-maker and a horse-breaker; you'll make a hempen ring to break your own neck of a horse one of ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... I shall not report you," said his companion, with a friendly squeeze of the arm. "He is not only a great brute, but he is an arrant coward into the bargain. The men do not mind being cuffed and bullied, because they are used to it; but when they see their officer never expose himself, and always shouting from the rear 'Get on, you pigs!' they don't like it. But, Himmel!"—and he chuckled—"our ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... French had been seen in the street; his brigade was almost in sight; Methuen was at Colenso with overwhelming force. The townspeople took heart. One man who had spent his days in a stinking culvert since the siege began now crept into the sun. "They are arrant cowards, these Boers," he cried, stamping the echoing ground; "why don't they come on and fight us like men?" So the day wears. At four o'clock comes an African thunderstorm with a deluge of rain, filling the water tanks and slaking the dust, grateful to all but the men of both ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... in Duress. What reckons Love of Hairpins more or less? Guard well your Heart and let the Hairpins go - To lose your Heart were arrant Carelessness. ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... that he is an arrant knave. For here is proof of a conspiracy against Mr. Hamilton, who was booked to sail with Captain Annis, and Keith is in it." Denham read the letter to Benjamin, explaining its meaning as he went along, for he was well posted about Keith and ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... vulgar if compared with the Latin out of which it has been corrupted, or even with Italian. There is a wider gap, and one implying greater boorishness, between ministerium and metier, or sapiens and sachant, than between druv and drove or agin and against, which last is plainly an arrant superlative. Our rustic coverlid is nearer its French original than the diminutive coverlet, into which it has been ignorantly corrupted in politer speech. I obtained from three cultivated Englishmen at different times three diverse pronunciations of a single word,—cowcumber, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... an arrant coward, nor was he himself overly keen for an upstanding, man-to-man encounter such as must quickly follow any attempt upon his part to uphold the authority of Simms, or their claim upon ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had fallen from his hand. Both arms wildly sawing the air, Ike shivered and shrank like the arrant ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... her own deception, she had a sudden fear that it might go wrong. She had no remorse for the act, but only a faint apprehension of the possible consequences. Suppose that in the shock of discovery Jasmine should throw everything to the winds, and lose herself in arrant egotism once more! Suppose—no, she would suppose nothing. She must believe that all she had done was for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... security. Behind her a cherry-tree was dropping its snowy blossoms, and two or three had fallen unheeded upon her wavy brown hair, making a charming frame for the young eyes and tender lips whose smiling harmony seemed to sing with arrant roguishness. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... camp the distance was about twelve miles. With a pack train McKay was in no hurry; as a matter of fact, Donald was never in a hurry when there was danger about. He was an arrant coward, but had some brave men of the Wascos with him. I speak ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... chemist by the name of Tongue, on the 12th of August, 1678, had warned the king against a plot that was directed at his life, etc. But the king did not attach any importance to the statement until Tongue referred to Titus Oates as his authority. The latter proved himself a most arrant liar while on the stand: but the people were in a credulous state of mind, and Oates became the hero of the hour;[242] and under his wicked influence many souls were hurried into eternity. Read Hume's account of the Popish Plot, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... to the Dauphine of Bavaria; so that she had now nothing to do with Montespan. The latter became furious, and related to the King all the particulars of the life of Dame Scarron. But the King, knowing her to be an arrant fiend, who would spare no one in her passion, would not believe anything she said to him. The Duc du Maine persuaded his mother to retire from Court for a short time in order that the King might recall her. Being ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... be not an arrant jade. Her portrait had been taken by that same limner who, they say, has been taught in the devil's school, and can despatch a likeness with ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... America, refusing to enter the League of Nations (now already established by twenty-nine nations) and bearing and deserving the contempt of the world, would submit an entirely new project. This act would either be regarded as arrant madness or ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... "Strange as it may seem, I believe you, Andy. What I want to know is this: Who owns them Dots? And what are they chasing all over the Flying U range for? It looks plumb malicious, to me. Did you find out anything about 'en, Andy, while you—er—while they—" His eyes twinkled and betrayed him for an arrant pretender. (Pink was not afraid of anything on earth—least ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... More arrant fudge could scarcely be found if Dr. Burdock's copy of verses had been recorded by Miss Amelia Wilhelmina Skeggs in "The Vicar ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... marries Ann Arrant, in 1898 dat was, and us have three chillen but dey all dead. Us git sep'rate in 1917 and I marries Mary Durham in 1921, and us still livin' together. Us have no chillen. Mammy have ten chillen but I'm de only one what am livin' now, 'cause ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... Christianity, or the authority of the church, or the sacraments, or anything of that sort. Such questions are at present of no interest to me. And yet the fact that they do not interest me, were enough to prove me in as false and despicable a position as ever man found himself occupying—as arrant a hypocrite and deceiver as any god-personating priest in the Delphic temple.—I had rather a man despised than excused me, Mr. Polwarth, for I am at issue with myself, and ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... according to our own imaginations nor according to abstract ideas of right; by no means according to mere general theories of government, the resort to which appears to me, in our present situation, no better than arrant trifling. I shall therefore endeavor, with your leave, to lay before you some of the most material of these circumstances in as full and as clear a manner as I am ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... and load them up to their muzzles, you can't risk anything. They are sure to fire wide of the mark, and both parties can retire from the field with honor. Let me manage all that. Hein! 'sapristi,' two brave men would be arrant fools to kill ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... to Cathay. There was Friar Odoric, of Pordenone, who, during the years 1316-30 visited Hindustan, Sumatra, Java, Cochin China, the Chinese Empire, and Thibet.[335] It was from this worthy monk that the arrant old impostor, "Sir John Mandeville," stole his descriptions of India and Cathay, seasoning them with yarns from Pliny and Ktesias, and grotesque conceits of his own.[336] Several other missionary friars visited China between 1302 and 1330, and about ten years after the latter ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... the Feather, tho our Friend took him for an Officer in the Guards, has proved to be [an arrant Linnen-Draper. [1]] ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... when recovering sobriety,—Steele reeled his way through life, and died with the reputation of being an orthodox Christian and a (nearly) habitual drunkard; the most affectionate and most faithless of husbands; a brave soldier, and in many points an arrant fool; a violent politician, and the best natured of men; a writer extremely lively, for this, among other reasons, that he wrote generally on his legs, flying or meditating flight from his creditors; and who embodied ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... ministers preach on universal peace hardly half a dozen times. Twenty years ago, in a drawing room, I dared in the presence of forty persons to moot the proposition that war was incompatible with Christianity; I was regarded as an arrant fanatic. The idea that we could get on without war was regarded as unmitigated weakness ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... there were attempts on foot last winter to revive some of those antiquated modes of wit that have been long exploded out of the commonwealth of letters. There were several satires and panegyrics handed about in an acrostic, by which means some of the most arrant undisputed blockheads about the town began to entertain ambitious thoughts, and to set up for polite authors. I shall therefore describe at length those many arts of false wit, in which a writer does not show himself a man of a beautiful ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... charms unfolds, And in herself my Muse beholds. Truth, Goddess of celestial birth, But little loved or known on earth, Whose power but seldom rules the heart, Whose name, with hypocritic art, An arrant stalking-horse is made, A snug pretence to drive a trade, An instrument, convenient grown, To plant more firmly Falsehood's throne, 130 As rebels varnish o'er their cause With specious colouring of laws, And pious traitors draw the knife In the king's name against his life; Whether (from ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... here but another hour, much as I should like to stay. Mr. Meredith, 't is a man's duty to aid a creditor to pay his debts. May I not hope to see you and Mrs. Meredith and Miss Janice at headquarters ere long? For if you come not willingly, I'll put Miss Janice under arrest as an arrant and avowed rebel, and have her brought to York ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... an important branch of all natural history; and geologic curiosities, interesting as they are, can hardly compete with the tales of old Polperro privateers and smugglers. Polperro built its own boats as it bred its own seamen, and both were excellent. That they were arrant smugglers was a characteristic of the times and of the locality; it is not for us to judge them. That they were men of piety is proved by the epitaph of that smuggler who prays for the pardon of the Preventive man who had shot ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... so that many people got out of his way as from a blast, and glad they could prove their two last years' conversation. The very breath of him was pestilential, and if it brought not imprisonment or death over such on whom it fell, it surely poisoned reputation, and left good Protestants arrant papists, and something worse than that, in danger of being put ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... folks will think I'm dead ef I don't get along home, sence the horse and sleigh have gone ahead empty. I've done my arrant and had my joke; now I want my pay, Tilly," and Gad took a hearty kiss from the rosy cheeks of his "little sweetheart," as he called her. His own cheeks tingled with the smart slap she gave him as she ran away, calling ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... place the glorious liberty of a republic, or more properly, an aristocracy, the common people being here as arrant slaves as the French; but the old nobles pay little respect to the doge, who is but two years in his office, and whose wife, at that very time, assumes no rank above another noble lady. 'Tis true, the family of Andrea Doria (that great ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... but an arrant humbug to affect to despise the honor that the world seems disposed to bestow upon us. I say us, for I cannot and will not take it all to myself. I may have been the originator of the idea, but I could ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... that border was the Armstrongs, able men; Somewhat unruly, and very ill to tame. I would have none think that I call them thieves, For, if I did, it would be arrant lies. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... exorbitant price for a place in the gallery: but as we'd been asked so much at the other doors, why I paid it without many words; but, then, to be sure, thinks I, it can never be like any other gallery, we shall see some crinkum-crankum or other for our money; but I find it's as arrant a take-in ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney |
