"Bluster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... did not come. Oxford contented himself with quarreling in a loud voice; but those whom he was trying to impress were not deceived by his bluster, and all present knew that he had proved himself ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... swan-down to feeling, The snow of the gaillin,[134] Thy limbs all excelling, Unite to amaze. The queen, I would name thee, Of maidenly muster; Thy stem is so seemly, So rich is its cluster Of members complete, Adroit at each feat, And thy temper so sweet, Without banning or bluster. My grief has press'd on Since the vision of Morag, As the heavy millstone On the cross-tree that bore it. In vain the world over, Seek her match may the rover; A shaft, thy poor ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... had seen her and, what was more, was in pursuit of her. He had been wanting for some time to have talk with Rosemary, but she had always, so it seemed, avoided him. Rosemary had never, at any time, liked Norman Douglas very well. His bluster, his temper, his noisy hilarity, had always antagonized her. Long ago she had often wondered how Ellen could possibly be attracted to him. Norman Douglas was perfectly aware of her dislike and he chuckled over it. It ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... you?" asked Bumpus, with a tremor in his voice that he tried in vain to conceal by a great show of assumed bluster. ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... confident. There was no self-assurance or bluster about it, and yet it was convincing. She looked at ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tactics. Bluster would not do, he saw. He put his hand into a pocket and drew out a five-dollar note, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... nigh exhausted the slender stock of evidence with which he had started. For a few minutes longer he tried by sheer bluster to conceal the poverty of the case, and last of all he handed one of Cobham's confessions to the Clerk of the Crown to be read in court. It entered into no particulars, which Cobham said their lordships must not expect from him, for he was so confounded that he had ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... terrible speech, Villiers had crouched on the ground, half terrified, while his wife towered over him, magnificent in her anger. At the end, however, he recovered himself a little, and began to bluster. ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... to bluster before his Virginie, Madame lays a finger on her lips and he is silent. He smokes his pipes and his cigars in a kiosk fifty feet from the chateau, and airs himself before he returns to the house. Proud of his subjection, he turns ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... he loves her best," said Mr. Mount, snuff-taking in graceful Court fashion, "for he hath loved a dozen since; but she is a shrew, and can rave and bluster at him till he would hang her with jewels, and give her his crown itself to quieten her furies. 'Tis the pretty orange wench and actor woman Nell Gwynne who will please him longest, for she is a good-humoured baggage and ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... good! [Pausing on his way to the telephone and addressing PHILIP with an evil expression.] You were always a bully and a blusterer, Mackworth; but, take my word for it, if you fancy you can bully Mr. Dunning, and bluster to my family, with any satisfactory results to yourself, you're ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... ultra-national bluster, we found him to be a very good sort of man, having nothing of the bear but the skin, and in the test of the quarantine arrangements, the least selfish of ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... said the monk; "nothing is lost by patience. See how long it takes the good Lord to make a fair flower out of a little seed; and He does all quietly, without bluster. Wait on Him a little in peacefulness and prayer, and see what ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... passage—grand, because it is true to human nature, true to the determined, prompt, kingly character of David. He does not complain, bluster, curse over the insult as a weak man might have done. He has been deeply hurt, and he is too high-minded to talk about it. He will do, and not talk. A dark purpose settles itself instantly in his mind. Perhaps he is ashamed of it, and dare not speak of ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... having swerved a hair's-breadth from the path he had marked out, took leave of his mother, and a formal farewell of the gentleman who described himself as the best of fathers. Beecot senior, turkey-cock and tyrant, was more subdued now that he found bluster would not carry his point. But the wave of common-sense came too late. Paul departed bag and baggage, and his sire swore to the empty air. Even Mrs. Beecot was not available, ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... had been a deal together of late, Kelly's a true heart now—a true Irishman ready for anything. Those Irish are the boys, after all—though I don't deny they do bluster and have their way a little too much in the Convention. But still Ireland's wrongs are England's. We have the same oppressors. We must make common ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... a remarkable article on the fiscal system of the United States—by an American—which I hope you will read. My contributor thinks there are great difficulties ahead in America, and Mr. Blaine's bluster is an attempt to direct ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... man, they said, concealed, with the plague, in his cellars, 765 Ready to be let loose, and destroy his brother the red man! But when Standish refused, and said he would give them the Bible, Suddenly changing their tone, they began to boast and to bluster. Then Wattawamat advanced with a stride in front of the other, And, with a lofty demeanor, thus vauntingly spake to the Captain: 770 "Now Wattawamat can see, by the fiery eyes of the Captain, Angry is he in his heart; but the ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... few years of worry and bluster across the North Sea we have a little forgotten India in our calculations. As Germany faces round eastward again, as she must do before very long, we shall find India resuming its former central position in our ideas of international ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... believed, that after the action of St. Cas—a mere affair of cutting off a rearguard, as you are aware—they were so unfeeling as to fire away I don't know how much powder at the Invalides at Paris, and brag and bluster over our misfortune? Is there any magnanimity in hallooing and huzzaying because five or six hundred brave fellows have been caught by ten thousand on a seashore, and that fate has overtaken them which is said to befall the hindmost? I had a mind to design an authentic picture ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... obedience? What, but a rabble of licentious vagrants, set free from the common restraints of decency, exempted from the necessity of labour, betrayed by idleness to debauchery, and let loose to prey upon the people? Such a herd can only awe the villages, and bluster in the streets, but can never be able to oppose an enemy, or defend the nation by which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... did not put himself in a passion, and Mr. Saunders, accustomed for his own part to make bluster serve instead of prowess, despised a command so calmly given. Ellen, who knew the voice, and still better, could read the eye, drew conclusions very different. She was almost breathless with terror. Saunders was enraged and mortified at an interference that promised ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... storm not uncommon in the East, when an adverse wind meets and drives back a strong shirocco. At daybreak the first sound of the morning was that of a large trained hawk near the window, chained to his perch, and screaming out his delight in the bluster of the tempest. Mount Hermon appeared, not in his summer glow, but in solemn majesty, defying the clouds and the winds that raged in ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... Faversham had felt almost a boy again. The spring was in his blood! Moreover, he flattered himself that he had not begun to look old! Still, he was sensitive lest Carrissima should fancy he was making an ass of himself, and, as usual at such times, he began to bluster. ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... have fascinated Haydon. Harlan saw him shrink back, the bluster gone out of him, his face the color of ashes. He kept stepping back, until he brought up against the rear wall of the ranchhouse; and there he stood, watching Woodward, his eyes ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... was appealed to and he of course gave a clear decision, not in the English way of compromise, which is the way of a barbarian and a coward, but like an honest man deciding 'twixt right and wrong. His judgment was wholly in favour of the Abbot of Cluny. The Earl then began to bluster and to attempt to appeal beyond the Pope; he even dared to place armed men at the Priory gate and to stop all communications with Cluny. The Abbot replied by an interdict upon Lewes, and things were in this confusion when the Pope appointed the ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... are only constituted proportionately to their throats, they must do good fighting. I should think nothing would stand before them. Daisy, they will certainly bear down all opposition. Are you afraid? Here is the Fourth, and Washington safe yet, for all the Southern bluster." ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... magistrate. I have heard that accusation brought against other magistrates again and again, who were not molested. He is said to have boasted when fou that he was a spy for the castle authorities, and could have any of them he chose to point at taken up. This was mere bluster, I suppose. There does seem no reason why the poor man should be cut off in the midst of his days by a guilty hand, for there is no record of any tangible injury which he had done to any man. Here ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... payment, and he had no stomach to face the reckoning. He had not noticed before how wiry and strong Stanislaus looked. But when he saw that the boy made no movement, only spoke in that quiet voice, he plucked up a little courage. He began to bluster ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... Preparations were made for the Christmas ball. Gay garlands were hung from ceiling and wall; The Yule log was laid, the tables arrayed, And the Lady Lorraine and her whole cavalcade, From the pompous old steward to the scullery-maid, Were all in a fluster, Excitement and bluster, And everything ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... it, and just as he had made an offer of money for a particular piece of intelligence, promising more when procured, I broke in upon them, and by bluster, calling for a knife to cut off his ears (one of which I took hold of) in order to make a present of it, as I said, to his employers, I obliged him to tell ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... to bluster, and now that he had got himself in hand again his fierce eyes and his low, hissing voice thrilled the girl as his threats had not thrilled her. This time he allowed her to rise, which she did, tottering slightly. She had forgotten about paying for her tea, but the dollar bill lay ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... bear- The realms of ocean and the fields of air Are mine, not his. By fatal lot to me The liquid empire fell, and trident of the sea. His pow'r to hollow caverns is confin'd: There let him reign, the jailer of the wind, With hoarse commands his breathing subjects call, And boast and bluster in his empty hall." He spoke; and, while he spoke, he smooth'd the sea, Dispell'd the darkness, and restor'd the day. Cymothoe, Triton, and the sea-green train Of beauteous nymphs, the daughters of the main, Clear from the rocks the ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... exaggerated John Bull of the caricaturists—with every quality, good or evil, at its highest? Here are the rough crust over a kindly heart, the explosive temper, the arrogance, the insular narrowness, the want of sympathy and insight, the rudeness of perception, the positiveness, the overbearing bluster, the strong deep-seated religious principle, and every other characteristic of the cruder, rougher John Bull who was the great grandfather of ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was looking intently. As soon as the tones of O'Shea's voice were carried away by the bluster of the wind, as far as the human beings there were concerned there was perfect stillness; the surf and the wind might have been ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... being the pugnacious person whom many of his later critics insisted that he was. Having given ample proof to the frontiersmen that he had no fear, he resolutely kept the peace with them, and they had no desire to break peace with him. Bluster and swagger were foreign to his nature, and he loathed a bully as much as a coward. If we had not already had the record of his. three years in the Legislature, in which he surprised his friends by his wonderful talent for mixing with all sorts ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... to have any such suspicion of his motives. He was not a cruel man: even the "hoary-headed Fabian," or Cyprian, or others whom he so roundly abused, would have found, when it came to the point, that his bluster was his worst weapon against them; at any rate he had enough of the "milk of human kindness" to feel considerable distress about ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... positively. "A cheap, gaudy show, all bluster and vulgarity. Even the dancing is a mere parody. I early ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... inherent in our civilisation; but if the Press withdrew its subvention, his monopoly would be curtailed, and art would be recruited by new talent, at present submerged. Art would gradually withdraw from the bluster and boom of an arrogant commercialism, and would attain her olden dignity—that of a quiet handicraft. And in this great reformation only two classes would suffer—the art critics and the dealers. The newspaper proprietors would profit largely, and the readers ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... style, I have endeavored neither to creep nor to bluster, for no author is so likely to betray his translator into both these faults, as HOMER, though himself never guilty of either. I have cautiously avoided all terms of new invention, with an abundance of which, persons of more ingenuity than judgment ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... If Froude had made such an astonishing slip, there would have been more ground for imputing to him an incapacity to distinguish between truth and falsehood. Freeman's "Last Words on Mr. Froude" show no sign of penitence or good feeling, and they end with characteristic bluster about the truth, from which he had so grievously departed. But Froude was never ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... Flint, "that if you attempt to leave this room, I will give you into custody at once, and transport you, whatever may be the consequence to others. Come, come, let us have no more nonsense or bluster. We have strong reasons for believing that the story by which you have been extorting money, is a fabrication. If it be so, rely upon it we shall detect and punish you. Your only safe course is to make a clean breast of it whilst there is yet time. ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... right onward, singing over his work, without bluster or self-gratulation, for very joy at having work to do. There is a keen practical insight about him, rarely combined, in these days, with his single-minded determination to do good in his generation. His eye is single, and his whole body full ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... cheered as he came out of the Palace. There have been some meetings, with resolutions to support the Bill, to express approbation of the Ministers, and to protest against the payment of taxes, and there will probably be a good deal of bustle and bluster here and elsewhere; but I do not believe in real tumults, particularly when the rabble and the unions know that there is a Government which will not stand such things, and that they will not be able to bandy compliments with the Duke as they did with Althorp and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... Sandip has realized that he is weak before me! That is why there is this sudden outburst of anger. He has understood that he cannot meet the power that I wield, with mere strength. With a glance I can crumble his strongest fortifications. So he must needs resort to bluster. I simply smiled in contemptuous silence. At last have I come to a level above him. I must never lose this vantage ground; never descend lower again. Amidst all my degradation this bit of ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... rendered fruitless by the contemptible double-dealing of James I, and during his trial, Sir Walter's self-possession and courage showed at their best. 'From eight in the morning till nearly midnight he fronted his enemies with unshaken courage. The bluster of Attorney-General Coke roared around him without effect. "I want words," stormed the great prosecutor, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... wind on the palace wall Beat and bluster, sob and moan, When at noon he musing lone, Comes the queen anigh his seat, And ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... caverns, as if builded there Of beetling crags; which, when the hurricanes In gathered storm have filled utterly, Then, prisoned in clouds, they rave around With mighty roarings, and within those dens Bluster like savage beasts, and now from here, And now from there, send growlings through the clouds, And seeking an outlet, whirl themselves about, And roll from 'mid the clouds the seeds of fire, And heap them multitudinously there, And in the hollow furnaces within Wheel flame around, until from bursted ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... control, there was no telling when relief would come. Until the weather moderated in the hills to the west, there was no hope of crossing the river; but men grew hungry and nights were chilly, and bluster and bravado brought neither food nor warmth. A third wave was noticed within an hour, raising the water-gauge over a foot. The South Fork of the Big Cheyenne almost encircled the entire Black Hills country, and with a hundred ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... heavy blows with his foe Woof's courage returned, and he determined to dishearten his adversary by bluster. ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... of Chimay, his brother, and son-inlaw, and the other obedient nobles, soon accommodated themselves to the new administration, much as they had been inclined to bluster at first about their privileges. The governor soon reported that matters were proceeding very, smoothly. There was a general return to the former docility now that such a disciplinarian as Fuentes held ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and what your bluff is worth. I know you can't held a foot of land if anybody is a mind to contest your claims. I've filed a contest on this eighty, here, and I'm going to hold it. Let that soak into your minds. I don't want any trouble—I'm even willing to take a good deal in the way of bluster, rather than have trouble. But I'm going to stay. See?" He waved his pipe in a gesture of finality and continued to smoke and to watch them impersonally, leaning against the door in that lounging negligence which is so irritating to ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... independence. It attached more importance to moral qualities than to mere political action. It was free in its criticism of persons or parties who it considered were setting up false standards for the guidance of the people. It derided the policy of the Irish Party as "half-bluster and half-whine," and when Mr Redmond spoke rhetorically of "wringing from whatever Government may be in power the full measure of a nation's rights," it bluntly told him he was talking "arrant humbug." It made the development of Irish industries one of ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... know the somewhat vulgar word which heads this paper. At least he did not know it as a noun, but gives "swagger: v.n., to bluster, bully, brag;" but the Slang Dictionary admits it as a word, springing indeed from the thieves' vocabulary: "one who carries a swag." Neither of these books however give the least idea of the true meaning ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... years that he was prepared to see a man who would intimidate him by his severity and awe him by the manifestation of his greatness. In fact, associating business success with his father's manners and methods, Allen had come to believe that force meant noise and bluster, and that firmness stood for an intolerance of discussion. But here, in the midst of his family, Robert Gorham displayed a side of his nature which Stephen Sanford had never seen; yet Allen was no less conscious of the man's power. The boy was ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... O'Regan looked very downcast, though the midshipmen did their best to keep up her spirits by telling her that they were sure the Spaniards would not dare to hurt her or any of us, let them bluster and threaten ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... time begun to recover somewhat from the shock of Wallace's unexpected appearance, commenced to bluster: ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... chechakos—the ones with nerve an' the ones with brass. The ones with the real nerve is the kind that stays in the big country. But the other kind of chechakos—the ones with brass—the bluff an' bluster—the counterfeit nerve that don't fool no one but theirself—the luckiest thing that can happen to them is they should live long enough to git back to the outside where they come from—an' most of 'em's lucky if they live long enough to ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... was all bluster and impotent defiance. I was as helpless as a squirming puppy held by the neck. I ran like a madman, but I ran the wrong way. The invisible crew passed me, and their voices faded. I heard them melt, melt into nothing. A sound, an impression,—that had been all. Not even a gray shadow on the fog ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... will never take you away from your mocking birds and roses. Don't you think any more about it. Run away now and find me a flower. You will have to look sharp under the leaves, for the wind is whistling to-day. Our little sham winter has begun to bluster. (Exit Virginia) She shall not suffer. She shall not! Though my heart surges like a prisoned sea hers shall not move her bosom's alabaster!... Why didn't I burn that letter. (Throws it into the fire. Take up the other one) I must keep the lawyer's. I shall ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... of nature which is sweeter by far than any human friendship. For her those long stretches of wild moorland, with the dark silent tarns and far-distant line of blue hills, the high cliffs where the sea wind roared with all the bluster and fury of a late March, the sea itself with its ever-changing face, the faint streaks of brilliant color in the evening sky, or the wan glare of a stormy morning—all these things had their own peculiar meaning to her, and awoke always some ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... bluster, that cry of a millionaire parvenu resuming the average opinion of the assembly, increased the general merriment; and he, flattered by his success, and tickled by the strange style of the painting, started laughing in his turn, so sonorously that he could ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... sort of Reform" (As we all must, God help us! with very wry faces;) And loud as he likes let him bluster and storm About Corporate Rights, so he'll ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... quite evident that Mr. Saunders did understand, for his countenance showed it. But the bluster was not out ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... catching the next steamer for Sydney," he said, and for the first time his speech was quiet and without bluster. ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... a stirring and a movement. There is a stir, like the stir before a breeze. Men are beginning to speak of religion without the bluster of the Christian formulae; they have begun to speak of God without any reference to Omnipresence, Omniscience, Omnipotence. The Deists and Theists of an older generation, be it noted, never did that. ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... no small noise and bluster, knocked up the inmates of the little inn of that little place, and succeeded in getting Gladys ensconced by a cheerful fire in the kitchen. The poor girl was benumbed with cold and overpowered with fatigue. The landlady rubbed her feet and hands, administered hot brandy and water, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... and the politicians began to bluster like the season. Late one afternoon he was on his way to the office with a cartoon, the first in which he had seriously to attack Clayton. Benson, the managing editor of the Telegraph, had conceived it, ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... have war, Silas," said he, slowly; "but don't you think that your Mr. Lincoln scares me into that belief. I don't count his bluster worth a cent. No sirree! It's this youngster who comes out here from Boston and buys a nigger with all the money he's got in the world. And if he's an impetuous young fool; ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Brandy Rocks, until, instead of a rotund, twinkling old sea-dog, with a gargoylish countenance, with which the spirit had nothing to do, there landed on the wharf at the city a swaggering, wrathy pirate, of devilish cast and temper, quick to flush and bluster, mighty in profanity, far ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... good-looking after a horsey fashion, clever, agreeable, and quite willing to submit himself to any nickname that could be found for him. He liked a rubber of whist, and was supposed to make something out of bets with bad players. He rode very carefully, and was altogether averse to ostentation and bluster in the field. But he could make a horse do anything when he wanted to sell him, and could on an occasion give a lead as well as any man. Everybody liked him, and various things were constantly said in his praise. He was never ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... from 1886 to 1896, when the Venezuela episode opened a valve for the steam to blow off, the relations between Canada and the United States were continuously at high tension. It was an era of friction and pinpricks, of bluster and retaliation. The United States was not in a conciliatory mood. It was growing in wealth and numbers and power, in unprecedented ways. Its people were one and all intensely proud of their country and satisfied with themselves. The muckraker ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... (stroke) bato. Blow blovi. Blouse kitelo. Blow (of flowers) ekflori. Bludgeon bastonego. Blue blua. Bluish dubeblua. Blunder erarego. Blunt malakra. Blunt (mannered) malafabla. Blur malpurigi. Blush rugxigxi. Bluster fanfaroni. Boa boao. Boar porkviro. Board (food) nutrado—ajxo. Board (plank) tabulo. Board logxi. Boarder (house) logxanto. Boarder (school) edukato. Boarding school edukejo. Boarding-house logxantejo. Boast fanfaroni. Boast ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... very alluring curtain of language. It seems to be the most natural thing in the world for the thief and swindler to talk with the greatest apparent earnestness and sincerity and honesty. Pious talk very frequently is the haze in which an avaricious and greedy soul hides itself. Bluff, bluster, and boasting are the sops which the coward throws to his own vanity, while the quietest, sweetest, and gentlest tones often sheath the fierce heart of the born fighter, as a velvet glove is said to clothe a ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... inclemency, vehemence, might, impetuosity; boisterousness &c adj.; effervescence, ebullition; turbulence, bluster; uproar, callithump [U.S.], riot, row, rumpus, le diable a quatre [Fr.], devil to pay, all the fat in the fire. severity &c 739; ferocity, rage, fury; exacerbation, exasperation, malignity; fit, paroxysm; orgasm, climax, aphrodisia^; force, brute force; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... with a laugh; "the awkwardness will soon wear off if she has to dress like this for a short time. As for me, I have learnt all a boy's tricks and ways. I can whistle and shout with any of them, can quarrel, and bluster, be saucy on occasion, and have only ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... typhoon speed and they went up in spurts like pitch barrels. The wind was high enough to romp ruthlessly with spark and blaze, until even the effort at fire-fighting had been abandoned. Happily the bluster had settled to a constant gale out of the south-west and the fire-tide rolled with it to the edge and not the core of the town and when it lapped at the reeking woods ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... the demand was made, the States government yielded at once, and yielded without bluster. I cannot say I much admired Mr. Seward's long letter. It was full of smart special pleading, and savored strongly, as Mr. Seward's productions always do, of the personal author. Mr. Seward was making an effort to ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... tactics. I began to bluster. I was a British subject and claimed to be treated with proper respect. I appealed to the British Consul; I insisted upon seeing him. When they laughed at me, saying that he would not interfere with the course of justice on behalf ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... the cherry! O sweeter than the berry! O nymph more bright Than moonshine night, Like kidlings blithe and merry! Ripe as the melting cluster! No lily has such lustre; Yet hard to tame As raging flame, And fierce as storms that bluster! ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... We awoke to a bluster of blinding sand so that the morning was darkened with it. Breakfast in consequence was a fiasco, and very empty, very angry, we faced the trail head-on to the sandstorm. Hour after hour it continued with no sign of abatement, and with ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... might suppose reading the list of heroes who met there. "The 'plunging prelate and his ponderous Grace'; my lord George, the 'bold baker,' and Mr. Unwell; Sir Xenophon Sunflower, the Assassin, and the flash grazier; the Dollar, hellite, billiard-marker, and bacon-factor; the ringletted O'Bluster, double-jointed publican, Leather lungs, and Handsome Jack contrasted in the pig's skin; and, ye Centaurs! what seats were there!" It must have been a sight for proper men to see. Not the veriest tailor would ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... it here." Stanley began to bluster. "I remember distinctly putting it in this corner. Now, who's had it? There's no time to lose. Look sharp! The stick's ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... said with his usual bluster, "this is the last day I will fool with that plane. Absolutely the last! If she doesn't go before night, she needn't go at all. I will get rid of her. Dad wrote me this morning that he had had a letter from ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... the left-hand columnar group, placed at the edge of the picture after the manner of Leonardo. The woman and child lighten the mass of foliage on the right and make a beautiful pattern. The white town of Castelfranco sings against the threatening sky, the winds bluster through the space, the trees shiver with the coming storm. Here and there leafy boughs are struck in with a slight, crisp touch, in which we can follow readily the painter's ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... merely means to make a little bluster, and try if he can pick up a little money. There is nothing whatever actionable in the paper.... The article on Hazlitt, which will commence next number, will be a most powerful one, and this business will not deprive it of ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... and never disproved: he challenged Church for talking openly about the story that the Holland Land Company had, for legislative services rendered, cancelled a bond against him for twenty thousand dollars; but the world doubts Burr's bluster as it doubts his word. At present he is in a desperate way because Alexander Baring, in behalf of a friend, I.I. Augustine, is pressing for payment on a bond given to secure the price of land bought by Burr and Greenleaf, and he has been offering worthless ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... is not usually a formidable opponent, and though he will sometimes charge home he is much more apt to bluster and bully than actually to come to close quarters. I myself have but once seen a man who had been hurt by one of these bears. This was an Indian. He had come on the beast close up in a thick wood, and had mortally wounded it with his ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... gold pencil on the end of his waldemar. His outward calmness exasperated Leverage. From this point of the interview, the chief of police would have dropped the attitude of trustful friendliness and resorted to a little practical third-degree stuff. He was fairly quivering with eagerness to bluster about the room and ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... salesmen themselves use it, to cover all the people who are trying to convince some one else that what they have is worth while whether it is an idea or a washing machine or a packet of drawings)—there is a certain rough type of salesman who tries to bluster his way through. He never lasts long as a salesman, though unfortunately he survives a good many years in various kinds of business. Even he must not ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... shame wi' bitter words, Tam Lorrigan. 'Tis the way of ye to bluster and bully until the neighbors all are affrighted to face ye ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... weak or silly enough to try to outdo the newcomers, and degraded the quiet dignity of their patriarchal manner of life by speculations on the Stock Exchange. The intelligent middle classes, whose eyes and ears were filled with this bluster of the gold-orgy, found that their former way of living had now grown uncomfortable, their houses were too small, their bread too dry, their beer too common and their views of life began to climb upward in a measure which, whether they were willing or equal in talent ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... no one suppose that by purging itself of bloody violence, hatred, and revenge, and becoming the sentinel of affection, jealousy has lost any of its intensity. On the contrary, its depth is quintupled. The bluster and fury of savage violence is only a momentary ebullition of sensual passion, whereas the anguish of jealousy as we feel ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... and now warm breezes; now he passed a company of storms marching down upon the earth; or a lightning or two straggling back again to the skies; or a thunder riding a cloud; or a troop of hail rushing to battle with a deal of bluster and fury; or a crowd of snows looking for colder weather and a roosting-place. At last, he reached the country of the stars. He found a land far more beautiful than that he had left behind him, upon the narrow strait, between the two tempestuous and stormy seas. He found it ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... the Blue-gum, when the darkness came to the mountain, "I am going to have a good sleep tonight. I'm a match still for old Daddy Wind, in spite of all his noise and bluster. And there are ways of dealing with white-ants, too. I've lived upon this mountain, tree ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... loudly, and his breath came short and quick. He turned away and walked up to the house-door, and then came back again. "You understand me, I suppose?" he said; "and if Elsworthy is not mad, you had better suggest to him not to lose his only chance of recovering Rosa by vain bluster with me, who know nothing about her. I shan't be idle in the mean time," said Mr Wentworth. All this time Elsworthy was beating against the door, and shouting his threats into the quiet of the morning; ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... along by The George— Past the Stocks, and the Church, and the Forge, And round the Pound, and skirting the Pond, Till they come to the whitewash'd cottage beyond, And there at the door they muster and cluster, And thump, and kick, and bellow, and bluster— Enough to put Old Nick in a fluster! A noise, indeed, so loud and long, And mix'd with expressions so very strong, That supposing, according to popular fame, "Wise Woman" and Witch to be the same, No hag with a broom would unwisely ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... speech," said he, "begin by proclaiming yourself the purest, the most disinterested of living men, and end by intimating that you are the bravest;" and then with the charming inconsistency of the dreamer he would add: "If there be anything on this earth that I despise it is bluster." ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... impervious to the veiled hostility that met him everywhere, faced Steptoe Service and made his request, that dignitary felt a chill go down his spine. Like Old Pete he felt the man beneath the surface. He met him, however, with bluster and refused all reopening of a matter which he declared settled with the burial of the snow-packer in the sliding canyons ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... "Your bluster won't serve you, sirrah. If you be a gentleman, which you make incredible, you may proceed in order and I'll consider if I may do you the honour ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... of one of those wide, wet, uncertain February days when the call of spring is on the wind though spring is weeks away. The lights of the town flashed and glimmered down the streets under the bare swaying maple branches. The early evening was full of soft bluster; the air was conscious with an appeal of nature, vague yet poignant. The young man caught at the strange sympathy that seemed to be abroad for his spirit. He walked to his house, courting it, troubled by it. They ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... another matter. That was nature. A man, with all of his bluster, cannot get away from nature. Don't the winters freeze and kill him? Doesn't water drown him, fire burn him? Love had no place in nature; hatred was a part of the one law, the primal law. The wolf kills the rabbit in hot rage; ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... Alf. "I ..." He was inclined for a moment to bluster. He looked curiously at Jenny's profile, judicial in its severity. Then some kind of tact got the better of his first impulse. "Well, I thought one of you girls ..." he said. "Will you come, Em? Have ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... bold and self-reliant, named his terms to Castellani—a half-interest in the business—and Castellani, swear and bully and bluster as he might, must accept. This made Sampey a rich man at once. Castellani, exceedingly gracious and friendly after the signing of the compact, proposed a quiet supper in his private apartments in celebration of the new arrangement, and presently he and Zoe and Sampey were enjoying a very choice ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... confront him with a theory of the ideal, he would not be reduced, like the pre-rational moralists in a similar case, to mere inattention and bluster. If you told him that every art and every activity involves a congruous good, and that the endeavour to realise the ideal in every direction is an effort of which reason necessarily approves, since reason is nothing but the method of that ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... "For myself, two centuries have been spent in my family to teach me to love like a gentleman, and to deserve you like a man. What does this young man need? A few days of bluster, of assertion! A few weeks of gaming and of roistering, of self-asserted claims! Gad! Lady Catharine, this is passing bitter! And now you ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... said Cleek, as he rose to his feet and shut a tight hand upon the collar of the manacled doctor; "got you, you dogs, and your little game is up. Oh, you needn't bluster, doctor; you needn't come the outraged innocence, Colonel. You'll, neither of you, bolster up the rascally claim of your worthy confederate, the Tackbun Claimant; and your game with the X-rays, your devil's trick of rotting away a man's arm to destroy ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... from beneath bushy eyebrows, his firm and kindly mouth, his bristling mustache, the simplicity of his manners, his clean-cut, reserved language,—all that goes to show that there is nothing in him of bluster and affectation. He is truly 'Papa Joffre,' the father and even the grandfather of the poilus. It is the poilu himself beneath the white panache of this unique ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... bluster won't do with me. I was an officer in Chicago before ever I came to this darned coal bunker, and I know a Chicago crook ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... After a tremendous bluster for two days the weather has become beautifully fine, and I find the climate here more invigorating than that of the main island. It is Japan, but yet there is a difference somehow. When the mists lift they reveal not mountains ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... offensive. The others were not so optimistic. But neither here, nor in any of the conversations I have heard at the headquarters of the Allies, was there a doubt expressed as to ultimate victory. They had a quiet confidence that was contagious. There was no bluster, no assertion; victory was simply accepted as a fact; the only two opinions might be as to when it would occur, and whether the end would be sudden or a slow withdrawal of the ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... informed themselves of their numbers, condition, and prospects. The opposition they encountered, the ridicule and opprobrium showered upon them from certain quarters, the sullenness of the natives, the bluster of the white tenants, the brushwood and dry branches thrown across their pathway, could not discourage them. They saw no 'lions in the way,' while mercy, with pleading looks, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... determined to do his best to rid them in future of this "superfluous swelling." So he indulged in a critical Donnybrook; but after hitting out and about at the Essay for three months he left it much as he found it.(19) He could not get to close quarters with Farmer's scholarship. His bluster compares ill with Farmer's gentler manner, and in some passages the quiet humour has proved too subtle for his animosity. There was more impartiality in the judgment of Johnson: "Dr. Farmer, you have done that which was never ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... The volcano itself is harmless enough. It smokes unpleasantly now and then, splutters and rumbles as if about to obliterate all creation, but for all its bluster it only manages to spill a trickle or two of fresh lava down its sides—just tamely subsides after deluging Leavitt with a shower of cinders and ashes. But Leavitt won't leave it alone. He goes poking into the very crater, half strangling ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... any reasonably governed country they should never have figured in the treaty; they had been inflicted before, and were due before. Before the rebellion began, the beach had rung with I know not what indiscreet bluster; the natives were to be read a lesson; Tamasese (by name) was to be hanged; and after what had been done to Mataafa, I was so innocent as to listen with awe. And now the rebellion has come, and this was the punishment! There might ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... visibly nervous. He was pale. His voice was neither strong nor clear. He appeared to be deeply affected by the epochal and awesome character of his task. His distinguished audience listened in profound silence as he stated America's case without bluster and without rancor. The burden of his address was a request that the House and Senate recognize that Germany had been making war on the United States and that they agree to his recommendations, which included a declaration that a state of war existed, that ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... as black as the church, stands on the opposite side of the road, with its barns; and these are all the buildings in sight of the railroad station. On the Concord rail, in the train of cars, with the locomotive puffing, and blowing off its steam, and making a great bluster in that lonely place, while along the other railroad stretches the desolate track, with the withered weeds growing up betwixt the two lines of iron, all so desolate. And anon you hear a low thunder running along these iron rails; ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hats, including the glossy castor of Joe Willis, the self-elected and would-be champion of the neighbourhood, a well-to-do young butcher of twenty-eight or thereabouts, and a great strapping fellow, with his full allowance of bluster. This is a capital show of gamesters, considering the amount of the prize; so, while they are picking their sticks and drawing their lots, I think I must tell you, as shortly as I can, how the noble old game of back-sword is played; for it is sadly ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... There was no bluster in these resolutions, but their meaning was apparent enough, and the city authorities understood it. From that hall, next morning, would march at least five or six thousand determined men, and if the mob rallied in force, to repeat the action of the day before, there would ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... else, it won't be to our credit," put in Roy. "If we can't stand up to bluster and sedition with that moral force at our backs, we shall deserve ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... "Farragut" (Pl. 27), a work that remains one of the modern masterpieces of portrait statuary. The man stands there forever, feet apart, upon his swaying deck, his glass in one strong hand, cool, courageous, ready, full of determination but absolutely without bluster or braggadocio, a sailor, a gentleman, and a hero. He showed it again, and with ampler maturity, in that august figure of "Lincoln" (Pl. 28), grandly dignified, austerely simple, sorrowfully human, risen from the chair of state that marks his ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... that generous optimist can hardly do him justice. In spite of the latter-day notoriety of the "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyam, we may set it down as a rule that he who would be heard must be a believer, must have a fundamental optimism in his philosophy. He may bluster and disagree and lament as Carlyle and Ruskin do sometimes; but a basic confidence in the good destiny of life and of the world ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... down she could see the way they had gone; the crooked gulch, a garment's crease in the great lap of the table-land, sinking to the river. She saw no one, heard no sound but the senseless hurry and bluster of the winds,—coming from no one knew where, going none cared whither. It blew a gale in the bright sunlight, mocking her efforts to listen. She waved her hand to her uncle's lone figure in the hollow, ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... "You ain't foolin' none?" Then, as though realizing his own weakness, he began to bluster. "Cos I ain't takin' no foolin' in a racket o' this sort. An' any feller thinks he ken fool me'll sure hate hisself when I'm ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... that the perpetual bluster of a party in the States will at last set the patient British back up. And if our people begin to bluster too, and there should come into existence an exasperating war-party on both sides, there will be great danger of ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... bullying villains they are; they will torment a weak woman for months together, but will fly in cowardly terror the moment you turn upon them in righteous anger! I should just laugh at them, but I would drive them out, hold not a moment's parley with them. Of course, they will bluster and show fight, because you have let them have their own way for so long that they will not tamely submit to expulsion; but face them with iron determination, set your will against them like an immovable rock, and down they will go. Say to them: 'I am a spark of the divine fire, and by the power ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers |
