"Briton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... universal among the ancient races. Banners, flags, and armorial bearings are supposed to be survivals of the old totemic tattooing. The Arab woman still tattoos her face, arms, and ankles. The war-paint of the American savage reappeared in the woad with which the ancient Briton stained his body; and Tylor suggests that the painted stripes on the circus clown are a survival of a custom once universal. (Tylor's "Anthropology," ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... the overthrow of ancient civilization in this corner of England by the barbarous Saxon invaders is summed up in the terse words of their own chronicle—"They slew all that dwelt therein, nor was there henceforth one Briton left." The name "Andredes Weald" is derived from the British—An tred—"No houses," and it correctly described the surrounding country at the time of the Roman occupation. The great Weald or forest actually extended ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... Master shall praise us, for only the Master shall lead; And no one shall fight for his country, and none for his honor or creed; But each for the Master Who loves him, and Teuton and Briton and all Shall fight, each the cause of the other, for the God of the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... taking delight only in what we already agree with, of liking to read only what we already think, or have been schooled into considering glorious, axiomatic, and British. As there are parts of Milton's prose-writings that would be even now as discomposing and irritating to an orthodox Briton as to an orthodox Spaniard or Russian, a genuine British reader might be expected perhaps to tend to those parts by preference. Hence there is something not wholly pleasing in the exclusive rush in our country ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the most anxious questions that a Briton can ask himself to-day is just how far the gigantic sufferings and still more monstrous warnings of this war have shocked the good gentlemen who must steer the ship of State through the strong rapids of the New Peace out of this forensic levity ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... glory of wedding Fiction and History in delighted union, and of embodying in imperishable records the manners, character, soul, and spirit of Caledonia; so that, if all her annals were lost, her memory would in those tales be immortal. His truly is a name that comes to the heart of every Briton with a start of exultation, whether it be heard in the hum of cities or in the solitude of nature. What has Campbell ever obtruded on the Public of his private history? Yet his is a name that will be hallowed for ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... to an act of kindness shown her by a British officer, remarked quietly: 'When there is so much to make the heart ache it is well to remember deeds of kindness.' The more we multiply deeds of kindness between Boer and Briton in South Africa, the better for the future of the two races, who, we hope, will one day fuse into a united nation under the ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... a Briton, he'll boldly advance, That one English soldier will beat ten of France; Would we alter the boast from the sword to the pen, Our odds are still greater, still greater our men: In the deep mines of science though Frenchmen may toil, Can their strength be compar'd to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... there, he had them reloaded on wagons and conveyed to Leesburg, where they were placed in an unoccupied building,[24] the key of which was given to a recently ordained clergyman, named Littlejohn. There they remained until the last hostile Briton had reached Baltimore, when they were carefully hauled back to Washington.[25] Thus we saved the precious documents of the revolutionary war, as well as our state archives, and thus does Leesburg boast, with abstract truthfulness, that for a ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... the Third, as he is of se-sawing his shoulders on the mile-stones of the Duke of Argyle. Each in their way were great benefactors, the one by teaching the Yankees to respect themselves, and the other by putting his countrymen in an upright posture of happiness. So I can join hands with the North Briton, and bless ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... be checked, and the criminal law which they administered, the wonder is less that there were sometimes desperate riots (as in 1780) than that London should have been ever able to resist a mob. Colquhoun, though a patriotic Briton, has to admit that the French despots had at last created an efficient police. The emperor, Joseph II., he says, inquired for an Austrian criminal supposed to have escaped to Paris. You will find him, replied the head of the French police, at No. 93 of such a street in Vienna on the second-floor ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... Herr Baron's sentiments about Albert Durer or Lucas Cranach may be. I can digest my rindfleisch without the aid of the commis voyageur's criticisms on Gothic architecture. This may be my misfortune. In spite of the Italian blood which I inherit, I am a shy man—shy as the purest Briton. But, like other shy men, I make up in obstinacy what may be deficient in expansiveness. I can be frightened into silence, but I won't be dictated to. You might as well attempt the persuasive effect of your eloquence upon a snail who has withdrawn ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Italian blood in their veins. The same has been the case in later times with Arabic, Persian, Spanish, German, English. Each of those tongues has become the familiar speech of vast regions where the mass of the people are not Arabian, Spanish, or English, otherwise than by adoption. The Briton of Cornwall has, slowly but in the end thoroughly, adopted the speech of England. In the American continent full-blooded Indians preside over commonwealths which speak the tongue of Cortes and Pizarro. In the lands to which all eyes are now turned, the Greek, who has been busily assimilating ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... thy foe. What say ye, my Lord Caradoc-ap-Owain-ap-etcetera?' Whereupon the lord of Rhyd-Alwyn unbent his haughty brows, and placing one narrow, white, and shapely hand upon my blood-stained baldric, spoke as follows: 'Well said, young Briton. Spoken like a brave knight and an honorable gentleman. My daughter thou shalt have, my son thou shalt be, thy friends shall be my friends, and thou and all of them shall be baptized Welshmen.' And then he himself re-ascended the staircase and sought ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... reasons, was forced to see before her a future of perpetual subordination: the Briton rules in Great Britain, the Frenchman in France, the American in America, each Dominion in its own area, but the Indian was to rule nowhere; alone among the peoples of the world, he was not to feel his own country as his own. "Britain for ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... I do even von Hindenburg's strategy, efficient as it may be. That is the spirit in which a country should meet a great emergency, and instead of mocking at it we ought to emulate it. I believe we are just as imbued with the spirit as Germany is, but we want it evoked. [Cheers.] The average Briton is too shy to be a hero until he is asked. The British temper is one of never wasting heroism on needless display, but there is plenty of it for the need. There is nothing Britishers would not give ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... at that time was one Evans, a Cambro-Briton. He had something of the choleric complexion of his countrymen stamped on his visage, but was a worthy sensible man at bottom. He wore his hair, to the last, powdered and frizzed out, in the fashion which I remember to have seen in caricatures of what were termed, in my young days, Maccaronies. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... I took a walk out into the country with Briton Riviere and some other artists. I had a cake or two of colour, and Riviere, with wine for water, at a trattoria where we lunched, made a picture of the attendant maid. He pointed out to me on the road a string of peasants carrying great loaves of coarse bread. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... as in the case of an English butler who recently came to his master and said he should be “obliged to leave.” On being questioned it came out that one of the guests was in the habit of chatting with him, “and,” added the Briton, “I won’t stand being took liberties with by ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... Briton many years resident in that fair capital and editor of the only English newspaper, had taken up stout verbal cudgels on behalf of the Americans, who had been viciously attacked in the columns of a local "daily." The United States of the North, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... of productions, is the portrait of the celebrated demagogue John Wilkes. This singular performance originated in a quarrel with that witty libertine, and his associate Churchill the poet: it immediately followed an article, from the pen of Wilkes, in the North Briton, which insulted Hogarth as a man, and traduced him as an artist. It is so little of a caricature, that Wilkes good humouredly observes somewhere in his correspondence, 'I am growing every day more and more like my portrait by Hogarth.' The terrible scourge of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... flag, enjoying the full privilege of that constitution, under which the parent land has risen to so lofty an eminence; with this, United Canada has nothing to covet in other lands; with less than this, no true Briton would rest satisfied."[46] ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... the coalheaver. "So, my lords, this here persecutor goes to vork like a Briton, and claps this here thingamy in my fist, vich ain't not a bit like me, but a blessed deal more likerer a bull with a ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... this volume are put certaine relations of Iohn de Vararzana, Florentine, and of a great captaine a Frenchman, and the two voyages of Iaques Cartier a Briton, who sailed vnto the land situate in 50. degrees of latitude to the North, which is called New France, which landes hitherto are not throughly knowen, whether they doe ioyne with the firme lande of Florida and Noua Hispania, or whether they bee separated and diuided all by the Sea as Ilands: and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... newspaper once printed a portrait of her whom the irreverent Briton had a reprehensible habit of designating colloquially as "The Old Lady," But the editor in question did not so designate her—his simple American manhood and republican spirit would not admit that she was a lady. ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... with a lot of air around the collar and a great deal of air adjacent to the waistband and through the slack of the trousers; frequently they fit him with such an air that he is entirely surrounded by space, as in the case of a vacuum bottle. Once there was a Briton whose overcoat collar hugged the back of his neck; so they knew by that he was no true Briton, but an impostor—and they put him out of the union. In brief, the kind of English clothes best suited for an American to wear ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... these matters of sentiment one must have "been there" one's self in order to understand them. No American can ever attain to understanding the loyalty of a Briton towards his king, of a German towards his emperor; nor can a Briton or German ever understand the peace of heart of an American in having no king, no Kaiser, no spurious nonsense, between him and the common God of all. If sentiments as simple as these are mysteries which one must receive ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... carefully docketed and valued. For instance, a Briton was of more value than a man, and wives than women. Those things or phases of life with which people had no personal acquaintance were regarded with a faint amusement and a certain disapproval. The principles of the upper class, in fact, were ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Only very rudimentary psychologists recognised conceit in this freedom; and only the same set of persons mistook shyness for arrogance. Effusiveness of praise or curiosity in a stranger is apt to produce bluntness of reply in a Briton. "Don't talk d-d nonsense, sir," said the Duke of Wellington to the gushing person who piloted him, in his old age, across Piccadilly. Of Tennyson Mr Palgrave says, "I have known him silenced, almost frozen, before the eager unintentional eyes of a girl of fifteen. And ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... grinning boy's face beneath it, and a bedraggled uniform. 'Many acts of great bravery'—such was the record for which he was decorated. Even the French wounded smiled at his quaint appearance, as they did at another Briton who had acquired the chewing-gum habit, and came up for his medal as if he had been called suddenly in the middle of his dinner, which he was still endeavouring to bolt. Then came the end, with the National Anthem. The British ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as the grave. All her friends will doubtless leave service on account of it. What he does now makes little difference to me, of course, as I had already given warning, but I shall stick to him like a Briton in spite of it. He has to-day made me a present, and a further five pounds for yourself, expecting you to hold your tongue on every matter connected with Mrs. P.'s friends, and to say nothing to any of them about this marriage until it is over. His lordship impressed this ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... soon we grow hardened to such spectacles. And then, unless he has become exceptionally cosmopolitan, a Briton finds it very difficult to reckon an African, or even an Asiatic, as quite a human being. Of course he knows that he is so, just as much as himself. He knows, and perhaps vehemently asserts, if necessary, that even the lowest type of negro is a ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... British Family Housewife, which she would sit consulting, with her elbows on the table and her temples on her hands, like some perplexed enchantress poring over the Black Art. This, principally because the Complete British Housewife, however sound a Briton at heart, was by no means an expert Briton at expressing herself with clearness in the British tongue, and sometimes might have issued her directions to equal purpose in the Kamskatchan language. In any crisis of this nature, Bella ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... compared them with a bad umbrella which a storm can break or burst, while others term them cuirasses against pleasure and cobwebs against infection. They were much used in the last century. "Those pretended stolen goods were Mr. Wilkes's Papers, many of which tended to prove his authorship of the North Briton, No. 45, April 23, 1763, and some Cundums enclosed in an envelope" (Records of C. of King's Bench, London, 1763). "Pour finir l'inventaire de ces curiosites du cabinet de Madame Gourdan, il ne faut pas ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... be assumed that the North Briton is, to an appreciable extent, a different creature from the Englishman, the assumption is not likely to provoke dispute. No one will deny us the prominence of our cheek-bones, and our pride in the same. How far the difference extends, whether it involves merit or demerit, are questions not now sought ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... the danger of making voyages in war-time. Their faith in the "big canoes" of King George was so firm that, sea-sickness notwithstanding, they had no doubts or fears concerning their safe arrival in the land where Briton, Boer, Indian and African were doing their level best to stamp out ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... to no Great Power But the one that God we call. Hastening on to death's high hour, He before asked not the Gaul, Nor the Briton, nor the others, If he too had leave to die In the battle of his brothers Underneath the Danish sky. First to act with ardor youthful, First a strong, clear faith to show, First to swear in spirit truthful, First o'er ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... sized potato as a bonanza, there is nothing that is pleasanter than to read a letter from an Englishman expressing compassion. How it tones up the stomach to read of the good will that, by a large majority, occupies the heart of the Briton who writes the letter to the Duchess ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... Prince, hearing from him of my tastes, would have it that I should then and there sit down at the wonderful little piano, all inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which stood in the corner, and play him the accompaniment to his song. It was called, as I remember, "The Briton Conquers but to Save," and he rolled it out in a very fair bass voice, the others joining in the chorus, and clapping ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... see thy craft. Thou hast, By seeming flight, enticed me from the battle, And warded death and destiny from off the head Of many a Briton. Now ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... dream of brilliant conquest 'twas, Nor selfish hope of gain, That sent the blood mad-rushing through And through each Briton's vein; No! such was not the spell that nerved Old England for the fight, Her war cry with her brother braves' Was "Freedom, God, and Right!" Ring out, rejoice, and clap your hands, Shout, patriots, everyone! A burst of joy let rend the sky: ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... violence of Ireland. But Bernard Shaw is not merely an Irishman; he is not even a typical one. He is a certain separated and peculiar kind of Irishman, which is not easy to describe. Some Nationalist Irishmen have referred to him contemptuously as a "West Briton." But this is really unfair; for whatever Mr. Shaw's mental faults may be, the easy adoption of an unmeaning phrase like "Briton" is certainly not one of them. It would be much nearer the truth to put the ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Briton nodded and was about to speak, the American leaped from his side, made the companion-ladder, and fairly tumbled below, Approaching Captain ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... bloated monarchy!" He smiled sadly—then handing his purse and his mother's photograph to another English person, he whispered softly. "If I am eaten up, give them to Me mother—tell her I died like a true Briton, with no faith whatever in the success of a republican form of government!" And then he crept back to ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... prevailing sentiment seems to have been that Ireland and Canada, leavened by a few respectable "loyalists" and officials, on the whole, were two exceedingly mutinous and embarrassing possessions, which, nevertheless, it was the duty of every self-respecting Briton to dragoon into obedience. Both dependencies were assumed to be equally expensive, though, in fact, Ireland, as we know now, was showing a handsome profit at the time, whereas Canada was costing a quarter of a million a year. For the rest, the pride ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... ransom for your prisoners, but doom them all to death; I am a Roman, and with a Roman heart will suffer death. But there is one thing for which I would intreat." Then bringing Imogen before the king, he said, "This boy is a Briton born. Let him be ransomed. He is my page. Never master had a page so kind, so duteous, so diligent on all occasions, so true, so nurse-like. He hath done no Briton wrong, though he hath served a Roman. Save him, if you spare ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Englishman and the Frenchman in the matter of economy, you find this interesting parallel: With the Frenchman the first question that attends income is "How much can I save?" Saving is the supreme thing. With the Briton, however, it becomes a matter of "How much can ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... gentlemen rushed out of the adjoining cafe, the English calling for their servants and horses, (many of whom, by the way, who had never possessed any;) one of these fainted—no heart of oak was he, when our ancient Briton, the commandant, Colonel Jones, again presented himself, vif et emporte. The spectators exclaimed—"que cela venoit de la trop rapide circulation de son sang." N'importe: the choleric Colonel, blustering, restored us to comparative tranquillity, as he brandished ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... book the story of some friends of mine, in which this was the case. They were young, they were hopeful, they had all life before them, but they did not marry. And when the last chapter came to the consciousness of the publisher he struck, with the courage of a true Briton, not ashamed of his principles, and refused to pay. He said it was no story at all—so beautiful is marriage in the eyes of our countrymen. I hope, however, that nobody will think any harm of John Tatham ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... English, and American, artists, poets, journalists, policemen, hotel-keepers, soldiers, lawyers, business men, and others. His old faculty of sympathetic interest in his fellows won for him, just as in his student days, privileges seldom extended to the Briton. He enjoyed again the rare experience of being taken into the bosom of a Frenchman's family. He was admitted to the momentous confidence of les jeunes, and found them as sure that they had surprised the secrets of art and life as the departed ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... a Britisher, A chip of heart of oak, That wouldn't warp or swerve or stir From what I thought or spoke; And you—a blunt and honest man, Straightforward, kind, and true, I tell you, brother Jonathan, That you're a Briton too!" ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... boon and a blessing to the average young Englishman. To the medical student, to the eater of dinners at the Temple, to the subaltern on leave, life in London is a wearisome proceeding. The healthy Briton takes his pleasure lawlessly, or it is no pleasure to him. Nothing that he may do affords to him any genuine satisfaction. To be in trouble of some sort is his only idea of bliss. Now, England affords him small opportunity in this respect; to get himself into a scrape requires ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... feeding certain rapacious swans navigating gracefully around Rousseau's Island. He had consumed several Trichinopoly cigars in the interval, and had moodily gazed back upon the strange path which had led him to the placid shores of Lake Leman! The gay promenaders envied the debonnair-looking young Briton, whose outer man was essentially "good form." Children left the side of their ox-eyed bonnes to challenge the handsome young stranger with ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... the captive Briton's woe; For his ennobled mind, Forgets the name of Britain's foe, ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... evidently to some cause of dispute between the Romans, Ambrosius, and Vortigern. Vortigern is said to have been sovereign of the Dimetae, and Ambrosius son to the king of the Damnonii. The latter was half a Roman by descent, and naturally supported the Roman interest: the former was entirely a Briton, and as naturally ...
— History Of The Britons (Historia Brittonum) • Nennius
... bravura pieces, the author limits himself only by the range of the virtuoso, which by definition far transcends the modesty of nature. If my Russians seem more Muscovite than any Russian, and my English people more insular than any Briton, I will not plead, as I honestly might, that the fiction has yet to be written that can exaggerate the reality of such subjects; that the apparently outrageous Patiomkin is but a timidly bowdlerized ghost of the original; and that Captain Edstaston is no more than ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... hope the time will never come when a Briton will so far forget his duty as not to go to the assistance of ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... instrument of the lovers, but no sooner sees the lovely North Briton than she herself is captivated. In response to her proffered affection, Glencairn manages by an extraordinary device to convey her out of the convent. In spite of the rage of Dan Jaques they escape to Sienna. The further surprising turns in their affairs to be later communicated ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... Margutte answered with a sneer, I like the blue no better than the black, My faith consists alone in savoury cheer, In roasted capons, and in potent sack; But above all, in famous gin and clear, Which often lays the Briton on his back, With lump of sugar, and with lympth from well, I drink it, and defy the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... ladies with the manner of the sturdy Briton who would make himself agreeable yet dreads the petit maitre. His voice would have been better if a little more subdued; he seated himself with perhaps rather more of ease than of grace; but on the whole Society would have let him pass muster ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... would choose to mention? And I answered, Eugene Aram.[146] The name of the "Admirable Crichton" was suddenly started as a splendid example of waste talents, so different from the generality of his countrymen. This choice was mightily approved by a North-Briton present, who declared himself descended from that prodigy of learning and accomplishment, and said he had family-plate in his possession as vouchers for the fact, with the initials A. C.—Admirable Crichton! H—— laughed or rather roared as heartily at this as I should ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... is a major-general and his mother an earl's daughter, and who is first cousin to that enlightened nobleman and legislator the Earl of C. Few men so young have had so many and varied experiences as this sturdy Briton. He has humped his swag in Australia, has earned fifteen shillings a day there as a blackleg protected by police picquets on a New South Wales coal mine. He was at Harrow under Dr. Butler, and at Corpus Christi, Cambridge. He has been in the ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... go with him to the station when the fly came back for him; and when we said good-bye he tipped us all half a quid, without any insidious distinctions about age or considering whether you were a boy or a girl. Our Indian uncle is a true-born Briton, ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... had expressed great disapproval that a woman should be idle, while men dragged heavy weights about. "White fellow, big-fellow-fool all right," he said contemptuously, when Mac explained that it was generally so in the white man's country. A Briton of the Billingsgate type would have appealed to Jackeroo as a ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... foreigners, the Chinese, with the exception of a few servants, know absolutely nothing; and equally little of foreign manners, customs, or etiquette. We were acquainted with one healthy Briton who was popularly supposed by the natives with whom he was thrown in contact to eat a whole leg of mutton every day for dinner; and a high native functionary, complaining one day of some tipsy sailors who had been rioting on shore, ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... once more within his own realm he met with an old shepherd, and inquired for tidings of his queen by name. The shepherd looked at him astonished, scarcely understanding his speech; for he was a Saxon, whereas Herla was a Briton. Nor, as he told the king, had he heard of such a queen, unless it were a queen of the former Britons, whose husband, Herla, was said to have disappeared at yonder rock with a dwarf, and never to have been seen again. That, however, was long ago, for it was now more ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... these digressions. Let me return to my proper subject—the story of my own experiences and doings in the great struggle which took place between Boer and Briton. ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... round a quarter of beef which hung close to his hammock, was found perfectly senseless by an officer who came to see the cause of the alarm. Some difficulty was experienced in getting him to relinquish his hold of the beef—which he stuck to like a Briton—and it was several days before his nerves recovered from the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... Briton loves good cheer, His mighty sinews never fail: 'Pour me,' he cries 'a draught of Beer, And let ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... in which case we must fall back upon cold lead and cold steel, serving out both to the enemy with such zeal and good will that they shall be anxious only to get back on board their own craft with the utmost possible expedition. You will all fight, and fight well, I know—I never yet met with a Briton who would not fight—but it may perhaps put a little extra vigour into your arms if I remind you that you will be fighting, not only for yourselves, but also for the helpless women and children who are sleeping below. Now muster yourselves, the ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... boy, I am a full-blooded Briton, and Juliana is what you may call an English half-breed. In the bottom of our hearts we have a hankering for monarchy. The lion, who permits nobody else to poach on his preserves, is our symbol. While the vexatious child and I are not at all alike in other things, I know she admires as much as ...
— A British Islander - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Cambro Briton, educated in the university of Oxford, there took his degree of Doctor; afterwards for many years in search of the profounder studies, travelled into foreign parts: to be serious, he was Queen Elizabeth's intelligencer, and had a salary for his maintenance from the Secretaries ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... the call of either; but to answer them with effect—even were I convinced that they now sounded in my ear—I must see some reasonable hope of success in the desperate enterprise in which you would involve me. I look around me, and I see a settled government—an established authority—a born Briton on the throne—the very Highland mountaineers, upon whom alone the trust of the exiled family reposed, assembled into regiments which act under the orders of the existing dynasty. [The Highland regiments were first employed by the celebrated Earl of Chatham, who assumed to himself no small ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... had cost a million or more, and England's millions enabled his government to control the globe. Not only was he keenly alive to the fact that capital and brains guided most human events, but naturally he possessed the instincts of a gentleman, and besides he was a true Briton. His ancestors for generations had followed the sea for a livelihood and fame. Some had served conspicuously in the navy, and others like himself had spent long lives ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... A Briton's first impulse, I believe, is to guard the contents of his pockets; but a moment's reflection convinced me of the futility of differing with the one man who had it in his power to make me comfortable; and with whose help it was possible that I might eventually escape from the crater. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... long pole. The artist's method of painting is to walk to the centre tables, take a huge dip of paint, and speed back again to his canvas, which represents a huge ash tree. Mr. Craven, besides sporting as much woad on his person as an ancient Briton, wears a white handkerchief round his brows. When he is very much pressed for time, he exchanges this handkerchief for a red one, and the joke goes round that this means blood. As it is impossible to carry heavy pots ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... built upon their ruins. But if my works be destined to have any duration, the name of Anjengo will not be obliterated from the memory of man. Those who shall read my works, or those whom the winds shall drive towards these shores, will say—There it is that Eliza Draper was born; and if there be a Briton among them, he will immediately add, with the spirit of conscious pride—And there it was that she was born ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... so many Tories, carried it into the other parish, and there secreted it. On their way they captured a notorious "King's man," and found on him two warrants aimed at the Commonwealth. When their patriotic trust was discharged, they turned their attention to the trembling Briton. Profoundly excited and indignant though they were, they never thought of mob violence, but, true to the inherited instincts of their race, they resolved themselves into a public meeting! The hostile warrants being produced ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... five months later I stood on the summit of Kut's famous minaret, from which Briton and Turk had each in their turn observed the enemy closing in on them, and from which one could see the junction of the Hai with the Tigris now very low, the ruins of what was the Liquorice Factory, and miles away Es Sinn and San-i-yat, it was ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... bookseller's shop in Fleet Street to ask for the Review, and on my expressing my opinion to a young Scotchman, who stood behind the counter, that Mr. Cobbett might hit as hard in his reply, the North Briton said with some alarm, 'But you don't think, sir, Mr. Cobbett will be able to injure the Scottish nation?' I said I could not speak to that point, but I thought he was very well able to defend himself. He, however, did not, but has ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... thousand copies of The Dictionary of Electricity written when electricity was new,—and it had turned out that even at the time its author had not rightly grasped his subject,—the firm had paid L10,000 to a respectable English paper (no other in fact than the Briton) for the use of its name, and to obtain orders for The Briton Dictionary of Electricity was the occupation of my unfortunate friend. He seems to have had a way with him. Apparently he knew by a glance at a man, or a look round at his garden, whether to recommend the book as "an absolutely ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... interesting evidences of striving to be cosmopolitan and polyglot—the most interesting of all of which, I think, is the mention of certain British products as "mufflings." "Muffling" used to be a domestic joke for "muffin;" but whether some wicked Briton deluded Balzac into the idea that it was the proper form or not it is impossible to say. Here is a Traite de la Vie Elegante, inestimable for certain critical purposes. So early as 1825 we find a Code des Gens ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... his country's authority and influence in remote nations—gloriously acquire the real mastery of the British Channel—gloriously send forth fleets that went and conquered, and never sullied the union flag by an act of dishonour or dissimulation. Not a single Briton, during the protectorate, but could demand and receive either reparation or revenge for injury, whether it came from France, from Spain, from any open foe or treacherous ally; not an oppressed foreigner claimed his protection but it was immediately and effectually granted. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... he lowered his tone. The true-born Briton bowed by instinct before the woman who had jilted him, when she presented herself in the character of a lord's mother. "How do you make that out, ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... knock the stripling down. Upon this I called the child to leap overboard, at the same time commanding a hand to lower my boat and scull in the direction of his fall. The boy obeyed my voice; and in a few minutes I had him on board blessing me for his safety. But the drunken Briton vented his rage in the most indecent language; and had his boat been aboard, I doubt not a summary visit would have terminated in a ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... summoner intimated his own death, and at others it was no uncommon circumstance that the person who fancied himself so called, died in consequence;—for the same reason that the negro pines to death who is laid under the ban of an Obi woman, or the Cambro-Briton, whose name is put into the famous cursing well, with the usual ceremonies, devoting him to the infernal gods, wastes away and dies, as one doomed to do so. It may be remarked also, that Dr. Johnson retained a ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... concluded an excellent speech, that spoke him the unrivalled orator, the uncorrupted Briton, and the unshaken patriot, in words to this effect:—"Let us suppose a man abandoned to all notions of virtue and honour, of no great family, and but a mean fortune, raised to be chief minister of state, by the concurrence of many whimsical ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... own secret heart she could not account for the wild suspicion to which that lightning glimpse had given birth. The man was probably a very ordinary Briton under ordinary circumstances. That he had a breadth of shoulder that imparted the impression of power and somewhat discounted his height, that his first appearance had been so leisurely that he might have been strolling in ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... and earnest brow is furrowed with despair as he turns from you. For whither shall he turn? When his bosom palpitates with the intense joy of newborn aspirations for liberty, to whom shall he go if the Briton, the champion of the world's freedom, has drunk of Comus's cup and become an oriental satrap? Ah! there is still hope. The "large heart of England" beats still for him. In the land of John Hampden and Labouchere there are thousands yet untainted by the plague, who keep no servant, who ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... upon motives from "Euryanthe," which was very powerful in effect, but he also has reminded posterity of what it possesses in this the youngest German master of the musical stage. "No musician, more thoroughly German than thou, has ever lived," he said at the grave. "See, now the Briton does thee justice, the Frenchman admires thee, but the German alone can love thee. Thou art his, a beautiful day in his life, a warm drop of his blood, a part of his heart." Thus at times he succeeded in arousing ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... opium, not to compel him to my will by destroying or plundering the fruits of his labour on the alleged ground that he is not cosmopolitan enough, and not to insult him for his want of my tailoring and religion when he appears as a peaceable visitor on the London pavement. It is admirable in a Briton with a good purpose to learn Chinese, but it would not be a proof of fine intellect in him to taste Chinese poetry in the original more than he tastes the poetry of his own tongue. Affection, intelligence, duty, radiate from a centre, and nature has decided that ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... which have arisen in and out of parliament in England about the abolition of the Briton's old favourite sports, it was conceded by all but a few, that from the custom of boxing, singlestick and backsword playing, wrestling, &c. arose the good temper which distinguishes that people—Englishmen being less subject to violent ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... the spirit that's gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him; But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on In the grave where a Briton has laid him. ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... and genial was the weather that certain lads, imbued with that spirit of lawlessness and adventure which seems inherent in the nature of the young Briton, had conspired together to defy the authority of their schoolmaster by playing truant from afternoon school and going to bathe in Firestone Bay. And it was while these lads were dressing, after revelling in their stolen enjoyment, that their attention was attracted ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... the Bond: the reverend gentleman who edits its Dutch paper and dictates its Dutch policy sluices out weekly vials of wrath upon Hofmeyr and Schreiner for machinating to keep patriot Afrikanders off the oppressing Briton's throat. ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... he declared, "but never mind. Even a Briton has been known to see the truth by gazing long enough. Take care of my little sister, and ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to see it, any tamely bear— If any, gamester, epicure, a wanton, he— Mamurra's own whatever all the curly Gauls Did else inherit, or the lonely Briton isle? Can you look on, look ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... our nation be filled? Britannia's shrill answer is never, oh never, My Beaconsfield's dead, and my Gordon is killed! Oh, blame not my foemen Or a Brutus-like Roman, Or Soudanese Arabs for Gordon's sad doom; But blame that vain Briton Whose name is true written, The slayer of Gordon, who fell ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... to hear, Mr. Wilton, that you have volunteered for active service. We are proud to know that you are ready to do your duty as a Briton. We shall be pleased to keep your place open for you during your absence. And, Mr. Wilton, you might take a few thousand of our circulars in your knapsack to be distributed among the enemy in the regrettable event of your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... The stolid Briton is scarcely less susceptible to the "jazz" than his volatile French brother, for when another colored band from "The States" went to London to head a parade of American and English soldiers, and halted at Buckingham Palace, it is said that King George V and Queen Mary heard the lively airs with ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... Lairds getting the rebel pirates out of the Mersey. Altogether, he must have attended the regular White House reception from thinking his hostility was unrecorded. But the President was clearly prepared for the fox-paw! He spoke to the Briton smoothly enough, but when the unsuspecting hand was placed in his grasp he gave it one of those natural and not formal grips which left an impression on him forever. The balladist's line was realized for ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... finished his question by a crooking of his upturned little finger, one of those many delicate symbols by which the north Briton indicates a failing not uncommon in ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... in Kimberley and not to become involved in the endless political discussions of clubs and dinner tables. I used to try very hard to discover what it was that made the average Briton living in South Africa hate the Boers so bitterly. The Colonial despises the Boer, but one does not hate a man only because one despises him. Jealousy is the best blend with contempt, and there is no doubt that the Boer's not unnatural desire to be paramount in his own land was what English ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... have had older men and married men at the bases lay in the temptations surrounding the men there on every side. These also have to be reckoned with as part of the inevitable cost of war. It says much for the grit and character of the average Briton that ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... gallery immediately cleared? Not a bit of it. Every man retains his place. Some even seem, to my fancy, to look a sort of grim defiance at the Speaker, as a bold Briton should. It is simply a form, which many years ago had some meaning, and, having once been used, cannot be discontinued without putting the Constitution in jeopardy. Five times this evening, the minority, intent on postponing the debate, call for a division,—and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... like a true courtier, that he should esteem it an honour to be favoured with Sir Austin Feverel's advice: secretly resolute, like a true Briton, to follow ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... eye Mr. Twist saw Uncle Arthur as a typical bullying, red-necked Briton, with short side-whiskers. He pictured him under-sized and heavy-footed, trudging home from golf through the soppy green fields of England to his trembling household. He was quite disconcerted one day to discover from something Anna-Rose said that he was a tall man, and not fat ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... less than the marine. These benches which now we are trying to see as they were testified to the change come with conquest, and illustrated both the policy and the prowess of Rome. Nearly all the nations had sons there, mostly prisoners of war, chosen for their brawn and endurance. In one place a Briton; before him a Libyan; behind him a Crimean. Elsewhere a Scythian, a Gaul, and a Thebasite. Roman convicts cast down to consort with Goths and Longobardi, Jews, Ethiopians, and barbarians from the shores of Maeotis. Here an Athenian, there ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... growing tall and green in a few moister places, and in others changing to ochre and coppery red, there ripples, acre after acre, a great sea of grain whose extent is beyond the comprehension of the insular Briton. ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... crowded by the ships of every nation; its warehouses containing the produce of every clime; and, though last, not least in my estimation, the splendid monument erected to the memory of Nelson. No monument of stone or brass is necessary to perpetuate our hero's fame; he lives in the heart of every true Briton, and will ever live, till British oak and British prowess shall cease to ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... cried Clarence, his face shining with a holy patriotism. "England, thou art free! Thou hast risen from the ashes of the dead self. Let the nations learn from this that it is when apparently crushed that the Briton is to ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... races dwelt side by side, but separate (except to some extent in the cities), or, if possible, the vanquished retreated before the vanquisher into Wales and Cornwall; and there to-day are found the only remains of the aboriginal Briton ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... a lark, insisted that so doubtful a question must be decided by trial of battle. A ring being formed, Farragut, after a short contest, succeeded in thrashing his opponent and regaining the pig, and with it a certain amount of complacency in that one Briton at least had felt the pangs of defeat. His grief mastered him again soon afterward, when asked by Captain Hillyar to breakfast with himself and Captain Porter. Hillyar, seeing his discomfiture, spoke to him with great kindness, saying: "Never mind, my little fellow, it ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... correspondent," such a one as he would describe in one of his stories. He fulfilled the popular ideal of what a member of that fascinating profession should look like. His code of life and habits was as fixed as that of the Briton who takes his habits and customs and games and tea wherever he goes, no matter how benighted or ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... cloud, and then went hissing along the ground like a number of fiery serpents. The horse started and trembled, now sprang to one side, now to the other, so that Joseph could scarcely keep the black man from falling off. Still, like a true Briton, he pushed on. There was no use looking for shelter, none was to be found nearer than his own hut. Suddenly a flash darted from a cloud just overhead, and seemed to strike the ground directly in front of Joseph. A moment before he had seen clearly. He made a few steps forward expecting ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... mark the West Saxon occupation. Professor Freeman, however, points out a very interesting characteristic proving that the conquest cannot have taken place until after the Saxons had ceased to be heathens. 'It is the one great city of the Roman and the Briton which did not pass into English hands till the strife of races had ceased to be a strife of creeds, till English conquest had come to mean simply conquest, and no longer meant havoc and extermination. It is ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... deny this, but we resented its truth and availed ourselves of a true-born free Briton's right to doubt the wisdom of those in authority. We all, in short, looked as though we knew better than engine-driver, signalman or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... Englishman loves liberty as a good husband loves his wife; that is also how he loves the land of his birth; at all events, England has a kind of wifely embrace for the home-coming Briton, especially if he comes home by ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Since his period—or reign—there have been many imitators; but he was the first; indeed, created the office, and is deserving of a permanent place in American annals. "His formality just bordered on stiffness," wrote the interested Briton, as though he were studying some new example of the human species; "his conversation was elegant, but pointed, as he was gifted with a cultured economy of language. He accomplished by inflection what many people ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Bill. Whether the initial letter belonged to his family name, and that was Baxter, Black, Brown, Barker, Buggins, Baker, or Bird. Whether he was a foundling, and had been baptized B. Whether he was a lion-hearted boy, and B. was short for Briton, or for Bull. Whether he could possibly have been kith and kin to an illustrious lady who brightened my own childhood, and had come of the blood of the ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens |
