"Strut" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they would say, the points of a slave. They look into him shrewdly, as an old jockey does into a horse. They will pick him out, at rifle-shot distance, among a thousand freemen. They have a nice eye to detect shades of vassalage. They saw in the aristocratic popinjay strut of a counterfeit Democrat an itching aspiration to play the slaveholder. They beheld it in 'the cut of his jib,' and his extreme Northern position made him the very tool for their purpose. The little creature ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... peace who understand neither its nature nor the way in which we may attain it with uplifted eyes and unbroken spirits. But I know that none of these speaks for the Nation. They do not touch the heart of anything. They may safely be left to strut their uneasy ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... knows how to strut, too! It's all on the cards that the Queen Will ask him to Buckingham Palace, to say what he's done and he's seen. Victoria's fond of her soldiers: and she's got a nose for a fight. If Tom tells a cleverish ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the assembled framework of aluminum alloy dragged loosely on the ground; the other end swung out and projected above the shaft, swayed for an instant—and then came the first direct knowledge of the enemy's presence. The end of a metal strut, though nothing visible was touching it, grew suddenly white hot, sagged, then broke into a shower of molten, dazzling drops that rained down into ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... law"—and "Sir, your eloquence—" "Yours, Cowper's manner"—and "yours, Talbot's sense." Thus we dispose of all poetic merit, Yours Milton's genius, and mine Homer's spirit. Call Tibbald Shakespeare, and he'll swear the nine, Dear Cibber! never matched one ode of thine. Lord! how we strut through Merlin's cave, to see No poets there, but Stephen, you, and me. Walk with respect behind, while we at ease Weave laurel crowns, and take what names we please. "My dear Tibullus!" if that will not do, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... hand and what of trouser-leg he had left, gazing eagerly between at the advancing masterpiece. Occasionally the triumph of expectation would exceed his control, when he would spring from the floor, and caper and strut about like a pigeon—soft as a shadow, for he knew his father could not bear noise in the morning—or behind his back execute a pantomimic dumb show of delight, in which he seemed with difficulty to restrain himself from jumping upon him, and hugging ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... a new strut here. You didn't get one in that outfit. And by rights we need a new propeller. There ain't the same thrust when it's gravel-chewed like that. But maybe you can't stand the expense, so we'll try and make this do ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... kill, because the weak are nervous or easily wrought up and must have allowances made for them. And the person so considered always thinks himself strong beyond others and never suspects the truth. Only the weak and foolish can strut independently through life." ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... do therefore but to ramble out armed with a lead pencil into a virtually unknown town riotous with liquor and negroes and the combination of Saturday night, circus time, and the aftermath of pay-day, and to strut back and forth in a way to suggest that I was a perambulating arsenal. But though I wandered a long two hours into every hole and corner where trouble might have its breeding-place, nothing but noise took place in my sight ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... what one is talking about. He is something beyond a mere name—one has not to beat the bush about his talents, his attainments, his vast reputation, and leave off without knowing what it all amounts to—he is not one of those great men, who set themselves off and strut and fret an hour upon the stage, during a day-dream of popularity, with the ornaments and jewels borrowed from the common stock, to which nothing but their vanity and presumption gives them the least individual claim—he has dug into the mine of truth, and brought up ore ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... coming forth in a spontaneous manner to see who I am and look at the bicycle, he pays me a ceremonious visit at the chapar-khana half an hour later. In this visit he is preceded by his farrash, and he walks with a magnificent peacock strut that causes the skirts of his faultless roundabout to flop up and down, up and down, in rhythmic accompaniment to his steps. Apart from his insufferable conceit, however, he tries to make himself as agreeable as possible, and after tea and cigarettes, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... and bullies about, we learn from Duerer's prints. In every crowd these gentlemen in leathern tights, with other ostentatious additions to their costume, besides poniards and daggers to emphasise the brutal male, strut straddle-legged and self-assured; and of course raw lads and loutish prentices yielded them the sincerest flattery. We can well understand that the model boy, to whom "God had given diligence," with his long hair lovely as a girl's, and his consciousness of being nearly ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... he lorded it over the whole house. Then he grew right saucy and impudent, but my father minded it not, deeming the fellow indispensable in managing the estate. But when I came back it irked me sorely to see the fellow strut about as though he owned the place. He was sly enough with me at first, and would brow-beat the Squire only while I was out of earshot. It chanced one day, however, that I heard loud voices through an open window and paused to hearken. That vile servant ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... take the name of every man who claimed United States protection, in order to obtain clothes for him. Soon the clothing came. It did not comprise a complete suit, but was extremely welcome. Never did I see a peacock strut with more ostentation than did some of the prisoners on donning the uniform. And it was worthy of pride. It was a token that we were not forsaken, but that a great nation was extending its protection over us. The ragged guards around, clad in their miserable butternut suits, growled many uncomplimentary ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... represents nature with more true feeling and love, with a deeper insight into her tenderness; he follows her more humbly, and has produced to us more of her simplicity; we feel his appeal to be more earnest: it is the crying out of the man, with none of the strut ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... defeated the otherwise invincible spirit of Steve. It was there in the bottom of the light vessels, in the drawn faces and attenuated bodies of the paddler crew of Shaunekuks. It was in the display of Steve's side-arms strapped to a strut of the canoe ready to his hand, with holsters agape, and his loaded guns protruding threateningly. It was in a similar display in the second boat, which the well-nigh demented Julyman had commanded. Oh, yes. No words were needed to tell the story. It was there ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... nymph, to whom fat Sir John Falstaff's lean, 10 There with her single person fills the scene. Another, with long use and age decay'd, Dived here old woman, and rose there a maid. Our trusty doorkeepers of former time There strut and swagger in heroic rhyme. Tack but a copper-lace to drugget suit, And there's a hero made without dispute: And that, which was a capon's tail before, Becomes a plume for Indian emperor. But all his subjects, to express the care 20 Of imitation, go, like Indians, bare: Laced linen ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... be as well up to it as ever ye will be," he said. "Not that such mumming would have passed in our time. Harry as the Saracen should strut a bit more, and John needn't holler his inside out. Beyond that perhaps you'll do. Have you got all ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... seria agit et praecepta pleno effundit penu, ad quae componere vitarn oporteat; in sententiis quanta gravitas, orationis quanta vis, quam probe et meditate cum hominum ingenia moresque novisse omnia testantur." We feel sure that our Umbrian fun-maker would strut in public and laugh in private, could he hear such an encomium of his lofty moral aims. For it is our ultimate purpose to prove that fun-maker Plautus was primarily ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... refinement and knowledge which the boys of the more fortunate classes in life obtain as it might be without knowing it. Yes, Jason bowed down to the golden calf, in spite of his puritanism, his love of liberty, his pretension to equality and the general strut of his disposition ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... maimed and hobbles off toward a pension or beggary—both tolerable things; anyway he has drunk deep of cruelty and terror and may go his way. By rare good grace he may have been a hero. In other words, he may have been a Belgian—which is a word like a decoration, a name to make one strut like a Greek of Thermopylae—and become thus a permanent part of the ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... "fascisti" (Nationalists) believed in it, for they issued a placard on which they called Borghese a traitor and threatened him with death. "He who after November 1918 returns to the martyred town," writes Signor Zanella, "is simply stupefied in beholding that those personages who now strut on the political scene, burning with the most ardent Italian patriotism, are the same who until the eve of Vittorio Veneto were the most unbending, the most eloquent and the most devoted partisans and servants of the reactionary Magyar regime." And around them a number of more or less questionable ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... by bayonets is always repugnant, wherever it comes from, and under whatever name it may strut. It can have nothing in common with Socialism, which is not only a doctrine of economic necessity, but also a doctrine of superior ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... we will absorb it with the rest: we have absorbed many others! I just laugh at the air of triumph they assume, and the pusillanimity of some of my fellow-countrymen. They think they have conquered us, they strut about our boulevards, and in our newspapers and reviews, and in our theaters and in the political arena. Idiots! It is they who are conquered! They will be assimilated after having fed us. Gaul has a strong stomach: in these twenty centuries she has digested more than one civilization. We are ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... great day came when old Mother Nature arrived to inspect the kingdom of old King Bear. All the little meadow people and all the little forest folk hastened to pay their respects to old Mother Nature and to strut about in their fine clothes—all but Mr. Toad. He was so busy that he didn't even know that old Mother Nature ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... color—peacock blue, vermilion, turquoise, emerald green, burnt orange; no inch of exposed woodwork has escaped the carver's cunning chisel; everywhere gold has been laid on with a spendthrift hand. And in this marvelous setting strut or stroll figures that might have stepped straight from the stage of Sumurun—fantastically garbed functionaries of the Household, shaven-headed priests in yellow robes, pompous mandarins in sweeping silken garments, ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... he watched the little tyrant strut off to his class. How long would he be able to keep hands ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... college servants, and the more unwilling "capping" of the under-graduates, to such a man are real luxuries, and the relish with which he enjoys them is deep and strong. And if he have but the luck to immortalize himself by holding some University office, to strut through his year of misrule as proctor, or even as his humble "pro," then does he at once emerge from the obscurity of the family annals a being of a higher sphere. And when there comes up to commemoration a waddling old lady, and two thin sticks of virginity, who horrify the college ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... when we in our viciousness grow hard, O, misery on't! the wise gods seal our eyes: In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us Adore our errors, laugh at us while we strut To ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... M. Chebe became a terrible trial. He could not work in the garden. On Sundays the fortifications were deserted; he could no longer strut about among the workingmen's families dining on the grass, and pass from group to group in a neighborly way, his feet encased in embroidered slippers, with the authoritative demeanor of a wealthy landowner of the vicinity. This he missed more than anything else, consumed as he was ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... could tell when she was being talked about. She came straight to her own rescue, as you might say, and Dr. McCurdy, poor man, was very polite, but not cheerful. If we had known then what he had been yelling in the woods, we should have understood better why Captain Markley seemed to pluck up and strut ...
— A British Islander - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... flattered. The most dissolute man likes the appearance of virtue. "But graces and accomplishments like yours, dear Mrs. Hopkinson," he said oleaginously, "belong to the whole country." Which, with something between a courtesy and a strut, he endeavored to represent. "And I shall want to avail myself of all," he added, "in the matter of the Castro claim. A little supper at Welcker's, a glass or two of champagne, and a single flash of those bright eyes, and the ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... accomplish'd beaus, At once confounded into sober sense, He feels his pristine insignificance: And blinking, blund'ring, from the general quiz Retreats, "to ponder on the thing he is." By pride inflated, and by praise allured, Small Authors thus strut forth, and thus get cured; But, Critics, hear I an angel pleads for me, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... success to identify the fellow by his carriage; there was a perceptible suggestion of a military strut, but that is something hardly to be termed distinctive in these days. Otherwise, he was tall, quite as tall as Lanyard, and had much the same character of body, ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... History and Chronology cry out that the annals of Theology are false, and her record of Time a fable; that the Deluge, for instance, is an old wives' story, and the economy of times and seasons a human fabrication:—when Astronomical and Mechanical Science strut up to the Throne whereon sits the Ancient of Days,—prate to Him, (the first Author of Law,) about the "supremacy of Law,"—and tell Him to His face that His miracles are things impossible:—when Physiology insinuates that ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... and thievishly resolved To escape the impending famine, often scared As oft return, a pert voracious kind. Clean riddance quickly made, one only care Remains to each, the search of sunny nook, Or shed impervious to the blast. Resigned To sad necessity, the cock foregoes His wonted strut; and, wading at their head, With well-considered steps, seems to resent His altered gait and ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... been my fate to be Acquainted with Irish Secretaries. I saw much of little Charles Abbot—afterwards Speaker—and at last Lord Colchester. He was a pompous dwarf; yet of an analytical head. Nothing could be more amusing than to see him strut up the House of Commons to take the chair; nor was the amusement less to listen to him, when he delivered his edicts, or the thanks of the House from the chair. His sonorous voice issuing from a diminutive person, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... Near her was a short, stout woman whose personality seemed to be strangely familiar to Medenham. He never forgot anyone, and this lady was certainly not one of his acquaintances; nevertheless, her features, her robin-like strut, her very amplitude of girth and singular rotundity of form, came definitely within the net ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... depression with a tight-lipped determination. He was not trying out a business venture so much as he was trying out himself. Previously he had always figured success and failure as his performance reacted on his audience. He was learning that one could impress a stupendous crowd and really fail, or strut upon the boards of an empty playhouse and still succeed. He began to realize just what was meant by the term self-esteem—how hard and uncompromising and exacting it was. To disappoint another was a humiliation; to disappoint oneself was a tragedy. And the tragedy became deep in proportion ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... so far recovered his equanimity as to strut jauntily towards his office, where he was to meet his fair client. He was surprised, however, to find her already there, and in company with a somewhat sheepish-looking young man—a stranger. If the Colonel had any disappointment in ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... familiar to us, and in spite of their Polish titles and faces, and a certain tenderness of nature that is almost feminine, they seem to have good, stout, Saxon stuff in them. Especially where the illustrious knights recount their heroic deeds there is a Falstaffian strut in their performance, and there runs riot a Falstaffian imagination ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... paying tribute to his importance, and he again went suddenly out of my control. He began to strut and caper and pose with the air of knowing that he was the finest ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... architects were invited to "submit designs" for the exterior. This is of course an extreme example and does not represent the usual practice, but it brings sharply to consciousness the well known fact that for these buildings we have substantially one method of construction—that of the vertical strut, and the horizontal "fill"—while in style they appear as Grecian, Roman, Renaissance, Gothic, Modern French and what not, according to the whim of ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... suddenly and unexpectedly from behind rocks and trees, and stand about considering; then one, more venturesome than the rest, runs quickly down to drink, and is followed by a string of others; then they run up again ever so fast, and strut about cooing and spreading their crests—one seldom sees them fly; when they do they rise straight up, and then dart away close to the ground and drop suddenly within a few yards. Of all birds the crow has most sound common sense; there is no dawdling in his methods; ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... Strut, for so the witling throng Oft called him when at school, And hitch'd him up in many a song To sport ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... as still on his square foot of floor as did Ranjoor Singh on his. It was the fact that he did not flinch and did not strut about, but stood in one spot with his arms behind him that confirmed Ranjoor Singh in his reading ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... really lasting impression. Even when she left him alone, watching him, I fear, over the top of her novel, he disappointed himself. For five minutes or so everything would go well; he looked as dejected as possible; but as he fell he was succeeding he became so self-satisfied that he began to strut. A pleased expression crossed his face, and instead of allowing his head to hang dismally, he put it well back. Sometimes, when we wanted to please him, we said he looked as glum as a mute at a funeral. Even that, however, defeated ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... is an awful fact that in every age of the church these "blundering raw-headed preachers" have abounded. It is a singular appellation to make use of to those who strut in black, and vainly pride themselves upon being descended from the apostles. Alas! how many are those whose hearts and heads are raw indeed as to any influences of vital religion, and whose whole ministry is calculated to mislead the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... dark shade of the palace wall, Where the peacocks strut, Where the queen may have heard my madrigal, Together ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... happily with his wife the Princess. His merriest time was when the Grand Vizier visited him in the afternoon; and when the Caliph was in particularly high spirits he would condescend to mimic the Vizier's appearance when he was a stork. He would strut gravely, and with well-stiffened legs, up and down the room, chattering, and showing how he had vainly bowed to the east and cried 'Mu...Mu...' The Caliphess and her children were always much entertained by this performance; but when the Caliph went on nodding ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... the mother o' Edie bein' good, Edie herself must be good, don't you see? Anythink as belonged to Mrs Willis can't help bein' good. I'm glad you took me to see her, doctor, for I've made up my mind to take that old 'ooman up, as the bobbies say w'en they're wexed with avin' nuffin' to do 'xcept strut about the streets like turkey-cocks. I'll take 'er up and do ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... patches of red flesh showing through its wet plumage, with the membrane of its face, and its short gills and comb swollen and bloody, with one eye put out, and the other only kept open by the thread attached to its eyelid, yet makes shift to strut, with staggering gait, across the cock-pit, and to notify its victory, by giving vent to a lamentable ghost of a crow. Then it is carried off followed by an admiring, gesticulating, vociferous crowd, to be elaborately tended and nursed, as befits so gallant ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... that those boys are going to leave is this, that they exercise self-control; that they are ready and diligent to make the place where they went fitter to live in than they found it; that they regarded other people's rights; that they did not strut and bluster, but went quietly, like self-respecting gentlemen, about their legitimate work. And the people of Vera Cruz, who feared the Americans and despised the Americans, are going to get a very different taste in their mouths about the whole thing when the ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... The great delight of this poor creature was to be considered the tallest individual in the kingdom, and indeed nothing could be more amusing than to witness the manner in which he held up his head while he walked, or sat, or stood. In fact his walk was a complete strut, to which the pride, arising from the consciousness of, or rather the belief in, his extraordinary height gave an extremely ludicrous appearance. Poor Tom was about five feet nine in height, but ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... coal with his pick, shovelling it into a large corve or basket which stood at hand ready for the reception of the lumps. At first the work was tolerably easy, as he could stand upright and swing his pick with all his force. As he got deeper and deeper into the bed, he had to fix a strut or post with a cross beam to support the weight of the roof, and he had to get the coal out by stooping down low or resting on his knees. Finally he had to work lying down on one elbow, swinging his pick over his head with the other ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... professors and generals stood about the farmers—led by the farmer-in-chief, morning-coated, carefully groomed, plainly nervous but sustained by the dignity of it all. His voice was firm; his manner that of a very circumspect bridegroom. The old smug strut and case-hardened pomp of legislature inaugurals was lacking. An undercurrent of deep sincerity stayed many a tremorous hand. Drury was the least nervous of all. I imagine that in the morning he had sung to himself some good old fortifying ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... authors, artists and actors of to-day follow in the path of their London ancestors who blow, and brag, and strut in midnight clubs and taverns to the pity and ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... cleanly best, John's pockets are an integral part of his personality. He feels after his pocket instinctively while yet in what corresponds in the genus homo with the polywog state in batrachia. The incipient man begins to strut as soon as mamma puts pockets into his kilted skirt—a stride as prophetic as the strangled crow of the cockerel upon the lowest bar of ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... aloft; no place will serve them but pinnacles—pinnacles, that they may be speaking in and to the air, that they may be promoting their heady notions, instead of solid truth—not considering that now they are where the devil would have them be. They strut upon their points, their pinnacles; but let them look to it: there is difficult standing upon pinnacles; their neck, their soul, is in danger. We read, God is in his temple, not upon these ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... the company, saying, in a loud voice :—"God preserve you, good people." Then taking the habit off indignantly, he threw it from him with contempt, and, turning to Elias, "That is the way," he said, "that the bastard brethren of our Order will strut." After this he resumed his usual demeanor and walked humbly with his old and tattered habit, saying:—"Such is the deportment of the true Friars Minor." Then, seating himself amongst them, he addressed them in the mildest manner, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... Woman's obstinacy is no novelty; but where's the difference 'twixt a Mistress and a Wife. Only a Mistress has a much better Air; you shall appear as gay and fine as any; strut in Brocade, and glitter in your Jewels, 'till you put ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... the past, but it will rob them of any effect of reality. The whole of their history becomes more and more foreign, more and more like some queer barbaric drama played in a forgotten tongue. There they strut through their weird metamorphoses of caricature, those premiers and presidents, their height preposterously exaggerated by political buskins, their faces covered by great resonant inhuman masks, their voices couched in the foolish idiom of public utterance, disguised beyond ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... it swooped. With a hoarse croak it lit on the snow at a wary distance, and began to strut back and forth. Presently, its suspicions at rest, the raven advanced, and with eager beak began its dreadful meal. By this time another, which had seen the first one's swoop, was in view through the ether; then another; then another. In an hour the brotherhood of ravens, thus telegraphically ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... of the story-teller as a good fellow standing at a great window overlooking a busy street or a picturesque square, and reporting with gusto to the comrade in the rear of the room what of mirth or sadness he sees; he hints at the policeman's strut, the organ-grinder's shrug, the schoolgirl's gaiety, with a gesture or two which is born of an irresistible impulse to imitate; but he never leaves his fascinating post to carry the imitation further than ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... sense of every sportsman, it is quite as well established in their manners and customs as if it were written on tables of iron. The consequence is, that however enraged a person may be, he sees, and generally at the outset, that his best course is to give way; he may fume and strut, look big and villify, but he bows his head and is off with as embarrassed a face as yours, gentle reader, would certainly be, if a friend whom you knew to be ruined came and asked you to lend ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... she neglected to improve any strong points in her own favor—the indifference, as every heart perceived, of despairing grief. Then came the manners on the hostile side—the haggard consciousness of guilt, the drooping tone, the bravado and fierce strut which sought to dissemble all this. Not one amongst all the witnesses, assembled on that side, had (by all agreement) the bold natural tone of conscious uprightness. Hence it could not be surprising that the storm of popular opinion made itself heard with a louder and ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the wing-strut which he had been setting in place, Tom faced the window just in time to see a swarthy-looking countenance, adorned with a toothbrush-like mustache, pulled out of range. The mechanic had been informed of Bob's experience with the man who had evidently followed him to the grounds during the summer, ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... veracities; a substratum of inarticulate good sense withal, and much magnanimity run wild, or run to seed. A big-limbed, swashing, perpendicular kind of fellow; haughty of face, but jolly too; with a big, not ugly strut;—captivating to the French Nation, and fit God of War (fitter than 'Dalhousie,' I am sure!) for that susceptive People. Understood their Army also, what it was then and there; and how, by theatricals and otherwise, to get a great deal of fire out of it. Great deal of fire;—whether ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... and a Chateaubriand because of the many beauties, the veritable grandeurs of their styles, we cannot quite learn to love yours. For in you the disease was aggravated by the presence of another powerful incentive to strut and posture and externalize and inflate your art. For you were the virtuoso. You were the man whose entire being was pointed to achieve an effect. You were the man whose life is lived on the concert-platform, whose values are those of the concert-room, who finds his highest good in the instantaneous ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... fact that a connecting rod functions as a strut, it is considered that this part should be only stiff enough to prevent any whipping action during the running of the engine. The greater the fatigue-resisting property that one can put into the rod after this stiffness is reached, the longer the ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... straightened, so that a new intelligibleness illumines the universe. The arbitrary and cruel Creator who inflicts pain and pleasure at will then disappears from the stage; and it is well, for he is indeed an unnecessary character, and, worse still, is a mere creature of straw, who cannot even strut upon the boards without being upheld on all sides by dogmatists. Man comes into this world, surely, on the same principle that he lives in one city of the earth or another; at all events, if it is too much to say that this ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... or triumph. To crow over any one; to keep him in subjection: an image drawn from a cock, who crows over a vanquished enemy. To pluck a crow; to reprove any one for a fault committed, to settle a dispute. To strut like a crow in a gutter; to walk proudly, or ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... is preposterous! How I have burned in desire to jump upon them and tear the things off and flog them, as they deserve. And to go to Seventh street on a Sunday or on a week-day, for that matter, the sight is heart sickening! There Sambo and his woman, dressed to death, strut along with heads erect, looking as important as though they owned the city, or, astride their bicycles, they'll ride plumb over you. But we have put a stop to Nigger high-stepping for a while at least, thanks ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... but never can I forget the agony of the next few minutes. That hat, that face, those flat black feet, that strut, that smile. I felt a sob of laughter beginning somewhere about my waist-belt, and yet my heart ached with fear for Dennis. Oh, if only His Magnificence would move a little quicker, and let us ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... thy best. But now the senate (if things hit, And thou at Stockbridge[4] wert not bit) Must feel thy eloquence and fire, Approve thy schemes, thy wit admire, Thee with immortal honours crown, While, patriot-like, thou'lt strut and frown. What though by enemies 'tis said, The laurel, which adorns thy head, Must one day come in competition, By virtue of some sly petition: Yet mum for that; hope still the best, Nor let such cares disturb thy rest. Methinks ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... to be something too much of the magnifico in his demeanour. If people grow presuming and self-important over such matters as a dukedom or the Holy See, they will scarcely support the dizziest elevation in life without some suspicion of a strut; and the dizziest elevation is to love and be loved in return. Consequently, accepted lovers are a trifle condescending in their address to other men. An overweening sense of the passion and importance of life hardly conduces to simplicity of manner. To women they ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Son now decided to walk, While the Ass marched in front with a strut and a stalk; Yet the people who ...
— Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks - From the French of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... and fancy myself of what degree or standing I please. I seem admitted ad eundem. I fetch up past opportunities. I can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that it rings for me. In moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much unlike that respectable character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles, drop a bow or curtsy, as I pass, wisely ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... thinking that he heard some other bird far away, on a ridge across the valley where he had no concern; for presently he drummed again on his own log. I answered it promptly, rolling back a defiance, and also telling any hen grouse on the range that here was another candidate willing to strut and spread his tail and lift the resplendent ruff about his neck to win his way into her good graces, if she would but come to his drumming log and ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... lacked the strength, of a man's, but he was nevertheless the favourite of the Great Spirit. He was less in stature than a man, and crooked withal, his height being little more than that of the tall bird[A] which loves to strut along the sandy shore, picking up the fish as they flutter joyously along in the beams of the warm and cheering sun. But if he was diminutive in body he was great in his soul—what others lacked in wisdom he supplied. His name was Ohguesse, which signifies a Partridge. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... thought he saw a development. From being a mere humbug, the young Indian seemed to be getting a belief in himself as something genuinely out of the common. His success in creating a party had greatly increased his conceit, and he walked with a strut, and his face was more unsettled and visionary than ever. One clear sign of his mental change was that he no longer respected his father at all, though the lonely old man looked at him often with what in one of our race would have been ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... Gay," said Arbuthnot with a chuckle. "A trim built wench, upon my word. And she knows how to walk. She hasn't the mincing gait of the city madams of the Exchange nor the flaunting strut of the dames of the Mall ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... One had only to look at his bloated, pouchy face to see how drink and sloth had fouled his joints and slacked his muscles. Never again could he spread the drugget in a rustic village street and strut about it on his hands for the edification of a rustic audience. But the uniform he still wore; he seemed to think it gave him some claim to indulgent notice. The Signor, in his own way, was not less in contrast with his background. ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... and even as thus called already civilized, they sacrificed men to gods,—could our great pro-slavers know all this, they would be more decent in their ignorant assertions, and not, so self-satisfied, strut about in their ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... distinguished "the September murderers, whom" says an observer[33104] in a position to know them, "I can compare to nothing but lazy tigers licking their paws, growling and trying to find a few more drops of blood just spilled, awaiting a fresh supply." Far from hiding away they strut about and show themselves. One of them, Petit-Mamain, son of an innkeeper at Bordeaux and a former soldier, "with a pale, wrinkled face, sharp eyes and bold air, wearing a scimitar at his side and pistols at his belt," promenades the Palais-Royal[33105] "accompanied or followed at a distance by ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... dis las' bunch dat wuz big an' bustin'. He strut bigoty wid his chist stuck out. He walk 'roun' stickin' his sword in de chair cushions, de pictures on de walls an' things like dat. He got powerful mad kaze he couldn' fin' nothin', den he look out de window an' seed Mis' Laura. She wuz standin' on de po'ch an' de sun wuz shinin' on de diamon' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... toil, and fagg, and fume, and fret, And—what the bashful muse would blush to say. But, now, your painful tremors are all o'er, Cloath'd in the glories of a full-sleev'd gown, Ye strut majestically up and down, And now ye fagg, and now ye fear, no more! Gent. Mag., 1795, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... she do?" he went on scornfully. "She couldn't shoot or run or fight. All she did was to lie around or strut about with a veil around her head and a golden girdle (sensible costume!) and serve the hero with ambrosia and ruddy nectar. I've never eaten ambrosia, but I'm pretty sure it was some sweet, sticky stuff, like her." There is no measure for the ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... in front of the camping-place, at a spot where the sand lay loose and dry, above the reach of the ordinary tidal influx, all made a stop at the summons of one who, from the superior style of his plumage and the greater grandeur of his strut, appeared a very important individual of the tribe—in all likelihood the "cock of ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... the author of Thersites in his exaggerated caricature until the least semblance of truth to nature is banished from the portrait. It is interesting to compare him with Ralph Roister Doister. Nevertheless if we project Sir Tophas upon the stage, and by our imagination dress him and make him strut and gesticulate after such a fashion as the text seems to indicate, we shall probably discover ourselves smiling over puns and remarks which, on casual perusal, we might pronounce flavourless imbecilities. Indeed, for sheer laughable absurdity on the stage, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... be the writer's constant aim. Instead of a general term like "walk," for example, he should select a specific, picture-making word such as hurry, dash, run, race, amble, stroll, stride, shuffle, shamble, limp, strut, stalk. For the word "horse" he may substitute a definite term like sorrel, bay, percheron, nag, charger, steed, broncho, or pony. In narrative and descriptive writing particularly, it is necessary to use words that make pictures and that reproduce ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... laughter?—It was the different cut of a coat. It was a silk bag, in which the hair was tied, an old sword, and a dangling pair of ruffles; which none of them suited with the poverty of the dress, and meagre appearance, of a person who seemed to strut and value himself upon ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... last strap and smiled, taunting assurance in the twisted unpleasantness of it. "The appearance of this battleship has very much disrupted your plans to strut like conquering heroes among the slaves on Athena, ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... find a general so affable and pleasant, for he had seen some lieutenants and captains strut like turkey-cocks, because they wore straps on their shoulders. Paul saluted the General, and said, "I am ordered to ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... case he will put aside the welfare of a nation for the miserable sake of party popularity? Are we to stand here in the guise and manner of free men, knowing that we are driven together like a flock of sheep into the fold by the howling of the wolves outside? Are we to strut and plume ourselves upon our unhampered freedom, while we act like slaves? Worse than slaves we should be if we allowed one breath of party spirit, one thought of party aggrandizement, to enter into the choice we are about to make. Slaves are driven to their work; shall ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... peacock, as 'ud strut about on the wall and spread its tail when the sun shone if all the folks i' the parish was dying: there's nothing seems to give her a turn i' th' inside, not even when we thought Totty had tumbled into the pit. To think o' that dear ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... a procession of bears come out, led, I believe, by a rooster who claps his wings and crows, and then they walk round a old man with a hour glass who strikes the hour on a bell. But the bears lead the programmy and bow and strut round ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... childhood from his experience of poverty at home, in his remarks in later life, on the sons of poor men, who by sheer hard work raise themselves from obscurity, and have much to endure, and no time to strut and swagger, but must be humble and learn to be silent and to trust in God, and to whom God also has given ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... is not that now very like How woman smites your souls? Whatever dress Of thought you take to royalize your nature,— Gorgeous shawls of kingship, a world's fear, Or ample weavings of imagination, Or the spun light of wisdom,—like a gust Of flame, that weather of impersonal thought You strut beneath, that hanging storm of Love, Strikes down a terrible swift dazzling finger, Sight of some woman, on your clothed hearts, And plucks the winding folly off, and leaves Bare nature there. And hear another likeness. Look, ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... story of his capture at Lurin and of his all night ride on mule back. The Dictator sent for the officer, who, thinking he was going to be rewarded for his cleverness, entered the reception room with a peacock strut that was admirable. By the time Don Nicholas finished a reprimand, he slunk away like a whipped cur and it is likely he was more careful to ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... twofold. America is ruining our agriculture; and soon, I suppose, we have to send to China for labourers. Why, those who do not emigrate demand twice as much to-day for half the work they used to do five years ago; and those who return from America strut about like country gentlemen deploring the barrenness of their ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the footlights with the greatest possible strut.> Both Leaders: King Solomon he had four ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... sweet, especially behind one's back. So pray go on, unless you have something better to say to each other;" and Hope retired briskly into his office. But when the lovers took him at his word, and began to strut up and down hand in hand, and murmur love's music into each other's ears, he could not take his eyes off them, and his thoughts were sad. She had only known that young fellow a few months, yet she loved him passionately, and he would take her away from ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... moving, as he spoke, with a sort of accelerated motion like a strut. He was a much shorter man than Carroll, and he made futile hops to get into step with him as they proceeded. "Yes, sir, every train through the twenty-four hours ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... came in to tell how happy and contented the chickens seemed in the new coop. He saw some evidences of displeasure on the faces of Meg and Harry, and he exclaimed, "I met Aunt Barbara in the hall, with her indignation strut on. ...
— Hatty and Marcus - or, First Steps in the Better Path • Aunt Friendly
... daylights out of men. Only you ain't honest enough to say so.... Even me or my kind! Even us, who're dirt under your little feet. But all the same we're men, an' mebbe better men than you think. If you had to put that dress on, why didn't you stay in your room? Naw, you had to come down an' strut around an' show off your beauty. An' I ask you—if you're a nice girl like Flo Hutter—what'd you wear ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... been a boggler ever:— But when we in our viciousness grow hard,— O misery on't!—the wise gods seal our eyes; In our own filth drop our clear judgments: make us Adore our errors; laugh at's while we strut ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... had the idea that he wanted to see you personally. Jay, you did a tremendous thing, man! Damn it, why don't you strut a little? Be—be normal for once! Why, I'd be damned near bursting with pride if one of the Hasturs insisted ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... intellectual difference, which in other cases of comparison of characters, is often a matter of undecided contest, being as clear in his case as the superiority of stature in some men above others. Johnson did not strut or stand on tiptoe; He only did not stoop. From his earliest years his superiority was perceived and acknowledged. He was from the beginning [Greek text omitted], a king of men. His school-fellow, Mr. Hector, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... is said, if you tell him a tale, he cries at last, What said you? but in the end he mutters to himself, as old women do many times, or old men when they sit alone; upon a sudden they laugh, whoop, halloo, or run away, and swear they see or hear Players, Devils, Hobgoblins, Ghosts, strike, or strut, &c., grow humorous in the end: like him in the Poet, saepe ducentos saepe decem servos [he often keeps two hundred slaves, often only ten], he will dress himself, and undress, careless at last, grows insensible, stupid or mad. He howls like a wolf, barks like a dog, and raves like Ajax ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... was Turkey Proudfoot. He loved to strut about the farmyard and spread his tail, which he claimed was the most elegant ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey
... actual cautery. But was virtue the cause of all this interest? Was it devotion to a young and innocent girl that made me willing to undertake so difficult and so delicate a task? Doubtless these motives went for something, but I will not attempt to strut in borrowed plumes, and must freely confess that if she had been ugly and stupid I should probably have left her to her fate. In short, selfishness was at the bottom of it all, so let us say no more ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... wishes to give up his life for his master he, too, had the stately walk, or strut, of a minister. The character of the newspaper writer was performed by the same Mr. Palmer who acted the part of the Nabob, but every one said, what I thought, that he made him far too much of a gentleman. His person, and his dress also, were too ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... the thousands in Holland and Friesland. Sometimes they strut in the streets, not in the least frightened or disturbed. They make their nests among the tiles and chimneys, on the red roofs of the houses, and they rear their young even on ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... Childhood, when I was young, had rosy cheeks and bright eyes, as I remember, but it was also extremely given to quarrelling. It used frequently to "get mad." It made nothing of twitching away books and balls. It often pouted. Sometimes it would bite. If it wore a fine frock, it would strut. It told lies,—"whoppers" at that. It took the biggest half of the apple. It was not, as a general thing, magnanimous, but "aggravating." It may have been fun to you who looked on, but it was death to us who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... as he went, Sholto's step slowed, and lost its braggart strut and confidence. Behind him Laurence chuckled and laughed, smiting his ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... is the use? All that is not so very desirable. Ministers, academicians, millionaires, prefects, men of power, I know all about them. I have made them all my life. The majority of those who strut about at this very time, well! well! it is I ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... in Dimetrodon was divided into lateral and medial groups (Figs. 5, 6). The lateral division consisted of temporal and masseter masses. The temporal arose from the upper rim of the temporal opening, from the lateral wall of the skull behind the postorbital strut, and from the dorsal roof of the skull. The bones of origin included jugal, postorbital, postfrontal, parietal and squamosal. This division may also have arisen from the fascia covering the temporal opening (Romer and Price, 1940:53). The muscle passed into ...
— The Adductor Muscles of the Jaw In Some Primitive Reptiles • Richard C. Fox
... stake—Iris, wealth, love, happiness, life itself—all depended on his plighted word. Yet his savage enemy, a slayer of women, a human vampire soiled with every conceivable crime, was stalking back to safety with a certain dignified strut, calmly trusting to the ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... been made by the most popular artists to enliven the scenes of the pilgrimage; but no colour glows like the enchanting words of Bunyan. No figures are so true to nature, and so life-like. Those eminent engravers, Sturt and Strut, Stothard and Martin, with the prize efforts excited by the Art Union of England, and the curious outlines by Mrs. M'Kenzie, the daughter of a British admiral, have endeavoured to exhaust the scenes in this inexhaustible ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... displays his great desirability, he tries to make every woman think how wonderful it would be to have him for a lover. His very ignoring of the women is part of the game. He is never UNCONSCIOUS of them. He should have been a cockerel, so he could strut before fifty females, all his subjects. But really, his Don Juan does NOT interest me. I could play Dona Juanita a million times better than he plays Juan. He bores me, you know. His maleness bores me. Nothing ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... you'll have to play, all in; It's the cruellest team will win. So hold your nose against the stink And never stop too long to think. Wars don't change except in name; The next one must go just the same, And new foul tricks unguessed before Will win and justify this War. Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage Once more with pomp and greed and rage; Courtly ministers will stop At home and fight to the last drop; By the million men will die In some new horrible agony; And children here will thrust and poke, Shoot and die, and laugh at the joke, With ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... man in this class," replied the Virginian solemnly, "who has been treated unjustly by the others. Lots of you won't see it, and can't be made to reason. But that injustice has put the hoodoo on the Army's athletics, and the hoodoo will strut along beside the present first class all the way through this year. You'll find it out more and more as time goes on. Just wait until next spring, and see the Navy walk away ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... bitterly. "Yes, that's what they say when an actor dares to think. 'Go on! Play your part! Be a marionette forever!' That's what you tell us! 'Slave for your living, you sordid little puppet! Squirm and sweat and strut, but don't you ever dare to think!' You tell us that because you know if we ever did stop to think for one instant about ourselves you wouldn't have any actors! Actors! Faugh! What do ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... so imperious as in the American ships. They are divided into three (I think) probationary classes of "volunteers," instead of being at once advanced to a warrant. Nor will you fail to remark, when you see an English cutter officered by one of those volunteers, that the boy does not so strut and slap his dirk-hilt with a Bobadil air, and anticipatingly feel of the place where his warlike whiskers are going to be, and sputter out oaths so at the men, as is too often the case with the little boys wearing ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... recovery, which was a long and tedious process, Caesar showed no inclination to leave the homestead. He used to strut about the back yard, and frequent the kitchen door, very much after the fashion of a house-dog. He was, indeed, as valuable as a watch-dog, for the appearance of any stranger was the signal for a volley of shrieks and chatter, sufficient ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... a letter from the mother, To say her daughter's feelings are trepann'd; Perhaps you 'll have a visit from the brother, All strut, and stays, and whiskers, to demand What 'your intentions are?'—One way or other It seems the virgin's heart expects your hand: And between pity for her case and yours, You 'll add to ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... than a mile to the north-west, on the way back to Horley. Outwood Common is delightful. Two great windmills, black and white, spread sails to the blowing air; below them, black and white like the mills, pigs nose quietly over the short grass, and geese strut cackling. To the north, beyond rich and tranquil fields, lie the grey-green wooded hills by Bletchingley ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... in villages, and assembled as necessity demanded. As they were completely beyond the sphere of Polish influence, they knew nothing about "knightly honour" and similar conceptions of Western chivalry; they even adopted many Tartar customs, and loved in time of peace to strut about in gorgeous Tartar costumes. Besides this, they were nearly all emigrants from Great Russia, and mostly Old Ritualists or Sectarians, whilst the Zaporovians were ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... I can say now is, that the artists and modellers have not travelled. They have studied the strange British apparitions which disfigure the Boulevard des Italiens in the autumn, their knowledge of our race is limited to the unfortunate selection of specimens who strut about their streets, and—according to their light—they are not guilty of outrageous exaggeration. I venture to assert that an Englishman will meet more unpleasant samples of his countrymen and countrywomen in ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... won't 'strut' about this, and you won't either, even if you are showing signs of standing up for her. Go at that wash, while I ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... thus? and sweep at once What Orpheus-like I forc'd from stocks and stones? 'Twill never swell thy bag, nor ring one peal In thy dark chest. Talk not of shreeves, or gaol; I fear them not. I have no land to glut Thy dirty appetite, and make thee strut Nimrod of acres; I'll no speech prepare To court the hopeful cormorant, thine heir. For there's a kingdom at thy beck if thou But kick this dross: Parnassus' flow'ry brow I'll give thee with my Tempe, and to boot That horse which struck a fountain with his foot. A ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... the gods call dross, Life seems a fest of Fate's contriving, 80 Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard passions and desires, Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. But stay! no age was e'er degenerate, Unless men held ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... of him. Too slow. I like efficiency, my boy, efficiency. . . . That's my motto." Sir John complacently performed three steps of his celebrated strut. "Did you know the Hearl?" Though fairly sound on the matter, in moments of excitement he was apt to counterbalance his wife with the elusive letter. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... to him, 'Good Lord, Dawson! Never offered you money? For God's sake! Did you want to be paid for Lura's body?' And he says, 'You know damn' well I didn't want to be paid for Lura's body, Pros Passmore,' he says. 'But do you reckon I'm a-goin' to let them mill men strut around with money they got that-a-way in their pockets? No, I'll not. I'll see 'em cold in hell fust,' he says—them Dawsons is a hard nation o' folks, Johnnie. I talked to 'em for a spell, and tried to make 'em see that the Hardwick folks hadn't never sold no dead ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... second in command at the Presidio, is the successful suitor. There stands he, in full moustache, covered with gold-lace, back and front, and frowning fiercely on every one who dares to rest eye for a moment upon the fair Catalina. With all his gold-lace and gallant strut, Catalina displays no great taste in her choice;—but is he her choice? Maybe not—maybe he is the choice of Don Ambrosio; who, himself of plebeian origin, is ambitious that his blood should be mingled with that of the military hidalgo. The soldier has no money—beyond his pay; and that is mortgaged ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... middle of the window. The three crosspieces were then put into their place, and the upright pressed firmly against them. One end of a long beam was placed in the notch, the other in a slight hole made in the ground, thus forming a strut, which held the ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... and a man named Tintint the Captain of the Sunrise Tribe. Tintint had a very pink skin and eyes so faded in their pink color that he squinted badly in order to see anything around him. He was a fat and pompous little fellow and loved to strut up and down his line of warriors twirling his long, pointed stick so that all ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... construction in stone or brickwork designed to receive and resist the lateral pressure of an arch, vault or strut. When built outside a wall it is ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... heavy shadows of the trees at the far side of Undern Pool. The water looked cold and ghastly even on this golden day. She watched the wagtails strut magisterially, the moorhens with the worried air of overworked charwomen, all the mysterious evening life of a summer pool, but she had no smile for them to-day. The swallows slid and circled across the water; their silence was no longer intimate, but alien. She looked across at Undern. There ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... an immense fancy fair. The temple pigeons wheeled disconsolately in the air or perched upon the roofs, unable to find one square foot of the familiar flagstones, where they were used to strut and peck. Stalls lined the stone pathways and choked the spaces between the buildings. Merchants were peddling objects of piety, sacred images, charms and rosaries; and there were flowers for the women's hair, ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... mind's flown so far away no spring, Nor loveliness of earth can call it back? I tell you what it is: in early youth The life is in the loins; by thirty years It travels through the stomach to the lungs, And then we strut and crow. By forty years The fruit is swelling while the leaves are fresh. By fifty years you're ripe, begin to rot. At fifty-two, or fifty-five or sixty The life is in the seed—what's spring to you? Puff! Puff! You are so winged and light you fly. For every passing zephyr, are blown off, And ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... up in the middle of the Pit, that he made a very proper Center to a Tragick Audience. Upon the entring of Pyrrhus, the Knight told me, that he did not believe the King of France himself had a better Strut. I was indeed very attentive to my old Friends Remarks, because I looked upon them as a Piece of natural Criticism, and was well pleased to hear him at the Conclusion of almost every Scene, telling ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... they were not very well behaved and needed a good scolding; so he began to strut about and talk at the top of his voice; but the ducklings had their swim and came out ...
— Dear Santa Claus • Various |
