"Strut" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mistresses—no, old—and yet 'tis true, Though they be old, the thing is something new; Each new, quite new—(except some ancient tricks), New white-sticks, gold-sticks, broom-sticks, all new sticks! With vests or ribbons, deck'd alike in hue, New troopers strut, new turncoats blush in blue; So saith the muse! my ——, what say you? Such was the time when Waltz might best maintain Her new preferments in this novel reign; Such was the time, nor ever yet was such: Hoops are no more, and petticoats ...
— English Satires • Various
... apt to strut:—Israel among the nations, the dog among animals, the cock among birds. Some say also the goat among small cattle, and some the caper shrub ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... true statement. Beverley read the paper when Clark sent for him; but he could not join in the extravagant delight of his fellow officers and their brave men. What did all this victory mean to him? Hamilton to be treated as an honorable prisoner of war, permitted to strut forth from the feat with his sword at his side, his head up—the scalp-buyer, the murderer of Alice! What was patriotism to the crushed heart of a lover? Even if his vision had been able to pierce the future and realize the splendor of Anglo-Saxon civilization which was to follow that little triumph ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... 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 with the baseball ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... my little Nannie? Does she still keep a menagerie for sick dogs and lost cats? And how's the parson-gull with the broken wing, and does he still strut like Parson Kis-sack in his surplice? I was at Westminster Hall yesterday. It was the great trial of Mitchell, M. P., who forged his father's will. Stevens defended—bad, bad, bad, smirking all the while with small facetiae. But Denman's summing up—oh! oh! such insight, such acuteness! ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest 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, 85 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 it at too cheap a rate, For in our likeness still ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... in Kirkwood's pocket, all right enough. By George, can you beat it! And here's another thing. A man hates to talk against his own flesh and blood; and you may think I'm not in a position to strut around virtuously and talk about other people's sins; but I guess I've got some sense of honor left. I've never stolen any money. I did run off with another man's wife, and I got my pay for that. That was in the ardor of youth, Waterman; it was a calamitous mistake. Nobody knows it better ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... the Daughter of the House, who had been listening very eagerly, "what made you talk like that, and strut about, and pound the deck? That's not like you. I would not have supposed that you ever could have ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... pictures of living objects are unlawful, but the Sultan is photographed, Abd el Kader is photographed, the "Sheikh ul Islam" is photographed. European shoes are unlawful because sewed with a swine's bristle, but Moslem Muftis strut about the streets in French gaiters, and the women of their harems tottle about in the most ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... "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, "Let me be Horace, and be Ovid you: Or, I'm content, allow me Dryden's ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... 'em leave to match him, if they can; It's fun to see him strut about, and try to be a man! The gamest, cheeriest little chap, you'd ever want to see! And then they laugh, because I think the child resembles me. The little rogue! he goes for me, like robbers ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... off then down the hotel corridor with a strut to his resentment that was bantam and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... imagine. Our deportment depends upon our dress. Make a man get into seedy, worn-out rags, and he will skulk along with his head hanging down, like a man going out to fetch his own supper beer. But deck out the same article in gorgeous raiment and fine linen, and he will strut down the main thoroughfare, swinging his cane and looking at the girls as ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... the message Turkey Proudfoot's tail drooped and he forgot to strut. He even shook slightly, as if something had frightened him. And then, to the Muley Cow's astonishment, he began ...
— The Tale of the The Muley Cow - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... infantry, which had drawn nearer upon the rising grounds over against them, was filing off towards their right. No certain judgment could, however, yet be formed of the enemy's real design, and as they were in want of bread, it wras thought probable that they intended to repass the Un-strut; but it was soon perceived that their several motions were contradictory to each other. At the same time that some of their infantry were filing off towards their right, a large body of cavalry ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... such fine baby faces, That strut in a garter and star,— Have they, under their tambour and laces, The kind ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... parade of guards, and domestics, and city functionaries. A beetling bastion of the fortress overlooked the palace and the public square in front of it; and on this bastion the old governor would occasionally strut backward and forward, with his toledo girded by his side, keeping a wary eye down upon his rival, like a hawk reconnoitering his quarry from his nest in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... 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 ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... to do with persons of modest and scrupulousness. Mr. Hickman, you say, is a modest man. He put your corrective packet into my hand with a very fine bow, and a self-satisfied air [we'll consider what you say of this honest man by-and-by, my dear]: his strut was no gone off, when in came my mother, as I ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... 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 Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... Pawliney hasn't got any more use for plain folks, Polly. She's going to do herself proud shoppin', so she can go to Boston and strut about like a frilled peacock. You'll have to be satisfied with your mother, Polly; Pawliney doesn't care ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... that of a Berlioz 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 ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... the Nation. I hear men debate 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 hour ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... 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, I give him and the people a tomasha, at the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... prisoner, 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. ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... can plant your men. I grant that this has the air of a highwayman's attack, but, after all, the uniform covers a host of civil sins, and, really, I do not see a better way to have done with the youth. It will never do to have him strut about Paris boasting that he snatched the sword away from an officer and drubbed him with a cane into ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... would you, can you use us? What good is air if lungs are out, or springs When the 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 ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... from the ends of the mark run lines towards the end at an angle of 45 degrees. Cut along these lines, and lay one of the edges just cut up against C, and flush with the outer edge of L1 (Fig. 5). Tack the strut on temporarily to both legs, turn the trestle over, and draw your pencil (which should have a sharp point) along the angles which the strut makes with the legs. This gives you the limits of the ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... my boy, If you're from Chile or from Illinois; You can't, because you serve a foreign land, Spit with impunity on ours, expand, Cock-turkeywise, and strut with blind conceit, All heedless of the hearts beneath your feet, Fling falsehoods as a sower scatters grain And, for security, invoke disdain. Sir, there are laws that men of sense observe, No matter whence they ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... agreed the Belgian. "But philosophy is like courage—easy to assume. We strut and talk big; we call the politicians sharks, the soldiers fools; but does it do any good? The war will go on; the enemy will destroy our homes, separate our families, take away our bread and leave us to starve; ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... scrutinizing every automobile in sight. 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 of ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... your walls, Are all of earth's beauty ye care to know; But ye strut about in soul-stifled halls To play moth-life by a candle-glow— What soul has space for upward fling, What manhood room for shoulder-swing, Coffined and cramped from the ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... time there was a great army of Danish men west there, whose chief was Heming, the son of Earl Strut-Harald, and brother to Earl Sigvaldi, and he held for King Knut that land that Svein ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous
... so, when he heard bravery extolled and cowardice derided, it woke him up. He was ashamed. Perhaps his sweetheart turned up her nose and said, "I am told that you are a coward!" It was not HE that turned over the new leaf—she did it for him. HE must not strut around in the merit of it—it is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... questions with patronising kindness, he gave them scraps of information upon all subjects of temporary interest, with a funny little air of pompous importance. When by mere force of habit they grew more familiar with him, he would strut up and engage them in long conversations, listen to all they said with consummate good nature, giving his opinion in return. He was wholly unconscious that he looked like a bantam crowing to a group of larger and more ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... 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 ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... worked out a design for a seaplane; the machine was completed in March 1912 and its first flight was made at Portland. On this seaplane Lieutenant Samson flew, first and last, for about a hundred and fifty hours, without breaking a strut or a float, which is a signal testimony to the merits of both the design and the construction. The Royal Aircraft Factory, working for the Air Department of the Admiralty, also produced a seaplane, which was successfully tested on Fleet Pond. Meantime ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... do you wish to happen to you? I am satisfied if I desire and avoid conformably to nature, if I employ movements towards and from an object as I am by nature formed to do, and purpose and design and assent. Why then do you strut before us as if you had swallowed a spit? My wish has always been that those who meet me should admire me, and those who follow me should exclaim, O the great philosopher! Who are they by whom you wish to be admired? Are they not those of whom you are used to say that they ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... great, while after death they either furnish valuable skins or wholesome food. Moreover, here the wolf awakes the reverberating echoes of the forest with its dismal howl; the raccoon, opossum, and squirrel pass their lives in sportive gambols; the wild and the ocellated turkeys strut about, pompous in manner, as if conscious of their handsome plumage, while the timid deer and shaggy-coated bison roam over prairies or through woodland glades, as yet unacquainted with the report of the white man's ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... is replete with lessons of wisdom and warning. No one can rise from its perusal without perceiving that the modern author has made himself by apt illustration an accomplished actor in ancient history, while the ancient characters are made in their vera effigies to strut on modern stages. His pictures of great actions and great men, noble deeds and nobler princes, are drawn with such masterly perspective of truth, that they serve for all time ; while his portraiture of tyrants, ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... right!" And he flung out a leg with a strut of proprietorship. "Opened last week. ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... the wimmen tried to get somethin' out o' Quassy. Lordy massy! you might as well 'a' tried to get it out an old tom-turkey, that'll strut and gobble and quitter, and drag his wings on the ground, and fly at you, but won't say nothin'. Quassy she screeched her queer sort o' laugh; and she told 'em that they was a makin' fools o' themselves, ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 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. ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... brief strut of his life is about over. Up-stairs—he dies. No angel wings hovering about him. No gospel promises kindling up the darkness;—but exquisite embroidery, elegant pictures, and a bust of Shakespeare on the mantel. ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... are you going in, Dick?' said a little stout man who walked with a strut and wore a ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... pride exalts Thyself in other's eyes, And hides thy folly's faults, Which reason will despise? Dost strut, and turn, and stride, Like a walking weathercock? The shadow by thy side Will be thy ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... has for its object the manufacture of weldless stayed chains, whereof each link, together with its cross strut or stay, is made of one piece of metal without any weld or joint; and the invention consists in producing a chain of stayed links from a bar of cruciform section by the consecutive series of punching, twisting and stamping operations ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... advanced, pecking, chirping, and scratching vigorously. A tuft of green leaves waved upon his crest, a larger tuft of brakes made an umbrageous tail, and a shawl of many colours formed his flapping wings. A truly noble bird, whose legs had the genuine strut, whose eyes shone watchfully, and whose voice had a ring that evidently struck terror into the catterpillar's soul, if it was a catterpillar. He squirmed, he wriggled, he humped as fast as he could, trying to escape; but all in vain. The tufted bird espied him, gave one warbling sort of ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... the monastery, a group of wounded soldiers were just entering. With them was a woman in a man's uniform. Her hair was curly and short, and her chin pointed. Her feet looked ridiculously small in the heavy, high, soldier's boots, and in spite of a strut her knees knocked together in an unmistakably feminine manner. But the men treated her quite as one of themselves. One soldier, who had had his leg cut off up to the thigh, supported himself by her shoulder. I have seen several women soldiers ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... work. The framing requires strength and simplicity. It is this portion of the instrument which sustains the tension of the strings, which in full to large-sized pianos is not less than from six to twelve tons, and it is a matter of prime necessity that the portions which serve as a strut or stretcher between the ends of the strings, and which are to resist this enormous pull, must be made correspondingly strong and rigid, since by any gradual yielding under the pull of the strings, their lengths and tensions, and hence their tone, must undergo proportionate change. ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... truthfully declared that she looked French this morning, and there was a suggestion of a strut in her walk which seemed to speak of personal satisfaction in her appearance. Bridgie did indeed look shabby beside her, but then no clothes, however poor, could ever make the sweet thing look anything but a lady, and she too held ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... their minds on worldly glory, and spent their money on extravagant dress. "The men," said he, "wear capes reaching down to the ground, and their long hair falls down to their shoulders; and the women wear so many petticoats that they can hardly drag themselves along, and strut about like the Pope's courtezans, to the surprise and disgust of the whole world." What right had these selfish fops to call themselves Christians? They did more harm to the cause of Christ than all the Turks and heathens in ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... manners can wind them round his finger, while white soldiers seem rather to prefer a certain roughness. The demeanor of my men to each other is very courteous, and yet I see none of that sort of upstart conceit which is sometimes offensive among free negroes at the North, the dandy-barber strut. This is an agreeable surprise, for I feared that freedom and regimentals ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... who have been doing penance by trying to be fine gentlemen at watering-places, when it wasn't at all in our line. I began to think we looked as much like fops as the rest of the scented and bearded dress-coats, who strut about, and imagine the world is looking at them. This would throw us into quite another rank of life, and give us new ideas. How shall we manage it though, my fine fellow?" "Nothing easier in the world. Let us rent a small house, somewhere near ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... him. It corresponded to his lordly strut, and was in keeping with the stentorian tones ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... 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
... of the wattle-tree and many light-green ferns. In this ingeniously contrived sylvan retreat the feathered architect runs about and holds a sort of carnival, to which others of his tribe gather. Here the little party chirp vigorously, and strut about ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... see yon bird strut by, Thus proud of his array; But human friends we may espy As ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... 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 him twenty ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... 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 ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... to explain that he was a new chum in politics. Only a fledgling from a Brussels or Axminster carpeted reception-room would stand on the hustings and publish a fear that he might be boring his audience. One familiar with the trade of electioneering, as it has always been conducted by men, would strut and shout and brag, never for a moment worrying whether or not he came anywhere near the truth or feeling the slightest qualm, though he deafened his hearers with his trumpeting or bored them to complete extinction, and would refuse to be silenced ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... the Casino steps, and hid myself among the fishing-boats lower down on the beach. Carlotta, however, was delighted and said that I looked pretty. Now I have grown callous, seeing other fools similarly apparelled. But a year ago, should I have dreamed it possible for me to strut about a fashionable plage in white ducks, a pink shirt, and a yachting-cap? I trow not. They are signs of some sort of madness—whether that of a Jaques or a dingo dog ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... scythe has mowed the hero down, The muse again awakes him to renown; She tells proud Fate that all her darts are vain, And bids the hero live and strut about again: Nor is she only able to restore, But she can make what ne'er was made before; Can search the realms of Fancy, and create What never came into ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... after years. You can never become a commonplace woman now and there are such a lot of 'em in the world. When I remember all you have done for us it makes me ill to think of some in our town—giggling, silly little flirts, with no higher ambition than to strut down the street in ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... fairies' rooms; They use their folded tails for brooms; But fairy dust is brighter far Than any mortal colours are; And all about their tails it clings In strange designs of rounds and rings; And that is why they strut about And proudly spread ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... full of bursting shrapnel and yet escape serious injury. The mere puncture, even the repeated puncture, of the wings did no damage. Only lucky shots that might pierce the fuel tank, hit the engine, touch an aileron or an important stay or strut, could affect the machine, while in due course of time a light armour on the bottom of the fusillage or body of the machine in which the pilot sat, protected the operator to some degree. Other considerations, however, finally led to ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... but then seeing that Helen was gazing at him inquiringly once more he added, gravely, "One could be well content to let vain people strut their little hour and be as wonderful as they chose, if it were not for the painful fact that they are eating the bread of honest men, and that millions are toiling and starving in order that they may have ease and luxury. That is such a very dreadful thing ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... for thy descent; and now skip down And smooth the creases from thy coat, and order The laces on thy breast; a little stoop, And on thy snowy stockings bend a glance, And then erect thyself and strut away Either to pace the promenade alone,— 'T is thine, if 't please thee walk; or else to draw Anigh the carriages of other dames. Thou clamberest up, and thrustest in thy head And arms and shoulders, half thyself within The carriage door. There let thy laughter rise So loud that from afar ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... iron, or any other material is used for a pillar or strut, it has not only to resist a crushing force, but also a force tending to bend or ...
— Instructions on Modern American Bridge Building • G. B. N. Tower
... reply, referred to Mr. Conkling's "grandiloquent swell" and his "turkey gobbler strut," ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... to gleam. A stout father with wife and children dozes. Painted women are practicing their dances. Grotesque mimes strut towards the theater. ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... 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 of ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... to the gentleman's cruel sarcasm," said Blaine, "I hope he will not be too severe. The contempt of that large-minded gentleman is so wilting, his haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic, supereminent, overpowering, turkey-gobbler strut has been so crushing to myself and all the members of this House, that I know it was an act of the greatest temerity for me to venture upon a controversy with him." Referring to a comparison which had been made of Conkling to ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... good taste, Mr. 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
... country; they fancy that, thereby, they are invested with claims upon their party, and suffer indefinite dreams of political eminence to be awakened in their bosoms. I have seen a fellow draw his hat fiercely down over his brow, and strut about, with insufferable importance, on the strength of having been thoroughly kicked ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... 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, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... land of the peacock; and they so far resemble this bird that they are sometimes called peacock-pheasants. I am also informed by Mr. Bartlett that they resemble the peacock in their voice and in some of their habits. During the spring the males, as previously described, strut about before the comparatively plain-coloured females, expanding and erecting their tail and wing-feathers, which are ornamented with numerous ocelli. I request the reader to turn back to the drawing (Fig. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... that his cane, hooked over his arm, swung jauntily, was not entirely at his ease. Mrs. Tretherick, however, vouchsafed him a gracious smile and a glance of her dangerous eyes; and the colonel, with an embarrassed cough and a slight strut, took ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... flared out, supported by heavy struts. He made his way back, crouching close to the hull, and straddled one of the struts. He jammed his magnetic boots down against the hull, and wrapped his arms around the strut with all his strength. ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... stove went out into the airy kitchen, and a larger flock of geese squawked in the weeds and ditches. Again Andy and Jim drove the cows, Andy of a morning with a dreamy stroll, and Jim of an evening with a strut that was intended for a military gait. Who had told little Jim of West Point, the family did not know. But he ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... weather now comes. Trees are heavy with blossom, peacocks strut in the glades and a general lethargy seizes the cowherds. One day Krishna and his friends are out with the cattle when Pralamba, a demon in human form, comes to join them. Krishna warns Balarama of the demon's presence and tells him to await an opportunity to kill him. He ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... I have, any appearance to the contrary being a bluff for success—effect. But now that I have been wisely and scrupulously and unscrupulously examined by the most exalted rulers of the Inner Temple, and they pronounce me all that man should be, why shouldn't I strut some? But, damn it, strutting brings that Devil's clutch—and a man cannot be anything more strutty than a dish-rag then. In William James you will find a questionnaire, "Why do I believe in immortality? 'Because I think ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... probable state of things," he continued: "Great Britain is to retain the western posts, and with them, the confidence of the Indians; she makes no compensation for the millions spoliated from our commerce, but adds new millions to our already heavy losses. Would Americans quietly see their government strut, look big, call hard names, repudiate treaties, and then tamely put up with new and aggravated injuries? Whatever might be the case in other parts of the Union, his constituents were not of a temper ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... have 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 work of beautiful scenery. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... cruel life, by the wise decrees of an all-seeing Providence, was suddenly cut short. He fought against his disease (small pox) with that rashness that had been his ruling spirit through life, and thus ingloriously terminated his days. The pride of this man was to strut through the Mexican towns and gloat over his many crimes. To the gazing crowd, he would point out the trophies of his murders, which he never failed to have about him. To his fringed leggins were attached the phalanges ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... should tell These red-coats 'tis a paltry swell, Such careless customs backing; If they must strut in spurs and boots, For once I'd join the chalk recruits, And shout, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Unfortunately the unit has been too minutely subdivided, and many faculties are practically lost for want of use. "The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.... Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things.... The priest becomes a form; the attorney a statute book; the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... this June day; and yet her eyes are microscopic, and she sees a host of little things not worth seeing. A true womanly moral nature seems never to have been infused into her being. She detests children, her little sister shrinks from her; she speaks and surmises evil of the absent; to strut down Fifth Avenue in finery, to which she has given her whole soul, is her ideal of happiness—there, stop! She is the daughter of my kind host and hostess. The mystery of this world's evil is sadly exemplified in her defective character, from which ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... mister?" . . . "Any ships astern," he meant, for his first glance was always to where the big green four-master might be expected to heave in sight. Then, when nothing was reported, he would begin his day-long strut up and down the poop, whistling "Garryowen" and rubbing ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... phoenix," said Hope, dryly. "Praise is 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 her father before she ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... waited for. With a strut he marched across the space between them and the target and carried that much further back. He longed for a target bearing an arrangement of letters that he could hit and cause to disappear, as at his boasted Seagirt, instead ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... who was once at point (O giglot fortune!) to master Caesar's sword, Made Lud's town with rejoicing fires bright, And Britons strut with courage." ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... prevented from wearing white cravats at parties, the same being evidently an attempt of sixth-rate individuals to ape the manners of first-class circles. And that no Gent, who does not actually keep a horse, and is not in the Army, be allowed to strut up and down the Burlington Arcade, with a whip and moustachios, such imposition being exceedingly offensive, and amounting to a passive swindling ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... large number of plays—not merely his own part, but the whole play—he has to undergo a severe physical training, part of which consists in standing for an hour every day with his mouth wide open, to inhale the morning air. He is taught to sing, to walk, to strut, and to perform a variety of gymnastic exercises, such as standing on his head, or turning somersaults. His first classification is as male or female actor, no women having been allowed to perform since the days of the Emperor Ch'ien ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... failures, in six months, might reasonably be supposed to call forth. I therefore wrote a hurried note to Curzon, setting forth the great interest all their proceedings had for me, and assuring him that my stay in town should be as short as possible, for that I longed once more to "strut the monarch of the boards," and concluded with a sly paragraph, artfully intended to act as a "paratonnere" to the gibes and jests which I dreaded, by endeavouring to make light of my matrimonial speculations. The postscript ran somewhat ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... beauty," and her graceful movements, looks, and attitudes. But this is all that can be said for her. Her mind has no room for anything but looks and dress; she has no feeling for anybody but her little self; and is only too truly declared by Mrs. Poyser to be "no better than a 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"—"no better nor a cherry, wi' a hard stone inside it."[1] Over and over this view of Hetty's character is enforced on us, from ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... mildews from a blight! You were born of ropery, and you go at it straight, like a webfoot to water. What's your boast?—your mother's disgrace! You shame your mother. Your whole life's a ballad o' bastardy. You cry up the woman's infamy to hook at a father. You swell and strut on her pickings. You're a cock forced from the smoke of the dunghill! You shame your mother, damned adventurer! You train your boy for a swindler after your own pattern; you twirl him in your curst harlequinade to a damnation as sure ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... awry, or a Roman has trouble with his foolish garters. Few men or women can resist mumming; they fancy themselves as somebody else, dead or living. Yet these seem happy in this nonsense. The indolent days appear to have deadened hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. They shall strut and fret their hour upon this little stage. Let that sprightly girl forget the sudden death which made her an orphan; the nervous broker his faithless wife; the grey-haired soldier his silly and haunting sins; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hight. One 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... inspection of every aeroplane every time it touches the ground. The jar of even the best of landings may fracture a bolt holding a wire, so that when the machine goes up again the wire may fly back and break the propeller, or get tangled in the control wires, or a strut or socket may crack in landing, and many other things may happen which careful inspection would disclose before any harm could occur. Mechanics who inspected machines regularly would be able to go all over them in a few ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton |
