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Bluster   /blˈəstər/   Listen
Bluster

verb
(past & past part. blustered; pres. part. blustering)
1.
Blow hard; be gusty, as of wind.  "The flames blustered"
2.
Show off.  Synonyms: blow, boast, brag, gas, gasconade, shoot a line, swash, tout, vaunt.
3.
Act in an arrogant, overly self-assured, or conceited manner.  Synonyms: swagger, swash.



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"Bluster" Quotes from Famous Books



... intrinsically. There is the same burly thick-necked strength of body as of soul;—built, in both cases, on what the old Marquis calls a fond gaillard. By nature, by course of breeding, indeed by nation, Mirabeau has much more of bluster; a noisy, forward, unresting man. But the characteristic of Mirabeau too is veracity and sense, power of true insight, superiority of vision. The thing that he says is worth remembering. It is a flash of insight into some object or other: so do both these ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... second and more gratuitous Crimea. But it was not only in Eastern Europe that his saving influence was felt. In Africa and India, and wherever British honor was involved, he was the resolute and unsparing enemy of that odious system of bluster and swagger and might against right, on which Lord Beaconsfield and his colleagues bestowed the tawdry ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... tongue to say that it was a good thing for him Dick was not there. But partly the sense that this would be unbecoming bluster, and partly the suffocating resentment of the fellow's impudence, limited his response to a formless gasp, and Bittridge went on: "But I'm glad to find you here, judge. I didn't know that you were in town. Family all well in New York?" ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... women who seem formed to manage their husbands; and we one day saw her take Okotook to task in a very masterly style, for having bartered away a good jacket for an old useless pistol, without powder or shot. He attempted at first to bluster in his turn, and with most women would probably have gained his point. But with Iligliuk this would not do; she saw at once the absurdity of his bargain, and insisted on his immediately cancelling it, which ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... if their arms are only constituted proportionately to their throats, they must do good fighting. I should think nothing would stand before them. Daisy, they will certainly bear down all opposition. Are you afraid? Here is the Fourth, and Washington safe yet, for all the Southern bluster." ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... seclusion, we felt the breath of the tremendous excitement which swayed the public mind next day. Not bluster, nor even passion, but the stir of the people's heart. As we walked to church, we could hear it in half caught words of those we passed by, see it in the grave, intense air which characterised groups and faces; feel it in the atmosphere, which was heavy with ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... engagement, which soon became general. On the whole, I come to the conclusion that, in the proceedings of the Chinese Plenipotentiaries and Commander-in-Chief in this instance, there was that mixture of stupidity, want of straightforwardness, suspicion, and bluster, which characterises so generally the conduct of affairs in this country; but I cannot believe that, after the experience which Sang-ko-lin-sin had already had of our superiority in the field, either he or his civil colleagues could have intended ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... Ladybrig murder, our fancies and the wind together played Eleanor and me sad tricks. When once we began to listen we seemed to hear a whole tragedy going on close outside. We could distinguish footsteps and voices through the bluster, and then a struggle in the shrubbery, and a thud, and a groan, and then a roar of wind, half drowning the sound of flying footsteps—and then an awful pause, and at last faint groaning, and a bump, as of some ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... downcast, though the midshipmen did their best to keep up her spirits by telling her that they were sure the Spaniards would not dare to hurt her or any of us, let them bluster and threaten ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... lookout for something that might be got up as a prodigy. The theatre, it seems, was in desperate condition—nothing but a miracle could save it. He pitched upon me for that miracle. I had a remarkable bluster in my style, and swagger in my gait, and having taken to drink a little during my troubles, my voice was somewhat cracked; so that it seemed like two voices run into one. The thought struck the agent to bring ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... speech, Villiers had crouched on the ground, half terrified, while his wife towered over him, magnificent in her anger. At the end, however, he recovered himself a little, and began to bluster. ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... cowardly cunning, "they are going to do the same thing in Lorient, too—and everywhere—in Paris, in Bordeaux, in Marseilles—even in Quimperle! And when all these cities are flying the red flag it won't be comfortable for cities that fly the tricolor." He began to bluster. "I'm mayor of Paradise, and I won't be bullied! You get out of here with your circus and your foolish elephants! I haven't any gendarmes just now to drive you out, but you had better start, all the ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... half a lifetime with well-bred dogs without a chance to see the demon which we have buried in their breasts, as we have in our own, beneath a host of civilizing influences. It is rare indeed in our day that a dog, unless insane, will bite a human being. The most of their assaults are pure bluster, mere pretence of fury, as is shown by the fact that if, carried away by their pretence, they are led to use their teeth, it is usually a mere sham assault, having no semblance of the ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... do you tell it to your children's children. Never mind how big may be the ships of the enemy, or how many guns they may carry, let British seamen when they meet them, as we do nowadays, feel sure that they will conquer, and I am very sure that conquer they will; ay, however the Frenchmen may bluster and boast of their mountain ships, just as the French ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston

... Ancient Greece, vol. i. p. 350.] while the medieval romances about the siege of Troy ascribe to Pandarus that shameful traffic out of which his name has passed into the words 'to pander' and 'pandarism.' 'Rodomontade' is from Rodomonte, a hero of Boiardo; who yet, it must be owned, does not bluster and boast, as the word founded on his name seems to imply; adopted by Ariosto, it was by him changed into Rodamonte. 'Thrasonical' is from Thraso, the braggart of Roman comedy. Cervantes has given us 'quixotic'; Swift 'lilliputian'; ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... hair's-breadth from the path he had marked out, took leave of his mother, and a formal farewell of the gentleman who described himself as the best of fathers. Beecot senior, turkey-cock and tyrant, was more subdued now that he found bluster would not carry his point. But the wave of common-sense came too late. Paul departed bag and baggage, and his sire swore to the empty air. Even Mrs. Beecot was not available, as ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... of your sort can hardly conceive the amount of bluster this country can stand without coming to blows. We Americans are not ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... much-longed-for has come at last! Instead of hunger and dysentery, we shall have sharp shot; and then!—Dumouriez, with force and firm front, looks on from a neighbouring height; can help only with his wishes, in silence. Lo, the eighteen pieces do bluster and bark, responsive to the bluster of La Lune; and thunder-clouds mount into the air; and echoes roar through all dells, far into the depths of Argonne Wood (deserted now); and limbs and lives of men fly dissipated, this way and that. Can Brunswick make an impression on them? The dull-bright ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... parliamentary tactics and watchfulness of Senators Doane, Coon, Smith, White, Dinsmore, Harrington and Tefft carried the bill through the bluster of the minority to its final vote; by twenty-two for to eight against.[469] When Senator Howe's name was called he offered ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... the chair-arm, his fingers were set, tips on his chin, and over them he surveyed his listeners with calmness. He did not raise his voice. It was his mild manner that made what he said sound so balefully savage. Bluster would have ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... head above the marsh. Sali had not even cocked his gun, the hammer being down on the nipples when found. I will not allow these men to come to grief in this way; they are a reckless set of thoughtless cowards, full of noise and bluster, fond of firing off their guns like children, and wasting ammunition uselessly, and in time of danger they can never be relied upon; they deserted their comrade when in need, and cried aloud like infants at his death; they shall not again be ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... dreary voyage, rendered fruitless by the contemptible double-dealing of James I, and during his trial, Sir Walter's self-possession and courage showed at their best. 'From eight in the morning till nearly midnight he fronted his enemies with unshaken courage. The bluster of Attorney-General Coke roared around him without effect. "I want words," stormed the great prosecutor, "to express ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... the strong current; now quite stationary, except a slight tremulous motion like the poise of a rope-dancer, then rising and falling in long undulations, and seeming to resign themselves passively to the wind; or, again sailing high and level far above the mountain's peak, no bluster and haste, but as stated, occasionally a terrible earnestness and speed. Fire at one as he sails overhead and, unless wounded badly, he will not change ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... to the 'gratifying prospect of a people building up the edifice of their liberties, and consolidating the work of their independence, amid the sympathies and good wishes of Europe.' Foreign Courts might bluster, protest, or sneer, but England was with her Foreign Minister; and 'Punch' summed up the verdict of the nation in generous words of ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... no answer. He was looking intently. As soon as the tones of O'Shea's voice were carried away by the bluster of the wind, as far as the human beings there were concerned there was perfect stillness; the surf and the wind might have been sweeping the ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... Taug, warily and with many pauses and much bluster, and still behind him came other bulls, snarling ferociously and uttering their uncanny challenges. Sheeta's yellow-green eyes glared terribly at Tarzan, and past Tarzan they shot brief glances ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... become anything else, it won't be to our credit," put in Roy. "If we can't stand up to bluster and sedition with that moral force at our backs, we ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... appetites: for ill successe faileth not in a beginning, the grounde whereof abhorring reason, is planted and layed vppon the sandie foundacion of pleasure, which is shaken and ouerthrowen, by the least winde and tempest that Fortune can bluster ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... believe now but wut half on't is lies; For who'd thought the North wuz a-goin' to rise, Or take the pervokin'est kin' of a stump, 'Thout't wuz sunthin' ez pressin' ez Gabr'el's las' trump? Or who'd ha' supposed, arter sech swell an' bluster 'Bout the lick-ary-ten-on-ye fighters they'd muster, Raised by hand on briled lightnin', ez op'lent 'z you please In a primitive furrest o' femmily-trees, Who'd ha' thought thet them Southerners ever 'ud show Starns with pedigrees to 'em like theirn to the foe, Or, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... you certainly went in at the back door to do it," he said. Madeira's God-bless-you's and God-love-you's were valuable crutches to his conversation. With them and his bluster he seemed able to cover a great ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... Gregory, seeing that bluster would not serve, "I meant ye no offense. I pr'ythee, do not keep a father and his children ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... sedulous ephemera still suck a little spiritual moisture. In another it led to the sacramental and sacerdotal developments of Anglicanism. In a third, among men with strong practical energy, to the benevolent bluster of a sort of Christianity which is called muscular because it is not intellectual. It would be an error to suppose that these and the other streams that have sprung from the same source, did not in the days of their fulness fertilise and gladden many lands. The wordy pietism of one school, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley

... That was nature. A man, with all of his bluster, cannot get away from nature. Don't the winters freeze and kill him? Doesn't water drown him, fire burn him? Love had no place in nature; hatred was a part of the one law, the primal law. The wolf kills the rabbit in hot rage; the black ant tears down the ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... are foolish people who assume that gushing women are shallow, but this is jumping at conclusions. A recent novel gives us a picture of "a tall soldier," who, in camp, was very full of brag and bluster. We are quite sure that when the fight comes on this man with the lubricated tongue will prove an arrant coward; we assume that he will run at the first smell of smoke. But we are wrong—he stuck; and when the flag was carried down in the rush, he rescued it and bore it bravely so far ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... from 1886 to 1896, when the Venezuela episode opened a valve for the steam to blow off, the relations between Canada and the United States were continuously at high tension. It was an era of friction and pinpricks, of bluster and retaliation. The United States was not in a conciliatory mood. It was growing in wealth and numbers and power, in unprecedented ways. Its people were one and all intensely proud of their country and satisfied with themselves. The muckraker had not yet lifted his ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton

... consent; "How," said I, "would Pope have raved had he been served so?" "We should never," replied he, "have heard the last on't, to be sure; but then Pope was a narrow man: I will however," added he, "storm and bluster myself a little this time;"—so went to London in all the wrath he could muster up. At his return I asked how the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... father should thus accuse him. "Do you understand me? I say that you lie. That you are the most contemptible liar that I have ever known. Your whole life is a lie." He spoke in a low tone, but there was something underlying the quiet of his voice and manner that contrasted strangely with the loud bluster of the older man, and made the latter tremble. This was a new experience for him, and something in the manly face of the one who uttered these hard ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... the negroes and to the white soldiers detailed to cook. He is nothing of a hustler, but he has directed negroes from his boyhood up and is as efficient a "boss cook" as the army contained without any bluster. Six or eight feet in front of him, a big hickory oak fire, say ten feet long, with glowing coals under the logs, skillets, ovens and pots all occupied in baking bread or boiling beef under the hands of the negro men, who delighted in the work ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little

... they will torment a weak woman for months together, but will fly in cowardly terror the moment you turn upon them in righteous anger! I should just laugh at them, but I would drive them out, hold not a moment's parley with them. Of course, they will bluster and show fight, because you have let them have their own way for so long that they will not tamely submit to expulsion; but face them with iron determination, set your will against them like an immovable rock, and down they ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers

... noise and bluster, knocked up the inmates of the little inn of that little place, and succeeded in getting Gladys ensconced by a cheerful fire in the kitchen. The poor girl was benumbed with cold and overpowered with fatigue. The landlady rubbed her feet and ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... ran clear in spite of that feeling of sharp practice toward himself—nay, because of it; it was impossible to use the weapon that a former kindness had placed in his hand. He looked at Leverich now with an expression which the latter quieted himself to meet. This was a situation, not for bluster and rage, but to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... crowning act of kindness to me, dear Mrs. Ormonde. It is possible that I have grown coarser; indeed, I know that I associate on terms of equality and friendliness with men from whom I should formerly have shrunk. I can get angry, and stand on my rights, and bluster if need be, and on the whole I think I am no worse for that. My ear is not offended if I hear myself called 'boss;' why should it be? it is a word as well as another. Nay, I have even felt something like excitement when listening to political speeches, in which frequent mention ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... hollowed hands and the clicking of boomerangs the function began. And having danced to their own satisfaction and the delight of the crowd, the warriors with ostentation and bluster recited private grievances and challenged those against whom they had real or fancied wrongs to combat. Most of the noisy declamation was ill-founded. The many had no grievances and no intentions of fighting, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... followed after the vanishing of the hated wolverines. A crow lifted on rounded vans, marking their departure, and it was seen. A blackcock launched from a high tree with a whir and a bluster like an aeroplane, showing their course, and it was noted. An eagle climbed heavily and ponderously over the low curtain of the snow mist, pointing their way, and it was followed. All the wild, all the world, seemed to be against ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... to a bluster of blinding sand so that the morning was darkened with it. Breakfast in consequence was a fiasco, and very empty, very angry, we faced the trail head-on to the sandstorm. Hour after hour it continued with no sign of abatement, and with caps pulled ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... tried first to bluster and then to explain. Carroll was again summoned and affirmed emphatically that he and Crawley had been separated for the greater part of one day, and that while together they had not approached ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor

... fool began to bluster, and attempted to deny this statement; but Lecoq opened the door, and Rose appeared in a most becoming costume. Paul now made no effort to continue his protestations, but throwing himself on his knees, in whining accents confessed the whole fraud and pleaded for mercy, promising to give evidence ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... observed, that on this side of the contract, he seems to be a mighty meek sort of creature. And though I should like it in him hereafter perhaps, yet I can't help despising him a little in my heart for it now. I believe, my dear, we all love your blustering fellows best; could we but direct the bluster, and bid it roar when and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... make a speech," said he, "begin by proclaiming yourself the purest, the most disinterested of living men, and end by intimating that you are the bravest;" and then with the charming inconsistency of the dreamer he would add: "If there be anything on this earth that I despise it is bluster." ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... that I'll kill you for this," he said. It was a simple statement, made without heat or bluster, and aside from this one remark he failed to speak a syllable until the ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts

... I have endeavored neither to creep nor to bluster, for no author is so likely to betray his translator into both these faults, as HOMER, though himself never guilty of either. I have cautiously avoided all terms of new invention, with an abundance of which, persons of more ingenuity than judgment have not enriched our language, but incumbered ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... grand passage—grand, because it is true to human nature, true to the determined, prompt, kingly character of David. He does not complain, bluster, curse over the insult as a weak man might have done. He has been deeply hurt, and he is too high-minded to talk about it. He will do, and not talk. A dark purpose settles itself instantly in his mind. Perhaps he ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley

... his ponderous Grace'; my lord George, the 'bold baker,' and Mr. Unwell; Sir Xenophon Sunflower, the Assassin, and the flash grazier; the Dollar, hellite, billiard-marker, and bacon-factor; the ringletted O'Bluster, double-jointed publican, Leather lungs, and Handsome Jack contrasted in the pig's skin; and, ye Centaurs! what seats were there!" It must have been a sight for proper men to see. Not the veriest tailor would walk on Derby day. He "would mount a mis-teached ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... glanced at him, understanding something of what was in his mind, but the next instant he had turned again to watch Vasilici. The man was a swaggerer through and through, although if the tales told of him were true he did not lack courage. He had for a long time impressed his followers with his bluster and attitudes, playing a carefully studied part before them, appealing to that vein of romance which life in the mountains had fostered in them; and he played the part now for the benefit of Ellerey and his comrades. Falling into a pose, he turned ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner

... buskin's pride, Together with the stage's glory, stood Each like a poor and pitied widowhood. The cirque profan'd was, and all postures rack'd; For men did strut, and stride, and stare, not act. Then temper flew from words, and men did squeak, Look red, and blow, and bluster, but not speak; No holy rage or frantic fires did stir Or flash about the spacious theatre. No clap of hands, or shout, or praise's proof Did crack the play-house sides, or cleave her roof. Artless the scene ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... corner butcher. The Captain would be a frightful man to meet socially. I can hear a host saying "Shake hands with the Captain." One quite loses his taste for dinner parties. There is a sabre cut across the Captain's cheek. He is even more disreputable in appearance than his followers, with a bluster that marks his rank.) ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks

... dismounted and started forward, only to stop short. A scream had come to them, faint in the bluster of the storm, the racking scream of a woman in a tempest of anger. Suddenly the light seemed to bob about in the old house; it showed first at one window—then another—as though some one were running from room to room. Once two gaunt shadows ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... by which Nikta entered the hut] Well, have you had enough spree? You've been puffing yourself up, but now you'll know how it feels! You'll lose some of your bluster! ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy

... how now, Cavalier, how like a discarded Favourite do you look now, who whilst your Authority lasted, laid about ye, domineer'd, huft and bluster'd, as if there had been no end on't: now a Man may approach ye without terror—You see the Meat's snatcht out of your Mouth, Sir, the Lady's dispos'd on; whose Friends and Relations you were so well ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... aspects, In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite, Of noxious efficacy, and when to join In synod unbenign; and taught the fixed Their influence malignant when to shower— Which of them rising with the Sun or falling, Should prove tempestuous. To the winds they set Their corners, when with bluster to confound Sea, air, and shore; the thunder when to roll With terror through the ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... begins to look like a masquerade dress hired for the occasion; of the hard and, perhaps, gallant service of months past, there is soon no other evidence, than an unnecessary loudness of speech, and a readiness to seize on any occasion to bluster or blaspheme. A friend of mine once remarked (by way of excuse for being detected in the most eccentric deshabille) that "the British dragoon, under any circumstances, was a respectable and elevating sight." I do not think the ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... the Mormon, without moving from his seat—"keep cool! I expected this; but it's all bluster. I tell you she will, and ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... the rough Torre began to heave and move, And bluster into stormy sobs and say, 'I never loved him: an I meet with him, I care not howsoever great he be, Then will I strike at him and strike him down, Give me good fortune, I will strike him dead, For this discomfort he hath ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... laughed. "Why, Brookes," he said, "you seem to think forever of these men showing fight. You don't know them as I know them. They have a deal of bluster and make a deal of noise, but when you seize them and hold them with a strong hand, there's naught of fight left in them. 'Tis like enough there 'll not be so much as a musket fired to-day. I've had to do with 'em often enough before to know my gentlemen well by this time." ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... be very industrious and frugal where there was any probability of considerable gain; but on the contrary, such as had been bred up in ignorance and hard labour, when they came to have plenty would extravagantly squander away their time and money in drinking and making a bluster." Indeed it is a melancholy proof how strangely power warps the minds of ordinary men, that there can be a doubt on this subject among persons who have been themselves educated. It tempts a suspicion that, ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... Constitution. While much will be yielded—every thing, almost, but the integrity of the Constitution, and the essential interests of the country—to the cause of mutual harmony and mutual conciliation, no ground can be granted, not an inch, to menace and bluster. Indeed, menace and bluster, and the putting forth of daring, unconstitutional doctrines, are, at this very moment, the chief obstacles to mutual harmony and satisfactory accommodation. Men cannot well reason, and confer, and take counsel ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... ignored the county. Bursley has the honours of antiquity in the Five Towns. No industrial development can ever rob it of its superiority in age, which makes it absolutely sure in its conceit. And the time will never come when the other towns—let them swell and bluster as they may—will not pronounce the name of Bursley as one pronounces the name of one's mother. Add to this that the Square was the centre of Bursley's retail trade (which scorned the staple as something wholesale, vulgar, and assuredly filthy), and you ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... that their republic would be recognized and defended by those European powers. On the other hand, the Northern people did not believe that the South would dare to fight for slavery when it had 4,000,000 slaves exposed to the chances of war. They thought it to be all bluster, and hence paid little heed to the threat of secession or of war. Both sides sadly learned their mistake, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... from the Bandstand I said quietly: "Show me the jewellery Burker sent you, Dolly. I am very much in earnest, so don't bluster." ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... like a boy who can fight when he has to," said Dolly, stoutly. "I haven't any use for sissies, and I think that's all Jake really is, for all his bluster." ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart

... mind to contest your claims. I've filed a contest on this eighty, here, and I'm going to hold it. Let that soak into your minds. I don't want any trouble—I'm even willing to take a good deal in the way of bluster, rather than have trouble. But I'm going to stay. See?" He waved his pipe in a gesture of finality and continued to smoke and to watch them impersonally, leaning against the door in that lounging negligence which is so irritating to ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... at the time. The troublesome question was settled; the time-honored friendship of two great peoples had suffered no interruption; and Roosevelt had secured for his country its just due, without public parade or bluster, by merely being ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... woman. He has only one eye, but that a very good one which does not miss things. He has been made into a regular hero by the people here, but he is the most modest man I have ever met. He is sincere and unassuming, so calm, with no heroic bluster about him. His voice is quiet and gentle. We had a blow-out for him, and all those present were very discreet. We all forgot our years and our troubles and we showed him a good time. I hardly think that even you, with all your democracy, ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... he could come here without our knowledge and enter the picture in the exhibition. It may be he doubted its success—he is diffident in some ways—and thought if it failed none of us at home would be the wiser; but I'm sure that now he has won he will brag and bluster and be very conceited and disagreeable over his triumph. That is the man's nature—to be cowed by failure and bombastic over success. It's singular, come to think it over, how one who has the soul to create a wonderful painting can be so crude and ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum

... tell them, and then they began to threaten and bluster. I was beginning to get frightened, but I made up my mind I wouldn't give in to them. And then—well, you came along, and I guess I never was so glad to see you, Jack! But, of course, they really did me no harm. How did it happen that you got here ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster

... They bluster at first: being (as I have said) much of the temper and habits, for good and evil, of English navvies. But they grow more and more uneasy, full of childish curiosity, and undefined dread. So into the town they go, on promise (which they ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... almost personal, love of nature which is sweeter by far than any human friendship. For her those long stretches of wild moorland, with the dark silent tarns and far-distant line of blue hills, the high cliffs where the sea wind roared with all the bluster and fury of a late March, the sea itself with its ever-changing face, the faint streaks of brilliant color in the evening sky, or the wan glare of a stormy morning—all these things had their own peculiar meaning to her, and awoke always some echo of ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... years of worry and bluster across the North Sea we have a little forgotten India in our calculations. As Germany faces round eastward again, as she must do before very long, we shall find India resuming its former central position in our ideas of international politics. ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... of question, and since the elements were beyond our control, there was no telling when relief would come. Until the weather moderated in the hills to the west, there was no hope of crossing the river; but men grew hungry and nights were chilly, and bluster and bravado brought neither food nor warmth. A third wave was noticed within an hour, raising the water-gauge over a foot. The South Fork of the Big Cheyenne almost encircled the entire Black Hills country, and with a hundred mountain affluents emptying in their ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... fierce as an angry giant, but at sight of Allen and the rest of us, he stopped as if we had shot him. Perhaps he had not expected so many. In any case, he saw that there was nothing he could hope to gain by violence or bluster. All he could do was to protest as his father had done, that this visit was a violation of his right to close the ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... for anything but the show and bluster which are threatening our ruin? English food, not long ago the best in the world, is falling off in quality, and even our national genius for cooking shows a decline; to anyone who knows England, these are facts significant enough. Foolish persons have prated about "our insular cuisine," demanding ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... to cover shame wi' bitter words, Tam Lorrigan. 'Tis the way of ye to bluster and bully until the neighbors all are affrighted to face ye ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... here to bluster at me and frighten me into running away out of the section," he reflected. "I'll ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day

... and silver, man and woman, For things that's raided, made, dug, or human, 'Meriky's the coming nation; She's-bound to conquer all creation! Per'aps you call this brag and bluster; No, 'taint nuther, for we muster The best of brain, the mighty dollar; We'll lead ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... semiofficial St. Petersburg press, like the Novoe Vremya, had begun to bluster about the affair, egged on by the Russian Foreign Office, and Sir Edward Grey was compelled to invent some pretext for his manifest dread of displeasing Britain's "good friend Russia" about anything. Hence the birth of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... was sad and sorry and ashamed, because of the futile bustle and bluster and cheerful courageous activity about her. Not a cheek had blenched; not a hand had trembled; not a voice had been lifted to protest or counsel surrender, despite their meagre capacities for defense and their number, but a handful. ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... Raoul, "such remarks are the idlest bluster. You know very well that the Duke of Buckingham is a man of undoubted courage, who has already fought ten duels, and will probably fight eleven. His name alone is significant enough. As far as I am concerned, you are well aware that I can fight also. ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... fate was against him, and that any further hostility toward the shadow was only a tempting of Providence. He lost his health, spirits, and everything but his courage. His countenance became pale and peaceful-looking; the bluster departed from him; his body shrank up like a withered parsnip. Thrice was he compelled to take in his clothes, and thrice did he ascertain that much of his time would be necessarily spent in pursuing his retreating person through the solitude of ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various

... much concerned. I was angry; I'll admit that. But I didna let him fash me. I just made up my mind that if I was no allowed to sing I'd have something to say to that basso before the evening was oot. And I looked at him, and listened to him bluster, and thought maybe I'd have a bit to do wi' him as well. I'm a wee man and a', but I'm awfu' strong from the work I did in the pit, and I'm never afraid of ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder

... debate was considered very damaging to Whigs and Radicals, and likely to lead to a dissolution—first, of Parliament, and then of Government. But the Radicals are now adopting a whining, fawning tone, have dropt that of bluster and menace, and, having before rudely insisted on a mighty slice of the loaf, are now content to put their tails between their legs and swallow such crumbs as they can get. Peel has written and published a ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... Jimbo's head, and the governess promised eagerly to do her very best. It was her first "place"; and by "nonsense" they both understood imagination. True enough, Jimbo's mother had given her rather different instructions as to the treatment of the boy, but she mistook the soldier's bluster for authority, and deemed it best to obey him. This ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood

... implied an impossible subtlety—that the power one saw in the man was produced simply by some trick of pose, by a frankness so big that one felt intuitively there must be still bigger qualities behind it. Whether it was all a bluster of affectation Adams had never as yet decided in his own mind, but there were moments when, in listening to stories of the masculine freedom in which Kemper lived, he felt inclined to acknowledge that the force, whatever it was, had spent itself in wind. In a profession the man would inevitably ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... There was no bluster in these resolutions, but their meaning was apparent enough, and the city authorities understood it. From that hall, next morning, would march at least five or six thousand determined men, and if the mob rallied in force, to repeat the action of the day before, ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... Doings presentable when they are done. Such philosophies will arise; be preached as Mammon-Gospels, the ultimate Evangel of the World; be believed, with what is called belief, with much superficial bluster, and a kind of shallow satisfaction real in its way:—but they are ominous gospels! They are the sure, and even swift, forerunner of great changes. Expect that the old System of Society is done, is dying and fallen into dotage, when it begins to rave in that fashion. ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... one gets clear at last, and we have to run to overtake the rest of the company. We begin to pant and complain, and bluster against those who are leading. Our feet go down haphazard; we stumble and hold ourselves up by the wails, so that our hands are plastered with mud. The march becomes a stampede, full of the noise of metal things and ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... they cower before the boatmen in this. For the boatmen of Beirut have not lost their prestige and power. They are a sort of commune and are yet supreme. Yes, they are always riding the whirlwind and directing the storm. And who dares say a word against them? Every one of them, in his swagger and bluster, is an Abd'ul-Hamid. Alas, everything is yet in a chaotic state. The boatman's shriek can silence the Press and ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... in my thought this ideal. These quiet ships lying in the river have no suggestion of bluster about them—no intimation of aggression. They are commanded by men thoughtful of the duty of citizens as well as the duty of officers—men acquainted with the traditions of the great service to which they belong—men who know by touch with the people of the United States ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... "No, no, Jack, bluster won't do with me. I was an officer in Chicago before ever I came to this darned coal bunker, and I know a Chicago crook ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle

... of business. And there's sma-all friendship atween me and Gourlay. He was nebby owre a bill I sent in the other day; and I'm getting tired of his bluster. Besides, there's little more to be made of him. Gourlay's bye wi't. But you're a rising man, Mr. Wilson, and I think that you and me might work thegither to our own advantage, don't ye see? Yes; just so; to the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... car had disappeared. Doubtless she had gone in ignorance of this outrage, perhaps thinking him accosted by a chance acquaintance. At all events, she was gone, and there was now nothing to be gained from an attempt to bluster the detective down, but deeper shame and the scorn ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... up, and marked the fixedness of her gaze. It seemed to call upon him to avenge an insult. He could only bluster, "Who brought this thing here?" He flung ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... love was unsleeping. The even bluster of the mistral, with which he had been combating some hours, had not suspended, though it had embittered, that predominant passion. His first look was for his wife, a look of hope and suspicion, menace and humility and love, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... cherry! O sweeter than the berry! O nymph more bright Than moonshine night, Like kidlings blithe and merry! Ripe as the melting cluster! No lily has such lustre; Yet hard to tame As raging flame, And fierce as storms that bluster! ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... If Montcornet begins to bluster before his Virginie, Madame lays a finger on her lips and he is silent. He smokes his pipes and his cigars in a kiosk fifty feet from the chateau, and airs himself before he returns to the house. Proud of his subjection, he turns to her, like a bear drunk ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... Ned, and his tones were firm, with no bluster nor bluff in them, "we came out here to find Tom Swift, and were going to find him! We have reason to believe he's here—at least, he started for here," he substituted, as he wished to make no statement ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton

... was just thinking! Thinking of a man whom I used to denounce as bad-tempered! A dear, kind, thoughtful, unselfish Englishman with a—a bluster! I can never call it temper again, after knowing Mr Travers! He has taught ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... he delivered this speech had an almost magical effect upon the jealous Latin. His bluster sank suddenly and died. Muttering to himself and staring at Berry as at a wizard, he seized the girl by the arm and started to move rapidly away, wide-eyed and ill at ease.... With suppressed excitement and the tail of my eye, I watched ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... lustily for the police; and squalling women, and chattering men, and ignorant country people, and elegant mercers' apprentices, and gay-mannered grocers, hustle, and scream, and swear, and lecture, and threaten, and bluster—but not a single blow! The guardian of the public peace appears, and the combatants evanish into thin air; and in a few minutes after this dreadful melee, the violin strikes up a fresh waltz, and all goes "gaily as a marriage-bell." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... a rollicking boy, full of merriment and bluster, and what tender feelings he possessed, he took such a wonderful amount of pains to conceal, that Susy never suspected he had any. She would have enjoyed her ride if she had not felt so full of grief. The day was beautiful. There had been a storm, and the trees looked as if ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May

... bully and bluster as much as you like," he said sulkily; "the difficulty about the money is not the only difficulty. You would be for taking strong measures with the women yourself—if you knew as much as ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... refugees, some of whom made a poor return for hospitality by endeavoring to use Canada as a base for border raids. Yet in the smaller towns and in the country sympathy was decidedly on the other side, particularly after the "Herald" had ceased its campaign of bluster and after Lincoln's proclamation had brought the moral issue again to the fore. The fact that a large number of Canadians, popularly set at forty thousand, enlisted in the Northern armies, is to be explained in part by the call of adventure and the lure of high bounties, but it must ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton

... "some sort of Reform" (As we all must, God help us! with very wry faces;) And loud as he likes let him bluster and storm About Corporate Rights, so ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... come not here, Bluster in thy proper sphere; Howl along the naked plain; There exert they joyless reign. Triumph o'er the wither'd flow'r, The leafless shrub, the ruin'd bower; But our cottage come not near, Other Springs ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various

... The Foundations of International Polity (HEINEMANN), a series of lectures developing phases of the argument of the Great Illusion, Mr. NORMAN ANGELL incidentally deals with this greengrocery business. Nobody with knowledge of his shrewd and vigorous method will be surprised that without bluster or rhetoric he establishes a very clear verdict of acquittal. One has always the impression that the rationalist in him is deliberately repressing the mystic, lest his case be weakened by a suspicion of sentimentalism. For it must be obvious that not a cold, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various

... thought that the threats used against them in the course of the election meant nothing and were only a kind of bluster to get the Budget passed, they were grievously mistaken. It must have been hard for them to realize that Lloyd George meant all the presumptuous things he said. He was never more in earnest. A cut-and-dried ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot

... of bluster mean? for unaccustomed it was; and Tom knew well that Mary Armsworth had her own way, and managed her father as ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... had well nigh exhausted the slender stock of evidence with which he had started. For a few minutes longer he tried by sheer bluster to conceal the poverty of the case, and last of all he handed one of Cobham's confessions to the Clerk of the Crown to be read in court. It entered into no particulars, which Cobham said their ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... we're not here to be examined by you, as if we were in the witness box," cried Watson, who hoped to carry the situation through with a strong hand. He would try a little bluster. ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins

... this ultra-national bluster, we found him to be a very good sort of man, having nothing of the bear but the skin, and in the test of the quarantine arrangements, the least selfish ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... not telling him of the freedom she had taken, by thinking—It will do as well to tell him of it to-morrow: a few notes, out of such a parcel as he has in his desk locked up from me, can't signify; and he'll only bluster and bully when I do tell him of it; so let him find it out when ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... cease? Will it be believed, that after the action of St. Cas—a mere affair of cutting off a rearguard, as you are aware—they were so unfeeling as to fire away I don't know how much powder at the Invalides at Paris, and brag and bluster over our misfortune? Is there any magnanimity in hallooing and huzzaying because five or six hundred brave fellows have been caught by ten thousand on a seashore, and that fate has overtaken them which is said to befall the hindmost? I had a mind to design an authentic picture of the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... nature Can be given of the matter, Any more than for shapes or for different stature? If you love your dear selves, your religion or queen, Ye ought in good manners to be peaceable men: For nothing disgusts her Like making a bluster: And your making this riot, Is what she could cry at, Since all her concern's for our welfare and quiet. I would ask any man Of them all that maintain Their passive obedience With such mighty vehemence, That damn'd doctrine, I trow! ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... subsequently found that I had been sent for to come back because the road was believed to be dangerous, there was no secure resting-place, and the authorities could not guarantee my safety. Imagine a Chinese in a Western country acting with the bluster that I did, although in good humour; I wonder whether he would be treated with the courtesy that those Chinamen showed ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... your master, and being within an ace of qualifying yourself to be tried for murder,' interposed Ralph. 'I speak plainly, young man, bluster as you will.' ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... warm. So it was with this man when he spoke to himself in his solitude of his purpose of resigning the titled heiress. To the arguments, the entreaties, or the threats of others he would pay no heed. The Countess might bluster about her rank, and he would heed her not at all. He cared nothing for the whole tribe of Lovels. If Lady Anna asked for release, she should be released. But not till she had heard his words. How scalding these words might be, how powerful to prevent the girl from ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... apparent result of August's mischief-making, her brother or someone one evening rode up to the cottage, drunk and inclined to bluster. He was accompanied by a friend, also drunk, who came to see the fun, and was ready to use his influence on the winning side. The teacher went inside, brought out his gun, and slipped two cartridges in. "I've had enough of this," he ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson

... again. It is not we who say this of American citizens, but American citizens who say this of themselves. "Bull is odious. We can't bear Bull. He is haughty, arrogant, a braggart, and a blusterer; and we can't bear brag and bluster in our modest and decorous country. We hate Bull, and if he quarrels with us on a point in which we are in the wrong, we have goods of his in our custody, and we will rob him!" Suppose your London banker saying to you, "Sir, I have always thought your manners disgusting, and ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to bluster, whereupon the lawyer advised him to seek an attorney of his own for consultation. Within a week Sayles knew more about the libel law, and gladly settled out of court to avoid the danger of having to pay much more after ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock

... three or four other hats, including the glossy castor of Joe Willis, the self-elected and would-be champion of the neighbourhood, a well-to-do young butcher of twenty-eight or thereabouts, and a great strapping fellow, with his full allowance of bluster. This is a capital show of gamesters, considering the amount of the prize; so, while they are picking their sticks and drawing their lots, I think I must tell you, as shortly as I can, how the noble old game of back-sword is played; for it is sadly gone out of late, even in ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... go on with something of the hilarity of a wake, rather than the despondency of other funerals. When the wind begins to come out of the northwest of set purpose, and to sweep the ground with low and searching fierceness, very different from the roistering, jolly bluster of early fall, I have put the strawberries under their coverlet of leaves, pruned the grape-vines and laid them under the soil, tied up the tender plants, given the fruit trees a good, solid meal about the roots; and so I turn away, writing Resurgam on the gatepost. And Calvin, aware ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... back a pace or two, and came quite close to the screen. I cowered behind it in alarm. I could see he was terrified. For a minute or two you talked with him, and urged him to confess. Bit by bit, as you went on, he recovered his nerve, and began to bluster. He didn't deny what you said: he saw it was no use: he just sneered ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... holy scare into him," as he put it. The old formula did not work in the case of the lean, long-jawed, bony-chinned man. He was polite, but obdurate, and his quick gray eyes seemed to read to their inner process of bluff and bluster as through tissue paper before a lamp. When they had tried to flash their guns on him, the climax of their play, he had beaten them to it. Two of them were carried back to the big ranchhouse in blankets, ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... to be considerable bluster about this business, and I'll wager something you won't have to stand up before him if you will put on a bold front and make-believe you ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish

... blood! Moreover, he flattered himself that he had not begun to look old! Still, he was sensitive lest Carrissima should fancy he was making an ass of himself, and, as usual at such times, he began to bluster. ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb

... been and there was a different look in his eye. Jed's rough handling had not frightened him, but the Major's cold, incisive tones and the threat of a term in prison had their effect. Nevertheless he could still bluster. ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... him best regarded him as a very strange boy; but that was only because he was a little out of his element. He would have preferred to be among men who did not bluster and swear; but, in spite of them, he had the courage and the fortitude to be true to himself. The little angel still maintained her ascendency ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic

... started. It seemed as if he were about to bluster. His bold, black eyes flashed ominously, and it was plain from his attitude that a flat and harsh refusal was on his lips. But somehow he didn't say it. The brutality of his expression slowly changed as he looked at her. A gentle light stole slowly, and ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... Creek, after dinner, and in a little while the performance begins. There is nothing of the gentle pattering shower about a rain and wind storm on these elevated plains; it comes on with a blow and a bluster that threatens to take one off his feet. The rain is dashed about in the air by the wild, blustering wind, and comes from all directions at the same time. While you are frantically hanging on to your hat, the wind playfully unbuttons your rubber coat and lifts ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... bring strife here from your Earth?" Arkoh's voice cut in, like a knife-blade cleaving through Franklin's bluster. "That is not permissible. Please do not make it necessary that there should be violence here." He stood motionless. But before his gaze Franklin relaxed into an ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings

... looking down at her, his great bearded face all slyly quirked with humor—"Abigail, look here. There are a good many things that you and I can do, and a few that we can't do. I can fish and shoot and ride with any man in the county, and bluster folks into doing what I want them to mostly, if I keep my temper; and as for you—you know what you can do in the way of fine stitching, and punch-making, and house-keeping, and you and I together have got the best, and the handsomest, and the most blessed"—the ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... wait a minute. You don't give me a chance, Sissy. You play faster for me than for anybody else! You do it a-purpose, too, just 'cause you know it's easy to bluster me. ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... fairness, and respect. Such a point of view precludes the use of satire, invective, or harsh epithets. These never carry conviction; in fact, they invariably destroy the effect that an otherwise good argument might produce. Ridicule and bluster may please those who already agree with the speaker, but with these people he should be little concerned; a debater worthy of the name seeks to change the opinions of those who disagree with him. For this reason he is diplomatic, ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... Blue-gum, when the darkness came to the mountain, "I am going to have a good sleep tonight. I'm a match still for old Daddy Wind, in spite of all his noise and bluster. And there are ways of dealing with white-ants, too. I've lived upon this mountain, tree and ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis

... deep tones of the provost, who was the leader, counsellor and friend of the Lansquenets. "A devout servant must not bluster at the holy Christmas-tide; he's permitted to drink a glass, Heaven be praised. Your house is to be greatly honored, Landlord! The recruiting for our most gracious commander, Count von Oberstein, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... here," began the lank man with that sort of persuasiveness which can turn instantly into bluster, "all this is pure foolishness, you know. We're here to stay. We've bought this place, and some other land to go with it, and we expect to stay right here and make a living. It happens that we expect to make a living off of sheep. Now, we don't want to start ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower

... storms is seldom heralded by any striking or unusual phenomenon. The real weather gods are free from brag and bluster; but the sham gods fill the sky with portentous signs and omens. I recall one 5th of March as a day that would have filled the ancient observers with dreadful forebodings. At ten o'clock the sun was attended by four ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs



Words linked to "Bluster" :   overstate, do, behave, boasting, amplify, triumph, puff, hyperbolize, act, crow, gust, self-praise, jactitation, fanfare, confusion, blast, magnify, exaggerate, overdraw, flash, gloat, hyperbolise, ostentation



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