"Boastful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... With laughter wild and gay; They tried to catch that boastful one, But he always got away. So they yelled at him in chorus, Which he minded not a whit; And they pelted him with cocoanuts, Which didn't seem to hit. And then they gave him reasons Which they thought of much avail, To prove how his preposterous ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... was one of the most conspicuous among the men of the 18th of March. He had been journalist, working printer, a clerk at the Hotel de Ville, editor of a newspaper, pamphleteer, and cafe orator in turn, but always noisy and boastful. Andre Gill, the caricaturist, once drew him as an undertaker's dog, dragging a saucepan behind him, and the caricature told Valles' story well enough. In face he was ugly, but energetic in expression, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... that she hadn't made that silly, boastful dare—trying to make someone else do what she was afraid to try herself! She was very fond of Jerry. The red faded from her face; she clenched her hands ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... fellow," he said more mildly, "if I hadn't been a boastful, drunken sot, you wouldn't have heard of 'em—you wouldn't, curse you. I was mad! I had you in my hand like that!" He closed a not over-clean fist under van Heerden's nose. "I saw it all, all, I saw you bullying ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... we must make up our minds to meet with reverses and overcome them. I hope God will at last crown our efforts with success. But the contest must be long and severe, and the whole country has to go through much suffering. It is necessary we should be humbled and taught to be less boastful, less selfish, and more devoted to right and justice to all the world.... ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... illustration. These ideas, these principles generally termed New England ideas, and New England principles, it seems to me, have had much to do with that prosperity which we are now enjoying, and about which we are perhaps apt to be too boastful, but for which it is certain we cannot be too ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... last book," says Conington, [2] "must have centred, at least to us, in the discourse about himself, in which the old bard seems to have indulged in closing this his greatest poem. Even now we may read with sympathy his boastful allusion to his late enrolment among the citizens of the conquering city; we may be touched by the mention he appears to have made of the year of his age in which he wrote, bordering closely on the appointed term of man's life; and we may applaud ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... rolled and the lightning flashed all around his paradise, Hiram lost his boastful courage. He saw visions. Trembling in every limb, he crouched on his throne and imagined he saw angels and demons and fairies dancing round him and jeering at his pretensions and his ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... Women liked that sort of thing. It aroused at once their emulation and their condemnation of each other. He seized the opportunity, but—for some reason, he knew not why—awkwardly and clumsily, with a simulated pathos that was lachrymose, a self-assertion that was boastful, and a dramatic manner that was unreal. Suddenly the girl ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... land, That breathes of poesy from every sod, Indignant throb beneath the heavy foot Of jeering renegade? at best a son His mother blushes for—shall he, bold rebel Entwine its glories in defiant wreath Above his boastful brow, and flaunt it in Her face, rejoicing in her woe? No! No! This priceless gem shall ever deck her crown, And grace its setting with a ray more pure For that, nor flood, nor fire, can flaw its heart. Yes, Canada, thy sons, at least, maintain The ancient honour of their ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... skilful (commander) strikes a decisive blow, and stops. He does not dare (by continuing his operations) to assert and complete his mastery. He will strike the blow, but will be on his guard against being vain or boastful or arrogant in consequence of it. He strikes it as a matter of necessity; he strikes it, but not from ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... strength and weakness, on both sides, in a possible campaign. A popular idea of Edison that dies hard, pictures a breezy, slap-dash, energetic inventor arriving at new results by luck and intuition, making boastful assertions and then winning out by mere chance. The native simplicity of the man, the absence of pose and ceremony, do much to strengthen this notion; but the real truth is that while gifted with unusual imagination, Edison's march to the goal of a new invention is ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... them to be laws of mortal mind, not of God. He showed the need of changing this mind and its abortive laws. He demanded a change of consciousness and evidence, and effected this change through the higher laws of God. The palsied hand moved, despite the boastful sense of physical law and order. Jesus stooped not to human consciousness, nor to the evidence of the senses. He heeded not the taunt, "That withered hand looks very real and feels very real;" but he cut off this vain boasting and destroyed human pride by taking ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... be boastful, I must admit that they are. You know the prince: he has more whims and freaks than Caligula. He has moments when he is capable of throttling an angel from heaven, and gentle moods in which he is ready to do his most deadly ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... other bearing of the matter than that on himself occurred to him. At first, the fresh air had increased the heady effect of the brandy he had drunk; but afterwards his mind grew clearer than it had been since morning. And the clearer it grew, the less final did his boastful self-assurances become, and the firmer his conviction that, when all explanations had been made, there remained something that could not be explained. His hysteria of an hour before had passed; he grew steadily calmer; but the disquieting conviction remained. A deep fear took ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... war against Greece, all his courtiers encouraged his boastful temper, which forgot how unsubstantial his grounds for confidence were. One declared that the Greeks would not endure to hear the news of the declaration of war, and would take to flight at the first rumour of his approach; another, that with such ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... know of it, he gave us a permit for the military trains. It had been the intention of the War Office to pack us under guard with the herds on one of those Government refugee trains. But to live and sleep with the soldiers as we were now to do, to see their marches, to absorb their uninformed and boastful talk, to study their guns, munitions, and equipment, was better than our ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... having entirely supplanted the national spectacle of bull-baiting. Cuba, in fact, seemed to me a great poultry-yard. I heard the crowing of cocks in all quarters, for the game-cock is the noisiest and most boastful of birds, and is perpetually uttering his notes of defiance. In the villages I saw the veterans of the pit, a strong-legged race, with their combs cropped smooth to the head, the feathers plucked from every part of the body except their wings, and the tail docked like that ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... band if we get half a chance!" declared Bud, and it was not said in a bloodthirsty or boastful spirit. It was calm retribution ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... Conwell stands steadily and strongly for good citizenship. But he never talks boastful Americanism. He seldom speaks in so many words of either Americanism or good citizenship, but he constantly and silently keeps the American flag, as the symbol of good citizenship, before his people. An American flag is prominent in his church; an American ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... exceedingly to accomplish this purpose. Undoubtedly this must have made me a very undesirable person to contend with in a fight. Luckily for me, I have never been afflicted with a quarrelsome or vindictive mind. This is not a boastful or frivolous assertion, but is uttered in the spirit of thankfulness to the allwise Creator ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... the highest wisdom, seek the company of such a one, for he has realized the Divine, he lives with the Eternal, he has become one with the Infinite. Believe not him that is impatient, given to anger, boastful, who clings to pleasure and refuses to renounce his selfish gratifications, and who practices not good-will and far-reaching compassion, for such a one hath not wisdom, vain is all his knowledge, and his works and ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... courage and a certain nobility of character. This natural valor, joined to his blind confidence in himself, sometimes precipitated him into almost inextricable situations, into which he threw himself headlong, and from which he never emerged without hard blows—for if he was as adventurous and boastful as a Gascon, he was as obstinate and opinionated ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... Amherstburg; disappointed in his hope of a general insurrection of the Canadians; and, "above all, dismayed at the report of General Brock's resolution to advance against him,"[62] Hull's schemes of conquest vanished; and he who, less than a month before, had landed in Canada boastful of his strength and with threats of extermination, now saw no other alternative than a hasty return to Detroit, under the pretence of concentrating his forces; and after re-opening his communication ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... tables, a young man in a red shirt sat drinking. He was in a boastful mood. Behind his ear stuck a cigarette. The fellow intruded ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... It becomes difficult to write of these personal courtesies, as I find them increasing in the progress of my life from now on. I trust the casual reader will not construe anything in these pages into a boastful desire to spread myself in too large ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... and Indian marauders, who gathered to our camp, were drunk with the most intoxicating of all stimulants—human blood. This flush of victory excited the redskins' vanity to a boastful frenzy. There was wild talk of wiping the pale-face out of existence; and if a weaker man than Grant had been at the head of the forces, not a white in the settlement would have escaped massacre. In spite of the bitterness to which the ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... though not a bit alike in looks and ways. Abe, the elder by a year, was a bit slow and heavy on his pins; given to reading, too, though he seemed to take it up for peace and quietness more than for any show he made of his learning. Bill was smarter altogether and better looking; a bit boastful, after the manner of young chaps. He could read too, but never did much at it, though I've heard that on Saturday nights he was fond of ranting verses—stuff about drink and such like—out of a book of Robert Burns's poetry he'd borrowed ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... women—protect their complexions from the sun with fans and veils, as only the stately gentlewomen do in Germany and the Netherlands. As a people they are stout-hearted, vehement, eager, cruel in war, zealous in attack, little fearing: death; not revengeful, but fickle, presumptuous, rash, boastful, deceitful, very suspicious, especially of strangers, whom they despise. They are full of courteous and hypocritical gestures and words, which they consider to imply good manners, civility, and wisdom. They are well spoken, and very hospitable. They feed well, eating much meat, which-owing ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Cristina tried to prevent the Triton's carrying off her son, since he could learn nothing but bad words and boastful bullying in the old home of the Ferraguts. And trumping up the necessity of seeing her own family, she left the notary alone in Valencia, going with her boy to spend the summer on the coast of Catalunia near ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to look back upon the high spirit and independent temper uniformly displayed by Mr. Adams abroad and at home in all dealings with foreign powers. Never in any instance did he display the least tinge of that rodomontade and boastful extravagance which have given an underbred air to so many of our diplomats, and which inevitably cause the basis for such self-laudation to appear of dubious sufficiency. But he had the happy gift of a native pride which enabled him to support in the most effective ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... scene I should love to dwell, and there end my days. Nor was I alone in these transports of delight. All my fellow-travellers seemed equally affected: and from the native Palmyrenes, of whom there were many among us, the most impassioned and boastful exclamations broke forth. 'What is Rome to this?' they cried: 'Fortune is not constant. Why may not Palmyra be what Rome has been—mistress of the world? Who more fit to rule than the great Zenobia? A few years may see great changes. Who can tell ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... venom of deceit that adder tongue of thine o'erflows, Nor is thy temper over-sweet, as well thine earlier consort knows. Thou'rt truly worthy of thy fame for boastful speech and lust of power, And well dost thou deserve thy name— the Brachail of Rathcroghan's tower.[45] Thy words are fair and soft, O queen! but still I crave one further proof— Give me the scarf of silken sheen, give me the speckled satin woof, Give from thy cloak's empurpled ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... you be afraid? He might mean you to go to the bottom, you know. Would you mind going to the bottom with him looking at you? I do not think I should mind it myself. But I must take care lest I be boastful ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... Beaumont, the distress of the recent forced retreat on Sedan—all were forgotten. Now that they were about to fight at last, was not victory certain? He had learned nothing and forgotten nothing; his blustering, boastful contempt of the enemy, his entire ignorance of the new arts and appliances of war, his rooted conviction that an old soldier of Africa, Italy, and the Crimea could by no possibility be beaten, had suffered no change. It was really ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... us leave these boastful courages. Theodorus answered Lysimachus, who threatened to kill him, "Thou wilt do a brave feat," said he, "to attain the force of a cantharides." The majority of philosophers are observed to have either purposely anticipated, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... speaking the submarine boy realized that this must have had a boastful sound. So ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... accord—unless he was a dealer. And then usually he was not really a true-born Briton. He waits to see what is being hung. He has these things now because he thinks they are right, not because they are beautiful, just as he used to have the Stag at Bay and the Boastful Hound. It is Leighton now; it was Landseer then. Really I believe that very soon the ladies' papers will devote a column to pictures. Something in this style. 'Smart people are taking down their Rossetti's Annunciations now, and are hanging Gambler Bolton's new Hippopotamus ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... was to his table companions, as sympathizers with Reuchlin and other innovators, well as he doubtless remembered their scornful attacks upon his Latin—he was a man to maintain his place. So, with boastful self-conceit, allowing no one else an opportunity to speak, he at once began to complain of the fatigues of the journey and to mention, with tiresome detail, the eminent persons whom he had met and who ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of Gloucester, delighting in his work in youth, quitting it only when compelled by crooked age, and then anxious to train up worthy successors in the art and mystery of managing a well-appointed household. Aman evidently who knew his work in every detail, and did it all with pride; not boastful, though upholding his office against rebellious cooks[3], putting them down with imperial dignity, "we may allow and disallow; our office is the chief!" Asimple-minded religious man too,—as the close of his Treatise shows,—and ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... pace with the expanding mind. A French boy is taught the glory of Moliere as well as that of Turenne; a German boy is taught his own great national philosophy before he learns the philosophy of antiquity. The result is that, though French patriotism is often crazy and boastful, though German patriotism is often isolated and pedantic, they are neither of them merely dull, common, and brutal, as is so often the strange fate of the nation of Bacon and Locke. It is natural enough, and even righteous enough, under the circumstances. ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... back to the rectory, he talked with a feverish volubility and excitement. Avoiding the slightest reference to the subject discussed at our strange and stormy interview, he returned, with tenfold confidence in himself, to his old boastful assertion of the great things he was going to do as a painter. The mission which called him to reconcile Humanity with Nature; the superb scale on which he proposed to interpret sympathetic scenery for the benefit of suffering mankind; the prime necessity of understanding ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... day after Law's entry into Paris, and the first time for more than two long years that he found himself alone with the Lady Catharine Knollys. His eagerness might have excused his impetuous and boastful speech. ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... friends he has made here at Yale are a lot of thin-blooded, white-livered creatures. Look at them! There is Bruce Browning, once called 'King of the Sophomores,' but cowed and bested by Merriwell, to be afterward dropped a class. There is Jack Diamond, a boastful Southerner. He forced Merriwell to fight, but fawned about Merriwell's feet like ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... fate. But who should come to rescue her but a certain young hero, Perseus, who was hastening homeward after a perilous adventure with the snaky-haired Gorgons. Filled with pity at the story of Andromeda, he waited for the dragon, met and slew him, and set the maiden free. As for the boastful queen, the Gods forgave her, and at her death she was set among the stars. That story ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... rivals. In size, in richness of decoration, in boldness of outline, and in aerial lightness it is unequalled. Above all, it still contains six windows of magnificent stained glass. Even now it seems to justify its boastful inscription: ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... difficult to say," I answered. "There is a certain kind of cad who is much given to boastful rhodomontade concerning his conquests. We all know him and can generally spot him at first sight, but I must say that Reuben Hornby did not strike me as that kind of man at all. Then it is clear that the proper course for Walter to have adopted, if he ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... possessed of small energy and strength, without knowledge and given to avarice and folly and sinful practices men will accept with joy the gifts made by wicked people with words of contempt. And, O son of Kunti, the kings of the earth, with hearts wedded to sin without knowledge and always boastful of their wisdom, will challenge one another from desire of taking one another's life. And the Kshatriyas also towards the end of such a period will become the thorns of the earth. And filled with avarice and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... me of the worst excesses of my brother in Yorkshire. Examining my own life, I had often come to the conclusion that adventures did not exist outside books. But the boys shook this comforting theory with their boastful prophecies, and I thought once more that perhaps it was my misfortune that they did not happen to me. I began to fear that I would ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... Andersonville in June, July, and August; that he could see three thousand men die each month in the most horrible manner, without lifting a finger in any way to assist them; that he could call attention in a self-boastful way to the fact that "I am killing off more Yankees than twenty regiments in Lee's Army," and that he could respond to the suggestions of the horror-struck visiting Inspector that the prisoners be given at least more room, with ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... now, only obliged to keep quiet and give up my grand walking excursions, which poor Robert used to be so boastful of. If he is vain about anything in the world, it is about my improved health, and I used to say to him, 'But you needn't talk so much to people of how your wife walked here with you and there with you, as if a wife with ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... no doubt, will. But right observation and reflection in regard to children will make any one modest and fearful on the subject of their right government, rather than bold and boastful. Those who, like you, think themselves so well qualified to manage children, usually make ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... after civilly saluting me, he stirred almost fiercely, eyeing as he did so the blazing coals with a half-abstracted and sullen, cowed, disquieted look altogether unusual with him. At least wherever I had before seen him, he had been as loquacious and boastful as a Gascon. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... of opinion that the said petition ought to be dismissed." Moreover, the sympathy which Franklin met with from some of the leading members of the opposition, tended still further to embitter the passions which had been roused in the mind of the philosopher. That boastful patriot himself—the great Earl of Chatham—hastened to express his sympathy with Franklin, and his detestation of the treatment he had received from Wedderburne and the government. It is due to the character of Chatham, however, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... It does not seem to have been the "vanity" of Hakem which induced him to introduce a new religion. The curious point in the new faith is that Hamza, the son of Ali, the real founder of the Unitarian religion, (such is its boastful title,) was content to take a secondary part. While Hakem was God, the one Supreme, the Imam Hamza was his Intelligence. It was not in his "divine character" that Hakem "hated the Jews and Christians," but in that of a Mahometan bigot, which he displayed in the earlier years of his reign. His barbarous ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... in all the phases of Jewish life. With some it was a religion of ceremony,—of prayers and fastings, tithes and boastful alms, fringes and phylacteries. But Joseph and Mary belonged to the simpler folk, who, while they reverenced the scribes as teachers, knew not enough of their subtlety to have substituted barren rites for sincere ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... to specify depravity, greedy covetousness, maliciousness. Oozing out of every pore there are envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity. Men are whisperers, backbiters, God-haters, and self-lovers, in that they are insolent, haughty, boastful. They are inventors of evil things, without understanding, breakers of faith, without natural ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... and made another lightly-confident, almost-boastful remark, to the effect that he did not think any one was ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... and those two other cronies of Nick's were holding their breath with dismay. They had never expected to see the time when any one could knock their boastful leader out in this easy fashion. What previous opinions they had entertained concerning Hugh Morgan's prowess must ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... island in the sea. When the ship's library over the blue horizon dwindles at last in its cloud of smoke and he is left without a shred of printed paper by him, the supreme opportunity of education will come to him. He will learn how vital and beautiful, or boastful and empty, his education is. If it is true education, the first step he takes he will find a use for it. The first bird that floats from its tree-top shall be a message from London straight to his soul. If he has truly known them, the spirits of all his ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... eyes Rale was an incendiary, setting on a horde of bloody savages to pillage and murder. While they thought him a devil, he passed in Canada for a martyred saint. He was neither the one nor the other, but a man with the qualities and faults of a man,—fearless, resolute, enduring; boastful, sarcastic, often bitter and irritating; a vehement partisan; apt to see things, not as they were, but as he wished them to be; given to inaccuracy and exaggeration, yet no doubt sincere in opinions and genuine in zeal; hating the English more than he loved the Indians; calling himself their friend, ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... eyes now; there was a ferocious gleam. It died away quickly, however; the squared shoulders drooped, and there was a deprecating shrug. "Pardon, signore; this is far away from the matter of boots. I grow boastful; I am an old man and should know better. But does the signore return to Italy in ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... resources of the University is not to check the natural history department, but to stimulate all the others? not that the zoological school grows too fast, but that the others do not grow fast enough? This sounds invidious and perhaps somewhat boastful; but it is you and not I who have instituted the comparison. It strikes me you have not hit upon the best remedy for this want of balance. If symmetry is to be obtained by cutting down the most vigorous growth, it seems to me it would be better to ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... thus: 'Is it a small matter that thou hast taken away my husband? and wouldst thou take away my son's dudaim also?' And Rachel said, 'See, Jacob shall be thine to-night for thy son's dudaim.' But Leah insisted, 'Jacob is mine, and I am the wife of his youth,' whereupon Rachel, 'Be not boastful and overweening. To me he was betrothed first, and for my sake he served our father fourteen years. Thou art not his wife, thou wast taken to him by cunning instead of me, for our father deceived me, and put me out of the way the night of thy nuptials, so that Jacob could not see me. Nevertheless, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... the other day an article by my colleague "Arcturus" which I thought was a little boastful. It referred to a bull-dog. Now I cannot tell what there is about a bull-dog that makes people haughty, but it is certain that I have never known a case in which the companionship of that animal has not had this effect. The man ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... African;—he has the Carib's large and melancholy eye, better adapted to express the emotions. ... Rarely can you discover in him the sombre fury of the African, rarely a surly and savage mien: he is brave, chatty, boastful. His skin has not the same tint as his father's,—it has become more satiny; his hair remains woolly, but it is a finer wool;... all his outlines are more rounded;—one may perceive that the cellular tissue predominates, as in cultivated plants, of which the ligneous and savage fibre ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... to beggary, as though I had been a prince? why have taught me nothing whereby I could now at least earn my daily bread? Why did you let me lavish in my youth the money which, frugally husbanded, might now have supported us in comfort? Why did you do all this—you who were so boastful of your worldly wisdom?" For a moment, so great was her mental anguish, that she almost looked her age—not that the picture had any terrors for herself, but upon her son's account alone. She may not have been penitent, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... subsequent revelations and the present sequel those words would have been forgotten, and were at the time attributed by some to mere boastful exuberance. ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... the boy took his stand once more at the knothole. Boastful as ever, after an interval, came Pete. Not only to-day, but to-morrow and the next day and through all the days to come, he would have to give up shooting sparrows because ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... her hand! And so I raved, and cast in hope A superstitious horoscope! And still, though something in her face Portended 'No!' with such a grace It burthen'd me with thankfulness, Nothing was credible but 'Yes.' Therefore, through time's close pressure bold, I praised myself, and boastful told My deeds at Acre; strain'd the chance I had of honour and advance In war to come; and would not see Sad silence meant, 'What's this to me?' When half my precious hour was gone, She rose to meet a Mr. Vaughan; And, as the image of the moon Breaks up, within some still lagoon That ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... the rearmost file when one boastful ruffian, egged on by the rest, suddenly ran out in front of the crowd and whipping a long, murderous-looking knife from his sash, hurled it with deadly aim at him. Luckily for the master, he caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, and wheeled round just in time to ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... she has already spoken frankly of her own appetit sensuel, and she proceeds to show this in the fashion which makes the fifteenth century and the early sixteenth a sort of trough of animalism between the altitudes of Mediaeval and Renaissance passion. Her lover turns out to be an utter cad, boastful, blabbing, and almost cowardly (he tells her in the usual stolen church interview, Je crains merveilleusement monsieur votre mari). But it makes not the slightest difference; nor does the at last awakened wrath of an at last not merely threatened ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... protect our citizens from proper treatment in foreign lands. We continue steadily to insist on the application of the Monroe Doctrine to the Western Hemisphere. Unless our attitude in these and all similar matters is to be a mere boastful sham we can not afford to abandon our naval programme. Our voice is now potent for peace, and is so potent because we are not afraid of war. But our protestations upon behalf of peace would neither receive nor deserve the slightest ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... "Wicked and boastful fool, who seeks any such thing from you? Do you think that your good looks win you the love of the very flies in the air? Nay, if you were presumptuous enough to address yourself to me, I would show you that I love, and seek to love, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... themselves, and affect to undervalue all other nations, they leave us, luckily, trap-doors and back-doors open, by which we strangers, less favoured by nature, may arrive at a share of their advantages. And thus they are in some respects like a boastful landlord, who exalts the value and flavour of his six-years-old mutton, while he is delighted to dispense a share of it to all the company. In short, you, whose proud family, and I, whose hard fate, made us soldiers of ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... himself close to the ground, concealed by the ashes around him, so like they were in color to his dingy robe, and the cap that covered his matted grizzled hair. Occasionally he chuckled to himself at the thought of the discomfiture which lay in store for Curling Smoke, that boastful giant, whom he believed to be lying in wait for the Prince near to the Wizard's Cave. Such confidence had the Ash Goblin in his snare that never for an instant did he believe that the Prince could escape it and come within reach of ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... ancestors was an empty name; but even a name was now sufficient for the general disaffection to rally round. A pamphlet which was at the time disseminated amongst the people openly called him the heir of Holland; and his engraved portrait, which was publicly exhibited, bore the boastful inscription:— ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... an evil, a monstrous personality which leered out of Logan Black's diary. Boastful of his own iniquity, swaggering in his wickedness, fatuous with self-love, he recounted his deeds with gusto and with particularity. They did not read a quarter of this terrible autobiography at the time, but they read enough to see the man in the process of building up a criminal organization ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... since the world has grown so wise and made such progress in the art of running rapidly downhill, is even the aristocratic British peer quite easy in his mind regarding his fair peeress? Can he leave her to her own devices with safety? Are there not men, boastful too of their "blue blood," who are perhaps ready to stoop to the thief's trick of entering his house during his absence by means of private keys, and stealing away his wife's affections?—and is not she, though a mother of three or four children, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... pretty sure to be deep—not with water but with sand. Whoever saw water in the channel, or "wash," of the Mohave? Perhaps the oldest settler may have seen it; at any rate he will so claim, for the oldest settler is always boastful; indeed, fairy-story telling is his inherent, bounden right. To make good his assertion he points to the bridge, and certainly the bridge is there; but as for the river, it may be on hand one day—perhaps an hour or so—in ten, ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... preposterously boastful and hollow; but he was manfully in earnest; every word came ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... very short sack coat; that his waistcoat was of a combustible plaid pattern with gaiters to match; that he had taken his fingers many times to the jeweler, but not once to the manicure; that he was beautifully jingled and alcoholically boastful of his native land and that—a crowning touch—he wore flaring from an upper pocket of his coat a silk handkerchief woven in the design and colors of his country's flag. But, praises be, it was not our flag that he wore ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Montrevel listened to Edouard's slightly boastful account of his prowess. Then she looked at him with that deep and holy sorrow of mothers to whom fame is no compensation for the blood it sheds. Oh! ungrateful indeed is the child who has seen that look bent upon him and does not ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... not so noisy as the Russians round their camp-fires, these Turks were by no means taciturn. There was a touch, now and then, of dry humour in the remarks of some, and a sedate chuckle occasionally. Among them stood Eskiwin and his resuscitated friend Ali Bobo. The latter, although not naturally boastful, had been so nettled by a big comrade underrating his courage and muscular power, in regard to which latter he, Bobo, was rather vain, that he vowed he would prove both by going to the front and bringing in, single-handed, ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... element is a fear of the ultimate consequences of a Union reconstructed without Slavery; for then Mr. Bright may argue in favor of universal suffrage, uninterrupted by allusions to the arrogance and coarseness, the boastful and aggressive spirit belonging to a pro-slavery America. "Why do you desire the dissolution of the Union?" asked one Englishman of another. "Oh, I have no reason, except that the Americans are so bounceable I want to see them humbled." But we were the weakest when Slavery made ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... reviewed them in "The Westminster Review" for July, 1835, and, with his usual earnestness and generosity, applied all his powers to making a just estimate of the new aspirant. To have reprinted this among his miscellaneous writings might have seemed rather boastful, as claiming credit for the first full recognition of a great poet: still it is a very remarkable review; and one would hope it will not be omitted if there is to be any further collection of his casual productions. I shall quote two passages ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... women from their example. We hear from different sources that American women will attempt, to some extent, to be registered this year as voters, and we hope so brave an example will become a contagion. A boastful warrior once demanded of his foe, "Deliver up your arms." The answer was, "Come, if you dare, and take them!" Let women become brave enough to take their rights, and there will not be much resistance. According to their faith and their ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... which I have delivered, and by the dangers too of which I have encountered great numbers, by reason of the most bitter hatred which all impious men bear me, have at least, (not to seem to say anything too boastful,) conducted myself so as to be no injury to the republic. And as this is the case, do you think that I ought to have no consideration ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... listening to his own recorded voice, rubbed the sunstone on his left finger with the heel of his right palm and watched it brighten. There was, he noticed, a boastful ring to his voice—not the suave, unemphatic tone considered proper on a message-tape. Well, if anybody wondered why, when they played that tape off six months from now in Johannesburg on Terra, they could look in the cargo holds of the ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... Milan, or that Last Supper which is now but a shadow on the wall of S. Maria delle Grazie. And above all, we may see how the true splendour of Titian exposes the ostentation of Rubens, as the sun will make even the greatest fire look dingy and boastful. Gradually Vandyck, shy and of a quiet, serene spirit, becomes aware of this, and, led by the immeasurable glory of the Venetians, slowly escapes from that "Flemish manner" to be master of himself; so that, after he has painted in the manner of Titian at Palermo, he returns to ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... peoples of the earth, with their varied productions, to the full and free enjoyment of their habits at home, and in return exhibit to them the results of our growth and industry. In no boastful spirit this new and marvelous city, which has sprung into existence within the life of men who hear me, has, with the aid of the general government and the states that comprise it, built these great palaces, adorned these lately waste places and brought into ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... in a boastful tone, "do you know that this old fellow lying here, won't get the drink out of the veins of that dainty creature he was so thirsty for? No! nor ever cheat any sweet little Red Riding Hood into thinking ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... Legislative, from the individual Patriot, flame monitory on all walls. Flags of Danger to Fatherland wave at the Hotel-de-Ville; on the Pont Neuf—over the prostrate Statues of Kings. There is universal enlisting, urging to enlist; there is tearful-boastful leave-taking; irregular marching on the Great North-Eastern Road. Marseillese sing their wild To Arms, in chorus; which now all men, all women and children have learnt, and sing chorally, in Theatres, Boulevards, Streets; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... "I am sure I never wish to hear the thing mentioned again. I have taken a lot of pains to become a good shot, and it seems that I have a natural aptitude that way. There is nothing more to feel boastful about than if nature had made me a giant, and I had thereby been able to thrash a man of ordinary strength. I am very glad that I have put it out of Marshall's power to bully other men, and, as he had several times done, to force them ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... Ha-ha. For some for Tamdka contend, and some for the fair, bearded stranger, And the betting runs high to the end, with the skins of the bison and beaver. A wife of tall Wazi-kut —the mother of boastful Tamdka— Brought her handsomest robe from the tee, with a vaunting and loud proclamation: She would stake her last robe on her son who, she boasted, was fleet as the Cbri [80] And the tall, tawny chieftain looked on, approving the boast of the ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... together in the empty coffee-room; compared notes; drank a pint of port apiece; and under its influence became boastful. Insensibly the adventure of the beaver hat came to wear the aspect of a dashing practical joke. It encouraged us to exchange confidences of earlier deeds of derring-do, of bird-nesting, of rook-shooting, of angling for trout, of encounters with poachers. I remember crossing my knees, holding ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the peaceful charms of thy presence; That which the silent does not, never the boastful can do. Vigor in man I expect, the law in its honors maintaining, But, through the graces alone, woman e'er rules or should rule. Many, indeed, have ruled through the might of the spirit and action, But then thou noblest of crowns, they were ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... for defense from the militia of the country, and but poorly armed and equipped?" "Providence!" was the reply; nothing less than Providence could have baffled and beaten such a powerful foe, bent on conquest and spoliation for a wicked purpose, with a wicked spirit, and in a wicked cause. England's boastful pride and intolerant and cruel insolence toward her American kindred was humbled at last. The God of battle had once again in time punished a strong nation for its stubborn crimes, and given victory to the oppressed. Providence was with Jackson ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... Browning and Mr. Kenyon had a nice little visit, talking about books and art. And Mr. Kenyon told Mr. Browning that Miss Elizabeth Barrett, the poetess, was a cousin of his—he was a bit boastful ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... page. The gathering broke up in quick confusion on finding him a silent auditor. When they were gone he reached for the newspaper. A record-breaking launching was to be achieved at Hilmer's shipyard within the week. The article ended with a boastful fling from Hilmer to the effect that his plant was running to full capacity in spite of strikes and lockouts. Fred threw the paper to the floor. A chill enveloped him. He had caught only the merest fragments of conversation which had fallen from the lips of the ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... eye over the Natchez players practicing on the field. Bo Stranathan had out his strongest team. They were not a prepossessing nine. They wore soiled uniforms that did not match in cut or color. But they pranced and swaggered and strutted! They were boastful and boisterous. It was a trial for any Madden's Hill ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... forms the common mind, Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined. 150 Boastful and rough, your first son is a squire; The next a tradesman, meek, and much a liar; Tom struts a soldier, open, bold, and brave; Will sneaks a scrivener, an exceeding knave: Is he a Churchman? then he's fond of power: A Quaker? sly: A Presbyterian? sour: A smart free-thinker? ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... people,—the new Democratic-Republican societies, in imitation of the French Jacobin clubs, being potent disseminators of democratic doctrine and sympathy with the French uprising against despotism. The forbearance of Washington, in suffering the irascible and boastful Genet to ride rough-shod over his own cabinet, was extraordinary. In ordinary times the man would have been summarily expelled from the country. At last his insults could no longer be endured and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... naturally and without any toilsome effort. We shall then find that the secret of co-operation is to have faith in ourselves because we first have faith in God; and we shall discover that this Divine self-confidence is something very different from a boastful egotism which assumes a personal superiority over others. It is simply the assurance of a man who knows that he is working in accordance with a law of nature. He does not claim as a personal achievement what the Law does FOR him: but on the other hand he does not trouble himself ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... North appeer'd From skirt to skirt a fierie Region, stretcht 80 In battailous aspect, and neerer view Bristl'd with upright beams innumerable Of rigid Spears, and Helmets throng'd, and Shields Various, with boastful Argument portraid, The banded Powers of Satan hasting on With furious expedition; for they weend That self same day by fight, or by surprize To win the Mount of God, and on his Throne To set the envier of his State, the proud Aspirer, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... conceited, boastful old thing, and even misfortune could not humble her. I was so annoyed that I felt coldly even toward Antonia and listened unsympathetically when she told me ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... declaring his musical powers in his boastful way. If he chose he could rip out the hearts of a dead Municipal Council with a violin, and could set a hospital for paralytics a-dancing. He would have fiddled the children of Hamelin away from the Pied Piper. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... of humility is in accord with Eskimo ethics. They say that if they adopt a boastful air and fail to give as many presents as the other n['ae]skut they will be ashamed. So they safeguard ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... to appear boastful; but I apprehend the fact to be not unlike what you suggest," the voice replied, with a subdued gusto. "It would depend upon our hypothetical person's discretion, and his views as to the claims of the august Being who has so long controlled ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... amount of crop on a given space is carried on among the slaves, who not unfrequently "chafe" each other upon the superior wealth and talent of their masters. It is a well-known fact, that John C. Calhoun's slaves, in addition to being extremely fond of him, were proud and boastful of ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... satellites of the Tuileries" were well acquainted with him and trembled at the sight of him; and asserted that one half of them must be guillotined, and the other half transported, the next time there was "a flare-up." His violent political creed found food in boastful, bragging talk of this sort; he displayed all the partiality for a lark and a rumpus which prompts a Parisian shopkeeper to take down his shutters on a day of barricade-fighting to get a good view of the corpses of the slain. ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... than the stable-lot Between the house and highway fence That bounds the home his father rents. His playmates mostly are the ducks And chickens, and the boy that "shucks Corn by the shock," and talks of town, And whether eggs are "up" or "down," And prophesies in boastful tone Of "owning horses of his own," And "being his own man," and "when He gets to be, what he'll do then."— Takes out his jack-knife dreamily And makes the Folk-Child two or three Crude corn-stalk figures,—a wee span Of ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... shivered as fearsomely over it as Robert did. Other tales followed; Uncle Jesse told how his vessel had been run down by a steamer, how he had been boarded by Malay pirates, how his ship had caught fire, how he had helped a political prisoner escape from a South American republic. He never said a boastful word, but it was impossible to help seeing what a hero the man had been—brave, true, resourceful, unselfish, skilful. He sat there in his poor little room and made those things live again for us. By a lift of the eyebrow, a twist ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to HAVE to whistle for us to get out of their way. If I may do so, without appearing boastful, I think I can honestly say that our one small boat, during that week, caused more annoyance and delay and aggravation to the steam launches that we came across than all the other craft on the ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... ornament. They shaved the beard on the chin; that on the upper lip was suffered to remain, and grow to an extraordinary length, to favor the martial appearance, in which they placed their glory. They were in their natural temper not unlike the Gauls, impatient, fiery, inconstant, ostentatious, boastful, fond of novelty,—and like all barbarians, fierce, treacherous, and cruel. Their arms were short javelins, small shields of a slight texture, and great cutting swords with a blunt point, after ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... him. Human beings have, since the beginning of the world, stoned their prophets. Nevertheless, he has liberated a force that no gauge made by man can measure. He has been boastful, if you like, and has said that with a teacupful of water he would drive a steamship across the Atlantic. I have been silent, working away with my eye on him, and he has been working away with ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... sang: "Ten acres of land, and a cow-house with three stalls and a stall for the new calf, and a pigsty, and a house for my bones and a barn for my hay and straw, and a loft for my hens: why should men pray for more?" She ambled to Moriah, diverting passers-by with boastful tales of Joseph, and loosened her imaginings ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... night returning, every labour sped, He sits him down the monarch of a shed; Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys His children's looks, that brighten at the blaze; While his lov'd partner, boastful of her hoard, 195 Displays her cleanly platter on the board: And haply too some pilgrim, thither led, With many a tale ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... element in Hunt's unmoral nature that this Maggie, through whom he was trying to symbolize so much, he knew to be a petty larcenist: shoplifting and matters of similar consequence. She had been cynically frank about this to him; casual, almost boastful. Her possessing a bent toward such activities was hardly to be wondered at, with her having Old Jimmie as her father, and the Duchess as a landlady, and having for acquaintances such gentlemen as Barney Palmer and ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... mild and on the other as too stringent. Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone both opposed it; the latter because the change was wanted by English Catholics rather than by the Vatican. He condemned the vanity and boastful spirit of the papal documents, but contended that his fellow Catholic countrymen should not suffer for that. The difficulty of applying it to Ireland, where the system objected to already existed, was pointed out. However the preliminary motion was passed ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook |
