"Debonair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Frank was evidently thinking deeply, and Carroll was following some weary round of conjecture for the thousandth time when she stopped at her number. Frank looked at it and then at her, startled out of his usual debonair manner for once. ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... eminent art connoisseur, and a smattering of men-about-town. Seated between the lawyer and one of the racing-men, Banneker, as the dinner progressed, found himself watching Delavan Eyre, opposite, who was drinking with sustained intensity, but without apparent effect upon his debonair bearing. Banneker thought to read a haunting fear in his eyes, and was cogitating upon what it might portend, when his attention was distracted by Ely Ives, who had been requested (as he announced) to exhibit ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... occupied one-half of the small tent next the Miners' Retreat, and the youthful operator instantly recognized his debonair visitor. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... very ferociously at the new-comers, at Griffo of the Claw, that had lost him one toss already, and at the woman who rode beside him so gay and debonair in her mannish habit—the woman he had slighted, the woman who had, as he guessed, baffled his plans once, and had now come, as he might be very sure, to baffle them again. It was plain to him that he had lost the day. It needed no great tactician, no strategist, to perceive ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and fair, To you will come suave debonair, Fortune robed in shining dress, Bearing ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... no: and what a rare tiring-bower the Jew's Kitchen makes! Come, Joan, be debonair and talk to me, for I am out ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... hand, the bold eye, the ready tongue; kneel to her, and she will scorn and contemn you. What woman, think you, would prefer the solemn, stern-eyed purity of a Sir Galahad (though he be the king of men) to the quick-witted gayety of a debonair Lothario (though he be but the shadow of a man)? Out upon thee, pale-faced student! Thy tongue hath not the trick, nor thy mind the nimbleness for the winning of a fair and lovely lady. Thou'rt well enough in want ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... turned up at Downend Terrace gay and debonair as if he had not a single trouble in the world. His evening dress was of the smartest and he had a rose in his buttonhole. From his cab he took a square brown paper parcel, which he deposited in David's ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... roadside, while our friends marched away to Mouquet Farm, or Beaumont Hamel, or Hohenzollern Redoubt, or some other point of the changing front that the Hun was about to lose. And as they left, the men were mostly silent; though they looked debonair enough with their swinging quickstep and easy carriage, and their frying-pan hats set at all sorts of rakish angles. Their officers would nod, glance enviously at the apple-trees and tents in our ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... for. He came, spruce and debonair once more, having exploited the resources of Port Royal so to render himself. He was a trifle dazzled by the honour proposed to him, when Lord Willoughby made it known. It was so far beyond anything that he had dreamed, and he was assailed by doubts ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... of which all the doors are open to every man, and whose fair inmates are all alike impressionable to the charm of intrigue or to the chink of gold. But, in simple earnest and reality, I have heard the wildest and most debonair amongst you—once convinced of the honour and innocence looking from a woman's eyes—stand up in defence of these when libelled in her absence, with a zeal and a stanchness that ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... multi-millionaire's well-known eccentricities, are suspecting him of living in quiet retirement somewhere, laughing in his sleeve at the tempest in the teapot that he has created; and that long before the two years are up, he will be back on Chicago's streets, debonair and smiling as ever. The fact that so little can be found in regard to the South American exploring expedition might give color to this suspicion; but where on this terrestrial ball could Mr. Stanley G. Fulton find a place ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... as the bride-elect of the debonair Aristide Pujol it was impossible to imagine. However, it was none of my business. I raised my ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... Arthur Mifflin, an exemplary young man off the stage, had been warmly applauded for a series of actions which, performed anywhere except in the theater, would certainly have debarred him from remaining a member of the Strollers' or any other club. In faultless evening dress, with a debonair smile on his face, he had broken open a safe, stolen bonds and jewelry to a large amount, and escaped without a blush of shame via the window. He had foiled a detective through four acts, and held up a band of pursuers with a revolver. A large ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... present to the ordinary eye of man anything especially rare, exquisite, unfamiliar, or even so distinguished as to be obsolete. He was about twenty-two, but not one of those book-read sportsmen of that age, confident in clothes and manner, easy travellers and debonair; that is to say, Noble was not of the worldly type twenty-two. True, he had graduated from the High-school before entering his father's Real Estate and Insurance office, but his geographical experiences (in particular) had ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... he came into the little drawing-room, where Hermione was waiting to receive him, he looked young and debonair, though still pale from ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... compel them to retire; yet it was eastward that we were travelling now. I at once spurred alongside Raffles, as he rode, bronzed and bearded, with warworn wide-awake over eyes grown keen as a hawk's, and a cutty-pipe sticking straight out from his front teeth. I can see him now, so gaunt and grim and debonair, yet already with much of the nonsense gone out of him, though I thought he ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... —the one which Sue once laughed at; but it has lost its silky curl and stands straight out now from the corners of his mouth, its points reaching almost to the line of his ears. There is, too, beneath it a small imperial, giving to his face the debonair look of a cavalier, and which accentuates more than any other one thing his Southern birth and training. As you follow the subtle outlines of his body you find too, that he is better proportioned than he was in his early manhood; thinner around the waist, broader across the shoulders; ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... charmed, Miss Forrest. Never even in the palmiest days of Washington society have I seen more elegant and becoming a toilet, and as for your singing,—it was simply divine." The doctor looked, as well as spoke, his well-turned phrases. He was gallant, debonair, dignified, impressive,—"a well-preserved fellow for forty-five," as he was wont to say of himself. He anxiously inquired for her health, deplored the state of anxiety and excitement in which they were compelled to live, thanked heaven that there were some consolations ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... green, old and faded, a black jacket rusty, with the sleeves patched, and a scarlet sash tied loosely about the waist. On the back of her cropped yellow curls was a velveteen cap, rakishly tipped, and she stood debonair beneath the folds of the curtain with ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... for an age unaccustomed to the perpetual veracity of our newspapers. Count Wala, who was also an abbot, had the misfortune to speak of Judith of Bavaria as "the adulterous woman," and when her husband, Louis le Debonair, came back to the throne after the conspiracy of his sons, the lady naturally wanted Wala killed; but Louis compromised by throwing him into the rock of Chillon. This is what Wala's friends say: others say that he was one of the conspirators against Louis. At any rate, he was the first great captive ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... serious without being depressed. Such, too, are the men whom they lead with such skill and devotion. Under the frightful hammer-blows of circumstance, the national characters seem to have been reversed. It is our British soldier who has become debonair, light-hearted and reckless, while the Frenchman has developed a solemn stolidity and dour patience which was once all our own. During a long day in the French trenches, I have never once heard the sound of music or laughter, nor have I once ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... reckoned without Charles. For all his urbane, good-tempered, debonair ways, there was an ugly cynical streak in his nature, manifested now in the manner in which he dealt with this situation. Himself he led his boldly handsome favourite by the hand into his wife's presence, before the whole Court assembled, and himself presented her to Catherine, what time ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... Nicolette my sweet friend would not grace if it were hers? Were she Empress of Constantinople or of Germany, were she Queen of France or of England, there were but little in it, so noble is she and gracious and debonair and endued ...
— Aucassin and Nicolette - translated from the Old French • Anonymous
... and try this temper, sirs, Mood it and brood it in your breast; Or if ye ween, for worldly stirs, That man does right to mar his rest, Let me be deft, and debonair, I am ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... been in France a man of the nobility—a man in whose veins flowed the blood of three kings—a man handsome of face, graceful of figure, debonair—a man who had sinned much, and who had paid for that sinning only in the sufferings of others; and they ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... are right," said the cure. "But, que voulez-vous? the saints are debonair, and have been flesh themselves, and know man's frailty and absurdity. 'Tis the Bishop ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... virtues," said Burke, "are almost too costly for humanity." Who wishes to be severe? Who wishes to resist the eminent and polite, in behalf of the poor and low and impolite? and who that dares do it can keep his temper sweet, his frolic spirits? The high virtues are not debonair, but have their redress in being illustrious at last. What forests of laurel we bring, and the tears of mankind, to those who stood firm against the opinion of their contemporaries! The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... spread at once and she expired in agony; Longfellow was himself badly burned in his effort to extinguish the flames and always carried the scars. I did not see him in those years but have heard that his mood changed, he was no longer careful and debonair but often melancholy and dishevelled. Yet the sweetness of his spirit persisted to the end. The critics of late have been busy with Longfellow. His gift was inferior, they say, and his sentiment shallow. Let them carp as they will, he holds, as few poets have done, the hearts of men and women; ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... the fact, would have guessed that he had the slightest personal interest in the affair. There was danger of his even over-doing the attitude of indifference. But he escaped it, and was exactly as smiling, debonair and courtly as if he were in his box at the theatre watching the development of some quite other dramatic performance. He has all the courage of his race, and his long training has steeled ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... Rheims was chosen as the seat of an episcopal primacy, and it was in the church built by St. Nicaise, or Nicasius, in 401, that Clovis was baptized and crowned in 496. This ancient building, doubtless of simple Roman proportions, was rebuilt in the reign of Louis the Debonair in 822, when Ebon ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... all with debonair satisfaction; then reverses his head-piece and holds it out upside-down, with a ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody
... had assembled at length, the dinner was in full swing. It would have been hard for any onlooker to have guessed that so much misery and heart-burning were there. Sir Charles, smiling, gay, debonair, chatted with his guests as if quite forgetful of the silent watchers by the railings outside. He might have been a rich man as he surveyed the tables and ordered the waiters about. True, somebody else would eventually pay for the dinner, but that ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... turn were riveted on his sad, lean apparition, how terribly changed from the old debonair days! Kind sympathy spoke in her look and mien till the radiance of love, beginning in little ghosts of welcoming smiles at the corners of her mouth, broke into ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... mumbling voice, now whining and pleading, now servile, now plucking up courage to indulge in abuse, kept on without even, it seemed, a pause for breath. And she could see the Adventurer, quite unmoved, quite debonair, a curiously patient smile on his face, standing there, much nearer to her, his right hand in the side pocket of his coat, a somewhat significant habit of his, his left hand holding a sheaf of folded, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... rise, winding the sarong about his lean waist twice, allowing one end to dangle down on his left side in a debonair and striking fashion. If set off his slim figure in ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... white now, but black and silver in the moonlight—stood for some seconds quite motionless, his head low, his broad and massive antlers thrust forward, his feet planted firmly and apart. Ominous in his stillness, he waited till his light-stepping and debonair adversary was within twenty feet of him. Then, with an explosive blowing through his nostrils, he launched himself ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... leader; and the loyal vassals—whose wavering ranks had been added to overnight—with their eyes on Mr. Bascom. And in justice to that veteran it must be said, despite the knock-out blow he had received, that he seemed as debonair as ever. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was called 'Le debonair Francois.' He loved the Provencal songs, and indeed learned to sing his sweet melodies to Christ after the mode of those songs of earthly love. His eyes danced with life, he went singing about all day long, and ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... it, and yet there was a lurking doubt. For there was in his manner something indescribably more sinister than she had felt in him on that occasion when she had saved his life. Then a debonair recklessness had been the outstanding note, but now there was something ribald and wicked ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... to stroll into the sun. They were men of leisure. Picturesque, handsome, careless, debonair, they wandered back and forth, smoking their cigarettes, exhibiting their finery. Indian women, wrinkled and careworn, plodded patiently about on various businesses. Indian girls, full of fun and mischief, drifted here and there in arm-locked groups ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... baptized are, As it suits my simple skill, Not the lofty rank you fill; Unmeet for such great service I; Yet my God, so debonair, All that's wanting ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... gallantly; and in the second button-hole thereof was a moss rose. The vest was white, and the trowsers a pearl-gray, with what tailors style "a handsome fall over the boot." A blue and white silk cravat, tied loose and debonair; an ample field of shirt front, with plain gold studs; a pair of lemon-colored kid gloves, and a white hat, placed somewhat too knowingly on one side, complete the description, and "give the world assurance of the man." And, with his light, firm, well-shaped figure, his clear complexion, his ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... a man on the platform who did not evince some degree of pleasure at the approach of the new-comer. The last warm rays of the sun, already sinking behind the mountains, seemed rather to take pride in showing what a debonair young fellow he was, in glowing kindly upon his handsome face and strong, graceful figure, and touching up to ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... envy in others what we do not ourselves possess, ignoring those traits of character we have which they no less desire. So to me then it seemed altogether useless to contend for the heart of a woman,—such a woman, at least, as this laughing Toinette,—against the practised wiles of so gay and debonair a cavalier. I steeled my ears to the light badinage they continued to indulge in, and ploughed on through the heavy sand at Jordan's heels, in no mood ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... with Dalton, was debonair and delightful. George, looking at him with speculative eyes, decided that there was more to this boy than he would have believed. He had exceedingly good manners and an ease that was undeniable. There was of course good blood back of him. And in a way it counted. George knew that he could never ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... thriving in unwonted soil and air Far from its native springtime's genial care; So on my ready tongue hath Love assayed In a strange speech to wake new flower and blade, While I of thee, proud yet so debonair, Sing songs whose sense is to my people lost— Yield the fair Thames, and the fair Arno gain. Love willed it so, and I, at others' cost, Already knew Love never willed in vain: Would my heart slow and bosom hard were found To ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... one's shoes) one may study the wild pinnacle of Woolworth, faintly superfused with a brightness of gold and pink. From the office of one of our dramatic critics the view is negligible (being but a hardy brick wall), but the critic, debonair creature, has a small mirror of his own, so there one manages the ticklish business of the cravat. And from our own kennel, where are transacted the last touches (transfer of pipe, tobacco, matches, Long Island railroad timetable, commutation ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... invariable practice to speak affably to his enemy in passing, mainly because it so angered the latter; this time he insisted upon stopping. He was debonair and smiling, as always, but there was more than a trace of mockery in his tone ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... ivy-crowned Bacchus bore: Or whether (as some sager sing) The frolic wind that breathes the spring, Zephyr, with Aurora playing, As he met her once a-Maying, There, on beds of violets blue, And fresh-blown roses washed in dew, Filled her with thee, a daughter fair, So buxom, blithe, and debonair. Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful Jollity, Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, Nods and becks and wreathed smiles Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter holding both his sides. Come, and trip ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... my heart would have ceased to beat, and I should be dead!" Pale and red he grew. He recked not of his own great worth. For all there agreed that so handsome a warrior had never come to the Rhineland, so fair of body, so debonair was he. ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... stripling, calm and cool and debonair, With a weird array of raiment and a wondrous wealth of hair, With a lazy love of languor and a healthy hate of work And a cigarette devotion that would shame the turbaned Turk. And he called his father "Guv'nor," with a cheek serene and rude, While that raging, wrathful rustic calld his son a ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... mere subterfuge. Now, look here, ask her again, and be more debonair and dashing this time. What you want is to endue her with the spirit of revelry. Perhaps you'd better go to the bar first and have a dry ginger-ale, and then you'll feel more in the ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... said the debonair spirit, rather carelessly—while Laurence Varney, off in another world, clutched at the invitation, fought for it, lied, thieved, prayed, lived and died for it—"I'm afraid I must go ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... aristocracy, a maker of tender rhymes, a singer of tender songs, a good swordsman, a brilliant wit, a perfect courtier, a lucky gambler—in a word, just that fortunate combination of noble and ignoble qualities most likely to fascinate Madame de St. Andre," and a shadow settled for a moment on the debonair face of Monsieur ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... could have seen him now must have failed to recognize the radiant Gianapolis so well-known in Bohemian society, the Gianapolis about whom floated a halo of mystery, but who at all times was such a good fellow and so debonair. He took up his hat and gloves, turned, and resolutely strode to the door. Once he glanced back over his shoulder, but shrugged with a sort of self-contempt, and ascended to the top of ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... silently thought over the impression he had made. He was the same handsome, confident Tom Endover, but there was something gone,—and was there not something in its place? Had that gay courtesy, that debonair good fellowship, changed into something more finished, but harder and more conscious? Was there a suggestion that his old careless charm had become a calculated and a clearly appreciated facility? Lucy Eastman did not formulate the question, and it did not even vaguely present itself to ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... with the sporting properties of this long-bodied breed are apt to refer smilingly to the Dachshund as "the dog that is sold by the yard," and few even of those who know him give credit to the debonair little fellow for the grim work which he is intended to perform in doing battle with the vicious badger in its lair. Dachshund means "badger dog," and it is a title fairly and squarely earned ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... pursed up, the little old man seated himself, gazing with dim, restless eyes at the shadowy blur which represented to him his handsome son—a Dysart all through, elegant, debonair, resistless, and, married or single, fatal to feminine peace of mind. Generations ago Dysarts had been shot very conventionally at ten paces owing to this same debonair resistlessness; Dysarts had slipped into and out of all sorts of unsavoury ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps at night, Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all, Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding, (No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,) Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return'd, Launch'd o'er the prairies wide, across the lakes, To the free skies unpent ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Adelaide and Simon. When Withers retired, Simon followed him, and under Adelaide's window, and under her eyes, he boxed the ears of Philip, the Debonair. After that, Mr. Withers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... debonair The new moon shone when we said good-bye? How it listened and smiled when we parted there? I shall hate the new moon until I die— Hate it for ever, nor think it fair. I ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Socialistic scare The dandyish and the debonair Has quite demolished; Whilst Privilege hath still a purse, There's yet a chance for flowing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... time it backed up to the door with much gong-clanging, and the capable young medico, in his white linen coat, ready, active, confident, with his smooth face half debonair, half grim, danced ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... foot. He could see the blow that he had striven to avert falling while he stood impotent. He had taken every risk, made every sacrifice man could make, to turn it aside. Now he had been told that he had failed. It was not easy to admit defeat. His debonair courage ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... energetic warning to Lady May Quisante. This last item came home most closely to the general feeling, and the general voice asked what Lady May was thinking of. There was warrant for the question in the wondering despair of Lady Mildmay and the sad embarrassment of debonair Sir Winterton. The Mildmays knew all about it, the whole thing had happened in their house; but Sir Winterton, challenged with the story about Sir Rufus, could only hum and ha, and Lady Mildmay had not denied the interview between Quisante's wife and the energetic Dr. ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... dead, indeed," answered Le Gros, "I for one will not fire a single cartridge. All the same, he was a debonair prince, and once gave me a groat to drink his health when he saw ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... back. This debonair, self-reliant fellow could not be Billy! But as a hasty glance down the line revealed only half a dozen straggling women, and beyond them, no one, William decided that it must be Billy; and taking brave hold of his ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... taste and try this temper, sirs; Mood it and brood it in your breast; Or if ye ween, for worldly stirs, That man does right to mar his rest, Let me be left, and debonair; I am content; I do ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... finding them discouraging; and though at times he considered it humorously man-about-town to say to a smoking friend, "Well, I'll tackle one o' your ole coffin-nails," he had never made a purchase of tobacco in his life. But it struck him now that it would be rather debonair to disport himself with a package of ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... be hoisted into the air, and strangled." Thus exasperated were the most gentle tempers in these times of doubt and peril. The rigorous tone adopted, confirms the opinion of those historians who observe, that, after the discovery of the Rye-house Plot, Charles was fretted out of his usual debonair ease, and became more morose and severe than had been hitherto thought consistent with ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... 1685. King Charles II. is dead. He was a prince of many virtues, and many great imperfections; debonair, easy of access, not bloody nor cruel; his countenance fierce, his voice great, proper of person, every motion became him; a lover of the sea, and skillful in shipping; he loved planting and building, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... one humble home in Port Agnew, it had been said that the two McKaye girls were secretly ashamed of their father. This because frequently, in a light and debonair manner, Elizabeth and Jane apologized for their father and exhibited toward him an indulgent attitude, as is frequently the case with overeducated and supercultured young ladies who cannot recall a time when their slightest wish has not been gratified and cannot forget that the good fairy who ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... any other nationality might have looked at him askance; but madame was French. She was fifty years of age, she was fat, she was ugly—but she was French. The sense of a pleasant encounter—the appreciation of romance was in her blood. She smiled at the debonair boy with as agreeable a self-consciousness as though she had been ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... he smiled, and received the gifts in a debonair way, sometimes making whimsical remarks. At the same time the jugs and jars of cordial (whose contents varied from whiskey, molasses and boneset, to rum, licorice, gentian and sarsaparilla roots) he carried to his room; and he religiously tried them all by turn. Each seemed to do him good for a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... intersected the arc of his friend's decline, but Mr. Kernan's decline was mitigated by the fact that certain of those friends who had known him at his highest point of success still esteemed him as a character. Mr. Power was one of these friends. His inexplicable debts were a byword in his circle; he was a debonair young man. ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... my habitual manner, and we parted. From the window of my saloon I could see him sauntering easily down the hotel steps and from thence along the street. How I cursed him as he stepped jauntily on—how I hated his debonair grace and easy manner! I watched the even poise of his handsome head and shoulders, I noted the assured tread, the air of conscious vanity—the whole demeanor of the man bespoke his perfect self-satisfaction ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... Seeking in azure what it lacks in space, And sees a young and finely chiselled face Filled with foretastes of wisdom yet more rare; Touching and yet untouched—unmeasured grace! A breathing credo and a living prayer— Yet of the earth, still earthy; debonair The while in heaven ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... with his still gallant figure, scrupulously attired; a blue frock-coat with a ribboned button-hole, a well-turned boot, hat a little too hidalgoish, but quite new. There was something respectable and substantial about him, notwithstanding his moustaches, and a carriage a degree too debonair for his years. He did not look like a carbonaro or a refugee. ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... to the house was less gay than the visit to the oak. The baronet himself made a feverish effort to appear blithe and debonair as before; but it was not successful. Fortunately, the carriages were all at the door as they reached the house, and luncheon being over, nothing delayed the parting compliments of the guests. As the last carriage drove away, Sir Miles beckoned to Gabriel, and bade ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... suppliant with a heavy despair, they would be merely pained at their helplessness before the tears of the grief that kills and the woe of mothers sorrowing for their sons. But when the black-eyed maiden knelt before the priest, courtly and debonair, begging him to send a husband quickly, his lips surely would control themselves no longer, and his smile would set the damsel's cheek a-blushing. And if a youth knelt before Saint Catherine in her dainty mantilla, and vowed his heart ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... bronzed, firm little hand, and gave her with it a smile that seemed all brilliant color—white teeth, ocean-blue eyes, and poppied cheeks. His square little figure was very boyish in the thin silk shirt and baggy knickerbockers, and a wide hat, slipping from his yellow mane, added a last debonair touch to his picturesque little person. He was flushed, ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... to the grid with a swaggering gesture of homage. A courtierlike fellow this, debonair as ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... curtains, scenery, everything—was got up by the 1st Cavalry Division Supply Column, and most of the performers were A.S.C. men. The most popular vocalist turned up on his own, however, viz. Captain the Maclean, of Lochbuie (of the 19th Hussars), who is quite an artist in his way. This gay, debonair Scotsman is simply worshipped by the men. One of the latter (himself holding the D.C.M. and the French Medaille Militaire for conspicuous bravery at Landrecies) told me Maclean was the bravest man he had ever seen; he ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... the baby god. This base, by the way, Miss Scudder attributes as the work of Laurence Grant White. Pan is enjoying the music of the two long pipes he blows-playing one of the unplaced wild lilts of nature, we may be sure. This sense of enjoyment and his debonair little swagger are festive and delightful. His mischievous gaiety communicates itself to the beholder. This humorous quality appears in another merry little god by the same sculptor, her "Flying Cupid," ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... joy. An intoxication seized him that lifted him at once over all his sorrow, and placed him almost in that very spot wherein he stood ten days ago; gay, debonair, light of heart as a boy, untouched by grief or the dread of grief. It was a divine madness. He threw off his clothes, admired his shapely body for a moment as he poised on the bank, and flung himself in headlong with a shout. He felt as he ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... a man she had been dancing with came out and passed them as they stood there smiling and touching hands—a handsome, debonair man and a subtly beautiful woman. Gay took the picture of them home with her, and stayed long thinking of it when she should have been sleeping. Long she leaned from her bedroom window, gazing at the great grey spaces of veld that she loved ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... mountain nymph (not much U.P.). Come, and sip it as you go, And let my not-too-gouty toe Join the dance with them and thee In sweet unrationed revelry; While the grocer, free of care, Bustles blithe and debonair, And the milkman lilts his lay, And the butcher beams all day, And every warrior tells his tale Over the spicy nut-brown ale. Peace, if thou canst really bring These ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... trees at home, and she left him. She ran from the intrusion of her parents at home, to her bedroom, where, looking out on the moonlit country, she stretched up her arms, hard, hard, in bliss, agony offering herself to the blond, debonair presence ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... brown, alert, and keen-eyed—eager for work, confident of some new victory, for he was an investigator of weight and standing among the younger men of science. On the street he was indistinguishable from other debonair young men of good social position; in his laboratory he was a master, absorbed, ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... his comrade's head, but even as he did so there came a choking rush of blood, and the soul had passed. So died a gallant cavalier of France, and Nigel as he knelt in the ditch beside him prayed that his own end might be as noble and as debonair. ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... forest garb, yet I permitted him to take my hand and assist me gallantly to the shore. Faith, but he appeared like a new person with his embroidered coat, buckled shoes and powdered hair, smiling and debonair, whispering compliments to me, as he helped me across a strip of mud to the drier ground beyond. But I liked him none the better, for there was the same cold stare to his eyes, and a cruel sting to his words which he could not hide. The man was the same whatever the cut of his clothes, and ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... heart. The merry interlude of supper was robbed of its zest, as she cudgelled her brains to imagine what she was about to hear. Ralph was evidently in trouble of some sort, and his parents for once inclined to take a serious stand. Yet anything more gay and debonair than the manner with which the culprit handed round refreshments and waited on his father's guests it would be impossible to imagine. Darsie watched him across the room, and noted that wherever he passed faces brightened. As he cracked jokes with ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... lose by not cultivating fine old-fashioned ladies and gentlemen. Our aged relatives and friends seem to be tucked away, nowadays, into neglected corners, as though it were the correct thing to give them a long preparation for still narrower quarters. For my own part, comely and debonair old age is most attractive; and when I see the "thick silver-white hair lying on a serious and weather-worn face, like moonlight on a stout old tower," I have a strong tendency to lift my hat, whether I ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... case of mutual attraction. He swung his tail and crest before her, comeliest and most debonair of all her suitors; and she, with an engaging smile, swung a responsive tail at him. Crest she had none, and, of course, her tail could not compare with his in beauty. The higher we get in the natural orders, the more distinctly does decoration become a feminine necessity. Her coat ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... armed with a fowling-piece. Halley himself walked at the head of the middle column, a youthful, debonair Frenchman, carrying only a cane, which he swung jauntily as he followed the jungle trail. When the soldiers arrived at a few feet from the main body of the natives, Iotete advanced and cried ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... of life were refreshed as a flower in the perfumed dew-fall. She felt competent, able to cope with them all; her restored self-confidence pervaded her whole entity, spiritual and material. She walked back with an elastic step, a breezy, debonair manner, and she met Justus Hoxon at the gate of her cousin's yard with a jaunty assurance, and with all the charm of her rich ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... answered, pluming himself and speaking in his softest tones. 'And the most charming, I assure you, the most debonair of men. But do ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... sky, And all our talk was delicate and shy, Though in that cage of words wild thoughts were pent Like prisoned birds that some sweet accident Might yet release to sing again, and fly. We passed between long lines of poplar trees . . . Where, summer comrades gay and debonair, The south wind and the sunlight danced . . . you smiled, With great glad eyes, as bright as summer seas, To feel their twinkling fingers in your hair . . And then you kissed me, quickly, ...
— The Inn of Dreams • Olive Custance
... fairheid scho bur the flour, And eik hir faderis air; Off lusty laitis and he honour, Meik bot and debonair: Scho wynnit in a bigly bour, On fold wes nane so fair, Princis luvit hir paramour In ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... came a squire so debonair His dress was rich, his words were fair, He sweetly sang, he deftly played: He could ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a coatee, which soldiers wear Button'd up high about the throat, But easy, flowing, debonair— In short a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... years in appearance. The smiling, confident, debonair officer was changed into a stricken, mournful man. He had altered with his ship. The Sirdar and her master could hardly be recognized, so cruel were the blows they ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... cruel stepmother, the fair Stepdaughter, kind and leal, The bull and bear so debonair, The ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... debonair he rode that late September afternoon. No man around him had so clear an eye nor so constant a vivacity. Since he had nothing but his life to lose, he had no fear. Let the theater be full of light while the play lasted, and let the curtain fall to a round of huzzas! For a few short hours ago ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... outside the court, as he walked quickly away, again inscrutable and debonair, the prisoner, Joseph Nadeau, touched him on ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
