"Debonair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and Staunton himself appeared. He looked years older than the strong, debonair man to whom I had told my story a few hours ago, but in his face was none of the despair which I had feared. He was pale, and his eyes were shining with suppressed excitement, but he had by no means the air of a beaten man. He came over ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... waking, I beheld her there Sea-dreaming in the moted air, A Siren sweet and debonair, With wristlets woven of colored weeds, And oblong lucent amber beads Of sea-kelp shining in her hair. And as I mused on dreams, and how The something in us never sleeps, But laughs or sings or moans or weeps, She turned,—and on her breast ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... the reminder. She was staring at this visitor, who had the face of the man she knew and the voice and manner of a stranger. All trace of young Devon's debonair indifference was gone. He had the cold eyes and set jaw of a determined man, busy at some task which would assuredly be done, but his air of detachment ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... of the reverend scholars contain no empty compliment. Elizabeth was a great sovereign and in some essential particulars, a very great national leader. This daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn the debonair, was born a heretic in 1533. Her father was then defying both Spain and the Pope. Within three years after her birth her mother was beheaded; and by Act of Parliament Elizabeth herself was declared illegitimate. She was fourteen when her father died, leaving the kingdom to his three ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... tells not of the wrecked ship, and the grave Beneath its surface. Then we heard, ere long, The sound of Helen's gentle voice in song, And, rising, entered where the subtle power Of Vivian's eyes, forgiving while accusing, Finding me weak, had won me, in that hour; But Roy, always polite and debonair Where ladies were, now hung about my chair With nameless delicate attentions, using That air devotional, and those small arts Acquaintance with society imparts To men gallant by nature. 'Twas my sex And not myself he bowed to. Had ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... brimming with exultant 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 slipped through ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... and Jack caught a clearer view of the man. What he saw sent a shiver through him. A great change had come over his friend. His untidy dress,—always so neat and well kept; his haggard eyes and shambling, unsteady walk, so different from his springy, debonair manner, all showed that he had been and still was under some terrible mental strain. That he had not been drinking was evident from his utterance and gait. This last discovery when his condition was considered, disturbed him most of all, for he saw that Garry was going through some terrible ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 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
... 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 ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... by the ship's executive officer and passed around the circle. Hardly a word was spoken during this procedure, the usual debonair Bill Witt slouching against the hull of the Dewey, a picture of abject despair. It took only a few minutes to prepare the slips and they were collected by Officer Cleary, who in turn deposited them in the code box. Captain McClure stirred them around ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... Charles was a good prince and a debonair; he was kind and he was pitiful. More than any other he possessed the gift of pleasing. He charmed by his grace, albeit but ill-looking and of weak constitution.[1235] His temperament was so out of harmony ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... person, looked at him and wondered. He would have been more at home, she thought, out in the storms of life than in her uncle's drawing-rooms. Yet what was he? He lacked the trimness of the soldier; of the debonair smartness of the modern fighting man there was no trace whatsoever in his speech or appearance. The politicians who were likely to be present she knew. What was there left? An explorer, perhaps, or a colonial. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... down on her bed, still furious. After a while she was able to understand something of this fury. The world was upside down, wrong end to. Dennison, not Cunningham, should have acted the debonair, the nonchalant. Before this adventure began he had been witty, amusing, companionable; now he was as interesting as a bump on a log. At table he was only a poor counterfeit of his father, whose silence was maintained admirably, at all times impressively dignified. Whereas ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... happened that evening. Of course he was there to witness Matters' discomfiture. He did not put in appearance until the sheriff and his friend were climbing anxiously and sadly into the light wagon to return home empty-handed. Then he sauntered from behind a hedge and lifted his hat in his usual debonair manner. ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... a manner meant to be debonair, but his thought was divided and uncontrollable impulse drew his ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... young man turned into the gate and came up the path with a debonair swing that proclaimed ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... children sweet and fair, To you will come suave debonair, Fortune robed in shining dress, Bearing ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... same mordant area holds Point Lobos, a headland which displays in moss and lichens all the minute delicacy of a gleeful, elfin world. I challenge the earth to produce a region more beautiful, yet also more gay and debonair in natural connotation, than the one which enfolds San Francisco. For here the water presents gorgeous, plastic color, alternating blue and gold. Here Mount Tamalpais lifts its long straight slopes out of the sea and thrusts them high in the sky. Here Marin County offers ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... 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 ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... in France," "Scion of Oldest Noblesse Implicated," "Duke Mysteriously Missing," I read in the diminishing degrees of the scare-head type. Then came the picture, with a mien attractively debonair, a pleasantly smiling mouth, and a sympathetic pair of eyes, and in due course, the tale. I clutched at the flapping ends of ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... thronged upon Beltane and his company with tears of joy, with laughter loud and high-pitched, with shouts and wild acclaim; many there were who knelt to kiss their sun-browned hands, their feet, the very links of their armour. And presently came Giles o' the Bow, debonair and smiling, a woman's scarf about his brawny throat, a dozen ribands and favours tied about ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... mind-screens, as at times we dreamily delve into the past, beloved faces come and go. Forever in the memory of the writer, as his ideal conception of healthy, virile splendid Youth personified, will stand the bronzed, debonair, clean-shaven young face of George Redmond—or "Reddy," as he was more familiarly dubbed by his comrades of ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... shall rowt [Shout] like a lion the first day; and a prince's charetter [charioteer] shall be a full braver [finer, more showy] man than the prince his master. Sir Roger made a deal more bruit than ever the King himself; that during all these four years was meek and debonair [humble and gentle], as though he abode his time. He wrought what he would (which was mostly ill), and bare him like those of whom the Psalmist speaketh, that said, "Our lips are of us, who is our lord?" [Psalm 9 4, Rolle's translation.] He ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... garbed in the picturesque regalia of the vaquero, Flandrau was a taking enough picture to hold the roving eye of any girl. A good many centered upon him now, as he sauntered forward toward the Cullison box cool and easy and debonair. More than one pulse quickened at sight of him, for his gallantry, his peril and his boyishness combined to enwrap him in the atmosphere of romance. Few of the observers knew what a wary vigilance ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... mentioned a third reason: that this same Danny O'Rourke, red-haired, smiling, and debonair was listed on the Air Fire Force of the United States with the highest rating that the A. F. F. has to give its pilots. But Danny would have grinned at such a suggestion and would have countered with a denial that he was better qualified than ...
— The Hammer of Thor • Charles Willard Diffin
... handsome, debonair young millionaire paid the good landlady an exorbitant price to keep ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... until I had reached the drawing-room and was enabled to take a square look at the Bassett that I found the debonair gaiety with which I had embarked on this affair beginning to wane a trifle. Beholding her at close range like this, I suddenly became cognisant of what I was in for. The thought of strolling with this rummy specimen undeniably gave me a most unpleasant sinking ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... his unkempt, bristling hair, His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, His lack of all we prize as debonair, Of power or will to shine, of art ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... and simple people in the back country of the Old Southwest—the deliberate and self-controlled English, the aggressive, landmongering Scotch-Irish, the buoyant Welsh, the thrifty Germans, the debonair French, the impetuous Irish, and the calculating Scotch. The lives they led were marked by independence of spirit, democratic instincts, and a forthright simplicity. In describing the condition of the English ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... 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 ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... Puss than Tabitha; for all of which she was deeply grateful. Still, she could not help wishing that Tom's name could have been Jerome. That did sound so splendid! But Tom in her eyes was just as nice as Jerome Vane, even if he was solemn and shy while Jerome was laughing and debonair. ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... quite a picture as he came in—a fashion-plate, and as such I coolly regarded him—fresh, fair, and smiling, looking younger, if possible, than when we parted a year before, and handsome, as that much-abused word goes, in his debonair, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... 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; ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the first time in the life of this debonair young millionaire that he had come face to face with a ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... how hale you virtuous honour forth! You do not well: away! Now, by my faith, ye do not well, I say. Take her, fair queen, use her as she deserves: She's fair, she's noble, chaste, and debonair. I must, according to due course of war, See that our soldiers scatter not too far, Lest, what care won, our negligence may ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... and gallant bearing of the other; considering, from the standpoint of her own personal knowledge in the premises, the Notary's disposition toward a secretive reticence that bordered upon severity, in contrast with the cordially frank and debonair temperament of the Major; and, at the back of all, keeping well in mind the fundamental truths that opportunity ever is evanescent and that time ever ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... sharp recall of wandering thoughts, and Haward had the situation in hand. An easy greeting to the gentlemen, debonair compliments for the ladies, a question or two as to the entertainment they had left, then a negligent bringing forward of Audrey. "A little brown ward and ancient playmate of mine,—shot up in the night to be as tall as a woman. Make thy curtsy, child, and go tell the minister what ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... hardly changed—a little thinner, perhaps, but not a day older in his paint; the same reckless, debonair creature whom Marion had loved, who had wounded her and grieved her, whom she had discarded at last with bitter anger, whom she had never forgotten, whom she remembered ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... little party, lead by Holcomb, were seen picking their way along the trail; Margaret keeping close to the young woodsman and plying him with innumerable questions. She thought she had never seen him look so handsome, debonair and manly. Then, too, his wide knowledge of the woods was a delight to her. Little by little he explained, as he followed the trail, those secrets of ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... passionate, more uncontrolled, than Charles of Burgundy, whose personal magnetism yet enabled them to win friends and to keep them, as the duke was powerless to do. The failure to command personal devotion, unquestioning loyalty, was one of his chief personal misfortunes. Philip, magnificent, lavish, debonair, found many lenient apologists for his crimes, while his son received criticism for his faults even from the faithful among his servitors. How a reflection of his bearing glows out from the mirror turned casually upon him by Commines' skilful hand! Take the glimpse of ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... seen him so perturbed. He usually approached these conflicts with his father with a passing grimace, exhibited sufficient repentance to get what he wanted, and emerged more debonair than ever. It was disturbing to see him so ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... all his heart: no debonair Lionella could decoy him to be untrue. But he was debonair himself, of high courage, and mettlesome; and he may have gone a little too far. He was now become her confidant, secretary, bosom friend. Whence came the shock ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... he caught sight of my figure in the antechamber beyond, and resuming in an instant his former debonair manner, he bowed very low and opened his lips as if about to ask a question. But he evidently thought better of it, for he strode by me and made his way to the front door without a word. Being an intruder myself, I did not like to stop him. But I am sorry now for the consideration ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... in his cheerful, debonair manner and rode off. Troubles sat lightly on his stout heart. His effervescent nature never left him long depressed when Fortune played her freakish tricks upon him. He had lost his commission upon the sale of Iredale's land, but he had secured the better deal of ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... man on earth whom the Wild Boar of Fauldshope and his men loved, it was the young Knight of Harden. He was so handsome, and brave, and debonair, a very leader among men, that I ween there was dire confusion among them when they heard Andrew o' Langhope's tale. A great oath fell from Will's lips as he threw off his jerkin and helmet, to ease his horse, and turned and galloped over the hill again, ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... the affair of Sumter, which might so easily have been made to appear treacherous, and in shouldering himself with all responsibility for the failure of the Charleston expedition. In the wave of excitement following the surrender, even so debonair a minister as Seward must have realized how fortunate it was for him that his chief did not tell all he knew. About this time Seward began to perceive that Lincoln had a will of his own, and that it was not safe to trifle further with the ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... classed him with the crowd, and he seemed no longer Sloane of the debonair humor and the happy personality, but only one of the evil faces that whirled along ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... understand, so I changed the subject. "The plan is simple, monsieur," I said briskly. "Singing Arrow will come to the window, and you are to make love to her. After a time—not too long—you are to beguile her inside. I think the guards will be complaisant, if you play your part well. Be as debonair as possible. A soldier is always tempted to be lenient to ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... 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 ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... spring dress. They never guessed that the commonplace man in the frayed old smoking-jacket had banished them all from the room long ago; had banished himself, for that matter. In his place was a tall, debonair, and rather dangerously handsome man to whom six o'clock spelled evening clothes. The kind of a man who can lean up against a mantel, or propose a toast, or give an order to a man-servant, or whisper ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... windows had been drawn in and they were keeping very quiet, indeed—Oh! it was joy! There was gallant Morgan himself swinging from Black Bess to kiss his mother, who stood waiting for him at her gate, and there was Colonel Hunt, gay, debonair, jesting, shaking hands right and left, and crowding the streets, Morgan's Men—the proudest blood in the land, every gallant trooper getting his welcome from the lips and arms of mother, sister, sweetheart, or cousin of farthest ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... himself, his instincts seemed to be to allude in a debonair spirit to the incidents of the past day—to the flowers in Lady Constantine's beds, the date of her house—perhaps with a view of hearing a little more about their owner from Louis, who would very readily have followed the Bishop's ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... along, and swung his gun in debonair fashion. It would not take him, an expert borderer and woodsman, long to get that prairie chicken, and after that, as he had said before, it was only a ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... who still believed that his wife was only feeling the effects of the winter weather, the spring weather, the summer weather, or the autumn weather, was as gay and debonair as usual, and even at the wedding it was felt that he was in some sort the centre of things. He had his usual group of admirers about him, and was so gracious and charming, so patriarchal one moment and so boyish the next, that his popularity was not to be wondered ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... came the 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 ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... &c. 827; cheery, cheerly[obs3]; of good cheer, smiling; blithe; in spirits, in good spirits; breezy, bully, chipper [U.S.]; in high spirits, in high feather; happy as the day is long, happy as a king; gay as a lark; allegro; debonair; light, lightsome, light hearted; buoyant, debonnaire, bright, free and easy, airy; janty[obs3], jaunty, canty[obs3]; hedonic[obs3]; riant[obs3]; sprightly, sprightful[obs3]; spry; spirited, spiritful[obs3]; lively, animated, vivacious; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and headed away for the trail through the bluff, and Steve watched him go. Nor could he help a feeling of admiration for the easy, debonair disregard of difficulties and hardship which these men of his own force displayed in the execution of their work. In his utter unself-consciousness he was quite unaware that wherever the police were known his own name was a household word ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... Alb was looking particularly debonair, and taking pattern by him, I turned away from my aunt's husband, pretending that I had ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... down the street and turned the corner, changing his pace to one of an easy and debonair grace befitting the possessor of several racing stables of ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... bright and gay, Oh, years! that slip so fast away, Keep her, I pray thee, fresh and fair, Dainty, bewitching, debonair, For life is but ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... 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 ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... 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 deft, and debonair, I am content, I do ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Mayer's voice on the phone brought back a slight, faint echo of the thrill. What he said was matter-of-fact and colorless—he had warned her that it would be—just if she was comfortable and everything Was all right. She tried to answer it with debonair brevity; show the right spirit, bold and undismayed, of the dauntless woman to the ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... thou enemy of gloom, Grandson of Momus, blithe and debonair, Who, aping Pan, with an inverted broom, Can'st brush the cobwebs from ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... arrayed in the armor of some stern warrior, or the velvet doublet of some gay cavalier, the dark eyes of a debonair knight looked down upon me with familiar fellowship. There was pride of birth, and the passion of conquest in every line of his haughty, sensuous face. I seemed to breathe the same moral atmosphere that had surrounded ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... upon the knight through the town, until he saw him lodged. Then, very joyful, he passed on a little farther until he saw reclining upon some steps a vavasor [17] well on in years. He was a comely man, with white locks, debonair, pleasing, and frank. There he was seated all alone, seeming to be engaged in thought. Erec took him for an honest man who would at once give him lodging. When he turned through the gate into the yard, the vavasor ran to meet ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... it seemed to Blair as though the sparkle had fled from the glasses, the gleam of candlelight from the silver. Across the cloth he had watched her—girlish, debonair, and with a secret laughter lurking in her eyes. And yet he had not had a chance to exchange half a ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... delegates remained undwarfed by the Prime Minister. Journalist, politician, captain of Blue Devils, Franco-American Commissioner, now the youngest of the French peace commission, Tardieu, more than any one else supplied the motive energy that carried the treaty to completion. Debonair and genial, excessively practical, he was the "troubleman" of the Conference: when difficulties arose over the Saar, or Fiume, or reparations, Tardieu was called in to work with a special committee and find a compromise. ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... shall. Having conquered the foe, St. George, according to The Golden Legend, "said to the maid: 'Deliver to me your girdle, and bind it about the neck of the dragon, and be not afeard.' When she had done so, the dragon followed her as it had been a meek beast and debonair." It was later, and not until St. George had baptized the King and all his people (which was his reward), that he smote off ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... and conveying by a virtuous and steadfast smirk a cheerful confidence in his innocence. Johnson solid and inexpressive, Redbrook unconcerned and debonair, Marzo uneasy. These four form a little group together on the captain's left. The rest wait unintelligently on Providence in a row against the wall on the same side, shepherded by the bluejackets. The first bluejacket, a petty officer, ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... you now 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 ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... dame came forth courtesying and bowing her delighted thanks, Earl William, setting a forefinger under her triple chin, stooped and kissed her in his gayest and most debonair manner. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... 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 ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... somberness of the reign of Louis, all France went to the extreme of levity. Costumes changed. Manners, but late devout, grew debonair. Morals, once lax, now grew yet more lax. The blaze and tinsel, the music and the rouge, the wine, the flowing, uncounted gold—all Paris might have been called a golden brothel of delirious delight, tenanted by ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... the doorway wore velveteen trousers of 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 a laugh ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... you been so early, Bawn?" my grandmother asked, while Uncle Luke came and set a chair for me and stood smiling at me; I was glad that in those waste places of the earth he had not forgotten those fine debonair ways which of old had made the women fall in ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... 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
... 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 ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... them. But there was something big and significant in their presence behind Hough. Gamblers leagued against a crooked gambling-hell! Durade had lost a fortune, yet not all his fortune. He seemed a haggard, flaming-eyed wreck of the once debonair Durade. His hair was wet and dishevelled, his collar was open, his hand wavered. Blood trickled down from his lower lip. He saw nothing except the gold, the cards, and that steel-nerved, gray-faced, implacable Hough. Behind ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... 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, ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... we paid a number of formal visits. General Yanushkhevitch, Chief of the Staff, had held that same position when the Grand Duke Nicholas had been commander-in-chief at the Stavka. Tall, handsome and debonair, he was a man whom it was a pleasure to meet, although he may not perhaps intellectually have been quite equal to the great responsibilities placed on his shoulders in the early days of the war. This distinguished soldier of very attractive personality was murdered ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... self, Monty was now almost a physical wreck, haggard, thin and defiant, a shadow of the once debonair young New Yorker, an object of pity and scorn. Ashamed and despairing, he had almost lacked the courage to face Mrs. Gray. The consolation he once gained through her he now denied himself and his suffering, peculiar as it was, was very real. In absolute recklessness he gave dinner ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 brought in a politer way of living, which passed to luxury and expense. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... tremendously; he went back wishing he had taken the hundred lines. But the others thought it amazingly brave of him. Lovelace minor, handsome, debonair, a swashbuckler in the teeth of authority, came up ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong! The sweet Lenore hath "gone before," with Hope, that flew beside, Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies, The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes— The life still there, upon her hair—the death upon her eyes. "Avaunt! avaunt! from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven— "From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven— "From ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... on, easy, careless, unperturbed. His stories were amusing Pasquale, and the old ruffian had a fondness for anybody that could entertain him. But back of his debonair gayety Steve nursed a growing unease. He was no longer dressed in the outfit of a cowpuncher, but wore a gray street suit and a Panama straw hat. Culvera had caught only a momentary glance at him the night they had faced each other ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... restored to him his gold pince-nez. The deputy needed no aid from Bob McGraw, but hastened to the protection of his sanctuary back of the counter. Bob stood looking at Carey, smiling his old bantering debonair smile. He waited until Carey ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... baby in the arms of the oldest girl. They all had the gentle quiet and ease of the father—but they were unkempt little creatures, uncombed, unwashed, in sad-colored clothes. That's the difference between the negro and the white man of this region. The negro is cheerful, debonair, he sings, he dances, and he wears all the colors of the rainbow. An old black woman who carries home my wash wore the other day a purple petticoat with a scarlet skirt looped above it, an old green sweater, ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... end I see In his old place our Poet's vis-a-vis, The great PROFESSOR, strong, broad-shouldered, square, In life's rich noontide, joyous, debonair. His social hour no leaden care alloys, His laugh rings loud and mirthful as a boy's,— That lusty laugh the Puritan forgot,— What ear has heard it and remembers not? How often, halting at some wide crevasse Amid the windings of his Alpine pass, High up ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... vocation of the aristocrat. Waiting for her in the dismantled dining-room, despite all that he had passed through, his greeting had the diffident, boyish manner of her recollection; and despite a night on the ground his brown uniform was without creases, giving him a well-groomed, even debonair, appearance. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... 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 ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... hand of other / in all their company; In courteous manner bending / full many might ye see And loving kisses given / by ladies debonair. Rejoiced the men of Gunther / and ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... through the door, her head up, her lips a little hard, Broderick was the first to see her and was upon his feet in a flash, as graceful as a cavalier, as debonair in his big boots and soft white silk shirt as though he had been a courtly gentleman dressed for the ball, his eyes frankly filled with the appreciation of her dainty beauty. Pollard, remembering, ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... poorly displayed, Ill 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 him who plants from ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... dangers. How debonair he would stroll among them! He wished to explore the unknown; felt the need of a splendid adventure, and had a happy premonition that one was coming nearer and nearer. He favored himself with a hopeful vision ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... free, as debonair, unarm'd, As bending angels; that's their fame in peace. But when they would seem soldiers, they have galls, Good arms, strong joints, true swords; and, Jove's accord, Nothing so full of heart. But peace, Aeneas, Peace, Troyan; lay thy finger on thy lips. The worthiness ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... pace. So did Arthur Updyke. It was rather to be expected of Arthur, however. His duties at the City Drug Store seemed to encourage a debonair lightness of conduct. He treated his blond ringlets assiduously from the stock of pomades; he was as fastidious about his fingernails as we might expect one to be in an environment of manicure implements and ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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 ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... smiled. Debonair in dress and deportment, there seemed nothing to inspire alarm in the air of gentle concern with which he regarded the man whom he had come to visit. Yet Spencer cursed the languor which had kept him from recovering the revolver which an ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... more than 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 ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... The hope is a rash one. Better were I to forget her—but then, alas, 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
... people together and making them feel at their ease. There was also, as a rule, some little individual touch about his entertainments that made them stand out. His manner, though naturally boyish and shy, could be both gay and debonair, quite irresistible in fact, when he was surrounded by congenial spirits! He played hockey, and was made a member of several clubs, sketched and made beautiful photographs. His time he divided strictly between the study of man and the study of theology, and though he did much hard, thorough ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... bishops and teachers. 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, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... all men are said, not without gentle sarcasm if a woman says it, to wish especially to know. She is declared to be the vision that haunts the youth as his heart opens to the soft influences of love, and her figure, trim and debonair, that allures the older fancy of the man who sits "alone and merry at forty year," having seen his earlier Gillian and Marian and a score more happily married. She is, in fact, the domestic magician, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... this effect, that he brightened visibly, and for the rest of the morning was almost normal. His spirits took a quick downward turn at five minutes to one, when the debonair ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... propounded by Patrick Lovell, to whom physical fear was an unknown quantity. Had he lived in the days of the Terror, he would assuredly have taken his way to the guillotine with the same gay, debonair courage which enabled the nobles of France to throw down their cards and go to the scaffold with a smiling promise to the other players that they would continue their interrupted game ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... 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
... looking more foolish than anyone has ever looked since the world began. I could hardly ask to be conducted off the premises like the honored guest. Nor would it do to retire by the way I had come. If I could have leaped the hedge with a single bound, that would have made a sufficiently dashing and debonair exit. But the hedge was high, and I was incapable at the moment of achieving a debonair leap ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... blooms from the top of their wallbower. Several young men were approaching them, and the criminologist noted with relief that they evidenced their afternoon libations even so early. Eyes dulled with over-stimulus were the less analytical. Chance was favoring him. The newcomers were garbed in that debonair and "cultured" modishness so dear to the hearts of magazine illustrators. Faces, weak with sunken cheek lines, strong in creases of selfishness, darkened by the brush strokes of nocturnal excesses and seared, all of them ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... out of sight at the risk of breaking their necks. They rode the sprucer for it; they were in better spirits for it. They laughed, they talked, they went at a faster pace, they cocked their hats, they were gay, they were debonair. They ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris
... banish dread and care, For God is bountiful and debonair; So of two things, the doing hurt to men And giving ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... created to obey your Grace's commands, so you will bear me out with my Sovereign for doing so," answered the debonair knight. "Yet, let me assure your Grace you will see something ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... keenness of his intellect had not caused him to be feared as a demon. His glance, more penetrating than his bistouries, looked straight into your soul, and dissected every lie athwart all assertions and all reticences. And thus he went along, full of that debonair majesty that is given by the consciousness of great talent, of fortune, and of forty years of a labourious ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... yet blithe and debonair, Rallying his friends with pleasant banter gay, Or half a-dream chaunting with jaunty air Great words of Goethe, catch of Beranger, We see the banter sparkle in his prose, But knew not then the undertone that flows So calmly sad, through all ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... at Camp Cooke in compliance with orders from division headquarters at 'Frisco had, three weeks later, practically finished the case of Brevet-Captain Nevins, and that debonair person, who had appeared before it on the first day, suave, laughing, and almost insolently defiant, had wilted visibly as, day after day, the judge advocate unfolded the mass of evidence against him. All that Nevins thought to be tried for was a charge of misappropriation ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... thought how much we 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
... formula: "Whatever is, is according to reason: whatever is according to reason, that is." Experience, which has gradually saddened the earth's colours for us, stiffened its motions, withdrawn from it some blithe and debonair presence, has quite changed the character of the science of nature, as we understand it. The "positive" method, in truth, makes very little account of marks of intelligence in nature: in its wider view of phenomena, it sees that those instances are a minority, and may ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... handmaid of his imperious will to learn. This desire, still in the nursery, climbs—like dissolution in Wordsworth's sonnet—from low to high: from a craving to discover experimentally what the stomach will assimilate and what reject, up to a kingly debonair interest in teleology. Our young gentleman is perfectly at ease in Sion. He wants to know why soldiers are (or were) red, and if they were born so; whence bread and milk is derived, and would it be good manners to thank the neat cow for both; why ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... and guarded, with her girlishly frail body so arrogantly well gowned, she had in some way touched his lethargic imagination. She showed herself to be of finer and keener fiber than the sordid demireps with whom he had to do. Shimmering and saucy and debonair as a polo pony, she had seemed a departure from type, something above the meretricious termagants round whom he so often had to weave his accusatory webs ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... office of the Literary Editor (lacing up 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
... shout on shout arose with the accumulative force of ascending breakers, till the vast amphitheater was deluged with sounding and resounding acclaim, such as a man could hope would envelope and uplift his name but once in a life-time. And he? There he stood, strong, Saxon, fair, debonair, yet white as new snow, and trembling like an aspen. It seemed too much, this sudden storm of applause and enthusiasm for him, the new idol, the coming President; yet who may say that through his exultant, yet trembling heart, that moment shot the presaging ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... him," she cried, and heaped hard words on the head of the debonair Giuseppe. She broke off presently panted, and then ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... 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 the apple-cheeked farmers, ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... vase. As Popery declined, the angel disappeared, and the lily-pot became a vase of flowers; subsequently the Virgin was omitted, and there remained only the vase of flowers. Since, to make things more unmistakeable, two debonair gentlemen, with hat in hand, have superseded the floral elegancies of the olden time, and the poetry of ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... accents of Slavic tongues. But this babel that met his ears was something new. Taken in connection with the rest of the experience, the discovery sent a cold chill down the spinal column of Mr. Lawrence Varick. For the first time in his debonair life he was afraid, and admitted it inwardly, with a sudden whitening ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... morning saunter was the debonair Arkansas goldfinch, which has received its bunglesome name, not from the State of Arkansas, but from the Arkansas River, dashing down from the mountains and flowing eastwardly through the southern part of Colorado. Most nattily this little ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser |
