"Swagger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... swagger that takes a man in Helmeted, clattering, proud. Sweet are the honors the arrogant win, Hot from the breath of a crowd. Precious the spirit that never will bend— Hot challenge for insolent stare! But—talk when you've tried it!—to win in ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... But now, in the silence, the growing darkness of that little chamber, with Chevet's threat echoing in my ears, he came to me in clear vision—I saw his dull-blue, cowardly eyes, his little waxed mustache, his insolent swagger, and heard his ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... the bushes, forgetting the burden of his weapons and his pack of food. In truth, he swaggered a bit, but it was a gay and gallant swagger, and it became him. He walked for some distance, feeling that he had been changed from a seaman into a warrior, and then from a warrior into an explorer, which was his present character. But he did not see at present the variety and majesty that all explorers wish ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... far as that goes—one of those swagger flats in Prince's Square. I suppose we could manage all right. Will you tell mother ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... could picture to you how he said this. Simple as it now reads, he made it vital with meaning. The insolent boast was uttered with such a swagger that my face instantly flushed, and ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... night, and there we did stop, in a drizzle of rain which prevented sight-seeing for those who had the wish, and the freedom, to go about. As for me, I was ordered by Lady Turnour to mend Mr. Stokes's socks, he having made peace by offering to "give her a swagger dinner ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... wire entanglements told of former fierce encounters. We passed a Stokes mortar battery of the 147th Infantry concealed in low bushes. The boys, lying idly in their dog-tents, wove canes from willow branches wound with wire and capped with bullets. I was presented with a cane by Private Boothby and a swagger stick by ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... receive them, and that the army is to be paid with them, then he thinks his work shall be done. And this is the difficulty you will be under in such a case. For the common soldier when he goes to the market or alehouse will offer this money, and if it be refused, perhaps he will swagger and hector, and threaten to beat the butcher or alewife, or take the goods by force, and throw them the bad halfpence. In this and the like cases, the shopkeeper or victualler, or any other tradesman has ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... fall the heavy rubber garment she had worn through the swamp. Then she removed her outer clothing and got into the uniform and into the long, polished boots quickly. There was even the swagger cane that ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... Mack was at the head of about 30,000 Neapolitan troops, said to be the finest in Europe. This, however, did not prevent them from being annihilated by 15,000 French, when General Championnet evacuated Rome. The King entered with all the swagger of an Oriental potentate. The Neapolitans followed the French to Castellana, and when the latter faced up to them they stampeded in disordered panic. Some were wounded, but few were killed, and the King, forgetting in his fright ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... brass buttons, a blue jacket with bigger brass buttons, and a blue cap with a brass button on either side—each brass button, on coat, cap, and vest, having an anchor of, (apparently), burnished gold in the centre of it. He had clear blue eyes, brown curly hair, and an easy, offhand swagger, which last was the result of a sea-faring life and example; but he had a kindly and happy, rather than a boastful or self-satisfied, expression of face, as he bowled along with his hands in his pockets, kicking all the stones out of his way, and whistling furiously. Sometimes ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... Pothunters too. Fear injects juices make it tender enough for them. Riding astride. Sit her horse like a man. Weightcarrying huntress. No sidesaddle or pillion for her, not for Joe. First to the meet and in at the death. Strong as a brood mare some of those horsey women. Swagger around livery stables. Toss off a glass of brandy neat while you'd say knife. That one at the Grosvenor this morning. Up with her on the car: wishswish. Stonewall or fivebarred gate put her mount to ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... a stout, tall, round-paunched, red-faced, brutal-looking old fellow, who gets drunk daily. He sat down on the step of our stoop, looking surly, and speaking to nobody; then got up and walked homeward, with a morose swagger and a slight unevenness of gait, attended by a ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... discloses the face beneath it. (1) Time reveals character. As the years pass along, a man generally gets to be known for what he is. For example, if a man is a coward and enlists in the army, he may swagger about and look like a real soldier, but a time will come when the spirit of the man will show itself, and he will be set down at his real value. Or a young man in an office may act dishonestly and go on ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... and, for that, the stronger. "Never show your feelings—to do so is not manly and bores your fellows. Don't cry out when you're hurt, making yourself a nuisance to other people. Tell no tales about your companions, and no lies about yourself. Avoid all 'swank,' 'side,' 'swagger,' braggadocio of speech or manner, on pain of being laughed at." (This maxim is carried to such a pitch that the Englishman, except in his press, habitually understates everything.) "Think little of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... not worked three months in the last four years. His mother, who kept a large and prosperous boarding-house, regarded Tip as being one of the manliest fellows in the world. She abetted his idleness by supplying him with too much money. Tip dressed well, though a bit loudly, and walked with a swagger. He was in a fair way to go through life without becoming anything more than ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... soon come, sir," said the gallant boy, "and, for one, I shall not be sorry to be in motion. Those chaps on board the Plantagenet will swagger like so many Dons, if they should happen to get a broadside at Monsieur de Vervillin, while we are lying here, under the shore, like a gentleman's yacht hauled into a bay, that the ladies might eat ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... swagger stick in the hand of the police officer found its target. "Shut up, you mule-stealin' baboon. Come on here! You git fifty years in jail if we don't ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are ...
— The Velveteen Rabbit • Margery Williams
... to be a good tight lad, Mr. Frank, and I remember thy father too—he was my playfellow at school. Hark thee, lad,—ride early at night, and don't swagger with chance passengers on the king's highway. What, man! all the king's liege subjects are not bound to understand joking, and it's ill cracking jests on matters of felony. And here's poor Die Vernon too—in ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of the time, able to rival, if he had the opportunity, the prowess of Harold Hardraade himself. Yes, he would go and see his mother: he would be kind if she was kind; if she were not, he would boast and swagger, as he was but too apt to do. That he should go back at the risk of his life; that any one who found him on English ground might kill him; and that many would certainly try to kill him, he knew very well. But that only gave special zest ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... slightly annoyed, allowed himself to be convinced; he threw the gun on to his shoulder with a swagger, and both our heroes, followed by Carefinotu, ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... alongside of me presently, with a hang-dog look on him, as if he had been caught stealing jam. "What a lark it'll be when she's really gone!" he observed, with a swagger obviously assumed. ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... a clean shirt, and the swagger kummerbund, Denison presented himself next morning to the editor of the Trumpet-Call. There were seven other applicants for the billet, but Denison's white shirt and new kummerbund were, he felt, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... course. Chauffeurs do not swagger through the world dressing for dinner each night and distributing gold in their leisure moments. But Smith's bump of inquisitiveness was well developed, as the phrenologists say, and he was already impressed ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... yellow boots, in the careless rig-out of a Parisian out for a holiday. He seemed, too, to have become more common, more jolly, more familiar, having assumed along with his would-be rustic garb a free and easy swagger which he thought suited the style of dress. His new apparel somewhat shocked M. and Madame de Meroul, who even at home on their estate always remained serious and respectable, as the particle "de" before their name exacted a certain amount of ceremonial ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... blue-eyed type. Just then it was suffused with almost boyish merriment, and indeed an irresponsible gaiety was a salient characteristic of the man. One would have called him handsome, though his mouth was a trifle slack, and there was a certain assurance in his manner that just fell short of swagger. He was the kind of man one likes at first sight, but for all that not the kind his hard-bitten neighbours would have chosen to stand by them through the strain of drought and ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... apparently belonged to the girl at his side. He was a handsome man, tall and rather spare, with dark eyes and a soldierly look. His movements were quick and forceful, but a hint of what Mrs. Keith called swagger somewhat spoiled his bearing. She thought he allowed his self-confidence to be seen too plainly. The girl formed a marked contrast to him; she was short and slender, her hair and eyes were brown, while her prettiness, ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... returned to him. After all, what was she but a "pert poppet"? He determined that marriage "clips a fellow's wings confoundedly," and so he set himself to enjoy life after his old fashion. There was perhaps a little swagger as he threw himself into a chair and addressed the happy lover. "I'll be shot if I didn't meet Tifto at the corner of ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... out over the emptying aisles; and, even as she pinned on her velveteen poke bonnet at a too-swagger angle, and fluffed out a few carefully provided curls across her brow, she kept watch and, with obvious subterfuge, slid into her little unlined silk coat with a deliberation not her own. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Bradley stared: and as they rounded the corner of the hedge he remarked suddenly "I say! There's that swagger ayah of yours walking with Lady Despard. She's jolly smart, for an ayah. Did you bring her from India? You never said you'd ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... might reasonably reply, "But this is how I support my friend Anne in her sublime evolutionary effort." Whenever he laughed at an old-fashioned actor for ranting, the actor might answer, "My exaggeration is not more absurd than the tail of a peacock or the swagger of a cock; it is the way I preach the great fruitful lie of the life-force that I am a very fine fellow." We have remarked the end of Shaw's campaign in favour of progress. This ought really to have been the end of his campaign against romance. All the tricks of love that ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... is no denying that you spoke to those men in a most overbearing manner. Why, you could not have been more downright had you been an officer of the Emperor himself. What passed through my mind as I listened was, 'Where did this youth get his swagger?' You ordered Kurzbold out ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... in correspondence with several—were thinking of joining. If they had been making a move he would have gone at once—very competitive, and with a strong sense of form, he could not bear to be left behind in anything—but to do it off his own bat might look like 'swagger'; because of course it wasn't really necessary. Besides, he did not want to go, for the other side of this young Forsyte recoiled from leaping before he looked. It was altogether mixed pickles within him, hot and sickly pickles, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... this, he perceived one of the beeldars, or officers of the caliph's household, pass by him. "That would be a nice office," thought Yussuf, "and the caliph does not count his people like the cadi. It requires but an impudent swagger, and you are taken upon your own representation." Accordingly, nowise disheartened, and determined to earn his six dirhems, he returned home, squeezed his waist into as narrow a compass as he could, gave his turban a smart cock, washed his hands, and took a peeled ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... said Peter. "You think there is no danger? You advise me to brazen the dina giacca out, to swagger ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... saw little of it and confessed to nothing. Certainly he was what some might call handsome, of a pictorial, exuberant style of beauty, all attitude, profile, and impudence: a man whom I could see in fancy parade on the grand stand at a race-meeting, or swagger in Piccadilly, staring down the women, and stared at himself with admiration by the coal porters. Of his frame of mind at that moment his face offered a lively if an unconscious picture. He was lividly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the other side of the Channel, all with a very light and engaging pen, and then spreads himself on any old far-off thing that interests him, such as the theatre, perhaps a little self-consciously and with a pleasant air of swagger most forgivable and, indeed, enjoyable. His chief preoccupation is with art and letters, it is clear; but, turning from them to the handling of urgent things and difficult men, he faces the business manfully. Of the men in particular he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... swagger about the child—that I bore people,' said the Colonel. 'I hope you smoke.' He appeared ten minutes later in the smoking-room, in a brilliant equipment, a suit of crimson foulard covered with little white spots. He gratified Lyon's eye, made him feel that the modern age has ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... charge of fine powder mixed with the coarser sort; then I aimed it exactly at the man in red, elevating prodigiously, because a piece of that calibre could hardly be expected to carry true at such a distance. I fired, and hit my man exactly in the middle. He had trussed his sword in front, [2] for swagger, after a way those Spaniards have; and my ball, when it struck him, broke upon the blade, and one could see the fellow cut in two fair halves. The Pope, who was expecting nothing of this kind, derived great pleasure and amazement ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... was very fair at golf. But that morning she had no heart for fishing, and especially in such company. She despised George Sherrard as a prig, fond of boasting of his means, and, indeed, so terribly self-conscious was he that in many circles he was declared impossible. Men disliked him for his swagger and conceit, and women despised him for his superior ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... says she, smilin' just as though we was carryin' on a sensible conversation. And it's a swagger stunt too, this talkin' without sayin' anything. When you get so you can keep it up for an hour you're qualified either for the afternoon tea class or the batty ward. But the lady ain't here just to pay a social call. She makes a quick ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... agreeable youth was out of sight, begin to run with his little companion; Mrs. Bolton following after them, with Captain Costigan at her side. But the Captain was too majestic and dignified in his movements to run for friend or enemy, and he pursued his course with the usual jaunty swagger which distinguished his steps, so that he and his companion were speedily distanced ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... brace of baboons answer'd, Yes; and said thou wert a pitiful poor fellow, and didst live upon posts: and hadst nothing but three suits of apparel, and some few benevolences that lords gave thee to fool to them, and swagger. ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... exchange a few words. Though we saw each other almost every evening in society, and she wrote to me every day, to deceive the curious and mislead the observant we had adopted a scheme of conduct: never to look at each other; to avoid meeting; to speak ill of each other. Self-admiration, swagger, or playing the disdained swain,—all these old manoeuvres are not to compare on either part with a false passion professed for an indifferent person and an air of indifference towards the true idol. If two lovers ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... the crooked little staircase with a who's-afraid kind of swagger, but he took his hat ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... is a good one and should be acted upon. As it is now, the justice there dispensed is so mixed and doctored that it satisfies only the vitiated taste of the roughs. The proceedings in the McFARLAND and JACKSON case show that swagger, not study—bullying, not brains, are in a fair way to become the important qualifications of a counsel. The lawyers should organize in their own defence and classify themselves. Mr. PUNCHINELLO suggests the following method as the simplest and probably the most effective ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... the most remarkable specimens of the race of lions, a kind of game which is hunted in London every spring with more than Meltonian ardor and perseverance. Bruce, who had washed down steaks cut from living oxen with water from the fountains of the Nile, came to swagger and talk about his travels. Omai lisped broken English, and made all the assembled musicians hold their ears by howling Otaheitean love songs, such as those with which ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I espied him descending the Gusedub by that tortuous path, marking so strongly the character of a Scottish glen. He was easily distinguished, indeed, at some distance, by his jaunty swagger, in which he presented to you the flat of his leg, like the manly knave of clubs, apparently with the most perfect contentment, not only with his leg and boot, but with every part of his outward man, and the whole fashion of his garments, and, one would almost have ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... ill And be dumb, And let every varlet undo us? Shall we doubt Of each lout That doth come, With a voice Like the noise Of a drum, And a sword or a buff-coat, to us? Shall we lose our estates By plunder and rates, To bedeck those proud upstarts that swagger? Rather fight for your meat Which those locusts do eat, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... eyes were turned on the tramp, and more than one hand was placed on a revolver, The bar-keeper with an ugly look, and bullying swagger, stepped from behind the bar and advanced on the tramp, his face distorted with rage, and his fists doubled in a most ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... places. 'Twas a pity—and a mystery. That he should hang his head who might have held it high! At Twist Tickle, to be sure, he would hop hither and yon in a fashion surprisingly light (and right cheerful); but abroad 'twas either swagger or slink. Upon occasions 'twas manifest to all the world that following evil he walked in shame and terror. These times were periodic, as shall be told: wherein, because of his simplicity, which was ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... would fain see all the Poets of our time pen such another play as that was; they'll prate and swagger, and keep a stir of art and devices, when (by God's so) they are the most shallow, pitiful fellows that live upon the face of ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... park. It was densely packed with people, most of them wearing clothes a farm tramp on Gram wouldn't be found dead in, but here and there among them were blocks of men in what was almost but not quite military uniform, each with a short and thick swagger-stick with a knobbed head. Across the park, in the distance, the head and shoulders of Zaspar Makann loomed a hundred feet high in a huge screen. Whenever he stopped for breath, a shout would go up, beginning with the blocks of ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... be sorry for that," the soldier said bluntly, "for I shall be right glad to be away from these Normans who fill every place at court and swagger there as if Englishmen were but dirt under their feet. Moreover, I love not London nor its ways, and shall be glad to be down again among honest country folk, though I would still rather be following my lord the earl in ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... little snatching up of a few loose trifles such as the Society Islands, which we had, according to our custom, carelessly or benevolently left to gleaners), French arms, despite a great deal of brag and swagger, obtained little glory, while French diplomacy let itself wallow in one of the foulest sloughs in history, the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... to bring with him a new companion, a stranger to Mr. Trumbull and every one else, whose appearance, however, led to the supposition that he might be a relative of the horse-dealer's—also "given to indulgence." His large whiskers, imposing swagger, and swing of the leg, made him a striking figure; but his suit of black, rather shabby at the edges, caused the prejudicial inference that he was not able to afford himself as much ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... clanking around the curve of the small metal world. The antenna of his walkie-talkie glittered above his head. He seemed to swagger against the ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... near, walking with a free swagger in time to the haunting waltz-music. Reaching her, he stopped and executed a sweeping bow, his ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... studies. The temper of the students is admirable. Rarely if ever do they betray any traces of the hectoring spirit which still lingers at Heidelberg, for instance. But for the display of corps-caps and cannon boots and an occasional swagger in the street, one might pass an entire semester in Leipsic without realizing that the city contains three thousand students. Undoubtedly, the young men perceive, like their colleagues of Yale, that their surroundings are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... with Barcelonas and comforters, and damp travelling caps of seal-skin, and blue cloth, and tartan, arranged above the same. Nevertheless, such a society in my juvenile estimation, during my short escapade from the middy's berth, had its charms, and I was rolling in with a tolerable swagger, when Mr. Treenail pinched ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... the gallery—for he had not moved from where she had first seen him—he struck her as confessing, with strange tears in his own eyes, to sharp identity of emotion. "Poor thing, poor thing"—it reached straight— "ISN'T she, for one's credit, on the swagger?" After which, as, held thus together they had still another strained minute, the shame, the pity, the better knowledge, the smothered protest, the divined anguish even, so overcame him that, blushing to his eyes, he turned short ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... double apron. His eye gleams at once. He takes a stealthy look at her, and begins to twirl his moustache nervously, with his left hand akimbo on his hip. Finally, striking the ground with his heels in something of a cavalry swagger, he strolls over to the left of the table, opposite her, and says) Louka: do you know what the ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... Benham laboured under the possession of a secret—a secret of mighty power. What wonder if he spent much of his day in eating-houses and drinking-houses, obscurely hinting to admiring boon companions of the thing he could do an he would? Then, having drunk his fill, he would swagger, sometimes not over-steadily, out to the Park, and amuse himself by scowling at the Premier, or smiling a smile of hidden meaning at Daisy Medland, as they drove by. Also, he occasionally got into trouble: one zealous ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... and stood for a moment by the door. His trim, graceful figure and dark good looks made him at once a focus of eyes. Nonchalantly he sunned himself in the limelight, with that little touch of swagger that captures the imagination of girls. No man in the cow-country dressed like Rutherford Wadley. In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed are kings, and to these frontier women this young fellow was a glass of fashion. There was about him, too, ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... small and middle-aged, with thin shoulders and a paunch. He carried himself with a hell-raising swagger, left over from a time twenty years gone. His skin had the waxy look of lost floridity, his tuft of white hair was coarse and thin, his eyelids hung in the off-side droop that amateur physiognomists like to associate ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... rascal's hands, a rattling shower of blows fell on his back, and he took an involuntary header into the river. He crawled up the bank a sad and sober man, and all three at once tumbled from the height of saucy swagger to a low depth of slavish abjectness. The musket was found to have an enormous charge, and might have blown our man to pieces, but for the promptitude with which his companions administered ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... determined to do as he likes. He will have his own way after all. He has a will, a knowledge, a purse, friends of his own. He will let the world see that he can get along with his own resources. Barnabas Know-nothing may talk as he please, Job Do-nothing may do all he can, and Richard Bombast may swagger because he thinks matters are done as he planned; but Mr. Grumbler is independent of them all, and will, by-and-by, demonstrate it ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... me gentle Sir, 'twas from my knowledge, And shall have no protection. And to you Sir, You have shew'd more heat than wit, and from your self Have borrowed power, I never gave you here, To do these vile unmanly things: my house Is no blind street to swagger in; and my favours Not doting yet on your unknown deserts So far, that I should make you Master of my business; My credit yet stands fairer with the people Than to be tried with swords; and they that come To do me service, must not think to win me With hazard of a murther; ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... had got for nothing, and had then almost forgotten about it, and, when reminded of it, still held on to it with that defiant stubbornness which often possesses improvident and careless natures. He had never had any real business instinct, and to swagger a little over the land he held and to treat offers of purchase with contempt was the loud assertion of a capacity he did not possess. So it was that stubborn vanity, beneath which was his angry protest against the prejudice felt by the new people of the West for ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... and strode down towards the corner of the Square. Both girls watched him for a few moments. His shoulders were as square as ever but something had gone from the springiness of his gait. There was nothing left of the sailor's jaunty swagger. ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lad in Clovelly, A bold, fisher lad of Clovelly, With purpose as straight and swagger as free As the course of his boat when breasting a sea, The brave sailor lad ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Christian fathers of modern days in their indulgences. The lad was now nineteen years old, and does not appear to have been willing, at the first parental attempt, to give up his military appanages and that swagger of the young officer which is so dear to the would-be military mind. Cicero tells him that if he joined the army he would find his cousin treated with greater favor than himself. Young Quintus was older, and had been already ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... in the shoulder then, Bill," he remarked, quite audibly, and the other reddened and grinned foolishly. They were rough-looking men with a certain swagger of smartness. They regarded Carroll with a swearing emphasis, yet with a measure of reluctantly ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... some subtle change which Robin, watching him closely as he came into the room, was quick to note. Mr. Manderton made an effort to retain his old air of rather patronizing swagger; but he seemed less sure of himself than was his wont. In fact, he appeared to be ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... say that I was delighted when I saw the article in print, and yet more so when I received for it a couple of guineas, which I speedily expended on gloves, neckties, and a walking-stick. Here let me say that we were rather swagger young fellows at Bonaparte. We did not have to wear hideous ill-fitting uniforms like other Lyceens, but endeavoured to present a very smart appearance. Thus we made it a practice to wear gloves and to carry walking-sticks or canes on our way to or from the Lycee. I even improved on that ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Weeks tightened his weapon belt with a touch of swagger he had never shown before. Rip was his usual soft voiced self, dependable as a rock and a good base for the rest of them—taking command without question as they marched off ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... trying to gather from them what their words might mean. They, deep in their conversation, did not notice her. Then, with a feeling of extraordinary relief—she hardly knew why—she saw a familiar, substantial person coming along the promenade with a sort of friendly swagger. She went forward to meet him, still feeling as though she ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... the Darwinian theory—apelike, flea and curio hunting! Shamelessly inquisitive and always hungry, what did he know of the Sphinx or the pyramids or the voice—and, for the matter of that, what did they know of him? And yet he was not half bad in comparison with the "swagger people,"—these people who pretend to have lungs and what not, and instead of galloping on merry hunters through the frost and snow of Piccadilly and Park, instead of enjoying the roaring fires of piled logs in the evening, ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... He was a thin, anaemic-looking young fellow a couple of years younger than Virginia who affected a swagger and gloves and who had a cough which was insistent, but which he strove to disguise. And yet Florrie's hyperbole had not been entirely without warrant. He had something of Virginia's fine profile, a look of her in his eyes, the stamp of ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... have to get out a conveyance at closing time and drive Richard, speechless, motionless, to Vine-Pits Farm. He never went to the Gauntlet, but always to the Roebuck—beginning the evening in the hotel billiard-room, trying to swagger it out at pool with the solicitor and the doctor, then drifting to the stable bar, and finishing the evening there, or outside in the open yard. One could imagine the feelings of the old father, waiting up all alone, knowing from experience what the sound of wheels implied after ten o'clock. ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... except small well-trimmed mustaches and a chin-tuft. Altogether, he was as pretty a model of a light cavalryman as I remember to have seen: square in the shoulder, slender in the hip, well limbed, lithe and muscular. His carriage was soldierly, without the exaggerated stiffness and swagger commonly found amongst non-commissioned officers of dragoons; and altogether he had a gentlemanly air which, I doubt not, would have made itself as visible under the coarse drugget of a private soldier, as beneath the garb of finer ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... abroad from barracks, clad in the "walking-out" finery of shell-jacket and overalls, with the jingle of spurs and effort at the true Cavalry swagger, or rather the first attempt at a walk abroad, for the expedition had ended disastrously ere well begun. Unable to shake off his admirer, Trooper Herbert Hawker, Dam had just passed the Main Guard and main gates in the company of Herbert, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... in Paris; the smart ones, I mean. Wait now, Herbinger, you know who I mean, the fellow who's in one of the jobbers' offices; yes, of course, you must know him, he's one of the best-known men in Paris, that great big fair-haired boy who wears such swagger clothes; he always has a flower in his buttonhole and a light-coloured overcoat with a fold down the back; he goes about with that old image, takes her to all the first-nights. Very well! He gave a ball the other night, and all the ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... officers, the beret of Czecho-Slovaks. And everywhere, too, the gay and well-known red pom-pon bobbed on the caps of French blue-jackets, and British marines stalked in pairs, looking every inch the soldier with their swagger sticks and their ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... Bunyan's Pilgrim—why, the thought is enough to turn one's moral stomach. His cockle hat and staff transformed to a smart cockd beaver and a jemmy cane, his amice gray to the last Regent Street cut, and his painful Palmer's pace to the modern swagger. Stop thy friend's sacriligious hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible. The Vanity Fair, and the pilgrims there—the silly soothness in his setting out countenance—the Christian idiocy (in a good sense) of his ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... alone, boy," he said sternly. "You, Michael Purlrose, knowing you as I do of old, for a mouthing, cowardly bully, do you think that I am going to be frightened by your swagger? Yes, I tell you that ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... elected to admire, and finally submits to be satisfied with far less than she had at first supposed could satisfy her. As for young men, they are mostly fools, and they talk of love with a vast deal of swagger and bravery, laughing it to scorn, as a landsman talks of seasickness, telling you it is nothing but an impression and a mere lack of courage, till one day the land-bred boaster puts to sea in a Channel steamer, and experiences a new sensation, and becomes a very sick man indeed before he is ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... in with a gleaming eye and an unsteady step—her hair partially dishevelled, and her dress most negligently put on. The moment Deaker saw her, his whole manner changed, notwithstanding his previous violence—the swagger departed from him, his countenance fell, and he lay mute and terror-stricken before her. It was indeed clear that her sway over him was boundless, and such was the fact. On this occasion she simply looked at him significantly, held up her hand in a menacing attitude, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... strength of his stalwart frame, all his physical powers were shown only to his fellow-men; a form of flattery which women appreciate, nay, which so intoxicates them, that every man with his mistress on his arm assumes a matador swagger that provokes a smile. Very well set up, in a closely fitting blue coat with solid gold buttons, in black trousers, spotless patent evening boots, and gloves of a fashionable hue, the only Brazilian touch in the Baron's costume was a large diamond, worth about a hundred thousand francs, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... a very gay life in Melbourne. His good looks and clever tongue had made him a lot of friends, and he was very popular both in drawing-room and club. The men voted him a jolly sort of fellow and a regular swagger man, while the ladies said that he was heavenly; for, true to his former tactics, Vandeloup always made particular friends of women, selecting, of course, those whom he thought would be likely to be of use to him. Being such a favourite entailed going out a great deal, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... promised production, and bidding him not be downhearted, for the first of the second half (the Sixth Part or eleventh volume of the whole) is actually at Press. It may be noticed that there is a swagger about these avis and such like things, which probably is attributable to Georges, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... his place with a lounging swagger, but his first ball was caught by the immortal Sibthorp, who uttered more puns on the occasion than the oldest man present recollected to have heard perpetrated in any given time. Russell—who, by the bye, excavated several quarts of 'heavy' during ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... but you may to some extent judge from the delicacy of his present work of the heights he will attain by diligence. Yasha!" A swarthy youth in a blue silk blouse and long glace boots, like a gipsy, came forward with a swagger, fingering the tassels of his belt, and merrily screwing up his big, impudent black eyes ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... temperament which must have commended itself to Mr Arnold almost as strongly as his literary quality, and very closely indeed connected with that—the temperament of equity, of epieikeia, of freedom from swagger and brag and self-assertion. And here, once more, the things receive precisely their right treatment, the treatment proportioned and adjusted at once to their own value and nature and to the use which their critic is intending ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... for the Foudroyant, the vessel was trim When it fought with the French, for JOHN BULL, under Him, The Star of the Nile. Yes, it carried his flag, When it captured the Frenchman. There's no need to brag, Or to say swagger things of a generous foe. Besides, things have doosedly altered, you know. We're no more like NELSON than I to a Merman; We can sell his flag-ship for firewood, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... with painstaking detail. Too late she had discovered that she didn't possess a dress fit to wear at any one's wedding, not to mention her own. From time to time she had dreamed of a swagger tailored suit, but the paradox of a swagger tailored suit in San Pasqual had been so apparent always that Donna could not bring herself to the point of submitting to a measurement in the local dry-goods emporium, having the ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... live forever in dispersion among the peoples in order to act as their teachers and models of morality, and to educate them gradually to pure rationalism, to a general brotherhood of mankind, and to an ideal cosmopolitanism. They declare the mission swagger to be either presumption or foolishness. They, more modest and more practical, demand only the right for the Jewish people to live and to develop itself, according to its abilities, up to the natural limits of its type. They have ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau
... wholly superficial things like his dandyism, his dark, sinister good looks and a great deal of the mere polished melodrama that he wrote. There was something in his all-round interests; in the variety of things he tried; in his half-aristocratic swagger as poet and politician, that made him in some ways a real touchstone of the time. It is noticeable about him that he is always turning up everywhere and that he brings other people out, generally in a hostile ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... though certainly critical. He was a type outside of her experience, and, by the law of opposites, attracted her. Every line of him showed tremendous driving power, force, energy. He was not without some touch of Western swagger; but it went well with the air of youth to which his boyish laugh and wavy, sun-reddened ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... uncontrollable amazement; 'There is no God but God: is it possible that four or five Franks can use all these things to eat, drink and sleep on a journey?' (N.B. I fear the Franks will think the stock very scanty.) Whereupon master Achmet, with the swagger of one who has seen cities and men, held forth. 'Oh Effendim, that is nothing; Our Lady is almost like the children of the Arabs. One dish or two, a piece of bread, a few dates, and Peace, (as we say, there is an ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... light! Death is the common right Of toads and men, — Of earl and midge The privilege. Why swagger then? The gnat's supremacy ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... grown man, and a very accomplished cavalier into the bargain. Lads were early formed in that rough, warfaring epoch; and when one has been in a pitched battle and a dozen raids, has killed one's man in an honorable fashion, and knows a thing or two of strategy and mankind, a certain swagger in the gait is surely to be pardoned. He had put up his horse with due care, and supped with due deliberation; and then, in a very agreeable frame of mind, went out to pay a visit in the gray of the evening. It was not a very wise proceeding on the young man's part. He would have ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... does swagger a bit, Harriet, but 'tis not an offensive swagger. As to his hat: 'tis a standing joke of the army as to how he keeps it on in battle. The hotter the fight the further on the side it gets. I saw a letter that General Greene writ to His Excellency ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... Toad, dismayed. "Me stop indoors and write a lot of rotten letters on a jolly morning like this, when I want to go around my property and set everything and everybody to rights, and swagger about and enjoy myself! Certainly not! I'll be—I'll see you—Stop a minute, though! Why, of course, dear Badger! What is my pleasure or convenience compared with that of others! You wish it done, and it shall be done. Go, Badger, order the Banquet, order what you like; then join our young friends ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... Haer, wearing a colonel's uniform and flicking his swagger stick along his booted leg, stood in the doorway. His voice was lazily arrogant. "And Mr. Holland, I must say, the Middle caste seems to have taken over the house. Well, Major Mauser? I assume you do not labor under the illusion that you are ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... standing on the steps of the inn. He had altered the fashion of his hair, had fastened on large bushy eyebrows which he had obtained from a skilful perruquier in Cadiz, and a moustache of imposing size turned up at the tips; he wore high buff leather boots, and there was an air of military swagger about him, and he was altogether so changed that at the first glance the muleteer failed to recognize him. As soon as the mules were unburdened, Gerald found an opportunity of speaking ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... species found in this region are more youthful in aspect, carry themselves with more swagger, wear their hats jantily, with greasy curls coaxed to project beyond the brim. They affect a sort of secondhand gentility, cultivate great brooches, silver guard-chains, and whiskers, and have the air of persons ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... Bow, Bill, Zword and Dagger, Were us'd all in vighting; Ch've heard my Father swear and swagger, That it was but a Flea-biting: ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... in that way by Kafirs, but somehow he impressed me, and besides I was curious to know what he had to say. So I translated, expressing my opinion at the same time that he was an impudent fellow, and that his swagger was outrageous. ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... about that!" growled Miles, and stalked from the room, his heavy shoulders swinging from side to side in an exaggerated swagger. ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman |
