"Boastful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... come alone, he can do me no harm through the bars of the windows. And he will think I am a coward, if I don't keep my word; no, I will let him see that I am not afraid of my own strength; I will show him I can go what length I please, and stop short when I please." Had Flatterwell heard this boastful speech, he would have been quite sure ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... traveller, "rocks of micaceous slate, and of sparkling talc, which are resplendent in the midst of a sheet of water, which acts as a reflector beneath the burning tropical sun." So are explained those massive domes of gold, those obelisks of silver, and all those marvels of which the boastful and enthusiastic minds of the Spaniards afforded them a glimpse. Did Raleigh believe really in the existence of this city of gold, for the conquest of which he was about to sacrifice so many lives? Was he thoroughly convinced himself, or did he not yield to the illusions ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... hearts, alas! being but too glad to catch at the excuse for sin which the devil gives them, when he tells them that this present earth is not God's kingdom; and so they go and act accordingly, selfish, grudging, pushing, boastful, every man's hand against his neighbour and for himself, till they succeed too often in making this earth as fearfully like the devil's kingdom as it is possible for God's kingdom to ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... of beaten women rose, and the weird chants of incantations and of foul unclean dances were heard. Khamane called the older men together around his fire. Pots of beer passed from hand to hand. As the men grew fuddled they became bolder and more boastful. Khamane then spoke to them and said, "Why should Khama rule you? Remember he forbids you to make and to drink beer. He has done away with the dances of the young men. He will not let you make charms or throw enchanted dice ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... subject. He believes and disbelieves with impassioned confidence. I wish to see him doubting, and doubting. He is intrepid, eloquent, and honest. Perhaps, the only acting democrat that is honest, for the patriots are ragged cattle; a most execrable herd. Arrogant because they are ignorant, and boastful of the strength of reason, because they have never tried it enough to know its weakness. Oh! my poor country! The clouds cover thee. There is not one spot of clear blue in ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... his boisterous humor and democratic sympathies, could not interpret Jefferson Brick and Lafayette Kettle and the other expansive patriots whom he met on his travels. Their virtues were as a sealed book to him. Their boastful familiarity was ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... ships were prepared on shore and sent down upon the Spanish fleet, burning fiercely and painting the skyline with red. Some of the large vessels had anchored, and, as these terrors approached, they slipped their cables in order to escape. Confusion beset the ranks of the boastful foe and cheered on the British bull-dogs ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... inhabitants are speaking of things that are universally admired. Every time that I told a citizen of Rotterdam that I liked the town he made a gesture of surprise. In speaking of their commerce and institutions they never let a vain expression escape them, nor even a boastful or complacent word. They always speak of what they are going to do, and never of what they have done. One of the first questions put to me when I named my country was, "What about its finances?" As ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... that he had been conducted to the spirit world." As an orator, he is said to have been even more powerful than Tecumseh himself, and his great influence in after years among the various tribes would seem to bear that statement out. However, he was boastful, arrogant, at times cruel, and never enjoyed the reputation for honesty and integrity that his more distinguished brother did. In personal appearance he was not prepossessing. He had lost one eye, "which defect he concealed by wearing a dark veil or handkerchief over the disfigured organ." ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... somewhat boastful of our intelligence, we should put the education of the young in wild-life protection on a rational ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... Supper which is now but a shadow on the wall of S. Maria delle Grazie. And above all, we may see how the true splendour of Titian exposes the ostentation of Rubens, as the sun will make even the greatest fire look dingy and boastful. Gradually Vandyck, shy and of a quiet, serene spirit, becomes aware of this, and, led by the immeasurable glory of the Venetians, slowly escapes from that "Flemish manner" to be master of himself; so that, after he has painted in the manner of Titian at Palermo, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... be jelly long before that fellow makes his way in the world," cried Clapart. "You don't know your own child; he is conceited, boastful, deceitful, lazy, incapable of—" ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... the conduct of the man who insinuates himself into the affections of a young girl by every protestation and avowal possible, save that which would be binding upon himself, and then withdraws his attentions with the boastful consciousness that he has ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... savage[27] into day. 190 At night returning, every labor sped, He sits him down the monarch of a shed; Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys His children's looks, that brighten at the blaze; While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard, 195 Displays her cleanly platter on the board: And haply too some pilgrim, thither led, With many a tale repays the ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... they for that the king has thus courteously kept them. Alexander is welcome; for there is no lack of aught that he wishes nor is there any baron in the Court so high that he does not speak him fair and welcome him. For he is not foolish nor boastful nor doth he vaunt his noble birth. He makes himself known to Sir Gawain and to the others one by one. He makes himself much loved by each; even Sir Gawain loves him so much that he hails him as friend and comrade. The Greeks had taken ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... like of that being their stupidity in living in an exposed situation. Millreagh does not admit that it has suffered any more than a temporary diminishment of its greatness, and it makes optimistic and boastful prophecies of the fortune and repute that will come to it when the engineers make a tunnel between Scotland and Ireland. Sometimes an article on the Channel Tunnel will appear in the Newsletter or the Whig, and ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... Arthur's Seat and cracked vain pistols at the frowning fortress. There was, in fact, all through the afternoon, a great deal of imagination loose in our neighbourhood. And even far into the gloaming sounds of battle, boastful recriminations, the clash of swords, the trample and rally of the heavy charge, even the cries of the genuinely wounded, came fitfully from this corner and that of the ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... being given to talking in a boastful manner, after having seduced that easily deluded woman (the wife of Dames) into an illicit connection with him, allured her into a perilous fraud, and persuaded her by an accumulation of lies to accuse her innocent husband of treason, and to invent ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... insolent, domineering, based upon the arrogant assumption that the Hungarians were incapable of managing their own affairs without the guidance of Austrian wisdom and the support of Austrian steadiness. But the Hungarians, united among themselves, putting their trust, not in boastful, vapouring, and self-seeking agitators, but in honest, truthful, high-minded, and capable statesmen, persevered in a course of firm, but temperate and constitutional, national self-assertion, until the Austrians ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... tables, a young man in a red shirt sat drinking. He was in a boastful mood. Behind his ear stuck a cigarette. The fellow intruded upon his neighbours, ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... connection with one of those feud cases, I was asked by a private if I were related to Edgar Allan Poe, "De mug what used to write poetry," and when I replied, "Yes, he was my grandmother's first cousin," he, evidently thinking I was too boastful, remarked, "Well, man, you've ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... his head. "Nothing compelled me, Max," he replied. "The time was ripe—therefore Robert MacGregor is no more. The name and character served their purpose," he continued, assuming a boastful tone. "It was I who warned von Lindenfelt's column when it stood a good chance of being cut off at Gwelba kopje. Again it is to my credit that a detachment of our forces was not ambushed at Zwarte kloof. I covered my tracks very effectively, did I not, Herr Oberst? Himmel. I have news for you, Max. ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... Ross, who considered them only as clever scoundrels or unmitigated humbugs, objected, as he did not wish to seem in any way to encourage them. However, one day as they, from Mr Ross's reluctance to put them to the test, became exceedingly boastful of their powers to do such wonderful things it was decided to give them ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... robbers and barbaric chieftains; the Prince Siddartha, who founded Buddhism, in his wanderings among the various Indian nations who bowed down to Brahma; and, still greater, the Apostle Paul, in his protracted martyrdom among Pagan idolaters and boastful philosophers, in Asia and in Europe. These and others may be cited, who led a life of self-denial and reproach in order to spread the truths which save mankind. We naturally call their lot hard, even though they chose it; but it is the school of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... temperature dropped lower and lower. And the animal world peeped furtively out upon the strange sight of creatures like themselves toiling at the command of beings whose voices had not even the power to smite the mountainsides with boastful defiance as theirs ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... distrust, not indeed of the principles embodied in our institutions, but of our practical ability to carry them out to their legitimate results, and thus to enjoy, fully and permanently, the advantages of the system of free government of which we have always been so boastful. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... possible for a man who is poor and has no office ([Greek: anarchonti)] and enjoys no honor to be happy; or to show yourself to them as rich and in power? For the second of these things belong to a man who is boastful, silly, and good for nothing. And consider by what means the pretence must be supported. It will be necessary for you to hire slaves and to possess a few silver vessels, and to exhibit them in public, ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... now re-entered the hall, leading his little sister, as if he had brought her to bear witness to the boastful tale which he told his father, of his having manfully ridden Black Hastings to the stable-yard, alone in the saddle; and that Saunders though he walked by the horse's head, did not once put his hand upon the rein, and Brewer, though he stood beside him, scarce held him by ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... will be quarrels and bloodshed. Tradition says that there was once a Chinese kingdom at the north of Borneo, whose chiefs married into the families of the principal Dyak chiefs; but it is the misfortune of the Chinese character to be both boastful and cowardly, and when they had irritated the Malays by their big words, they stood no chance of prevailing against them in war. If their enemies did not run away after the first attack and discharge of firearms, they were pretty sure to show them an example by doing so themselves. ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... though he had been a girl I was in love with. The man had formerly been in the light cavalry, but afterwards had joined the arquebusiers as one of the Bargello's corporals; and what increased my rage was that he had used these boastful words: "If it had not been for me, who killed that brave young man, the least trifle of delay would have resulted in his putting us all to flight with great disaster." When I saw that the fever caused by always seeing him about ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... newspaper a remarkable event, all the loafers turned to Jed with wide, malicious grins, to hear him cap it with a yet ore marvelous tale of what had happened to him. They gathered around the simple-minded little old man, their tongues in their cheeks, and drew from him one silly, impossible, boastful story after another. They made him amplify circumstantially by clumsily artful questions, and poked one another in the ribs with delight over his deluded joy in ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... results—and this quite naturally and without any toilsome effort. We shall then find that the secret of co-operation is to have faith in ourselves because we first have faith in God; and we shall discover that this Divine self-confidence is something very different from a boastful egotism which assumes a personal superiority over others. It is simply the assurance of a man who knows that he is working in accordance with a law of nature. He does not claim as a personal achievement what the Law does FOR him: but on the ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... the drums were their words and they roared like the roar of the Ha-ha. For some for Tamdoka contend, and some for the fair, bearded stranger, And the betting runs high to the end, with the skins of the bison and beaver. A wife of tall Wazi-kute —the mother of boastful Tamdoka— Brought her handsomest robe from the tee, with a vaunting and loud proclamation: She would stake her last robe on her son who, she boasted, was fleet as the Cabri [80] And the tall, tawny chieftain looked on, approving the boast of the mother. Then ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... on the pine-tree torch the sulphur blue, And from the dripping bay dash round the lustral dew. And yet—to these abodes we all must come, Believe, or not, these are our final home; Though now Ierne tremble at our sway, And Britain, boastful of her length of day; Though the blue Orcades receive our chain, And isles that slumber in the frozen main. But why of conquest boast? the conquered climes Are free, O Rome, from thy detested ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... before the assault on Seringapatam, he was absurdly angry with me, and with others, for treating the whole thing as a fable. A foolish wrangle followed; and Herncastle's unlucky temper got the better of him. He declared, in his boastful way, that we should see the Diamond on his finger, if the English army took Seringapatam. The sally was saluted by a roar of laughter, and there, as we all thought that ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... my dear fellow," he said more mildly, "if I hadn't been a boastful, drunken sot, you wouldn't have heard of 'em—you wouldn't, curse you. I was mad! I had you in my hand like that!" He closed a not over-clean fist under van Heerden's nose. "I saw it all, all, I saw you bullying the poor devil, shaking some secret out of him, ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... is that angle which placing a line there shows a regular chance to be fitting. This is so boastful. ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... watching the Bandarlog at play in the forest. As you behold them and comprehend their natures, now hugely brave and boastful, now full of dread, the most weakly emotional of any intelligent species, ever trying to attract the notice of some greater animal, not happy indeed unless noticed,—is it not plain they are bound to invent things called gods? Don't think for the moment of whether there are gods or ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... hereafter say that I was alone to blame for the failure of my plans," cried the archduke, with a mournful smile; "they will charge me with having been unable to carry out the grandiloquent promises which I made to the emperor and the Tyrolese, and the emperor will exult at the discomfiture of the boastful archduke who took it upon himself to call out the whole people of the Tyrol, put himself at their head, and successfully defend against all enemies this fortress which God and Nature erected for Austria. ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... conquers space, It cowes that boastful trickster Chance, And bids the tyrant Circumstance Uncrown and fill ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... in me and trust me, my beautiful gringo flower! You will learn in time to do so, for I shall teach you. Some day you shall bless your guardian angel that to-night I found you and snatched you from your boastful lover." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... "Choo Hoo, boastful and vainglorious, would approach with his enormous horde; he would taunt us, no doubt, with his absurd 'Koos-takke,' which I verily believe has no meaning at all, and of which we need take no heed. In a few days, having exhausted the supplies, ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... Vie d'un Joueur," having been among the triumphs of the Porte-Saint-Martin and of Frederick Lemaitre. As a novelist he did not write for children like Ducray-Duminil, and one of his novels contains a boastful preface scoffing at and glorying in the accusations of impropriety brought against him. I have found nothing very shocking in those books of his which I have read, and I certainly have not thought it necessary to extend my acquaintance in ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... mountains alone to find rest, and there he communicated with his god. It was surely a great step in advance when all the Elohims were combined into one Supreme Elohim that was everywhere present and ruled the world. Instead of dozens of little gods, jealous, jangling, fearful, fretful, fussy, boastful, changing walking-sticks to serpents, or doing other things quite as useless, it was a great advance to have one Supreme Being, dispassionate, a God of Love and Justice, "with whom can be no variation, neither ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... had adopted the boys were enemies, holding no communication. For a time letters full of boyish bravado and boastful narratives of the new and larger experience—grotesque descriptions of their widening lives and the new worlds they had conquered—passed between them; but these gradually became less frequent, and with William's removal to another and greater city ceased ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... would have been most honourable to him and to them, if there were not abundant proofs that it was meant to be a dead letter. It was an Act purporting to grant entire liberty of conscience to all Christian sects. On this occasion a proclamation was put forth announcing in boastful language to the English people that their rightful King had now signally refuted those slanderers who had accused him of affecting zeal for religious liberty merely in order to serve a turn. If he were at heart inclined to persecution, would he not have persecuted the Irish Protestants? He ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... than an hour later, I found that I was thirty pheasants behind my adversary, I shook my head, and so did everybody else. On the whole, that luncheon, of which we partook in a keeper's house, was a very pleasant meal, though Van Koop talked so continuously and in such a boastful strain that I saw it irritated our host and some of the other gentlemen, who were very pleasant people. At last he began to patronize me, asking me how I had been getting on with my "elephant-potting" of ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... feelings which can better be imagined than described. He had already written home in the most boastful manner about the invitation he had received, and he knew that before he could contradict it, it would have been generally reported by his gratified parents to his city friends. And now he would be compelled ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the critic's youthful mind that the battle ought to have resulted differently, and that if the foes of "the mighty Julius" had had the wit to take advantage of his indiscretion, certain pages of the "Commentaries" might have been conceived in a less boastful spirit. Little Louis Joseph had sketched a rough plan, showing the respective positions of the opposing forces, and had then demanded of his tutor why this had not been done, why that had been neglected, and why the other had never been even so much as thought ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... was convinced that there was no living creature under the sun, human or otherwise, that walked upon two legs, that he could not pommel to death, with more or less ease, by means of his fists alone. And in this conviction he was not far wrong. Yet it must not be supposed that Jo Bumpus was a boastful man or a bully. Far from it. He was so thoroughly persuaded of his invincibility that he felt there was no occasion to prove it. He therefore followed the natural bent of his inclinations, which led him at all times to exhibit a mild, amiable, and ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... experiences any shock at Romeo's forgetting his Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the yearning of his youthful imagination, and rushing into his passion for Juliet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy; and we should remark the boastful positiveness of Romeo in a love of his own making, which is never shown where love is really ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... he said, with a grave smile, "we men of the south are rather boastful of our hospitality. But true hospitality consists in something besides eating and drinking with those whose companionship is a sufficient recompense for all that we do for them. It clothes the naked, feeds the hungry, shelters ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... they heard the voice of Dolar Durba, very loud and boastful. "Who is that I hear?" said the king's son. "It is a man of the foreigners asking for a hundred of my men to go ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... Zealanders in answer to the commander's praise would be, "Thank you. Why not?" as if this were what the New Zealanders expected of themselves. They take much for granted about New Zealand, without being boastful. ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the famous campaign of Antietam; which had humbled the pride of the boastful confederates, and had turned back their hordes to their mountain fastnesses in Virginia for safety. A campaign which, while conducted with great hesitancy and a total want of that celerity of movement usually considered ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... too sad to think long about, lest we become very Heraclituses. Let us take the other side of the matter with Democritus, try to laugh man out of a little of his boastful ignorance and self-satisfied clumsiness, and tell him, that if the House of Commons would but summon one of the little Paramecia from any Thames' sewer-mouth, to give his evidence before their next Cholera Committee, sanitary blue-books, invaluable as they are, would be superseded for ever ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... circumstances condemn such generous souls as Father Hecker to inactivity, a favorite solace is picking up fragments of work or recalling high ideas from the crowded memory of their former zeal, often with much profit to those who listen. And this was no idle-minded or boastful trait in him, as ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... of Europe, a more appropriate simile may be found in the proverbial habit of each of two men, in a street fight, frightening his opponent by recognition of a personage in the background. That Germany, however ambitious, and however boastful of her military strength, should be rendered nervous by the menace of Franco-Russian co-operation is a consideration modified only by the universal recognition of the desire of France for self-respecting peace. As soon ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... but in all truth I need not seek quarrel—it comes my way without seeking. De Baugis was not so bad—a bit high strung, perhaps, and boastful of his rank, yet not so ill a comrade—but there is a newcomer here, a popinjay named Cassion, with whom I cannot abide. Ah, but you know the beast, for you journeyed west in his company. Sacre! the man charged you with murder, ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... excellent, and greatly stimulated our discourse. Yet, I must confess, it was drunk chiefly by the Frenchman and Jordan; for Wells barely touched his glass, while I had never acquired a taste for such liquor. De Croix waxed somewhat boastful, toward the last; but we paid small heed to him, for I was deeply interested in Captain Wells's earlier experiences among the savages, which he related gravely and with much detail. Jordan proved himself a reckless, roistering young ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... to make one wrathful! Boastful threats of arms against the Republic if she yield not obedience to the Holy Father, with secret promises of armed assistance to his Holiness to keep him firm in his course, at the very moment of her cringing attempts at mediation ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... a Province wide Tenfold the length of this terrene: at last Farr in th' Horizon to the North appeer'd From skirt to skirt a fierie Region, stretcht 80 In battailous aspect, and neerer view Bristl'd with upright beams innumerable Of rigid Spears, and Helmets throng'd, and Shields Various, with boastful Argument portraid, The banded Powers of Satan hasting on With furious expedition; for they weend That self same day by fight, or by surprize To win the Mount of God, and on his Throne To set the envier of his State, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... went. Louie received him with a manner half mocking—half patronising—and made no effort whatever to be agreeable to him. She was preoccupied; and the stout, shy man in his new suit only bored her. As for him, he sat and watched her; his small, amazed eyes took in her ways with Cecile, alternately boastful and tyrannical; her airs towards Lucy; her complete indifference to her brother's life and interests. When he got up to go, he took leave of her with all the old timid gaucherie. But if, when he entered the room, there had been anything left in his mind of the old dream, he was a wholly free ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Unusual bodily vigour enabled him to combine severe devotion to work with facile indulgence in sensual pleasures. His passion for wine and women was almost as well known as his learning. Versatile, light-hearted, boastful and pleasure-loving, he contrasts with the nobler and more intellectual character of Averroes. His bouts of pleasure gradually weakened his constitution; a severe colic, which seized him on the march of the army against Hamad[a]n, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... She had often heard her father talk like this before. She had often heard these oracular hints of some grand event looming mighty in the immediate future; but she had never seen the vague prophecy accomplished. Always a schemer, and always alternating between the boastful confidence of hope and the peevish bewailings of despair, the Captain had built his castle to-day to sit among its ruins to-morrow, ever since ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Christians, through whom the report came, misinterpreted his Mongolian title Ung-Khan as denoting a priest-king named John, and it was this distant Eastern potentate who came to be known in Europe as Presbyter Johannes or Prester John. It was the Syrian Christians who, in their desire to outvie the boastful arrogance of their Latin neighbours, together with many apochryphal tales invented a letter from this dignitary to some of the sovereigns of Europe, including the Pope. Equally fabulous seems to have been the report to Alexander III of a physician named ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... changed in his fierce, boastful way, while his two remaining Zulus clapped their hands and sentence by sentence echoed his words, and Goroko, the witch-doctor, ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... War. Much in the old Germany appealed powerfully to our son, and even of the new Germany, with its energy and its zeal for learning, he was something of an admirer. But he hated in modern Germany its brazen materialism and boastful arrogance. He attributed the change in the spirit of the German people to the hardness of their Prussian taskmasters, whose yoke was submissively borne because of the glamour of the military victories achieved since 1866, and the rapid growth in wealth that had followed the attainment of German ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... feel called upon to make to the entertaining Major: the youth of America should be taught to love, to live for, and, if need be, to die for their country; but they should also be taught to shun narrow exclusiveness and boastful vanity. A government of a whole people should in this respect set a noble example ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... eyes she was a sight that weakened the knees beneath him and set him quaking with a new fear. He dared not speak and bring her gaze upon him, the memory of his boastful words in the forest ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... staunch to the death; tender with a grave sweetness to those who claim his love; passionate, beneath stoic seeming, for the causes he holds sacred. A hater of confusion and of idle noise, his place is not where the mob presses; he makes no vaunt of what he has done, no boastful promise of what he will do; when the insensate cry is loud, the counsel of wisdom overborne, he will hold apart, content with plain work that lies nearest to his hand, building, strengthening, whilst others riot in destruction. He was ever hopeful, and deems it a crime to despair of ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... great flourish about his fidelity to Massachusetts. I shall make no profession of zeal for the interests and honor of South Carolina; of that my constituents shall judge. If there be one State in the Union, Mr. President (and I say it not in a boastful spirit), that may challenge comparison with any other for a uniform, zealous, ardent, and uncalculating devotion to the Union, that State is South Carolina. Sir, from the very commencement of the Revolution up to this hour there ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... life so also in art, Thalberg manifests innate tact; his execution is so gentlemanlike, so opulent, so decorous, so entirely without grimace, so entirely without forced affectation of genius [forcirtes Genialthun], so entirely without that boastful boorishness which badly conceals the inner pusillanimity...He enchants by balsamic euphony, by sobriety and gentleness....There is only one I ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... who dared to buy a picture on his own accord—unless he was a dealer. And then usually he was not really a true-born Briton. He waits to see what is being hung. He has these things now because he thinks they are right, not because they are beautiful, just as he used to have the Stag at Bay and the Boastful Hound. It is Leighton now; it was Landseer then. Really I believe that very soon the ladies' papers will devote a column to pictures. Something in this style. 'Smart people are taking down their Rossetti's Annunciations ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... against Greece, all his courtiers encouraged his boastful temper, which forgot how unsubstantial his grounds for confidence were. One declared that the Greeks would not endure to hear the news of the declaration of war, and would take to flight at the first rumour of his approach; another, that with such a vast army ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... a singer (born 1773, died 1835), the husband of Mozart's eldest sister-in-law, who frequently, even in Beethoven's presence, made some boastful remark in praise of his deceased relative; such as "My brother-in-law would not have ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... that she wanted to hold her own with the other charwomen who were represented in the trenches. So she assumed the relationship of an anonymous marraine towards a certain unknown namesake in the Black Watch, and made boastful pretence of having received ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... inquiring into the rightfulness of title, and urged the line of 49 deg.. Mr. Crittenden followed in the same vein, and in a reply to Senator William Allen of Ohio, chairman of Foreign Affairs, made a speech abounding in sarcasm and ridicule. The Whigs having in the campaign taken no part in the boastful demand for 54 deg. 40', were not subjected to the humiliation of retracing imprudent steps and retracting ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... should not mind it much myself, for I am very old and have not a great while longer to live in any case, but for the time that is left it will mar my usefulness. I have been able to help the people here and they have come to depend upon me—that is my life. I trust I am not boastful if I say my greatest joy has been ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... stout-hearted people by its grand performances. This little David had fought the Goliath of England most valiantly for seven years, and in the might of right its "pebbles from the brook" had been equal in efficiency to the huge "spear" of the boastful oppressor. Divine help gave final victory to ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Sugar Camp in peace we dwell And none is boastful of himself; None plots to gain with shot and shell His neighbor's bit of land or pelf. The roar of cannon isn't heard, There stilled is money's tempting voice; Someone detects a new-come bird And at her presence ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... sanitation, the Huns and Hunnesses and a few other beastlinesses. One can admire even the statue of Wissmann, the great explorer, that looks with fixed eyes to the Congo in the eye of the setting sun. He is symbolical of everything that a boastful Germany can pretend to. For at his feet is a native Askari looking upward, with adoring eye, to the "Bwona Kuba" who has given him the priceless boon of militarism, while with both hands the soldier ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... and he was standing, in considerable perplexity, to receive Corey, when the young man opened his painted glass door. It was a hot afternoon, and Lapham was in his shirt sleeves. Scarcely a trace of the boastful hospitality with which he had welcomed Corey to his house a few days before lingered in his present address. He looked at the young man's face, as if he expected him to despatch whatever unimaginable affair ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... advantages in the conflict. Out of hundreds of outposts like the one we were just in, for example, only four others have ever been discovered, and the Zards still have no clue where our fortress is." This he said in a boastful manner, but as he did a faint spirit of sorrow spread across his face for an instant, as if in memory of one of the ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... with a displeased look and tone, "instead of instructing these poor, ignorant barbarians in the rules and civilization of our enlightened empire, you foster, by such boastful words, the idle pride and fury of their temper, which hurries them into brawls with the legions of other foreign countries, and even breeds ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... his bunk again to remain until summoned. The engineer, who was like an officer in charge, was not a hard man. He understood the necessity of breaking his boys in gradually. Zaidos, too tired to sleep, lay in his bunk watching the men about him and listening to their idle or boastful talk. His native tongue had come back to his remembrance, and it was easy to ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... amused with her boastful supremacy; but the last words touched him with a certain pang just in that moment. He felt like a slave—a slave who must obey his tyrant, or go out ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... little harmonies of sound as it swept through the tall, waving grass; strange birds carolled joyously from the orchard by the road, and near at hand the old, brown Jersey lowed lovingly to her ungainly calf. From the more distant chicken coop came the cackle of hens and the boastful crowing ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... conventional channels of politics, and if he desired to step on a law, he stepped on it, and a court came running up behind him, and legalized his transaction. He sneered at reformers, and mocked God, did John Barclay in those days. He grew arrogant and boastful, and strutted in his power like a man in liquor with the vain knowledge that he could increase the population of a state or a group of states, or he could shrivel the prosperity of a section of the country by his whim. For by changing a freight rate he could make ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... Count Adolphus Schwarzenberg and all the plots and intrigues concocted by him in Berlin, and his efforts to lead my officers into insubordination and revolt. But when I ordered investigations to be made into these matters, and the count should have justified his actions, the boastful lord showed himself to be but ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... in terms of prodigious achievement as they passed from tongue to tongue, and the scant regard for anything approaching the truth in these matters became a national eccentricity. The habitant was boastful in all that concerned himself or his race; never did a people feel more firmly assured that it was the salt of the earth. He was proud of his ancestry, and proud of his allegiance; and so are his descendants of today even though their allegiance ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... when of all things a contestant most desires silence. Major Jennings was determined to triumph over his boastful companion. And he was full of courage and resolve. They had reached the seventeenth green in the same number of strokes from the first tee. That is to say, each had used up ninety-five of his allotted ninety-eight. Neither holed ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... to HAVE to whistle for us to get out of their way. If I may do so, without appearing boastful, I think I can honestly say that our one small boat, during that week, caused more annoyance and delay and aggravation to the steam launches that we came across than all the other craft on the river ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... possibly, by bribing high, succeed, provided they immediately leave the country, undertaking never to return; forsooth, the latter part of the arrangement would be no great punishment, as I cannot conceive any one willingly remaining in a land ruled by that despotic and boastful tyrant, Duke Alva. I was permitted to see my wife, and I was thus able to keep up her spirits. My belief is, that the authorities, who have got her in their power, keep her there, in order to see how much they ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... the endeavour to act the leadsman's name in dumb charade; first his surname, which he had inherited from his father, and then his Christian name, which his mother had chosen for him at his baptism. These names were sacred to him, and although there may have been a little boastful sound about them, he had ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... precious metals, factories managed with so splendid an ingenuity? If wine and oil are your quest, said he, you have but to tap the surface of the munificent earth. One thing only, he confessed, was lacking, and that need a few years would make good. "Wait," said he, with an assured if immodest boastful-ness,—"wait until we get a bit degenerate, and then we will produce a Shakespeare"! I had not the heart to suggest that the sixteenth century in England was a period of birth, not of decay. I could only accept his statement in awful appreciation. And ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... acquainted with him and trembled at the sight of him; and asserted that one half of them must be guillotined, and the other half transported, the next time there was "a flare-up." His violent political creed found food in boastful, bragging talk of this sort; he displayed all the partiality for a lark and a rumpus which prompts a Parisian shopkeeper to take down his shutters on a day of barricade-fighting to get a good view of the corpses of the slain. When Florent returned from ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... surprisingly good. No evidence of mental aberration was discovered. The diagnosis could be made, in short, that the boy was a subnormal verbalist. His character traits might be enumerated in part by saying that he was aggressive, unscrupulous, boastful, ambitious, and a continual and excessive liar. In the exercise of these he was strikingly lacking in foresight. This latter characteristic also was shown in his test work. The abilities in which he was overbalanced gave him special ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... been misled by them. So, too, there are at the present day many proud spirits. Some dare not yet publicly show themselves. Such as have perceived that they are learned, or are held in regard by men, thereupon grow boastful and, despite all their skill and learning, abide without the Spirit and without fruit, even if they do not work more harm in addition ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... two disputants was not without effect. The calm, clear reasoning of the Reformer, so gently and modestly presented, appealed to minds that turned in disgust from Eck's boastful and boisterous assumptions. ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... country, and but poorly armed and equipped?" "Providence!" was the reply; nothing less than Providence could have baffled and beaten such a powerful foe, bent on conquest and spoliation for a wicked purpose, with a wicked spirit, and in a wicked cause. England's boastful pride and intolerant and cruel insolence toward her American kindred was humbled at last. The God of battle had once again in time punished a strong nation for its stubborn crimes, and given victory to the oppressed. Providence was ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... recovery, Tip Branders had been inclined to be boastful. He had shown his boldness by his thieving exploits and by daring to face the steady rifle fire of Private Hal Overton, United States Army. But when the sentence of the court came upon him Tip broke down. He wept and could hardly stand. He implored the judge to lessen ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... difficult to say," I answered. "There is a certain kind of cad who is much given to boastful rhodomontade concerning his conquests. We all know him and can generally spot him at first sight, but I must say that Reuben Hornby did not strike me as that kind of man at all. Then it is clear that the proper course ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... of the day went like the previous one. He played the boastful soldier, and the merry smith, and he had comrades and boon-companions in plenty. At eight o'clock he had to put on his uniform again, and was shut up in the church. He had not been there for an hour before he had come ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... dirty from riding in coal cars, my father was so glad to see me he didn't whip me. He was, in fact, a little proud of me. For he was always boastful of the many miles he had travelled through the various states, as salesman, not many years before. And after I had bathed, and had put on the new suit which he bought me, I grew talkative about my ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... among our men. Whenever they were going into action I used to offer them $25.00 to bring out a little German whom I might capture all by myself. I used to tell them not to bring out a big one, as it might look boastful for a chaplain. Here were three ready to hand for which I had to pay nothing. We moved on through the smoke, a most comical procession. The sergeant went ahead and I brought up the rear. Between us went the three terror-stricken ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... her. My Lady's Indian kinsman unannounced With half a score of swarthy faces came. His own, tho' keen and bold and soldierly, Sear'd by the close ecliptic, was not fair; Fairer his talk, a tongue that ruled the hour, Tho' seeming boastful: so when first he dash'd Into the chronicle of a deedful day, Sir Aylmer half forgot his lazy smile Of patron 'Good! my lady's kinsman! good!' My lady with her fingers interlock'd, And rotatory thumbs on silken knees, Call'd all her vital spirits into each ear To listen: unawares ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson |
