"Pompous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... headed eastward out over the elongated gulf. Looking back, John saw the sandhills by the sea glistening in the bright sunlight like mounds of gold-dust. Every leaf and stem in the scrub stood out in black and silver filigree; and euphorbias and adeniums, gouty and pompous above the lower growths, seemed like fantasies of gray on a Japanese screen covered with cerulean velvet. It was their last sight of Persia, and one ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... was distinguished by the arrival of illustrious visitors. The Duchess of Savoy, with an escort of eighteen lovely maids of honor, made her pompous entry on the 4th, and took up her quarters in the Palazzo Pepoli. On the 6th came the Duke of Ferrara, for whom Charles had procured a safe-conduct from the Pope. During the Emperor's stay at Bologna, Alfonso d'Este had been assiduous in paying him and his Court small ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... also maintained costly and pompous establishments, apart from the Inns of Court. Sir Thomas More's house stood in the country, flanked by a garden and farm, in the cultivation of which ground the Chancellor found one of his chief sources of amusement. In Aldgate, Lord Chancellor Audley built his town mansion, on the site of ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... who was not at all the pompous, conceited man that the girls at Lakeview Hall had come to think him, looked after Cora for a moment in surprise, then turned smilingly back to the two girls and asked Linda to ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... upon. They even extended their operations throughout the department and along its borders. Each shareholder of course subscribed to the paper. The judicial advertisements were divided between the "Bee-hive" and the "Courrier." The first issue of the latter contained a pompous eulogy on Rogron. He was presented to the community as the Laffitte of Provins. The public mind having thus received an impetus in this new direction, it was manifest, of course, that the coming elections would be contested. Madame ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... "The most pompous monument of Egyptian greatness, and one of the most bulky works of manual industry," said Imlac, "are the Pyramids: fabrics raised before the time of history, and of which the earliest narratives afford us only uncertain traditions. Of these the greatest is still standing, ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... could have avoided it. It seems to be one of the privileges of the people's guardians, in your free country, to arrest and imprison anyone on a mere suspicion of crime. Here is a case in which someone has sadly blundered, and I imagine it is the pompous gentleman who claims to know pearls and does not," with a nod toward Le ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... heard at the door, Austin flew to open it, and admitted Mr. Pitt, the governor, a tall pompous personage, who, in his turn, ushered in four other individuals. The first of these, whom he addressed as Mr. Gay, was a stout, good-looking, good-humoured man, about thirty-six, with a dark complexion, an oval face, fine black eyes, full of fire and sensibility, and ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... eyes a-dance, "yonder cometh a pompous prior that was, not very long since, nought but massy monk that did upon a time (though by dint of some small persuasion) bestow on me a goodly ass. My lord, I was bred a monk, so do I know, by divers signs and portents, he cometh here to ban ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... in rude country carts—"carrette"—as far as Brescello, where the Po was navigable, and they were able to continue their journey by water to Pavia. Here Messer Galeazzo Visconti was awaiting them with a fleet of boats and three bucentaurs, by which pompous name the rude barges in which these high-born personages travelled were glorified. The many discomforts and the actual cold and hunger which the Este ladies endured during the five days which they spent on board these vessels are graphically described ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... wished, oh how Rose wished, that she too could write to her husband and say "Come." The Wilkins menage, however pompous Mellersh might be, and he had seemed to Rose pompous, was on a healthier, more natural footing than hers. Lotty could write to Mellersh and would get an answer. She couldn't write to Frederick, for only too well did she ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... of gossip, and that every action of the dauphiness is there distorted into crime. [Footnote: "Memoires de Madame de Campan." vol. i., p. 65.] If my lord cardinal has nothing else to tell me it was scarcely worth his while to come to the palace in so pompous a manner, with such a ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... conflict of ideals has been shown, all through the drama, by the contrast of the pompous heartlessness of the king's court and the natural purity of the forest hermitage. The drama opens with a hunting scene, where the king is in pursuit of an antelope. The cruelty of the chase appears like a menace symbolising the spirit of ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... her, amused, yet bewildered, through the wide archway into the more brilliantly lighted drawing-room. It was a magnificent apartment, containing a half dozen people. The one nearest the entrance was a man of middle age, exceedingly pompous and dignified, who immediately arose to his feet, expectantly. Miss Coolidge cordially extended ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... the highest satisfaction, as Mr Bradshaw often said both to her and to the Bensons; indeed, she rather winced under his pompous approbation. But his favourite recreation was patronising; and when Ruth saw how quietly and meekly Mr Benson submitted to gifts and praise, when an honest word of affection, or a tacit, implied acknowledgment of equality, would have been worth everything said and done, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... service to their adopted kingdom, which was just emerging from barbarism. They enriched the libraries by the books which they had rescued from the barbarism of the Turks, and contributed much to the eclat of the court of Moscow by the introduction of the pompous ceremonies of the Grecian court. Indeed, from this date Moscow was often called a second Constantinople. The capital was rapidly embellished with palaces and churches, constructed in the highest style of Grecian and Italian architecture. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... instruction may well come afterwards," said he, "since we shall travel together as far as Khartoum, and it will be a joy to me to see you grow in wisdom and in virtue as we go." He walked over to the fire, and stooping down, with the pompous slowness of a stout man, he returned with two half-charred sticks, which he laid crosswise upon the ground. The Dervishes came clustering over to see the new converts admitted into the fold. They stood round in the dim light, tall and fantastic, with ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... deduced the perimeter and surface of the circle, as well as the surface and volume of the sphere. He showed that the surface and volume of the last- named equal two-thirds of the surface and volume of the circumscribing cylinder. Disdaining all pompous inscription, the learned Syracusan honoured himself with his theorem as his sole epitaph. The geometrical figure proclaimed the individual's name as plainly as ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... a great faith in his eyes, the men solemnly marched to St. Ethelburga Church, off Bishopsgate Street, London, to partake of Holy Communion and ask God's aid. Back to the muddy water front, opposite the Tower, a hearty God-speed from the gentlemen of the Muscovy Company, pompous in self-importance and lace ruffles—and the little crew steps into a ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... trident long, Trident three-fork'd, trident strong: And ye Nereids fair and gay, Fairer than the rose in May, Nereids living in deep caves, Gently wash'd with gentle waves; Nereids, Neptune, lull asleep Ruffling storms, and ruffled deep; All around, in pompous state, On this richer Argo wait: Argo, bring my golden fleece, Argo, bring him to his Greece. Will Cadenus longer stay? Come, Cadenus, come away; Come with all the haste of love, Come unto thy turtle-dove. The ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... grew beside a running brook: An Alder, one, of unassuming mien: His mate, a Poplar, who, with lofty look, Wore, with a rustling flirt, his robe of green. With pompous front the Poplar mounted high, And curried converse with each swelling breeze; While Alder seemed content to live and die A lowly ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... caught sight of Capito. Approaching me, but a few paces from me, was one of the most detestable bores in Rome, a man whom I sedulously avoided, Faltonius Bambilio. His father, the Pontifex of Vesta, was an offensively and absurdly unctuous and pompous man. His son, who had already held several minor offices in the City Government, had been one of the quaestors the year before, and so was now a senator. But he was, as he always had been, as he remained, a booby. I do not believe ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Baloardo Grazian, is a pedant, a philosopher, grammarian, rhetorician, astronomer, cabalist, a savant of the first water, boasting of his degree from Bologna, trailing the gown of that august university. Pompous in phrase and person, his speech is crammed with lawyer's jargon and quibbles, with distorted Latin and ridiculous metaphors. He is dressed in black with bands and a huge shovel hat. He wears a black vizard ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... long as a Peruvian lama's. ''Tis Sir Isaac,' said I to myself; and behind Sir Isaac I saw Chapman, so to call him, carrying a basket with pedlar's wares, and, to my surprise, Old Jessop, who is a formal man, with a great deal of reserve and dignity, pompous indeed (but don't let that go further), talking to Chapman quite affably, and actually buying something out of the basket. Presently Chapman went away, and was soon lost to sight. Jessop comes into the Reading-Room. 'I saw you,' said I, 'talking to an old fellow with ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seriously combats the belief in purgatory as unscriptural. But it is the mass that bears the brunt of attack. The Host figures under the designation, current in the literature of the sixteenth century,[264] of Le Dieu de Pate, or Le Dieu de Farine. The pompous and complicated ceremonial, with its repetitions devoid of meaning for the illiterate spectator, is, on the whole, the favorite object of satire. In strict accordance with the spirit of the rough controversy of the times, little mercy ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... his pompous way, leaned back in his chair, his thumbs in his armholes, his manner that of a most ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... Roman aristocrat had turned his thumb down to a lot of barbarian captives because he had a fit of indigestion, and the next day, when his digestion was better, he had scattered coins among barbarian children; that Napoleon, who had also gone over the pass road, was a pompous, fat little man, who did not always wipe his upper lip clean of snuff when he was on a campaign; that the baron's youngest daughter had lost her eyesight from a bodkin thrust for telling her sister, who had her father's temper, that she was ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... can, and sometimes does, silence his subordinate by the tacit might of his superior dignity. He says: "I do not think there is much in all that. Many errors were committed at the time you refer to which we need not now discuss." A pompous man easily sweeps away the suggestions of those beneath him. But though a minister may so deal with his subordinate, he cannot so deal with his king. The social force of admitted superiority by which he overturned ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... wiping her eyes, and putting on her spectacles, endeavoured, as fast as the dew which collected on her glasses would permit, to get at the meaning of the needful part of the epistle; while her husband, with pompous elevation, read an extract from ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and when he called a parliament, he sent not to the primate, as to the other peers, a summons to attend it. Stratford was not discouraged at this mark of neglect or anger: he appeared before the gates, arrayed in his pontifical robes, holding the crosier in his hand and accompanied by a pompous train of priests and prelates; and he required admittance as the first and highest peer in the realm. During two days the king rejected his application: but sensible, either that this affair might be attended with dangerous ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... his brother Edward, whose children he had set aside, and whom by the comparison of this act of piety, he hoped to depreciate(53) in the eyes of the people? The very example had been pointed out to him by Henry the Fifth, who bestowed a pompous funeral on Richard the Second, murdered by order ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... ex-Mayor. On one of the occasions it happened that the ladies were from home, but Mr. Mumbray, on the point of going out, begged Glazzard to come and have a word with him in his sanctum. After much roundabout talk, characteristically pompous, he put the question whether Mr. Glazzard, as a friend of Mr. Denzil Quarrier, would "take it ill" if he, Mr. Mumbray, accepted an invitation to come forward as the candidate ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... form granted or denied according to the general principles of policy adopted in different states, or the degree of influence which some few persons who have adopted it may happen to have at court. What may be the value of certain pompous titles with which many of the advocates of Homoeopathy are honored, it might be disrespectful to question. But in the mean time the judicious inquirer may ponder over an extract which I translate from a paper relating to a personage well known to the community as Williams ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... mind. The fine star-dust and nebulous blur in Orion, "the portentous year of Mizar and Alcor," must come down and be dealt with in your household thought. What if you shall come to discern that the play and playground of all this pompous history are radiations from yourself, and that the sun borrows his beams? What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... to moralize, and her moralizing degenerates unfortunately often into commonplace platitudes. She is even at times disagreeably pompous and authoritative, and preaches rather than argues. This was due partly to a then prevailing tendency in literature. Every writer—essayist, poet, and novelist—preached in those days. Mary frequently ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... which would have been too much even for the infernal powers. As they greatly exaggerated what had passed, perhaps, with a view of excusing themselves, the steward wrote to the duke, who was then at Pisa, an account still more pompous and more replete with the marvelous than that which the workmen ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... gathers all the conceivable treasures of earth, jewels and gold and dignities, and scenes of sensuous delights, and everything that holds to the visible and the temporal, and piles them into one scale, and then He puts into the other the one name, God; and the pompous nothings fly up and are nought, and have no weight at all. Is that not true? Does it need any demonstration, any ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Jesuit priest, says of it in his letters to the bishop of St. Louis, in 1841: The first rock which we saw, and which truly deserves the name, was the famous rock Independence. At first I was led to believe that it had received this pompous name from its isolated situation and the solidity of its basis; but I was afterward told that it was called so because the first travellers who thought of giving it a name arrived at it on the very day when the people of the ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... man of good understanding and talents, with the advantage of a liberal education. Tho somewhat pompous, he was an entertaining companion; and his literary performances have no inconsiderable share of merit. He was a friendly and very hospitable man. Both he and his wife (who has been celebrated for her beauty), tho upon the stage for many years, maintained a uniform decency of character; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... slowly, "in the first years of my mission I had a fellow curate, a good many years younger than myself. I consequently looked down on him, especially as he was slightly pompous in his manner and too much addicted to Latin and French quotations. In fact, he looked quite a hollow fellow, and apparently a selfish and self-contented one. I changed my opinion later on. He was particularly fond of horses, though ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... how to wait for us. Even the classic Salute waits like some great lady on the threshold of her saloon. She is more ample and serene, more seated at her door, than all the copyists have told us, with her domes and scrolls, her scolloped buttresses and statues forming a pompous crown, and her wide steps disposed on the ground like the train of a robe. This fine air of the woman of the world is carried out by the well-bred assurance with which she looks in the direction of her old- fashioned Byzantine neighbour; ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... attired in a dress spotlessly clean, a bright red bandanna tied around her head, was more pompous and dictatorial than ever. Her helpers had been increased for the event, and she issued her commands with a force which would have done credit to a skipper on a quarter-deck. Often she scolded those around her, but her anger was more apparent than real, and while she smote ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... Mr. Pryor's windows from a second onslaught—and Mr. Arnold pronounced an incongruous benediction, at least he felt it was incongruous, for he could not at once banish from his memory the sight of gigantic Norman Douglas shaking the fat, pompous little Whiskers-on-the-moon as a huge mastiff might shake an overgrown puppy. And he knew that the same picture was in everybody's mind. Altogether the union prayer-meeting could hardly be called an unqualified success. But it was remembered in Glen St. Mary when scores of orthodox and undisturbed ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... once, in deeds of warfare his acts had gone beyond his promises; the day had come when he was about to promise more than he could perform. Liberal phrases no longer concealed from the nation the yoke which crushed it. The pompous declarations against the English leopard, hurled forth at the opening of the session of the Corps Legislatif, in December, 1809, did not hasten the end of the war in Spain. The emperor did not set out as he had solemnly announced. He called Marshal Massena, ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... brought me here; your eyes that smiled into mine—and drove home the colonel's request that I and my sister should accompany you. God! I was weak then! You smile, senora; you think you have succeeded—you and your pompous colonel and your clever governor! You think you have compromised me, and perjured ME, because of this. You are wrong! You think I dare not speak to this puppet of a baron, and that I have no proofs. ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... in light, and one in darkness drest, (For contraries oppos'd still shine the best.) When a cold Page half breaks the Writer's heart, By this it warms, and brightens into Art. When Rhet'ric glitters with too pompous pride, By this, like Circe, 'tis un-deify'd. So Berecynthia, while her off-spring vye In homage to the Mother of the sky, (Deck'd in rich robes, of trees, and plants, and flow'rs, And crown'd illustrious with an hundred tow'rs) O'er all Parnassus ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... story, as no doubt you know it: the current version, I mean. She had been poor and fond of enjoyment, and she had married that pompous stick Philip Trant because she needed a home, and perhaps also because she wanted a little luxury. Queer how we sneer at women for wanting the thing that gives them ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... were refreshing themselves with a little water, we were beset by the agents of the different hotels, and restaurateurs of Versailles, who presented us with little cards, announcing in a very pompous manner the superiority of ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... to that. He found a thin garrison, a pompous bailiff, wordy and precise, headboroughs without heads, and a panic-stricken horde of shopkeepers with things to lose, who spent the day in crying "Danger," and the night in drinking beer. Outside, somewhere, was an enemy who might be a rascal, but was certainly a man. Professional honour ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... press her hand to his lips. Even the anticipation of future happiness could not prevent him from envying the good fortune of Iskander, who was allowed to converse with her without restraint; and bitterly, on their return to the khan, did he execrate the pompous eunuch for all the torture which he occasioned him by his silly conversation, and the petty tyranny of office with which Kaflis always repressed his attempts to converse ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... us up to the broad back of the pompous old baronet, whose white whiskers shone silver in the fitful lamplight. My brain was utterly bewildered. ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... Miss Rose Wynn, whose five feet five of feminine humanity, clad in bright red delaine, quite overshadowed the delicate figure beside him. But he obeyed the elder woman's command meekly, nevertheless, and went forward, asking in a pompous tone: ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... lad meeting an elderly amateur violinist of the pompous class who not only was kind enough to pay the most embarrassing attention to my solos but further favoured me with his conversation and advice. "Now," said he, "you must get a steel bow; tell your father about it; absolutely necessary. You see this stick of a thing you are playing ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... they equipped themselves to meet the Indians,—yellow hunting-shirts, handkerchiefs tied about their heads, and rifles on the shoulder; the militia were on foot, and the light horse of the counties were in military dress. Conspicuous about the field, "haughty and pompous," as Gallatin described him in the legislature, was David Bradford, who had assumed the office of major-general. Brackenridge draws a lifelike picture of him as, mounted on a superb horse in splendid trappings, arrayed in full uniform, with ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... to certain dangers which lie in wait for the sincere aspirant towards life. The first is the terrible danger of becoming that most odious and least supportable of persons—a prig. Now a prig is a pert fellow who gives himself airs of superior wisdom. A prig is a pompous fool who has gone out for a ceremonial walk, and without knowing it has lost an important part of his attire, namely, his sense of humour. A prig is a tedious individual who, having made a discovery, is so impressed by his discovery that he is capable ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... were eager to foster trade and cultivate good will, for it brought them pompous trappings as well as useful goods. "Grandy King George" of Old Calabar, for example, asked of his friend Captain Lace a mirror six feet square, an arm chair "for my salf to sat in," a gold mounted cane, a red and a blue coat with gold lace, a case of razors, pewter ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... ridiculous, pompous wind-bag! What do you suppose I care about being unmasked by you?—Go to work! Leave off this silly drivelling!—Do something! Get ahead! I don't need to sponge on any one ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... though pompous, were a kindly pair: and Mrs. Grantham, entering the library where Mr. Wesley and his daughter awaited her, and observing that the girl seemed frightened or depressed (she could not determine which), rang the bell at once and sent a maid ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... will not be deemed too pompous for the preface to a story in which true love is crossed by a soldier's sense of honour. The theme is a variant on a great commonplace: and, following my habit, I let the incidents and characters have their own way without the author's ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... occasion by his son, afterwards to rise to distinction in the army. He employed himself, however, more as a savant than an artist—in examining and copying the Greek and Latin inscriptions in the Vatican. The President of the Roman Academy introduced the painter to the School of Art, and was rather pompous about the works of his students. Ramsay's national pride was piqued. 'I will show you,' he said, 'how we draw in England.' He wrote to his Scotch assistant, Davie Martin, to pack up some drawings and journey at once to Rome. On his arrival, Ramsay arranged his drawings, and then invited the President ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... spirit and temper. The alliterative verse, wherever it is found, declares itself as belonging to an elaborate poetical tradition. The alliterative line is rhetorically capable of a great amount of emphasis; it lends itself as readily as the "drumming decasyllabon" of the Elizabethan style to pompous declamation. Parallelism of phrases, the favourite rhetorical device, especially with the old English poets, is incompatible with tenuity of style; while the weight of the verse, as a rule, prevents the richness ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... where the best soda was served, filled many other civic needs than those of supplying sundaes and prescriptions. It also served as a town information bureau, and just now, while the girls were waiting for their order, a very pompous woman in the spickest, spannest white duck outfit, was asking questions ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... dreamiest, sweetest way. I sat down on an old stone, and looked away to the desolate salt-marshes and still, shining surface of the etang; and, as I did so, reflected that this was a queer little out-of-the-world corner to have been chosen, in the great dominions of either monarch, for that pompous interview which took place, in 1538, between Francis I. and Charles V. It was also not easy to perceive how Louis IX., when in 1248 and 1270 he started for the Holy Land, set his army afloat ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... is formed from the verb "dignify"? Ans. Dignified.—Give a stronger word. Ans. Majestic.—Give a word which denotes the same thing carried to excess and becoming ridiculous. Ans. Pompous. ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... saluting Sikhs at the pompous Kaiserish entrance gate, and got out on to front steps that brought to mind one of those glittering hotels at German cure-resorts—bad art, bad taste, bad amusements and a ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... extravagant and hyperbolical, and every censure exaggerated and excessive. In a favourite, every frailty is heightened into a perfection, and in a foe degraded into a crime. The dramatic poets, especially the most tender and romantic, are quoted in almost every line, and every pompous or pathetic thought is forced to give up its natural and obvious meaning, and with all the violence of misapplication, is compelled to suit some circumstance of imaginary woe of the fair transcriber. Alicia is not too mad for her heroics, nor Monimia too ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... match, had proclaimed them king and queen, allowing his majesty to retain the title for his life, which they had fixed for the term of six months; and ordering, in respect of his royal birth, that the prince should immediately lie in state and have a pompous funeral. ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... an' he spen' powerful sight of his time out here wid me an' de horses. He wuz allers del'cut,—warn't able ter do nothin' in this yere climate,—but he bed sech a sperit! He wouldn't ever let folks know when he wuz a sufferin'. He use ter call me 'Pompous,'" and Pompey chuckled softly. "He say when I git inter my fur coat I look as gran' on de box as de Jedge do inside; an' one day he braided de horses' manes inter a hunderd tails an' tied 'em wid yaller ribbun, 'cause he said de crimps wuz in de fashun an' ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... so." Jerry's instant response in a pompous tone made Miss Towne laugh. Marjorie thought her pretty when she laughed. Her teeth were unusually white and even, and her face broke into ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... near the banks. The river being low at this season, we ran aground, in spite of all the care of our Scindian pilot and the Seedic leadsman, often enough to have wrecked a moderately-sized navy. The leadsman was a rather pompous individual, duly impressed with the importance of his position, in having charge of the deep-sea line, which was something short of two fathoms in length. He was stationed at the bows, and ever and anon proclaimed aloud the depth ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... pompous distributor of justice, addressing young Purcel, "how do you do? Take a seat—by the way, is it true that your father and my excellent friend, Dr. ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... exorcises the demon, and then anathematizes him, with all the eclat he possibly could: the bishops are assembled in the cathedral, the people repair thither in crowds; the circumstance is recounted in pompous terms; the evil spirit is threatened; the tapers are extinguished—all of them striking ceremonies: the woman is moved by them, and her imagination is restored to ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... however, be assumed that the sole aim of the bourgeoisie was that of making a haughty and pompous display. This is refuted by the testimony of the "Menagier de Paris," a curious anonymous work, the author of which must have been an educated ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... beside. Yet heap the other passions in the scale, And balance them 'gainst that which gold outweighs— Against this love—and you shall see how light The most supreme of them are in the poise! I speak by book and history; for love Slights my high fortunes. Under cloth of state The urchin cowers from pompous etiquette, Waiving his function at the scowl of power, And seeks the rustic cot to stretch his limbs In homely freedom. I fulfil a doom. We who are topmost on this heap of life Are nearer to heaven's hand than you below; And so are used, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... relaxation, the young M.P. will be properly qualified for discussing those social questions which form the chief part of every aspirant's political baggage. Being gifted with a happy power of enunciating pompous platitudes with an air of profound conviction, and of spreading butter churned from the speeches of his leaders on the bread of political economy, he will be highly thought of at meetings of political leagues of either sex, or of both combined. It is necessary that he should catch the ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... mankind, who say that men Whose business 'tis to drive the tongue or pen Make the most clamorous fanfaronade O'er their most worthless work; and I'm afraid They're not entirely different from the hen. Lo! the drum-major in his coat of gold, His blazing breeches and high-towering cap— Imperiously pompous, grandly bold, Grim, resolute, an awe-inspiring chap! Who'd think this gorgeous creature's only virtue Is that in battle ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... was his choiceness and aptness in his use of adjectives. It is a style which now provokes merriment, and even had Alison been learned and impartial, and had he possessed a good method, his style for the present taste would have killed his book. Gibbon is sometimes called pompous, but place him by the side of Alison and what one may have previously called pompousness one ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... capacity as owner of the Sylph I had merely undertaken to furnish Major Stanleigh with passage to Muloa and back, but the events of the last three days had made me a party to the many conferences, and I was now on terms of something like intimacy with the rather stiff and pompous English gentleman. How far I was from sharing his real confidence I was to discover later when ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... motion, Of danger they abandoned the wild notion, Finding it easy for a Frog to jog On with a kind King Log. But in the fulness of the time, there came A would-be monarch—Legion his fit name; A Plebs-appointed Autocrat, Stork-throated, Goggle-eyed, Paul-Pry-coated; A poking, peering, pompous, petty creature, A Bumble-King, with beak for its chief feature. This new King Stork, With a fierce, fussy appetite for work; Not satisfied with fixing like a vice Authority on Town and Country Mice, Tried ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... say to you," cried Mr. King in his most pompous way, and with a stately wave of his hand, ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... type of a second-rate personage on the lookout for something to turn up, and ready to do anything if so he might get on in the world, while keeping within the limitations of the possible and the forms of law. His pompous expression was an admirable indication of the time-serving eloquence to be expected of him. Chesnel's successor had discovered the young Count's hiding place to him, and he took great credit to himself for ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... detected. Great genius and force of character undoubtedly make their own career. But because Walter Scott was dull at school, is a parent to see with joy that his son is a dunce? Because Lord Chatham was of a towering conceit, must we infer that pompous vanity portends a comprehensive statesmanship that will fill the world with the splendor of its triumphs? Because Sir Robert Walpole gambled and swore and boozed at Houghton, are we to suppose that gross sensuality and coarse contempt of human ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... robustious T. W. RUSSELL, or the astute CAINE) and then, walking across the room to a well-remembered pigeon-hole, took thence an official-looking scroll, sat down, formally unfolded it, cleared his throat, and began with pompous complacency to read aloud its title, preamble, clauses, and provisions, compulsory regulations, and peremptory prohibitions to the apparently semi-asphyxiated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various
... early times of Christianity, there was any church wedding. Weddings were accomplished before witnesses independently of the church, or perhaps in the presence of a priest by the professiones." Then followed the pompous home bringing of the bride. Afterwards the spouses took part in the usual church service and the sacrament and gave oblations.[1345] Later special prayers for the newly wedded were introduced into the service. Later still special masses for the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... cried the old domestic. "Has Master Zacharius ever listened to their fancies and pompous sayings? He might accept medicines for the watches, but ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... Lord Melbourne takes him not to have a very high opinion of the abilities of others in general, and he is not unlikely to depreciate Sir Robert Gordon to Lord Beauvale. Sir Robert Gordon is a man of integrity, but he is tiresome, long and pompous, which cannot be agreeable to the Prince, who has about him much of the French vivacity, and also much of their settled and regular ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... Well, what a character he was! As pompous and conceited a little fellow as ever you met with; and then, he was so bullied by his wife, he always came down to revenge it on the regiment. She was a fine, showy, vulgar woman, with a most cherishing affection for all the good things in this life, except her ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... while I acquaint her ladyship with your arrival," said the pompous person with the eyebrows, and went out noiselessly, ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... wonder how they could get anybody, either above or below that rank, to dine with them at all? It is, indeed, a marvel how such a host could find guests of any degree sufficiently wanting in self-respect to sit at his table and endure his pompous insolence—the insolence of an innately vulgar mind, which, unhappily, is sometimes to be met even in the ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... His assiduous application to his profession did not allow him to accompany us in learning to defend the happy land we were enjoying. Indeed, my life, the promise of our dear children does me more good than the purest of pure air." Observe how this pompous and formal statement is framed so as to please the mother. The writer does not say much about himself; but he knows that his wife is longing to hear of her darlings, and he tells her the news in his high-flown manner. He was not often apart from the lady whom he loved ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Brown," to take his chances in the social world strictly on his own merits; assured that if he has any merit, other people will discover it without an ostentatious reminder of it in the shape of a pompous visiting-card. Of course this suggestion of democratic simplicity refers to the engraving of one's own card; other people address the man properly by his official or honorary title, with all due respect for the worth which the world recognizes—even though the wearer ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... the plate at the church I go to every Sunday," said Holmes, laughing, "and it would take a great sight more than a two-dollar wig and a pair of fifty-cent whiskers to conceal that pompous manner of his." ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... is another precept of the hypercritical mother. Why? Goodness only knows!—for none but a pompous blockhead or a solemn prig will pretend that he never relaxes. But let ancient Plato, brimful as he was of philosophy, answer the question ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... the bookseller, pointing to a pompous monument, 'there lies Mr. Such-a-one. I have forgotten his name. A remarkably clever man; he was an attorney, and hardly ever lost a cause he undertook. Burns made many a lampoon upon him, and there they rest, as ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... miss Dick's coming of age, won't you? There are to be high doings. Mr. Hardcastle is too mysterious and pompous to live. One can't get any thing out of him but just 'My son Dick doesn't come of age but once' (as if we thought it was a yearly occurrence), 'and we don't celebrate it but once.' But I got hold of Dick privately and wheedled it out of him in less than ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... death. The points which he depicts in his satire are, their credulity in giving way to Peregrinus; their unintelligent belief in Christ and in immortality; their factiousness in aiding Peregrinus when in prison; their pompous vanity in martyrdom, and possibly their tendency to believe legends respecting a martyr's death. His satire is contempt, not anger, nor dread. It is the humour of a thorough sceptic, which discharged itself on all religions alike; and indicates one type of opposition ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... necessity that a story such as this should be episodical, lapsical, disconnected. Its inception lies in two countries, and of different people. And it is, in its beginnings, a story of contrasts. So one may be permitted again to say: At a time when pompous, ponderous, white-whiskered, black-suited old Dr. DeLancey was engaged in bringing to the daughter of Kathryn Blair a posthumous baby brother that, in the mystery of things, turned out after all to be a sister, a stranger chanced to be riding at dusk through the deep shades of the Bois du Nord, ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... suit Professor Henderson to have his plans upset in this fashion. Nor did he care to give a detailed description of his ship to officers of the war department. He had many valuable inventions that were not patented. So he determined to outwit the pompous ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... a fixed moral fibre must always be some moral idea. When a man lives up to a real, not a pompous, dignity some ideal must inform it. Memba Sasa's ideal ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... the two principal actors in the day's doings the affair was an unmitigated annoyance, and even their own great and true happiness could not lighten the excessive fatigue of the pompous ceremony and of the still more pompous reception which followed it. To describe that day would be to make out a catalogue of gorgeous equipages, gorgeous costumes, gorgeous decorations. Many pages would not suffice to enumerate the cardinals, the dignitaries, the ambassadors, the great nobles, ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... shrill chorus which emanated from the audience was decidedly antagonistic to grave deliberation, and the anxious curiosity of the woman superseding the self imposed role of the diplomatist, our envoy lost the pompous tone she had first adopted, and a volley of queries and replies was exchanged so rapidly, and with such appalling shrillness, that we onlookers ran a great risk of being either deafened, or driven out of our senses. At the first slackening of the wordy warfare, Dunmore put his questions, ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... Spaniards to his assistance, for the bravery of the Flemings afforded them ample employment beyond the Rhine; in vain did he call upon the Roman court and the whole church to come to his rescue. The offended Pope sported, in pompous processions and idle anathemas, with the embarrassments of Ferdinand, and instead of the desired subsidy he was ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... which the most remarkable were two mural crowns and eight civic. In addition to this, that he brought forward citizens saved from the enemy, amongst whom was mentioned Caius Servilius, when master of the horse, now absent. Then after he had recounted his exploits in war, in pompous language suitable to the dignity of the subject, equalling his actions by his eloquence, he bared his breast marked with scars received in battle: and now and then, directing his eyes to the Capitol, he called ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... appears to have meditated an expedition to Britain at the time of his pompous ovation at Puteoli, mentioned in c. xiii.; but if Julius Caesar could gain no permanent footing in this island, it was very improbable that a prince of Caligula's character would ever seriously attempt it, and we shall presently see that the whole ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... later, at 5:32, a slightly pompous and thoroughly outraged young salesman marched through the doors of the station house and over to the ...
— The Circuit Riders • R. C. FitzPatrick
... so the guarantees afforded by the Constitution for just legislation are nugatory; they are worth neither more nor less than the pompous securities for every kind of inalienable right which have adorned the most splendid and the most transitory among the Constitutions which have during a century been in turn created and destroyed in ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... pictures but they are not barbaric pictures; they are florid pictures in the last faded realism of the Renascence. There really is stiff and ungainly decoration, but it is not the harsh or ascetic decoration of a Spanish cloister; it is much more like the pompous yet frivolous decorations of a Parisian hotel. In short, in so far as the shrine has really been defaced it has not been defaced by the Dark Ages, but rather if anything by the Age of Reason. It is the ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... all the simple enthusiasm of my eighteen years, and had been sent to Carpentras, there to manage the primary school attached to the college. It was a strange school, upon my word, notwithstanding its pompous title of 'upper'; a sort of huge cellar oozing with the perpetual damp engendered by a well backing on it in the street outside. For light there was the open door, when the weather permitted, and a narrow prison-window, with iron bars and lozenge panes set in ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... Household managers like Agathe have a plain common-sense which enables them to perceive such political chicane: the poor woman saw the truth through the lines of her son's tale; for she had read, in the exile's interests, all the pompous editorials of the constitutional journals, and watched the management of the famous subscription, which produced barely one hundred and fifty thousand francs when it ought to have yielded five or six millions. The Liberal leaders soon found ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... poento; (tip) pinto. poison : veneno. poker : fajrinstigilo. pole : stango; (of car) timono; (geog.) poluso. polecat : putoro. police : police, (—"court") jugxejo. policy : politiko. polish : poluri. politics : politiko. pompous : pompa. poodle : pudelo. poor : malricxa, kompatinda. pope : papo. poplar : poplo. poppy : papavo. -"coloured", punca popular : populara. porcelain : porcelano. porcupine : histriko. porous : pora, truajxa. porpoise ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... the Church as much as her precepts. The descendants of Friar Tuck and the Vicar of Bray were here, as well as those who would have been Wycliffes and Latimers had the fires of Smithfield still been alight. Obsequious curates bowed down to pompous prebendaries; bluff rectors chatted on cordial terms with suave archdeacons; and in the fold of the Church there were no black sheep on this great occasion. The shepherds and pastors of the Beorminster flock were polite, entertaining, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... statement, he took very great pains with it; indeed, internal evidence would be sufficient to establish this if we had no positive external testimony whatsoever. He came at a fortunate time, when the stately yet not pompous or over-elaborated model of the latest Georgian prose, raised from early Georgian "drabness" by the efforts of Johnson, Gibbon, and Burke, but not proceeding to the extremes of any of the three, was still the academic standard; ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... of the morning Dick, together with Davis, called at the office of his attorney. Thomas M. Fitt, a bustling little man with a rather pompous manner, welcomed his client effusively. He had been appointed local attorney in charge by Gordon's Denver lawyers, and he was very eager to make the most of such advertising as his connection with so prominent ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... could hope to pay them off. 'And I owe something to Morell as well as to Chevalier,' thought he, recalling the night when he had run up so large a debt. It was at a carousel at the gipsies arranged by some fellows from Petersburg: Sashka B—-, an aide-de-camp to the Tsar, Prince D—-, and that pompous old——. 'How is it those gentlemen are so self-satisfied?' thought he, 'and by what right do they form a clique to which they think others must be highly flattered to be admitted? Can it be because they are on the Emperor's staff? Why, it's awful ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... the summoned peers, a shining train, To where the palace glitters o'er the plain. The opening gate receives the pompous throng; Thence to the festive room they move along, Where tapers, rang'd in lofty rows, display An added splendour, and nocturnal day. There, till the close of night, the bowls go round, And the full board with luxury ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... Chinese are very singular, as well as very rich and pompous, forming grand and solemn processions, in which sometimes at least 500 persons of both sexes assist, the women being all cloathed in white. At these funerals they employ music to heighten the shew, together with coloured umbrellas and canopies, carrying their principal ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... are two pier tables, on one of which is a clock and on the other a crucifix between lofty candelabra with feet of gilded wood. The wall hangings, of red silk damask with a Louis XIV palm pattern, are topped by a pompous frieze, framing a ceiling decorated with allegorical figures and attributes, and it is only just in front of the throne that a Smyrna carpet covers the magnificent marble pavement. On the days of private audience, when the Pope remains in the little throne-room or at times in ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... little capital of Williamsburg; so, at his door, stands ready his "lordly coach and six with liveried outriders in waiting." Again, the great gates are thrown open to guests arriving on horseback and in chariots and chairs. Pompous, beruffled dignitaries vie with gay gallants in obeisances and compliments to the ladies, and in assisting them to alight without harm to brocades and laces and rich cloaks and wide-hooped petticoats. And, yet again, all is a-bustle here with scarlet-coated horsemen and baying ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... the pompous black pyramid at the Louvre is only a skeleton now; all the flags have been miraculously whisked away during the night, and the fine chandeliers which glittered down the Champs Elysees for full half a mile, have been consigned to their dens and darkness. Will they ever be reproduced for other ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the repeated prayer of his flock, the good Archbishop allowed the crystal coffin of St. Carlo Borromeo to be carried in solemn procession, upon the shoulders of Cardinals, from end to end of the city—on which occasion all Milan crowded into the streets, and clustered thick on either side of the pompous train of monks and incense-bearers, priests and acolytes. But soon there fell a deeper despair upon the inhabitants of the doomed city; for within two days after this solemn carrying of the saintly remains the death-rate had tripled and there was scarce a house ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... death of Mariamne and her sons, which were barbarous actions in the king, he tells falsehoods about the incontinence of Mariamne, and the treacherous designs of his sons upon him; and thus he proceeded in his whole work, making a pompous encomium upon what just actions he had done, but earnestly apologizing for his unjust ones. Indeed, a man, as I said, may have a great deal to say by way of excuse for Nicolaus; for he did not so properly ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus |
