"Strut" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Thus we dispose of all poetic merit, Yours Milton's genius, and mine Homer's spirit. Call Tibbald Shakespeare, and he'll swear the nine, Dear Cibber! never matched one ode of thine. Lord! how we strut through Merlin's cave, to see No poets there, but Stephen, you, and me. Walk with respect behind, while we at ease Weave laurel crowns, and take what names we please. "My dear Tibullus!" if that will not do, "Let ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... happily performing one of the most solemn duties of his life. He walked about in front of the line and at every step pulled himself up, slightly arching his back. It was plain that the commander admired his regiment, rejoiced in it, and that his whole mind was engrossed by it, yet his strut seemed to indicate that, besides military matters, social interests and the fair sex occupied no ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... whom other nations have known and know by different names, it is given to us once more to be mortal for an hour, and, though we be but shadows, to renew the loves and hates of our long-perished flesh. Here for an hour we strut in our forgotten pomp; the crowns that were ours still adorn our brows, and once more we seem to listen to our people's praise. Our hopes are the hopes of mortal life, our foes are the foes we feared, ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... to derision and insult is awakened by the softness of foppery, the swell of insolence, the liveliness of levity, or the solemnity of grandeur; by the sprightly trip, the stately stalk, the formal strut, the lofty mien; by gestures intended to catch the eye, and by looks elaborately formed as evidences ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Roman Nero down to Russian Paul, Could grate upon my ear so mean, so base, As the rank jargon of that factious race, Who, poor of heart and prodigal of words, Formed to be slaves, yet struggling to be lords, Strut forth, as patriots, from their negro-marts, And shout for rights, with rapine in their hearts. Who can, with patience, for a moment see The medley mass of pride and misery, Of whips and charters, manacles and rights, Of slaving blacks and democratic whites, And all the piebald polity ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the "bogus diploma" trade. Business and not vanity is doubtless the ruling motive with the foreigners who strut in plumage bought of the Philadelphia "university." The diploma of M. D. is worth its price for display before the eyes of the patients waiting in the "doctor's" office, while to Squeers of Dotheboys Hall the degree of A. M. is good for at least three new pupils, and Ph. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... what he had waited for. With a strut he marched across the space between them and the target and carried that much further back. He longed for a target bearing an arrangement of letters that he could hit and cause to disappear, as at his boasted Seagirt, instead of a plain affair ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... presumptuous spirit at war with all the passive worth of mankind. The independence which they boast of despises habit, and time-honoured forms of subordination; it consists in breaking old ties upon new temptations; in casting off the modest garb of private obligation to strut about in the glittering armour of public virtue; in sacrificing, with jacobinical infatuation, the near to the remote, and preferring, to what has been known and tried, that which has no distinct existence, even in imagination; in renouncing, with voluble tongue and vain heart, every thing intricate ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... very like How woman smites your souls? Whatever dress Of thought you take to royalize your nature,— Gorgeous shawls of kingship, a world's fear, Or ample weavings of imagination, Or the spun light of wisdom,—like a gust Of flame, that weather of impersonal thought You strut beneath, that hanging storm of Love, Strikes down a terrible swift dazzling finger, Sight of some woman, on your clothed hearts, And plucks the winding folly off, and leaves Bare nature there. And hear another likeness. Look, if the priests have made an altar-fire, ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... I, that am not shap'd for sporting tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty, To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;— I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up And that so lamely and ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... opinions and liable to be swayed in any course. When he was at Flower De Hundred, living in the atmosphere of liberalists and republicans, he was one of the most outspoken of all. He would strut for hours before any one who would listen to his senseless twaddle and would harangue and discourse on ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... would you, can you use us? What good is air if lungs are out, or springs When the mind's flown so far away no spring, Nor loveliness of earth can call it back? I tell you what it is: in early youth The life is in the loins; by thirty years It travels through the stomach to the lungs, And then we strut and crow. By forty years The fruit is swelling while the leaves are fresh. By fifty years you're ripe, begin to rot. At fifty-two, or fifty-five or sixty The life is in the seed—what's spring to you? Puff! ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... marketed a luxury item to the galaxy. You know how every super-jet big shot on twenty-five planets wants to say he's hunted on Khatka. And if he can point out a graz head on his wall, or wear a tail bracelet, he's able to strut with the best. To holiday on Khatka is both fabulous and fashionable—and very, very profitable for the natives and for Combine who sells transportation to ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... as was expected. The Little Lady surrendered to Arnaux and the Available Lady to the Big Blue. Two nests were begun and everything shaped for a "lived happily ever after." But the Big Blue was very big and handsome. He could blow out his crop and strut in the sun and make rainbows all round his neck in a way that might turn the heart of ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... elf-like girl—the living Peter Pan to millions of theater-goers—was to assume the feathers and strut of the barnyard Romeo, there was a widespread feeling that he was making a great mistake, and that he was putting Miss Adams into a role, admirable artist that she was, to which she was absolutely unsuited. A storm of criticism arose. But Frohman was absolutely ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... I let Froggy forget that L10 he owes me, and he begins to strut about like a peacock, his mother declares "He ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... you say?" cried Vallombreuse, contemptuously. "What! a man of birth and condition mingle voluntarily and on terms of equality with these low buffoons of actors, paint his nose red, and strut about the stage, receiving cuffs and kicks from everybody? Oh no, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... was so much at stake—Iris, wealth, love, happiness, life itself—all depended on his plighted word. Yet his savage enemy, a slayer of women, a human vampire soiled with every conceivable crime, was stalking back to safety with a certain dignified strut, calmly trusting to the ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... blot-sheet instead of on the lining of his coat if she took three lessons a week from Miss Oram on the spinet. How happy and proud she was! Her glee was a constant source of wonder to McQueen. Perhaps she put on airs a little, her walk, said the critical, had become a strut; but how could she help that when the new joyousness of living was dancing and ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... nightcap and nightshirt were discernible in almost pitchy darkness), they saw him strut back from the window to slip downstairs and surprise them. Mr Pinsent paused only to insert his feet into a pair of loose slippers, and again, as he unbolted the back door, to snatch a lantern off its hook. Yet by the time he ran out upon the garden the depredators ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... he had no concern; for presently he drummed again on his own log. I answered it promptly, rolling back a defiance, and also telling any hen grouse on the range that here was another candidate willing to strut and spread his tail and lift the resplendent ruff about his neck to win his way into her good graces, if she would but come to his drumming ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... who had never intended to go at all—those who had no heart in the cause, from the first, and who had merely assumed the regulation uniform to feed vanity or the pocket. The former, to strut Broadway in unimpeachable blue-and-gold, be called by military titles, lounge at the theatres or create sensations at the watering-places, confident of being able to escape, on some pretext, before ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... having ascertained that no one was near. As they left the gates of the house the rajah walked rapidly along, concealing his face in his robe, while Reginald swaggered on by his side with a martial strut assumed generally by the sowars. A large number of people were still abroad; and as they passed on they caught some of the expressions which were being uttered. It was very evident that a rebellion had taken place, and that the star of Mukund ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... shrapnel and yet escape serious injury. The mere puncture, even the repeated puncture, of the wings did no damage. Only lucky shots that might pierce the fuel tank, hit the engine, touch an aileron or an important stay or strut, could affect the machine, while in due course of time a light armour on the bottom of the fusillage or body of the machine in which the pilot sat, protected the operator to some degree. Other considerations, however, finally led to ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... songsparrow, the red-start, the hermit-thrush, the red-eyed flycatcher and other feathered choristers, while the golden-winged woodpecker or rain fowl, heralds at dawn the coming rain of the morrow, and some crows, rendered saucy by protection, strut through the sprouting corn, in their sable cassocks, like worldly clergymen computing their tythes. On the aforesaid walk, once trodden over by the prince of American naturalists, the great Audubon, whilst on a visit to Mr. Atkinson ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... STRUT—The upright braces between the upper and lower wings of a machine are called struts. They take the compression of the truss frame of the biplane or triplane. Each wing is divided into ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... farmers—led by the farmer-in-chief, morning-coated, carefully groomed, plainly nervous but sustained by the dignity of it all. His voice was firm; his manner that of a very circumspect bridegroom. The old smug strut and case-hardened pomp of legislature inaugurals was lacking. An undercurrent of deep sincerity stayed many a tremorous hand. Drury was the least nervous of all. I imagine that in the morning he had ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... made by the most popular artists to enliven the scenes of the pilgrimage; but no colour glows like the enchanting words of Bunyan. No figures are so true to nature, and so life-like. Those eminent engravers, Sturt and Strut, Stothard and Martin, with the prize efforts excited by the Art Union of England, and the curious outlines by Mrs. M'Kenzie, the daughter of a British admiral, have endeavoured to exhaust the scenes in this inexhaustible work of beautiful scenery. The most elegant and correct edition ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... lightheadedness for which sober, literal, decorous English has no synonym. As we went, she danced and sang, and laughed out joyously at everything and at nothing, and talked the most fascinating nonsense—all in the role of "Cousin Burwell." She could imitate him to perfection; her strut and swagger and slang threw me into paroxysms of delight. We picked huckleberries, and dived into the woods to feast upon wild plums that had ten drops of syrupy juice between tough skins and flinty stones encased in the pulp of bitterness, and gathered handfuls of wild flowers because their ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... is shown an "Oblique Halving Joint," where the oblique piece, or strut, does not run through (Fig. 28, 3). This type of joint is used for strengthening framings and shelf brackets; an example of the latter is shown at Fig. 48. A strut or rail of this type prevents movement or ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... the Anglo Saxons, in some way or other, have been anthropophagi, and worshipped fetishes; and even as thus called already civilized, they sacrificed men to gods,—could our great pro-slavers know all this, they would be more decent in their ignorant assertions, and not, so self-satisfied, strut ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... with such fine baby faces, That strut in a garter and star,— Have they, under their tambour and laces, The kind honest heart ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... were not very well behaved and needed a good scolding; so he began to strut about and talk at the top of his voice; but the ducklings had their swim and came out as happy ...
— Dear Santa Claus • Various
... and tried for a long time to learn to strut. At last the Partridge turned around and asked the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... sea legs on, I could proudly strut about among the lumber and sheep-pens without fear of rolling overboard. I found the sailors a rough but good-natured set of fellows, with but little refinement in ideas or language. Although they amused themselves with my awkwardness, and annoyed ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... behind their visitors, gazed with admiring eyes at every motion of his grandfather. To one who had from earliest infancy looked up to him with reverence, there was nothing ridiculous in the display, in the strut, in all that to other eyes too evidently revealed the vanity of the piper: Malcolm regarded it all only as making up the orthodox mode of playing the pipes. It was indeed well that he could not see the expression upon the faces of ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... went, Sholto's step slowed, and lost its braggart strut and confidence. Behind him Laurence chuckled and laughed, smiting his thigh in ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... or standing I please. I seem admitted ad eundem. I fetch up past opportunities. I can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that it rings for me. In moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock vein rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much unlike that respectable character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles, drop a bow or curtsy, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... his hat down over his eyes, whirls around and offers his arm to DAISY. They strut into the store, DAVE gazing contemptuously at JIM as he passes. Crowd roars with laughter, much to the embarrassment ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... not gape after things beyond it. Man, what do you wish to happen to you? I am satisfied if I desire and avoid conformably to nature, if I employ movements towards and from an object as I am by nature formed to do, and purpose and design and assent. Why then do you strut before us as if you had swallowed a spit? My wish has always been that those who meet me should admire me, and those who follow me should exclaim, O the great philosopher! Who are they by whom you wish to be admired? ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... frequently to recite these lines at his assemblies: O you who, in sumptuous array, strut about like princes and scorn the hatred of the poor, know that the saddle-cloth changeth not the nature of the ass, neither do splendid trappings change the nature of the ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... sorry you are so vain, and strut around so, and want everyone to see how beautiful ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... fairies' rooms; They use their folded tails for brooms; But fairy dust is brighter far Than any mortal colours are; And all about their tails it clings In strange designs of rounds and rings; And that is why they strut about And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... most dissolute man likes the appearance of virtue. "But graces and accomplishments like yours, dear Mrs. Hopkinson," he said oleaginously, "belong to the whole country." Which, with something between a courtesy and a strut, he endeavored to represent. "And I shall want to avail myself of all," he added, "in the matter of the Castro claim. A little supper at Welcker's, a glass or two of champagne, and a single flash of those bright eyes, and ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... added Ippolito to their party. He was delighted at the change of duty, because, as Norvin discovered, it brought him to the side of Lucrezia Ferara. Thus it happened that Martel had reason to regret the choice of his bodyguard, for on the very first visit Ippolito began to strut and swagger before the girl and allowed the secret to escape him, whereupon it was carried ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... genius, Will! that's the very thing to wake us up! Here are you and I, dashing blades, who have been doing penance by trying to be fine gentlemen at watering-places, when it wasn't at all in our line. I began to think we looked as much like fops as the rest of the scented and bearded dress-coats, who strut about, and imagine the world is looking at them. This would throw us into quite another rank of life, and give us new ideas. How shall we manage it though, my fine fellow?" "Nothing easier in the world. Let us rent a small house, somewhere near the Bowery—that's the right neighborhood; ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... on and says— "Er dower'd with sich advantages!" And I've come back, with welcome tread, From journeyin's vain, as I have said, To settle down in ca'm content, And cuss the towns where I have went, And brag on ourn, and boast and strut Around the streets o' ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... with much applause; however, Wild continued as before to levy contributions among the prisoners, to apply the garnish to his own use, and to strut openly in the ornaments which he had stripped from Johnson. To speak sincerely, there was more bravado than real use or advantage in these trappings. As for the nightgown, its outside indeed made a glittering tinsel ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... Quezox: Hold! Hold! my friends, sweet Bonset means no ill, 'Twere only lack of polish in his speech. We Spaniards sweetly phrase our ev'ry word E'en when we prick one sharply in the ribs. 1st Gentleman (excitedly) Well, who is this, with dignity enrobed Who like a fighting cock doth bravely strut? 2nd Gentleman (whispers) Whist, little friend, this is the mighty Quezox, Who doth within his hand hold destiny. Twere best for business purposes to yield Apparent homage, though we him disdain. 1st Gentleman (turns to Quezox) Ho! Ho! I did a mistake serious make In ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... come strutting it finely," said the innkeeper, in a mocking tone. "And dost thou strut now? Nay, verily; but thou art as meek as any whipped cock. And since it was by thy strut that men did recognize thee, how shall they make thee out when thy fine strut is gone? Wherefore serve the strangers, ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... cliff, spread for the passing crowd a lure of Viennese jewelry in garnets, opals, amethysts, and the like, and of such Bohemian playthings as carrot-eating rabbits, worsted-working cats, dancing-bears, and peacocks that strut about the feet of the passers and expand their iridescent ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... clerk 'journed de court. De judge take his silk beaver hat and gold headed cane and march out, while de baliffs holler: 'Make way! Make way for de honorable judge!' Everybody took up dat cry and keep it up long as de judge was on de streets. Oh, how dat judge twirl his cane, smile, and strut. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... Every little puppy hopes to be a dog, of course. Every little kitten pet, so tender and so nice, Expects to be a grown-up cat and live on rats and mice. Every little fluffy chick, in downy yellow dressed, Expects some day to crow and strut or cackle at his best. Every little baby bird that peeps from out its nest, Expects some day to cross the sky from glowing east to west. Now every hope I've mentioned here will bring its sure event, Provided nothing happens, dear, to hinder ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... now, you hear human people swell and brag and strut round about how they are different from the animals and have something they call a soul that the animals haven't got, but that's just the natural conceit of this electricity or something before it has found out much about itself. Not different from the animals, you ain't. This tree I'm leaning ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... the fourth century. The papyri of this period are full of the high-flown titles and affected phraseology which was so beloved of Byzantine scribes. "Glorious Dukes of the Thebaid," "most magnificent counts and lieutenants," "all-praiseworthy secretaries," and the like strut across the pages of the letters and documents which begin "In the name of Our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, the God and Saviour of us all, in the year x of the reign of the most divine and praised, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... go to the footlights with the greatest possible strut.> Both Leaders: King Solomon he had ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... group of wounded soldiers were just entering. With them was a woman in a man's uniform. Her hair was curly and short, and her chin pointed. Her feet looked ridiculously small in the heavy, high, soldier's boots, and in spite of a strut her knees knocked together in an unmistakably feminine manner. But the men treated her quite as one of themselves. One soldier, who had had his leg cut off up to the thigh, supported himself by her shoulder. I have seen several women soldiers in Kiev, ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... our viciousness grow hard, O, misery on't! the wise gods seal our eyes: In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us Adore our errors, laugh at us while we strut To our confusion." ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... opposite the middle of the window. The three crosspieces were then put into their place, and the upright pressed firmly against them. One end of a long beam was placed in the notch, the other in a slight hole made in the ground, thus forming a strut, which held the rest firmly ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... our agriculture; and soon, I suppose, we have to send to China for labourers. Why, those who do not emigrate demand twice as much to-day for half the work they used to do five years ago; and those who return from America strut about like country gentlemen deploring the barrenness of their ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... commonplace woman now and there are such a lot of 'em in the world. When I remember all you have done for us it makes me ill to think of some in our town—giggling, silly little flirts, with no higher ambition than to strut down the ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... mistresses—no, old—and yet 'tis true, Though they be old, the thing is something new; Each new, quite new—(except some ancient tricks), New white-sticks, gold-sticks, broom-sticks, all new sticks! With vests or ribbons, deck'd alike in hue, New troopers strut, new turncoats blush in blue; So saith the muse! my ——, what say you? Such was the time when Waltz might best maintain Her new preferments in this novel reign; Such was the time, nor ever yet was such: Hoops are no more, and petticoats not much: Morals and minuets, virtue ...
— English Satires • Various
... her face. Peace restored, Dimples and the Owlet remember a dead lizard they found in a corner of the verandah, and set off to recover it. These two walk exactly like mechanical toys; and as they strut along hand in hand, or one after the other, they look like something wound up and going, in a Christmas shop window. Presently they return with the lizard. Its tail is loose, and they sit down to pull it off. This is not a nice game, ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... made a great variety of angles; every room had a particular inclination; the gable had tilted towards the garden, after the manner of a leaning tower, and one of the former proprietors had buttressed the building from that side with a great strut of wood, like the derrick of a crane. Altogether, it had many marks of ruin; it was a house for the rats to desert; and nothing but its excellent brightness—the window-glass polished and shining, the paint well scoured, the brasses radiant, the very prop ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Earl, Some Baronet, or K.C.B., But I'm a most unhappy girl, And no such luck's in store for me! I would I loved some Soldier bold, Who leads his troops where cannons pop, But if the bitter truth be told— I love a man who walks a shop! For oh! a King of Men is he— With princely strut and stiffened spine— So his, and his alone, shall be, This ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... there. However, we advanced with all boldness, and soon distinguished the chieftain from his attendants by his giant stature. No bishop's cassock covered his towering form. Clothed in scarlet and gold, he descended the hill with the true Albanian strut. His manner was frank and cordial; and on his invitation we all three sat down on the grass to partake of a camp luncheon. The Vladika was then in the thirty-fifth year of his age. In truth, he was a goodly man—a very Saul among his people. His height I should think very nearly midway between ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Spirit as a Divine influence or power that we are somehow to get hold of and use, leads to self-exaltation and self-sufficiency. One who so thinks of the Holy Spirit and who at the same time imagines that he has received the Holy Spirit will almost inevitably be full of spiritual pride and strut about as if he belonged to some superior order of Christians. One frequently hears such persons say, "I am a Holy Ghost man," or "I am a Holy Ghost woman." But if we once grasp the thought that the ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... enmity as is allotted by nature to wolves and lambs, [so great a one] have I to you, you that are galled at your back with Spanish cords, and on your legs with the hard fetter. Though, purse-proud with your riches, you strut along, yet fortune does not alter your birth. Do you not observe while you are stalking along the sacred way with a robe twice three ells long, how the most open indignation of those that pass and repass turns their looks on thee? This fellow, [say they,] cut with ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... clinging to a strut while he stared fascinatedly in the direction Johnny had indicated. "Git in, bo, and we'll beat it. She may have power enough to hop us outa this death trap. We can come down somewheres else." He clawed ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... matter with Hamilton's portrait in the big room—to take an instance at random. Hamilton has plenty of talent, and this picture is well enough, pleasant in colour and tastefully planned; but his talent would be seen to greater advantage if it did not strut in borrowed and inappropriate plumes. The simplifications and distortion of the head perform, so far as I can see, no aesthetic function whatever; they are not essential to the design, and are at odds with the general rhythm of the picture. ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... biggity now, but you'll be lots worse, then," said Mary Virginia, with unflattering frankness. "I think you'll probably strut like a turkey, and you'll be baldheaded, and wear double-lensed horn spectacles, and spats, and your wife will call you 'Mr. Mayne' to your face and 'Your Poppa' to the children, and she'll perfectly despise people like Madame and ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... tell him a tale, he cries at last, What said you? but in the end he mutters to himself, as old women do many times, or old men when they sit alone; upon a sudden they laugh, whoop, halloo, or run away, and swear they see or hear Players, Devils, Hobgoblins, Ghosts, strike, or strut, &c., grow humorous in the end: like him in the Poet, saepe ducentos saepe decem servos [he often keeps two hundred slaves, often only ten], he will dress himself, and undress, careless at last, grows insensible, stupid or mad. He howls like ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... as a rule, DO men believe in? ... Themselves! ... only themselves! They are, in their own opinion, the Be-All and the End-All of everything! ... as if the Supreme Creative Force called God were incapable of designing any Higher Form of Thinking-Life than their pigmy bodies which strut on two legs and, with two eyes and a small, quickly staggered brain, profess to understand and weigh the whole foundation ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... its hook into the ring of my leathern belt, so as to be ready for the worst. Now was the time when a bit of scamped work by the mechanic is paid for by the life of the aeronaut. But she held together bravely. Every cord and strut was humming and vibrating like so many harp-strings, but it was glorious to see how, for all the beating and the buffeting, she was still the conqueror of Nature and the mistress of the sky. There is surely something divine in man himself that he should rise so superior to the limitations which ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Tom," Mollie cut into his sentence sharply. "You're just a fool boy chasin' cows' tails for thirty dollars a month. I'm not going to have any of this nonsense. Bear Cat's a law-abidin' place. We're all proud of it. We don't let bad-men strut around an' shoot up our citizens, an' we don't let half-grown punchers go crazy an' start hangin' folks without reason. Now do we?" A persuasive smile broke out on the harsh face and transformed it. Every waif, every under-dog, ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... gallery opening into the bed- chambers running round; the barbarous peach-coloured drawing-room; the bright look-out through the garden-door upon the grassy lawns and terraces behind, where the soft-hued pigeons still love to coo and strut in the sun,—are described in "Shirley." The scenery of that fiction lies close around; the real events which suggested it took ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of the tragedy of Cato in London (Cato by Sheridan) Mr. Wignell was put forward in his old established part of Portius. In the first scene he stepped forward in his accustomed strut and began ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... medals, God give me loud honors, That I may strut before you, sweetheart, And be worthy of— The love I ...
— War is Kind • Stephen Crane
... with his foolish garters. Few men or women can resist mumming; they fancy themselves as somebody else, dead or living. Yet these seem happy in this nonsense. The indolent days appear to have deadened hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. They shall strut and fret their hour upon this little stage. Let that sprightly girl forget the sudden death which made her an orphan; the nervous broker his faithless wife; the grey-haired soldier his silly and haunting sins; the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... de Vandenesse. "In these days every rogue who can hold his head straight in his collar, cover his manly bosom with half an ell of satin by way of a cuirass, display a brow where apocryphal genius gleams under curling locks, and strut in a pair of patent-leather pumps graced by silk socks which cost six francs, screws his eye-glass into one of his eye-sockets by puckering up his cheek, and whether he be an attorney's clerk, a contractor's son, or a banker's bastard, he ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... cause of all this interest? Was it devotion to a young and innocent girl that made me willing to undertake so difficult and so delicate a task? Doubtless these motives went for something, but I will not attempt to strut in borrowed plumes, and must freely confess that if she had been ugly and stupid I should probably have left her to her fate. In short, selfishness was at the bottom of it all, so let us say no ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... walks up and down, Dressed in orange-tawney and black and brown. Though his eye is so proud and his step so firm, He can always stoop to pick up a worm. With a twist of his head, and a strut and a hop, To his Robin-wife, in the peach-tree top, Chirping her heart out, he calls: "My dear You don't earn your living! Come here! Come here! Ha! ha! ha! Life is lovely and sweet; But what would it be if we'd nothing ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... paper some computations regarding the cross-section of one of the cylinders, and was working out the amount of stress to which he could subject a shoulder strut, when a shadow was cast across the drawing board he had propped ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... that a new intelligibleness illumines the universe. The arbitrary and cruel Creator who inflicts pain and pleasure at will then disappears from the stage; and it is well, for he is indeed an unnecessary character, and, worse still, is a mere creature of straw, who cannot even strut upon the boards without being upheld on all sides by dogmatists. Man comes into this world, surely, on the same principle that he lives in one city of the earth or another; at all events, if it is too much to say that this ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... not often swept and cleaned, but what will soon become an intolerable nuisance within, and not much better without, and the ground immediately around the premises a dirty place. The common pigeon is a pugnacious cavalier, warring apparently upon mere punctilio, as we have often seen, in the distant strut-and-coo of a stranger bird to his mate, even if she be the very incarnation of "rejected addresses." On all these accounts, we would locate—unless a small and select family of fancy birds, perhaps—the pigeon stock at the principal farm-yard, and in the lofts of ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... nothing of bills of costs and deputy sheriffs, but I do know that Mr. Aristabulus Bragg is an amusing mixture of strut, humility, roguery and cleverness. He is waiting all this time in the drawing- room, and you had better see him, as he may, now, be almost considered part of the family. You know he has been living in the house at Templeton, ever since he was installed by Mr. John Effingham. It was there I had ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... she was sorry for them. "Every brood," she declared, "should have at least one swimmer in it." She began to strut up and down the edge of the duck-pond, clucking in a most overbearing fashion. Really, she had never felt quite so important before—not even when her first brood pecked their ...
— The Tale of Henrietta Hen • Arthur Scott Bailey
... accepted lover he is. Hernani, not to be outdone in generosity, offers his life to his enemy and preserver, giving him his horn and promising to come to meet his death at its summons. There is the same fault here which is felt in Hugo's novels. Motives are exaggerated, the dramatis personae strut. They are rather over-dramatic in their poses—-melodramatic, in fact—and do unlikely things. But this fault is the fault of a great nature, grandeur exalted into grandiosity, till the heroes of these plays, "Hernani," "Marion Delorme," "Le Roi d'Amuse," loom and stalk across ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... through their lives a shadow of degradation and ridicule clings to them; both their wives and their company must be taken from beneath them. They talk no longer of going out into the world and making their way; they used to strut arrogantly before the old folk and demand free play for their youth, but now they go meekly in harness with hanging heads, and blink shamefacedly at the mention of their one heroic deed. And those who cannot endure their fate must leave the country ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... appears about 1800, and there is not the slightest clue to its origin. The victorious march of the ugly word swank has been one of the linguistic phenomena of recent years. There is a dialect word swank, to strut, which may be related to the common Scottish word swankie, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... the strut and meen Of new prais'd Poets, having often seen Some of his Fellows, who have writ before, When Nel has danc'd her Jig, steal to the Door, Hear the Pit clap, and with conceit of that Swell, and believe themselves ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... this fountain of power, has been so distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, and cannot be gathered. The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk and strut about so many walking monsters,—a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the Arabian Nights. Your backyard becomes voluptuous with pomegranate and almond trees, lemon groves, and hedges of flowering cactus, dazzling banks of azaleas, marble- basined fountains, in which chestnut-and-white pond-herons step daintily amid exotic water-lilies, while golden pheasants strut about on alabaster terraces. The whole effect rather suggests the idea that Providence and Norman Wilkinson have dropped mutual jealousies and collaborated to produce a background for an open-air Russian Ballet; in point of fact, ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... which was a long and tedious process, Caesar showed no inclination to leave the homestead. He used to strut about the back yard, and frequent the kitchen door, very much after the fashion of a house-dog. He was, indeed, as valuable as a watch-dog, for the appearance of any stranger was the signal for a volley of ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... a Dangeville, who plays so flatly, who walks the stage nearly bent double, who stares affectedly and incessantly into the eyes of every one she talks to, and who takes her grimaces for finesse, and her little strut for grace; or on that emphatic Clairon, who becomes more studied, more pretentious, more elaborately heavy, than I can tell you. That imbecile of a pit claps hands to the echo, and never sees that we are a mere worsted ball ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... awful fact that in every age of the church these "blundering raw-headed preachers" have abounded. It is a singular appellation to make use of to those who strut in black, and vainly pride themselves upon being descended from the apostles. Alas! how many are those whose hearts and heads are raw indeed as to any influences of vital religion, and whose whole ministry is calculated to mislead the souls of their fellow-sinners as to their eternal hopes. Reader, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... an' my marster gi'e me dat intitlemint on account o' my shape," he would say, with a strut, on occasion, if he were bantered, for he had learned that the name held personal suggestions which it took a little bravado to confront. Evidently ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... such a polite element abroad on polling day. Men are so respectful and hurl such affectionate terms at one another. Even the dogs are upset, and strut about in quite a different manner than on ordinary days, so puffed out with vanity are they, on account of their decorations. The members' wives and their friends are all taking part in the scene too, bringing voters along in their carriages, and shaking hands ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... hears the lark in the morning; the pensive man hears the nightingale in the evening. The cheerful man sees the cock strut, and hears the horn and hounds echo in the wood; then walks, "not unseen," to observe the glory of the rising sun, or listen to the singing milkmaid, and view the labours of the ploughman and the mower: then casts his eyes about him over scenes of smiling ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... on, took the new chain into his shop and cut off a link. A wanton act done because he "thought the chain a little too long," and not discovered until the machine had been cramped together, every strut and reach shortened to get the chain in place; meanwhile the factory was being vigorously blamed for sending out chains too short. During it all the mechanic was discreetly silent, but the new link on the vise in the shop betrayed him after the ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... good taste, Mr. Gay," said Arbuthnot with a chuckle. "A trim built wench, upon my word. And she knows how to walk. She hasn't the mincing gait of the city madams of the Exchange nor the flaunting strut of the dames of ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... fortune-hunt, nor afford to marry without a fortune. My parliamentary schemes are not much to my taste—I spoke twice last Session, [1] and was told it was well enough; but I hate the thing altogether, and have no intention to "strut another hour" on that stage. I am thus wasting the best part of life, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... beggary—both tolerable things; anyway he has drunk deep of cruelty and terror and may go his way. By rare good grace he may have been a hero. In other words, he may have been a Belgian—which is a word like a decoration, a name to make one strut like a Greek of Thermopylae—and become thus a permanent part of the world's ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... any other material is used for a pillar or strut, it has not only to resist a crushing force, but also a force tending to bend ...
— Instructions on Modern American Bridge Building • G. B. N. Tower
... every color—peacock blue, vermilion, turquoise, emerald green, burnt orange; no inch of exposed woodwork has escaped the carver's cunning chisel; everywhere gold has been laid on with a spendthrift hand. And in this marvelous setting strut or stroll figures that might have stepped straight from the stage of Sumurun—fantastically garbed functionaries of the Household, shaven-headed priests in yellow robes, pompous mandarins in sweeping silken garments, bejeweled and bepainted dancing-girls. It is not real, you feel. ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... Nation. I hear men debate peace who understand neither its nature nor the way in which we may attain it with uplifted eyes and unbroken spirits. But I know that none of these speaks for the Nation. They do not touch the heart of anything. They may safely be left to strut their ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... society with a certain distaste, as a necessary evil, an irritating but inevitable restriction upon the "natural" sovereignty and entire self-government of the individual. That was the dream of the egotist. It was a theory in which men were seen to strut in the proud consciousness of their several and "absolute" capacities. It would be as instructive as it would be difficult to count the errors it has bred in political thinking. As a matter of fact, men have never dreamed of wishing to do without ...
— When a Man Comes to Himself • Woodrow Wilson
... is true, we waited until a man was sixty before we called him an old man. They are going faster, nowadays.... Wireless telegraphy, aeroplanes.... A generation is more quickly exploded.... Poor devils! They won't last long! Let them despise us and strut about in ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... idea that he wanted to see you personally. Jay, you did a tremendous thing, man! Damn it, why don't you strut a little? Be—be normal for once! Why, I'd be damned near bursting with pride if one of the Hasturs insisted ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... a certain tenderness of nature that is almost feminine, they seem to have good, stout, Saxon stuff in them. Especially where the illustrious knights recount their heroic deeds there is a Falstaffian strut in their performance, and there runs riot a Falstaffian imagination ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... this long train of camels coming up to the king's gate, and the ox-trains from Egypt, gold and silver and precious stones, and beasts of every hoof, and birds of every wing, and fish of every scale! See the peacocks strut under the cedars, and the horsemen run, and the chariots wheel! Hark to the orchestra! Gaze upon the dance! Not stopping to look into the wonders of the temple, step right on to the causeway, and pass up ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... disclosure of crime so revolting as to surpass all that I had ever imagined or could imagine in a woman of such dainty personality and unmistakable culture. Nor was the superintendent or the district attorney less confounded by the event. Durbin only tried to look wise and strut about, but it was of no use; he deceived nobody. Veronica Moore's real connection with Mr. Pfeiffer's death,—a death which in some inscrutable way had in so short a time led to her own,—was an overwhelming surprise ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... You've seen two peacocks spread their tails and strut as they pass each other? Well, the peacock coming up wasn't in it with the one going down. Her coat wasn't so fine, nor so heavy, nor so newly, smartly cut. Her toque wasn't so big nor so saucy, and the fur on it—not to mention that the descending peacock was a brunette and ... well, ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... the quaint polychrome finials of the earlier Palissy models; and crowd the rough cobble-paved courtyard with a rare and distinguished assemblage of flamingoes, peacocks, herons, cockatoos swinging from gabled windows, and game-cocks that strut about in company with pink doves—and you have the famous inn ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... will do," and Miss Arabella sniffed in a most significant manner. "I know the whole tribe. Nothing but trash, every one of them. Queer scouts, I call them. Yes, they'll all have suits, and my, how they'll strut around." ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... of the drunkard is the dude, that missing link between monkey and man, whose dream of happiness is a single eye-glass, a kangaroo strut, and three hours of conversation without a sensible sentence; whose only conception of life is to splurge, and flirt, and spend his ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... hairy legs—pull her legs, the Colonies, off, and leave her little English body, all shriveled and shrunk alone, and I should like to know what size she would be then, and how she would manage to swell and to strut?" ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... river to drink very early in the morning and just before dusk in the afternoon, but on cloudy days they might appear at almost any hour. If undisturbed they would remain near the water's edge for a considerable time or strut about the sand beach just at the edge of the jungle. At the sound of a gun or any other loud sharp noise the peacocks would answer with their mournful catlike wail, exactly as the domesticated ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... messengers, smart cabmen, smart publicans, smart politicians, smart women, smart scoundrels! Greatness became commonplace here, and Mr. Douglas might drink at Willard's Bar, with none so poor to do him reverence, or General Winfield Scott strut like a colossus along "the Avenue," and the sleepy negroes upon their backs would give him the attention of only one eye. It was interesting, to notice how rapidly provincial eminence lost caste ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... do not take me in, my good fellow. I told you yesterday that you were cleverer than I; you did not see then that I was joking? Your mask is still too transparent. One sees the tears behind the grinning face. No tragic aim. Come down from this stage on which you strut in such a ridiculous manner, and let us talk seriously ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... Woman's obstinacy is no novelty; but where's the difference 'twixt a Mistress and a Wife. Only a Mistress has a much better Air; you shall appear as gay and fine as any; strut in Brocade, and glitter in your Jewels, 'till you put all ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... conscious by comparison; the intellectual difference, which in other cases of comparison of characters, is often a matter of undecided contest, being as clear in his case as the superiority of stature in some men above others. Johnson did not strut or stand on tip-toe: He only did not stoop. From his earliest years his superiority was perceived and acknowledged[152]. He was from the beginning [Greek: anax andron], a king of men. His schoolfellow, Mr. Hector, has obligingly furnished me with many particulars of his boyish days[153]: ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... joke isn't always on me. Not infrequently I gain much amusement observing these cocky youngsters who strut in the blue-and-silver uniforms of the Service in which, until more or less recently, I bore the ...
— Vampires of Space • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... our dress. Make a man get into seedy, worn-out rags, and he will skulk along with his head hanging down, like a man going out to fetch his own supper beer. But deck out the same article in gorgeous raiment and fine linen, and he will strut down the main thoroughfare, swinging his cane and looking at the girls as perky as ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... be in coarseness. The coarse work is generally left for the apprentice. Everything coarse, be it a block, a wedge, or a blade, passes as unfinished, as raw, jagged, and just the reverse of cutting. No one is proud of a coarse shirt, but many, even quite distinguished people, proudly strut about the streets in a coarse smock of abusive language, quite unconcernedly, without any ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... shall no high tone assume, Nor strut in arms;—farewell my cap and plume: Brief be my verse, a task within my power, I tell my feelings in one happy hour; But what an hour was that! when from the main I reach'd this lovely valley once again! A glorious harvest ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... with anything hardly as he wuz with that, and Josiah too. Every hour a procession of bears come out, led, I believe, by a rooster who claps his wings and crows, and then they walk round a old man with a hour glass who strikes the hour on a bell. But the bears lead the programmy and bow and strut round and act. ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... with his wife the Princess. His merriest time was when the Grand Vizier visited him in the afternoon; and when the Caliph was in particularly high spirits he would condescend to mimic the Vizier's appearance when he was a stork. He would strut gravely, and with well-stiffened legs, up and down the room, chattering, and showing how he had vainly bowed to the east and cried 'Mu...Mu...' The Caliphess and her children were always much entertained by this performance; but when the Caliph went on nodding and bowing, and ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... Publishers, who make the Works of other People their own, without acknowledging the Piracy they are guilty of, or so much as paying the least Complement to the Authors of their Wisdom: No, Gentlemen and Ladies, I am not the Daw in the Fable, that would vaunt and strut in your Plumes. And besides, I know very well you might have me upon the Hank according to Law, and treat me as a Highwayman or Robber; for you might safely swear upon your Honours, that I had stole the whole Book from your recreative Minutes. But I am more generous; I am what you ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... are beginning to gleam. A stout father with wife and children dozes. Painted women are practicing their dances. Grotesque mimes strut towards ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... the fact that a connecting rod functions as a strut, it is considered that this part should be only stiff enough to prevent any whipping action during the running of the engine. The greater the fatigue-resisting property that one can put into the rod after this stiffness is reached, ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... know he's tall and graceful and has chestnut hair," fawned Judith. "I've loved Ted from the moment I saw how he curls his cross letters like a riding crop. That's always a sign of originality and genius." There was a hint of strut in Judith's ordinarily graceful motion, and tiny drops of pool water flicked her eyelashes unnoticed. When Judith Stearns professed to "love a boy" she did so heroically, though he be myth or just an ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... uncle, "military politics, just futile display of pyrotechnics to amuse the populace and give heroically inclined young men a chance to strut in uniforms—but after the election this fall ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... grounds over against them, was filing off towards their right. No certain judgment could, however, yet be formed of the enemy's real design, and as they were in want of bread, it wras thought probable that they intended to repass the Un-strut; but it was soon perceived that their several motions were contradictory to each other. At the same time that some of their infantry were filing off towards their right, a large body of cavalry wheeled round towards ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... awakened next morning by the sun shining brilliantly in at my bed-room window, my apprehensions had vanished, my enthusiasm was again at fever-heat, and I panted for the moment—not to be very long deferred—when I should don my uniform and strut forth to sport my glories before an ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... representation of Christ he does not offend us by a single word or a single gesture. If there were in his manner the slightest touch of affectation or of self-consciousness; if there were the remotest suspicion of a strut in his gait, we should be compelled to turn aside in disgust. As it is, we forget the artist altogether. For it is easy to see that Josef Mayr forgets himself, and wishes only to give a faithful picture of the events in ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... beauty had it been on a larger scale, had begun to fill what little there was of Corney's imagination; and he left her with a feeling that he knew where a treasure lay. He walked with an enlargement of strut as he went home through the park, and swung his cane with the air of a man who had made a conquest of which he had reason to ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the Elizabethan or in the seventeenth-century poets, or most rarely. They were dear to the eighteenth century, and, much more than the heroic couplet, are the distinctive metre of that age. They swagger—or, worse, they strut—in its lighter verse, from its first year to its last. Swinburne's anapaests are far too delicate for swagger or strut; but for all their dance, all their spring, all their flight, all their flutter, we are compelled to perceive ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... spent their money on extravagant dress. "The men," said he, "wear capes reaching down to the ground, and their long hair falls down to their shoulders; and the women wear so many petticoats that they can hardly drag themselves along, and strut about like the Pope's courtezans, to the surprise and disgust of the whole world." What right had these selfish fops to call themselves Christians? They did more harm to the cause of Christ than all the Turks and ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... adorning your walls, Are all of earth's beauty ye care to know; But ye strut about in soul-stifled halls To play moth-life by a candle-glow— What soul has space for upward fling, What manhood room for shoulder-swing, Coffined and cramped ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... "Strut on, my pretty bantam," thought Buckingham, whose eyes lost little that might be turned to his own ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... be told what had become of the manhood of Ascalon, and asked it with contempt. What was the fame of the town based upon but a bluff when one man was able to shut it up as tight as a trunk, and strut around that way adding the insult of his tyrannical presence to the act of his oppressive hand. There were plenty of questions and suggestions, but ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... the laird gae kaim his wig, The sodger not to strut sae big, The lawyer not to be a prig; The fool he cried, Te-hee! I kenn'd that I could never fail! But she pinn'd the dishclout to his tail, And soused him frae the water-pail, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... ye toil, and fagg, and fume, and fret, And—what the bashful muse would blush to say. But, now, your painful tremors are all o'er, Cloath'd in the glories of a full-sleev'd gown, Ye strut majestically up and down, And now ye fagg, and now ye fear, no more! Gent. Mag., ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... habit with Bluff to be always expecting something serious to happen; and in case his suspicions were verified, as might occasionally occur, he would crow over the others, and strut around as though he thought himself a prophet gifted with second-sight, and able to forecast coming ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... dramatic work was Tamburlaine the Great, in two parts; printed in 1590, but written before 1588. In this work, what Ben Jonson describes as "Marlowe's mighty line" is out in all its mightiness. The lines, to be sure, have a vast amount of strut and swell in them, but then they also have a good deal of real energy and force. Marlowe has had much praise, perhaps more than his due, as the introducer of blank-verse on the public stage; it ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... and I know it's all on your account. The fellows come up and say 'Harper, old man, I haven't seen you for an age,' or, 'Harper, I heard of you through so and so last week. I wish to congratulate you on that case, etc.' But I know what it means,—they want an introduction to you girls—and I strut around like a peacock." ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... anything that had been previously attempted, and as a model an ordinary boat was taken. In shape it is as nearly streamline as is practicable, having a keel and ribs of wood with curved longitudinal members, the strut ends being housed in steel sockets. The whole frame is braced with piano wire set diagonally between the struts. The car is floored from end to end, and the sides are enclosed with 8-ply ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... shamelessly given to the practice of "wieldin' a pencil" until he discovered that he could make folk laugh. After that he was an abandoned soul, with a naughty strut on the roads. For folk laughed with flattering amazement, and they clapped Terry Lute on his broad little back, and much to his delight they called him a limb o' the devil, and they spread his fame and his sketches from Out-of-the-Way ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... very light but most effective bas-reliefs of jesting subject:—two cocks carrying on their shoulders a long staff to which a fox (?) is tied by the legs, hanging down between them: the strut of the foremost cock, lifting one leg at right angles to the other, is delicious. Then a stag hunt, with a centaur horseman drawing a bow; the arrow has gone clear through the stag's throat, and is sticking ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... have all I want to eat, without the joy of hunting for it. Every day I must dress in fine clothes and wear that horrible crown till it makes my head ache. Rabbits come to me with all sorts of troubles, when my own troubles are the only ones I care about. When I walk out I can't hop and run; I must strut on my rear legs and wear an ermine robe! And the soldiers salute me and the band plays and the other rabbits laugh and clap their paws and cry out: 'Hail to the King!' Now let me ask you, as a friend and a young lady of good judgment: isn't ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... decided to walk, While the Ass marched in front with a strut and a stalk; Yet the people who passed ...
— Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks - From the French of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... myself, as the old Man stood up in the middle of the Pit, that he made a very proper Center to a Tragick Audience. Upon the entring of Pyrrhus, the Knight told me that he did not believe the King of France himself had a better Strut. I was indeed very attentive to my old Friend's Remarks, because I looked upon them as a Piece of natural Criticism, and was well pleased to hear him at the Conclusion of almost every Scene, telling me that he could not imagine how the Play would end. One while he appeared much concerned for ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... boys are going to leave is this, that they exercise self-control; that they are ready and diligent to make the place where they went fitter to live in than they found it; that they regarded other people's rights; that they did not strut and bluster, but went quietly, like self-respecting gentlemen, about their legitimate work. And the people of Vera Cruz, who feared the Americans and despised the Americans, are going to get a very different ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... incidentally involved patching one of half a dozen over-worn tubes—I looked her over more in detail. The customary frame, strut rods, and torsion rods had been supplemented by the most extraordinary criss-cross of angle-iron braces it has ever been my fortune to behold. They ran from anywhere to everywhere beneath that car. I began to ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... woman come to look after my birds?" said Mrs d'Urberville, recognizing a new footstep. "I hope you will be kind to them. My bailiff tells me you are quite the proper person. Well, where are they? Ah, this is Strut! But he is hardly so lively to-day, is he? He is alarmed at being handled by a stranger, I suppose. And Phena too—yes, they are a little frightened—aren't you, dears? But they will soon ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... allus a quarrelling," growled a wonderfully copper-faced old sailor, giving his lower jaw a twist. "You puts me in mind of the gamecocks as the Malay niggers we're going amongst keeps, to strut up and shake out their hackles afore they has ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... it is only the monstrous conceit of mankind which makes him think that all this stage was erected for him to strut upon." ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... boots, shall strut and shout, Keep my locks curled. The fame of my name shall go ringing about ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... "the good old Knickerbocker days." But the truth is, odious though the millionnaire's ascendancy may be at present, that of the Knickerbocker was once hardly less so. Vulgar, brassy, and intolerable the "I'm-better-than-you" strut and swagger of plutocracy surely is; but in the smug, pert provincialism of those former New York autocrats who defined as "family" their descent of two or three generations from raw Dutch immigrants, there was very little comfort indeed. The present writer has seen something of this element; ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... are, who have a soldier to show them the way. I see a distinct difference in their walk from that of the others, don't you, Natalie? They seem to be saying 'We were invited—and by this splendiferous creature at our side!' See how they strut! And look at the soldierless ones, how timidly they go—just as if they had found their tickets in the street, or had crept in through the basement windows. 'Please, kind Mr. Soldier-man, let us stay and see the show. We'll ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl |
