"Strutting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... went off with a lighter heart than usual. It was a delightful day. The homes all looked so cheery, and the children were playing at the gates as she went down the street. There was one her eye dwelt on more than the rest. The pigeons were strutting on the sloping roof, the cat dozed in the window-sill, and the little fair-haired girls were swinging under the cherry-tree. Yes, marriage and home must be sweet after all. Beth had always said she never would marry. She wanted to write stories and not have ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... Claude, I should not come to you, with any evil motive. There is no intention of cutting a dash in the taverns with your unzains, and of strutting about the streets of Paris in a caparison of gold brocade, with a lackey, cum meo laquasio. No, brother, 'tis ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... and Remember Williams was partly shivering with dread of bears and Indians and things, and partly glowing with anticipatory glory of telling the Hillsboro boys all about the adventure. Hannah soothed the first and inflamed the second emotion until she had Remember strutting about gathering firewood, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... you laugh when you observe a dignified looking individual strutting down the street wearing a paper tail that has been pinned to his coat by ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... it—eternities at a time, warm, convenient, and comfortable, the same old green and white, with all its improvements on it, whatever the sun does. And above all I keep seeing the Man on it, full of defiance and of love and worship, being born and buried—the little-great man, running about and strutting, flying through space on it, all his interests and his loves wound about it like clouds, but beckoning to worlds as he flies. And whatever the Man does with the other worlds or with this one, I always keep seeing this one, the ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Queen Bess, And in Parliament an ass; Fair Charlecote is ruined By this bluffer of the state, And only his dependents Will dare to call him great. The deer and hares and pidgeons Are imprisoned for his use, Yet, poaching lads from Stratford Pluck this strutting, ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... of the windows on to the verandah, the lawn, and thence out of the front gate, where they found the dominie in a state of radiant abstraction, strutting up and down the road, and quoting pages of his favourite poet. He had ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... at himself in a crock of water, and he was so pleased with his appearance that he said, strutting about like ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... girl, magnificent, radiant in her beauty, before the rose-hedge, with the white pigeons furling and unfurling, strutting and pecking all round, I seemed to see suddenly the whitewashed room of last night, the big crucifix, that poor thin face under the yellow waxlight. I felt glad for Father Domenico; ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... you are an impudent impostor! You have written no word that is your own. You are an embezzler of the mind, strutting through life in borrowed and ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... sentence of democratic sentiment when suddenly doubts overwhelmed him. His belief in his heroic quality and calling he found had altogether lost its assured conviction. The picture of a little strutting futility in a windy waste of incomprehensible destinies replaced it. Abruptly it was perfectly clear to him that this revolt against Ostrog was premature, foredoomed to failure, the impulse of passionate inadequacy against inevitable things. ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... goes, the turkey-cock, strutting young officer," cried Cosetta harshly in his own tongue. "Eye the young Gringo upstart well. You must know him again, for he is to be a marked man in the streets of ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... yellow sands, And then take hands: Curtsied when you have, and kiss'd The wild waves whist,[388-99] Foot it featly here and there; And, sweet sprites, the burden bear. Hark, hark! { Burden dispersedly. The watch-dogs bark: { Bow-wow. Hark, hark! I hear; { Bow-wow. The strain of strutting { ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... even to drum within hearing. In the winter he shared the southern pasture peaceably with twenty other grouse; and on certain days you might, by much creeping, surprise a whole company of them on a sunny southern slope, strutting and gliding, in and out and round about, with spread tails and drooping wings, going through all the movements of a grouse minuet. Once, in Indian summer, I crept up to twelve or fifteen of the splendid birds, who were going through their ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... other is proud of his very imperfections and glories in his folly. What does this creature know of virtue, who finds it by leaning on his own soul, forsooth? What does he know of God, who, in looking for him, can see but himself, steeped in sin, bloated and swollen with monstrous pride, and strutting before the world and the creator as a maker of systems, a layer down of morals, and a preacher of ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... of the engagement was the thoroughly matter-of-fact manner in which both officers and men went about their work. There was no strutting, no posing, no shirking, but an evident intention on the part of all concerned, from General Schwan down, to do whatever had to be done without unnecessary fuss and feathers, promptly and well. I have seen far ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... the captain, strutting up, and cocking his hat in the face of our adventurer, "you may be mad as ever a straw-crowned monarch in Moorfields, for aught I care, but damme! don't you be saucy, otherwise I shall dub your worship with a good stick across your shoulders." "How! petulant boy," cried the knight, "since you are ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... provision baskets (this was of great importance to us afterwards). That evening we all met out walking, on the only riding-road there was in those days. Rajah spoke to the school-children, and we all amused ourselves with the little Middletons, boys of four and five, strutting along with turbaned hats and long walking-sticks. It was a dull evening, and we all felt unaccountably gloomy. We fancied it was because Rajah was not well enough to come and dine with us, as he had purposed in the morning; but during dinner I remembered afterwards that the Bishop said, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... the same I sat down close to poor Tom as he lay upon the deck, and roared with laughter to see his miserable yellow face, and the way in which he screwed up his eyes. But it was only three days before when I was really ill that Tom was strutting about the deck ridiculing sea-sickness, and telling me what a poor sort of a fellow I was to knuckle under to a few ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... enraged her. He had put forth his claim like a braggart, but he had made good with an audacity superb in its effrontery. How she hated him! How she feared him! The thoughts were woven inseparably in her mind. Mephisto himself could not have impressed himself more imperatively than this strutting, ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... Are strutting about, All still, and none stammers A single note out. From the hedge starts the blackbird, at brook side to drink: I thought he'd have whistled, but he ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... said Chester, in contempt. "We would make a couple of fine-looking officers, strutting around without ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... carry the outward signs," said he, "for I made the most of your wounds and you really owe your room to them. You see, we're a very representative crowd. That festive old boy, strutting up and down with his cigar, in the Panama hat, is really best known in the black cap: it's old Sankey, the hanging judge. The big man with his back turned you will know in a moment when he looks this way: it's our celebrated friend ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... romping merrily but not noisily, more queer-looking students in shabby frock coats, tight at the waist, trousers too short, and comical hats, stylishly dressed women displaying the latest fashions, brilliantly uniformed army officers strutting proudly, dangling their swords—an attractive and interesting crowd, so different, thought the two Americans, from the cheap, evil-smelling, ill-mannered mob of aliens that invades their own Central Park the days when there is music, making it a nuisance ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... Carthage also prepared for the struggle. But Hasdrubal, who was placed at the head of their army, was one of the usual army-destroyers whom the Carthaginians were in the habit of employing as generals; strutting about in his general's purple like a theatrical king, and pampering his portly person even in the camp, that vain and unwieldy man was little fitted to render help in an exigency which perhaps even the genius of Hamilcar and the arm of Hannibal could have no longer ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... immediately; you have a good mile of pleasant dry walk around your own farm. It would make you laugh to see Emma and her mother fitting up pig-sties and hencoops, and already the Canal is enlivened with ducks, and the cock is strutting with his ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... head, which was as still as a millpond. This basin was surrounded by thick mangroves, and completely concealed from every thing without by the jutting out of a point at its entrance. A more lonely place I never saw. Around its borders a "solitary guest," you might see the Flamingo[B] strutting in all the pride of its crimson plumage, as erect and nearly as high as a British soldier. The bottom of this Cove was like ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins
... on forms raised one above another, at the lowest end of the room, and our master was strutting about the floor, now and then giving us a flourish on his kit, when our youngest governess put her head in ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... really esteemed a common acquaintance by Leonora, after what has passed between us?" "Passed between us! Do you intend to affront me before this gentleman?" "D—n me, affront the lady," says Bellarmine, cocking his hat, and strutting up to Horatio: "does any man dare affront this lady before me, d—n me?" "Hark'ee, sir," says Horatio, "I would advise you to lay aside that fierce air; for I am mightily deceived if this lady has not a violent desire ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... hear thou'lt stretch thy mouth agape With big bold words against us undismayed— Thou, the she-captive's offspring! High would scale Thy voice, and pert would be thy strutting gait, Were but thy mother noble; since, being naught, So stiff thou stand'st for him who is nothing now, And swear'st we came not as commanders here Of all the Achaean navy, nor of thee; But Aias sailed, thou say'st, with absolute right. Must we endure detraction from a slave? What was ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... impudent dishonesty;—brazen insensibility to lying and to making others lie; total oblivion, and flinging overboard, for the nonce, of any real thing you can call veracity, morality; with dextrous putting-on the cast-clothes of that real thing, and strutting about in them! What Legislating can you get out of a man in that fatal situation? None that will profit much, one would think! A Legislator who has left his veracity lying on the door-threshold, he, why verily he—ought to be sent out ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... scenery beheld at close quarters, the thick paint on the actors' faces, and their outlandish costumes, made of such coarse materials, the stage carpenters in greasy jackets, the firemen, the stage manager strutting about with his hat on his head, the supernumeraries sitting among the hanging back-scenes, the ropes and pulleys, the heterogeneous collection of absurdities, shabby, dirty, hideous, and gaudy, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... clogs your mind! That load from off your spirits shake; You'll own and grieve for your mistake; 80 A while your thoughtless spleen suspend, Then read, and (if you can) attend. As Plutus, to divert his care, Walked forth one morn to take the air, Cupid o'ertook his strutting pace, Each stared upon the stranger's face, Till recollection set them right; For each knew t'other but by sight. After some complimental talk, Time met them, bowed, and joined their walk. 90 Their chat on various subjects ran, But most, what each had done ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... little. She was quite sure that she could find her way home, a big girl of four years ought certainly to know her own house. She knew exactly where it stood. Near the rushing silver brook, a low, red-roofed house, and a barn with black beams, also cocks and hens and geese strutting about in the little yard. It was quite near the water-mill; she could hear the rushing of the water as she lay in her little bed under her big feather sack, with only her little nose and ears peeping out. A fir-tree ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... was a Unitarian—that is, he did not believe Christ was the son of God and the Saviour of the world, but only the best of teachers; yet so little had he learnt of Him that his heaven consisted in making money, strutting about with his gay wife, and ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... the human. In the animal world the male has the plumage and does the strutting and fascinating act; but in the human animal the female is the bird with ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... frock coats, was kneeling wherever he happened to be, on his veranda, on the sidewalk, or in the middle of the street, his hat laid on the ground before him, facing a high churchman in flowing robes and a "stove-pipe" hat strutting across the plaza toward the cathedral. Traveling priests wear their regalia of office as far as Yurecuaro on the main line, ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... does look strutting about and clasping her hands, dressed in that black skirt, shirt-waist, and sailor hat!" ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... waving her battered old felt hat at the clucking cluster of hens eddying around her legs as she plowed through the flock towards the chicken house. "Scat. You, Solomon," she called out, directing her words at the bobbing comb of the big rooster strutting at the edge of the mob. "Don't just stand there like a satisfied cowhand after a night in Reno. Get these noisy females outta my way." She batted at the hens and they scattered with angry squawks ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... him, with his little dreadful air of fervid solemnity—and I don't know whether I dreamed it or whether it was really there—very spruce and strutting about the lawns of Amerley Park at that garden-party they ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... held up to him, arranged his rough, black hair, caressed his long mustache, hung his formidable sword to a rich strap of buffalo skin which had been brought to him, proudly put on the felt hat with golden cord and white plumes, and, strutting up and down the room with a triumphant air, impatiently awaited the moment of presentation to the widow. This moment arrived shortly. The aged mulattress who had received the adventurer came to seek him, and begging him to follow her, ushered him into the retired ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... religious drama of early New England Puritan life; so out of place, so unreal is this fussy, pompous, restless tithingman, with his fantastic wand of office fringed with dangling foxtails,—creaking, bustling, strutting, peering around the quiet meeting-house, prodding and rapping the restless boys, waking the drowsy sleepers; for they slept in country churches in the seventeenth century, notwithstanding dread of fierce correction, just as they nod and doze ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... as they approached the more crowded thoroughfares, the instinct of chivalrous protection was keen in his breast. He piloted her skillfully; he jauntily suited his own to her skipping step; he lifted her with scrupulous politeness over obstacles; strutting beside her on crowded pavements, he made way for her with his swinging stick. All the while, too, he had taken note of the easy carriage of her head and shoulders, and most of all of her small, slim feet and hands, that, to his fastidious taste, betokened ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... answer, his horse, as impatient as himself, would not stand still. A groom, who was sauntering about, saw the uneasiness of the horse, and observing that it was occasioned by a peacock, who, with spread tail, was strutting in the sunshine, he ran and chased the bird away. Ormond thanked the groom, and threw him a luck token; but not recollecting his face, asked how long he had been at Annaly. "I think you were not here when I was ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... I was told you were all here, and young H. too upon a very extraordinary occasion; so I was willing to see how causes went among you. It will be long enough before you come to see me."—"My brother, and Lord Davers, and Mr. H. have all rode out."—"Well, niece," strutting with his hands behind him, and his head held up—"Ha!—He has made a fine kettle on't—han't he?—that ever such a rake should be so caught! They tell me, she's plaguy cunning, and quite smart ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... termed round shoulders; on the contrary, the body should be held erect, as if the person to whom it belongs were not afraid to look the world in the face, and the chest by all means be allowed to expand. At the same time, everything like strutting or pomposity must be carefully avoided. An easy, firm, and erect posture is alone desirable. In walking, it is necessary to bear in mind that the locomotion is to be performed entirely by the legs. Awkward persons rock from side to side, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... to the taps that fell on his small head from surrounding bows. And when at last the tuning was done and there burst forth the wonderful new melody of the choral, Sebastian's heart went dizzy with the joy of it. And Uncle Heinrich on the platform, strutting proudly back and forth, conducting the choral—his own choral—forgot his anger and forgot Reinken, and forgot everything except the Bachs playing there before him—playing as only the Bachs, the united Bachs, could play—in all Germany ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... and some strangers, set to making themselves comfortable. There arrived a large body of the Fellahheen, headed by Shaikh Suliman es Said, a ragged and ugly crew, he as dirty as the rest, but strutting about in a robe of ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... and potential in relation to immediate experience, it can hardly lie in the same plane of reality with the thought to which it appears. The spectator on this side of the foot-lights, while surely regarded by the play as a whole, cannot expect to figure in its mechanism or to see himself strutting among the actors on the boards. He listens and is served, being at once impotent and supreme. It has been well ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... is but a dream, This poor fantastic strutting show of law! And you shall wake with us in Sherwood Forest And find Will Scarlet in your arms again. Come, cheerly, cheerly, we ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... sniggling at the predicament of the public which paid them for its protection against precisely the kind of thing which they openly tolerated and encouraged; yes, and even the militia, the guarantee of law and order, Broadcastle's own command, were decked out in tinsel and pipeclay, strutting to music in a palpable bid for applause and admiration. And yonder—the tide of anarchy was slowly but surely rising about the Rathbawne Mills, presaging riot, bloodshed, God alone knew what!—but one ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... mother was strutting about the yard with all her children behind her, crying "cluck, cluck!" as she scratched up bits for them among the straw, Gip, the little pet dog, ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various
... Cervantes to begin laughing; these variable and many-sided beings sneered at high-flown sentiments and experienced them too. They sang the Song of Roland, and read with delight a romance in which the great emperor is represented strutting about before his barons, his crown on his head and his sword in his hand, asking the queen if he is not the most admirable prince in the world.[203] To his surprise, the queen says no, there is a better, there is King Hugon, emperor of Greece and of Constantinople. Charlemagne ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... contradictions without end in the sketches of character which abound in Walpole's works. But if we were to form our opinion of his eminent contemporaries from a general survey of what he has written concerning them, we should say that Pitt was a strutting, ranting, mouthing actor, Charles Townshend an impudent and voluble jack-pudding, Murray a demure, cold-blooded, cowardly hypocrite, Hardwicke an insolent upstart, with the understanding of a pettifogger and the heart ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... most important impulses of mankind is the instinct of self-assertion; it often gets us into trouble, but it is also behind every effort toward developed character. At its lowest level self-assertion manifests itself in the strutting of the peacock, the prancing of the horse, and the "See how big I am," of the small boy. At its highest level, when combined with self-consciousness and the moral sentiments acquired from society and developed into the self-regarding sentiment, it is responsible for most of our ideas of right, ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... woods that she followed grew very thick. And she was still more surprised, presently, to come upon a wire fence. In such woods, it seemed very strange to her. Then, as she saw a bird with a long, brilliantly colored tail strutting around on the other side of the fence, she suddenly understood. This must be the place where the precious pheasants she was supposed to have frightened were kept. And she hadn't even known ...
— A Campfire Girl's First Council Fire - The Camp Fire Girls In the Woods • Jane L. Stewart
... a Combination in that Colony of high Church Clergymen & great Landholders—of the former, a certain Dr C is the head; who knows an American Episcopate cannot be establishd and consequently he will not have the pleasure of strutting thro the Colonies in Lawn Sleeves, until the Authority of parliament to make Laws for us binding in all Cases whatever is settled. The Latter are Lords over many Slaves; and are afraid of the Consequences that would follow, if a Spirit of Liberty should prevail among them. This however is so far ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... about August and the birds assume more simple barred plumes, but the molt is very irregular; usually the full plumage is resumed in March or even earlier. The train is, of course, an ornament to attract the female and, when a cock is strutting about with spread plumes, he sometimes makes a most peculiar rustling sound ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... in remembering that although cheated in all these transactions we were not duped. Mr Foster, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons—in those days the Speaker actually spoke, a whimsical Irish custom—tore the cloak off Lord Castlereagh's strutting statesmanship, and laid bare his real motives. Speaking on the first Union proposal in 1799 ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... dazzling sight, Seem quivering for predestined flight To worlds of unrevealed delight. In lustrous sheen, their stately looks Sedate as parsons reading books, Flock grey-billed, see-saw-gaited rooks Strutting; or when they wings assume Pluck the warm air with fingered plume, Labouring, anxious if weight and size Make flight most hazardous or wise! Nelly we sauntered on and on By hedgerows, brightly overhung ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... place is old Sox—tolerated on account of his advanced age. That veteran, whose love of mischief and whose unfailing impudence would lead any stranger to suppose he had but just come out of the egg, spends most of his time strutting about the ranch, stealing the food of the dogs and chickens; awing them into submission by his supernatural gift of speech. And as though that were not enough, his crop distended with his pilferings to the point of bursting, he comes unabashed to the kitchen door and ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... at another, and looked down lovingly on her mother's face, and was horrified by its extreme ugliness. There was no longer any gallant Tom Thumb wit strutting about her eyes and mouth, no little tender cheeping voice to distract the attention from the hideous ruin time had worked in her. Age diffused through her substance, spoiling every atom, attacking its contribution to the scheme of form and colour. It had pitted her skin ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... one of the wings. Beyond a gate in the court-yard wall the flower-garden drew its dark-green squares and raised its statues against the yellowing background of the park. In the borders only a few late pinks and crimsons smouldered, but a peacock strutting in the sun seemed to have gathered into his out-spread fan all the ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... up to all you expect of me. I'll try and fill the bill, but promise me this much. When I've finally pitched my tent in Canaan and achieved that happy home, then you'll come and share it with me. At least," she added as Mrs. Ware nodded assent, "what time you are not strutting through foreign salons or the Governor's mansion, or sailing the high ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... feeling of proprietorship in the Bishop and his garden, and his niece, Margery, and the Fountain Boy. Hence what was our astonishment and chagrin to see one morning, from our schoolroom window, a chit of a girl, smaller than myself, strutting up and down the Bishop's garden, pushing a doll's perambulator. She had fluffy golden hair about her shoulders, and her skirts gave a rhythmic swing as she turned the corners. Now and then she would stop in her walk, remove ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... wanting; but it remained largely in the background. Vice was strutting in cloth of gold; virtue was at home mending its rags. Every expedient was resorted to, not so much to keep up appearances as to keep the wolf from the door. Servants were sent around by high-born ladies to sell, anonymously, baskets ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... place in the world where so outlandish a thing as a pair of red moccasins ought to be seen. How the old people would frown and shake their heads at you! How the young people would titter and point at you; and some would say: 'Just look yonder at Sprigg, strutting about in a pair of red moccasins, as if he were thinking himself so much finer than our bare-footed boys—the young monkey!' And, Sprigg, would you like to be called a monkey? I rather think not. You'd rather take a whipping any day than ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... the human soul loves truth, nor willingly believes or receives a lie. Our intellectual sin is synecdoche, the putting a part truth for a whole truth. Generalization is dangerous intellectual exercise. Our premise is insufficient, and our conclusion is self-sufficient, like some strutting scion of a decayed house. Trace the origin of this idea of a poet's non-sanity. He was not ordinary, as other men, but was extraordinary, and as such belonged to the upper rather than the lower world; for we must be convinced how ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... earth shall mingle, Or—which is likelier to befall— 'Til death exterminate us all. I marry without more ado. My dear Dick Redcap, what say you?" Dick heard, and tweedling, ogling, bridling, Turned short 'round, strutting, and sidling, Attested, glad, his approbation Of an immediate conjugation. Their sentiments, so well express'd, Influenced mightily the rest; All pair'd, and each pair built a nest. But, though the birds were thus in haste, The leaves came on not quite so fast, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... herb, and a perennial. It is often called Oswego tea, because the Indians are supposed to have used it for tea. Then, again, you will hear it called Indian's plume. This name seems most suitable. I can just imagine a chief strutting around with this gay plume on his head. It likes a somewhat secluded, moist, shady, cool place. I think it would be possible for some of you to make it grow at home. For colour it would be invaluable. The cardinal flower is the only flower more ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... Lieutenant-General Sir George Tufto, K.C.B., and have seen him, as they may on most days in the season, padded and in stays, strutting down Pall Mall with a rickety swagger on his high-heeled lacquered boots, leering under the bonnets of passers-by, or riding a showy chestnut, and ogling broughams in the Parks—those who know the present Sir George ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... information of the utmost importance, putting a finger to their lips, screwing up their eyes to enjoin secrecy. A provincial flavor distinguished them all, with differences of inflection, Southern excitability, the drawling accent of the Centre, Breton sing-song, all blended in the same idiotic, strutting self-sufficiency; frock-coats after the style of Landerneau, mountain shoes, and home-spun linen; the monumental assurance of village clubs, local expressions, provincialisms abruptly imported into political and administrative ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... favour, hold a little; I must examine you something better, before you go.—Heyday! who have we here? Father Dominick is shrunk in the wetting two yards and a half about the belly. What are become of those two timber logs, that he used to wear for legs, that stood strutting like the two black posts before a door? I am afraid some bad body has been setting him over a fire in a great cauldron, and boiled him down half the quantity, for a recipe. This is no father Dominick, no huge overgrown abbey-lubber; this is but a diminutive sucking friar. As sure as ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... pond, in the direction of a balcony built on the churchyard wall, to which one could climb by six steps not much broader than the rungs of a ladder. In an instant she was at the top and, surely enough, there came all the school children marching along, Jahnke strutting majestically beside the right flank, while a little drum major marched at the head of the procession, several paces in advance, with an expression on his countenance as though it were incumbent upon him to fight the battle ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... Bond-street strutting, Did he greet his friends of yore; Such a universal cutting Never man received before. Till at last his pride revolted; Pale, and lean, and stern, he grew; And his wife REBECCA ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... government. Shaxton was an arrogant braggart, and Barlow a feeble enthusiast. Shaxton, who had flinched from the stake when Bilney was burnt, Shaxton, who subsequently relapsed under Mary, and became himself a Romanist persecutor, was now strutting in his new authority, and punishing, suspending, and inhibiting in behalf of Protestant doctrines which were not yet tolerated by the law.[529] Barlow had been openly preaching that purgatory was a delusion; that a layman might be a bishop; that where two or three, it might be, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... back threateningly, and speaking in Spanish. "Be careful who you charm. Best not be coddling Nine Eyes, or any other man, while I'm livin'. Bring another bottle. You could have kept those girls here for me, if you'd tried. You allowed that strutting dandy to carry them off before your eyes. This makes the second time he got away from me. The third time is the charm. Not your kind of charm, Mex, but ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... time an old red hen Went strutting 'round with pompous clucks, For she had little babies ten, A part of which were tiny ducks. "'T is very rare that hens," said she, "Have baby ducks as well as chicks— But I possess, as you can see, Of chickens four ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... You know what that costs. It would support the wives and children of many among you for ten long years. 'How heavy must be the purse which can expose such a treasure to sun and rain!' is the thought of every one who sees him strutting about as proudly as a peacock. And his purse is loaded with many talents. Only it is a pity that, day after day, most of you must give your children a little less bread and deprive yourselves of many a draught of wine to deck him ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... through the grass, or ricks were being built, or rafts were being loaded, he would allow his eyes to wander from his men, and to fall to gazing at, say, a red-billed, red-legged heron which, after strutting along the bank of a stream, would have caught a fish in its beak, and be holding it awhile, as though in doubt whether to swallow it. Next he would glance towards the spot where a similar bird, but one not yet in possession ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... attracting everybody's attention, and that pleased her. The comparatively fresh air also gladdened her, but it was painful to step on the rough stones with the ill-made prison shoes on her feet, which had become unused to walking. Passing by a corn-dealer's shop, in front of which a few pigeons were strutting about, unmolested by any one, the prisoner almost touched a grey-blue bird with her foot; it fluttered up and flew close to her ear, fanning her with its wings. She smiled, then sighed deeply as she remembered her ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... lend me that habit." Elias did not dare refuse: he went aside and took it off and brought it to him. Francis put it on over his own, smoothed it down, plaited it nicely under the girdle, threw the cowl over his head, and then, strutting fiercely with his head erect, he paced three or four times round the company, saying, in a loud voice :—"God preserve you, good people." Then taking the habit off indignantly, he threw it from him with contempt, and, turning to ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... was in the lead, stopped abruptly. Down one of the bypaths a strutting peacock had caught his eyes. A glimpse of water showed beyond the gaudy tail of the bird, and a few steps toward it revealed a circular bathing pool in the heart of the thicket. Large mats of colored straw, thick rugs and cushions, all brilliantly ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... and broad, with a chest like a pouter pigeon's in its plumage of bright waistcoats, came strutting ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... The peacock is sacred to Jeypore; it crowns in miniature the street lamps, and is sculptured in hundreds of places. Chattering parrots by the roadside may arrest attention, but are forgotten in a moment—a strutting peacock is beautiful enough to place the parrot family in eclipse. When blue-rock pigeons descend by thousands in the market-place to profit by an over-turned sack of grain, visitors marvel at their irridescent necks and breasts—but a beauteous peacock appearing on the scene attracts an ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... it strike you?" asked the woodchuck, strutting up and down the gravel walk before her and swinging his ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... class or person who had not distinguished himself in some good way and therefore earned the right to public respect. There was still the sneer behind for mere pedigree—"he is nothing, has done nothing, only an accident, a fraud strutting in borrowed plumes; all he has to his account is the accident of birth; the most fruitful part of his family, as with the potato, lies underground." I wondered that intelligent men could live where another human being was born to a privilege which was not also their birthright. I was never tired ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... which was so guarded, that no one could suspect that he was interested in any particular subject. One day, as he was passing the statehouse, Giles Peram, who, with the powdered wig, lace, and ruffles of a cavalier, was strutting before some of the court officials, turning his eyes with an ill-bred stare on the stranger ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... drank the mortal hemlock, Socrates could withdraw himself, and listen to the inner whisper of his daemon. All this, I say, you could see in the abstracted, resigned and composed look of Mr. Gladstone at the moment when his triumphant enemies, in their summer garb, with their smiling faces, and strutting walk, entered the House of Commons. If you wanted to see at once the contrast, not only of the temper of the hour, but the still greater and more momentous contrast of temperaments, you had only to look from the face of Mr. Gladstone to that of Mr. Chamberlain. ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... Pennys and Java Head. The one goes as far back as to colonial Pennsylvania for the beginning of its chronicle and the other as far as to Salem in the days of the first clipper ship; and yet by no paraphernalia of languid airs or archaic idioms or strutting heroics does either of the novels fall into the orthodox historical tradition. They have the vivid, multiplied detail of a contemporary record. And this is the more notable for the reason that the characters in each of ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... and see," responded Liza, with a laugh. "That's nothing to what Nabob Johnny said to me once, and I gave him a slap over the lug for it, the strutting and smirking old peacock. Why, he's all lace—lace at his neck and at his wrists, and ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... the beautiful white pigeon with pink eyes which had her nest up in the cupola of our barn, and whose big beautiful brown husband was so proud of her and always was cooing to her when they were on the roof of our barn and was always strutting around so very proud, with his neck all puffed out ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... the stair. He was before her, standing on the verandah directly in front of the doors. His back was to her. She saw that he was very tall and thin, not unlike her uncle in build, but with a distinction that gentleman did not possess. Her father was strutting up and down the drive, ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and to be got at the point of the sword, to put on the heads of insolents like Lord Leicester!" His face was flaming, he was like a cock strutting upon a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... handful of snow, we jestingly alluded to the occupation of our cockney friends at the same moment, and saw them, in fancy, tricked out with the Gallic finery of kid gloves and nankeen trowsers, strutting through the crowded thoroughfares of Regent Street, or ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... The crowd on the highroad became greater and greater; there was quite a crush of men and cattle. They walked in the road, and close by the paling; and at the barrier they even walked into the tollman's potato field, where his own fowl was strutting about with a string to its legs, lest it should take fright at the crowd, and stray away, and so be lost. This fowl had short tail feathers, and winked with both its eyes, and looked very cunning. "Cluck! cluck!" said the fowl. What it thought when it said this I cannot tell you; but as ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... framed for Cooper imaginary feelings and then proceeded to assail him for having them. He was accused, especially, of pluming himself highly upon the title of the "American Scott." Hazlitt, for instance, seeing him strutting, as he terms it, in the streets of Paris, was enabled to detect by the way the novelist walked the way he felt upon this special matter, and afterward to state the conclusion at which he had arrived as a positive fact. Similar specimens of fine critical insight into ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... man saw in these combats; he had a vague notion that quarrelling made boys hardy, and that tyranny was a useful accomplishment for them to learn. Flushed with praise and victory over Master Toffy, George wished naturally to pursue his conquests further, and one day as he was strutting about in new clothes, near St. Paneras, and a young baker's boy made sarcastic comments upon his appearance, the youthful patrician pulled off his dandy jacket with great spirit, and giving it in charge to the friend ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... night, I cleared out a muzzy cove quite; [9] He'd been a strutting avay like a king, And on his digit he sported a ring, A di'mond sparkler, flash and knowing, Thinks I, I'll vatch the vay he's going, And fleece my gemman neat and clever, So, at least I'll ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... the idea that he was master in his own house, he began strutting about the kitchen, taking mental note of the things that needed attention, with a view to reproving Bridget when she came back to the fold. He burnt his fingers trying to straighten the stovepipe, smelt of the dish-cloths to see if they were greasy, ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... him I was a Scotchman lately come to town, descended of a good family, and that my name was Random. The justice looked upon this assertion as an outrage upon his memory, on which he valued himself exceedingly; and strutting up to Jackson, with a fierce countenance, put his hands in his side, and said, "Who are you, sir? Do you give me the lie? Take notice, gentlemen, here's a fellow who affronts me upon the bench but I'll lay you fast, sirrah, I will—for notwithstanding your laced jacket, I believe you are a notorious ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... equaled, and having some resemblance to the crowded square of Venice on which St. Mark's stands. Originally it was a marketplace, busy and lively, a great resort where might be seen "good men walking quietly by themselves," [Footnote: Plautus Cuve, iv. 1. ] "flash men strutting about without a denarius in their purses," "gourmands clubbing for a dinner," "scandal-mongers living in glass houses," "perjured witnesses, liars, braggarts, rich and erring husbands, worn-out harlots," and all the various classes which now appear in the crowded places of London ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... set on end. When the train is up, nothing appears of the bird before but its head and neck; but this would not be the case were those long feathers fixed only in the rump, as may be seen by the turkey cock when in a strutting attitude. By a strong muscular vibration these birds can make the shafts of their long feathers clatter like the swords of a sword-dancer; they then trample very quick with their feet, and run backwards ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... pleasure-seeker; its more progressive, that of an artful husband hunter, and its summit—ah! its summit was where she stood herself, and where a deplorable percentage of our society wives and mothers are standing or strutting about with their brilliant plumage expanded, airing their silly pride and lisping out in self-laudatory accents the story of their empty ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... cut up quite decent at the last. I expect it was that little poem of mine which fetched him," said Rumple, who was strutting round like a peacock in a new suit of clothes and feeling ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... start on Boyton's forehead. A young officer was in command who posed as a strict disciplinarian and acted up to his idea that there was very little else in the world for him to learn. He critically examined the paper and then looked into the saddle bags that were swung over the mule's back. Then strutting haughtily about, said: ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... safe numbers of their own people they recovered from their alarm. Ambrose suspected their present confidence to be as little founded on reason as their previous terror. Watusk, strutting like a turkey-cock in his military ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... populace forgot its orgy of blood to acclaim a violinist. And what a violinist! He was one of the most effeminate and grotesque individuals in the world. I can see him yet, strutting along with his long hair, his ample rear, and his shoes with their little quarter-heels, which gave him the appearance of a fat cook dressed up in ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... a struggle." Leaving the town I scanned the faces of the passers-by apprehensively, and said "Good-morning" or "Good-evening" very meekly to all dangerous-looking persons, but a fortnight later I was even strutting on the road with a smile ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... nothing of the kind. Do tell me! I know admirals—they swear—and captains, and, I think, lieutenants, and, above all, those little loves of midshipmen, strutting with their dirks and cocked hats, like warlike bantams, but I never ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... anyone who has the slightest acquaintance with stagefolk will testify that, taking one with another, the women have vastly more brains than the men and are appreciably less vain and idiotic. Relatively few actresses of any rank marry actors. They find close communion with the strutting brethren psychologically impossible. Stock-brokers, dramatists and even theatrical managers are greatly ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... from the little phial of Rheims anointed the brow of a new dynast, and a Roman Pontiff blessed the diadem with which a once poor, pensioned, disaffected Corsican patriot crowned himself lord of France in Notre Dame. The old pomposities of a court came strutting back to their places:—Arch Chancellors, Grand Electors, Constables, Grand Almoners, Grand Chamberlains, Grand Marshals of the Palace, Masters of the Horse, Masters of the Hounds, Madame Mere and a bevy of Imperial Highnesses with their ladies-in-waiting. ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... Quenu he grasped her hand, called her "dear lady," and conducted her to the vestry, where, taking off his surplice, he told her that he would be entirely at her service in a moment. They returned, the priest in his cassock, bareheaded, and Lisa strutting along in her shawl, and paced up and down in front of the side-chapels adjacent to the Rue du Jour. They conversed together in low tones. The sunlight was departing from the stained windows, the church was growing dark, and the retreating footsteps of ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... streets of the town were fairly filled with khaki-clad warriors, strutting up and down, exchanging military salutes, and arousing the admiration of all the girls, who came forth to gaze ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... varies, and fashion is as despotic in the Marquesas as in other countries. Some wear necklaces of red beads, others a string of small pieces of light wood. Although both men and women have their ears pierced, ear-rings are not usually worn. But a young native girl has been seen strutting about wearing as a neck ornament the rusty iron shaving-dish which she had stolen from the ship's barber, whilst a man was equally proud of sporting the ramrod of Captain Marchand's gun, which he had placed in the orifice of his ear, letting ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... of the late John Palmer, who, it will be remembered, was somewhat stiltish. "Palmer, whose father was a bill-sticker, and who had occasionally practised in the same humble occupation himself, strutting one evening in the green-room at Drury-Lane Theatre, in a pair of glittering buckles, a gentleman present remarked that they greatly resembled diamonds. 'Sir,' said Palmer, with warmth, 'I would have you to know, that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... tube of the laboratory or the workshop of nature, all organic chemical reactions take place only within a restricted range of heat. Man, the latest of the ephemera, is pitifully a creature of temperature, strutting his brief day on the thermometer. Behind him is a past wherein it was too warm for him to exist. Ahead of him is a future wherein it will be too cold for him to exist. He cannot adjust himself to that future, because ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... don't forget to pay for it! Shut up! Call again! I'm all right! Hurra!" And the parrot—for it was a large and handsome parrot—hopped upon a chair, from the floor where he had been strutting about, and looked at the company with eyes as sharp as ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... Ruth and Grace some distance off. The two girls were deep in conversation with a farm boy. Strutting around near them were a fat turkey gobbler and a ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... it became notorious. It was known all over the country for its roughs or "Bowery B'hoys," as they were called, its rowdy firemen, and its doubtful women. In short, it was the paradise of the worst element of New York. On this street the Bowery boy was in his glory. You might see him "strutting along like a king" with his breeches stuck in his boots, his coat on his arm, his flaming red shirt tied at the collar with a cravat such as could be seen nowhere else; with crape on his hat, the hat set deftly on the side of his head, his hair evenly plastered ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... nay, and in all things I am so true to my principles, that I cannot be so much as counterfeited, even by those who challenge the name of wits, yet indeed are no better than jackanapes tricked up in gawdy clothes, and asses strutting in lions' skins; and how cunningly soever they carry it, their long ears appear, and betray what they are. These in troth are very rude and disingenuous, for while they apparently belong to my party, ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... a herd of buffaloes came strutting up to look at their oxen, and only by shooting one could they be made to retreat. Shortly afterwards a female elephant, with three young ones, charged through, the centre of their extended line, when the men, throwing down ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... strides, and hastily retired again behind the safe bulwark of Jeff's back. As he stood there in his shrunken condition, he about as much resembled the pompous and arrogant duellist of a half-hour previous as a wet and bedraggled turkey does the strutting, gobbling cock of the flock. The Major, with an objurgation at him for stepping "as if he had on seven league boots," stepped off the distance himself, explaining to Lawrence that ten paces was about the best distance, as it was sufficiently distant ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... are voyageurs," he said, strewing salted pease for the strutting, cooing, softly crowding birds. "I'm training them every day. Some day I shall know more about pigeons than any one else in ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... Mr. Roosevelt was appointed by President Taft as the American representative at the funeral. There was a gathering in London of thirteen reigning monarchs, and many curious stories are told about the occasion. Of course the Kaiser was there, strutting about and trying to patronize everybody. Mr. Roosevelt had been politely received by the Kaiser and believed, as did every one, that beneath his arrogant manners, there was a great deal of ability. But he did not allow himself to be treated by the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt • Edmund Lester Pearson
... WOMAN. 'I saw her strutting about with him yesterday, looking as if she thought the two of them ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... street, from the Battery to St. Paul's Church, between the hours of twelve and half-past two, wind and weather permitting. There I saw Rupert, in his country guise, nothing remarkable, of a certainty, strutting about with the best of them, and looking handsome in spite of his rusticity. It was getting late, and he left the street just as I saw him. I followed, waiting until we got to a private place before I would speak to him, however, as I knew ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... squalling of catcalls and penny trumpets." Nor could the sense of smell have been much better catered to than that of hearing, owing to the "singeing of pigs and burnt crackling of over-roasted pork." Once within the enclosure he saw all sorts of remarkable things, including the actors, "strutting round their balconies in their tinsey robes and golden leather buskins;" the rope-dancers, and the dirty eating-places, where "cooks stood dripping at their doors, like their roasted swine's flesh." Ward also looked ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... nothing more delightful, than for loves to be conferring and receiving obligations from each other. In this very farm-yard, to give thee a familiar instance, I have more than once seen this remark illustrated. A strutting rascal of a cock have I beheld chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck-ing his mistress to him, when he has found a single barley-corn, taking it up with his bill, and letting it drop five or six times, still repeating ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the defiant, red-balled glowering eyes with one brief, straight look. The fence-cutter broke a tip of sage and set to work, the old man lifting his arms like a strutting gobbler, his head held high, the pain of his hurt forgotten in the triumphant moment of ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... is over—though I imagine that with the excitement that there is in the town, all the boys will play truant to-day——But in any case I will go to the house after class hours. I don't wish you to go out alone, senora. Those vagabond soldiers are strutting about the streets with such insolent ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... decay of nature and the mutability of institutions. An actually weird effect is produced by the sight of this plump and rosy Christian pervading the graves of dead empires, and thinking democracy amidst the listening ghosts of the Pharaohs. Did these solemn empires, did these absolute and strutting monarchs mistake their grandeur, and exist after all only that this modern democrat might laugh and live a life devoid of care? Such is the lesson of the book. It is sweeter to know the freshness and kindly nature that penned it; it is sweeter to feel the graceful and humane fancies that baptize ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... upon the road, as though in triumph at their freedom. There were dull pigs too, turning up the ground in search of dainty food, and grunting their monotonous grumblings as they prowled about, or crossed each other in their quest; plump pigeons skimming round the roof or strutting on the eaves; and ducks and geese, far more graceful in their own conceit, waddling awkwardly about the edges of the pond or sailing glibly on its surface. The farm-yard passed, then came the little inn; the humbler beer-shop; and the village tradesman's; then the lawyer's and the parson's, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... formed, and his dress was a matter of extreme study. But it is rather libellous on the memory of this man of taste to suppose, that he at all resembled in this important matter the strutting display which we have seen in later times, and which irresistibly strikes the beholder with surprise, that any man capable of seeing himself in the glass could exhibit so strong a temptation to laughter; while to the more knowing in the affairs of costume, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... that occasion, I was not informed. The rector came back among us with his head high in the air, strutting magnificently on his wizen little legs. He embraced his daughter in pathetic silence, and gave me his hand with a serene smile of condescension worthy of the greatest humbug (say Louis the Fourteenth) that ever sat on a throne. When he got the better of ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... is going to get the idea that you sure hate yourself!" he remarked, standing with his hands on his hips while Applehead came strutting into the foreground. "You'll never make any one believe you were ever a real, honest-to-God sheriff. They'll put you down as an extra picked up through a free employment agency and feeling like you owned the plant because you're earning a couple of dollars. Go ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... The three of us turned to the window to watch the figure, the music of which was just beginning. Mr. Cooke, with the air of an English squire at his own hunt ball, was strutting contentedly up and down one end of the room, now pausing to exchange a few hearty words with some Presbyterian matron from Asquith, now to congratulate Mr. Trevor on the appearance of his daughter. Lined against the opposite wall were the Celebrity and his ten red-coated followers, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... assertion has been made with great confidence, by many writers and speakers. It is a gross exaggeration, and absurd as it is gross. I say nothing of the unseemly egotism of a dominant caste, thus parading its own merits, flaunting its plumes, strutting and crowing over the common folk—of this pharisaic spirit of the ascendant Protestant, standing close to the altar, reciting to God and the world the number of his resplendent virtues, and scornfully contrasting his excellent moral condition with the degraded Catholic—the ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... last she crossed over to him and said softly, (no sarcasm in her voice now), 'Away with you, and vote for Gladstone's man!' He jumped up and made off without a word, but from the east window we watched him strutting down the brae. I laughed, but she said, 'I'm no sure that it's a laughing matter,' and afterwards, 'I would have liked fine to ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... Strutting along equipp'd in vest of silk. * * * * * * Full many a hat is doff'd as he draws near, For gentlemen ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... they choose to go with us, they must come at once; we cannot be lingering here till the plovers begin their flight. It is pleasant to travel as we do in a family party, not like the chaffinches and strutting cocks. Among their species the males fly by themselves, and the females by themselves: that, to say the least of it, is not at all seemly. What a miserable sound the stroke of the swans' wings has compared ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... this hour, the flagged court was crowded by pigeons, strutting fearlessly between the feet of the passers-by, and filling the air ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... ranks had an enjoyable time. As Christmas approached, active preparations were made to excel anything we had ever had before in the way of festivities, and this was possible now that we were out of action. Quarter-Master-Sergeants, puffed out with importance, were to be seen strutting hither and thither, returning with mysterious sacks and parcels, presumably filled with ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... that often made him speak loosely, even when men and women were by to whom such a style gave positive pain. No doubt much of his coarseness, like that of every humorist, was based on honesty and hatred of shams. When he saw silly peacocks strutting about and trying to fill the horizon with their tails, he could not help ruffling their feathers and making them scream, were it only to let the world know how unmelodious were their voices. It was generally in the presence of prudes that he referred to unnamable things; and he most ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... arrows to their bows, and pointed them at inoffensive "papaya" trees, whilst two little boys shot small arrows into the green and yellow fruit, seeming to catch the fever from their elders. One man actually danced a kind of war-dance on his own account, strutting about with his bow and arrow pointed, and getting into all sorts of grotesque attitudes, moving about with his legs stiffened, and pulling the most hideous faces, till I was ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker |
