"Swagger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... let every varlet undo us? Shall we doubt Of each lout That doth come, With a voice Like the noise Of a drum, And a sword or a buff-coat, to us? Shall we lose our estates By plunder and rates, To bedeck those proud upstarts that swagger? Rather fight for your meat Which those locusts do eat, Now every ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... almost obscuring Quincy itself. The want of barriers, of pavements, of forms; the looseness, the laziness; the indolent Southern drawl; the pigs in the streets; the negro babies and their mothers with bandanas; the freedom, openness, swagger, of nature and man, soothed his Johnson blood. Most boys would have felt it in the same way, but with him the feeling caught on to an inheritance. The softness of his gentle old grandmother as she ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... man, and the red-nosed man could not move. The red-nosed man heard all the questions and the landlord's answers, and could not even pretend that he did not hear them. "I am my cousin's clerk," said he, putting on his hat, and coming up to Mr Toogood with a swagger. "My name is Dan Stringer, and I'm Mr John Stringer's cousin. I've lived with Mr John Stringer for twelve year and more, and I'm a'most as well known in Barchester as himself. Have you anything to say to ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... drizzle of rain which prevented sight-seeing for those who had the wish, and the freedom, to go about. As for me, I was ordered by Lady Turnour to mend Mr. Stokes's socks, he having made peace by offering to "give her a swagger dinner ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... the way spies always look. Besides, I don't think his clothes really belonged to him. I could see that at a glance. He had a pair of white flannel trousers with creases down the fronts of the legs, quite as swagger as yours, if not swaggerer, and a white sweater. He didn't look a bit comfortable in them, not as if they were the kind of clothes he was accustomed to wear. That's Rossmore head on the left there, Cousin Frank. He's not there. I didn't expect he would be, and he ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... of these men have the daring to declare that regeneration must come through her abandonment of all the social theories and prejudices that distinguished her as a section before the war. But in a great degree the beaten bully is a bully still. There is the old lounging, the old tipsiness, the old swagger, the old violence. Mr. Andrews has to fly from a mob, as in the merry days of 1859, because he persuades an old negro to go home and not stay and be stabbed by a gentleman of one of the first families. Drunken life-long idlers hiccup an eloquent despair ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... brave and daring companions (tre compagni bravi e facinorosi), and a palace worth fifty crowns on lease. But Lorenzo had just taken another on the Campo di San Polo at three hundred crowns a year, for which swagger (altura) Pietro Strozzi had struck a thousand crowns off his allowance. Bibboni also learned that he was keeping house with his uncle, Alessandro Soderini, another Florentine outlaw, and that he was ardently in love with a certain beautiful Barozza. This woman was apparently one of the grand courtesans ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... to a crisis one day when Maxwell was informed that some one was waiting to see him in the parlor. The visitor was dressed in very pronounced clothes, and carried himself with a self-assertive swagger. Maxwell had seen him in Bascom's office, and knew who was waiting for him long before he reached the parlor, by the odor of patchouli which ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... fact that he was sneaking away struck him like a blow. Sneaking away! He stopped. With a careless, cocky swagger he had always, before this, stood ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... men moved to the door and out, Phinuit with a brazen swagger, Jules without emotion visible, Monk with eyebrows ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... genteel Effendi, who sat by, at last burst out in uncontrollable amazement; 'There is no God but God: is it possible that four or five Franks can use all these things to eat, drink and sleep on a journey?' (N.B. I fear the Franks will think the stock very scanty.) Whereupon master Achmet, with the swagger of one who has seen cities and men, held forth. 'Oh Effendim, that is nothing; Our Lady is almost like the children of the Arabs. One dish or two, a piece of bread, a few dates, and Peace, (as we say, there is an end of it). But thou shouldst see the merchants of Escandarieh, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... into the corner of which there now comes the tail of Louka's double apron. His eye gleams at once. He takes a stealthy look at her, and begins to twirl his moustache nervously, with his left hand akimbo on his hip. Finally, striking the ground with his heels in something of a cavalry swagger, he strolls over to the left of the table, opposite her, and says) Louka: do you know what the higher ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... in height was almost heavy set. He wore a plaited leather jerkin beneath his robe and knee pants of leather out of which his lower legs showed as gray, hairy pillars of strength. He had come into the salon with a swagger, his ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... company of crazy men had been suddenly let loose among us. Not content with plotting secretly against my master, they must needs swagger about, advising others to join them in their rebellion, and everywhere could be heard oaths and threats, in such language as was like to cause honest men's hair ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... of Germany has never been on friendly terms with the Germany of the court and the landowner. It has inherited a burgerlich tradition and resented even while it tolerated the swagger of the aristocratic officer. It tolerated it because that sort of thing was supposed to be necessary to the national success. But Munich, the comic papers, Herr Harden, Vorwaerts, speak, I think, for the central masses of German life far more truly than any official utterances ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... imitating what she considers are a man's stride and swagger, returns to table and proceeds to unwrap parcel.] Well, I'll go out like a girl, if I did come in like a man. [Drops wrapping paper on table and holds up a woman's long automobile cloak and a motor bonnet. Is suddenly startled by sound of approaching footsteps and glances in a frightened way toward ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... walking was peculiar, and rather like that of a cat, but of a cat that was well acquainted with the ground it was moving over; the step showed no doubt or apprehension, it could hardly be called stealthy, but it glided on firmly and cautiously, without haste, or swagger, or unevenness.... The oftener you heard him speak, the more his speaking gained upon you.... He never seemed occupied with himself. His effort was evidently directed to convince you, not that he was eloquent, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... especially in such company. She despised George Sherrard as a prig, fond of boasting of his means, and, indeed, so terribly self-conscious was he that in many circles he was declared impossible. Men disliked him for his swagger and conceit, and women despised him for his ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... He wanted to show off his courage before his followers, who were mostly does; many of them his wives too—for the old antelopes are shocking polygamists. It would never do to appear timid in the eyes of the fair does; and he was determined to cut a swagger. Under this impulse, he walked boldly up, until his sharp snout touched the hair of ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... Petrovitch. 'I'm convinced, on the contrary, that you and I are far more in the right than these young gentlemen, though we do perhaps express ourselves in old-fashioned language, vieilli, and have not the same insolent conceit.... And the swagger of the young men nowadays! You ask one, "Do you take red wine or white?" "It is my custom to prefer red!" he answers in a deep bass, with a face as solemn as if the whole universe had its eyes on him ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... swagger society, eh, Droom? If anyone but Billy Fernmore had done that, he would have been ostracised ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... seeing. General Mack was at the head of about 30,000 Neapolitan troops, said to be the finest in Europe. This, however, did not prevent them from being annihilated by 15,000 French, when General Championnet evacuated Rome. The King entered with all the swagger of an Oriental potentate. The Neapolitans followed the French to Castellana, and when the latter faced up to them they stampeded in disordered panic. Some were wounded, but few were killed, and the King, forgetting ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... me now the words translate: Natale solum, my estate; My dear estate, how well I love it, My tenants, if you doubt, will prove it, They swear I am so kind and good, I hug them till I squeeze their blood. Libertas bears a large import: First, how to swagger in a court; And, secondly, to show my fury Against an uncomplying jury; And, thirdly, 'tis a new invention, To favour Wood, and keep my pension; And, fourthly, 'tis to play an odd trick, Get the great seal and turn ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... influencing the others to do the same, yet there is no denying that you spoke to those men in a most overbearing manner. Why, you could not have been more downright had you been an officer of the Emperor himself. What passed through my mind as I listened was, 'Where did this youth get his swagger?' You ordered Kurzbold out of the ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... to be a "swagger" ship and crew, the wardroom mess took lunch, instead of dinner, at one o'clock, dining at seven o'clock in the evening. This was the hour adopted by the saloon party, who, I learned, were regularly reinforced by one or more ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... rubber garment she had worn through the swamp. Then she removed her outer clothing and got into the uniform and into the long, polished boots quickly. There was even the swagger cane that young ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... kindliness and courtesy that communicated itself to all with whom they came in contact. The cowboys, Beulah soon discovered, were as unlike the cowboys of fiction and of her imagination as a Manitoba steer is unlike his Alberta brother; they did not carry revolvers, nor swagger in high boots, nor rip the air with their profanity; and their table manners reminded her of George and Harry Grant, and the Grants were outstanding examples of right living in the Plainville district. And Mrs. Arthurs, gentle and ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... exclaimed the other with a swagger. "That's how yer paw used ter put it. Your maw warn't much good no how, with her finicky notions 'bout eddicati'n an' sech. A little pone and baken with plenty good ol' red eye's good 'nough fer us. Yer ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... park," went on Parmalee, "of swagger residences; very exclusive and reserved, you know. You've certainly unearthed startling news, but I can't help thinking that it will be a wild goose chase that leads us to look for our criminal in ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... turned the corner and promptly lengthened when she saw that he was empty-handed and walking with the exaggerated swagger which she was coming to recognize as ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... a cavalry charge in the dead of night? I can scarcely tell, For when it is over it's like a dream, and when you are in it a kind of hell! I should like you to see the officers lead—forgetting their swagger and Bond Street air— Like brothers and men at the head of the troop, while bugles echo and troopers dare! With a rush we are in it, and hard at work—there's scarcely a minute to think or pause— For right and left we are fighting hard for the regiment's honour and country's ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... yard, and I should be expelled for that. So I suppose I had better agree to your terms. I will not come back, and— what sum did you say you demand as the price of your silence? Four pounds ten, or twelve, I think; you shall have it." And turning on his heel with an attempt at swagger which was not very successful, Saurin went out, kicking the mat aside, and banging ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... "The young gaffer! We'll all stick to him!" And in spite of his youth, George was at once installed as captain of the little Fairburn band. He had always been highly popular with the men of the colliery; they liked his entire freedom from vain show and swagger, and his ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... happened to be alone, he ordered, and paid, and drank, and went out quickly. If he happened to be with friends, he pointedly addressed his conversation to his countrymen, and left with a certain degree of swagger, and without the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... prestige and power. They are a sort of commune and are yet supreme. Yes, they are always riding the whirlwind and directing the storm. And who dares say a word against them? Every one of them, in his swagger and bluster, is an Abd'ul-Hamid. Alas, everything is yet in a chaotic state. The boatman's shriek can silence the Press ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... looked in the glass when it was done. He chucked Poll a diamond worth about a million piastres, and, remarking that he would not trouble him for the change, he walked out. By this characteristic swagger, of course, he more than confirmed my belief that he was, indeed, the celebrated foreigner the Count of Monte Cristo; whose name and history even YOU must be acquainted with, though you may not be what I have heard my friend Chevy ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... had lurched from the cabin she touched me. Smiled with her mannish swagger, for fear we were still observed, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... at him strangely, but he continued with growing enthusiasm: "I mean to sit at such a table as this, with such a chef, with such wines—to know one crowded hour like this is to live! Not a thing is missing; all this swagger furniture, the rich atmosphere of smartness about the whole place; best of all, the company. It's a great thing to have the real people around you, the right sort, you know, socially; people you'd ask to your own table at home. There are only ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... Keate nature had accorded a stature of only about five feet, or say five feet one; but by costume, voice, manner (including a little swagger), and character he made himself in every way the capital figure on the Eton stage, and his departure marked, I imagine, the departure of the old race of English public school masters, as the name of Dr. Busby seems to mark its introduction. In connection ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... melancholy nobility of Athos: Honour, Chivalry, and Friendship. I declare your characters are real people to me and old friends. I cannot bear to read the end of "Bragelonne," and to part with them for ever. "Suppose Porthos, Athos, and Aramis should enter with a noiseless swagger, curling their moustaches." How we would welcome them, forgiving D'Artagnan even his hateful fourberie in the case of Milady. The brilliance of your dialogue has never been approached: there is wit everywhere; repartees glitter and ring like the flash and clink of small-swords. Then ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... it—the depth of emotion expressed, and expressed with perfect simplicity and directness and an entire absence of parade. The negro troops are marching steadily, soberly, with high seriousness of purpose, and their white leader rides beside them, drawn sword in hand, but with no military swagger, courageous, yet with a hint of melancholy, ready not only to lay down his life but to face, if need be, an ignominious death for the cause he believes to be just. And above them, laden with poppy and with laurels, floats ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... of the Lecture Bureau may be found in a swagger Club any evening with a Bourbon H. B. at his Right, a stack of Student Lamps at his Left and Two Small Pair ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... she sat there smiling, while the clumsy dragoons came rattling up, beaming at my red riding-breeches, and all saluting the Countess with a cheerful yet respectful swagger that touched me deeply as I noted the lines of hunger ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... pansy eyes rested in his. He felt a sudden intoxication of the senses. Almost with a swagger he drew up a chair and seated himself beside her. Already he was the conquering male in headlong pursuit. Nor was he disturbed by the least suspicion of having been filled with the sensations and the impulses that ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... bootblack or newsboy, he is an adept in all the tricks of the trade; and as a fast young man about town among his kind, he is worthy his white prototype: the swagger, the impertinent look, the coarse remark, the loud laugh, are all in the best style. As a lounger and starer also, on the street corners of a Sunday afternoon, he has ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... wished to be discreet—to take care not to swagger because they were gentlefolk. I felt them willing to recognise this as something of a drawback, at the same time that I guessed at an underlying sense—their consolation in adversity—that they HAD their points. They certainly had; but these advantages struck me as preponderantly social; ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... the table with a little swagger, ruffling it gaily in his triumph over me; and so young, so small he seemed, to be boasting of his manhood and his prowess in the warfare of love, that ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Gothic tapestry, we find flowers. The flowers of nature, they are, a simple nature at that, and never to be thought of in the same day as the gorgeous, expansive, proud flowers of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century decoration. Those splendid later blossoms flaunt their richness with assured swagger and demand of man his homage, quite forgetting it is the ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... run with his little companion; Mrs. Bolton following after them, with Captain Costigan at her side. But the captain was too majestic and dignified in his movements to run for friend or enemy, and he pursued his course with the usual jaunty swagger which distinguished his steps, so that he and his companion were speedily distanced by Pen ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... no longer. Not even for you, not even for the chance of getting Christian back. It's empty swagger to say that I wish to GOD I'd the chance of giving my life to get him back for you. But you must come home now. I've bitten my lip through in holding my tongue, but I won't see you kneel another minute at the feet of that sulky old ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... (though I don't say they are visible), and Dugald Dalgetty and Ivanhoe were to step in at that open window by the little garden yonder? Suppose Uncas and our noble old Leather Stocking were to glide in silent? Suppose Athos, Porthos, and Aramis should enter, with a noiseless swagger, curling their moustaches? And dearest Amelia Booth, on Uncle Toby's arm; and Tittlebat Titmouse with his hair dyed green; and all the Crummles company of comedians, with the Gil Blas troop; and Sir Roger de Coverley; and the greatest of all crazy gentlemen, the ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... a great disappointment to the Dons,' Carrel said with a short laugh, and he lit a cigarette with all the swagger ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... indignant reply. Such a remark, he said, was a libel on the character of the place. The meeting, he declared, was not composed of a fourth part of the population, or a hundredth part of the respectability of the village. The resolutions he described as being the work of presuming boys, who swagger of time immemorial; of strangers who had lived but a brief time in the county; and of a few disreputable persons who, bent on construing liberty entirely on their own side, interposed against palpable rights and sacred family feelings their gossiping ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... stage. But at the same moment a light figure darted from behind the scenes, and delivering a kick that sent the discomfited humorist back among the musicians, cut a pigeon-wing, executed a double-shuffle, and then advancing to the foot-lights with that inimitable look, that audacious swagger and utter abandon which had so thrilled and fascinated them a moment before, uttered the characteristic speech: "Wot are you goin' to hit a man fur, when he's ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... seeming a bit dull, instead of moping and feeling sorry and waiting for something to happen, Jay looked about for some way of amusing himself. He was something of a bully,—a great deal of a bully, in fact,—this dashing rascal in a gay blue coat; and the more he could swagger, ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... interest in him was considerable, though certainly critical. He was a type outside of her experience, and, by the law of opposites, attracted her. Every line of him showed tremendous driving power, force, energy. He was not without some touch of Western swagger; but it went well with the air of youth to which his boyish laugh and wavy, sun-reddened ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... the lead, showed a tendency to swagger. She bounced and tossed. The fair lad, swaying to the motions of his horse, rode the fretting creature ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... spoils, his sanction will dismay, And bid the insurgents tremble and obey. He comes!—but where, the amazing theme to hit, Discover language or ideas fit? Splay-footed words, that hector, bounce, and swagger, 380 The sense to puzzle, and the brain to stagger? Our patriot comes! with frenzy fired, the Muse With allegoric eye his figure views! Like the grim portress of hell-gate he stands, Bellona's scourge hangs trembling in his hands! ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... and unattractive, and that he finds female beauty (can his standard for this have been Orientalised?) very rare. He predicts that it would be impossible to maintain the Yellowstone National Park as such, and asserts that it was only a characteristic spirit of swagger and braggadocio that prompted this attempt at an impossible ideal. He also seems to think lynching an any-day possibility in the streets of New York. The value of his forecasts may, however, be discounted by his prophecy in the same book that the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... ratlin tow, Begins to jow an' croon; Some swagger hame, the best they dow, Some wait the afternoon. At slaps the billies halt a blink, Till lasses strip their shoon: Wi' faith an' hope, an' love an' drink, They're a' in famous ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... schooners, collier brigs, and timber barques; and those aren't the sort of craft that rub neatness into a man. Our motto in the little drogher yonder is to keep her afloat with the least possible bother to ourselves. We never lie in swagger harbours to be looked at. There isn't a burgee or a brass button on board. Strict Spartan utility is very much the motto of the ship's company. Hence, for example, you find the decks brown and not white, ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... Union soldiers headed by Corporal Evans, an insolent young fellow of about twenty-five. He has a very boisterous manner, giving his orders with a swagger. ...
— The Southern Cross - A Play in Four Acts • Foxhall Daingerfield, Jr.
... charm to a New-Yorker cannot express itself in figures, nor, indeed, in any adequate manner. It is the city of his soul. He loves it with a passionate dignity which will not let him swagger like the Cockney or twitter like the Parisian. His love for New York goes frequently unacknowledged even to himself, until a necessary absence of unusual length teaches him how hard it would be to lose the city ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... desolating braying began. "If you love Swagger Literature, put your telephone on to Bruggles, the Greatest Author of all Time. The Greatest Thinker of all Time. Teaches you Morals up to your Scalp! The very image of Socrates, except the back of his head, which is ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... The future—even the narrow bounds of an earthly future—holds men prisoners. A few careless dogs, to be sure, live their day, blind to the years to come, but that is brute stupidity. A few brave souls swagger through their prime with some bravado, knowing the final cost, but willing to pay it by installments through the dribbling years which follow; but the usury of time makes that folly. The wise choke such gypsy impulses—admit the mortgage ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... figure came clanking around the curve of the small metal world. The antenna of his walkie-talkie glittered above his head. He seemed to swagger against ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... these Pedagogues to huff and swagger in the heighth of all their Arrogance. I cannot but think it great Pity, that in our Considerations, for Refinement of the English Tongue, so little Regard is had to Antiquity, and the Original of our present Language, which is the Saxon. This indeed is allow'd by an ingenious ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... compliment by any means, though it may sound like one. Being an irreligious as well as a stupid man, he held that all who professed religion were hypocritical and silly. Manliness, in poor Jo's mind, consisted of swagger, quiet insolence, cool cursing, and general godlessness. With the exception of Fred Martin, the rest of the crew of the Lively Poll resembled him in his irreligion, but they were very different in character,—Lockley, the ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... the dickens don't you get out of a fellow's way?" snapped Herbert, supporting the machine and glaring round at Phil. He bore little resemblance to the usual dapper, immaculate, self-possessed young fellow from the city whose tailored clothes and swagger manners had aroused the envy and admiration of a ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... them, then he thinks his work shall be done. And this is the difficulty you will be under in such a case: for the common soldier when he goes to the market or ale-house will offer this money, and if it be refused, perhaps he will swagger and hector, and threaten to beat the butcher or ale-wife, or take the goods by force, and throw them the bad half-pence. In this and the like cases the shop-keeper, or victualler, or any other tradesman, has no more to do than to demand ten times the price of his ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... bristling towards the eye; He that can hang two handsome tools at his side, Go in disguis'd attire, wear iron enough, Is held a tall man and a soldier. He that with greatest grace can swear Gog's-zounds, Or in a tavern make a drunken fray, Can cheat at dice, swagger in bawdy-houses, Wear velvet on his face, and with a grace Can face it out with,—As I am a soldier! He that can clap his sword upon the board, He's a brave man—and such a ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... at last. He was ghastly pale, as if the blood had ceased to flow in his body, but he stood up, drawing himself to his little height with a sudden triumph. "Damned if I don't do it! the time has come for the great deed!" He went with a swagger, as though he walked on air, down ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... returned the look with interest swagger—aggression would be too emphatic, and defiance would not do. His was the air, perhaps, of Talleyrand when he said, "There seems to be an inexplicable something in me that brings bad luck to governments that neglect me:" the air of a man who has made a brilliant ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... determined to do as he likes. He will have his own way after all. He has a will, a knowledge, a purse, friends of his own. He will let the world see that he can get along with his own resources. Barnabas Know-nothing may talk as he please, Job Do-nothing may do all he can, and Richard Bombast may swagger because he thinks matters are done as he planned; but Mr. Grumbler is independent of them all, and will, by-and-by, demonstrate ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... tell you, my dear young lady: Young men like to go on sprees; they like gayety and distraction, and all sorts of dissipations, and their wives may sit at home and wait for them till midnight. And they come home drunk, and bully their wives, and swagger. But an old man will just sit near his wife; he'll die before he'll leave her. And he would like to look into her eyes all the time and to caress her and to kiss her hands. ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... Procuratie, or upon the Molo, whither they go every evening to taste the air and to look at the ladies, while the Austrians and the other foreigners listen to the military music in the Piazza. They are both young, our friends; they have both glossy silk hats; they have both light canes and an innocent swagger. Inconceivably mild are these youth, and in their ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... boyish merriment, and indeed an irresponsible gaiety was a salient characteristic of the man. One would have called him handsome, though his mouth was a trifle slack, and there was a certain assurance in his manner that just fell short of swagger. He was the kind of man one likes at first sight, but for all that not the kind his hard-bitten neighbours would have chosen to stand by them through the strain of drought and ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... furtive trot, as if he were going to pawn his bat. When your turn comes to go in, take care to be just within the regulation two minutes, but school yourself to emerge from the pavilion at a leisurely stride with more than a suspicion of swagger in it. The bat should not be carried as a shy curate carries a shabby umbrella, but either boldly across the shoulder, like a rifle, or tucked under the armpit, so that you may do up your batting-gloves ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... said Sandy, "anybody could look swagger in the lancer and huzzar rig. It takes a man to look like a soldier in what our fellows have ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... that his mother and himself were objects of query, and stood stolid, erect and disdainful,—the stranger should see that all their clanking iron, their dominating swagger, and their trained animals could not make him move an eyelash ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... of Braccio and the Baglioni; their handsome savage faces; their brawny limbs clad in the parti-coloured hose and jackets of that period; feathered caps stuck sideways on their heads; a splendid swagger in their straddling legs. Female beauty lay outside the sphere of Signorelli's sympathy; and in the Monte Oliveto cloister he was not called upon to paint it. But none of the Italian masters felt more keenly, or more powerfully ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... world that awaits them after the completion of their studies. The temper of the students is admirable. Rarely if ever do they betray any traces of the hectoring spirit which still lingers at Heidelberg, for instance. But for the display of corps-caps and cannon boots and an occasional swagger in the street, one might pass an entire semester in Leipsic without realizing that the city contains three thousand students. Undoubtedly, the young men perceive, like their colleagues of Yale, that their surroundings are too ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... had restored the Widow Dugrival's fifty thousand francs, it was out of the question that you should allow the Widow Dugrival to be robbed of her fifty thousand francs! You were bound to come, attracted by the scent of the mystery. You were bound to come, for swagger, out of vanity! And ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... face vanished. Dick Gale heard footsteps and the tinkle of spurs. He strode to the window, and was in time to see a Mexican swagger into the front door of the saloon. Dick had only a glimpse; but in that he saw a huge black sombrero with a gaudy band, the back of a short, tight-fitting jacket, a heavy pearl-handled gun swinging with a fringe of sash, and close-fitting trousers spreading wide at the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... Even so, in time one's eyes grew accustomed and it was a glamorous spectacle—twenty-eight beasts moving through dark defiles and over steep passes among the rugged, ragged hills. From any one spot they seemed at once to swagger and to slink, swaying as they moved on and vanished into obscurity. The small wild things in the night paused affrightedly in their scurryings until they had gone ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... with delight at being completely understood. 'I couldn't resist one little bit of sheer swagger. It's a French trick, and you wouldn't understand; but it's got at by slewing round the head a trifle, and a tiny, tiny foreshortening of one side of the face from the angle of the chin to the top of the left ear. That, and deepening the shadow under the lobe of the ear. It was flagrant ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... like men to swear at you, and to swagger like Bobadils and to misbehave themselves, so that one has to blush for them if a servant chances to hear them. Do you really think that he has conducted himself today ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... all, I triumph, that is certain!—That animal of a Jeliotte is not such a simpleton!—There are many who, if they were in my place, would swagger!" ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... employment of the time that brought in much money), and friend as he was of nearly all the men of letters of the time, it is expressly stated in one of the few personal notices we have of him, that he could not "swagger in a tavern or domineer in a hothouse" [house of ill-fame]—that is to say, that the hail-fellow well-met Bohemianism of the time, which had led Marlowe and many of his group to evil ends, and which was continued in a less outrageous ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... rest, raised the light to the man's face. It was black. A surprised hum—a faint hum that sounded like the suppressed mutter of the word "Nigger"—ran along the deck and escaped out into the night. The nigger seemed not to hear. He balanced himself where he stood in a swagger that marked time. After a moment he said calmly:—"My name ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... more truly expressive of the infinity of foliage, than the niggling of Hobbima could have rendered his canvass, if he had worked on it till doomsday." Our author seems to have studied skies, such as they are in Turner or in nature. He talks of them with no inconsiderable swagger of observation, while the old masters had no observation at all;—"their blunt and feelingless eyes never perceived it in nature; and their untaught imaginations were not likely to originate it in study." What is the it, will be asked—we believe ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... last appearance in print—for his own sake no less than for yours. He is conceited enough as it is, but if once he got to know that people are always writing about him in the papers his swagger would be unbearable. However, I have said good-bye to him now; I have no longer any rights in him. Yesterday I saw him off to his new home, and when we meet again it will be on a different footing. "Is that your dog?" I shall say to his master. "What is he? A Cocker? Jolly ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... A swagger young woman came to the door with a handsome mantel clock and walked calmly down the stairs. "Please put this in some especially safe place, please," she said, as composedly as though this were nothing more ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... the combatants. After which he rebuked Billy Silver with a swagger-stick. Wren's share in the business he overlooked. He was by way of being a patron of Wren's, and he disliked Billy Silver, partly for his own sake and partly because he hated his brother, with whom he had come into contact once ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... as the street was in a suburb communicating with the high-road, and formed one of the entrances into the town, he had probably, after long day's journey, reached his evening's destination. The looks of this stranger wore anxious, restless, and perturbed. In his gait and swagger there was the recklessness of the professional blackguard; but in his vigilant, prying, suspicious eyes there was a hang-dog expression of apprehension and fear. He seemed a man upon whom Crime had ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... made of wax shall lodge each member Close by the hinges of a block of timber. We then no more shall Master, master, whoot, The swagger, who th' alarum bell holds out; Could one seize on the dagger which he bears, Heads would be free from tingling in the ears, To baffle the whole storehouse of abuses. The thus farewell Apollo ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... your light hair out of the way; pull your cap over your eyes; gather your veil down close; draw up your figure; throw back your head; walk with a little springy sway and swagger, as if you didn't care a damson for anybody, and—there! I declare no one could tell you from me!" exclaimed Capitola in delight, as she completed the disguise and ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... By enriching his relations, friends, and dependants, in a most exorbitant manner, he was weak enough to imagine that he had provided a support against an evil day. He had the best among all false appearances of courage, which was a most unlimited assurance, whereby he would swagger the boldest men into a dread of his power, but had not the smallest portion of magnanimity, growing jealous, and disgracing every man, who was known to bear the least civility to those he disliked. He had some small smattering in books, but no manner of politeness; nor, in his whole life, was ever ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... best,' so far as he knew—and he was in correspondence with several—were thinking of joining. If they had been making a move he would have gone at once—very competitive, and with a strong sense of form, he could not bear to be left behind in anything—but to do it off his own bat might look like 'swagger'; because of course it wasn't really necessary. Besides, he did not want to go, for the other side of this young Forsyte recoiled from leaping before he looked. It was altogether mixed pickles within him, hot and sickly pickles, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... citizen,' thought Robert Wynn. 'What a peculiar accent he has! and the national swagger too.' And Mr. Wynn, feeling intensely British, left his box, and walked into the midst of the room with his newspaper, wishing to suggest the presence of a third person. He glanced at the American, a middle-aged, stout-built man, with an intelligent and energetic countenance, who returned ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... they would say in some of the swagger hospitals, if they were asked to trepan a man's skull under these conditions," he said as the operation was finished. "But he'll pull through, and thank you, as the old man will when he knows, for saving his ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... can die of light! Death is the common right Of toads and men, — Of earl and midge The privilege. Why swagger then? The gnat's ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... file, Captain Tony advanced through the clearing, and what with his flowing black beard, his portly form, and a certain dramatic swagger which he possessed, he looked so entirely Italian and operatic that you expected to hear him at any moment burst out in a sonorous basso. With a sweeping gesture he flung down upon the table two brown canvas ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... is gone. I frighten no man more. My nose is pulled by whipper-snappers, who jump up on a chair to reach it. I am found out. And in the days of my triumphs, when people were yet afraid of me, and were taken in by my swagger, I always knew that I was a lily-liver, and expected that I should ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... but lead a life of joyous, and rather indolent oblivion in their quarter of the city. They are often to be seen sauntering up and down the street by which the Charlesbridge cars arrive,—the young with a harmless swagger, and the old with the generic limp which our Autocrat has already noted as attending advanced years in their race.... How gayly are the young ladies of this race attired, as they trip up and down the side-walks, and in and out through the pendent garments ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... with the idea implanted in your bosom that you are going to enjoy yourself. You wave an airy adieu to the boys on shore, light your biggest pipe, and swagger about the deck as if you were Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, and Christopher Columbus all rolled into one. On Tuesday, you wish you hadn't come. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, you wish you were dead. On ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... short man swagger tow'rds the footlights at Shoreditch, Sing out "Heave aho! my hearties," and perpetually hitch Up, by an ingenious movement, trousers innocent of brace, Briskly flourishing a cudgel in his ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... perceived one of the beeldars, or officers of the caliph's household, pass by him. "That would be a nice office," thought Yussuf, "and the caliph does not count his people like the cadi. It requires but an impudent swagger, and you are taken upon your own representation." Accordingly, nowise disheartened, and determined to earn his six dirhems, he returned home, squeezed his waist into as narrow a compass as he could, gave his turban a smart cock, washed his hands, and ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat |
