"Vainglorious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perhaps have been more written about and fought over than those of Amerigo Vespucci. Some will have it that he went only two voyages, and say he was a braggart and a vainglorious fool if he said he went more. Others think that he went at least four voyages and probably six. And most people are now agreed that these last are right, and that he who gave his name to the great double ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... had the honor to be his distinguished guest at his garden-house, and am in the act of taking my leave, he patronizes me to the gate with elaborate obsequiousness, that would be tedious, if it were not so graceful, so comfortable, so gallantly vainglorious. He shows the way by following, and spares me the indignity of seeing his back by never taking his eyes from mine. He knows what is due to his accomplished friend, the Sahib, who is learned in the four Yankee Vedas; as to what is due to Asirvadam the Brahmin, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the one who was the friend of the angel's Lord, and it could bring only death to the other, who was His enemy. It could do nothing to the Apostle but cause his chains to drop from his wrists, nor anything to the vainglorious ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... Hooker's own vainglorious allusion to his relations to the man before him flashed across Brant's mind, but it left now only a smile on his lips. He felt he had already become a part of the irresponsible comedy played around him. Why should he resist, or examine its ethics too closely? He offered ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... apparel, with noble Barbary steeds fretting under them, and little pages and liveried varlets about their steps. Usually, unless he went hunting or on a visit to some noble, Guidobaldo, like his father, walked about Urbino like any one of his citizens; but he knew the pompous and somewhat vainglorious temper of Messer Benedetto, and good- naturedly was willing to humor its harmless vanities. Bowing to the ground, the master-potter led the way, walking backward into his bottega; the courtiers followed their prince; Giovanni Sanzio with ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... have liked to have taken the advice, I admit. I was not in nearly such a vainglorious mood as I had been back in the Swede's barroom, with the waterfront applauding me. If Newman had offered to dodge around the corner with me, I'd have gone. The aspect of that empty wharf was depressing, and there was something sinister about all these unusual circumstances ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... Russians, to the village of Dernstein; the soldiers of General Dupont entered it at the same time from another direction. They hastened by forced marches to the succor of the marshal. Napoleon's anger fell heavily on Murat, whom he accused, not without reason, of vainglorious levity. Already the brilliant general of cavalry had presented himself at the gates of Vienna. The Emperor Francis had not wished to expose his capital to the horrors of a siege; when he saw the proposals for an armistice rejected which he had addressed ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... you, dear M., I have spent three weeks in the American Valley, and I returned therefrom humbled to the very dust when thinking of my former vainglorious boast of having "seen the elephant." To be sure, if having fathomed to its very depths the power of mere existence, without any reference to those conventional aids which civilization has the folly to think ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... pursued him over land and sea: Not his the flight of fear, the heart aghast With stony dread of immortality, He fled 'not cowardly'; Fled, as some captain, in whose shaping hand Lie the momentous fortunes of his land, Sheds not vainglorious blood upon the field, Death! why at last he finds his treasure isle, And he the pirate of its hidden hoard; Life! 'twas the ship he sailed to seek it in, And Death is but the pilot come aboard, Methinks ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... that unsettled age of mine, learned I books of eloquence, wherein I desired to be eminent, out of a damnable and vainglorious end, a joy in human vanity. In the ordinary course of study, I fell upon a certain book of Cicero, whose speech almost all admire, not so his heart. This book of his contains an exhortation to philosophy, and is called "Hortensius." But this ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... Every variety of scar that could well be imagined was represented, some healed, some healing, and some freshly gory. The youth with the most scars, we observed, gave himself the most airs, and the really vainglorious were, more or less, obscured in cotton-wool, evidently just from the hands of the surgeon. The Senator examined them individually as they passed, with an inquisitiveness which they plainly enjoyed, and was much impressed with their fighting qualities as a ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... wise, as godlike as any other. Perhaps his best work in this field is "Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood," a patriotic poem read at "Commencement" time in Dartmouth College (1872). There is too much of vainglorious boasting in the poem (for America should be modest, and can afford to be modest), but it has enough of prophetic vision and exalted imagination to make us ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... poured into its porches. The pith and marrow of the great Netherland enterprise was sapped by the slow poison of the ill-timed negotiation. The fruit of Drake's splendid triumphs in America was blighted by it. The stout heart of the vainglorious but courageous Leicester was sickened by it, while, meantime, the maturing of the great armada-scheme, by which the destruction of England was to be accomplished, was furthered, through the unlimited procrastination so precious to the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the register. "Nuthin' but favoritism in the county court. Ranger air 'lected by the jestices. Ye know," he added, vainglorious of his own tenure of office by the acclaiming voice of the sovereign people, "ranger ain't 'lected, like the register, ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Butler had a keen knowledge of Shakespeare, and unconsciously used much of the actor's quick-witted method, that his delicately feathered barbs made no dent on the hard head of Pepys. Like his neighbor of the Avon, the author of "Hudibras" was a merciless scourge to the vainglorious follies of the time in which he poorly and obscurely lived; and like the truths which he told in his inimitable satires, the virtue and decency of his life was obscured by the disorder of the Commonwealth and the unfaith of the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... uttered this vainglorious speech, the mountain of his merits was diminished by sixteen yojanas, and virtue and efficacy departed from him, insomuch that when he next addressed the multitude they first mocked, then hooted, ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... measure altogether, as being undertaken precipitately and without sufficient preparation. King Ferdinand, however, was influenced by the counsel of Don Diego de Merlo, and was eager to strike a brilliant and decided blow. A vainglorious confidence prevailed about this time among the Spanish cavaliers; they overrated their own prowess, or rather they undervalued and despised their enemy. Many of them believed that the Moors would scarcely remain in their city when they saw the Christian troops advancing to assail it. The Spanish ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Germany. The essence of editorial opinion in that country regarding their action, according to a Berlin message, was that "so long as there are men in the American Congress who boldly refuse to have their country involved in the European slaughter merely for the sake of gratifying Wilson's vainglorious ambition, there is hope that the common sense of the American people will assert itself and that they will not permit the appalling insanity to spread to the new world that holds the old world in a ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... his khaki riding suit loped gaily down the broad mountain road toward Ganlook, beside the black mare which carried John Tullis. Behind them rode three picked troopers from the House Guard. He had told Tullis of his vainglorious ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... point; and the sword proved, as Sanza had said, to be a genuine Muramasa. Sanza was delighted at the verdict; but the other two went home rather crestfallen. Umanojo, although he had been worsted in the argument, bore no malice nor ill-will in his heart; but Banzayemon, who was a vainglorious personage, puffed up with the idea of his own importance, conceived a spite against Sanza, and watched for an opportunity to put him to shame. At last, one day Banzayemon, eager to be revenged upon Sanza, went to the Prince, and said, "Your lordship ought to see ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... we see before us, and around us, and beneath us, are but a herd of slaves; gulled and vainglorious slaves!" ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... must know in his heart that woefully, from his own and his people's point of view, did he overestimate his strength at the outset. For the time he contents himself with the backwater of Nish for the scene of his oratory of conquest. His vainglorious words may well prove in their environment the prelude of a compulsory confession of failure, which is likely to come at a far briefer interval than the eighteen months which separate the imaginary hope of Paris from the slender ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... replied Walter, 'I should refrain from so doing; and therein I should only be acting according to the maxims of chivalry; for you know we are admonished to be dumb as to our own deeds, and eloquent in praise of others; and, moreover, that if the squire is vainglorious, he is not worthy to become a knight, and that he who is silent as to the valour of others is a thief and ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... a facility of expression bewildering to less gifted tongues, scathing invective, cutting sarcasm, or bitter irony impress upon an offender the gravity of a breach of discipline. Withal, he is modest. He appreciates his own power, but there is no undue display of that appreciation, no vainglorious boasting over achievements which read like a fairy-tale. Fittest to lead or follow, idol of every true soldier. Who, that knows him as those who fought beside him, does not wish to see him at the head of that army and that nation of which he is the brightest ornament ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... had never played the conquering dog until now. He had so far been the victim of the sex, and in his own small way had suffered scorn and beguilement enough. What with the luncheon and the sticky champagne, he began to feel mighty and vainglorious, and he took the airs which he supposed to be appropriate to the situation. He praised the lady, therefore, with a humorous appreciation of the manner in which she accepted flatteries which were passed, so to say, upon a shovel, and he tasted ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... the scattered rebel pickets withdrew. The only fatality of the campaign was the death of the gallant but indiscreet Ellsworth. We had our first experience of lying out doors in our blankets. How vainglorious we felt over it! Many a poor fellow complained jocosely of the hardship and exposure, whom since I have seen perfectly content to obtain a few pine boughs to keep him from being submerged in an abyss of mud. Many, alas! have gone ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Spain, and let God provide for the danger that may with time fall upon me or my posterity than presently to starve myself and mine with putting the meat in their mouth. Nay, rather if they be so weak as they can neither sustain themselves in peace nor war, let them leave this vainglorious thirsting for the title of a free state (which no people are worthy or able to enjoy that cannot stand by themselves like substantives), and 'dividantur inter nos;' I mean, let their countries be divided between ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... proceedings which celebrated the centenary of his chief discovery. The kindly heart would be moved, the high sense of social duty would be satisfied, by the spectacle of well-earned wealth, neither squandered in tawdry luxury and vainglorious show, nor scattered with the careless charity which blesses neither him that gives nor him that takes, but expended in the execution of a well-considered plan for the aid of present and future generations of those who are willing ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... a moment! Vainglorious bird of Gaul, or of the island contiguous, wait a moment ere you crow before ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... displease The coming of Beowulf now—bold sailor o'er the seas. To none on earth would he allow a greater fame 'mong men Beneath the heavens than his): 'Art thou the same Beowulf then, Who swam a match with Breca once upon the waters wide, When ye vainglorious searched the waves, and risked your lives for pride Upon the deep? Nor hinder you could any friend or foe From that sad venture. Then ye twain did on the waters row; Ye stretched your arms upon the flood; the sea-ways ye did mete; 10 O'er billows glided—with ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... months' standing. Meeting Fishhead one day in the spring on the spindly scaffolding of the skiff landing at Walnut Log, and being themselves far overtaken in liquor and vainglorious with a bogus alcoholic substitute for courage, the brothers had accused him, wantonly and without proof, of running their trot-line and stripping it of the hooked catch—an unforgivable sin among the water ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... which he has been visited by the ticklish Tarasconnais. Daudet relates that in his attempt to shed a humorous light upon some of the more vivid phases of the Provencal character he selected Tarascon at a venture; not because the temperament of its natives is more vainglorious than that of their neighbours, or their rebellion against the "despotism of fact" more marked, but simply because he had to name a particular Provencal city. Tartarin is a hunter of lions and charmer of women, a true ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... in the midst of one of the deepest sorrows I have ever known—perhaps I have never felt such sorrow...perhaps I have never been so mercifully supported under it. It is a good and profitable sorrow I trust for me: it has made so much in me reveal itself as hollow, worldly, selfish, vainglorious. It has, I hope, helped to strip away the veil, and may be by God's blessing the beginning of more earnest life-long repentance and ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and the works of Sidonius Apollinaris whose correspondence interlarded with flashes of wit, pungencies, archaisms and enigmas, allured him. He willingly re-read the panegyrics in which this bishop invokes pagan deities in substantiation of his vainglorious eulogies; and, in spite of everything, he confessed a weakness for the affectations of these verses, fabricated, as it were, by an ingenious mechanician who operates his machine, oils his wheels and ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... all, and mighty warlords, the might of three was much more in their armies than in themselves. Cruel Philip was not a warrior of any kind. Ambitious Louis and the vainglorious Kaiser were only second-rate soldiers, who would never have won their own way to the highest command. But Napoleon was utterly different. He was as great a master of the art of war on land as Nelson was by sea; and that ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... important is perhaps his General History of Virginia (London, 1624), a compilation of various narratives by different hands, but passing under his name. Smith was a man of a restless and daring spirit, full of resource, impatient of contradiction, and of a somewhat vainglorious nature, with an appetite for the marvelous and a disposition to draw the longbow. He had seen service in many parts of the world, and his wonderful adventures lost nothing in the telling. It was alleged against him that the evidence of his prowess rested almost entirely ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... self-conscious and thinks that she is being purposely slighted unless she is the center of everything. Others, both boys and girls, are excessively irritable, very suspicious, inordinately selfish, hysterical, vainglorious, or in other ways show lack of self-control and emotional stability. Later in life such conditions may lead to intense misery. Nevertheless traits of this sort are often combined with very fine qualities in other respects. This renders it extremely hard to decide whether such ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... Immediately on our appearance he would swing into the saddle and charge through the assembled rabble. Away we would go at a rapid pace down the streets of the town or village, to the utter amazement of the natives and the great satisfaction of our vainglorious zaptieh. As long as his horse was fresh, or until we were out of sight of the village, he would urge us on with cries of "Gellcha-buk" ("Come on, ride fast"). When a bad piece of road or a steep ascent forced us to dismount ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... and foul infamies, Leasings, backbitings, and vainglorious crakes, Bad counsels, praises, and false flatteries; All those against that fort did bend their batteries. 1719 SPENSER: Faerie Queene, Bk. ii., Canto ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... privileged individual, the Thersites of the campaign, and with one advantage over his prototype—he really wanted to fight. So he swaggered, heeding not the reproving spear; he fumed; he mocked; for no warrior affected to notice his vainglorious absurdities. He was as much in earnest as those who fought on account of elemental love, and far more so than any of the blusterers who talked big and looked small. He longed ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... and intent on increasing their flocks, had seemed to become contaminated by the general animalism. She remembered her father only too well! . . . Even her sister was obliged to live in apparent calmness with the vainglorious Karl, quite capable of disloyalty not because of any special lust, but just to imitate the doings ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... political complications, and that they were all the working out of His purposes, and that 'the axe in His hand' as Isaiah has it so picturesquely, was this proud king of Assyria, with his boastful mouth and vainglorious words. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... but had also been employed on the staff of General Williams, and had been for several years in the consular service. He was, in all respects, well fitted for his post; but, unfortunately for him, when he entered Abyssinia he had to deal with a fascinating, vainglorious, shrewd man, hiding his cunning under an appearance of modesty: in a word, with Theodore who had become an over-bearing despot. On his first arrival, Cameron was received with great honours, and treated by the Emperor with marked respect, and when he left in October, 1862, he was loaded with presents, ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... same floor; being, in fact, the back parlour; and had, as Mrs Todgers said, the great advantage (in London) of not being overlooked; as they would see when the fog cleared off. Nor was this a vainglorious boast, for it commanded at a perspective of two feet, a brown wall with a black cistern on the top. The sleeping apartment designed for the young ladies was approached from this chamber by a mightily convenient little door, which would only ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... and stately, they sat like towers upon their powerful chargers. On parades they manifested none of the show and ostentation of the other troops: neither, in battle, did they endeavor to signalize themselves by any fiery vivacity, or desperate and vainglorious exploit,—everything, with them, was measured and sedate; yet it was observed that none were more warlike in their appearance in the camp, or more terrible for their achievements in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... much annoyed by the abject Pumblechook, who, being behind me, persisted all the way as a delicate attention in arranging my streaming hatband, and smoothing my cloak. My thoughts were further distracted by the excessive pride of Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, who were surpassingly conceited and vainglorious in being members of so ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... her on both cheeks, after the manner of foolish men, David gravely got him to his home and to a sound sleep that night. Next morning, the remembrance of the pleasant smiting roused him to an outwardly sedate and inwardly vainglorious courage. Going with steady steps to the Friends' meeting-house at the appointed time, the Spirit moved him, after a decorous pause, to announce his intended marriage to the prettiest Quaker in Framley, even the maid who had shocked the community's sense of decorum ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... evinced. The timidity and rawness of the boy quickly gave way in the courageous developments of the man. He soon evinced the sagacity, cunning, perseverance, and heroic courage which constitute the admiration of the Indians. And he relied largely upon these in the gratification of an ambitious, vainglorious, and mischief-loving disposition. In wisdom and energy he was superior to any one who had ever lived before. Yet he was simple when circumstances required it, and was ever the object of tricks and ridicule in others. He could transform himself ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... in the back, he insisted that he was still an abler seaman than ninety-five per cent, of the thirty-year-olds who followed the sea for a living. When Captain Trigger announced his resolve to stay on board, where he belonged, these vainglorious old seadogs elected to remain with ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... see at a glance that these people have enough to do. They live on a grand scale, and though food and clothes are dearer with them than with us, they must still be better fed and clothed than we are—as gentility requires. Moreover, they have enormous debts, yet occasionally, in a vainglorious mood, they make ducks and drakes of their guineas, pay other nations to box about for their pleasure, give their kings a handsome douceur into the bargain; and, therefore, John Bull must work to get the money for such expenditure. By day and by night he must tax ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... with a biography of Tonti—birthplace, parentage, genius probably inherited from his mother, remarkable instance of precocity, etc—and a complete treatise on the system to which he bequeathed his name. The material is all beside me in a pigeon-hole, but I scorn to appear vainglorious. Tonti is dead, and I never saw anyone who even pretended to regret him; and, as for the tontine system, a word will suffice for all the ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... his cigarette, he glanced round the room without offering the slightest recognition, and then disappeared. How he made his change from civilian clothes so quickly I can't understand. It seemed like a vainglorious display of his uniform in order to let us take full cognizance of ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... dispositions to ensure victory; it comes from the heart and goes to it. God has made nobler heroes, but He never made a finer gentleman than Walter Raleigh. And as our Admirals were full of heroic superstitions, and had a strutting and vainglorious style of fight, so they discovered a startling eagerness for battle, and courted war like a mistress. When the news came to Essex before Cadiz that the attack had been decided, he threw his hat into the sea. It is in this way that a schoolboy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of life's beautiful hours, she thought, as in a great splash of salt water she reached the buoy, and hung laughing and panting to its restless bulk. Ward had preceded her by a full minute, Richard was half a minute behind her. With much vainglorious boasting from the men, they all rested there before the homeward swim. Harriet hardly spoke, her cup was full to the brim with a mysterious felicity born of the summer hour, the heaving waters, and the joyous mood of father and son. When Richard praised her swimming she flushed in the severe blue ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... was hardly even for that everlasting glory which has been the vision and the temptation of great men. It was for the glory of a single day. It was something rather in the nature of a holiday than anything that could be even in the most vainglorious sense a heritage. It did not in the ordinary sense make a monument, or even a trophy. It destroyed a monument to make a procession. We might almost say that it destroyed a trophy to make a triumph. There is the true barbaric touch in this oblivion ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... excuse for idleness. "Our life," says Jeremy Taylor, "is too short to serve the ambition of a haughty prince or a usurping rebel; too little time to purchase great wealth, to satisfy the pride of a vainglorious fool, to trample upon all the enemies of our just or unjust interest: but for the obtaining virtue, for the purchase of sobriety and modesty, for the actions of religion, God gives us time sufficient, if ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... we two could be To enjoy our days set wholly free; To the true life together bend our mind, And take a furlough from the falser kind. No rich saloon, nor palace of the great, Nor suit at law should trouble our estate; On no vainglorious statues should we look, But of a walk, a talk, a little book, Baths, wells and meads, and the veranda shade, Let all our travels and our toils be made. Now neither lives unto himself, alas! And the good suns we see, that flash and pass ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... abuses. As one may disinterestedly animate them, for the noblest and best of purposes, so another may entangle them in the deceitful meshes of sophistry, and dazzle them by the glare of a false magnanimity, whose vainglorious crimes may be painted as virtues and even as sacrifices. Beneath the delightful charms of oratory and poetry, the poison steals imperceptibly into ear and heart. Above all others must the comic poet (seeing that his very occupation keeps him always ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... retained belief enough in human nature to doubt it. To his surprise, and, it must be added, to his relief, also, his apprehensions proved to be groundless. The only emotions aroused in Noel Vanstone's mind by a perusal of the letter were a hearty admiration of his friend's idea, and a vainglorious anxiety to claim the credit to himself of being the person who carried it out. Examples may be found every day of a fool who is no coward; examples may be found occasionally of a fool who is not cunning; but it may reasonably be doubted whether there ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... vainglorious ambition Beauty would doubtless be alive and resplendent; his consort, modest hued and devoted, at his side, and my bank account would ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... almost a formal order from her husband to bring her to Dresden. She was then a pretty woman, twenty-four years old, witty, and proud of her birth and her crown. Napoleon she looked on as an upstart, a vainglorious adventurer, the cause of all the humiliations inflicted on the Austrian monarchy; and the splendor which surrounded the hero of Marengo, of Austerlitz, of Wagram, aroused in her a resentment all the keener because she was compelled to hide it. Napoleon in his pique determined ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Monsieur remains his truculent, vainglorious self, Montsurry has suffered a strange degeneration. It is sufficiently remarkable, to begin with, after his declaration at the end of ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... the warrior took somewhat of the exaggerated coloring shed over his exploits. Proud and vainglorious, swelled with lofty anticipations of his destiny, and an invincible confidence in his own resources, no danger could appall and no toil could tire him. The greater the danger, indeed, the higher the charm; for his soul revelled in excitement, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... bold dragoon, for it's a profession, d'ye see, that has run in the family. All my forefathers have been dragoons and died upon the field of honor except myself, and I hope my posterity may be able to say the same; however, I don't mean to be vainglorious. Well, my grandfather, as I said, was a bold dragoon, and had served in the Low Countries. In fact, he was one of that very army, which, according to my uncle Toby, "swore so terribly in Flanders." He could swear a good stick himself; and, moreover, was the very man that introduced the doctrine ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... As vainglorious was Richard Westmacott's retreat from the field of unstricken battle as his advance upon it had been inglorious. He spoke with confidence now of the narrow escape that Wilding had had at his hands, of the things he would have done to Wilding had not that gentleman grown wise in time. ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... of the edicts. In truth, this most vacillating, confused, and unfortunate of men perhaps scarcely comprehended the purport of his recent negotiations in Spain, nor perceived the drift of his daily remarks at home. He was, however, somewhat vainglorious immediately after his return, and excessively attentive to business. "He talks like a King," said Morillon, spitefully, "negotiates night and day, and makes all bow before him." His house was more thronged with petitioners, courtiers, and men of affairs, than even the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Dohrn has joined a cavalry regiment. I have not yet met a soul in England who does not rejoice in the splendid triumph of Germany over France (456/2. See Letter 239, Volume I.): it is a most just retribution against that vainglorious, war-liking nation. As the posts are all in confusion, I will not send this letter through France. The Editor has sent me duplicate copies of the "Revue des Cours Scientifiques," which contain several articles about my views; so I send ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... received, he claimed, a letter from the King, strengthening his commission and empowering him to "doe justice to all men, not sparinge those of the Councell", which he had often shown them, but this they would not heed. "I hope," he wrote, "you never held me to be ambitious or vainglorious, as that I should desire to live here as Governor to predominate, or prefer mine owne particular before the generall good." My position in Virginia is most miserable, "chiefly through the aversions of those from whom I expected assistance". ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... hero of him; as much astonished, perhaps, as Beaufort to know that his careless, impertinent compliment to Madame Danton's charming head had sealed the fate of his own. But 'tis in this hap-hazard fashion that the destiny of mortals is decided. We are but the victims of chance or mischance. Of all vainglorious philosophies, that of ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... some, and thinks himself lucky, since the bond between the pair is of such a nature as to involve a real partnership—a partnership full of perplexity to the working member of it, the ordinary forensic creature of senses, passions, ambitions, and self-indulgences, the eating, sleeping, vainglorious, assertive male of common experience—and it is not to be denied that it has been fruitful, nor again that by some freak of fate or fortune the house has kept a decent front to the world at large. It is still solvent, still favourably regarded ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... of ruin and starvation, but the peril seemed forgotten while the dream lasted. The agitator was wont to refer to the Queen in terms of extravagant loyalty, and it would seem that the feeling was largely shared by his followers. However futile and vainglorious his scheme and methods may appear, we must not deny to him a distinction, rare indeed among Irish agitators, of having steadily disclaimed violence and advocated orderly and peaceable proceedings. He thought his cause would be injured, and ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... for that; for riches make men vainglorious, proud, and to oppress their bretheren, and are the occasion of wars. No man can be rich but he must be rich either by his own labors, or by the labors of other men helping him. If a man have no help from his neighbors, he shall never gather an estate of hundreds and thousands ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... liveries to thy servants, give them respectable and serviceable, rather than showy and gay ones, and divide them between thy servants and the poor; that is to say, if thou canst clothe six pages, clothe three and three poor men, and thus thou wilt have pages for heaven and pages for earth; the vainglorious never think of this new mode ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the fifteenth, the day he had settled for his departure, as he sat thinking how he would go down to the lake in a few hours, a letter started to his mind which, as well as he could remember, was written in a foolish, vainglorious mood—a stupid letter that must have made him appear a fool in her eyes. Had he not said something about—The thought eluded him; he could only remember the general tone of his letter, and in it he seemed to consider Nora as a sort of medicine—a ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... laughingly, that she thought Mrs Foster's idea better, whereupon the widow waxed vainglorious, and tried to ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... primitive substance, but even undertakes to show by observation and experiment how others arise from it, and transformations occur. As to the discovery of the obliquity of the ecliptic by the aid of a gnomon attributed to Anaximenes, it was merely a boast of his vainglorious countrymen, and altogether beyond the scientific grasp of one who had no more exact idea of the nature of the earth than that it was "like a broad ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... not a word, but bowing himself down humbly to the earth, both before the King and the Queen's Majesties, went forth into the field; and at the same time the wolf was also ready, and stood boasting, and giving out many proud and vainglorious speeches. The marshals and rulers of the lists were the leopard and the loss. These brought forth a book, on which the wolf swore and maintained his assertion that the fox was a traitor and a murderer, which he would prove on his body, or else be counted a recreant. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... he can't, and very likely he will show you that he can. It's in the blood. Between the prophecy of the snag-boat captain and my vainglorious answer at the Cheyenne crossing, I learned to respect the words of the man who invented the eccentric old river. In the face of heavy head winds, I quoted the words, "You'll never get down"—and they bit deep like whip lashes. On many a sand-bar and gravel reef, with the channel ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... day made war upon divers kings. Of these some were slain in battle, and others remained captive in his hand. Alive or dead, Riton used them despitefully; for it was his wont to shave the beards of these kings, and purfle therewith a cloak of furs that he wore, very rich. Vainglorious beyond measure was Riton of his broidered cloak. Now by reason of folly and lightness, Riton sent messages to Arthur, bidding him shave his beard, and commend it forthwith to the giant, in all good will. Since Arthur ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... to be handed over to the type of man engaged in the search for perpetual motion and does not come within the purview of a simple author. Man who tames the lion, harnesses the winds, makes a whimperer of steam and cowers the lightning—this same vainglorious, triumphant man is simply helpless in the presence of a woman's tears! Ensal stole quietly to his seat and sat there in a state ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... But suddenly, in a blaze of revelation, he understood what had lurked in his mind since the scene in the village; the smiles that mirth of men who triumph by a stratagem, who see their adversary vainglorious, strong and doomed. He remembered Captain Hahn's choleric pomp, his own dignity and aloofness; and it was with a heat of embarrassment that he now perceived how he ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... appreciation. They were all proud of him, in so far as the charge of being proud may be brought against people who were, habitually, distinctly guiltless of the misdemeanor known as "taking credit." They never boasted of Robert Acton, nor indulged in vainglorious reference to him; they never quoted the clever things he had said, nor mentioned the generous things he had done. But a sort of frigidly-tender faith in his unlimited goodness was a part of their personal sense of right; and there can, perhaps, ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... thou yield to Fate, Minion of Fortune, now miscalled in vain! Can vantage-ground no confidence create, Marcella's pass, nor Guarda's mountain-chain? Vainglorious fugitive! yet turn again! Behold, where, named by some prophetic Seer, Flows Honour's Fountain, {2} as foredoomed the stain From thy dishonoured name and arms to clear - Fallen Child of Fortune, ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... Kallikratidas for pay, and see how he would manage to maintain the men. And when he finally left Ephesus, he endeavoured to force Kallikratidas to admit that he had handed over to him a fleet which was mistress of the seas. Kallikratidas, however, wishing to expose his vainglorious boasts, answered: "If so, sail from hence, passing Samos on your left, and hand over the fleet to me at Miletus; for we need not fear the Athenians at Samos, if our fleet is mistress of the seas." To this Lysander answered that ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... come back,—how strange—out of the grave; Its dreams are in your eyes, and still there clings Dust of the grave on your vainglorious hair; And a mysterious rust ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... in Margie's past. That boy, in fact all you Briskows, have put me so deeply in your debt that I'm afraid I shall have to conquer my meddlesome instincts." The speaker looked up suddenly. "You'll never know, by the way, how deep is my debt of gratitude. When a vainglorious, supersensitive man finds himself under a cloud, it is pretty nice to know that there is somebody whose faith is unshakable; somebody who needs no legal proof that he's—Proof! Here I am, back again right where I was when you came in; back ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... leads the path To ampler fates that leads? Not down through flowery meads, 110 To reap an aftermath Of youth's vainglorious weeds, But up the steep, amid the wrath And shock of deadly-hostile creeds, Where the world's best hope and stay By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way, And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... long resolution declaring it essential that the attitude of the Society in regard to the war should be clearly asserted, and concluding: "The Fabian Society therefore formally dissociates itself from the Imperialism of Capitalism and vainglorious Nationalism and pledges itself to support the expansion of the Empire only in so far as it may be compatible with the expansion of that higher social organisation which this Society was founded ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... I returned scornfully, for it would never do to encourage this vainglorious spirit. 'I should have felt more disposed to thank you if you had not kept me for ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... doubt that the next campaign will be a hot one for, now that Spain has been as completely subdued as such vainglorious, excitable people can be subdued, the French marshals are free to join against us; and it is hard to see how, with but 30,000 men, we are going to defend Portugal against ten times that number of French. Still, I suppose we shall do it, somehow. The French ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... truth? See now and be astonished how shameless and impudent the adversaries are: they dare to set up their own words as sheer commands of lords, they frankly say: The laymen must be content. But what if they must not?] This is a concoction of Eck. For we recognize those vainglorious words, which if we would wish to criticize, there would be no want of language. For you see how great the impudence is. He commands, as a tyrant in the tragedies: "Whether they wish or not, they must be content." Will ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... prominence desirable; not one whose writings betrayed egotism, self-inflation or bombast. Such was their honest aversion to personal publicity, it is now almost impossible to trace the work each did. Some of their noblest arguments for Freedom were published anonymously. They made no vainglorious claims to the original authorship of ideas. But never in the history of reform was work better done than the old American Anti-Slavery Society did from its formation in 1833 to its disruption in 1840. In less than seven years it regained for Freedom most of the vantage-ground ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... Germany and of England, had flowed, and were destined still to flow, for the gratification of a man who wanted the vulgar courage which was found in the meanest of the hundreds of thousands whom he had sacrificed to his vainglorious ambition? ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... your national heroes out of men whose reasoning powers remained those of a college sophomore, who were unable to state an opponent's position with fairness, who lacked wholly the judicial quality, who were vainglorious and extravagant, who had, in short, the mind of an exuberant barbarian; but you instantly forget their intellectual defects in the presence of their abounding physical and moral energy, their freedom from any taint of ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... painting and in illumination, and among them an eagle very well done, and a very beautiful lion that is tearing a tree. Of these two excellent illuminators Dante makes mention in the eleventh canto of the Purgatorio, where he is talking of the vainglorious, in these verses: ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... appeared not only the graceful pagodas, which have been for ages the boast of Soochow and the dense foliage of secular trees—the invariable glory of Chinese cities—but also the shimmering roofs of newly decorated palaces confidently occupied by the vainglorious leaders of the rebellion. The proximity of the rebel line became apparent with surprising suddenness, for, following their usual custom, they greeted the rising sun with a simultaneous display of gaudy banners above the line of their entrenchments. The mud walls they had thrown up in advance, scarcely ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... are angels from Heaven watching over them, David, guiding them, showing them how. I believe good white angels are guiding every true minister,—not the bad ones— Oh, I know a lot about ministers, honey,—proud, ambitious, selfish, vainglorious, hypocritical, even amorous, a lot of them,—but there are others, true ones,—you, David, and some more. They just have to grow together until harvest, and then the false ones will be dug up and dumped ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... historian, Faria y Sousa, appears to be nettled at the prosperous issue of the voyage; for he testily remarks, that "the admiral entered Lisbon with a vainglorious exultation, in order to make Portugal feel, by displaying the tokens of his discovery, how much she had erred in not acceding to his propositions." Europa Portuguesa, tom. ii. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... Francie—her occupations, her theories, her personal disposition, even her dress—and I've wondered where the improvement was to be suggested. You see, she might be a very good woman, and yet have no sense of humor; she might be very charitable, and also a little vainglorious about it; she might have very exalted ideas of duty, and be a trifle hard on those who did not come up to her standards; but in Miss Francie's case these qualifications haven't to be put in at all. She always seems to me to be doing the right thing, ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... seen a man, black or white, so delighted as was that vainglorious Kafir. For whole hours he danced and sang and took snuff and saluted with his hand, telling me the story of his deed over and over again, no single version of which tale agreed with the other. He took a new title also, that meant "Eater-up-of-Elephants"; ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... had only told the master who had given them leave of absence from dinner that they meant to go a long walk. He had not mentioned Appenfell, not from any want of straightforwardness, but because they thought that it might sound like a vainglorious attempt, and they did not want to talk about it until they had really accomplished it. But in truth if they had mentioned this as their destination, no wise master would have given them permission to go, unless they promised to be accompanied by a guide; for the ascent of ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... just thirty; and his sister Judith, who was some years his senior, sat behind his tea-urn on most occasions and made it possible for the young things of society to flutter in as freely as they willed. The young things came to little in themselves, but some of them had vainglorious mothers and ambitious, pomp-loving fathers, and who could tell in what richly promising crevice their light-minded chatter might lodge and sprout? So Daffingdon and his sister encouraged them to come, and the young things came gladly, willing enough to meet with a break in the social ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... that went before—Vain Confidence by name—not seeing the way before him, fell into a deep pit, which was on purpose there made, by the prince of those grounds, to catch vainglorious fools withal, and was dashed in ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... be reckoned as the foundation stone of the British Empire in India. It sprang from the character of Sirajuddaula. That prince was a cruel despot, but weak-willed, vacillating, and totally unable to keep a friend. One day he would strut in some vainglorious semblance of dignity; the next he would engage in drunken revels with the meanest and most dissolute of his subjects. He insulted his commander-in-chief, Mir Jafar: he offended the Seths, wealthy bankers ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... was conscious of its great potential superiority over Canada, in men and in available resources. So evident, indeed, was the disparity, that the prevalent feeling was not one of reasonable self-reliance, but of vainglorious self-confidence; of dependence upon mere bulk and weight to crush an opponent, quite irrespective of preparation or skill, and disregardful of the factor of military efficiency. Jefferson's words have already been quoted. Calhoun, then ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan |
