"Vaunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remarkable. In Judges, the seventh chapter and the second to seventh verses, we read, "And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me. Now therefore go to, proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from Mount Gilead. And there returned ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... and only one, Walmgate, was suffered to retain this interesting feature. It is a wonder they spared those curious stone half-length figures of men, sculptured in a menacing attitude in the act of hurling large stones downwards, which vaunt themselves on the summit of Monk Bar—probably intended to deceive invaders—or that interesting stone platform only twenty-two inches wide, which was the only foothold available for the martial burghers who guarded the city wall at Tower Place. A year or two ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... the art to add, by taking thought, One cubit to thy stature? and hast thou, Or such as thou, Nature's whole fabric wrought? Not thine such vaunt—not thine to disavow The lustre of thy genuine origin. To the Most Highest, as thine author, bow With rapture of exulting faith, wherein Devotion's cravings their desire achieve, The bright ideal that they imaged, win. Rejoice that thus ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... it is different; and furthermore, what originated in a necessity has been mounted into a vaunt. In towns there is large rivalry in building tall houses. If one gentleman builds his house four stories high, and another gentleman comes next door and builds five stories high, then the former, not to be looked down upon that way, immediately sends for his ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... times, both present, past, And the age that shall be last, Vaunt the beauties they bring forth. I have found in one such worth, That content I neither care What the best before me were; Nor desire to live and see Who shall fair hereafter be; For I know the hand of Nature Will ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... Newspapers were somewhat given to vaunt themselves as to their circulation, but they had no need to call in the aid of the chartered accountant, as they could get their facts from the number of stamps supplied—the stamp then being of the value of three halfpence per newspaper, an impost which was ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... writes, "I am tired of railing against Destiny and myself.... There are moments in which I despair of all that is good, in which I feel it has been enjoined upon me to work against everything that makes a vaunt of specious happiness." But he took no manful and resolute steps to battle against his unhappy state; he continued to correspond with the lady of his affections, to gaze upon her portrait, to write to his friend about her, and to dwell upon the past, the hours he had spent in her society. ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Furthermore, victuals and other matters are dearer, seeing rich men buy up all, and with their monopoly keep the market as it please them. Unless you find a remedy for these enormities, you shall in vain vaunt yourselves of executing ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... use the term familiar to ourselves. This might be very brief or at considerable length; it might suggest inquiries of any of the company or merely pledge an attentive and courteous hearing to whatever the guest might utter; it might refer to the past glory of the castle and its lord, or vaunt its present greatness and ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... priest's breast; her face was hidden on it. But for all that, I knew her—knew her, shuddering for the woman whose badges I was even now wearing, whose gift I bore at my side; and I remembered the priest's vaunt of a few hours before, made in her presence, "There is no man in ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... him not vaunt that gains my loss, For when that he and time hath proved her, She may him bring to Weeping-Cross: I say no more, because I ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... shall my selfe reape pleasure, also if they please you well, under whose name and cognisance they shall goe abroad and seeke their fortunes. How the world will entertaine them I know not, or what acceptance your credit may adde to their basenes I am yet uncertaine; but this I dare vaunt without sparke of vaine-glory that I have given you a taste of the best Italian fruites, the Thuscane Garden could affoorde; but if the pallate of some ale or beere mouths be out of taste that they cannot taste them, let ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... and Tlascalan on the bloody altars of their gods; and as for entering into any treaty, the last man, woman, and child would resist the hated invaders until the last drop of blood was shed and the last stone of their city thrown down. This vaunt, as regards the latter part, was almost literally carried out, and to some extent as regards ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... Ganelon. His every nerve was stretched and torn, And the limbs of his body apart were borne; The bright blood, springing from every vein, Left on the herbage green its stain. He dies a felon and recreant: Never shall traitor his treason vaunt. ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... chiefs of Iran shamed through me." And then he turn'd, and sternly spake aloud:— "Rise! wherefore dost thou vainly question thus Of Rustum? I am here, whom thou hast call'd By challenge forth; make good thy vaunt, or yield! Is it with Rustum only thou wouldst fight? Rash boy, men look on Rustum's face and flee! For well I know, that did great Rustum stand Before thy face this day, and were reveal'd, There would be then no talk of fighting more. But ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... no hint of any vaunt of superior shrewdness. His was merely the level-toned manner of an observer of facts ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... his opportunity; he kept his eye settled upon them, to profit by the first opening which their folly should offer to the dreadful artillery of law. At last, said the minister, we will put to proof this vaunt of yours. We dare not bring you to trial, is your boast. Now, we will see that settled; and, at the same time, we will try whether we cannot put you down for ever. That trial was made, and with what perfection of success the reader knows; for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... morning received his Diploma as Doctor of Laws from the University of Oxford. He did not vaunt of his new dignity, but I understood he was ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... mundo; ruegan por el'—'Here lie the bones and ashes of the worst man that has ever been in the world; pray for him.' But like all Andalusians he was a braggart; for a love of chocolate, which appears to have been his besetting sin, is insufficient foundation for such a vaunt: a vice of that order is adequately punished by the corpulence it must occasion. However, legend, representing don Miguel as the most dissolute of libertines, is more friendly. The grave sister who escorts ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, Charleston, Natchez, or St. Louis, he would be torn in pieces by the citizens with one accord, and that if any one should attempt to bring his murderers to punishment, he would be torn in pieces also. The editors of southern newspapers openly vaunt, that every abolitionist who sets foot in their soil, shall, if he be discovered, be hung at once, without judge or jury. What mockery to quote the letter of the law in those states, to show that ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... from horizon to horizon, the mists had still been there, and we knew that this paradise was haunted by killing damps and foul malaria. The fences along the line bore but two descriptions of advertisement; one to recommend tobaccos, and the other to vaunt remedies against the ague. At the point of day, and while we were all in the grasp of that first chill, a native of the State, who had got in at some way station, pronounced it, with a doctoral air, "a fever ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the giving as can in craving be their vade mecums. Do not here produce ancient examples of the paragons of paillardice, and offer to match with my testiculatory ability the Priapaean prowess of the fabulous fornicators, Hercules, Proculus Caesar, and Mahomet, who in his Alkoran doth vaunt that in his cods he had the vigour of three score bully ruffians; but let no zealous Christian trust the rogue,—the filthy ribald rascal is a liar. Nor shalt thou need to urge authorities, or bring forth the instance of the Indian prince of whom Theophrastus, Plinius, and Athenaeus ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... of this marvellous change; and experience evinces the truth of what they affirm, and which originates in the very nature of things. It is characteristic of human perversity to disbelieve what is imperceptible to reason or invisible to sense, and to vaunt itself upon that very infidelity as a distinctive mark of pre-eminence, which is, in fact, a proof of debasement and guilt. If a system of religion were to be so constructed as to be exempt from the ridicule of the profane, it must be itself ridiculous; because ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... even while His rod Of righteous wrath falls on us smiting sore: And this God is our God for evermore Through life, through death, while clod returns to clod. For though He slay us we will trust in Him; We will flock home to Him by divers ways: Yea, though He slay us we will vaunt His praise, Serving and loving with the Cherubim, Watching and loving with the Seraphim, Our very selves His praise through ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... the very tombs were taught to flatter kings. Royal pride and luxury could not be moderated even on this theatre of death, and the bearers of the sceptre who had brought such ills on France and on humanity seemed even in the grave to vaunt a vanished splendor. The strong hand of the Republic should pitilessly efface these haughty epitaphs, and demolish these mausoleums which might recall the frightful memory ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... chief object. 7. Bon vi-vant (French, pro. bon ve-van'), one who lives well. Gour-mand (French, pro. goor'man), a glutton. Gas-tro-nom'ic, relating to the science of good eating. 8. Cor'pu-lent, fleshy, fat. Ep'i-cure, one who indulges in the luxuries of the table. Vaunt'ed, boasted. 9. Ex'pi-ates, atones for. Lard'er, a ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... men. So the self-love of every man was enlisted in this sentiment. To praise the South was to praise himself; to boast of its valor was to advertise his own intrepidity; to extol its women was to enhance the glory of his own achievements in the lists of love; to vaunt its chivalry was to avouch his own honor; to laud its greatness was to extol himself. He measured himself with his Northern compeer, and decided without hesitation in his ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... as he shared the hospitality, so he has not left unsung the praises of Penshurst. Where is the circle which shall again combine so many claims to our admiration and respect? What age shall presume to vaunt itself for genius or for virtue above the age of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... O King Sacripant! That fame of yours, say, what avails it ye? That lofty honour, those great deeds ye vaunt,— Say, what's their value with the lovely she Shew me—recall to memory (for I can't)— Shew me, I beg, one single courtesy That ever she vouchsafed ye, far or near, For all you've done and ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... maister? Haue ye forgotten I saye, the dutie of a vertuous gentleman, wel nourished and trayned vp towarde suche and so great a ladie as I am? Ah, Thefe and Traitour! Is this the venime which thou kepest so couert and secrete, vnder the swetenesse of thy counterfaicte vertue? A vaunte varlet, a vaunt: goe vtter thy stuffe to them that be like thy self, whose honour and honestie is so farre spent, as thy loialtie is light and vayn. For if I heare thee speake any more of these follies be assured that I wil ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... responded to its stimulus with an enthusiasm denied to later times. It was work that appealed to persons of varying ranks and of varying degrees of learning. In the early part of the century, according to Nash, "every private scholar, William Turner and who not, began to vaunt their smattering of Latin in English impressions."[250] Thomas Nicholls, the goldsmith, translated Thucydides; Queen Elizabeth translated Boethius. The mention of women in this connection suggests how widely the impulse was diffused. Richard ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... so cool and well-dressed in the midst of it, you need not be offended or overwhelmed. Such is ever the naivety of great souls among those whose culture is primitive. It is like the boasted bravery of the eldest among little children, wholly an act of kindness and consideration, not a selfish vaunt. That they should be admired and trusted is for them a foregone conclusion; and when they call on that admiration and trust, they do it merely for the sake of those whom they would encourage and console, for whose sakes they will even ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... intellect had not been laid out at college on those windy fields that so puff up a beginner in knowledge and in life; his whole mind had been given up already to those terrible problems of the soul that both humble and exalt the man who spends his life among them. Beattie's future congregation will not vaunt themselves about their minister's ability or scholarship or eloquence; his sermons will soon push his people back behind all such superficial matters. Beattie's preaching and his whole pastorate will soon become another illustration of the truth that it is not gifts ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... with Bacchus her camous did promote. Such rascolde drames, promoted by Thais, Bacchus, Licoris, or yet by Testalis, Or by suche other newe forged Muses nine, Thinke in their mindes for to haue wit diuine; They laude their verses, they boast, they vaunt and iet, Though all their cunning be scantly worth a pet: If they haue smelled the artes triuiall, They count them Poetes hye and heroicall. Such is their foly, so foolishly they dote, Thinking that none can their playne errour note; Yet be they foolishe, ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... to pine after knowledge irretrievably buried in oblivion. Otherwise we might fairly have wished to have stood beside King Nebuchadnezzar when he so unadvisedly uttered that proud vaunt which ended in his being condemned to a long course of vegetable diet. For doubtless he gazed upon at least four main roads which entered the walls of Babylon from four ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... and let there be an end. I vaunt not myself; thou knowest what I have been and seest what I am. Yet I can give thee love and happiness and, mayhap, children to follow after thee, and with them some place and power. What yonder witch can give thee thou canst guess. Tales of the past, pictures on the flame, wise maxims and honeyed ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... glories of mid-earth held under heaven than himself: 'Art thou the Beowulf who with Breca strove on {the} wide sea, in {a} swimming strife, where ye from pride 1020 tempted {the} fords, and for foolish vaunt in {the} deep water ventured {your} lives? Nor you any man, nor friend nor foe, might blame {for your} sorrowful voyage, when on {the} sea ye row'd, when ye {the} ocean-stream, 1030 with {your} arms deck'd, measur'd {the} sea-ways, with {your} hands vibrated {them}, glided o'er {the} main; ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... look thou for no termination, until some god shall appear as a substitute in thy pangs, and shall be willing to go both to gloomy Hades, and to the murky depths around Tartarus. Wherefore advise thee, since this is no fictitious vaunt, but uttered in great earnestness; for the divine mouth knows not how to utter falsehood, but will bring every word to pass. But do thou look around and reflect, and never for a moment deem pertinacity better ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... his dark eye, when aught was uttered in his hearing that affected, ever so remotely, his own condition; and, once or twice, by the haughty gleamings of ferocity that escaped him, when Eben Dudley was heard to vaunt the prowess of the white men in their encounters with the original owners of the country. The Puritan did not fail to note these symptoms of a budding intelligence, as the pledges of a fruit that would more than reward his pious toil; ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... little wonder if the lad felt his blood run cold as he listened to the Indian's vaunt, and it is little wonder that his head swam until he was near in reality to the very ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... glassy scepters vaunt; Not scepters, no, but reeds, soon bruised, soon broken; And let this worldly pomp our wits enchant; All fades, and scarcely leaves behind a token. Those golden palaces, those gorgeous halls, With furniture superfluously fair; Those stately ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... of worthy deeds, if men would not seem little, ungenerous, and puerile, but on the contrary, bulky, firm, and brave. But for a man to be elated by happiness, as Epicurus is, like sailors upon the festivals of Venus, and to vaunt himself that, when he was sick of an ascites, he notwithstanding called his friends together to certain collations and grudged not his dropsy the addition of good liquor, and that, when he called to remembrance the last ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... that God is no more idle now than He was at the beginning, but that He is still and forever shaping the human chaos into the instruments and means of beauty. It may also suggest to that scholar- pride, that vanity of technique, which is so apt to vaunt itself in the teacher, that the best he can do, after all, is to let the pupil teach himself. If he comes with divine authority to the thing he attempts, he will know how to use the appliances, of which the teacher ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... manly," he added. "It was one of the points that I inclined to like about you; inclined, I believe, to admire. The names of virtues exercise a charm on most of us; we must lay claim to all of them, however incompatible; we must all be both daring and prudent; we must all vaunt our pride and go to the stake for our humility. Not so you. Without compromise you were yourself: a pretty sight. I have always said it: none so void of all pretence ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mayor's indignation had overmastered his reason when he made this mistimed vaunt; for three soldiers, who had hitherto stood motionless like statues, made each a stride in advance, which placed them betwixt the municipal officers and the soldier, who was in the act of rising; then making at once the movement ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... to say that 'he was but a quarter of an hour behind the handsomest man in England;' and this vaunt of his is said not to have been disproved by circumstances. Swift, when neither young, nor handsome, nor rich, nor even amiable, inspired the two most extraordinary passions upon record, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... the desire that his son should be like him, and should have sons like him, to people the earth. It is the strongest desire that can come to a man—if it comes to him at all—stronger even than love or the desire for personal immortality. All men vaunt it, and declare that it is theirs; but the hearts of most are set elsewhere. It is the exception who comprehends that physical and spiritual life may stream out of him for ever. Miss Abbott, for all her goodness, could not comprehend it, though such ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... understanding; for in the empyreal heaven he had been chosen for father of revered Rome and of her empire; both which (to say truth indeed) were ordained for the holy place where the successor of the greater Peter hath his seat. Through this going, whereof thou givest him vaunt, he learned things which were the cause of his victory and of the papal mantle. Afterward the Chosen Vessel went thither to bring thence comfort to that faith which is the beginning of the way of salvation. But I, why go I thither? ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... is limited, and we are outside it. But can we not observe the same phenomenon when the rich boast of their wealth, i.e., robbery; the commanders in the army pride themselves on victories, i.e., murder; and those in high places vaunt their power, i.e., violence? We do not see the perversion in the views of life held by these people, only because the circle formed by them is more extensive, and we ourselves are moving inside ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... a hero: an uncommon want, When every year and month sends forth a new one, Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant, The age discovers he is not the true one; Of such as these I should not care to vaunt, I 'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan— We all have seen him, in the pantomime, Sent to the devil somewhat ere ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Richmond's son (in his own ruinous way), but not to the extent of being burdened with the cub half a dozen times a week. Gourlay was merely boasting—as young blades are apt to do of acquaintance with older roisterers. They think it makes them seem men of the world. And in his desire to vaunt his comradeship with Allan, John failed to see that Allardyce was scooping him out ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... lines; nor about to expatiate on the beauties of error, for it has none; but the clank of steam-engines, and the shouts of politicians, and the struggle for gain or bread, and the loud denunciations of stupid bigots, have wellnigh smothered poor Fancy among us. We boast of our science, and vaunt our superior morality. Does the latter exist? In spite of all the forms which our policy has invented to secure it—in spite of all the preachers, all the meeting-houses, and all the legislative enactments—if ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... himself, after he had murdered so many of the nobility; executed (as aforesaid) eighteen thousand and six hundred in six years, and most cruelly slain man, woman, and child, in Mechlin, Zutphen, Naerden, and other places: notwithstanding his Spanish vaunt, that he would suffocate the Hollanders in their own butter-barrels, and milk-tubs; he departed the country no otherwise accompanied, than with the curse and detestation of the whole nation; leaving his master's affairs in a tenfold worse estate, than he found ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... Poor vaunt of life indeed, Were man but formed to feed On joy, to solely seek and find and feast; Such feasting ended, then As sure an end to men: Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... his approach came to the ears of Sankharib, the King rode forth to meet his Minister, rejoicing in him with joy exceeding and received him lovingly and kissed him, and cried, "Well come and welcome and fair welcome to my sire and the glory of my realm and the vaunt of my kingdom: do thou require of me whatso thou wantest and choosest, even didst thou covet one-half of my good and of my government." The Minister replied, "Live, O King, for ever; and if thou would gift me bestow thy boons upon ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... triumphant chant, Match'd with thine, would be all But an empty vaunt— A thing wherein we feel there ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... provision wherewith to batter, they made their retreat by land, in spite of all their garrisons both of horse and foot. In this sort I have a little digressed from my first purpose, only by the necessary comparison of their and our actions: the one covetous of honour, without vaunt or ostentation; the other so greedy to purchase the opinion of their own affairs, and by false rumours to resist the blasts of their own dishonours, as they will not only not blush to spread all manner of untruths, but ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... men to die. So the Wazir shortened his stages and tarried long at the watering stations and did his best to solace the King. Now when Shah Zaman drew near the capital of his brother he despatched vaunt couriers and messengers of glad tidings to announce his arrival, and Shahryar came forth to meet him with his Wazirs and Emirs and Lords and Grandees of his realm; and saluted him and joyed with exceeding joy and caused the city to be decorated in his honour. When, however, the brothers ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... remonstrances from Mistress Pennyquick. But I refused to let her coddle me, and as my appetite never failed, and I throve amazingly, the good woman at last ceased to lament, and, as I discovered, was wont behind my back to vaunt my ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... In truth, the Geats' prince gladly trusted his mettle, his might, the mercy of God! Cast off then his corselet of iron, helmet from head; to his henchman gave, — choicest of weapons, — the well-chased sword, bidding him guard the gear of battle. Spake then his Vaunt the valiant man, Beowulf Geat, ere the bed be sought: — "Of force in fight no feebler I count me, in grim war-deeds, than Grendel deems him. Not with the sword, then, to sleep of death his life will I give, though it lie in my power. No skill is his to strike against ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... vaunt with a sneer. "You ought to be a detective—in a novel." He buttered his toast and ate a little of it, like a man of ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... ancient customs required the emperors to ascend high mountains and offer sacrifices on their summits. The literary class had ancient rule and precedent for every step in this ceremony, and so sharply criticised the emperor's disregard of these observances that they roused his anger. "You vaunt the simplicity of the ancients," he impatiently said; "you should then be satisfied with me, for I act in a simpler fashion than they did." Finally he closed the controversy with the stern remark, "When I have need of you I will let you know ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... a very genuine, homely, and personal experience, the conviction that moral perfection is the only true aim. He reached this conviction while still a young man, and in the main tenor of his life he was faithful to it. He made no vaunt of his religion, founded no sect, gave his words and deeds chiefly to practical affairs; and perhaps few guessed, until at the close of his life he told his own story with consummate charm, that the secret motive and mainspring of his life ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... Give me a fresh horse; Rally the vaunt-guard, or the day is lost, Yield, yield! I give you the honour of arms Shake my sword over you; will ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... perilous hour By him overthrown? Thy girdle broke, Or thou hadst felt the conqueror's yoke. Thy crowding warriors proved thy shield, They saved and dragged thee from the field; By them unrescued then, wouldst thou Have lived to vaunt thy prowess now?" ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... that you almost covet for the sympathy it brings,—that hand of hers resting on your fevered forehead, or those fingers playing with the scattered locks, are more full of kindness than the loudest vaunt of friends; and when your failing strength will permit no more, you grasp that cherished hand with a fulness of joy, of thankfulness, and of love, which your tears ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... night in Glen Doone satisfied me for a long time thereafter; and I took good care not to venture even in the fields and woods of the outer farm, without John Fry for company. John was greatly surprised and pleased at the value I now set upon him; until, what betwixt the desire to vaunt and the longing to talk things over, I gradually laid bare to him nearly all that had befallen me; except, indeed, about Lorna, whom a sort of shame kept me from mentioning. Not that I did not think ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... had been profitable to Lige; it was his true aim that had brought down one of the live guerrilleros. On his asserting this, his comrades had laughed at it, as an idle vaunt; but Quackenboss proved his assertion to be correct by picking his bullet out of the man's body, and holding it up before their eyes. The peculiar "bore" of his rifle rendered the bullet easy of identification, and all agreed that Lige had shot ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... remembrance of my debt, I homeward turn. Farewell, my pet! When here again thy pilgrim comes, He shall bring store of seeds and crumbs. Henceforth I prize thy wiry chant O'er all that mass and minster vaunt: For men mishear thy call in spring, As 'twould accost some frivolous wing, Crying out of the hazel copse, "Phe—be!" And in winter, "Chic-a-dee-dee!" I think old Caesar must have heard In Northern Gaul my dauntless bird, And, echoed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... my destiny: Rosalvo knows no medium: Rosalvo can never act like common men," and thereupon proceeds to prove by his extraordinary actions that this is no idle vaunt. He lives a double life: in the guise of Abellino, he joins the banditti, and by inexplicable methods rids Venice of her enemies; in the guise of a noble Florentine, Flodoardo, he woos the Doge's daughter, Rosabella. The climax of the story is reached ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... gold, Worse than remorse, and worse a thousand-fold, Than pangs of hunger. 'Tis the thirst of love, The rage and rapture of the ravening dove We name Desire. Ah, pardon! I offend; My fervor blinds me to the withering end Of all good council, and, accurst thereby, I vaunt anew the ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... virtues—would surely never have sold herself to foreign vices! It is not possible, lady, that you should be a native of Britain, unless indeed your heart be as much below as the sons of Britannia vaunt theirs to be above ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... respect of man's nobility! I never shall account it marvelous, That our infirm affection here below Thou mov'st to boasting, when I could not choose, E'en in that region of unwarp'd desire, In heav'n itself, but make my vaunt in thee! Yet cloak thou art soon shorten'd, for that time, Unless thou be eked out from day to day, Goes round thee with his shears. Resuming then With greeting such, as Rome, was first to bear, But since hath disaccustom'd I began; And Beatrice, that a little space Was sever'd, smil'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... that the blood torrent should flow at once through the Netherlands, in order that the promised golden river, a yard deep, according to his vaunt, should begin to irrigate the thirsty soil of Spain. It is obvious, from the fundamental laws which were made to define treason at the same moment in which they established the council, that any man might be at any instant summoned to the court. Every man, whether innocent or guilty, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... How vaunt and prophecy were fulfilled, all the world knows now. A more miserable waste of apparently ample means and material has seldom been recorded in the annals of modern war. General Hooker stands forth the worthy rival of ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... air with thy voice is loud"; "a rain of melody"; surpassing the "sound of vernal showers" and of "rain-awakened flowers" and "all that ever was joyous, clear and fresh"; "a flood of rapture so divine"; beside it a "hymenaeal chorus" or a "triumphal chaunt" is "but an empty vaunt"; "clear, keen joyance," "notes flow ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... George Burroughs, also a minister of Salem. He had, it seems, buried two wives, both of whom the busy gossips said he had used ill in their life-time, and consequently, it was whispered, had murdered them. This man was accustomed foolishly to vaunt that he knew what people said of him in his absence; and this was brought as a proof that he dealt with the devil. Two women, who were witnesses against him, interrupted their testimony with exclaiming that they saw the ghosts of the murdered wives present (who ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... another coffee-cake?" says some one, and we remember that we are at Spillman's also. And, indeed, we might be more sensible to stay with our party always; eat cakes, drink wine, laugh at the old world, vaunt the new, read Baedeker and the Bible, say our orthodox Protestant prayers, with a special "Lead us not into Romanism" codicil, and go to bed, and dream of our own golden houses, Paris dresses, and fat ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... would raise a bank higher than those walls, in confidence of whose strength he despised him, and that by only each man of his army taking a handful of earth; hereby making a show of the great number of his army, and aiming to affright him. Ahab answered, that he ought not to vaunt himself when he had only put on his armor, but when he should have conquered his enemies in the battle. So the ambassadors came back, and found the king at supper with his thirty-two kings, and informed him of Ahab's answer; who then immediately gave order ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Men proudly vaunt their love of gold and fame, High station and accomplishments of skill, Yet of life's greatest conquest they are still, And deem it weakness, or an act of shame, To seem to place high value on the love Which first of all they should ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... assertion that he would remain had perhaps appeared to vaunt a heroism that was not true. He supposed that she had seen his selfishness of motive, and that it was her time now to let him see that she had not much admiration for him, so that he might make his choice ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... Ravenswood was concerned; but his was that considerate valour which does not delight in unnecessary risks. This, however, was a secondary consideration; the main point was to veil the indigence of the housekeeping at the castle, and to make good his vaunt of the cheer which his resources could procure, without Lockhard's assistance, and without supplies from his master. This was as prime a point of honour with him as with the generous elephant with whom we have already compared him, who, being overtasked, broke his skull through the desperate ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... expeditions organised for the purpose of penetrating into inhospitable lands or into regions encompassed by all the terrors of the unknown, will perhaps think that I was jesting when I gave the inventory of my luggage in the last chapter and that from sheer vaunt I did not mention the support of some Geographical or Commercial Society and neither the tons of goods which would follow in my wake, nor the numerous waggons and armed battalion that ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts, and hurricanes, spout Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity of the world! Crack nature's molds, all germens spill at once, That make ingrateful men! Rumble thy belly full! Spit fire! Spout ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... Statuaries make, The image of some great & worthy one, They still, as they intend his forme to take, Forecast the Basis he shall rest vpon, Whose firme infixe thunders nor winds can shake, Nor Time, that Nature deeds to liue alone. So (worthiest Lady) may I proudly vaunt, (Being neuer guilty of that crime before) That to this Laye, which I so rudely chaunt, Your diuine selfe, which Dian doth adore, As her maids her, I haue select to daunt Enuy: as ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... bauble or toy which idle fellows write, for as idle fellows to read, and who so cannot invent? [91]"He must have a barren wit, that in this scribbling age can forge nothing. [92]Princes show their armies, rich men vaunt their buildings, soldiers their manhood, and scholars vent their toys;" they must read, they must hear ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... time Ursula left Wiggiston. Miss Inger went to Nottingham. There was an engagement between her and Tom Brangwen, which the uncle seemed to vaunt as if it were an assurance of ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... than one man's lifetime after, the reign of Mistress Clorinda Wildairs was a memory recalled over the bottle at the dining-table among men, some of whom had but heard their fathers vaunt her beauties. It seemed as if in her person there was not a single flaw, or indeed a charm, which had not reached the highest point of beauty. For shape she might have vied with young Diana, mounted side ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... perchance without a tear. Now to my theme—but from thy holy haunt Let me some remnant, some memorial bear; Yield me one leaf of Daphne's deathless plant, Nor let thy votary's hope be deemed an idle vaunt. ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... who ruleth in heaven, henceforth I will not rest in one place more than one night or two, but will ride ever till I have found Perceval, or learnt certain tidings of his doings; and I will bring him to court an he be minded to ride with me—further will I not vaunt myself." ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... the first. Monsieur was, in truth, a splendid and formidable marksman. Mr. G——, in preparing for the duel, happening to cast his eyes on his adversary, perceived that he had slily placed his arm in such a position, as must ensure, on the honourable gentleman's fire, the fulfilment of his vaunt to make him "a dead man." No time was to be lost; the young Englishman's life depended upon dispatch; and, instantly firing, he proved himself as good a marksman as Monsieur ——, by sending his ball, with the utmost precision, through the wily manoeuvrer's elbow, from whence it passed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... favour. The violent crisis of the Spanish Armada had marked the close of an epoch at Court. In September 1588 Leicester died, in April 1590 Walsingham, in September 1591 Sir Christopher Hatton, three men in whose presence, however apt Raleigh might be to vaunt his influence, he could never have felt absolutely master. New men were coming on, but for the moment the most violent and aggressive of his rivals, Essex, was disposed to wave a flag of truce. Both Raleigh and Essex ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... smoke-wreaths fly When fresh breezes clear the sky, Passed away each swelling boast Of the misbelieving host. From the Hebrus rolling far Came the murky cloud of war, And in shower and tempest dread Burst on Austria's fenceless head. But not for vaunt or threat Didst Thou, O Lord, forget The flock so dearly ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his vaunt with corresponding gestures, and directed his eyes to the circle of his equally confident sons while speaking, he drew their gaze from Ellen to himself; but now, when they turned together to note the succeeding movements of their ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... desire of your hearts, and vaunt not the valiant deeds of your youth. This, too, is evil in the eyes of the Lord. For while I boasted that the face of a beautiful woman had never allured me in the wars, and reviled my brother Reuben for his transgression with Bilhah, the spirit of passion and unchastity ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... all greatest things have been wrought in the earth: I too have my unbelief as well as you—I can not believe that a lie on the belief of which has depended our highest development. You may say you have a higher to bring in. But that higher you have become capable of by the precedent lie. Yet you vaunt truth! You would sink us low indeed, making out falsehood our best nourishment—at some period of our history at least. If, however, what I call true and high, you call false and low—my assertion that you have never seen that of which I so speak ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... assistance which they were to derive from Parma's cooperation. Even when the Prince had at last been informed as to the state of affairs, he stoutly denied the facts of which the leaguers made their vaunt; thus giving to Mucio and his friends ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... venturous deed: 115 The glory was to France alone, the danger was their meed. And what cared they for idle thanks from foreign prince and peer? What virtue had such honey'd words the exiled heart to cheer? What matter'd it that men should vaunt and ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... the first results of positivism is to destroy even the rudiments of any machinery by which one man could govern, with authority, the inward kingdom of another; and the moral imperative is reduced to an empty vaunt. For what can be an emptier flourish than for one set of men, and these a confessed minority, to proclaim imperious laws to others, which they can never get the others to obey, and which are essentially meaningless to the only people to whom they are not superfluous? Suppose that, on ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... they are driven by necessity among the bales and boxes of freight, with no avenue of escape in case of accident. These are the people who suffer in cases of snagging and collision, &c. These hardy sons of toil, migrating with their families, are all but penniless, and therefore, despite all vaunt of equality, they are friendless. Had every deck-passenger that has perished in the agony of a crushing and drowning death been a Member of Senate or Congress, the Government would have interfered long ere this; but these miserable wretches perish in their ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Hal—vouch, Will, o' the ward-room mess, On you how the riving thunder-bolt clapped. With a bead in your eye and beads in your glass, And a grip o' the flipper, it was part and pass: "Hal, must it be: Well, if come indeed the shock, To North or to South, let the victory cleave, Vaunt it he may on his dung-hill the cock, But Uncle Sam's eagle never ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... boasting &c. v.; boast, vaunt, crake|; pretense, pretensions; puff, puffery; flourish, fanfaronade[obs3]; gasconade; blague[obs3], bluff, gas*; highfalutin, highfaluting[obs3]; hot air, spread-eagleism [obs3][U. S.]; brag, braggardism[obs3]; bravado, bunkum, buncombe; jactitation[obs3], jactancy[obs3]; bounce; venditation|, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Variegated multkolora. Variety diverseco. Variola variolo. Various diversa. Varnish laki. Varnish lako—ajxo. Vary diversi. Vase vazo. Vaseline vazelino. Vassal vasalo. Vassalage vasaleco. Vast vasta. Vat kuvego. Vault (leap) salti. Vault arkajxo. Vaunt fanfaroni. Veal bovidviando, bovidajxo. Veer turni, igxi. Vegetable legomo. Vegetable-garden legoma gxardeno. Vegetate vegeti. Vegetation kreskajxado. Vehemence perforteco. Vehement perforta. Vehicle veturilo. Veil (for face) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... faith, persuasion, conviction, tenet, creed. Belittle, decry, depreciate, disparage. Bind, secure, fetter, shackle, gyve. Bit, jot, mite, particle, grain, atom, speck, mote, whit, iota, tittle, scintilla. Bluff, blunt, outspoken, downright, brusk, curt, crusty. Boast, brag, vaunt, vapor, gasconade. Body, corpse, remains, relics, carcass, cadaver, corpus. Bombastic, sophomoric, turgid, tumid, grandiose, grandiloquent, magniloquent. Boorish, churlish, loutish, clownish, rustic, ill-bred. Booty, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... boasting &c v.; boast, vaunt, crake^; pretense, pretensions; puff, puffery; flourish, fanfaronade^; gasconade; blague^, bluff, gas [Slang]; highfalutin, highfaluting^; hot air, spread-eagleism [U.S.]; brag, braggardism^; bravado, bunkum, buncombe; jactitation^, jactancy^; bounce; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... deceitful mediator then, by whom in Thy secret judgments pride deserved to be deluded, hath one thing in common with man, that is sin; another he would seem to have in common with God; and not being clothed with the mortality of flesh, would vaunt himself to be immortal. But since the wages of sin is death, this hath he in common with men, that with them he should be ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... turn'd, and sternly spake aloud:— "Rise! wherefore dost thou vainly question thus 365 Of Rustum? I am here, whom thou hast call'd By challenge forth; make good thy vaunt, deg. or yield! deg.367 Is it with Rustum only thou wouldst fight? Rash boy, men look on Rustum's face and flee! For well I know, that did great Rustum stand 370 Before thy face this day, and were reveal'd, There would be then no talk of fighting more. But being ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... an Episcopalian, and was long one of the leading members of Trinity Church. His devotion was unaffectedly sincere, and though he made no vaunt of his religious principles or hopes, there could be no question of his deep, earnest convictions. Kind, courteous, ever thinking of the good of others, and wholly unselfish, Mr. Walton was a good specimen ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... some moment of passion made big boasts of what they would do "some day." Few ever made so tremendous a vaunt; fewer still ever so completely fulfilled their threats; and, perhaps, no one ever struggled so patiently, so nobly, nor against such tremendous obstacles before the goal was reached, as did this angry little Swede, known to history ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... brought the proud spirit low! Nor dashed his brow nor checkt his daring? No. Tho' half the wretches whom at night he led To thrones and victory lie disgraced and dead, Yet morning hears him with unshrinking crest. Still vaunt of thrones and victory to the rest;— And they believe him!—oh, the lover may Distrust that look which steals his soul away;— The babe may cease to think that it can play With Heaven's rainbow;—alchymists may doubt The shining gold their ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... upon the Turks, and the country of Gog and Magog—whence they came, whom we all agreed to abuse as much as possible, since our antipathies were pretty equal. The Sheikhs then began very naturally to vaunt of their power in The Sahara, and I may embrace this opportunity of giving some outline of the Touarick nations of The ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... old he-goat, the one-eyed, what shall be My saying of a knave, his fashion and degree? I rede thee vaunt thee not of praise from us, for lo! Even as a docktailed cur thou art esteemed of me. By Allah, without fail, to-morrow thou shalt see Me with ox-leather dress and drub ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... of Emancipation had been promulgated. It made little difference to the people of the South; for it was at that time looked upon as a vaunt as idle as if he had declared the throne of England vacant. Secure in their belief in their right doing, and in the trusty arms and deadly rifles that defended it, the southern masses never dreamed the day would come when that proclamation would be more than the paper upon which ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... Thou alone liftest up thyself against us, and I am laughed to scorn for thy sake, and reproached: and why dost thou vaunt thy power against us ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... the graces, Daughters of Delight, Handmaids of Venus, which are wont to haunt Upon this hill and dance there, day and night; Those three to men all gifts of grace do grant And all that Venus in herself doth vaunt Is borrowed of them; but that fair one That in the midst was placed paravant, Was she to whom that shepherd piped alone, That made him pipe so merrily, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... Lilly's book, and having mentioned it in the house, it was agreed that the astrologer should be summoned. Lilly attended accordingly, when Sir Robert Brooke told him the reason of his summons, and called upon him to declare what he knew. This was a rare opportunity for the vain-glorious Lilly to vaunt his abilities; and he began a long speech in praise of himself and his pretended science. He said, that after the execution of Charles I, he was extremely desirous to know what might from that time forth happen to the parliament and to the nation in general. He, therefore, consulted the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... you, cosen Guise, so great a courtier, So full of majestic and roiall parts, No Queene in Christendome may vaunt her selfe. Her Court approves it: that's a Court indeed, Not mixt with clowneries us'd in common houses; 20 But, as Courts should be th'abstracts of their Kingdomes, In all the beautie, state, and worth they hold, So is hers, amplie, and by her inform'd. ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... censure produce repentance and shame, the one bringing grief, the other fear, and these they mostly make use of for purposes of correction. And so Diogenes, when Plato was being praised, said, "What has he to vaunt of, who has been a philosopher so long, and yet never gave pain to anyone?" For one could not say, to use the words of Xenocrates, that the mathematics are such handles to philosophy as are the emotions of young men, such as shame, desire, repentance, pleasure, pain, ambition, whereon ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... hands and feet well behind his back, and bound them tight with a painful bond as Ulysses had told them; then they fastened a noose about his body and strung him up from a high pillar till he was close up to the rafters, and over him did you then vaunt, O swineherd Eumaeus saying, "Melanthius, you will pass the night on a soft bed as you deserve. You will know very well when morning comes from the streams of Oceanus, and it is time for you to be driving in your goats for the ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... that a silly fool, with nothing but empty birth to boast of, should in his insolence array himself in the merits of others, and vaunt an honour which ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... the traditional kite flown by Gilderoy. The having at his beck this array of frowning metal lent Lieutenant Davis such an importance in his own eyes that his demeanor swelled to the grandiose. It became very amusing to see him puff up and vaunt over it, as he did on every possible occasion. For instance, finding a crowd of several hundred lounging around the gate, he would throw open the wicket, stalk in with the air of a Jove threatening a rebellious world with the dread thunders of ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... assault below the belt. I shall deliberately destroy your credit as an essayist, as a journalist, as a critic, as a Liberal, as everything that offers your laziness a refuge, until starvation and shame drive you to serious dramatic parturition. I shall repeat my public challenge to you; vaunt my superiority; insult your corpulence; torture Belloc; if necessary, call on you and steal your wife's affections by intellectual and athletic displays, until you contribute something to the British drama. You are played out as an essayist: your ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Parminter, who sat upon the other side of him, "Wallie" Hine began to boast. Sylvia tried to check him, but he was not now to be stopped. His very timidity pricked him on to extravagance, and his boasting was that worst form of boasting—the vaunt of the innocent weakling anxious to figure as a conqueror of women. With a flushed face he dropped his foolish hints of Mrs. This and Lady That, with an eye upon Sylvia to watch the impression which he ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... his comings and goings, his sayings and silences. All were leveled and subdued by a serene and far-evolved spirit; and upon all was the flower of truth. His love had been an inner reverent thing which did not vaunt itself. All but once the passions he had felt were his own deep property.... The Shadowy Sister, who would live on when the worn-out earth of her being sank into its seventh year of restoring,—yes, the Shadowy Sister had been chastened ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... talent, pride and political influence, and all opposition is vain. You Abolitionists are mere sentimentalists, visionaries, doctrinaires." This had great influence with the indifferent, the timid, and especially with those who vaunt themselves as "practical men," who boast that they care nothing for abstractions, but take business views of things. This plea and these men were largely influential in carrying forward some of the most ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 • Various
... builders, while each man was a master of his own especial art, had done most of their work in cities, and when it came to matters of the fields and woods they were not to be trusted. But when David found Roger a little inclined to vaunt his superior woodcraft he set him a riddle ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... Moorish land an Almazour Steps forth. All Spain can show no greater wretch. Before Marsile he makes a boastful vaunt: "To Ronceval will I my people lead— Full twenty thousand men with lance and shield. If I Rolland find there, I pledge his death; No after-day shall dawn but Carle shall ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... it be imagined that by this mutual quotation and commendation; if it be supposed that, by casting the characters of the drama assigning to each his part, to one the attack, to another the cry of onset; or if it be thought that, by a loud and empty vaunt of anticipated victory, any laurels are to be won here; if it be imagined, especially, that any or all these things will shake any purpose of mine,—I can tell the honorable member, once for all, that he is greatly mistaken, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... on their philosophical attainments vaunt in very eloquent words the superiority of the physical instrument over mere sensation. Evidently, however, the earnestness of this eulogy leads them astray. The most perfect registering apparatus must, in the long-run, after its most scientific operations, address itself to our senses ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... of the Galland house were the congratulations of the premier to Westerling, who had come from the atmosphere of a staff that accorded to him a military insight far above the analysis of ordinary standards. But he was too clever a man to vaunt his triumph. He knew how to carry his honors. He accepted success as his due, in a matter-of-course manner that must inspire confidence ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... "A mere vaunt-courier to announce the coming of his master."—Tooke's Diversions, Vol. i, p. 49. "The parti-coloured shutter appeared to come close up before him."—Kirkham's Elocution, p. 233. "When the day broke upon this handfull of forlorn but ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... said, 'What need is there, O man, for this thy vaunt and this thy boast? Accomplish all this first, and then mayst thou vaunt indeed. Therefore, delay thou not. Thou knowest thyself to be strong and endued with prowess, so thou shalt rightly estimate thy strength ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and deliberately, with his bargain, on the other side, as if he were dealing with creatures utterly without feeling. Shanty turned first to one, and then to another; nodding and winking to Dymock to keep quiet on one side, whilst he continued to vaunt the merits of ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... considered careful walk and placid mien, wend their way homeward, bearing their heavy udders to the house-mother, who, pail in hand awaiting their approach, pauses for a moment to mark the feathered boaster at her feet, as he makes his parting vaunt of a day well spent and summons "Partlet" to her vesper perch ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... Warmth, life, no less the while? To grant one spark Myself may deal with—make it thaw my blood And prompt my steps, were truer to the mark Of mind's requirement than a half-surmise That somehow secretly is operant A power all matter feels, mind only tries To comprehend! Once more—no idle vaunt 'Man comprehends the Sun's self!' Mysteries At source why probe into? Enough: display, Make demonstrable, how, by night as day, Earth's centre and sky's outspan, all's informed Equally by Sun's efflux!—source ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... combat. Alfonso accepted the latter alternative; but, a dispute arising respecting the guaranty for the performance of the engagements on either side, the whole affair evaporated, as usual, in an empty vaunt of chivalry. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... that would'st forget The gamester's smile, the trader's vaunt, The statesman actor's face hard set, The kennel cry that cheers his taunt, Come where pure winds and rills combine To ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... heav'n a different mortal claims my bed; To take him in, great nicety we need; But howsoe'er, at times I can succeed; The satisfaction doubly then is felt:— In fond emotion bosoms freely melt. With neither of you, husband or gallant, Would I exchange, though these so much you vaunt. ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... this disease of electricity has been for some time past almost universally conceded. While some vaunt the faradic, others prefer the galvanic current in its treatment. It appears that thus far the best results have been obtained on the one hand by galvanization of the spine, on the other by general faradization. It occurred to me, when I began to devote myself ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... be critics of these tear-away wits; which are, moreover, so threadbare to conceal the character! Caroline led him to vaunt his riding and his shooting, and a certain time passed before she perceived that though he responded naturally to her first sly attacks, his gross exaggerations upon them had not been the triumph of absurdity she supposed herself ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... skirts the way, Trembling lest passing hounds snuff out your lair! Listen at eventide on lonesome path For traveller's footfall, or the mule-bell's chime, Pouncing by hundreds on one helpless man, To cut him down, then back to your retreats— You dare to vaunt your sires? I call your sires, Bravest of brave and greatest 'mid the great, A line of warriors! ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... let him come and prove, the field I grant, Nor wrong nor treason let him doubt or fear, Some here shall pay him for his glorious vaunt, Without or guile, or vantage, that I swear. The herald turned when he had ended scant, And hasted back the way he came whileare, Nor stayed he aught, nor once forslowed his pace, Till he bespake ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... root, and grow To vaunt themselves God's laws, until our clothes, Our gems, and gaudy books, and cushioned litters Become ourselves, and we would fain forget There live who ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... as yet you know not what this is to be; no more do I. You are troubled without cause. But know this truly: if there were in me only so much courage as your love inspires, truly I should not fear to face any man alive. But I am foolish to vaunt myself; yet I say it not from any pride, but because I wish to comfort you. So comfort yourself, and let it be! I cannot longer tarry here, nor can you go along with me; for, as the King has ordered, I must not take you beyond ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... knows not how miserable that City and Country is, when a military person happens to ly sick in this Hospital. If he be in Garison, he doth nothing but trick up himself, walk along the streets, flatter his Mistress, and vaunt of his knowledge and Warlike deeds; though he scarce understands the exercising of his Arms, I will not mention encamping in a Field, Fortification, the forming of Batalions, and a great deal more that belongs ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... fervent than I wont. For Daphne's wrongs and 'scapes in Thetis' lap, All gods are subject to the like mishap. Stars daily fall ('tis use is all in all), And men account the fall but nature's course. Vaunting my jewels hasting to the west, Or rising early from the grey-ey'd morn, What do I vaunt but your large bountyhood, And show how liberal a lord I serve? Music and poetry, my two last crimes, Are those two exercises of delight, Wherewith long labours I do weary out. The dying swan is not forbid to sing: The waves of Hebrus[46] play'd on Orpheus' strings, When ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... term of the District Court opened. Men who had come for a long distance to vaunt their ignorance and other qualifications as jurors could be seen on the streets. Here and there you could see the familiar faces of those who had served as jurors for years and yet had never lost a case. Wealthy ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... and fortress of this vast system, and of the reaction against the philosophy of the eighteenth century, was the University of Oxford. Orthodoxy was its vaunt, and a special exponent of its spirit and object of its admiration was its member of Parliament, Mr. William Ewart Gladstone, who, having begun his political career by a laboured plea for the union of church and state, ended it by giving ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... again; And we, the living, wherefore should we ache With counting all our lost ones, till we wake The old malignant fortunes? If Good-bye Comes from their side, Why, let them go, say I. Surely for us, who live, good doth prevail Unchallenged, with no wavering of the scale; Wherefore we vaunt unto these shining skies, As wide o'er sea and land our glory flies: "By men of Argolis who conquered Troy, These spoils, a memory and an ancient joy, Are nailed in the gods' houses throughout Greece." Which whoso readeth ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... Monte Cristo "upon the simple condition that they should respect myself and my friends. Perhaps what I am about to say may seem strange to you, who are socialists, and vaunt humanity and your duty to your neighbor, but I never seek to protect a society which does not protect me, and which I will even say, generally occupies itself about me only to injure me; and thus by giving ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sing His love through the languid hours, And vaunt of his hives, as a proud old king Might boast of his palace-towers: But my rose bowed in a mockery, And hid in the leaves in wait ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... filmed in dark. Enough said now of this: For the other helps of man hid underground, The iron and the brass, silver and gold, Can any dare affirm he found them out Before me? None, I know, unless he choose To lie in his vaunt. In one word learn the whole: That all arts come to mortals from Prometheus. Aeschylus: ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton |
