"Boastful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... allowed to shoot with real guns in the holidays, which reminded me of the worst excesses of my brother in Yorkshire. Examining my own life, I had often come to the conclusion that adventures did not exist outside books. But the boys shook this comforting theory with their boastful prophecies, and I thought once more that perhaps it was my misfortune that they did not happen to me. I began to fear that I ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... sharply at Pete, who met his eye with a gaze in which there was both a challenge and a confession. Yet there was no boastful pride in the confession. It was as though Pete had stated the simple fact that he had killed a man in self-defense—perhaps more than one man—and had earned the hatred of those who had the power to make him pay with his life, whether he were ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... "you have had your day, and, blind bat as you are, you were beginning to see it just for a moment, but this fine speech of yours has thrown you off your guard again. You doubtless think that with a few empty boastful words you have recovered your lost position, but you are mistaken, my good friend, as you will find out when you return from your next cruise—if indeed you ever return at all. Well, enjoy your own opinion while you can; rejoice in the ease with which you have re-established yourself; I shall ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... them. It is not a bullfight. There are no picadors, armed with lances to prick the bull to madness; no banderilleros, with barbed darts; no heroic matador, ready with shining blade to give a mad and weary bull the coup de grace. Here all is fun and frolic. To be sure, the bull is duly annoyed by boastful boys or drunken Aymaras, who prod him with sticks and shake bright ponchos in his face until he dashes after his tormentors and causes a mighty scattering of some spectators, amid shrieks of delight ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... boastful laugh he repeated his assertion that it didn't take much courage to open a sealed door, especially when there might be a fortune concealed behind it. In his opinion it was cowardly to let oneself be frightened by a century-old legend. He wouldn't let that bother him if he had influence ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... poisonous element of death in action close on life; here they lower our dear brother down a foot or two; here sow him in corruption to be raised in corruption; an avenging ghost at many a sick-bedside; a shameful testimony to future ages how civilization and barbarism walked this boastful island together." ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... I then boastful? It is half in scorn Of caring for your love, or for your praise, As women do, and must. Had I been born In this proud Athens, I had spent my days In jealousy of boys, and stolen hours With some Milesian, of a questioned place, Learning of her the use of woman's powers ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... itself. It had a rich boastful note; it seemed proud of its noisy reiteration of simple self-assertion. For some obscure reason the phrase "oleographic sounds" drifted into the bishop's thoughts. This bird produced the peculiar and irrational impression that it had recently ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... Rainey, John T. Brooks, the ninth in number. Fifty-seven private soldiers, Filled the columns. (See Appendix.) General Lovell H. Rousseau[7] was Yet another gallant warrior, Of whose glittering escutcheon, All the city's pride is boastful; Lawyer, politician, soldier, He in Congress represented Louisville and all the district, And won military prowess, ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... the Emperor, with a displeased look and tone, "instead of instructing these poor, ignorant barbarians in the rules and civilization of our enlightened empire, you foster, by such boastful words, the idle pride and fury of their temper, which hurries them into brawls with the legions of other foreign countries, and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... of the outfit which it furnished, and were enabled to make a long-desired trip into the virgin East, where miners had not yet appeared. It was brought about by a conversation in the Eldorado Saloon, in which men waxed boastful of their favorite dogs. Buck, because of his record, was the target for these men, and Thornton was driven stoutly to defend him. At the end of half an hour one man stated that his dog could start a sled with five hundred pounds and walk off ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... campaign of Antietam; which had humbled the pride of the boastful confederates, and had turned back their hordes to their mountain fastnesses in Virginia for safety. A campaign which, while conducted with great hesitancy and a total want of that celerity of movement usually considered absolutely necessary to brilliant success in military operations, ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... table-turning) miracles in the most simple mechanical accidents; or from becoming (as in spirit-rapping) the dupes of the most clumsy, palpable, and degrading impostures, even after they have been exposed over and over again in print. Humiliating, indeed, it is, in this so self-confident and boastful nineteenth century, amid steam-engines, railroads, electric telegraphs, and all the wonders of our inductive science, to find exploded superstitions leaping back into life even more monstrous and irrational than in past ages, and to see our modern Pharisees and Sadducees, like those in Judea of ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... gathering fruit, they found me asleep, went home, held a council, came the next day with their elephants and horses, overwhelmed the few giants watching me, and carried me off. Jubilant over their victory, the smaller boys were childishly boastful, the bigger boys less ostentatious, while the girls, although their eyes flashed more, were not so talkative as usual. The woman of ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... attention. The wild-eyed man was talking rapidly. What he said cannot be printed here. Mainly was it derogatory of the southern countries. Shortly it became boastful of the northern, and then of the man who ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... escorted him, right side up, across the border into Switzerland to escape the heresy-hunters who were looking for human kindling. This kind landlady, now grown old, and living largely in the past, saw points of resemblance between her philosophic boarder and the great Grotius, and soon waxed boastful to the neighbors. Spinoza noticed that he was being pointed out on the streets. His record had followed him. The Jews hated him because he was a renegade; the Christians hated him because he was a Jew, and both Catholics and Protestants shunned him when they ought not, and greeted him with howls ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... title Ung-Khan as denoting a priest-king named John, and it was this distant Eastern potentate who came to be known in Europe as Presbyter Johannes or Prester John. It was the Syrian Christians who, in their desire to outvie the boastful arrogance of their Latin neighbours, together with many apochryphal tales invented a letter from this dignitary to some of the sovereigns of Europe, including the Pope. Equally fabulous seems to have been the report to Alexander ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... and handsome, with a stretch of some forty or fifty feet between the house at the stern and the forecastle, which rose considerably higher; a low bulwark was surmounted by a heavy rail supported upon turned posts painted white. Everything, in spite of the captain's boastful detraction, was in perfect trim, at least to landfolk's eyes. "Now come into the cabin," said the captain. He gave Lydia's traps, as he called them, in charge of a boy, while he led the way below, ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... long period after, this newborn consciousness had an infantile and very innocent character, quite different from its later and more aggressive forms—just as we see self-consciousness in a little child has a charm and a grace which it loses later in a boastful or grasping boyhood and manhood. So we may understand that though self-consciousness may have begun to appear in the human race at this very early time (and more or less contemporaneously with the invention of very rude ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... rifles and common and lots of nice crisp Bolshevik money and with boastful stories of how they had whipped the invading foreigners on other fields in the fall and with invective against the invaders these leaders soon excited quite a large following of fighting men from the numerous villages. With growing power they rounded up unwilling ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... I did;" and Dick told of his sufferings during the sand-storm, not in a boastful way, but as if it were his purpose to give the prospectors ...
— Dick in the Desert • James Otis
... my head back at every other step in the hope that a cab with its flag up might suddenly materialise; but hoping against hope. It was miserable, it was depressing, and it was really rather shameful: by the year 1919 A.D. (I thought) more should have been achieved by boastful mankind in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... would not strike you now, and that there is small chance of your meeting again after you have grown up to prove the truth of what you say. It is mere boasting, Olaf; and, mark me, you will never be a brave man if you begin by being a boastful boy. A truly brave and modest man—for modesty and bravery are wont to consort together—never says he will strike until he sees it to be right to do so. Sometimes he does not even go the length of speaking at ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... have a chance to get into politics and be the president of your ward club or something like that, and from that on it's an easy matter to go on up. You can trust me to know the wires." And so the tenor of his boastful talk ran on, his mother a little bit awed and not altogether satisfied with the new 'Rastus that ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... newspaper—Hilmer's picture smiled insolently from the printed page. The gathering broke up in quick confusion on finding him a silent auditor. When they were gone he reached for the newspaper. A record-breaking launching was to be achieved at Hilmer's shipyard within the week. The article ended with a boastful fling from Hilmer to the effect that his plant was running to full capacity in spite of strikes and lockouts. Fred threw the paper to the floor. A chill enveloped him. He had caught only the merest fragments of conversation which had fallen from the lips of the group he had surprised, ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... Uttered words of boastful triumph: "Now thou ancient Vainamoinen, Never while thy life endureth, In the course of all thy lifetime, While the golden moon is shining, 200 Walk in Vainola's fair meadows. Or on ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... It was evident to the critic's youthful mind that the battle ought to have resulted differently, and that if the foes of "the mighty Julius" had had the wit to take advantage of his indiscretion, certain pages of the "Commentaries" might have been conceived in a less boastful spirit. Little Louis Joseph had sketched a rough plan, showing the respective positions of the opposing forces, and had then demanded of his tutor why this had not been done, why that had been neglected, and why the other had never been even so much as thought of. M. Ricot, ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... age, and then anxious to train up worthy successors in the art and mystery of managing a well-appointed household. Aman evidently who knew his work in every detail, and did it all with pride; not boastful, though upholding his office against rebellious cooks[3], putting them down with imperial dignity, "we may allow and disallow; our office is the chief!" Asimple-minded religious man too,—as the close of his Treatise shows,—and one able to appreciate the master he served, the "prynce fulle ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... be among the company an Australian gentleman just arrived in England, who had brought with him a pocket-book full of notes, which he perhaps intended to pay into an English bank. The gentleman, being boastful and proud of his money, gave broad hints of the wealth he carried with him to Lucy Murdoch and her husband, whom he thought very nice people, and so much more friendly to a foreigner than the cold, proud English folk usually are. One morning ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... heard the voice of Dolar Durba, very loud and boastful. "Who is that I hear?" said the king's son. "It is a man of the foreigners asking for a hundred of my men to go and meet him," ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... tho' you may not believe it, that I am not entirely in a sober mood. Yesterday I planted bulbs with a lady who was not bulbous. The day before I shot pigeons for a lark. And I am boastful! fair boastful, my Lady! My secretary and my confidential clerk and my many dark-hued messengers are solemnly impressed with my prowess with gun and spade. The truth shall not be heard in the land. I am my own talebearer ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... in himself, sometimes precipitated him into almost inextricable situations, into which he threw himself headlong, and from which he never emerged without hard blows—for if he was as adventurous and boastful as a Gascon, he was as obstinate ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... copper-skinned critters attack us—I've got my gun handy, and I give you my word there'll be the very old dickens to pay if they start rough-housing it with us," answered the young logger; and it was not in a boastful spirit that he spoke, for Eli usually showed a modest disposition; only he, too, had taken a great fancy to the new chum who had been sent to them by such a freak of fortune, and Cuthbert's intimation that the other must be the victim of oppression ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... The Treasury, unimportant in the world's affairs before 1861, suddenly became one of the greatest dealers in credit. Its debt of $2,808,000,000, outstanding in October, 1865, affected the interests and solidity of international finance, and indicated, as well, resources of which even boastful Americans had been unaware in 1861. One item in the debt, however, was a menace to the security of the whole, which was but little stronger than its ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... that he would not quit the sheep country without proving that he had in him the mettle of a flockmaster. Hector Hall had been given to understand the same thing. In fact, Mackenzie thought, it looked as if he had been running with his eyes shut, making boastful pledges. ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... pseudo-Messiahs have been) and Kalki again became a hope for the future. Vincent Smith (Hist. of India, ed. III. p. 320) intimates that Yasodharman performed considerable exploits but was inordinately boastful.] ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... wanted to hold her own with the other charwomen who were represented in the trenches. So she assumed the relationship of an anonymous marraine towards a certain unknown namesake in the Black Watch, and made boastful pretence of having received letters from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... thought, on one side too mild and on the other as too stringent. Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone both opposed it; the latter because the change was wanted by English Catholics rather than by the Vatican. He condemned the vanity and boastful spirit of the papal documents, but contended that his fellow Catholic countrymen should not suffer for that. The difficulty of applying it to Ireland, where the system objected to already existed, was pointed out. ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... all other nations, they leave us, luckily, trap-doors and back-doors open, by which we strangers, less favoured by nature, may arrive at a share of their advantages. And thus they are in some respects like a boastful landlord, who exalts the value and flavour of his six-years-old mutton, while he is delighted to dispense a share of it to all the company. In short, you, whose proud family, and I, whose hard fate, made us soldiers of fortune, have the pleasant recollection that in the British service, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... undertaken to protect our citizens from proper treatment in foreign lands. We continue steadily to insist on the application of the Monroe Doctrine to the Western Hemisphere. Unless our attitude in these and all similar matters is to be a mere boastful sham we can not afford to abandon our naval programme. Our voice is now potent for peace, and is so potent because we are not afraid of war. But our protestations upon behalf of peace would neither receive ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Bank had not languished before, and did not cease to occupy a front place in the attention of the principal of that establishment now. In boastful proof of his promptitude and activity, as a remarkable man, and a self-made man, and a commercial wonder more admirable than Venus, who had risen out of the mud instead of the sea, he liked to show how little his domestic affairs abated his business ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... name; but even a name was now sufficient for the general disaffection to rally round. A pamphlet which was at the time disseminated amongst the people openly called him the heir of Holland; and his engraved portrait, which was publicly exhibited, bore the boastful inscription:— ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the city, however, Lyle came aboard of the locomotive in quite a muddled condition. He was talkative and boastful now. He began to tell of the many famous special runs he had made, of the big salaries he had earned, and of his general proficiency as ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... an element of dramatic interest in the record, when one considers that here, in the delightful regions of Port Royal, the descendants of the Puritan and the Huguenot, after two centuries, came face to face,—and that sons of Massachusetts, reversing the boastful threat which has become historic, here called the roll, upon South-Carolina soil, of her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... of telling Susan that the buttons on Ella's dress had been of sterling silver, "made right from Papa's mine," and that the little ship Kenneth held had cost twenty-five dollars. All of her conversation was boastful, in an inoffensive, faded sort of way. She told Susan about her wedding, about her gown and her mother's gown, and the cost of her music, and the number ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... at this boastful assumption of importance, but seeing that the boy was in earnest, she humored him ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... is," the Count declared severely. "I am here to-night at the Emperor's orders to tell you from him that, though he appreciates all your efforts on his behalf, he disapproves of your drunkenness and your boastful tongue." ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... after speaking the submarine boy realized that this must have had a boastful sound. ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... alluding to the destruction of other religions and the propagation of his own. It does not seem to have been the "vanity" of Hakem which induced him to introduce a new religion. The curious point in the new faith is that Hamza, the son of Ali, the real founder of the Unitarian religion, (such is its boastful title,) was content to take a secondary part. While Hakem was God, the one Supreme, the Imam Hamza was his Intelligence. It was not in his "divine character" that Hakem "hated the Jews and Christians," but in that of a Mahometan bigot, which he displayed in the earlier years of his reign. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... a smith's bellows. But I was filled with wonder at all that passed, and could form no guess at the bond that united two such dissimilar men, nor at the reason so much value was attached to the services of a boastful, clattering, pushing, inquisitive ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... battle, nor expose his troops to any danger, but to pursue steadily the same policy which he himself had followed. He had, however, been in Rome only a short time before tidings came that Minucius had fought a battle and gained a victory. There were boastful and ostentatious letters from Minucius to the Roman senate, lauding the exploit which he ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... The Reformatory, a boastful, brick building set in grounds that seemed freshly starched and ironed, had a discoloured door that would have frowned and threatened of its own accord, even without the printed warnings pasted to its panels stating that no application for admission, with or without permits, would ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... not force his caresses upon me as much as he did at first, but used to call me his little nun, and say in his usual boastful way that he would make me in time eager for that from which I turned away now. Every day as our marriage came nearer I dreaded it more, and felt as if I must run away to the ends of the earth rather than endure it; but ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... and in boastful emphasis, he bends lower to observe its effect. Not in her face, still covered with the serape, but her form, in which he can perceive a tremor from head to foot. She shudders, and ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... deceived in my estimate of myself,—who by my vigilance, and anxiety, by the opinions which I have delivered, and by the dangers too of which I have encountered great numbers, by reason of the most bitter hatred which all impious men bear me, have at least, (not to seem to say anything too boastful,) conducted myself so as to be no injury to the republic. And as this is the case, do you think that I ought to have no consideration ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... "O, by thy father's head! by thine own soul! Art thou not Rustum? speak! art thou not he?" But Rustum eyed askance the kneeling youth, And turn'd away, and spake to his own soul:— "Ah me, I muse what this young fox may mean! False, wily, boastful, are these Tartar boys. For if I now confess this thing he asks, And hide it not, but say: Rustum is here! He will not yield indeed, nor quit our foes, But he will find some pretext not to fight, And praise my fame, and proffer courteous gifts A belt or sword ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... and boastful," interrupted Bertalda, "and she cannot prove that I am the child of these low people. My noble parents, I beg you to take me from this company and out of this city, where they are ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... Everything to admire but the water supply, the sanitation, the Huns and Hunnesses and a few other beastlinesses. One can admire even the statue of Wissmann, the great explorer, that looks with fixed eyes to the Congo in the eye of the setting sun. He is symbolical of everything that a boastful Germany can pretend to. For at his feet is a native Askari looking upward, with adoring eye, to the "Bwona Kuba" who has given him the priceless boon of militarism, while with both hands the soldier lays a flag—the imperial flag of Germany—across a prostrate lion at his feet. ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... on—for he was not a man of facile or boastful speech—by the eyes of Rachel Henderson, and those slight gestures or movements by which from time to time when the talk flagged she would set it ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his anxious eye Where Britain's banner waved along the sky; And, graced with spoils of many fields of blood, Cornwallis boastful on a bulwark stood. Where York and Gloster's rocky towers bestride Their parent stream, Virginia's midmost tide, He camp'd his hundred nations, to regain Their force, exhausted in the long campaign; ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... marvellous induced him to believe it. On the night before the assault on Seringapatam, he was absurdly angry with me, and with others, for treating the whole thing as a fable. A foolish wrangle followed; and Herncastle's unlucky temper got the better of him. He declared, in his boastful way, that we should see the Diamond on his finger, if the English army took Seringapatam. The sally was saluted by a roar of laughter, and there, as we all thought that ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... Dick Whittington,' wrote Mat, in his happy, boastful way; 'all night long the bells were saying to me, "Turn again, turn again, Mat O'Brien, for fortune is before you." I could hear them in my dreams—and then the next morning came a letter from Mr. Turner. Dear old ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... way. Tolstyakov, a friend of mine, is always obliged to take off his pudding basin when he goes into any public place where other people wear their hats or caps. People think he does it from slavish politeness, but it's simply because he is ashamed of his bird's nest; he is such a boastful fellow! Look, Nastasya, here are two specimens of headgear: this Palmerston"—he took from the corner Raskolnikov's old, battered hat, which for some unknown reason, he called a Palmerston—"or this jewel! Guess the price, Rodya, what do you suppose ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... husband? and wouldst thou take away my son's dudaim also?' And Rachel said, 'See, Jacob shall be thine to-night for thy son's dudaim.' But Leah insisted, 'Jacob is mine, and I am the wife of his youth,' whereupon Rachel, 'Be not boastful and overweening. To me he was betrothed first, and for my sake he served our father fourteen years. Thou art not his wife, thou wast taken to him by cunning instead of me, for our father deceived me, and put me out of the way the night of thy nuptials, so that Jacob could not ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... there was no living creature under the sun, human or otherwise, that walked upon two legs, that he could not pommel to death, with more or less ease, by means of his fists alone. And in this conviction he was not far wrong. Yet it must not be supposed that Jo Bumpus was a boastful man or a bully. Far from it. He was so thoroughly persuaded of his invincibility that he felt there was no occasion to prove it. He therefore followed the natural bent of his inclinations, which led him ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... than a year there would descend upon it the baleful shadow of the Great War. Much in the old Germany appealed powerfully to our son, and even of the new Germany, with its energy and its zeal for learning, he was something of an admirer. But he hated in modern Germany its brazen materialism and boastful arrogance. He attributed the change in the spirit of the German people to the hardness of their Prussian taskmasters, whose yoke was submissively borne because of the glamour of the military victories achieved ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... What would you do in my position? Would you drop the war where it is? Or would you prosecute it in future with elder-stalk squirts charged with rose water? Would you deal lighter blows rather than heavier ones? Would you give up the contest, leaving any available means unapplied? I am in no boastful mood. I shall not do more than I can, and I shall do all I can, to save the government, which is my sworn duty as well as my personal inclination. I shall do nothing in malice. What I deal with is too vast ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... a piece of intense tragic horror follows. The messenger tells the names of the champions who are to assault the gates. As he names them and the boastful or impious mottoes on their shields, the King names the Theban champions who are to quell their pride in the fear of the gods. Five of the insolent attackers are mentioned, then the only righteous ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... spirit. More and more each article of furniture will grow to be an essential part of the home, dear for its comfort, and beautiful in its fitness and simplicity. More and more you will learn the worthlessness of boastful fashion, and the exceeding ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... the leadership of the insurgent rabble he thinks to restrain their ferocity and thus earn the thanks of the supreme authority.—It remained for Schiller to convert this rude self-helper in the age of expiring feudalism into a savage anarchist in the boastful age of enlightenment. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... with metals and coins, is contained in the word sterling. We speak of "sterling qualities" or a "sterling character" in praising people for being straightforward and truthful, and not boastful. But the expression originally applied only to metals and coins. Sterling gold or silver is gold or silver of a certain standard of purity and not mixed with too much of any ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... that sort of thing. It aroused at once their emulation and their condemnation of each other. He seized the opportunity, but—for some reason, he knew not why—awkwardly and clumsily, with a simulated pathos that was lachrymose, a self-assertion that was boastful, and a dramatic manner that was unreal. ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Stories grew in terms of prodigious achievement as they passed from tongue to tongue, and the scant regard for anything approaching the truth in these matters became a national eccentricity. The habitant was boastful in all that concerned himself or his race; never did a people feel more firmly assured that it was the salt of the earth. He was proud of his ancestry, and proud of his allegiance; and so are his descendants of today even though their allegiance ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... temper and calling one another bad names over the sad case of Little-Faith, had tried to tell one another why that unhappy pilgrim's faith was so small, and how both their own faith and his might from that day have been made more. Hopeful, for some reason or other, was in a rude and boastful mood of mind that day, and Christian was more tart and snappish than we have ever before seen him; and, altogether, the opportunity of learning something useful out of Little-Faith's story has been all but lost to us. But, now, since there are so many of Little-Faith's kindred ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... without knowledge and given to avarice and folly and sinful practices men will accept with joy the gifts made by wicked people with words of contempt. And, O son of Kunti, the kings of the earth, with hearts wedded to sin without knowledge and always boastful of their wisdom, will challenge one another from desire of taking one another's life. And the Kshatriyas also towards the end of such a period will become the thorns of the earth. And filled with avarice and swelling with pride and vanity and, unable and unwilling to protect (their ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of animals," replied Rat. "So simple, so good-natured, and so affectionate. Perhaps he's not very clever—we can't all be geniuses; and it may be that he is both boastful and conceited. But he has got some great qualities, ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... bacon and fish was shortly provided, and as the boys set to work upon it, Tom recounted (and adorned) his adventures. They were a vain and boastful company of heroes when the tale was done. Then Tom hid himself away in a shady nook to sleep till noon, and the other pirates got ready ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... an evil, but that it is possible for a man who is poor and has no office ([Greek: anarchonti)] and enjoys no honor to be happy; or to show yourself to them as rich and in power? For the second of these things belong to a man who is boastful, silly, and good for nothing. And consider by what means the pretence must be supported. It will be necessary for you to hire slaves and to possess a few silver vessels, and to exhibit them in public, if it is possible, though they are often the same, and to attempt to conceal the fact that they ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... eager to lay hands on his prize, just as though the big greenback might recover, and hop into the pond before his very eyes, that possibly Steve was not quite as careful as his boastful words would indicate. ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... and ever her eyes shone more and more, and ever she crept closer to him. Eric's brain was afire, though his heart was cold and dead. He laughed loud and mightily, he told great tales of deeds that he had done, growing boastful in his folly, and still Swanhild's eyes shone more and more, and still she crept closer, wooing him in ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... talc, which are resplendent in the midst of a sheet of water, which acts as a reflector beneath the burning tropical sun." So are explained those massive domes of gold, those obelisks of silver, and all those marvels of which the boastful and enthusiastic minds of the Spaniards afforded them a glimpse. Did Raleigh believe really in the existence of this city of gold, for the conquest of which he was about to sacrifice so many lives? Was he thoroughly convinced himself, or did he not ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... on his recovery, Tip Branders had been inclined to be boastful. He had shown his boldness by his thieving exploits and by daring to face the steady rifle fire of Private Hal Overton, United States Army. But when the sentence of the court came upon him Tip ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... curve is that angle which placing a line there shows a regular chance to be fitting. This is so boastful. ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... point of the sword. Gallus hesitated, but his men induced him to risk an engagement. Three thousand legionaries, some hastily recruited Belgic auxiliaries, and a mob of peasants and camp-followers, who were as cowardly in action as they were boastful before it, came pouring out simultaneously from all the gates, hoping with their superior numbers to surround the Batavians. But these were experienced veterans. They formed up into columns[298] in deep formation that defied assault on front, flank, or rear. They thus pierced our ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... yet how hopeful he could be: How in good fortune and in ill, the same: Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he, Thirsty for gold, nor feverish ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... boastful confidence was present among the pilots with whom McGee and Larkin were daily associated, but fortunately it was somewhat counterbalanced by the long-delayed orders sending the squadron to the front. April slipped away and May came. Still no orders. It was maddening! Yancey, Fouche, Hampden, ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... having sprung from the lower ranks of society, it has been supposed, wrongly, that they had received no education, and that they owed their success solely to their fighting ability. Augereau, in particular, has been very badly judged. He has been represented as boastful, hard, noisy and nasty. This is an error, for although he had a stormy youth, and fell into some political misconceptions, he was kind, polite and affectionate, and I can assure you that of the five marshals under whom I have served, it was he who did most to lessen the evils of war, who was most ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... she has already spoken frankly of her own appetit sensuel, and she proceeds to show this in the fashion which makes the fifteenth century and the early sixteenth a sort of trough of animalism between the altitudes of Mediaeval and Renaissance passion. Her lover turns out to be an utter cad, boastful, blabbing, and almost cowardly (he tells her in the usual stolen church interview, Je crains merveilleusement monsieur votre mari). But it makes not the slightest difference; nor does the at last awakened wrath of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... two disputants was not without effect. The calm, clear reasoning of the Reformer, so gently and modestly presented, appealed to minds that turned in disgust from Eck's boastful ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... him by Deacon Brown, and its possession had made him very proud and boastful. It was the one thing Davie ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... translation of his notes to a young man who modified them to suit his own notions. Far from taking the scrupulous care to be exact which distinguishes modern editors, he exaggerated facts; and, dwelling too much on the personal qualities of the traveller, he gave to the narrative of the journey a boastful tone ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... some scepter'd Murderer's fate! When shall scepter'd SLAUGHTER cease? Awhile He crouch'd, O Victor France! Beneath the light'ning of thy Lance, With treacherous dalliance wooing PEACE. But soon up-springing from his dastard trance The boastful, bloody Son of Pride betray'd His hatred of the blest and blessing Maid. One cloud, O Freedom! cross'd thy orb of Light And sure, he deem'd, that Orb was quench'd in night: For still does MADNESS roam on GUILT'S bleak ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... agile: I sprang up before him. A hearty kissing I got for a welcome, and some boastful triumph, which I swallowed as well as I could. He checked himself in his exultation to demand, "But is there anything the matter, Janet, that you come to meet me at such an hour? ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... rather boastful, and due in a great measure to the fact that they all, himself included, felt that, for the present at any rate, they had no danger to encounter, but he ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... precocious, and had a most intelligent face, with great, flaming, tender eyes. In disposition Pope was the reverse of admirable. He was extremely sensitive, petulant, and supercilious; fierce and even coarse in his attacks on opponents; boastful of his self-acquired wealth and of his intimacy with the nobility. The great redeeming feature of his character was his tender devotion to his ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... be sure, but through the regular conventional channels of politics, and if he desired to step on a law, he stepped on it, and a court came running up behind him, and legalized his transaction. He sneered at reformers, and mocked God, did John Barclay in those days. He grew arrogant and boastful, and strutted in his power like a man in liquor with the vain knowledge that he could increase the population of a state or a group of states, or he could shrivel the prosperity of a section of the country by his whim. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... certainty. They are, however, interesting as records of the piety and religious feelings of the sovereigns of Babylon, and as affording numerous topographical notices of that famous city; while the boastful language of the inscription will often remind the reader of Nebuchadnezzar's words in Dan. iv. 30: "Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?" ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... things that make a boy respected by his younger brothers, and admired by his still younger sisters. They of course have a good deal to tell him. The setter puppies must be inspected. A match is being got up with the village eleven, who are boastful and confident in the possession of a bowling curate. To this the family hero rejoins that "he will crump the parson," a threat not so awful as it sounds. There is a wasps' nest which has been carefully preserved for this eventful ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... meant to eat something. But another man had come into the game with a roll of money and a boastful manner. Casey rubbed his cramped leg and hunched down in his chair again and called for a stack of blues. Casey, I may as well confess, had been calling for stacks of blues and reds and whites ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... assembled and assembling company, sufficiently indicated the convivial character of the scene about to be enacted within. Let us enter. Around a long and richly-furnished table, in the principal apartment, were just seated those who deemed themselves the elite of that boastful army. Its notorious chief, the weak and wise, vain-glorious and energetic Burgoyne, occupied the post of honor, at the head, and the fair hostess, the amiable, learned, and vivacious Countess of Reidesel, the foot of the table: while, at the sides, were ranged, according ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... reign. After the hats came a burning of fish panniers defective in measure; while in the reign of Edward III. some false chopins (wine measures) were destroyed. This was rough justice, but still the seizures seem to have been far fewer than they would be in our boastful epoch. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... state of abstraction, "shows, with great liveliness of colouring, how our Scotch pride and poverty make liars and braggarts of us; and yet the knave, whose every third word to an Englishman is a boastful lie, will, I warrant you, be a true and tender friend and follower to his master, and has perhaps parted with his mantle to him in the cold blast, although he himself walked in cuerpo, as the Don says.—Strange! that courage and fidelity—for ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... clothes after our return home, washed the soot and dirt from our hands and faces, and while we were thus employed a modest rap was heard at the door, and who should enter but Mr. Steel Spring, looking as important, defiant, and boastful as ever. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... it seems, a tradition, that from the three first articles of this oath, the first founders of a certain boastful, worshipful fraternity (who pretend to derive their origin from the earliest times) borrowed both the hint and form of their establishment; and that their pretended derivation from the first Adam is a forgery, it being only from the first Adam Tiler: see ADAM TILER. At the admission of a new brother, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... in all the phases of Jewish life. With some it was a religion of ceremony,—of prayers and fastings, tithes and boastful alms, fringes and phylacteries. But Joseph and Mary belonged to the simpler folk, who, while they reverenced the scribes as teachers, knew not enough of their subtlety to have substituted barren rites for sincere love for the God of their fathers and childlike trust in his mercy. Jesus knew not ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... bugler, by marching around him, making faces. It gave me a queer feeling to see a grown-up man indulging in the tactics of a spoiled child, but I have heard many people express the opinion, in which I now heartily agree, that the Germans are a childish sort of people. They are stupidly boastful, inordinately fond of adulation and attention, and peevish and sulky when they cannot have their own way. I tried to imagine how a young German boy would have been treated by one of our doctors, and laughed to myself at ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... then was dark and solemn disproof of her belief. He did not need to speak. His repetition of that savage, almost boastful blow on his breast added only to the dignity, and not to the ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... the sun with fans and veils, as only the stately gentlewomen do in Germany and the Netherlands. As a people they are stout-hearted, vehement, eager, cruel in war, zealous in attack, little fearing: death; not revengeful, but fickle, presumptuous, rash, boastful, deceitful, very suspicious, especially of strangers, whom they despise. They are full of courteous and hypocritical gestures and words, which they consider to imply good manners, civility, and wisdom. They are well spoken, and very hospitable. They feed well, eating much meat, which-owing to the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... their several opponents. The Caledonia was effective in putting the Queen Charlotte out of action. When the larger British ships surrendered, the smaller craft were compelled to follow the example, and the squadron yielded to Perry after three hours of battle. It was in no boastful strain but as the laconic fact that he sent his famous message to the nation. He had met the enemy and they were all his. It was leadership—brilliant and tenacious—which had employed makeshift vessels, odd ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... mere boastful talk will not lick Germany. Guns, and the men behind them are the only things that will do the job. There is only one way for us of the A. E. F.—the men behind the guns—to bring about the peace which the world craves, and that ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... present which we may not forget, for in it our thankfulness, if it is real, must culminate. What a change has a century wrought for us! How unlike is 1884 to 1784! I do not much believe, my brethren, in numbering the people. I am sure that any boastful or vain-glorious numbering is but an evil thing. But surely when "a little one" has "become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation," we may gratefully recognize the merciful guidance and blessing of the Lord, Who has "hastened it in his time." In 1784, ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... words left me gasping, and fearing that I had been too boastful for politeness, I hastened to inform him that "although the balloon was very big, it was also bu'sted, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... HAVE to whistle for us to get out of their way. If I may do so, without appearing boastful, I think I can honestly say that our one small boat, during that week, caused more annoyance and delay and aggravation to the steam launches that we came across than all the other craft on the river ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... as to which was the most beautiful. When their strife was at its height, a Bramble from the neighboring hedge lifted up its voice, and said in a boastful tone: "Pray, my dear friends, in my presence at least cease from such ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... father talk like this before. She had often heard these oracular hints of some grand event looming mighty in the immediate future; but she had never seen the vague prophecy accomplished. Always a schemer, and always alternating between the boastful confidence of hope and the peevish bewailings of despair, the Captain had built his castle to-day to sit among its ruins to-morrow, ever since she had ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... that he take a correspondent attitude. Were he sinless, the religion suited to him would be the mere utterance of law, and he might stand up before it with the serene brow of an obedient subject of the Divine government; though even then, not with a proud and boastful temper. It would be out of place for him, to plead guilty when he was innocent; or to cast himself upon mercy, when he could appeal to justice. If the creature's acceptance be of works, then it is no more of grace, ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... helmeted with snow, its sides, especially east and north, seamed and ridged and jagged, the gorges filled with snow, the beetling cliffs jutting dark and threatening, bearing huge drifts upon their shoulders. Torrey's Peak actually seemed to be calling over to us like some boastful Hercules, "Ah, ha! you have climbed my mild-tempered brother, but I dare you to climb me!" For reasons of our own ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... still strong and genial, able and willing to do and suffer great things, as soon as the rational way of doing and suffering them becomes plain. Had I written this book merely to please my own fancy, this would be a paltry criterion, at once illogical and boastful; but I wrote it, God knows, in the fear of God, that I might speak what seems to me the truth of God. I trusted in Him to justify me, in spite of my own youth, inexperience, hastiness, clumsiness; and He has done it; and, I trust, will do ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... letter with feelings which can better be imagined than described. He had already written home in the most boastful manner about the invitation he had received, and he knew that before he could contradict it, it would have been generally reported by his gratified parents to his city friends. And now he would be compelled to explain that he had ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... boastful old thing, and even misfortune could not humble her. I was so annoyed that I felt coldly even toward Antonia and listened unsympathetically when she told me her father was ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... experiences any shock at Romeo's forgetting his Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the yearning of his youthful imagination, and rushing into his passion for Juliet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy; and we should remark the boastful positiveness of Romeo in a love of his own making, which is never shown where love is really ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... this, I think I see upon the countenance of the reader signs of dissatisfaction mingled with contempt, when he hears declarations which sound so boastful and extravagant; and yet they are beyond comparison more moderate than those advanced by the commonest author of the commonest philosophical programme, in which the dogmatist professes to demonstrate the simple nature of the soul, or the necessity of a primal being. Such a dogmatist promises ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... their very language with a grace which the haughty Islanders who oppress them never attained. They are independent, yet never insolent; elegant, yet always respectful; and brave, but not in the least boastful." ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... declared war against Greece, all his courtiers encouraged his boastful temper, which forgot how unsubstantial his grounds for confidence were. One declared that the Greeks would not endure to hear the news of the declaration of war, and would take to flight at the first rumour of his approach; another, that with such a vast army Greece could not ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... his own accord—unless he was a dealer. And then usually he was not really a true-born Briton. He waits to see what is being hung. He has these things now because he thinks they are right, not because they are beautiful, just as he used to have the Stag at Bay and the Boastful Hound. It is Leighton now; it was Landseer then. Really I believe that very soon the ladies' papers will devote a column to pictures. Something in this style. 'Smart people are taking down their Rossetti's Annunciations now, and are hanging Gambler ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... savages to pillage and murder. While they thought him a devil, he passed in Canada for a martyred saint. He was neither the one nor the other, but a man with the qualities and faults of a man,—fearless, resolute, enduring; boastful, sarcastic, often bitter and irritating; a vehement partisan; apt to see things, not as they were, but as he wished them to be; given to inaccuracy and exaggeration, yet no doubt sincere in opinions and genuine in zeal; hating the English more than he loved the Indians; calling himself ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... intellectual and social life of the Italians, though much reduced in vigor, was therefore still, as formerly, concentrated in cities marked by distinct local qualities and boastful of their ancient glories. The courts of Ferrara and Urbino continued to form centers for literary and artistic coteries. Venice remained the stronghold of mental unrestraint and moral license, where ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... it seemed to those assassins that the Marquis had been neither mad nor boastful when he had spoken of strange things he had learned beyond the Alps, or else it was they themselves were turned light-headed, for the doors of a cupboard at the far end of the room flew open suddenly, and from between them stepped the stalwart figure of Martin de Garnache, a grim ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... ranted, cursed and swore with such frantic violence that superficial observers set him down for the wildest of libertines. The multitude was unable to conceive that a man who, even when sober, was more furious and boastful than others when they were drunk, and who seemed utterly incapable of disguising any emotion or keeping any secret, could really be a coldhearted, farsighted, scheming sycophant. Yet such a man was Talbot. In truth his hypocrisy was of a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... putting a new tooth in the "loafer rake," had set a fine, mellow "wine-sap," from which he had taken a bite, on the shed sill beside him. "Got a pile of those fellows in my hoard," he remarked, with a boastful wink. "Have you got a hoard ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... justice. His conversations with these, especially with the French mixed-bloods, who inflamed his prejudices against the Americans, all had their influence in making of the wily Sioux a determined enemy to the white man. While among his own people he was always affable and genial, he became boastful and domineering in his dealings with the hated race. He once remarked that "if we wish to make any impression upon the pale-face, it is necessary to put ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... on an exceedingly bold front. Realizing that he was cornered, he adopted a lightly boastful air. ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... killed and captured within sight of four thousand troops who refused to go to the help of their comrades. Disgusted and defeated, Van Rensselaer turned over his command to Brigadier-General Alexander Smith, a boastful Irish friend of Madison from Virginia, who issued burlesque proclamations about an invasion of Canada, and then declined to risk an engagement, although he had three Americans to one Englishman. This closed the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the glory which made their hearts sick. His exultation was boundless. The inscriptions on the medals which he struck to commemorate his success, the letters by which he enjoined the prelates of his kingdom to sing the Te Deum, were boastful and sarcastic. His people, a people among whose many fine qualities moderation in prosperity cannot be reckoned, seemed for a time to be drunk with pride. Even Boileau, hurried along by the prevailing enthusiasm, forgot the good sense and good ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... things that I really need to know," was the mildly boastful retort. "But you see, now, how foolish my suspicions were. Mr. Galbraith meets Mr. Griswold just as he would any other nice young man; and Charlotte Farnham, who recognized the robber even when he was disguised as a deck-hand, sees Mr. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... skilful (commander) strikes a decisive blow, and stops. He does not dare (by continuing his operations) to assert and complete his mastery. He will strike the blow, but will be on his guard against being vain or boastful or arrogant in consequence of it. He strikes it as a matter of necessity; he strikes it, but not from a wish ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... came round all the company were either asleep or so full of strong drink that they could not listen, so in the end he made no vow whatsoever. Yet to the last he was as sober as when he first entered the hall, and he remembered ever afterwards the boastful oaths that had been made. Many of his fellow vikings—as Thorkel the High, Bui the Thick, and Vagn Akison — declared that they would but follow their chief to Norway, while others of Sweyn's following in ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... ship, the Rachel, was descried, bearing directly down upon the Pequod, all her spars thickly clustering with men. At the time the Pequod was making good speed through the water; but as the broad-winged windward stranger shot nigh to her, the boastful sails all fell together as blank bladders that are burst, and all life fled from ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... in dumb charade; first his surname, which he had inherited from his father, and then his Christian name, which his mother had chosen for him at his baptism. These names were sacred to him, and although there may have been a little boastful sound about them, he had always scorned ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... Master Boastful!" said old Margery. "Mind the old saying, 'Brag is a good dog, but holdfast ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... palace than this of mine here.' He shook his finger heavily and uttered with a boastful defiance: 'Shalt not say I shower no gifts on her. Shalt not say she has no state. I ha' sent her seven jennets this day. I shall go bring her golden apples on the morrow. Scents she has had o' me; French gowns, Southern fruits. No man nor wench shall say I be not ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... who now hailed the Policy in not quite so boastful a voice as when the vessels ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke
... the voice, and he was standing, in considerable perplexity, to receive Corey, when the young man opened his painted glass door. It was a hot afternoon, and Lapham was in his shirt sleeves. Scarcely a trace of the boastful hospitality with which he had welcomed Corey to his house a few days before lingered in his present address. He looked at the young man's face, as if he expected him to despatch whatever unimaginable affair ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the Jews are so haughty and boastful. They see that Shem, their father, alone has the promise of eternal blessing, which is given through Christ. So far, so good. But when they believe that the promise pertains not to faith but rather to the carnal descent, they are in error. This subject ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... declaring his musical powers in his boastful way. If he chose he could rip out the hearts of a dead Municipal Council with a violin, and could set a hospital for paralytics a-dancing. He would have fiddled the children of Hamelin away from the Pied Piper. Didn't Blanquette ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... since met such characters, who are very boastful and bold in the company of lads younger than themselves, or of persons whom they think will believe them, but cautious and silent in the presence of those whom they have sufficient discernment to perceive at once take them at their true value. Observe one of those fellows the ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... the old man my project, and he scoffed at the smallness of my commodity trying to urge me to some darker bargain, but could not move me from my purpose. And then he told me tales with a somewhat boastful air of the big business, the great bargains that had passed through his hands. A man had once run in there to try and exchange death, he had swallowed poison by accident and had only twelve hours to live. That sinister old man had been able to oblige him. A client ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... ever came to town who were not entertained at Wills Forest. This could not be possible now, but previous to the war it was not at all impossible, and, during the war, at times, we received whole families of refugees. I do not mention these facts in a boastful spirit, but only as a sample of the old customs ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... isolated in a dug-out, holding the reins of his wires over a section of line adjoining the section we had just left. Before we proceeded we must look over his shelter from shell-storms. The only time that British generals become boastful is over their dug-outs. They take all the pride in them of the man who has bought a plot of land and built himself a home; and, like him, they keep on making improvements and calling attention to them. I must say that this was one of the best shelters I have seen anywhere in the tornado belt; ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... a boastful word, but it was impossible to help seeing what a hero the man had been—brave, true, resourceful, unselfish. He sat there in his little room and made those things live again for his hearers. By a lift ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the only wonder is that he was granted a trial at all. Through all the trying hours of that ordeal how like a hero did he deport himself! Grand in his assaults on the citadel of slavery, he became grander still as he calmly met his enemies, and told them of his purposes. Never boastful, he assumes nothing, but at the end, when asked to say why sentence of death should not be imposed upon him, he said: "The Court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the Law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That ...
— John Brown: A Retrospect - Read before The Worcester Society of Antiquity, Dec. 2, 1884. • Alfred Roe |
