"Boasting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... between seven and eight hundred men, of whom about a hundred and twenty were French, and the rest mission Indians.[77] They declared that they would lay waste all the settlements on the Connecticut,—meaning, it seems, to begin with Hatfield. "This army," says Williams, "went away in such a boasting, triumphant manner that I had great hopes God would discover and disappoint their designs." In fact, their plans came to nought, owing, according to French accounts, to the fright of the Indians; for a soldier having ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... everywhere driven back, and Hokiuping returned to China rich in booty, among it the golden images used as religious emblems by one of the Tartar princes. Returning with a larger force, he swept far through their country, boasting on his return that he had put thirty thousand Tartars to the sword. As a result, two of the princes and a large number of their followers surrendered to Vouti, and were disarmed and dispersed through the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... as if I were boasting, but this is something for a young Englishman to be able to say in a country which, though it is the veritable El Dorado of poor Drake's dreams, and has possibly a future of wealth and prosperity before it when it comes under the rule of the Anglo-Saxon ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... topsy-turvy once more. The seventh Janissary regiment, when the two-and-thirty Janissaries returned to them with bloody swords boasting of their deed, rushed upon them and cut them to pieces. The new Janissary Aga was shot dead within his own gates. Kabakulak retired within a mosque. Halil Pelivan, who had been appointed Kulkiaja, hid himself in a drain pipe ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... he went on swinging, he heard all the birds quarrelling, and boasting, and fighting, hundreds of them all around, and he said to ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... better spirit. But, Thanksgiving is devoted to good dinners; Christmas and New-Years' days to making presents and compliments; Fast-day to playing at cricket and other games, and the Fourth of July to boasting of the past, rather than to plans how to deserve its ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... did tell the King that he is offered L40,000 to make a peace, and others have been offered money also. It seems the taking of their Bourdeaux fleete thus, arose from a printed Gazette of the Dutch's boasting of fighting, and having beaten the English: in confidence whereof (it coming to Bourdeaux), all the fleete comes out, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... kinds from the Hunter river, he declared she could not have known surpassed anywhere. Then the vegetables were excellent; the potatoes from Van Dieman's Land, were just better than all others in the world; and the dessert certainly in its abundance of treasures justified his boasting that Australia was a grand country for anybody that liked fruit. The growth of the tropics and of the cooler latitudes of England met together in confusion of beauty and sweetness on Mr. Esthwaite's table. There ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... there has been too much complimenting of that sort; and whenever a speaker, whether he is one of ourselves or not, wastes our time in boasting or flattery, I say, let us hiss him. If we have the beginning of wisdom, which is, to know a little truth about ourselves, we know that as a body we are neither very wise nor very virtuous. And to prove this, I will ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... detestation of all Europe. The really efficient weapons with which the philosophers assailed the evangelical faith were borrowed from the evangelical morality. The ethical and dogmatical parts of the Gospel were unhappily turned against each other. On one side was a church boasting of the purity of a doctrine derived from the Apostles, but disgraced by the massacre of St. Bartholomew, by the murder of the best of kings, by the war of Cevennes, by the destruction of Port Royal. On the other side was a sect laughing at the Scriptures, shooting out the tongue at the sacraments, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the smoker was boasting of his unerring ability to tell from a man's looks exactly what city he came from. "You, for example," he said to the man next to him, "you are from New Orleans?" ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various
... the Mahometan might urge in behalf of his prophet, for he might tell the Christian, boasting that Jesus and his Apostles converted the Roman world from idolatry, that they overthrew one system of idolatry, only to build up another, since the worship of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the Saints, and their images was established in a few hundred years after Jesus, and ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... always with the most quiet references to himself. "No man," says one who knew him well, "ever vaunted less of his achievements than Mr. H. I hardly ever heard him speak of those great achievements which form the prominent part of his biography. As for boasting, he was entirely a stranger to it, unless it be that, in his latter days, he seemed proud of the goodness of his lands, and, I believe, wished to be thought wealthy. It is my opinion that he was better pleased to be flattered as to his wealth ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... slight pause. "Baker has rounded up and arrested all persons suspected of corresponding with the rebels, and sent some to Old Capitol Prison, and others through the lines to Richmond, where they can do us no harm. Most of these spies gave themselves away by their secesh talk, or by boasting of their ability ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... known, Joseph Bumble proved to be somewhat of a braggart. He was forever boasting of his connection with the Bumblebee family. And Betsy couldn't say anything to him without his remarking that his cousin Buster Bumblebee's mother, the well-known Queen, ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... so," retorted the other, "nevertheless, without boasting, I may venture to assert—because I can prove it—that I am able to make tables, chairs, chests, and such-like things, besides knowing something of the blacksmith's trade. In regard to doctoring, I am not entitled to practise for fees, not yet being ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... recollection that this was the stump of Liberty Tree! The British soldiers had cut it down, vainly boasting that they could as easily overthrow the liberties of America. Under its shadowy branches, ten years before, the brother of Chief Justice Oliver had been compelled to acknowledge the supremacy of the people by taking the oath which they prescribed. This tree was connected with all the events that ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... so loudly that a rabbit heard him. The rabbit came out of the bushes and sat up on his hind legs. He watched Spread Feather play, and listened to his boasting. ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... slip, and the edge will take off a row of fingers as clean as the guillotine. Tibbald, of course, had his joke about that part of the machinery which is called the 'damsel.' He was a righteous man enough as millers go, but your miller was always a bit of a knave; nor could he forbear from boasting to me how he had been half an hour too soon for ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... you any of the birds that you find for him?" Miss Kitty Cat inquired when Spot was boasting a bit about the sport he and Johnnie had in the woods. "No!" she said, answering her own question. "You're silly to hunt for him. I prefer to do my hunting alone. Then nobody can take the game ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey
... themselves. So with these old Birmingham manufacturers. They were well content, genial, and hospitable. They did not give themselves any fine airs or pretensions; indeed, they were often proud of their success and prosperity, and would sometimes delight in openly boasting of their humble beginnings, not always to the joy and delight of their children who might hear them. They were sociable, hospitable, generous-hearted, open-handed men. They gave bountiful entertainments, not of a mere formal give-and-take character ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... and we are escaped: our help is in the name of the Lord who made the heaven and the earth." Who thought to have seen such a sudden change in Scotland, when all second causes were posting a contrary course? when proud men were boasting and saying, "Bow down that we may go over;" and we laid our "bodies as the ground, and as the streets to them that went over." But now, behold one of God's wonders! So many of all ranks taking the honour and cause of Christ ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... but it was whispered about among the boys, the first boy boasting that he had a talk with the young man magician. If Harry had heard himself called thus, he would have been ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... that poor little Beatrice's story has been indited. Certain it is, that the young woman would never have been immortalized in this way, but for the good which her betters may derive from her example. If your ladyship will but reflect a little, after boasting of the sums which you spend in charity; the beef and blankets which you dole out at Christmas; the poonah-painting which you execute for fancy fairs; the long, long sermons which you listen to at St. George's, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... one who had once saved her life, and to whose care and kindness and forethought she was much indebted. Her present attendant was certainly a gentleman; and to an unprejudiced eye—which hers certainly was not—quite as handsome and distinguished and gallant as was his favored rival, and boasting one advantage over the other in that he bore a titled name—not such a desideratum among American girls at that time, however, as it was afterwards destined to become; and in a girl of the stamp of Miss Katharine Wilton, possibly no ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... enough to do without imitating. If they imitate they should imitate, not any meanness or baseness, but the good only; for the mask which the actor wears is apt to become his face. We cannot allow men to play the parts of women, quarrelling, weeping, scolding, or boasting against the gods,—least of all when making love or in labour. They must not represent slaves, or bullies, or cowards, drunkards, or madmen, or blacksmiths, or neighing horses, or bellowing bulls, or sounding ...
— The Republic • Plato
... seated before a well-filled table, Hector could not preserve his rigidity. He felt the joyous expansion of spirit which follows assured safety after terrible peril. He was himself, young again, once more strong. He told Sauvresy everything; his vain boasting, his terror at the last moment, his agony at the hotel, his fury, remorse, ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... time the tribe has been much encroached upon by the Huwayta't. It still claims, however, as has been said, all the lands between El-Muwaylah and Makna, where they have settlements, and the Jebel Harb, where they feed their camels. They number some twenty-five to thirty tents, boasting that they have hundreds; and, as will appear, their Shaykh, Hasan el-'Ukbi, amuses himself by occasionally attacking and plundering the wretched Maknawis, or people of Makna, a tribe weaker than ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... host devolves the duty of drawing out any of the guests with whose particular specialties he is acquainted, and his manners, too, must at least simulate ease, if he have it not. Let host and hostess refrain from boasting of the price of any article ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... clad in a long dirty apron came into the room from the kitchen and putting a dish on the counter stood eating its contents. He tried to win the admiration of the idlers by boasting. In a blustering voice he called familiarly to women seated at tables along the wall. At some time in his life the cook had worked for a travelling circus and he talked continually of his adventures ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... said, dryly, "you have established the fact that the Southerners come here for the summer and live in great luxury; but what has that to do with the cheapness of living in New York, which you began by boasting?" ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... to show themselves such cowards as to desert their own convictions, and prove false to the interests of multitudes? Rather, say they, let us rejoice, in such a cause, to bear reproach. This is the language of our nature. Nay, such persons come to prize suffering, to make it a matter of pride and boasting. Their rank among themselves is, by and by, determined by the readiness with which they offer themselves as sacrifices for truth and God. Are such persons to be deterred by threats, or the actual infliction ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... but when her husband appears with the children she tells him a white lie. "I have just been boasting to Adela about the skill of my hunting hawk." She has been doing nothing of the kind; but she can not talk about the great event of her ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... in no spirit of boasting that we make this comparison. "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy Name give the praise, for Thy loving mercy and for Thy truth's sake." Yet it is becoming on this one-hundredth anniversary of the consecration of the first bishop of Connecticut ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... have smitten Toothgnasher and slain him, And I smile at the pride of his boasting. One more to my thirty I muster, And, men! say ye this of the battle:— In the world not a lustier liveth Among lords of the steed of the oar-bench; Though by eld of my strength am I stinted To stain the black wound-bird ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... my boy," the captain returned with feeling, "yet I should have greater fear for you if I heard you talk in a self-confident and boasting spirit. Trusting in ourselves we are not safe, but trusting in Jesus we are. We are safe only while we cling to our sure foundation, the Rock Christ Jesus; but our greatest security is in the joyful fact that he holds us fast and will ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... for them there and then, and was very much put out when their owner insisted on having them back. However, shortly afterwards a pair was got for him; and with these on his nose he galloped about the country, exhibiting them to all his neighbors, and boasting of the miraculous power they imparted to his eyes of seeing the world as no one ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... once princes followed a queen and came back boasting. Master, the workers were angry. Be warned, Master, because you and I went together once to the hoard beyond the marshes. Be warned. ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany
... eh?" Garson demanded, still with that gruesome air of boasting. "I got the gun, and the Maxim-silencer thing, off a fence in Boston," he explained. "Say, that thing cost me sixty dollars, and it's worth every cent of the money.... Why, they'll remember me as the first to spring one ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... as one or both birds are usually killed within a few minutes after they are tossed into the pit, very little sport attaches to the contest. The villagers are inordinately proud of their local fighting-cocks, boasting of their prowess as a Bostonian boasts of the Braves or a New Yorker of the Giants, and are always ready to back them to ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... Mr. Ludolph's eyes, Dennis said, earnestly: "Without boasting, I think that I can say that I try to serve you faithfully. If you could see my heart, I am sure you would find that gratitude for your kindness is a part of my motive, as well as my wages. In the same manner, while I do not lose sight of the rich rewards God promises ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... seven years of age, he was on a certain day with other boys, his companions about the same age. Who when they were at play, made clay into several shapes, namely, asses, oxen, birds, and other figures, each boasting of his work, endeavoring ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant
... best player in the world, but for the Knights at chess which jumped about in the most unreasonable and absurd manner without rhyme or reason, here there and everywhere, and the lady who it was said was found engaged and playing with thirty-two men remained single ever afterwards. A rather boasting player once said, "I must win, I have a piece —a (of) head." One answered, "You would be more likely to win, if instead of a piece of a head, you ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... Boasting is always an empty business, which pleases nobody but the boaster, and I have no disposition to boast of what the Democratic Party has accomplished. It has merely done its duty. It has merely fulfilled its explicit promises. But ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... not bear the thought of being superseded by his old chief. In fact, Nelson could not tolerate being placed in a secondary position by any one. As I have already stated, he put Keith's authority at defiance and took responsibilities upon himself, boasting that had they failed he would have ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... it in the depth, it will come out more beautiful: should you contend with it, with great glory will it overthrow the conqueror unhurt before, and will fight battles to be the talk of wives. No longer can I send boasting messengers to Carthage: all the hope and success of my name is fallen, is fallen by the death of Asdrubal. There is nothing, but what the Claudian hands will perform; which both Jupiter defends with his ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... muttered Ivan. "Alexis was ever a brave man, though much given to boasting. Also, barring perhaps myself, he was the most powerful ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... free and able to see me. Meanwhile we go off to luncheon and much talk with some members of the Staff in a house on the village street. Everywhere I notice the same cheerful, one might even say radiant, confidence. No boasting in words, but a conviction that penetrates through all talk that the tide has turned, and that, however long it may take to come fully up, it is we whom it is floating surely on to that fortune which is no blind hazard, but the child of high faith and untiring labour. Of that labour the Somme ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on the road that was always trying what could he pick off others, and he saw the Connemara man—that was the Goban—had a nice cravat, and he thought he would get a hold of that. So he began talking with him, and he was boasting of all the money he had, and the Goban said whatever it was he had three times as much as it, and he with only thirty pounds in the world. And the Scotch rogue thought he would get some of it from him, and he ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... wife across the way. They have the rector to tea twice a year, and keep a page-boy, and are visited by two baronets' wives. They devoted themselves to the education of their orphan niece, and I think I may say without boasting that Mrs. Lombard's conversation shows marked traces of the advantages ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... his daughter your bride, and their kingdom. After he had left you in the valley as food for serpents he was punished for his great crimes by the return of the enemy, who again laid siege to the capital. This happened at the very moment when he was surrounded by his guests, and was boasting of his possession of the air-car, the magic golden ring, and the rest ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... found some refreshment, of which she gently insisted that Madelinette should partake. In another hour from their arrival they were on the road again, with the knowledge that Tardif had changed horses and gone forward four hours before, boasting as he went that when the bombshell he was carrying should burst, the country would stay awake o' nights for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of his sister Spring Crushes and tears the rare enjewelling, And boasting 'I have fairer thing's than these' Plashes amidst the billowy apple-trees His lusty hands, in gusts of scented wind Swirling out bloom till all the air is blind With rosy foam and pelting blossom and mists Of driving vermeil-rain; and, as he lists, The dainty onyx-coronals ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... to me something of a heretic,"[170] he says, espying an enemy; and he fells him to earth. Oliver, too, in a passage which shows that if woman has no active part assigned to her in the poem she had begun to play an important one in real life, slays the caliph and says: Thou at least shalt not go boasting of our defeat, "either to thy wife or to any lady in ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... to Paris, for example, a letter of introduction to the President of the Republic. I don't say this in any boasting spirit. A university professor can always get all the letters of introduction that he wants. Everyone knows that he is too simple to make any commercial use of them. But I never presented this letter to the President. What was the use? ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... cloth, No dwelling for Christ's declining To its crystal candles, of bees-wax both, On the pure, white Scriptures shining. Beside it a hostel for all to frequent, Warm with a welcome for each, Where mouths, free of boasting and ribaldry, vent But modest and innocent speech. These aids to support us my husbandry seeks, I name them now without hiding— Salmon and trout and hens and leeks, And the honey-bees' sweet providing. Raiment ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... behind a rock advised me that there was at least one human habitation within reach, where it might be possible to get information. It was a wretched mud hovel backing on to the rock—its roof of sods being held at the corners by stones—and boasting no window, only the door out of which ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... mouthed out one speech after another with a balanced kind of see-saw, which again and again ran into blank verse. I said, "You have something good for Lincoln, I hear. Any chance of being on?" He replied, "I heed no fairy tales or boasting yarns. When a man says he has a certainty, I tell him to his face that he's a liar. The ways of chance are far beyond our ken, and I can but say that I try. Information I have. From Newmarket I receive daily messages, and I have as much chance of being right as other men have; but you know ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... the awful sight as Billy Mallory's bloody and swollen eyes rolled up and set, while the mucker threw the inert form roughly from him. Quick to the girl's memory sprang Mallory's recent declaration, which she had thought at the time but the empty, and vainglorious boasting of the man in love—"Why I'd die for you, Barbara, ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... makeshift saloons and other places on both sides of the street. It seemed, from what they could glean and put together, that he had stopped drinking when he had arrived at a certain point in his boasting and had announced his intention of sobering up before he "took the bloody, hog-bellied cow-puncher apart, providin' the latter showed." This suited Mormon, who wanted fairly to whip a live opponent, not fight ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... that is vanity," I went on. "But you will learn, sooner or later, the difference between boasting and simple statement of fact. You will learn that I do not boast. What I said is no more a boast than for a man with legs to say, 'I can walk.' Because you have known only legless men, you exaggerate the difficulty of walking. It's as easy for me to ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... willing to allow time to that great chief to arrange his thoughts, Crowsfeather assumed the office of filling the gap. He was far more of a warrior than of an orator, and was listened to respectfully, but less for what he said, than for what he had done. A good deal of Indian boasting, quite naturally, was blended with ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... Papacy. As in 1888 and with the same ceremonies, Leo XIII will receive the Emperor-King of Prussia at the Vatican, and William II, as on that previous occasion will be able to split his sides with laughter on returning to the Quirinal, mimicking the Holy Father and boasting that he has befooled him ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... plain boasting, and Sammy knew it. But Sammy always does have a good opinion of himself. It is one of his faults. He quite lost sight of the fact that it was entirely by accident that he had come over to this swamp. Now that he had guessed who this might be, he was less ...
— The Adventures of Poor Mrs. Quack • Thornton W. Burgess
... herself the Countess Demikoff. This case alone took me nearly six months to unravel, but I did not grudge the time, seeing that I was well paid for my labours, and that I managed to succeed where the police had failed. From that time forward I think I may say without boasting that I have been as successful as any man of my age has a right to expect to be. What is better still, I am now in the happy position of being able to accept or decline business as I choose. It is in many ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... but Napoleon, on hearing his high descent urged as a claim to consideration, is said to have replied, brusquely,—"I don't want any of those people." In his letters to his mother, he recounts his adventures, military and amorous, with frankness, but without boasting; but his confidences soon become very partial, and before she knows it the poor mother has a dangerous rival. We will let him give his own account of the origin of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... Didn't you hear about what happened on the river this afternoon? Tim went there on purpose to meet the parson, and strike up a race. He's been boasting for some time that he would do it. The Lord has given that man much rope, and has suffered him long. But this was too much, and He's ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... shortly afterwards in a League newspaper, loudly boasting of the great victory won by Mr. Dillon, M.P., for the starving and poverty-stricken tenants. Two of these tenants (brothers) were under a yearly rent of L7, 10s. They declared they could only pay L3, ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... faded by wind and weather to delicate mauves and dove colors and greens impossible to describe. Up against the slope a squat 'dobe chapel sat, while just beyond reach of the tide was a funny little pocket-size plaza, boasting a decrepit fountain and an iron fence eaten by the salt. Backing it all was a marvellous verdure, tipped up on edge, or so it seemed, and cleared in ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... evidence also of Monsieur de Merri's unfortunate habit of boasting of conquests. But I was convinced that it could not have been of her that he had boasted. These thoughts, however, were but transient flashings across my sense of the plight in which I had put this unhappy woman by killing Monsieur de Merri. I tried ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... (as I repeat) purely as applying to the question of her machinery for enforcing discipline. This part of her machinery, it will be seen, is unique, and absolutely peculiar to herself. Other universities, boasting no such enormous wealth, cannot be expected to act upon her system of seclusion. Certainly, I make it no reproach to other universities, that, not possessing the means of sequestering their young men from worldly communion, they must abide by the evils of a laxer discipline. It is their ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... his straining throat Grace and shifting beauty float! Sinewy strength is in his reins, And the red blood gallops through his veins; Richer, redder, never ran Through the boasting heart of man. He can trace his lineage higher Than the Bourbon dare aspire,— Douglas, Guzman, or the Guelph, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... that their political system was of almost unrivalled excellence: they held that they were freemen entitled to look down upon foreigners as the slaves of despots. Nor can we say that their satisfaction was without solid grounds. The boasting about English freedom implied some misunderstanding. But it was at least the boast of a vigorous race. Not only were there individuals capable of patriotism and public spirit, but the body politic was capable of continuous energy. During the eighteenth century the British ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... approved method. The storekeeper exemplified it, and having talked about nothing for ten minutes, quietly remarked that young Larrimer was out hunting a scalp, had been drinking most of the morning, and was now about the town boasting of what ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... regretted her He does not know the miseries of ambition and vanity How sad these old memorics are in the autumn Never travel when the heart is troubled! Not more honest than necessary Poor France of Jeanne d'Arc and of Napoleon Redouble their boasting after each defeat Take their levity for heroism The leaves fall! the leaves fall! Universal suffrage, with its accustomed intelligence Were certain ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... see, I don't boast. I despise boasting." She took up her knitting, put on her glasses, closed her lips, and thus announced ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... rest while I awaited the coming of my brothers. When I awoke to consciousness the Nightingale and its golden cage were gone. I came home to my father's city as a beggar and there they told me that my brothers had come just before me bringing with them the Nightingale and boasting of the perils they had been through and the dangers they had faced. But the Nightingale, they told me, hanging in its golden cage beside the fountain, was silent. Yet when I went to ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... return chastier of the foe, To the freed kingdoms of my native land! Then shall our song with loftier cadence flow, Boasting the deeds of thy heroic hand! Scorn not, meanwhile, the feeble lines which thus Thy future glory and success foretell. Live, prince beloved! be brave, be prosperous; Conquer, howe'er opposed,—and ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... I'll give him the credit for that. I came of my own accord because I felt my place was here. So I go round to needlework parties and sewing bees and Red Cross matinees and try to be civil to the German women and listen to their boasting and bragging about their army, their hypocrisy about Belgium, their vilification of the best friends Daddy and I ever had, you English! But doing my duty by my husband does not forbid me to help my friends when they are in danger. That's why you ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... our boasting of the American public school, of the equal opportunity afforded to every child in America, we have the shortest school-term, and the shortest school-day of any of the civilized countries. In the United States of America, there are 106 illiterates ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... way—for what was the use of telling this little girl that his pictures had been hung in the Salon and the Academy, or that he had hopes of one day rising to fame and fortune in his recently adopted profession? He was not given to boasting of his own success, and besides, this child—with her saucy face and guileless eyes—would not understand either his ambitions ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... practical politicians were familiar had their bearing upon the outcome. In New York State, where occurred the worst tug of war, Governor Hill and his friends, while boasting their democracy, were widely believed to connive at the trading of Democratic votes for Harrison in return for Republican votes for Hill. At any rate, New York State was ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... to have charity for these unhappy people, when I consider that, with all this wisdom of which I am boasting, there are certain things in the world so tempting,—for example, the apples of King John, which happily are not to be bought; for, if they were put to sale by auction, I might very easily be led to ruin myself in the purchase, and find ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... Prior Giustiniani, the commodore of the small Maltese squadron. This officer had hitherto fought with no less success than skill, and had already captured four Turkish galleys. The Viceroy of Algiers had, the year before, captured three galleys of Malta, and was fond of boasting of being the peculiar scourge and terror of the Order of St. John. The well-known white cross banner, rising over the smoke of battle, soon attracted his eye and was marked for his prey. Wheeling round like a hawk, he bore down from behind upon the unhappy prior. The three war-worn vessels of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... 21: This idea may be carried out in other instances. The bravery of civilization is not the bravado that savages call bravery, and modesty is now a virtue where boasting used to be reckoned as the necessary complement of bravery. As for hospitality in the old sense, it is not now a 'virtue' ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... with all his boasting about the "centre of culture," has not discovered that the beauty of antiquity is the expression of those virtues which were useful at the time of Theseus, as Stendhal rightly tells us. Individual force, which was everything of old, amounts to almost nothing in our modern ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... to General Lee that his cavalry was so badly demoralized that it should be dismounted; and the citizens of the valley, intensely disgusted with the boasting and swaggering that had characterized the arrival of the "Laurel Brigade" in that section, baptized the action (known to us as Tom's Brook) the "Woodstock Races," and never tired of poking fun at General Rosser about his precipitate and inglorious flight. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... "I occupied the seat in the car in front of you last evening. I heard you exultingly and wickedly boasting how you had deceived a distressed and helpless old man. Mr. Randal, is this the boy who lied to you, and caused you to get ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... had gifts in service that seemed more attractive and desirable than others had, it might be said more showy. And their brethren, not free from the old worldly spirit, were envious and jealous. And these who had such gifts were not free from a boasting spirit. Factions or parties had arisen as a result. It was the bad world spirit of competition and rivalry in among Christ's followers where it should never come, yet where it still does come. In writing ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... placed Charles X., formerly Comte d'Artois, on the throne. Extremely narrow, incapable of understanding the new world which surrounded him, and boasting that he had not modified his ideas since 1789, he prepared a series of reactionary laws—a law by which an indemnity of forty millions sterling was to be paid to emigres; a law of sacrilege; and laws establishing the rights of primogeniture, the ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... solicited to be recalled; Medinaceli, who was appointed his successor, refused to accept the government: Requesens, commendator of Castile, was sent from Italy to replace Alva; and this tyrant departed from the Netherlands in 1574; leaving his name in execration to the inhabitants; and boasting in his turn, that, during the course of five years, he had delivered above eighteen thousand of these rebellious heretics into ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... this while the royal family have not so much as even thought of seeing the wonders of Mr. Katterfelto. This kind of rhodomontade is very finely expressed in English by the word puff, which in its literal sense, signifies a blowing, or violent gust of wind, and in the metaphorical sense, a boasting or bragging. ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... first; "at the sound of a Christian voice, mayhap, he may vanish away; and thou art ever boasting to Father Peter that thou are the most Christian man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... the Count seemed made of iron and was very proud of his strength, often boasting that he should ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... you misjudge me," said the young man; "I am the most practical person in the Empire. You interrupted my boasting to her ladyship of my handiwork. I would have you know I am a capable mechanic and a sword maker. What think you of that, my Lord?" he asked, drawing forth his weapon, ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... overture of Oberon here," he began. "Madame Byelenitsin was boasting when she said she had all the classical music: in reality she has nothing but polkas and waltzes, but I have already written to Moscow, and within a week you will have the overture. By the way," he went on, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... lately deprived. Upon the faith of this promise, Simon worked harder for his patron than he ever was known to do upon any previous occasion; and he was not deficient in that essential characteristic of an electioneerer, boasting. He carried this habit sometimes rather too far, for he not only boasted so as to bully the opposite party, but so as to deceive his friends: over his bottle, he often persuaded his patron that he could command voters, with whom he had no manner of influence. For instance: ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... When others are boasting 'bout fetes and parades, Whar silken hose shine, and glitter cockades, In the low-thatched cot mair pleasure I feel To discourse wi' the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... land was as the garden of Eden before him; behind him it was a desolate wilderness. Encouraged by the omen of some storks leaving their nest, he stormed and destroyed Aquileia, and, razing city after city into heaps of blackened ruins, advanced to Milan, boasting that "where his horses' hoofs trod the grass never grew." Rome awaited with trembling a fate which seemed to threaten unprecedented catastrophe. But in this awful crisis the Pope, Leo I., showed himself the true Defensor civitatis. He headed a splendid embassy ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... exploit, the marauders continued their way up the bay, and turning up into the Sassafras River ravaged the country on both sides of the little stream. After spreading distress far and wide over the beautiful country that borders Chesapeake Bay, the vandals returned to their ships, boasting that they had despoiled the Americans of at least seventy thousand dollars, and injured them to the amount of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... prince, whose principles obliged him to break it? What occasion of disdainful insulting, did it give to the prelatical party, then pleading for the nation's laws, to observe presbyterians, acquiescing in that which suspended and stopped the penal statutes? Yea, what matter of gloriation and boasting was it to papists, to see presbyterians sleeping and succumbing, and not opposing, when, at this opened gap, they were bringing in the Trojan horse ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... this time the mayor was boasting that he had put an end to gambling and prize fighting in the city; but here a swarm of professional gamblers had leagued themselves with the police to fleece the strikebreakers; and any night, in the big open space in front of Brown's, one might ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... in what I am saying of this period, I am chiefly thinking of England, the hopes of the richer classes ran high; and no wonder; for England had by this time become the mistress of the markets of the world, and also, as the people of that period were never weary of boasting, the workshop of the world: the increase in the riches of the country was enormous, even at the early period I am thinking of now—prior to '48, I mean—though it increased much more speedily in times that we have all seen: but part of the jubilant hopes ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... mean time a trotting-match had been got up in the road in front of the tavern, by a small party who had been boasting of the speed and other qualities of their horses; and it being now understood that the trial was to be delayed till the constable's return, the whole company left the house, and went out to the road to witness the performance. ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... rebuked him, Peter said he was ready to follow Him to death. That boasting is too often a forerunner of downfall. Let us walk humbly and softly. We have a great tempter; and, in an unguarded hour, we may stumble and fall and bring ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... our fathers' God has guided us through all dangers. What other nation has come out of the horrors of civil war with victors and vanquished vieing with each other in love for one common country? Where has the hand of the assassin bowed the whole people by the leader's grave? This is no day for boasting or to call over the roll of ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... but soon afterwards obtained from the senate Gallia-Comata [47] also, the senators being apprehensive, that if they should refuse it him, that province, also, would be granted him by the people. Elated now with his success, he could not refrain from boasting, a few days afterwards, in a full senate-house, that he had, in spite of his enemies, and to their great mortification, obtained all he desired, and that for the future he would make them, to their shame, submissive to his pleasure. One of the senators observing, sarcastically: "That will not ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... are known to live almost entirely among themselves abroad, and seldom to interfere in the concerns of foreigners; and lastly, I am afraid that the moral influence of England, of which our papers are so fond of boasting, is very small indeed on the continent generally, and especially in Italy. All the articles the Times ever wrote on Italian affairs did not produce half the effect of About's pamphlet or Cavour's speeches. I am convinced that the influence of English newspapers in Italy is most limited. The ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey |
