"Brandish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forest defile in America. The Indian scouts suddenly come gliding in, the fire of an enemy is heard, little spots of smoke burst on the mountain side and dissolve again. Shrill yells resound on every hand, brown arms brandish flashes of brightness. The young commander rises to the emergency. His white-coats are rapidly placed in position behind trees, and ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... out some better way of trampling? Pump thine invention dry; cannot the universal seed-plot of subtile wiles and stratagems spring up one new method of cutting capers? Is this the top of skill and pride, to shuffle feet and brandish knees thus, and to trip like a doe and skip like a squirrel? And wherein differ thy leapings from the hoppings of a frog, or the bouncings of a goat, or friskings of a dog, or gesticulations of a monkey? And cannot ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... this Year, he starts up as in spasm, determined to draw sword, and plunge in; twice he is crushed down again, with sword half drawn; and only the third time (in 1743) does he get sword out, and brandish it in a surprising though useless manner. After which he feels better. But up to that crisis, his case is really tragical,—had idle readers any bowels for him; which they have not! One or two Fractions, snatched from the circumambient Paper Vortex, must suffice us for the indispensable ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... warrior would leap up, and the drum and the dancers would cease as he struck a post with his tomahawk, and in a loud voice recounted his exploits. Then the music and the dance began anew, till another warrior caught the martial fire, and bounded into the circle to brandish his ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... we so lately did subdue; The self-same individuals that Did run as mice do from a cat, When we courageously did wield 465 Our martial weapons in the field To tug for victory; and when We shall our shining blades agen Brandish in terror o'er our heads, They'll straight resume their wonted dreads. 470 Fear is an ague, that forsakes And haunts by fits those whom it takes: And they'll opine they feel the pain And blows they felt to-day again. Then let us boldly charge them home, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... changes to insolence and then to fierceness. They demand powder and shot, and when they are refused begin to brandish their tomahawks. A tall chief, motioning to the band to keep back, now accosts Mr. Chase, and through Antoine as an interpreter, informs him that unless the demands of his braves are complied with he will not be responsible for the consequences; that they are out on the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... he was interrupted by the sounds of silvery footsteps on the stairs, and a party of wimin, carryin' guns and led by BETSY JANE, who brandish'd a loud and rattlin' umbereller, burst ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Altho' Sir Oracle is he, Who is as wise, as wise can be, In one short minute we shall find The wise man gone, a fool behind. Courage, that is all nerve and heart, That dares confront Death's brandish'd dart, That dares to single Fight defy The stoutest Hector of the sky, Whose mettle ne'er was known to slack, Nor wou'd on thunder turn his back; How small a matter may controul, And sooth the fury of his soul! Shou'd this intrepid Mars, his clay Dilute with nerve-relaxing Tea, Thin broths, thin ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... night, with noises of the northern sea. So flash'd and fell the brand Excalibur: But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, And caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him Three times, and drew him under in the mere. And lightly went the other to the King. Then spoke King Arthur, drawing thicker breath: "Now see I by thine eyes that this is done. Speak out: what is it thou hast heard, or seen?" And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... be the heavens with black, yield day to night! Comets, importing change of times and states, Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky, And with them scourge the bad revolting stars That have consented unto ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... of Maximilian I. and twenty or thirty bronze statues ranged on each side of the nave, representing fierce warrior chiefs, and gowned prelates, and stately damsels of the middle ages. These are all curious for the costume; the warriors are cased in various kinds of ancient armor, and brandish various ancient weapons, and the robes of the females are flowing and by no means ungraceful. Almost every one of the statues has its hands and fingers in some constrained and awkward position; as if the artist knew as little what to do with them as some ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... singing, others playing dice or cards or that unfailing pastime for ship-life, chess. Talking, reading, telling their beads, writing diaries, sleeping, hunting in their clothes for vermin; so they spend their day. Some for exercise climb up the rigging, or jump, or brandish heavy weights: some drift about from one party to another, just watching what is going on. Our good friar complains of the habits of the noblemen, who gambled a great deal and were always making small wagers, which they paid with a cup of Malmsey wine. He also tells how the patron, to beguile the ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... transgression has been; as the prophet puts it with profound truth, 'Thou shalt be ashamed and confounded, and never open thy mouth any more, because of thy sins, when I am pacified towards thee for all that thou hast done.' If you would bring a man to know how bad he is, do not brandish a whip before his face, or talk to him about an angry God. You may bray a fool in a mortar, and his foolishness will not depart from him. You may break a man down with these violent pestles, and you will do little more. But get him, if I may continue the metaphor, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... by the past; still they brandish their feeble weapons against the truths of Nature, as if assertions one way or another could alter fact, or make the thing other than it really is. As Galileo said before his spirit was broken, "In these and other positions certainly no man doubts ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... sedentary habits was too sudden, and I often found myself, with my eyes still fixed upon the figures before me, absorbed in a sort of castle-building reverie, in which I was boarding or chasing the enemy, handling my cutlass, and sometimes so moved by my imagination as to brandish my arm over my head, when an exclamation of surprise from one of the clerks would remind me of my folly, and, angry with myself, I would once more resume my pen. But after a time I had more command over myself, and could sit steadily at my work. Mr. Trevannion had often observed ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... glanced forward and saw the level ground between a seething mass of savage forms, so densely wedged together as to block further progress. I could see hundreds of brown sinewy arms uplifted from a sea of faces to brandish weapons of every description, and marked how the Miamis cowered like whipped curs behind the protection of Wells's horse, while close beside him stood Jordan, erect and silent as it on parade, a rifle grasped in his hands, his head bare, a great welt showing redly across ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, "what happened, happened justly! Martin is responsible. The whole thing was conducted in the spirit of a pantomime, a great joke. Who are we, the Wolves, to brandish empty firearms, to shrink from letting a little ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sight, Dares thus bestride thee, chaffing in thy might? Of portly stature, and determin'd mien? Whose dark eye dwells beneath a brow serene? And forward looks unmov'd to fields of death: And smiling, gently strokes thee in thy wrath? Whose brandish'd falch'on dreaded gleams afar? It is a British soldier, ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... aid of your auspicious skill. Tho' Sweden's general voice consents to own Me the true master of her triple throne, Tho' her disputed crown adorns my brow, And tributary millions round me bow; One bold, one stubborn province, yet defies My brandish'd arm, and to my threats replies; In face of all the realm denies my right, And challenges three kingdoms to the fight. On Dalecarlia's wide uncultured ground, With rugged hills, and mineral riches crown'd, A race, endued with native freedom, dwell; A race, that ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... had only met with failure; so he was tempted to brandish his successes. He gave a humorous description of his friends—how he had picked them up; how they had supplied him with horses to ride and guns to ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... shouted for joy. Jason next proceeded to sow the dragon's teeth and plough them in. And soon the crop of armed men sprang up, and, wonderful to relate! no sooner had they reached the surface than they began to brandish their weapons and rush upon Jason. The Greeks trembled for their hero, and even she who had provided him a way of safety and taught him how to use it, Medea herself, grew pale with fear. Jason for a time kept his assailants at bay with his sword and ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... to hear the clangor of the trumpet; for of him might truly be said, what was recorded of the renowned St. George of England, "there was nothing in all the world that more rejoiced his heart than to hear the pleasant sound of war, and see the soldiers brandish forth their steeled weapons." Casting his eye more kindly, therefore, upon the sturdy Van Corlear, and finding him to be a jovial varlet, shrewd in his discourse, yet of great discretion and immeasurable wind, he straightway conceived a vast kindness for him, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... to use personal correction to a boy of your age; but really . . . Siste tandem, carnifex! The butchery is too horrible. The hand drops powerless, appalled at the quantity of birch which it must cut and brandish. I am glad we are not all found out, I say again; and protest, my dear brethren, against ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dollars—two hundred dollars—three hundred dollars were the gay figures which they bore, and which he flaunted in the air before he sat down at table, or rose from it to brandish, and then, flinging his napkin into his chair, walked up and down to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... song amongst the ruins," says one of us, "what a wonderful acoustic phenomenon!" "Bhuta, bhuta!" whisper the awestruck torch-bearers. They brandish their torches and swiftly spin on one leg, and snap their fingers to chase away ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... thousand horse: but it was impossible for me to compute their number, considering the space of ground they took up. A cavalier, mounted on a large steed, might be about ninety feet high. I have seen this whole body of horse, upon a word of command, draw their swords at once, and brandish them in the air. Imagination can figure nothing so grand, so surprising, and so astonishing! it looked as if ten thousand flashes of lightning were darting at the same time from ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... disproportionately large, the nose long and projecting, the mouth wide and well furnished with teeth; the eyes are formed of large green or blue beads with black dots to indicate the pupils. Sometimes the male figures carry a shield in the left hand and brandish a sword in the right; while the female figures are represented grasping with both hands a serpent which stands on its coiled tail. Rags of many colours adorn these figures, and the hair of the deceased, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... stone, bone, and shells at their ears and about their necks, and the men generally wear long white feathers stuck upright in their hair. They came off in canoes which will carry a hundred people; when within a stone's throw of the ship, the chief of the party would brandish a battleaxe, calling out: 'Come ashore with us and we will kill you.' They would certainly have eaten them too, for they ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... Jacobite Journal." "The Whirling Coxcomb," cries Lady Fanny enraged, "what had he to do with ridiculing any Party, who had travell'd round the whole Circle of Parties and Ministers, ever since he could brandish a Pen." [3] Her Ladyship adds some further sneers on writers pensioned to amuse people with their nonsense. The other counter pamphlet consists of conversations overheard, all over the town, on the subject of Winnington and his Apology. Here a ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... war-horn, Your great Olifant, far-sounding: Charles will hear it and return here.' 'Cowardice were that,' quoth Roland; 'In fair France my fame were tarnished. No, these Pagans all shall perish When I brandish Durendala.' ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... this. Whereupon the peasant sprang from the bed, quickly drew his axe from his belt, and began to brandish it in all directions. I wished to fly, but I could not. The room seemed to be suddenly full of corpses. I stumbled against them; my feet slipped in pools of blood. The terrible peasant called me gently, ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... brandish high thy sword, With calm assurance, And face the devil's horde With brave endurance, Is meet and well begun, And merits praising. But from the strife to run, When blows thy courage stun, Is ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... the assassins' fury. They stuck her head on a pike, and carried it in triumph to the Palais Royal to display it to D'Orleans, who was feasting with some of the companions of his daily orgies, and then proceeded to the Temple to brandish it before the eyes ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... had found within him some cave from which it might emerge to brandish its hideous envenomed horned head, and into ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... reach it, that would have blazed up; over the bush I see a pine-tree hung with moss; that, too, would fly in fire upon the instant to its topmost bough; and the flame of that long torch—how would the trade-wind take and brandish that through the inflammable forest! I hear this dell roar in a moment with the joint voice of wind and fire, I see myself gallop for my soul, and the flying conflagration chase and outflank me through the hills; I see this pleasant forest burn for days, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... OF SROSH. We pay homage to thee, Srosh, the obedient and blessed one, the first of creatures to worship Ahura-Mazda, the Creator. Thou didst also worship the bountiful immortals, and wast the first to brandish the veresma and to sing the Gathas. Thou didst slay the all-destroying demon, and thou protectest the world and its denizens. Thou sleepest not, nor slumberest day or night. Thou teachest men ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... unleashed his supple body and was half way to the gate in a single arrow flight. I followed, carrying the pistol still in my hand. My involuntary haste must have made me seem to brandish it. I heard a perfectly civilized scream from Madame Mauer, receding into the background—which shows that I was, myself, acquiring full speed ahead. By the time Follet reached the gate, Ching Po moved. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... fascinating, and that my experience had cost me eighteen-pence, the cheapness of which he had to admit. I am glad that I added up my expenses, for that eighteen-pence was very useful, it was such a delightfully ridiculous sum to brandish at any one who thought that I was trotting down the road ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... conform cheerfully to their customs, even to their little follies, but not to their vices. Do not, however, remonstrate or preach against them, for remonstrances do not suit with your age. In French companies in general you will not find much learning, therefore take care not to brandish yours in their faces. People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority. Conceal all your learning carefully, and reserve it for the company of les Gens d'Eglise, or les Gens de Robe; and even then let them rather extort it from you, than find you over-willing to draw ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... half-breeds of Prince Albert, incited by Riel, began to collect fire-arms, and to drill in each others barns, the Indians began to sing and dance, and to brandish their tomahawks. Their way of living during late years has been altogether too slow, too dead-and-alive, too unlike the ways of their ancestors, when once at least in each year, every warrior returned ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... equitable and logical principle, derived by them from the high places of the new administration—namely, that the Egypt of to-day belongs far less to the Egyptians than to the noble foreigners who have come to brandish there the torch ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... rock).—We, Alf of Grof, Broddi Thorleifsson, Einar the Rich, and all who are here, excepting only Brand Kolbeinsson, agree, and brandish our weapons in confirmation of our purpose, that we shall not part from one another, and share a common fate, until we shall have brought from ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... man rise up with a weapon in his hand, it is an Agerepta. If he brandish it, it is an Avaoirista. If he actually smite a man with malicious aforethought, it is an Aredus. Upon the fifth Aredus he becomes ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... of you, 510 Lief or loth were he, might lay wyte to stay you Your sorrowful journey, when on the sea row'd ye; Then when the ocean-stream ye with your arms deck'd, Meted the mere-streets, there your hands brandish'd! O'er the Spearman ye glided; the sea with waves welter'd, The surge of the winter. Ye twain in the waves' might For a seven nights swink'd. He outdid thee in swimming, And the more was his might; but ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... said Slade, with a gesture toward the knife. He spoke, as though he strangled an impulse to brandish his fists and scream, in a nasal whisper. "It's safe to kick you," he said. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... who appear in the theatrical pieces above-mentioned, make a great deal more noise than your stationary tragedians; and if they have to denounce a villain, to declare a passion, or to threaten an enemy, they roar, stamp, shake their fists, and brandish their sabres, so that every man who sees the play has surely a full pennyworth for his penny. Thus Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry perhaps a little exaggerated her heroines' parts liking to strike her audiences quickly, and ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... many, their arrow-shot was no great matter, for they were in very evil order, as has been said; and moreover, their rage was so great to come to handy strokes with these foemen, that some of them flung away their bows to brandish the axe or the sword. Nevertheless were some among the kindred hurt or slain by ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... saw "old Kent" yesterday after the lapse of thirty years, and protest he was younger than when he rapped sepulchral silence from his resounding desk. "How are you, Quilibet First?" he said, quite in the ancient way; he seemed once more to brandish the ferrule on ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... excitement decides—he mounts the breach. The "Screecher" shoots through the waters, quivering from head to stern. The Kentucky boys yell with delight and defiance. Again the "Burster" closes on her rival. Kentuckians brandish their knives, and call to the negroes, who are already half-roasted, "Pile on the wood; pile like agony; I'll ram a nigger into the fire for every foot the 'Burster' gains." Soon a cry of exultation is heard on board the "Burster," as she shoots up close to her rival. The enraged Kentuckians ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the whole seven were going out for a long expedition, they said to their aunt, 'Dear aunt, if a baby sister comes into the world to-day, wave a white handkerchief, and we will return immediately; but if it is only a boy, just brandish a sickle, and we will go on with ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... been spared these scenes of malignant carnage. No Bedouins attacked our terrible rear. And none attacked the front. The new-comers were only a reinforcement of cadaverous Arabs, in shirts and bare legs, sent far ahead of us to brandish rusty guns, and shout and brag, and carry on like lunatics, and thus scare away all bands of marauding Bedouins that might lurk about our path. What a shame it is that armed white Christians must travel under guard of vermin ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "Tales of Terror" and "Tales of Wonder," were of his same raw-head and bloody-bones variety. His imagination rioted in physical horrors. There are demons who gnash with iron fangs and brandish gore-fed scorpions; maidens are carried off by the Winter King, the Water King, the Cloud King, and the Sprite of the Glen; they are poisoned or otherwise done to death, and their wraiths revisit their guilty lovers in their shrouds at midnight's dark hour ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... most religious veneration for your spiritual nouriture. Only imagine that I here every day see men, who are mountains of roast beef, and only seem just roughly hewn out into the outlines of human form, like the giant-rock at Pratolino! I shudder when I see them brandish their knives in act to carve, and look on them as savages that devour one another. I should not stare at all more than I do, if yonder alderman at the lower end of the table was to stick his fork into his neighbour's jolly cheek, and cut a brave slice of brown and fat. Why, I'll ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... the middle of some quaint sentence or beautiful thought just because the sun is touching a certain bush down by the water's edge, which is a sign that it is lunch-time and that I must be off. Back we go together through the rye, he carefully tucked under one arm, while with the other I brandish a bunch of grass to keep off the flies that appear directly we emerge into the sunshine. "Oh, my dear Thoreau," I murmur sometimes, overcome by the fierce heat of the little path at noonday and the persistence of the flies, "did you have flies at Walden to exasperate you? And what became of your ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... a loophole knocked over a savage who had paused in the open to brandish a war-ax thickly decorated with either ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... civilization. "No man dictates to the assembly; he may persuade but cannot command. When anything is advanced not agreeable to the people, they reject it with a general murmur. If the proposition pleases, they brandish their javelins. This is their highest and most honorable mark of applause; they assent in a military manner, and praise by the sound of their ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... peeping thence in fond alarm, Most trembling for her guardian's life, She looks, expecting that his arm Would brandish his ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... hint, perchance, thy warmest hopes may quell, And cuckoo mingle with the thoughts of Bel."[37] At that loved name, with fury doubly keen, Fierce on the Deacon rush'd the raging Dean; Nor less the dauntless Deacon dare withstand The brandish'd weight of Toe's uplifted hand. [38]The ghost of themes departed, that, of yore, Disgraced alike, the Doctor praised or tore, On paper wings flit dimly through the night, And, hovering low in air, beheld ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... presented a more vigorous resistance, where the greatest danger and labour were indicated. At first they repelled the enemy with missile weapons, and suffered no place to be sufficiently secure for those engaged in the works; afterwards, not only did they brandish their weapons in defence of the walls and tower, but they had courage to make sallies on the posts and works of the enemy; in which tumultuary engagements, scarcely more Saguntines than Carthaginians were slain. ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius |
