"Swagger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... asked Captain DuChassis. He smiled and tapped his swagger stick lightly on his boot top. "Perhaps you are near ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... in my juvenile estimation, during my short escapade from the middy's berth, had its charms, and I was rolling in with a tolerable swagger, when ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... offensive of all musical notes. It is so unnecessary too, as if the day didn't come soon enough without his warning; but I suppose he is anxious to waken his hens and get them at their daily task, and so he disturbs the entire community. In short, I dislike him; his swagger, his autocratic strut, his greed, his irritating self-consciousness, his endless parading of himself up and down in a ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... letter in all my life; so saucy, so journalish, so sanguine, so pretending, so everything. I satisfied all your fears in my last: all is gone well, as you say; yet you are an impudent slut to be so positive; you will swagger so upon your sagacity that we shall never have done. Pray don't mislay your reply; I would certainly print it, if I had it here: how long is it? I suppose half a sheet: was the answer written in Ireland? ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... wants his tea and the officers like to carry their canes and swagger sticks with them "over the top" into battle. A brave, unpretending man, who likes his own ways and wishes to be allowed to follow them and who is willing to fight and die that others also may be free—such is the English Tommy. With him it is all a part ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... trumpet-blasts and the angry murmurs of the defeated heathen. Threatening fists were shaken in the air, while behind the carceres the drivers and owners of the red party scolded, squabbled and stormed; and Hippias, who by his audacious swagger had given away the race to their hated foe—to the Blues, the Christians—narrowly escaped ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to a crisis one day when Maxwell was informed that some one was waiting to see him in the parlor. The visitor was dressed in very pronounced clothes, and carried himself with a self-assertive swagger. Maxwell had seen him in Bascom's office, and knew who was waiting for him long before he reached the parlor, by the odor of patchouli which penetrated ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... swagger as thou dost; but why offended at this? Oh, but he has been a naughty man, and I have been righteous! sayst thou. Well, Pharisee, well, his naughtiness shall not be laid to thy charge, if thou hast chosen none of his ways. But since thou wilt yet bear me down that thou ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... here Michael showed a touch of his wonderful knowledge of human weakness; for that suit played havoc with Ivan. There was courage to be found in the crimson cloth, interest in the gold embroidery, ardent curiosity in the gleaming boots, an almost swagger in the empty sword-belt. Truly, his Highness had calculated well. By the appointed hour, Ivan was aflame. Once dressed, he relinquished the idea of going to his mother for a parting kiss. He felt, instead, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Bunyan's Pilgrim—why, the thought is enough to turn one's moral stomach. His cockle hat and staff transformed to a smart cockd beaver and a jemmy cane, his amice gray to the last Regent Street cut, and his painful Palmer's pace to the modern swagger. Stop thy friend's sacriligious hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to reprint the old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible. The Vanity Fair, and the pilgrims there—the silly soothness in his setting out countenance—the Christian idiocy (in a good sense) of his admiration of the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... heart and microscopic wit, Scarce for a coachman or a barber fit; His untried sword, his title, are to her Better than genius, wealth, or high renown; His uniform is sweeter than the gown Of an Episcopalian minister; And "dash," for swagger but a synonym, Is knightly grace and ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... may be recognised by an excessive vanity which will often tempt him to steal, the thefts being generally confined to articles of personal adornment or which give an occasion to "swagger." When accused he will deny the charge brought against him with an effrontery which will too often create the conviction that he is innocent. When charged he will challenge the statements of his superiors without any hesitation whatever, but at a given moment will break down and ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... where we are bound?" asked Hal in German of their new friend, who introduced himself with a swagger as "Lieutenant Alexis Vergoff." ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... from barracks, clad in the "walking-out" finery of shell-jacket and overalls, with the jingle of spurs and effort at the true Cavalry swagger, or rather the first attempt at a walk abroad, for the expedition had ended disastrously ere well begun. Unable to shake off his admirer, Trooper Herbert Hawker, Dam had just passed the Main Guard and main gates in the company of Herbert, and the two recruits had encountered the Adjutant ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... translate: Natale solum, my estate; My dear estate, how well I love it, My tenants, if you doubt, will prove it, They swear I am so kind and good, I hug them till I squeeze their blood. Libertas bears a large import: First, how to swagger in a court; And, secondly, to show my fury Against an uncomplying jury; And, thirdly, 'tis a new invention, To favour Wood, and keep my pension; And, fourthly, 'tis to play an odd trick, Get the great seal and turn out Broderick;[3] And, fifthly, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Iglesias. But, as course followed course, hot and succulent, while the chianti at once steadied his circulation and stimulated his brain, de Courcy Smyth became talkative, not to say garrulous. Finally he began to assert himself, to swagger, thereby laying bare the waste places ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... noted artist I was able to obtain with great difficulty, as he was engaged in the more important work of making a swagger stick. I finally secured him by the promise of an ice cream cone and twenty-three cents to go with his two cents so that he could buy a Thrift Stamp. He is given due credit on ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... sort could be alleged against Sylvia's appearance, which she felt, as she arrayed herself every morning, to be all that the most swagger frat could ask of a member. Aunt Victoria's boxes of clothing, her own nimble fingers and passionate attention to the subject, combined to turn her out a copy, not to be distinguished from the original, of the daughter ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... peculiarities of the gentleman of fashion, we may dismiss this portion of our subject. A gentleman never affects military air or costume if he is not a military man, and even then avoids professional rigidity and swagger as much as possible; he never sports spurs or a riding-whip, except when he is upon horseback, contrary to the rule observed by his antagonist the snob, who always sports spurs and riding-whip, but who never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... days later that a buoyant young figure swung into an elevator in the great office building that housed the Berg, Shriner Advertising Company. Just one more grain of buoyant swing and the young man's walk might have been termed a swagger. As it was, his walrus bag just ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... in concert with the utmost regularity. One might think, at first, that these narrow boots were as uncomfortable to the calesero as the Scottish instrument of torture of that name; but his little swagger when he is down, and his freedom in kicking when he is up, show that he has ample room ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... short silence, after which Toby Crackit, seeming to abandon as hopeless any further effort to maintain his usual devil-may-care swagger, turned to ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... with the world for an honest world, in which nations keep their word; for a world in which nations do not live by swagger or by threat; for a world in which men think of the ways in which they can conquer the common cruelties of nature instead of inventing more horrible cruelties to inflict upon the spirit and body of man; for ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... by, at last burst out in uncontrollable amazement; 'There is no God but God: is it possible that four or five Franks can use all these things to eat, drink and sleep on a journey?' (N.B. I fear the Franks will think the stock very scanty.) Whereupon master Achmet, with the swagger of one who has seen cities and men, held forth. 'Oh Effendim, that is nothing; Our Lady is almost like the children of the Arabs. One dish or two, a piece of bread, a few dates, and Peace, (as we say, there is an end of it). But thou shouldst see ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... gazed at her fearfully. For the first time in the eight years since his marriage he was encountering the girl again. But a girl no longer. Her figure was slim as ever—or perhaps not quite, for a certain boyish swagger, a sort of insolent adolescence, had gone the way of the first blooming of her cheeks. But she was beautiful; dignity was there now, and the charming lines of a fortuitous nine-and-twenty; and she sat in the car with such perfect appropriateness ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... next day, an older man than Hanson had imagined and of a different type. There was no smack of the circus ring about him, no swagger of the footlights; nor any hint of the emotional, gay temperament supposed to be the inheritance of southern blood. He was a saturnine, gnarled old Spaniard with lean jaws and beetling brows. His skin was like parchment. It clung to his bones and fell in heavy ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... suit, silver aigulets, lace collar, black hat with its imposing feather, and black leather boots, than would know I lived in two small rooms in a dirty street; and experience has taught me how high a value the world sets on outside show. So I walked with head erect, and just the smallest swagger, and the passers-by did not fail to yield the wall to such a brilliant gallant. Albert de Lalande in rich velvet was a very different person from the simple country youth in rusty black, whose poverty had provoked the sneers of the guests ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... approach their tables. John Morrissey is occasionally to be seen, walking through the rooms, apparently a disinterested spectator. He is a short, thick-set man, of about 40 years, dark complexion, and wears a long beard, dresses in a slovenly manner, and walks with a swagger. Now and then he approaches the table; makes a few bets, and is then lost ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... not be sorry for that," the soldier said bluntly, "for I shall be right glad to be away from these Normans who fill every place at court and swagger there as if Englishmen were but dirt under their feet. Moreover, I love not London nor its ways, and shall be glad to be down again among honest country folk, though I would still rather be following my lord ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... an army and a navy; we don't like it when those fellows on the Continent swagger in our faces, and yet we won't pay either for the ships or the men. However, now that they've done away with purchase—Gad! I could fight them in the streets for the way in which they've done it!—now that they've turned the army into an examination-shop, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... upon me, and would seem to lack a Vice? Ere his words be half spoken, I am with him in a trice Here, there, and everywhere, as the cat is with the mice: True Vetus Iniquitas. Lack'st thou cards, friend, or dice? I will teach thee to cheat, child, to cog, lie, and swagger, And ever and anon to be ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... querulous, wishing some one else to stand first in the breach, leaving them time for drill, equipment, and preparation. One figure impressed itself very strongly on my memory. A sturdy form, a head with more than ordinary marks of intelligence, but a bearing with more of swagger than of self-poised courage, yet evidently a man of some importance in his own community, stood before the seat of the governor, the bright lights of the chandelier over the table lighting strongly both their figures. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Bureau may be found in a swagger Club any evening with a Bourbon H. B. at his Right, a stack of Student Lamps at his Left and Two Small Pair pressed closely ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... in evening-dress. Now at Hawthornden's you never dress for dinner. There isn't a place in Llandudno where it's the exception not to dress for dinner. They seemed rather surprised; not put out, not ashamed of themselves for being too swagger, but just mildly disappointed with Hawthornden's. The fact is, they didn't think much of Hawthornden's. I learnt all manner of things during dinner. They'd been in Scotland when I corresponded with ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... the dickens don't you get out of a fellow's way?" snapped Herbert, supporting the machine and glaring round at Phil. He bore little resemblance to the usual dapper, immaculate, self-possessed young fellow from the city whose tailored clothes and swagger manners had aroused the envy and admiration of a number ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... view of the case seemed to cheer Billy Williams so much that he began to smile on the world again, and felt able to swagger a little, almost as if he had won the race instead of losing it. Somehow, Ceddie Errol had a way of making people feel comfortable. Even in the first flush of his triumphs, he remembered that the person who was beaten might not feel so gay as he did, and might like to think that he MIGHT ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... presented a grand military figure. He was what you call a fine man; florid, with still a good head of hair though touched with grey, splendid moustaches, large fat hands, and a courtly demeanour not unmixed with a slight swagger. The colonel was a Montacute man, and had inherited a large house in the town and a small estate in the neighbourhood. Having sold out, he had retired to his native place, where he had become a considerable personage. The duke ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... the soldiers of the garrison, with tinkling spurs and long trailing sabres, mingling fraternally with the serape-clad tradesmen, the gambucinos, and rancheros of the valley. They imitate their officers in strut and swagger—the very character of which enables one to tell that the military power is here in the ascendant. They are all dragoons—infantry would not avail against an Indian enemy—and they fancy that the loud clinking of their spurs, and the rattle of their ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... means, though it may sound like one. Being an irreligious as well as a stupid man, he held that all who professed religion were hypocritical and silly. Manliness, in poor Jo's mind, consisted of swagger, quiet insolence, cool cursing, and general godlessness. With the exception of Fred Martin, the rest of the crew of the Lively Poll resembled him in his irreligion, but they were very different in character,—Lockley, the skipper being genial; Peter Jay, the mate, very appreciative of humour, ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... some of his accustomed swagger began to return. "I don't know what the flowery phrases are all about, but the symbols refer to common proteins, lipins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and biomins," he said. "What is this, ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... mustaches and a chin-tuft. Altogether, he was as pretty a model of a light cavalryman as I remember to have seen: square in the shoulder, slender in the hip, well limbed, lithe and muscular. His carriage was soldierly, without the exaggerated stiffness and swagger commonly found amongst non-commissioned officers of dragoons; and altogether he had a gentlemanly air which, I doubt not, would have made itself as visible under the coarse drugget of a private soldier, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... the bad qualities of Englishmen. He has their courage and audacity, their independence and pride, their generally defiant front to the rest of the world; but he is also vain, obstinate, bigoted, prejudiced, narrow in his views, and boastful in his language. His vulgar swagger, for instance, about the navy sweeping the seas, would have been condemned here, if it had been addressed by the most violent of demagogues to the most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Americans don't embroil us in a war before long it will not be their fault. What with their swagger and bombast, what with their claims for indemnification, what with Ireland and Fenianism, and what with Canada, I have strong apprehensions. With a settled animosity towards the French usurper, I believe him to have always been sound in his desire to divide ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... left the place, with a heavy heart, and Ragged Pete, deeming this a good opportunity to begin hostilities, advanced to the bar with a swagger, and said ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... reprove, or scold at any one; also to bluster, bounce, ding, or swagger. A captain huff; a noted bully. To stand the huff; to be answerable for the reckoning ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... in upon Morton in his chambers. Very handsome he looked, too, I dare say, in his evening clothes, with an opera-coat thrown back from his shoulders. I remember well myself his grand air, with a touch of cavalry swagger about it. I've no doubt he leaned against the chimney-piece and tapped his leg with his stick. And the upshot of it ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... not! I guess I got some brains around me," he added, inspired by Sam's presence to assume a slight swagger. "They'd have to get up pretty early to find any good ole revolaver, once I got my hands ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... Many of the men at this work are like dentists rather than soldiers; they are busy in carefully lit rooms, they wear white overalls, they have clean hands and laboratory manners. The only really romantic figure in the whole of this process, the only figure that has anything of the old soldierly swagger about him still, is the aviator. And, as one friend remarked to me when I visited the work of the British flying corps, "The real essential strength of this arm is the organisation of its repairs. Here is one of the repair vans through which our machine guns go. It is a motor workshop ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... sugar-bush where we cut our fuel from some dead trees. He was a fine fellow in his way, was Pharaoh, and I think that he had been named Pharaoh because he had an Egyptian cast of countenance and a royal sort of swagger about him. But his way was a somewhat peculiar way, on account of the uncertainty of his temper, and very few people could get on with him; also if he could find liquor he would drink like a fish, and when ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... varieties inexhaustible—the schapska-shaped head-gear of Polish officers, the beret of Czecho-Slovaks. And everywhere, too, the gay and well-known red pom-pon bobbed on the caps of French blue-jackets, and British marines stalked in pairs, looking every inch the soldier with their swagger sticks and ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... Mr. Crowe, fully crediting the power confided to him, did as he was bidden. He was very harsh to the poor Captain; but in such a condition a man can hardly expect that people should not be harsh to him. The Captain endeavoured to hold up his head, and to swagger, and to assume an air of pinchbeck respectability. But the attorney would not permit it. He required that the man should own himself to be penniless, a scoundrel, only anxious to be bought; and the Captain at ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... with holiest intentions. We should be sorry to have this practice become general. There would then be no question agitated in Congress without eliciting the informal and contrariant opinions of the softer sex." This top-lofty sentiment accorded well with the customary assumption and swagger of one of the lords of creation. For the young reformer was evidently a firm believer in the divine right of his sex to rule in the world of politics. But as he grew taller and broader the horizon of woman widened, and her sphere embraced every duty, responsibility, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... courtesy that communicated itself to all with whom they came in contact. The cowboys, Beulah soon discovered, were as unlike the cowboys of fiction and of her imagination as a Manitoba steer is unlike his Alberta brother; they did not carry revolvers, nor swagger in high boots, nor rip the air with their profanity; and their table manners reminded her of George and Harry Grant, and the Grants were outstanding examples of right living in the Plainville district. ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... weather eye!" shouted the Captain, resuming his walk with a facetious swagger, while, with the paddles, he increased his speed. Soon after, he returned to ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... dost appear As boldly as a brigadier Tricked out with marks and signs, all o'er, Of rank, brigade, division, corps, To show by every means he can An officer is not a man; Or naked, with a lordly swagger, Proud as a cur without a wagger, Who says: "See simple worth prevail— All dog, ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... in a short wooden pipe, would swagger up twirling his moustaches, and surveying the warriors ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... who had thought of it during dinner, "that you might like to be taken out. How would that do for a present? Of course I'd like to do both—to take you out and give you a swagger gift—but we know it ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... clean shirt, and the swagger kummerbund, Denison presented himself next morning to the editor of the Trumpet-Call. There were seven other applicants for the billet, but Denison's white shirt and new kummerbund were, he felt, a tower ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... and chains and buckles; the glinting bridles, reins and saddles; Lord Tybar's exquisitely poised figure, so perfectly maintaining and carrying up the symmetry of his horse as to suggest the horse would be disfigured, truncated, were he to dismount; his taking swagger, his gay, ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... the man; "if it comes to that, I've business enough. Perhaps you'll just pay me this debt," he continued, changing his fawning manner into a bullying swagger. "I've waited ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... believes in virtue, but who is virtuous? Nations have made an idol of Liberty, but what nation on the face of the earth is free? My youth is still like a blue and cloudless sky. If I set myself to obtain wealth or power, does it mean that I must make up my mind to lie, and fawn, and cringe, and swagger, and flatter, and dissemble? To consent to be the servant of others who have likewise fawned, and lied, and flattered? Must I cringe to them before I can hope to be their accomplice? Well, then, I decline. I mean to work nobly and with a single heart. I will work day and night; I will owe my fortune ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... visible), and Dugald Dalgetty and Ivanhoe were to step in at that open window by the little garden yonder? Suppose Uncas and our noble old Leather Stocking were to glide in silent? Suppose Athos, Porthos, and Aramis should enter, with a noiseless swagger, curling their moustaches? And dearest Amelia Booth, on Uncle Toby's arm; and Tittlebat Titmouse with his hair dyed green; and all the Crummles company of comedians, with the Gil Blas troop; and Sir Roger ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... as against By-ends, Sir Having Greedy, and the Lord Old-man on the other, are in these drawings as simply distinguished by their costume. Good people, when not armed cap-a-pie, wear a speckled tunic girt about the waist, and low hats, apparently of straw. Bad people swagger in tail-coats and chimney-pots, a few with knee-breeches, but the large majority in trousers, and for all the world like guests at a garden-party. Worldly-Wiseman alone, by some inexplicable quirk, stands ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... poor abilities may be able to accomplish. Not that I have any purpose of imitating Johnson, whose general learning and power of expression I do not deny, but many of whose Ramblers are little better than a sort of pageant, where trite and obvious maxims are made to swagger in lofty and mystic language, and get some credit only because they are not easily understood. There are some of the great moralist's papers which I cannot peruse without thinking on a second-rate masquerade, where the best-known and least-esteemed characters in town march in ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... are faithful to their post, Mr. George strides through the streets with a massive kind of swagger and a grave- enough face. It is eight o'clock now, and the day is fast drawing in. He stops hard by Waterloo Bridge and reads a playbill, decides to go to Astley's Theatre. Being there, is much delighted with the horses ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... bravely to swagger out to the theatre when Minty Brown came in with one of the club-men he knew. He bowed and smiled, but she appeared not to notice him at first, and when she did she ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... eyes; And should his humour, and his mimic art, Bear due proportion to his outer part, As once 'twas said of Macklin in the Jew, 'This is the very Falstaff Shakspeare drew.' To you, with diffidence, he bids me say, Should you approve, you may command his stay, To lie and swagger here another day. If not, to better men he'll leave his sack, And go as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... late down to breakfast, he snorts at us. He worries our lives out with pic-nics and shoots, And will flourish his Clarets and Ports at us. My wife likes her ease and her breakfast in bed; I hate cellar-swagger and scurry. Entertainment indeed! We're as lumpish as lead When we're not on the whirl or the worry. But turn out to-morrow, my BLOGGS? No, not me, Though I know what your "little hints" signify. Your "dear DICK" forsooth! Such a noodle as he The title of "duffer" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... wearing them out). "My dear fellow, I strongly recommend you to put your ink on your boots to save blacking, and to take your pens for toothpicks, so that when you come away from Flicoteaux's you can swagger along this picturesque alley looking as if you had dined. Get a situation of any sort or description. Run errands for a bailiff if you have the heart, be a shopman if your back is strong enough, enlist if you ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... that morning with painstaking detail. Too late she had discovered that she didn't possess a dress fit to wear at any one's wedding, not to mention her own. From time to time she had dreamed of a swagger tailored suit, but the paradox of a swagger tailored suit in San Pasqual had been so apparent always that Donna could not bring herself to the point of submitting to a measurement in the local dry-goods emporium, having the suit made in Chicago and sent out by express. Instead ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... of his irritation, he could not but admire the sort of affectionate swagger with which McVay rose to greet her, as if the brother of so tender a ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... and the other side of the Channel, all with a very light and engaging pen, and then spreads himself on any old far-off thing that interests him, such as the theatre, perhaps a little self-consciously and with a pleasant air of swagger most forgivable and, indeed, enjoyable. His chief preoccupation is with art and letters, it is clear; but, turning from them to the handling of urgent things and difficult men, he faces the business manfully. Of the men ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... clear congruity established between your versifying and your clothes; they will both be in the mode, and the mode the same. One feels about the Cavalier fashion that it was not serious either one way or the other. It had not the Elizabethan swagger; it had not the Restoration cynicism; it had not the Augustan urbanity. Go back now to the Elizabethan, and avoiding Shakespeare as a law unto himself, which is the right of genius—for the sonnets have wit as well as passion (but a mordant wit), everything that real love-poetry must have, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... only too apt a pupil in the lessons in the midst of which his childhood had been passed. He had at his tongue's tip all the slang of the stables and all the blackguardisms of the betting-ring; and boy—almost child—as he was, he affected the swagger and habits of a "fast man," like a true ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... refuse it, Hadji Baba, seeing that thou dost swagger into my presence unbidden," said Achmet, with a smile, as he sat down in the usual oriental fashion—cross-legged on a low couch—and patted the head of the noble animal which he had chosen as his companion, and which appeared to regard him with the ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... he seems to stagger, with a hey, with a hey, Who but now did so swagger, with a ho; God's fish he's stuck in the mire, And all the fat's in the fire, With ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... the first half of the promised production, and bidding him not be downhearted, for the first of the second half (the Sixth Part or eleventh volume of the whole) is actually at Press. It may be noticed that there is a swagger about these avis and such like things, which probably is attributable to ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... bushes, forgetting the burden of his weapons and his pack of food. In truth, he swaggered a bit, but it was a gay and gallant swagger, and it became him. He walked for some distance, feeling that he had been changed from a seaman into a warrior, and then from a warrior into an explorer, which was his present character. But he did ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... have her pockets full; and between her pockets and mine there was soon established a clandestine communication; accordingly, at fourteen, I wore my cap on one side, stuck pistols in my belt, and assumed the swagger of a cavalier and a gallant. At that age my poor mother died; and about the same period, my father, having written a 'History of the Pontifical Bulls,' in forty volumes, and being, as I said, of high birth, obtained a cardinal's hat. From that time he thought fit to disown your humble servant. ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... prancing gait and to an elaborate exaggeration of the motions, whether of stealth or of onslaught, involved in their deeds of exploit. Similarly in athletic sports there is almost invariably present a good share of rant and swagger and ostensible mystification—features which mark the histrionic nature of these employments. In all this, of course, the reminder of boyish make-believe is plain enough. The slang of athletics, by the way, is in great part made up of extremely sanguinary locutions borrowed from the ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... Dear is the swagger that takes a man in Helmeted, clattering, proud. Sweet are the honors the arrogant win, Hot from the breath of a crowd. Precious the spirit that never will bend— Hot challenge for insolent stare! But—talk when you've tried it!—to ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... of my friends looking out of all the club windows. My reputation is gone. I frighten no man more. My nose is pulled by whipper-snappers, who jump up on a chair to reach it. I am found out. And in the days of my triumphs, when people were yet afraid of me, and were taken in by my swagger, I always knew that I was a lily liver, and expected that I should ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... wholly superficial things like his dandyism, his dark, sinister good looks and a great deal of the mere polished melodrama that he wrote. There was something in his all-round interests; in the variety of things he tried; in his half-aristocratic swagger as poet and politician, that made him in some ways a real touchstone of the time. It is noticeable about him that he is always turning up everywhere and that he brings other people out, generally in a hostile spirit. His ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... attracted attention by their fanciful dresses, and the easy swagger with which they accompanied their morenas, who were not the less conspicuous for their graceful though somewhat confident demeanor. They were all, of course, attired in their peculiar costume, bedizened with ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... two-foot swagger stick in the hand of the police officer found its target. "Shut up, you mule-stealin' baboon. Come on here! You git fifty years in jail if we don't ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... pervades whole sentences and paragraphs with an indefinable lightness and palatableness. It is a thoroughly American style, too, a little over-indifferent to tradition and convention, but quite free of the sic-semper-tyrannis swagger. Uncle Bull, who is just like his nephew in thinking that he has a divine right to the world's oyster, cannot swallow it properly till he has donned a white choker, and refuses to be comforted when Jonathan disposes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... newly sowed wheat field we pass through, and we pause to note their graceful movements and glossy coats. I have seen no bird walk the ground with just the same air the crow does. It is not exactly pride; there is no strut or swagger in it, though perhaps just a little condescension; it is the contented, complaisant, and self-possessed gait of a lord over his domains. All these acres are mine, he says, and all these crops; men plow and sow for me, and I stay here or go there, and find life sweet ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... light as was within him flashed from his face freely; all the capacity and the vigour which impelled him to strain against the strait bonds of his lot set his body quivering and made music of his utterance. At the same time, his free movements passed easily into swagger, and as he talked on, the false notes were not few. A working man gifted with brains and comeliness must, be sure of it, pay penalties for ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... scarcely heard utter half a dozen words in his life, that he was left speechless. He was still standing before the window when Mr. Weatherley crossed the pavement to the waiting taxicab. In his walk and attitude the signs of the man's deterioration were obvious. The little swagger of his younger days was gone, the bumptiousness of his bearing forgotten. He cast no glance up and down the pavement to hail an acquaintance. He muttered an address to the driver and ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... supozi, konjekti. sure : certa surface : suprajxo. surgeon : hxirurgo. surgery : hxirurgio. surprise : mir'o, -igi, ("take by"—) surprizi. surrender : cedi, kapitulaci. survey : termezuri. susceptible : impresema. suspect : suspekti. swaddle : vindi. swagger : fanfaroni. swallow : hirundo; gluti. swan : cigno. swear : jxuri; blasfemi. sweat : sxviti. sweep : balai. swell : sxveli. swing : balanc'i, -igxi; svingi. sword : glavo, spado. sycamore : sikomoro. syllable : silabo. syllabus : ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... she had first seen him—he struck her as confessing, with strange tears in his own eyes, to sharp identity of emotion. "Poor thing, poor thing"—it reached straight— "ISN'T she, for one's credit, on the swagger?" After which, as, held thus together they had still another strained minute, the shame, the pity, the better knowledge, the smothered protest, the divined anguish even, so overcame him that, blushing to his eyes, he turned short away. The affair but of a few muffled ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... ignorant sailor; could scarcely write his own name; but he had biceps and a thick head. Didn't know when he was whipped. I can see him yet, as he used to look, with his giant shoulders and his swagger as he stepped into the ring. There was no nonsense about him—or his fist; could break a board with that. And how the shouts used to go up; 'the pet!' 'a quid on the pet!' 'ten bob on the stars and stripes!' meaning ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... who always walked the deck with a rolling swagger, with his huge hands thrust deep into his breeches' pockets when there was nothing for them to do, said to Jim Welton, "he'd advise 'im to go below an' clap the ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Frenchmen walked along the deck, that there was a good deal of swagger in their manner, but I only set it down to Gallic impudence. While this conversation was going on, one of our midshipmen, a smart youngster—Mowbray, I think, was his name—had been inquisitively examining the Frenchmen, and he now hurried up to the ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... known him, as he might have done, he would have had a character ready to his hand that would have added one of the most amusing and interesting portraits to his gallery. He faintly suggests a moral Falstaff, if we can imagine a Falstaff without vices. As a narrator he has the swagger of a Captain Dalghetty, but his actions are marked by honesty and sincerity. He appears to have had none of the small vices of the gallants of his time. His chivalric attitude toward certain ladies who appear in his adventures, must have ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... she is an alchemist's crucible, that has every fair and rich thing thrown into it, but will only yield in return the calcined stones of chagrin and disappointment; she is a harlot, whose kisses are to be bought, and who runs after those who brawl the loudest and swagger the finest in the world's market-places. No! I want nothing of her. My lord here condemned her as I came in; he said she was the offspring of echoing parrots, of imitative sheep, of fawning hounds. Who can want the creature of ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... could do better, when we hear of others that they have been toiled, nor be tickled at the thoughts of our own manhood; for such commonly come by the worst when tried.[258] Witness Peter, of whom I made mention before. He would swagger, aye, he would; he would, as his vain mind prompted him to say, do better, and stand more for his Master than all men; but who so foiled, and run down ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... he objected to an actress for ogling she might reasonably reply, "But this is how I support my friend Anne in her sublime evolutionary effort." Whenever he laughed at an old-fashioned actor for ranting, the actor might answer, "My exaggeration is not more absurd than the tail of a peacock or the swagger of a cock; it is the way I preach the great fruitful lie of the life-force that I am a very fine fellow." We have remarked the end of Shaw's campaign in favour of progress. This ought really to have been the ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... accustomed, in the rough and varied colonial life, to looking after themselves and thinking for themselves, and trusting no one else to do it for them. You can see this self-reliance of theirs in their manner, in their gait and swagger and the way they walk, in the easy lift and fall of the carbines on their hips, the way they hold their heads and speak ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... a great swagger. 'Well yer needn't be funny in this waggon,' says he. 'The pair of yer spongin' a ride! Yer needn't be ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... absurd to see the self-importance of the miserable cut-throats belonging to Koorshid's party, who, far too great to act as common soldiers, swagger about with little slave-boys in attendance, who carry their muskets. I often compare the hard lot of our honest poor in England with that of these scoundrels, whose courage consists in plundering and murdering defenceless natives, while the robbers fatten on the spoil. I am most anxious ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... the richest capitalists in Paris one day met an extremely pretty little working-girl. Her mother was with her, but the girl had taken the arm of a young fellow in very doubtful finery, with a very smart swagger. The millionaire fell in love with the girl at first sight; he followed her home, he went in; he heard all her story, a record of alternations of dancing at Mabille and days of starvation, of play-going ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... the red-nosed man could not move. The red-nosed man heard all the questions and the landlord's answers, and could not even pretend that he did not hear them. "I am my cousin's clerk," said he, putting on his hat, and coming up to Mr Toogood with a swagger. "My name is Dan Stringer, and I'm Mr John Stringer's cousin. I've lived with Mr John Stringer for twelve year and more, and I'm a'most as well known in Barchester as himself. Have you anything to ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... returned Elmer nonchalantly. He was a thin, anaemic-looking young fellow a couple of years younger than Virginia who affected a swagger and gloves and who had a cough which was insistent, but which he strove to disguise. And yet Florrie's hyperbole had not been entirely without warrant. He had something of Virginia's fine profile, a look of her in his eyes, the stamp of good blood upon him. He suffered ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... tall trees that flamed bright yellow with autumn outside the camp limits, and then to the end of the long street of barracks, where was a picket fence and a sentry walking to and fro, to and fro. His brows contracted for a moment. Then he walked with a sort of swagger towards the fourth building ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... not all well enough? Will you not grant that we can strut and huff? Men may be proud; but faith, for aught I see, They neither walk, nor cock, so well as we; And, for the fighting part, we may in time Grow up to swagger in heroic rhyme; For though we cannot boast of equal force, Yet, at some weapons, men have still the worse. Why should not then we women act alone? Or whence are men so necessary grown? Our's are so old, they are as good as none. Some who have tried them, if you'll take ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... workmen as they loitered about the streets, their stomachs empty, said to each other that it was a great honour for Mugsborough that their Member should be promoted in this way. They boasted about it and assumed as much swagger in their gait ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... started for the ball-ground, but at this taunt he turned back, thrust his hands into his pockets, put on a swagger, and stammered: "No, I'm not afraid of a ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... gaze of his eyes and was lost. With the ghost of a swagger in her gait she crossed to the red plush sofa upon which Paul was seated and lounged upon the end of it, one foot swinging in the air. She had a trick of rubbing the second finger of her left hand as if twisting a ring, and Paul watched her ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... him? Dared she trust? But he was no deceiver, no flirt, like the lady-killers who used to come to the Palazzo to bow over Lucia's hand and eye each other with that half hostile, half knowing swagger. She had watched them. . . ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... suffused with almost boyish merriment, and indeed an irresponsible gaiety was a salient characteristic of the man. One would have called him handsome, though his mouth was a trifle slack, and there was a certain assurance in his manner that just fell short of swagger. He was the kind of man one likes at first sight, but for all that not the kind his hard-bitten neighbours would have chosen to stand by them through the strain of drought and frost ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... the boy stubbornly, "and I'll drink it if he says so." He lifted the glass and stood looking inquiringly at the man across from him. "Shall I drink it?" he asked, and waited with a boyish swagger. ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... woolen comforters untied and hanging down their backs. They invited the women to dance by pulling them by the cap ribbons that fluttered behind them. Some few, in hats and frockcoats and colored shirts, had an insolent air of domesticity and a swagger befitting grooms in ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... regiment. This done, they would again sink back and each would sit leaning his head against his musket, or with his forehead resting heavily on his folded arms. In comparison the relieving column looked like giants as they came in with a swinging swagger, their uniforms blackened with mud and sweat and bloodstains, their faces brilliantly crimsoned and blistered and tanned by the dust and sun. They made a picture of strength and health and aggressiveness. Perhaps the contrast was strongest when ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... as the wife of another man. Gradually, however, better thoughts returned to him. After all, what was she but a "pert poppet"? He determined that marriage "clips a fellow's wings confoundedly," and so he set himself to enjoy life after his old fashion. There was perhaps a little swagger as he threw himself into a chair and addressed the happy lover. "I'll be shot if I didn't meet Tifto at the corner ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope |
