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More "Boasting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... of the family depends on an extension of a conscience for character through all our thinking on the family. We are really half-ashamed to talk of character. We blush for ideals but we have no shame in boasting of commerce and factories; we are ashamed of the things of beauty and we love only the useful. So we have become ashamed of the ideals of the home. Not only do we passively acquiesce in the popular attitude of indifference or derision, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... her good-night under the porch. She forgot her cue for a moment, and became natural. "I feel so very, very tired," she said. I remember how drearily she said it, and how the tears glittered in her weary eyes. I remember, too, how, ten minutes later, I heard that amiable youth boasting of what had happened, and giving a hideous travestie of her attempts to captivate him, till at last my wrath was kindled, and, to his great confusion (for he was of a timid disposition), I spoke, and sharply, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... strew,— My daily bread? and dare I to implore Thy pillar and thy cloud to guide me, Lord? Yes, he may hope for all who trusts thy word. O then thy miracles in me renew; Thine be the glory, and my boasting o'er." ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... nought for the good of humanity as bound up in the well being of this land. I have called these men few, for it cannot be that the great and time-honored organization of which I hope these men are but the calumniators, boasting the grand old names of Jefferson and Jackson as founders, and enrolling in its ranks so many thousands of the substantial yeomanry and solid men of the country, will really prove false to its name and trust, and be willing to descend into history in the robe of horror and infamy which, like the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... yesterday into an expressive and enduring parable to-day! He approaches a luxuriant Fig-tree, boasting great things among its fellows, and thus through it He addresses a doomed city and devoted land,—"O House of Israel," He seems to say, "I have come up for the last time to your highest and most ancient festival. You ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... observed Hans, "the Gospel, of these Wittemburg doctors is a wonderful thing. It has changed a fierce, boasting, hard, grasping Baron into a mild and liberal man. It has procured us our liberty, who were doomed, I feared, to a long captivity. I must ask leave to remain with you at Wittemburg that I may learn more ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... was a very politic one. He already knew that Mr. Hardy was willing to grant terms, but he wished to show the other chiefs that he supported the honor of the tribe by boasting of their power and resources, and by making the peace as upon ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... with his hand to his head; "some such thought was in my mind this afternoon when I heard of your riding. Stay! I have it! I was at Ampthill, Ossory's place, just before I left. Some insupportable coxcomb was boasting a marvellous run with the hounds nigh across Hertfordshire, and Miss Manners brought him up with a round turn and a half hitch by relating one of your exploits, Richard Carvel. And take my word on't she got no small applause. She told how you had followed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... say a word, not only about the opportunities offered to us individually, but about those offered to England for this great enterprise. The prophet of old represented the proud Assyrian conqueror as boasting, 'My hand hath gathered as a nest the riches of the peoples . . . and there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped.' It might be the motto of England to-day. It is not for nothing that we and our brethren across ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... are no news here to interest much. A German spy (boasting himself such) was stabbed last week, but not mortally. The moment I heard that he went about bullying and boasting, it was easy for me, or any one else, to foretell what would occur to him, which I did, and it came to pass in two days after. He has got off, however, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... sweets the blossoms yield, And a low murmur runs along the field. Millions of suppliant crowds the shrine attend, And all degrees before the Goddess bend; The poor, the rich, the valiant, and the sage, And boasting youth, and narrative old age. Their pleas were diff'rent, their request the same: For good and bad alike are fond of Fame. Some she disgraced, and some with honours crowned; Unlike successes equal merits found. Thus her blind sister, fickle Fortune, reigns, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... commiseration. "I don't believe that was because he wasn't suffering, though. I'm sure it was only because he felt his business was so important. Mary told me he seemed wrapped up in his son's succeeding; and that was what he bragged about most. He isn't vulgar in his boasting, I understand; he doesn't talk a great deal about his—his actual money—though there was something about blades of grass that I didn't comprehend. I think he meant something about his energy—but perhaps not. No, his bragging usually seemed to be not ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... boasting of unanimity, or calling for it. But before this unanimity can be matter either of wish or congratulation, we ought to be pretty sure that we are engaged in a rational pursuit. Frenzy does not become a slighter ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... safe in Egypt?" he rapped. "We are dealing, remember, with the Si-Fan, which, if I am not mistaken, is a sort of Eleusinian Mystery holding some kind of dominion over the eastern mind, and boasting initiates throughout the Orient. It is almost certain that there is an Egyptian branch, or group—call it what you will—of ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... falling inflection. "Then I must say I feel sorry for you. . . . Now, why have you that little amused twinkle in your eyes? I used to see it sometimes at the table on the Tampico when Reggie was boasting, and—and sometimes when I was trying to be very brilliant. Do you know, sometimes I felt like boxing your ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... excuse," said Dick. "I speak not now in any boasting humour, but rather as one inquiring after help or counsel; for if I get not forth of this house through these sentinels, I can do less than naught. Take me, I pray ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dames are pleasant enough," Pao-y smiled, "and they know how to speak decently; but it's they who get quite worn out every day, and they contrariwise say that you've got ample to do daily. Now, doesn't this amount to bragging and boasting?" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Eastern servants before acknowledged superiors; his salutation was expressive of most abject homage; yet when he raised himself, and met the glance of the Princess, his eyes lingered, and brightened, and directly he cast off or forgot his humility, and looked lordlier than an Emir boasting of his thousand tents, with ten spears to each, and a score of camels to the spear. She endured the gaze awhile; for it seemed she had seen the face before—where, she could not tell; and when, as presently happened, she began to feel the brightness of the eyes intenser growing, the sensation reminded ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... Mr. Lovelace's boasting behaviour to his servants: perhaps he may be so mean. But as to my brother, he always took a pride in making himself appear to be a man of parts and learning to our own servants. Pride and meanness, I have ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... and rebound brought about by such strain. Moreover, exaggeration has always to outdo itself progressively. There should have been a Durdles to tell this Swinburne that the habit of exaggerating, like that of boasting, ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... you will pull through," she continued, "only we must take great care of you. Be easy, you have a good friend beside you, and without boasting, a woman as will nurse you like a mother nurses her first child. I nursed Cibot round once when Dr. Poulain had given him over; he had the shroud up to his eyes, as the saying is, and they gave him up for dead. Well, well, you have not come to that yet, God be thanked, ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... wretches had their vanity, and would contend for superior merit, of which the argument was the money their keepers had gained in exhibiting them. To put an end to this contention, the ladies made them understand that what they thought a subject for boasting, was only a proof of their being so much farther from the usual standard of the human form, and therefore a more extraordinary spectacle. But it was long before one of them could be persuaded to lay aside her pretensions to superiority, which she claimed on account of an extraordinary ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... indeed, so far from appearing to my eye in the light of a Miles Gloriosus, that, in the best of my taste and judgment, he does not discover, except in consequence of the robbery, the least trait of such a character. All his boasting speeches are humour, mere humour, and carefully spoken to persons who cannot misapprehend them, who cannot be imposed on: They contain indeed, for the most part, an unreasonable and imprudent ridicule of himself, the usual subject of his good humoured merriment; but in the company of ignorant ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the Cardinal was to be exiled to York, he had ventured on a sorry jest about old friends and old wine being better than new; but the King, who had once been open to plain speaking, was now incensed, threatened and swore at him! Moreover, one of the other fools had told him, in the way of boasting, that he had heard Master Cromwell, formerly the Cardinal's secretary, informing the King that this rogue was no true "natural" at all, but was blessed (or cursed) with as good an understanding as other folks, as was well known in the Cardinal's ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... terrible, that any one coming from amongst them was likely to experience a very disagreeable reception. Indeed it may be suspected, that the sultan must have been a good deal embarrassed by the simplicity with which his guest listened to his pompous boasting as to the extent of his empire, and by the earnestness with which he entreated him to name one of his seaports, where the English might land, when it was certain that he had not a town which was not some hundred miles distant from the coast. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... me to understand the power of nature, that I may be willing to obey her laws. I pray that I may so live that my life will proclaim itself without need of boasting or deception. Forbid that I should spend my life in perfecting trifles, and have no leisure to enjoy ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... indeed! Well, it seems that it was you who wanted the help, after all. What do you mean to pay the Heer Allan Quatermain for saving your life, for I am sure he has done so? You have got no goods left, although you were always boasting about your riches; they are now at the bottom of a river, so it will have to be in love ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... have been whirling away in cabs to the city." Helen had a smile of triumph as she told the story. If the seniors had been robbed of their opportunity to outwit the juniors, they at least would not miss the chance of boasting of it. ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... impaired: but I think I may reasonably despise the understanding of one who conducts himself in such a manner as naturally produces such lamentable consequences, and continues in the same destructive paths to the end of a long life, ostentatiously boasting of morals and philosophy in print, and with equal ostentation bragging of the scenes of low debauchery in public conversation, though deplorably weak both in mind and body, and his virtue and his vigour in a state of non-existence. His confederacy with Swift ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... threescore years and ten, but at three score years and twenty Nature has shown most of those who live to that age that she is earnest, and means to dismantle and have done with them in a very little while. As for boasting of our past, the laudator temporis acti makes but a poor figure in our time. Old people used to talk of their youth as if there were giants in those days. We knew some tall men when we were young, but we can see a man taller than any one among them at the nearest dime museum. ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sent forth a wanderer and an exile, now poor and unimportant, to eat the bread of strangers and climb other people's stairs; and so obnoxious was he to the dominant party in his native city for his bitter spirit, that he was destined never to return to his home and friends. His ancestors, boasting of Roman descent, belonged to the patriotic party,—the Guelphs, who had the ascendency in his early years,—that party which defended the claims of the Popes against the Emperors of Germany. But this party had its divisions and rival families,—those that sided with the old feudal nobles who had ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... features. These, diverting themselves, as children do, chanced to look into a mirror, as it lay upon their mother's chair.[23] He praises his own good looks; she is vexed, and cannot endure the raillery of her boasting brother, construing everything (and how could she do otherwise?) as a reproach {against herself}. Accordingly, off she runs to her Father, to be avenged {on him} in her turn, and with great rancour, makes a charge against the Son, how that he, though a male, ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... that we loved God, but that he loved us, and gave his Son a ransom for sinners.' There seemed such a contrast between my conduct to God, and His to me; and then it has made me, I hope, a little more, (a very little, you know,) I am not boasting, Emilie, am I? it has made me a little more willing to look over things which used to vex me so. What are Fred's worst doings to me, compared with my best ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... acknowledged his talents, actually shuddered when he mentioned his name. Burr declared, in so many words, that he meant to kill Hamilton, because he had threatened to do so long before. He told Mr. Bentham, while boasting of his great success with our finest women, that Mrs. Madison herself was his mistress before marriage; and seriously proposed—in accordance with what may be found in his Life by Matthew L. Davis, about educating daughters ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... don't believe I have mastered the idea well enough to do any really sincere bragging as yet. However, if you ever beat us at anything except brag, then I'm going to try to copy your form in the boasting line." ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... selection which we hear at this time, is one which I have re-named 'The Carol of the Ferns.' Pardon me, Mr. Flagg, if in my enthusiasm over the beauties of what you have so poetically termed my 'magical temple of ferns,' some of my statements should sound like boasting; I assure you they are not so intended. I trust that now I have cleared up the mystery to your ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... August, 1853.—The more intimately I become acquainted with barbarians, the more disgusting does heathenism become. It is inconceivably vile. They are always boasting of their fierceness, yet dare not visit another tribe for fear of being killed. They never visit anywhere but for the purpose of plunder and oppression. They never go anywhere but with a club or spear in hand. It is lamentable to see those who might be children of God, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... the race of your life for it," said Peter, entering into the same light spirited boasting. "I hear Mair and Todd and Semple are also entered, but with a decent handicap I won't mind these, even with ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... replied the inn-keeper, "but what do we know about the American money and its value? I've been told many stories of American girls boasting they have money enough to buy their husband, but heaven knows. It's a country too far away and a language too complicated for us to understand. We like to have our stuff on the table before ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... Without boasting, for much more might have been done, the Boston Association has no cause to be ashamed of its history. Beginning with all ready to criticize, and many disapproving, the Association has worked itself into the confidence of ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... preditum; But for my soul I cannot credit 'em. And must in spite of them maintain, That man and all his ways are vain: And that this boasted lord of nature Is both a weak and erring creature. That instinct is a surer guide Than reason, boasting mortals' pride; And that brute beasts are far before 'em, Deus est anima brutorum. Who ever knew an honest brute At law his neighbour prosecute. Bring action for assault and battery, Or friend beguile ...
— English Satires • Various
... edification as well as a calendar full of saints' days, if they were observed in a 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 benefits and ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Against these boasting, false apostles, Paul boldly defends his apostolic authority and ministry. Humble man that he was, he will not now take a back seat. He reminds them of the time when he opposed Peter to his face and reproved ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... In spite of his boasting, the tea was the worst I ever tasted. I should have thrown it out of the window, if they had offered us such nasty stuff at Trimley Deen. When I set down my cup, he asked facetiously if I wished him to brew any more. My negative answer was a masterpiece ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... been studying Manchu for seven weeks when, feeling that his glowing report of the progress he was making might be regarded as "a piece of exaggeration and vain boasting," he enclosed a specimen translation from Manchu into English. This he accompanied with an assurance that, if required, he could at that moment edit any book printed in the Manchu dialect. About this period Mr Jowett and his colleagues passed from one sensation to another. The calm confidence ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... she'd say to him with a sneer, 'it ill becomes you to drink and sing, and be making a man of yourself. If you were like O'Shaughnessy there, six foot three in his stockings—'Well, well, it looks like boasting; but no matter. Here's ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the weekly local column was exceedingly reserved, as if some prescience of the future had rendered every man and woman cautious of performing a single act worthy of interest. Nothing was said of the last meeting of the Ladies' Civic League and Cemetery Association. There was no flamboyant boasting concerning the ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... person in the court of the Palazzo, before I came away, that it would be to the everlasting discredit of Fra Girolamo if he allowed a government which is almost entirely made up of his party, to deny the Appeal, without entering his protest, when he has been boasting in his books and sermons that it was he who got the law passed. [Note 1.] But between ourselves, with all respect for your Frate's ability, my Romola, he has got into the practice of preaching that ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the physical union, before the astonishing glass shade had fallen that interposes between married couples and the world. She was to keep her independence more than do most women as yet. Marriage was to alter her fortunes rather than her character, and she was not far wrong in boasting that she understood her future husband. Yet he did alter her character—a little. There was an unforeseen surprise, a cessation of the winds and odours of life, a social pressure that would have her ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... its religion, Arabian in its morals, a cesspool of wickedness, it is a fit capital to the Dark Continent." And it is the great emporium—not an obscure settlement, but the consummate flower of East African civilization and boasting in the late Sultan Bargash, an unusually enlightened Moslem ruler. Of the interior and the ivory-slave trade pursued under the auspices of Arab dominion the same author says: "Arab encampments for carrying on a wholesale trade in this terrible commodity are now established all over the heart ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... talking together one day, and boasting of their fathers' crops. Ananzi said his father had never had such a crop in his life before; and Mosquito said, he was sure his father's was bigger, for one yam they dug was as big as his leg. This tickled Jack-Spaniard so much, that he laughed till he broke his waist in two. ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... the dot the great railroad warehouses near the city wharf had burst into flames. Herman had watched without comment, while Rudolph talked incessantly, boasting of his ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in England. If my uncle had wanted a few thousands or tens of thousands to play ducks and drakes with, he'd only to ring me up on the telephone, and he'd have had whatever he asked for in a few hours. That's not boasting, Mr. Chestermarke—that's just plain truth. My uncle a thief! Mr. Chestermarke!—there's only one word for your suggestion. Don't think me rude if I tell you what ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... condition in life, as if they had been Emperor and Empress of the Indies. It was, in the Scots phrase, a good hearing, and put me in good humour with the world. If people knew what an inspiriting thing it is to hear a man boasting, so long as he boasts of what he really has, I believe they would do it more freely ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up the hill and rang the bell at the Tour de l'Horloge, which is the only part of the buildings still boasting a roof, and here the concierge and his family tuck themselves away somewhere within its high, narrow walls. The bell that we rang is on the outer side of the tower, and in the course of time a girl, about as big as the old key she carried, unlocked a door in the archway through which we entered. ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... he drove on, related the story of Jack's miserable boasting and poltroonery. Much as she pitied the wretch, Mrs. Manly could not help remembering his treachery towards her son, and feeling that Frank was now ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... attend the five-cent theaters in groups, with something of the "gang" instinct, boasting of the films and stunts in "our theater." They find a certain advantage in attending one theater regularly, for the habitues are often invited to come upon the stage on "amateur nights," which occur at least once a week in all the theaters. This ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... at which travellers from Barcelona re-enter French territory, we follow the coast, traversing a region long lost to fame and the world, but boasting of a brilliant history before the real history of ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... some conquests to-night, that cream-white satin with her diamonds and these old fashioned gold bands, suit her to perfection. She enjoys wielding the sceptre and she does it with such seeming unconsciousness, and absence of vanity that is very charming, never boasting of her conquests even to me." But where can she be all this time, I wonder, and with whom? so breaking in upon Lionel's reverie, she repeated her question of, "Where and with whom is Vaura? she has ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... village dances, he had heard young fellows boasting about girls whom they had seduced, and praising such and such a young fellow, and often, also, after a dance, he saw the couples go away together, with their arms round each other's waists. They had no suspicions of him, and he listened and watched, until, at last, he ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the truth. Mercier said nothing of the amount of wine he had drunk, nothing of his boasting. He described the men at the Lion d'Or as truculent, easily ready to ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... in Canada, than those who have commanded large bodies of the militia. Put the query to any officer in the army who has had such a charge, and the universal answer will be: "The militia of Canada are loyal to Britain, without vapouring or boasting of that loyalty; for they are not by natural constitution a very speaking race, or given at every moment to magnify; but they will fight, should need be, for Victoria, her crown, ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... for his life from a charge of complicity in a Nihilist conspiracy: he wisely came to the conclusion, therefore, that he would not be the first to divulge the story of his own ignominious defeat, unless he found that damned radical chap was going boasting around the countryside how he had balked Sir Lionel. And as nothing was further than boasting from Bertram Ingledew's gentle nature, and as Philip and Frida both held their peace for good reasons of their own, the baronet ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... don't scare worth a cent," declared Bandy-legs, given to boasting a little more than any of ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... spirit in a dying breast, Then be it so: Heauens keepe old Bedford safe. And now no more adoe, braue Burgonie, But gather we our Forces out of hand, And set vpon our boasting ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... evening, in the event of their accepting the box in question. The ladies received the offer with too much pleasure to dream of a refusal. To no class of persons is the presentation of a gratuitous opera-box more acceptable than to the wealthy millionaire, who still hugs economy while boasting of carrying a king's ransom in his ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... kindly made free, and told them they must follow them (the officers). Margret was boasting the other day of her answer, "I don't want to be any free-er than I is now—I'll stay with my mistress," when Tiche shrewdly remarked, "Pshaw! Don't you know that if I had gone, you'd have followed me?" The conduct ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... he could plead his own merits; but we are taught that we can only plead the mercy of God. The apostle says that salvation is "not of works, lest any man should boast." Eph. 2:9. If it were by works man would have some cause for boasting; but because it is wholly by grace, he has nothing of self in which to boast. Again he says, "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost." ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... under many disadvantages on the side of the allied army, was almost as unsuccessful as their enemies could have desired. The battle of Fontenoy was obstinate and bloody, and many thousands were left on the field on the side of the vanquished. The victorious army had little reason for boasting, having likewise bought their victory very dear. Though bad success attended the British arms on the continent at this time, yet that evil being considered as remote, the people seemed only to feel it as affecting the honour of the nation, which by some ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... half a century earlier, dripping with the blood of a thousand martyrs, seemed hardly a more loathsome object to all Netherlanders than the Advocate now appeared to his political enemies, thus daring to preach religious toleration, and boasting of, humble ignorance as the safest creed. Alas! we must always have something to persecute, and individual man is never so convinced of his own wisdom as when dealing ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... love, 'twill chafe my ghost in Hades' realm, where heroes shine, Should I hear the shepherd boasting To his Argive concubine? Let him boast, the girlish victor, Let him brag; not thus, I trow, Were the laurels torn from Hector, Not ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... one small check in my career," he continued eagerly, "but the game is not finished. Believe me, I have still great cards up my sleeve. I know that you have been used to wealth and luxury. Miss Abbeway," he went on, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper, "I was not boasting the other night. I have saved money, I ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... think I was boasting of what I could do in the way of getting food for us—and all that. You see, I have been in the South Seas ever since I was a kid—and by nature I'm half a Kanaka. I've lived among natives ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... the good old lord Lafeu, make very interesting parts of the picture. The wilful stubbornness and youthful petulance of Bertram are also very admirably described. The comic part of the play turns on the folly, boasting, and cowardice of Parolles, a parasite and hanger-on of Bertram's, the detection of whose false pretensions to bravery and honour forms a very amusing episode. He is first found out by the old lord Lafeu, who says, 'The soul of this man is in his clothes'; and it ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... "Without boasting," she answered with a wide smile, "there are few enterprises, however difficult, in which I do not succeed. What is it ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... Desarmoises came and told me that all the company, not seeing me at supper, had been puzzling itself to find out what had become of me. Madame Zeroli had spoken enthusiastically about me, and had taken the jests of the two other ladies in good part, boasting that she could keep me at Aix as long as she remained there herself. The fact was that I was not amorous but curious where she was concerned, and I should have been sorry to have left the place without obtaining complete possession ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the prince's confident air with displeasure. Concealing his feelings, however, he chirped, "Well, Prince, have your wits proven as bright as of yore? Or do you but come to return the shields and to ask forgiveness for your rash boasting?" ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood
... too—and delighted," he had returned. "The little boy came to me in the field, boasting of his braces." Then they had both laughed, and she had asked him to come in ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... come a great convulsion Or a rushing tidal wave, Or a sound of mighty thunders From a subterranean cave, And a boasting world's possessions Shall be buried in ...
— Poems of Progress • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... what I am fit for. I am more than all perplexed by this fact: that the prime inclination — that is, natural bent (which I have checked, though) of my nature is to music, and for that I have the greatest talent; indeed, not boasting, for God gave it me, I have an extraordinary musical talent, and feel it within me plainly that I could rise as high as any composer. But I cannot bring myself to believe that I was intended for a musician, because it seems so small a business in comparison with other things which, it ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... years old Torrigiano came to Florence to engage artists to go to England to aid him in some works he was to execute. He wished to have Cellini in the number; but Torrigiano so disgusted Benvenuto by his boasting of the blow that he had given Michael Angelo, that though he had the natural youthful desire to travel, he refused to be employed by such a man as Torrigiano. We can safely assume that this predisposed Michael ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... his qualifications with tact, if not with modesty, and rated very highly his ability to serve me as a listener; but he did so in a manner intended to convince me that he was not boasting, but stating facts which it was necessary I should know. His experience had been varied: he had acted as a tutor, a traveling companion, a confidential clerk, a collector of information for technical writers, and ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... 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 carried ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... and unity may be preserved?' When, therefore, Erasmus sought to obtain unity of faith by mutual concession and compromise, Luther answered by declaring such unity to be impossible, for the simple reason that the Catholics, by their very boasting of the authority of the Church, absolutely refused on their part to make any concession at all. But so far as 'unity of charity' was concerned, he held that on that point the Evangelicals needed no admonishment, for they were ready to do and suffer all things, provided nothing was imposed upon ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... beef about, and seeing them sidle and back on their aimless, Cousin Feenix-like legs: it is a sight to bring a freckle-nosed cousin almost into hysterics. But one day a vivacious girl had committed the offence of boasting too much of her skill in crab-catching, besides being quite unnecessarily gracious to Mr. Jefferson Jones. Then Mr. Madison Addison, who must have been reading Plutarch, did a sly thing indeed. The boat having been drawn unnoted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... it becomes thee, Britain, to avow JOHNSON's high claims!—yet boasting that his fires Were of unclouded lustre, TRUTH retires Blushing, and JUSTICE knits her solemn brow; The eyes of GRATITUDE withdraw the glow His moral strain inspir'd.—Their zeal requires That thou should'st better ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... drawing-room; kept a pack of harriers; and assumed the title of Squire Hobnell. When he died, and his son reigned in his stead, the family might be fairly considered to be established as county gentry. And Sam Huxter, at London, did no great wrong in boasting about his brother-in-law's place, his hounds, horses, and hospitality, to his admiring comrades at Bartholomew's. Every year, at a time commonly when Mrs. Hobnell could not leave the increasing duties of her nursery, Hobnell came up to London ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... favorite studies, those in which he most excelled, and which appeared almost intuitive to him, were those connected with figures. The old Squire, who idolised his handsome sullen boy, was never weary of boasting of his abilities, and his great knowledge in mathematics ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... king was boasting of his conjurer before some other kings, they said to him, "We too have some diviners. Let us compare their wits with the wisdom of your man." The kings then buried three pots,—one filled with milk, another with honey, and the third with pitch. The conjurers ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... "My boy's forever boasting of your Butterfly Man," said the judge, falling into step with me one morning on the street. "He tells me Flint's been made a member of several learned societies; and that he's gotten out a book of sorts, telling all there is to tell about some crawling plague or other. ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... at which tyrants pale, And their proud legions quail, Their boasting done; While Freedom lifts her head, No longer filled with dread, Her sons to victory ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... drily, "when a girl goes about boasting that her father is more powerful than the Czar or Kaiser! Suppose she had stopped there, any hearer would have concluded that he was an anarchist, and therefore to be watched. But she went further: she asserted that he can blow up forts and destroy armies! That he can wreck battleships! Why, M. ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... all cheerful, however, for as they applied themselves to the supper, the boy, with glowing face, would tell just how his company "A" was getting on, and what they were going to do to companies "B" and "C." It was not boasting so much as the expression of a confidence, founded upon the hard work he was doing, and Hannah and the "little sister" shared that ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... that gentleman was the main cause of that sentence, as those who had a hand in passing it did confess; for he had solemnly sworn, that if he lived there, that minister should not be in that place. Returning to his house a few days after, and boasting how he had kept his word, and got his minister cast out of his parish, he was suddenly struck by the Lord with a high fever, which plucked him away in the very strength of his years." Fulfilling of the scriptures, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... next thing to be done was to find out some inn, or house of public entertainment, where we might pass the night, a measure which the increasing darkness rendered necessary. In this, however, we were disappointed, the town of Villa Franca boasting of no such convenience on any scale. But we were not on that account obliged to bivouac; for the Alcalde, or mayor of the place, politely insisted upon our accompanying him home, and entertained us with great hospitality; nor, in truth, had we any ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... science for replenishment, we must be filled. And the ironic power which presides over our feasts compels the most inveterate egoist amongst us to share his treasures. Mind is for ever craving to give to mind. If we want nothing better than to boast of our superiority, the boasting imparts a lesson to others and is therefore a gift. But the reforming spirit spares few who think. It is generally believed that the purely literary mind scorns the idea of reforming: that art is above moral purpose. I have yet to discover the purely literary mind. Homer and Shakespeare, ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... referred to; but that such could have been the meaning intended is very unlikely, considering the contempt of the ancient philosophers for vulgar opinion. In any other sense they are clear cases of Petitio Principii, since the word laudable, and the idea of boasting, imply principles of conduct; and practical maxims can only be proved from speculative truths, namely, from the properties of the subject-matter, and can not, therefore, be employed to prove those properties. As well might it be argued that a government is good because we ought to support ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... advertising department. The Pittsburg Gazette was the only daily paper on the Clipper's exchange list—this fact compels the admission that Pittsburg was a little ahead of Brownsville in the newspaper field, boasting two papers at the time, the Gazette and Post. Both papers carried display advertisements of Hostetter's Stomach Bitters and Dr. Jayne's Liver Pills for grown people and vermifuge for children. Those were the only patent medicines that advertised ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... dandy who flirts with nurses and cooks, spends his time boasting about South Africa and the U. S. A., posing for motion pictures, and exhibiting royalty. Authorities differ as to his marksmanship, although it is now conceded he can often hit a man-sized target at the distance of 4 feet 3 inches. Weather, however, must be clear. Is ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... to a sudden stand still; there was something so strange in hearing a laugh at that moment, especially as Chillingworth was, at that moment, boasting of his knowledge of the ground and the certainty ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... heaven's behalf than heaven would have 'em. That is my kind of man, that is true living, That is the pattern we should set ourselves. Your fellow was not fashioned on this model; You're quite sincere in boasting of his zeal; But you're deceived, ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... In spite of his great services, his popularity began to decline. He was hated by the Spartans for the part he took in the fortification of the city, who brought all their influence against him. He gave umbrage to the citizens by his personal vanity, continually boasting of his services. He erected a private chapel in honor of Artemis. He prostituted his great influence for arbitrary and corrupt purposes. He accepted bribes without scruple, to the detriment of the State, and ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... life, when old enough to work in the harvest field, we had a neighbor who was very "close," and we never had any fancy for him. He was always boasting of his ability to work with bees. One year he had a large harvest, and many hands employed, and we were helping him. One day we told him we had found a fine bee tree which could be cut down in a few minutes, ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... never doubted that the plans of the President were wise and sufficient. Their failure we all impute, 1. To the insubordinate temper of Armstrong: and, 2. To the indecision of Winder. However, it ends well. It mortifies ourselves, and so may check, perhaps, the silly boasting spirit of our newspapers, and it enlists the feelings of the world on our side: and the advantage of public opinion is like that of the weather-gage in a naval action. In Europe, the transient possession of our Capital ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... revolted. A cad from the Potterrow once struck him in the mouth; he struck back, the pair fought it out in the back stable lane towards the Meadows, and Archie returned with a considerable decline in the number of his front teeth, and unregenerately boasting of the losses of the foe. It was a sore day for Mrs. Weir; she wept and prayed over the infant backslider until my lord was due from Court, and she must resume that air of tremulous composure with which she always greeted him. The judge ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of this degraded panderer to crime and folly. He is beneath notice, so far as he himself concerned; I devote the space to him, because it is well worth while to understand how base an imposture can draw a steady revenue from a nation boasting so much culture and intelligence as ours. It is also worth considering whether the authorities must not be remiss, who permit such odious deceptions to be ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... at table. But it was not long before he discovered his mistake. One day, after dining with the Abb, de Radonvillers at Versailles, in company with several courtiers and marshals of France, he was boasting of the rare acquaintance with etiquette and custom which he had exhibited at dinner. The Abb, Delille, who heard this eulogy upon his own conduct, interrupted his harangue, by offering to wager that he had committed at least a hundred improprieties at the table. ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... buy some of those plums, whose acid was of the hair-lifting aqua-fortis variety, and all the rest of the day he stewed them, adding sugar, trying to make them palatable, tasting them now and then, boasting meanwhile of their nectar-like deliciousness. He gave the others a taste by and by—a withering, corroding sup—and they derided him and rode him down. But Jim never weakened. He ate that fearful brew, and though for days his mouth was like fire he still referred to the luscious health-giving ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 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 not point specially to our own habits and doings, but to the general state ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... nevertheless made a truce. The cause lay in the fear that, if Philip were out of the way, the Greeks might recover their ancient spirit and no longer pay them court, that the AEtolians, already filled with great boasting because they had contributed the largest share to the victory, might become more vexatious to them, and that Antiochus might, as was reported, come to Europe and form an alliance with Philip. (Ursinus, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... the market, the streets, Everywhere he was boasting his feats; Till one said, with a sneer, "Let us see it done here! What's so oft done with ...
— The Baby's Own Aesop • Aesop and Walter Crane
... special treatises by Dana, Gould, Pickering, Gray, Cassin, and Brackenbridge, we are obliged to refrain from dwelling on the work done in countries already known. The success of these publications beyond the Atlantic was, as might be expected in a country boasting of so ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... as I have reason to know. They love their lives just as much as we do, and they long to go back and spend their days amongst their loved ones. It is only rare that cowardice is seen, and it is rarer still for them to make any boast; the average Englishman is not given to boasting; he has his duty to do, and he just does it, saying very little ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... standstill in London on account of this wretched war, at which it appears to me the English are getting the worst, notwithstanding their boasting. They thought to settle it in an autumn's day; they little knew the Russians, and they did not reflect that just after autumn comes winter, which has ever been the ...
— Letters to his wife Mary Borrow • George Borrow
... Danforth was given to boasting a bit as to the part his ancestors had played as neighbors to Oliver Cromwell at the time, and the only time, when England was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... was fond of boasting. Situated on the brink of the Great Briney, its other three sides were flanked by thick, swampy jungle, in which the isuan grew and was gathered by Tantril's Venusian workers. Ranch? More a fort than a ranch, with its electrified, steel-spiked fence; its three watch-towers, lookouts always ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... the papers may cause the starvation of my passion for politics, and that scab may drop off. God has shown me what the scabs are:—Evil-speaking, lying, slandering, back-biting, scoffing, self-conceit, boasting, silly talking, and some ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... true that Lord Mortimer has lately wed his only child, a daughter, to a knight who calls himself Sir Edward Chadwell, and makes claim to be descended from my lord's house. Men say that he makes great boasting that the Chadwells are an older branch than the Chadgroves, and that by right of ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... psychological mystery not to be solved by the cold empirical methods which could be employed in the solution of other problems. I must ask you to bear this in mind when judging Lady Auriol. She had once fancied herself in love with an Italian poet, an Antinous-like young man of impeccable manners, boasting an authentic pedigree which lost itself in the wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus. None of your vagabond ballad-mongers. A guest when she first met him of the Italian Ambassador. To him, Prince Charming, knight and troubadour, she surrendered. He told her ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... "Midnight murder, thou boasting fool; I love thee not well enough to cheat the hangman of his prey," replied a harsh and grating voice, which, even without the removal of the cloak, would have revealed to Nigel's astonished ears the Earl of Buchan. "Ha! I have startled thee—thou ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... talk about the imperial cities is mere boasting. I am famous, admired and loved here, it is true, but the people are worse than ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... reply to my inquiries is conclusive. Before giving it, however, I may mention that my fellow-tramp, Mr. Kitton, suggested, more particularly with reference to another illustration in Edwin Drood, viz., "Durdles cautions Mr. Sapsea against boasting," that, for the purposes of the story, the Prior's Gate is placed where the ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... know, sir, I'm sure, but I was took aback. An' in a small place like this it's certain to make talk. That old Miss Gallup, now, she'll be boasting everywhere that our Miss Mary went to dine with her nephew, just as she did when he went to a dinner party up at the house, and for us as belongs to the house—well, we don't relish it. I hope, sir," Willets went on in quite a different tone, "that you'll make it convenient ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... 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 deserted within a day's march of the English settlements, most of them turned ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... Lady, and you are not the first to so object, but the others were men, and I may say, without boasting, that I bent not the knee to them when I reached their level, but I have been told that custom will enable a maid to look more forgivingly on such escapades if her feeling is friendly toward the invader, and I am ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... cheek had often felt the blush of shame, At his proud boasting; and her heart had sunk At the cold arrogance that scorn'd the poor; But she was fain to turn aside, and weep, To wring her hands in secret, and to raise The eye of silent anguish up to heaven; For though he dearly lov'd her, he would ne'er Submit to ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... meant to legitimate the child, and to give the mother a title. "All that," said Madame de Mirepoix, "is in the style of Louis XIV.—such dignified proceedings are very unlike those of our master." Mademoiselle Romans lost all her influence over the King by her indiscreet boasting. She was even treated with harshness and violence, which were in no degree instigated by Madame. Her house was searched, and her papers seized; but the most important, those which substantiated the fact of the King's paternity, had been withdrawn. At length she gave birth to a son, who was ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... 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 fare ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... to know?—This must, no doubt, Content me, that we are as wine, and men By us have senses drunk against his toil Of knowing himself, for all his boasting mind, Caught by the quiet purpose of the world, Burnt up by it at last, like something fallen In molten iron streaming. But I know Not drunken may man's soul master his world; And I now make for woman a new mood, Wherein she will not bear to know herself A heady drug for man.—I ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... 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; ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... who resided for some time in England at the commencement of the eighteenth century, says, in his amusing letters on the English and French nations, that he continually met with Englishmen who were not less vain in boasting of the success of their highwaymen than of the bravery of their troops. Tales of their address, their cunning, or their generosity, were in the mouths of everybody, and a noted thief was a kind of hero in high ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... to some persons but folly, and to others but mere boasting, to point to this young man, as any fruit of, or recompense for, the costly and calamitous Arctic expeditions. But others may not think it all in vain, if thereby one soul has been saved, and an example left to a few young ...
— Kalli, the Esquimaux Christian - A Memoir • Thomas Boyles Murray
... their character, no doubt, originates in their mode of life; accustomed as a hunter to depend greatly on chance for his subsistence, the Cree takes little thought of to-morrow; and the most offensive part of his behaviour—the habit of boasting—has been probably assumed as a necessary part of his armour, which operates upon the fears of his enemies. They are countenanced, however, in this failing, by the practice of the ancient Greeks, and perhaps by that of every other ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... on the poor man's brain. He could have broken that pale man in halves with one hand; yet the pale man mastered him. He knew some of the burly seamen as old ruffians; yet here they were—talking gently, and boasting about their happiness and prosperity. When the last crashing chorus had been sung, the two swells went round and chatted ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... have hitherto given, but we are not excluded from other apostolic labors as the wants of the Church may demand or develop. . . . We begin early this fall our campaign of missions, and we never had before us so fine a list. One thing I may say, and I trust without boasting, we are of one mind and heart, resolved to labor and die for Jesus Christ, for the good of His holy Church, for the advancement of the Catholic faith. We have the encouragement of a number of bishops, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... "if I doubt this. Whatever stories you may have picked up concerning me, not unexaggerated probably—since the Greeks do not keep the privilege of boasting so entirely to themselves but the Varangians have learned a little of it—you can have heard nothing of me which can authorise your using your present ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... they went to their guns. Several of them, as they cast their eyes on me, vowed that they would shoot me through the head should the day go against them. Having no fancy to be so treated, I thought it prudent to go below, knowing very well that, in spite of their boasting, they would soon get the worst of it, and that you, at all events, would fight on until you had compelled them to strike their flag or sent them to the bottom. I felt the awful position in which I was placed. I might be ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... these statements regarding the lunar inhabitants; and we may realize more than we have imagined or dreamed. We may obtain observations as satisfactory as those of a son of the Emerald Isle, who was one day boasting to a friend of his excellent telescope. "Do you see yonder church?" said he. "Although it is scarcely discernible with the naked eye, when I look at it through my telescope, it brings it so close that I can hear the organ playing." Two hundred years ago, a ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... adventure at the top of the Haymarket, where the former dismissed the coach he had hired in Cheapside, and they proceeded towards Piccadilly on foot. Up to this time the major had been in very high spirits, boasting what he would do, in case they encountered Disbrowe, and offering to keep guard outside the door while the knight remained in the house. But he now began to alter his tone, and to frame excuses to get away. He ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... tormented by their sisters, and enchanted by those they love; and which cause the coquetries of other women to appear insipid or coarse in their eyes; inducing them to exclaim, with an appearance of boasting, yet in which they are entirely justified by the truth: NIEMA IAK POLKI! "Nothing equals the Polish women!" [Footnote: The custom formerly in use of drinking, in her own shoe, the health of the woman they loved, is one of the ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... people are proud of being all head and no heart. There is no flummery about them. It is stern, severe sense and principle. Well, my friends, say I to such, you are (in a moral sense) deficient of a member. Fancy a mortal hopping through creation, and boasting that he was born with only one leg! Or even if you have a little of the kindly element, but very little when compared with the logical, you have not much to boast of. Your case is analogous to that of the man who has two legs indeed, but one of them ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... King's Speech, or a Parliamentary Speech, has been uttered, in which this glove has not been thrown, till the world has been insulted with their challenges. But it now appears that all this was vapour and vain boasting, or that it was intended to conceal abuses and defects, and hush the people into taxes. I have taken the challenge up, and in behalf of the public have shewn, in a fair, open, and candid manner, both the radical and practical defects of the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... new teachers continually boasting of their spirit of toleration. That those persons should tolerate all opinions, who think none to be of estimation, is a matter of small merit. Equal neglect is not impartial kindness. The species of benevolence which arises from contempt ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the road, boldly looking down at the blinded windows, thinking how common these houses were; in many parts of England he had seen them, grinning, sulking, boasting, counterfeiting, smirking at a world that ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... in all his demeanor toward the king, instead of triumphing over him, and boasting of the victory which he had achieved, he did every thing in his power to soothe and assuage the fallen monarch's sorrow, and ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Robinson, afterwards Viscount Goderich and earl of Ripon, chancellor of the exchequer in 1823. So called by Cobbett, from his boasting about the prosperity of the country just a little before the great commercial ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... was displayed in his reception, for the unfriendly nature of his errand was already known. Don Sabiniano Manrrique de Lara received the letter which he brought; it was full of arrogance, ostentatiously boasting of Cot-sen's power, and declaring that his champans were many thousands in number and his perfect soldiers hundreds of thousands; (it is a fact that those champans, counting large and small, amount to 15,000, as is known by eyewitnesses); and, in virtue of this pompous and noisy declaration, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... exceedingly fierce and awful and fraught with a loud din. Beholding, O king, those two mighty car-warriors close with each other, I became very curious to observe the course of the battle. Then Bhima, boasting of his prowess in battle, covered Karna in that encounter, O king, with showers of winged shafts in the very sight of thy sons. Then Karna, that warrior acquainted with the highest of weapons, filled with wrath, pierced Bhima with nine broad-headed and straight arrows made entirely of iron. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... far out on a spiral arm, well away from the main stream of traffic that flowed through the galaxy. It was a fair planet boasting an equable climate, at least in the tropic zone. But as yet the population was small, consisting mostly of administrative officials who served their alloted time and thankfully returned to their home planets closer to the center ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow
... only three of us at this time—my little self; Bobbie, a boy of four years old, boasting of the fattest, rosiest cheeks in the world; and wee Willie, the white-faced, fretful baby of six months. Oh, how well I remember the old house, with its great lamp hanging out over the lonely road, and shining among the trees, to show the villagers the way up to their ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... and said she, 'By the virtue of my magic gifts, let a pair of horns spring out of your head, and sing to the lodge.' Just as she wished, so it was. They sprung from the front of each ear, and met at the back. Oh, the poor wretch! And how he bawled and roared! and the servants that he used to be boasting to were soon flocking from the castle, and grinning and huzzaing, and beating tunes on tongs and shovels and pans; and he cursing and swearing, and the eyes ready to start out of his head, and he so black in the face, and kicking out his legs behind ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... serve out the tuak, a spirit prepared from rice and spiced with various ingredients, tobacco being one. The men must drink at these feasts; they are very temperate generally, but on this occasion they are rather proud of being drunk and boasting the next day of a bad headache! The women urge them to drink, but do not join in the orgies, and disappear when the intoxicating stage begins. I trust that this description belongs only to the past; at any rate, we know that in those places where the missionaries have long taught, their ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... may say it without boasting—I had Mlle. Goldberg senior in the hollow of my hand. On the boulevards, as soon as she caught sight of me, her dour face would be wreathed in smiles, a row of large yellow teeth would appear between her thin lips, and her cold, grey eyes would soften with a glance of welcome which more ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
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