"Arrant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... affections yearn for something that they have not,—when his avarice oversteps all the commandments,—when his pride builds castles full of splendor; and yet put this before his eye, and he reads with the most careless air in the world, and condemns as arrant fiction, what cannot be ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... number of the country gentry of Ireland, driving them from their native shores, impoverishing the landlords without any perceptible benefit to the tenants, who appear to be no better off than ever. What surprised him most was the arrant nonsense talked by the English Gladstonians, and the blindness and apathy of the English people generally, who in his opinion were being gradually led to the brink of a frightful abyss, which threatened to swallow up the prestige and prosperity of ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... away your most noble, you worthless scamp, you arrant rascal! First come, first served, is the rule in Holland, and has been ever since the days of Adam and Eve. Prick up your ears, Crooklegs! If my 'most noble' cloak, and Herr Wilhelm's too, are not hanging in their old places before I count twenty, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that," was the eager response. Then, the Irishwoman shook her huge head admiringly. "Sure, when the women get the votes, you'll be elected alderman from the ward." But, as Cicily would have laughingly protested against this arrant flattery, a sudden thought came to the President of the new club, and she spoke with an increase of seriousness: "And, oh, I was forgetting one thing! What do you think now, Mrs. Hamilton? Carrington's men have been around!" In answer to her hostess's look of ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... to pieces, had not Sulla by his intervention in Asia and Italy saved its existence. It is true that the constitution of Sulla had as little endurance as that of Cromwell, and it was not difficult to see that his structure was no solid one; but it is arrant thoughtlessness to overlook the fact that without Sulla most probably the very site of the building would have been swept away by the waves; and even the blame of its want of stability does not fall primarily on Sulla. The statesman builds only so much ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... luxury, little debars him, Nor sickness nor age, no treachery-sorrow Becloudeth his spirit, conflict nowhere, No sword-hate, appeareth, but all of the world doth Wend as he wisheth; the worse he knoweth not, 90 Till arrant arrogance inward pervading, Waxeth and springeth, when the warder is sleeping, The guard of the soul: with sorrows encompassed, Too sound is his slumber, the slayer is near him, Who with bow and arrow ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... Deadeye, the poacher, transported last year, and took the prize for Devons at the Great Mesopotamian Agricultural with a brindled bull. We remember his weeping at the wedding-breakfast over the loss of his eldest treasure, and wonder if he was an arrant humbug, or only a foolish, fond old man, inclining morosely toward the former opinion. We don't seem to care much about Sir Roland de Vaux, the celebrated geologist, whom we shall have the privilege of meeting this evening. What are strata to us, when our thoughts ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... lay rather with the common people than with the Irish aristocracy, who, he thought, were arrant "grafters." Of one in particular ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... "What arrant nonsense!" exclaimed Nelson, with some exasperation. "It always irritates me when I hear these old topers excused. A man should be able to take a glass of wine or beer ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... pacing up and down the room. "What arrant nonsense a man can be capable of when he is headstrong to begin with! To think of the elegant Horatio King, a model for all men, surrounding himself with this commonplace family. Faugh! It is easy enough to see what they are all after. ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... find the self-styled Kearney quietly seated on the sofa, the gentle May Sylvester, the "Lily of Lone Valley," sitting with maidenly awe and unaffected interest on one side of him, while on the other that arrant flirt, her cousin Kate, was practicing the pitiless archery of her eyes, with an excitement that seemed ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... windows thus prolong your shames, And to such arrant nonsense sign your names, The diamond quit—with me the pencil take, So shall your shame but short duration make; For lo, the housemaid comes, in dreadful pet, With red right hand, and with a dishclout wet, Dashes out all, nor leaves a wreck to tell Who 't was that wrote so ill!—and ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... venenum; Wine is poison to a sick body. A sick body is no sound body; ergo, wine is a pure thing, and is poison to all corruption. Try-lill! the hunters whoop to you. I'll stand to it: Alexander was a brave man, and yet an arrant drunkard. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... his defeat any more palatable to Cass that he had brought it on himself by his bad-tempered unneighborliness and by his overreaching disposition. A hundred times he had blacknamed himself for an arrant fool because he had not anticipated the move of his enemy and ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... any, as he himself in a letter declares; yea, with a design to bespatter the Presbyterian church of Scotland, a most scurrilous pamphlet was published at London, not only reflecting on our excellent reformers from popery, publishing arrant lies anent Mr. Alexander Henderson, abusing Mr. David Dickson, and breaking jests upon the remonstrators and presbyterians (as they called them), but also, in a most malicious and groundless kind of rhapsody, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... and you will be sure to attain success—far more so than if you attempt to follow in another's footsteps. Fracasse, as you represent him, loves and admires courage, and would fain be able to manifest it—he is angry with himself for being such an arrant coward. When free from danger, he dreams of nothing but heroic exploits and superhuman enterprises; but when any actual peril threatens him, his too vivid imagination conjures up such terrible visions of bleeding wounds and violent ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... at making critical remarks. And tho ever so well qualified, I am satisfied that your Grace's works would come out pure from the essay." The successor of the apostles smiled at my answer. He made no observation on it; but it was easy to see through all his piety that he was an arrant author at the bottom: there is something in that dye that not ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... than a man Our state employs. He's gone: and being gone, I dare tell you, whom I dare better trust, That our night-eyed Tiberius doth not see His minion's drifts; or, if he do, he's not So arrant subtile, as we fools do take him; To breed a mungrel up, in his own house, With his own blood, and, if the good gods please, At his own throat, flesh him, to take a leap. I do not beg it, heaven; but if the fates Grant it these eyes, ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... truth. The causes of their enmity are their chagrin at the events of the Exodus and the difference of their religious ideas."[1] Josephus deals with Manetho's description of the going-out from Egypt, and undertakes to demonstrate that "he trifles and tells arrant lies." He dissects the charge that the Hebrews were a pack of lepers exiled from the country, and insists upon its absurdity and the lack of consistency in the details. He offers ingenuously as a proof of the falsity of the allegation ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... more arrant outrage than to hate God and to abhor His Law? What an excellent Law it is. Listen: "I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... in the beholder, or to become objects of human interest and affection. The kingbird is the best dressed member of the family, but he is a braggart; and, though always snubbing his neighbors, is an arrant coward, and shows the white feather at the slightest display of pluck in his antagonist. I have seen him turn tail to a swallow, and have known the little pewee in question to whip him beautifully. From the great-crested to the little green flycatcher, their ways and general habits are ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Meredith, 't is a man's duty to aid a creditor to pay his debts. May I not hope to see you and Mrs. Meredith and Miss Janice at headquarters ere long? For if you come not willingly, I'll put Miss Janice under arrest as an arrant and avowed rebel, and have her brought to York ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... of lightning and a peal of thunder startled the party, the leaders veered round again, jumping violently, and carrying the wagon perilously near the gully. William Mount and Walter Hart sprang to the horses' heads, while the ladies screamed in concert. Aunt Faith was an arrant coward where riding was concerned. "I would rather get out and walk all the way home than sit in this wagon a ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... pirate ship was quickly captured, and not long afterwards twenty-five of her crew were tried, convicted, and hung near Newport, Rhode Island. But the arrant Low escaped without injury, and continued his career of contemptible crime for some time longer. What finally became of him is not set down in the histories of piracy. It is not improbable that if the men under his command were not ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... Mellish, delivers that arrant bit of nonsense "The Seven Ages of Man" in such a manner as a man might tell a rather serious story in a drawing room. "The Seven Ages of Man," of course, is just as much of an aria as La Donna e Mobile. It always ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... head and said, "I cannot get rid of the idea, nor will anyone in the world remove it, or make me think otherwise—and he would be a blockhead who would hold or believe anything else than that that arrant knave Master Elisabad made free with ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a place in the gallery: but as we'd been asked so much at the other doors, why I paid it without many words; but, then, to be sure, thinks I, it can never be like any other gallery, we shall see some crinkum-crankum or other for our money; but I find it's as arrant a take-in as ever ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... would have replaced Asker Ali. This tyrant, like all tyrants, on receiving his recal, was unmanned, and became weaker than a child, for the performance of acts of the darkest cruelty and the most arrant cowardice, are quite compatible. The tyrant Asker Ali shed tears! on leaving the country, where he had exercised the most atrocious cruelties. However, he was fated to execute one act of justice, in the style of the Turk, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... glance about to mark the effect of his insolent words. For the instant I believed Cassion's first thought was murder, for he gripped a pistol in his hand, and flung one foot forward, an oath sputtering between his lips. Yet the arrant coward in him conquered even that mad outburst of passion, and before I could grasp his arm in restraint, the impulse had passed, and he was staring after the slowly receding figure of De Artigny, ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... border was the Armstrongs, able men; Somewhat unruly, and very ill to tame. I would have none think that I call them thieves, For, if I did, it would be arrant lies. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... the public registers that he was born at Antium. Pliny charges Gaetulicus as guilty of an arrant forgery, merely to soothe the vanity of a conceited young prince, by giving him the lustre of being born in a city sacred to Hercules; and says that he advanced this false assertion with the more assurance, because, the year ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... said I, "if you have given up, in these six hours, a tithe of your heart to this man—if, in fact, his screed be not arrant bosh—then will I hie me to London for good and all, and write political leaders all the days ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... I will join him, said Burbo; 'meanwhile, I say, keep a sharp eye on the cups—attend to the score. Let them not cheat thee, wife; they are heroes, to be sure, but then they are arrant rogues: Cacus was ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... And now that twenty years of self-abnegation were at last finding their reward, now that the King had come into his own, and the King's faithful friends were being compensated in accordance with the length of the King's purse, would it not be arrant cowardice and disloyalty for her—an only child—to oppose her father's will in the ordering of her own future, to refuse the rich marriage which would help to restore dignity and grandeur to the ancient name and to the ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... been all alone until within the ten minutes last passed; when, finding himself rather dullish company to himself, he thought he would have a good time with Souter John and Tam O'Shanter, otherwise called Somnus and Morpheus, two very good fellows, though one was not very bright, and the other an arrant rattlebrain, who, though much listened to by some, no wise man would ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... plantation. Master Georgy has no right to be your brother. He is worse than a dissenter. Dissenters try to be gentlemen; but George has no misgivings about himself on that score; so he gives his undivided energy to his efforts to be parsonic. He is an arrant hypocrite." ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... your paltry spite; My heart's not black,—your liver 'tis that's white; So hold your jaw. Why should I grieve to see That men for love such arrant fools can be? The more the merrier; for on each day, Our Princess 'scapes a husband's dreaded sway; She gives us all a good jollification, ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... the testimony of Aubrey, who was at Stratford probably about the year 1680. He was an arrant and inveterate hunter after anecdotes, and seems to have caught up, without sifting, whatever quaint or curious matter came in his way. So that no great reliance can attach to what he says, unless it is sustained ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... told him that their fright was really a disgrace; and if one thousand of our men had come in town, the whole thirty-five hundred would have been at their mercy. Even the naval officers denounce it as a most arrant piece of cowardice; for instead of marching their troops out to meet ours, they all rushed into the Garrison, where, if attacked, their only retreat would have been into the river. The gunboats were ordered into the middle of the stream, in front of the Garrison; and cooped ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... cast out the "daimon of unrest" from the mind of labor, while at the same time he had given a notable illustration to all his people of the folly of outrunning too far the sentiments of your age, and the arrant rot of placing edicts upon the statute books that at once become a dead letter unless backed by despotic force, and feeling the security of his position, stood before his petitioners, lightly leaning on his left ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... she fallen upon an adventure? Was Dennison's theory correct regarding the beads? She rose and went to the dresser, inspecting the beads carefully. Positively glass! That Anthony Cleigh should be seeking a string of glass beads seemed arrant nonsense. ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... we all take up false notions in youth, and this was one of mine; but, of the two, I should prefer the cold, dogged domination of English law, with its fruits, the heartlessness of a sophistication without parallel, to being trampled on by every arrant blackguard that may happen to traverse this valley, in his wanderings after dollars. There is one thing you yourself must admit; the public is a little too apt to neglect the duties it ought to discharge, and to assume duties it has no ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... who was at this time at school, and whose rapid progress in every branch of instruction astonished and delighted his preceptors, I took no pleasure in books, whose use, indeed, I could scarcely comprehend, and bade fair to be as arrant a dunce as ever brought the blush of shame into the cheeks of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... is a good horse in the stable, but may make an arrant jade on the journey"—to paraphrase Goldsmith—and the only way in which these irreconcilable differences could be settled was by bullet and bayonet, which ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... how she blushed?" he said in a fierce whisper. "Sacredie! I'll bet my head she's an arrant flirt. Who, in the name of all the fiends, is this lodger she's been carrying on with? A lodger, too—oh! the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... passed out of the door, he heard the company laugh long and loud at the supposed imposition he had attempted to practise upon Mr. Grump, the 'worthy host.' Now be it known that this Mr. Grump was one of the most arrant scoundrels that ever went unhung. Low-bred and vulgar, he had made a fortune by petty knavery and small rascalities. He was a master printer; one of those miserable whelps who fatten on the unpaid labor of those in their employ. An indignant 'jour' once told him, with as much ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... restore me a pair of saddle-bags whereof he hath saith indeed he did it not; but I saw him, not a month ago, in act to have them resoled.' Ribi on his side cried out with all his might, 'Believe him not, my lord; he is an arrant knave, and for that he knoweth I am come to lay a complaint against him for a pair of saddle-bags whereof he hath robbed me, he cometh now with his story of the boothose, which I have had in my house this many ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... both, for a time, set their faces against the whole plan of education; Christy having been nettled at hearing what he terms a wild-goose chase put on a par with a fox-hunt; and the gamekeeper having always been accustomed to look upon hawks as arrant poachers, which it was his duty to shoot down, and nail, in ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... lying well, of stealing well, and of receiving a blow in the face without apparently noticing it, were the most useful arts to human life; but, of the three, the last was the only one that he practised successfully. His intentions were good, but his intellect deficient. This arrant rogue was only a petty knave that any one ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... States appropriately may punish.' * * * It is not within our competence to confirm or deny claims of social scientists as to the dependence of the individual on the position of his racial or religious group in the community. It would, however, be arrant dogmatism, quite outside the scope of our authority in passing on the powers of a State, for us to deny that the Illinois legislature may warrantably believe that a man's job and his educational opportunities and ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... warned the king against a plot that was directed at his life, etc. But the king did not attach any importance to the statement until Tongue referred to Titus Oates as his authority. The latter proved himself a most arrant liar while on the stand: but the people were in a credulous state of mind, and Oates became the hero of the hour;[242] and under his wicked influence many souls were hurried into eternity. Read Hume's ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... wages which have accrued since her last payment. If discharged unjustly and without sufficient cause before the expiration of her term, she is entitled to her wages in full; but if discharged without notice because of intoxication, immorality, dishonesty, arrant disobedience, or permanent incapacity from illness, she can claim nothing. It is customary with some housekeepers to start the new maid on a comparatively low salary, with the promise of an increase of perhaps fifty cents per month, in case she proves herself worthy, till the maximum is reached. ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... we grant that the Creator never yet communicated directly with the creature; that man has not seen with mortal eyes beyond the veil that shrouds the two eternities, it does not follow that religious faith is but arrant folly, that God is non-extant and man but the pitiful creature of blind force. The dumb brute knows many things it was never taught, and might not man, the greatest of the animal creation, be gifted with a knowledge not ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... be ranked mentally above them: no light research, and tact, and industry, and head-and-hand labour, are sufficient for a volume; even certain stolid performances in print do not shake my judgment; for arrant blockheads as sundry authors undoubtedly are, the average (mark, not all men, but the average) unwriting man is an author's intellectual inferior. All men, however well capable, have not perchance the appetite, nor the industry, nor the opportunity to fabricate a ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... do to keep his head above water, struggling as he was with the fear of a terrible death before his eyes. His two comrades were running up and down on the shore; not that they were such arrant cowards but what they would have been willing to do almost anything to help Joel; but unfortunately they had lost their heads in the sudden shock; and as Toby afterwards contemptuously said, "acted like so many chickens after the ax ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... sir," the Colonel quickly declared, not understanding. "But you must let me assure you that the girls have given it little attention. They never gossip, sir!—for gossips, sir, are the most arrant of cowards! No one's character is safe from them, sir! They take a grain of fact," the old gentleman's face was becoming flushed as he thundered forth this pet denunciation, "and plant it in soil manured with the rottenest intentions, sir! And it grows into a bastard of truth, exhaling odors ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... Most great singers are arrant hypocrites. There is nothing of themselves in their tone. The trouble is to have a really beautiful voice one must have a ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... Look red, and blow, and bluster, but not speak; No holy rage or frantic fires did stir Or flash about the spacious theatre. No clap of hands, or shout, or praise's proof Did crack the play-house sides, or cleave her roof. Artless the scene was, and that monstrous sin Of deep and arrant ignorance came in: Such ignorance as theirs was who once hiss'd At thy unequall'd play, the Alchemist; Oh, fie upon 'em! Lastly, too, all wit In utter darkness did, and still will sit, Sleeping the luckless age out, till that she Her resurrection ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... characters in life," said Richmond, "and a consistent character in fiction is merely a strained form of art. In life the most arrant coward will sometimes fight; the bravest man at times lacks nerve; the generous man may sometimes show the spirit of the niggard. But your character in fiction is different. He must be always brave, or always generous, or always niggardly. He must be consistent, ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... hundred livres as a payment for goodwill. Although the wine merchant considered it an exorbitant charge, yet on reflection he decided to pay it rather than go, having established a good business on these premises, as was well known. Before long a still mare arrant piece of dishonesty gave him an opportunity for revenge. A young man of good family, who was boarding with him in order to gain some business experience, having gone into Derues' shop to make some purchases, amused ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Miss Charlecote, the way he is going on is enough to ruin the best children in the world. That little Cilly is the most arrant little flirt I ever came across; it is like a comedy to see the absurd little puss going on with the curate, ay, and with every parson that comes to Wrapworth; and she sees nothing else. Impressions! All she wants is to be safe shut up with a good governess, and other children. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as this is so great a staple of the plan of the campaign, it is worth while to examine it carefully; and if we examine only a very little, and do not allow ourselves to be misled, we shall be able to see that the whole thing is the most arrant Quixotism that was ever enacted before a community. What is the matter of popular sovereignty? The first thing, in order to understand it, is to get a good definition of what it is, and after that to ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... arrant lies as ever woman told; And though not mine, I claim the price for them— This cap stuffed full ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... that fear of the terrors he had held up before him would cause Jackson—whom he knew to be an arrant coward—to refrain from adventuring ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... verse in Mr. Whitman's writing. There is, fortunately, but one attempt at rhyme.... Each line starts off by itself, in resolute independence of its companions, without a visible goal ... it begins like verse and turns out to be arrant prose. It is more like Mr. Tupper's proverbs than anything we have met.... No triumph, however small, is won but through the exercise of art, and this volume is an offence against art.... We look in vain through the book for a single idea. We find nothing but flashy imitations ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... the event that would mean thousands in or out of their pockets. Among the second choices Artillery, the black Meddler mare, was held a shade the best. Next to her came Tay Ho, a son of Hastings, five years old, who might have divided honors with the favorites but for being an arrant rogue. To-day he ran in blinkers, and nodded the least bit in his stride, whereas his stable mate, Petrel, the last of the second choices, went as free as ever ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... it appeared that the cow made him her confidant in return. If he began to murmur something to himself as he sat by the chimney corner, they would inquire what he was talking about. It was generally arrant nonsense that he told ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... is an arrant rogue! He is nor boy nor man, sapling nor tree. And long hath he outgrown his mother's rod, Nor ever hath he felt his father's whip. Ungoverned is he as a yearling colt, That's never known the bridle or the whip. We must forgive or ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... you are not sufficiently acquainted with him. I admit that he is an arrant thief of fruit, and that, as his advocate, I have a difficult case. I shall not plead for him until summer, when he is in such imminent danger of capital punishment He's a little beauty, though, with ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... it had not been in existence on the date impressed on the envelope, then the fraud would be quite apparent. And if there had been such fraud, then would the testimony of all those four witnesses be crushed into arrant perjury. They had produced the fraudulent document, and by it would be thoroughly condemned. There could be no necessity for a ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... Bendo, had with unswerving faithfulness and untiring assiduity for years courted the arts and sciences, and had learned dark secrets and received signal favours from them. He was therefore prepared to take part against unlearned wretches, and arrant quacks, whose impudent addresses and saucy pretences had brought scandal ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... and snarling in a half-frightened, half-furious manner. But Baptiste was not to be daunted. Lifting his axe on high, he shouted at them in his choicest French, and charged upon the pack as though they had been simply a flock of marauding sheep. Wolves are arrant cowards, and without pausing to take into consideration the disparity of numbers, for they stood twelve to one, they fled ignominiously before the plucky Frenchman, not halting until they had put fifty ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... servants; two or three carried the lights which had dazzled me, three or four held pikes in rest. They were huddled together; their weapons were protruded before them; their faces were pale and agitated. To put it plainly, they looked in as arrant a fright as I have seen men look, and they gazed apprehensively at a man who stood in the middle of the bridge, sword in hand. Rupert Hentzau was in his trousers and shirt; the white linen was stained with blood, but his easy, buoyant pose told me that he was himself either not touched at ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... She—while in various forms she tries Her furious spirit to disguise, At one place in her flight bestow'd Her brother's limbs upon the road; And at another could betray The daughters their own sire to slay." How think you now?—What arrant trash! And our assertions much too rash!— Since prior to th' Aegean fleet Did Minos piracy defeat, And made adventures on the sea. How then shall you and I agree? Since, stern as Cato's self, you hate All tales alike, both small ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... big man went on, leaning forward; "I knowed what your arrant was the fust minute I clapped eyes on you. You didn't know whether I could shoot with my left hand as well as my right—I didn't choose you should know. I watched fer ye to be tryin' to put handcuffs on me any minute—after you found my ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... fights with his mates and thrashings from the teachers. On the one occasion when public opinion had driven him to put up his fists, he had been saved from disgrace only because the bully against whom he had turned proved to be an arrant craven. ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... talking! You have such a reckless way. A warrant-officer, an arrant criminal! And your father, Sir Duncan Yordas, that very strange gentleman, who could never get warm! Oh, Robin, you always did talk nonsense, when—whenever I would let you. But you should not try to make my ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... continued Mr. Sumner, "Burke, Canning and Brougham, at successive periods unite in declaring, from the experience of the British West Indies, that whatever the slave-masters undertook to do for their slaves was always arrant trifling; that whatever might be its plausible form it always wanted the executive principle. More recently the Emperor of Russia, in ordering the emancipation of the serfs, declared that all previous efforts had failed because they had been left to the spontaneous initiative ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... The disposition of the Coaita is mild in the extreme— it has none of the painful, restless vivacity of its kindred, the Cebi, and no trace of the surly, untameable temper of its still nearer relatives, the Mycetes, or howling monkeys. It is, however, an arrant thief, and shows considerable cunning in pilfering small articles of clothing, which it conceals in its sleeping place. The natives of the Upper Amazons procure the Coaita, when full grown, by shooting it with the blowpipe and poisoned darts, and restoring life by putting a little salt (the ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... less good; and comparing one parish with another, such as Rood Hall and Hazeldean, he is dimly aware that there is no greater CIVILIZER than a parson tolerably well off. Then, too, Squire Hazeldean, though as arrant a Tory as ever stood upon shoe-leather, is certainly not a vampire nor blood sucker. He does not feed on the public; a great many of the public feed upon him: and, therefore, his practical experience a ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... say nothing of great political and social interests, which, though often thwarted by the common sense of the people, are sometimes too successful. At this very moment the news comes to us that a slight majority, led by arrant demagogues, have fastened upon the great Empire State of the Pacific a crude, ill-digested constitution, which while it doubtless contains some good features, embodies some of the most primitive and pernicious ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... ideas and with what would have been their own practice, they expected no quarter. The Chinese troops, as distinguished from the Manchus, behaved differently; they took to their heels before a shot had been fired. This behaviour, which seems to be nothing more than arrant cowardice, is nevertheless open to a more favourable interpretation. The yoke of the Manchu dynasty was already beginning to press heavily, and these men felt that they had no particular cause to fight for, certainly not such a personal cause as then stared ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... grace a monarch's bed; Young, brisk, good-humoured, with engaging mien; None in the town, or round, the like was seen: Her praises every voice inclined to sing, And judged her worthy of a mighty king; At least a better husband she deserved: An arrant fool he looked, and quite unnerved. This Nicia Calfucci (for such his name) Was fully bent to have a father's fame, And thought his country honour he could do, Could he contrive his lineage to pursue. No holy saint in Paradise was blessed, But what this husband ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... speech, so murmurous, yet guttural, was the utterance, mixed with puffy breath-sounds at the languid lips. This state was accompanied by an intense contraction of the pupils, absence of the knee-jerk, considerable rigor, and a rapt and arrant expression. I got into the habit of sitting long hours at her bed-side, quite fascinated by her, trying to catch the import of that opiate and visionary language which came puffing and fluttering in deliberate monotone from her lips. Gradually, in the course of months, my ear learned to detect ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... and the sagacious bird afforded almost as much amusement as did Bully Pigeon, who soon showed that he was very little altered from what he had been in his youth. He could not bully, but he could give abundant evidence of being still an arrant donkey. Pigeon now called himself a philosopher, and used to be very fond of broaching his philosophical principles, as he denominated his nonsense. One day, when dining in the gun-room, he began as usual. As he drank his wine he grew bolder ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... thou arrant knave; I would to God that I might have thee hanged: thou hast drawn my shoulder ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... the company may be assumed to be arrant rascals—rascals male and rascals female—chevaliers d'industrie, the offscourings of all the shut-up gambling-houses in Europe, demireps and lorettes, single and ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... of consanguinity. We would do well to analyze the causes which lead to our feelings of dislike, and I fear we should often find that wounded self-esteem was the root of the evil. And, after all, what a great matter a little fire kindleth! Let us quench the spark before it ignites. It is arrant folly, not to mention wickedness, to make enemies for the little while we are here. There is an incurable heartache which comes from such mistakes. Owen Meredith describes it in a poem, every verse of which throbs with hopeless love and regret, ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... the wind, which carries the pollen grains from one bunch of blossoms to another. Then the nuts gradually swell out to an enormous size, and ripen very slowly, even under the brilliant tropical sun. (I will admit that the tropics are hot, though in other respects I hold them to be arrant impostors, like that precocious American youth who announced on his tenth birthday that in his opinion life wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.) But the worst thing about the coco-nut palm, the missionaries always say, is the fatal fact that, when ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... feeble boy; not good at work; womanish in his ways; inclined to go in for petty bullying, until a boy showed fight, when he discovered himself to be an arrant coward. Four or five years later I met him at the university. His greeting was cool. My next affair was with a boy who was about my age (13), strong, full-blooded, coarse, always in 'hot water.' He was the son of the headmaster of one of the best-known public schools. It ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... evidently in high good humour with each other, and too much occupied to notice any one else, I began to wonder I had never before found out what a conceited puppy Willingham was, and set down poor Clara as an arrant flirt. But I was in a variable mood, it seemed, and a feather—or, what some may say is even lighter, a woman's word—was enough to turn me. So when I found myself, by some irresistible attraction, drawn next to her again at supper, and heard her sweet voice, and saw what I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... says Adam, crossing his arms, "here's the truth on't. I found a poor wretch bent on vengeance, murder, and a rogue's death, which was pure folly. I offered you riches, the which you refused, and this was arrant folly. I took you for comrade, brought you aboard ship with offer of honest employ which you likewise refused and here was more folly. Your conduct on board ship was all folly. So, despite yourself, I set you on a fair island with the right noble and handsome ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... now, but Tarrano dismissed the subject with a gesture. "That—is between her and me.... You have been following the general news, I assume? I provided you with it." He rolled a little cylinder of the arrant-leaf, and ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... heartily. "I value that sort of compliment. But I didn't want to go away from here and leave you to think me an arrant coward. The truth is, I shouldn't have been of much use to Mac or to myself. I'm not swimming, this summer, for I was unlucky enough to break my arm, last June, and it's not ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... written to prove their pre-historic origin, and to claim for them a history that in our day reads as arrant nonsense. In 1784, a short pipe was asserted to have been found between the jaws of the skull of an ancient Milesian exhumed at Bannockstown, county Kildare. Upon this discovery, an elaborate and learned paper was written ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... steps of the "Union Jack Club," with half a dozen other "young rakes of the fourth or fifth order." Two of Thackeray's own drawings in the "Book of Snobs"—in chapters three and nine—show men, one civil the other military, smoking cigars out of doors; but as these were no doubt arrant snobs, the drawings may be accepted as ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... self-respecting men, to the amazement of everybody not behind the scenes, the very men who had crossed over from Westminster to recommend the acceptance of the measure were the first to move its rejection. A more unworthy and degrading performance it is not possible to imagine. It was an arrant piece of cowardice on the part of "the leaders," who failed to lead and who shamefully broke faith with Mr Birrell and their Liberal allies. True, the Irish Council Bill was not a very great or strikingly generous measure. It had serious defects, but these might be remedied in Committee, ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... the most arrant nonsense, Fan. You must be a goose, or what is almost as bad, a hypocrite, to say that I have any love or tenderness in me. I confess that I did once have a little affection for you, but that ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... yellow skin, and red eyes. He would have the brain of the Anglo-Saxon with the temperament of the Mongol, and would probably become a raving maniac. It is not the temperament only, nor the intellect only, which produces the idiot or the madman; it is the lack of balance between the two. Arrant cowards frequently have very warlike imaginations, and in their dreams conceive themselves doing extremely violent things. Suppose that with such an imagination you unite the temperament of an Arab fanatic, or the coarse, brutal courage of an English prize-fighter, you can put no bounds ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... eyes in the round face of Kwaiba stood out. He leaned over and touched Iemon's sleeve. In astonishment Iemon noted the fright depicted in his face. The blustering old man at bottom was an arrant coward. Two knaves should understand each other—as did he and Cho[u]bei. He felt that he had been gulled during the whole of his intercourse with this old fool. He should have bluffed; and not been bluffed. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... convinced that the inhabitants of our bay were as arrant cannibals as any of the other tribes on the island, still I could not but feel a particular and most unqualified repugnance to the aforesaid Typees. Even before visiting the Marquesas, I had heard from men who had touched at ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... that the Wieroos were arrant cowards and that they bore no weapons, for after two or three had fallen beneath his fists the others formed a circle about him, but at a safe distance and contented themselves with threatening and blustering, while those whom he had felled ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the fellow to be an arrant harbourer of smugglers and rebels, I took his lamentation ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... revolution in thought which was going on all around him. He was saturated with the doctrines of 1832. He stated them with unequalled vigour and clearness. Anybody who disputed them from either side of the question seemed to him to be little better than a fool. Southey and Mr. Gladstone talked arrant nonsense when they disputed the logical or practical value of the doctrines laid down by Locke. James Mill deserved the most contemptuous language for daring to push those doctrines beyond the sacred line. When Macaulay attacks an old non-juror or a modern Tory, we can only ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the luggage! 'Tis expressly against the law of arms; 'tis as arrant a piece of knavery, mark you now, as can be offered in the 'orld." ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... necessary to afford an example to traitors and satisfaction to the people. And the people were thoroughly satisfied, according to the governor, and only expressed their regret that three or four members of the States-General could not have their heads cut off as well, being as arrant knaves as Henlart; "and so I think they be," ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... cut out the rotten from your apple, Your apple eats the better. Let them go. They go like those old Pharisees in John Convicted by their conscience, arrant cowards, Or tamperers with that treason out of Kent. When will her Grace ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... has been corrupted, or even with Italian. There is a wider gap, and one implying greater boorishness, between ministerium and metier, or sapiens and sachant, than between druv and drove or agin and against, which last is plainly an arrant superlative. Our rustic coverlid is nearer its French original than the diminutive coverlet, into which it has been ignorantly corrupted in politer speech. I obtained from three cultivated Englishmen at different ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... and flaunt my felicity in their faces? Wait till I get used to it a trifle. I have done them a palpable wrong, but I can at least forbear to add insult to injury. I may be an arrant fool, but, for the moment, I have taken it into my head to be prodigiously pleased. I should n't be able to conceal it; my pleasure would offend them; so I lock myself ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... qualities full expression. But she did not tell Beth that. The girl was so accustomed to despise herself and so suspicious of any creditable impulses that at times unexpectedly obtruded themselves, that she would have dismissed such a suggestion as arrant flattery, and Louise was clever enough not to wish to arouse her cousin to a full ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... Liberty of Prophesying [22] Taylor turns this way into mere ridicule. I love thee, Jeremy! but an arrant theological barrister that thou wast, though thy only fees were thy desires of doing good ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... be not an arrant jade. Her portrait had been taken by that same limner who, they say, has been taught in the devil's school, and can despatch a likeness with the twirl of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... suffer impertinence from any quarter to pass unchecked. It is certainly of great service to a public man, and it largely increases the estimation in which he is held, to establish such a character. It is no small detriment to Brougham that he is accounted an arrant coward; and it is remarkable that Peel never was known to deal in the insolence, and bullying, and offensive personalities in which the other has so copiously indulged, both in Parliament and at ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... it—of being arrant asses," retorted the doctor, "and not having sense enough to know honest air from poison, and the dry land from a vile, pestiferous slough. I think it most probable—though, of course, it's only an opinion—that ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... against Ophelia, 'We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us!' He reproaches this daughter of Eve with her own weaknesses and the great number of her sins in words reminding us of Isaiah, [14] where the wantonness of the daughters ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... the furious, noiseless lashing of the tail, and the bristling of the hair at its shoulders. But suddenly a strange thing happens. The creature shrinks back, and draws slowly away. Its awful eyes are averted as though in a fear it is powerless to contend with. Its anger is lost in an arrant cowardice, and the beast slinks within a low-mouthed cavern. What is it that has power to put fear into the heart of the monarch of the mountainside, unless it is the madness which peers out of ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... to their muzzles, you can't risk anything. They are SURE to fire wide of the mark, and both parties can retire from the field with honor. Let me manage all that. Hein! 'sapristi,' two brave men would be arrant fools to kill each other ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... was the culprit, however, he soon quieted down, being an arrant sneak and afraid ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... us share, and then to horse before day. An the Prince and Pointz be not two arrant cowards, there's no equity stirring: there's no more valour in that ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... makes the whole thing only the more arrant nonsense," grumbled Ray. "It's foolish enough in all conscience sake, if they had a chance of success, but when they haven't any, why the deuce do they want to drag us poor ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... and I'm glad to see it," responded the commissary in a softer tone. "Your friend is an arrant blackguard to have treated his wife as he has, and to have betrayed you because you took her part. But you surely knew how unscrupulous he was, and also that he was a most dangerous character. We know of one or two of his exploits, and I may ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... tell you, man, there's a blunder in the returns. Look, man, look!" snatching up the report from the Flats. "Isn't that arrant nonsense on the face of it? The Flats, mind you; our own little pocket borough of the Flats! Don't talk to me about the Poles muddling things; those inspectors of election can give them cards for stupidity and take every trick. Let ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... been hired to assail me at the Crown and Anchor meetings, for the purpose of preventing the truths that I delivered being heard there, he might have told the truth; but to swear that he or any of his gang had ever dared to lay hands on me, either at a public or a private meeting, is as arrant a falsehood as ever was uttered at ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... the question of war. I have lived a longish life and have heard our ministers preach on universal peace hardly half a dozen times. Twenty years ago, in a drawing room, I dared in the presence of forty persons to moot the proposition that war was incompatible with Christianity; I was regarded as an arrant fanatic. The idea that we could get on without war was regarded as unmitigated ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... is an arrant ass Who pays to ride up Kirkstone Pass, For he will find, in spite of talking, He'll have to walk ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... people. It derided the policy of the Irish Party as "half-bluster and half-whine," and when Mr Redmond spoke rhetorically of "wringing from whatever Government may be in power the full measure of a nation's rights," it bluntly told him he was talking "arrant humbug." It made the development of Irish industries one of the foremost objects of its advocacy. It courageously attacked the Catholic clergy for the faults it saw, or thought it saw, in them. They were told they took no effective steps to arrest emigration—that they next to the British Government ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... infamous speculation is not an exceptional fact; it takes place in Paris under various forms too little disguised for the historian of manners and morals to pass them over unnoticed in a complete and accurate picture of society in the nineteenth century. Dutocq, an arrant scoundrel, still owed fifteen thousand francs on his practice, and lived in hopes of something turning up to keep his head, as the saying is, above water until the close of 1840. Up to the present time none of the three confederates had flinched or groaned. Each felt ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... countrymen, was cruelly judged by the Times, and most severely treated. What I said to Mr. Owen about the spread of the English language in Wales being quite compatible with preserving and honouring the Welsh language and literature, was tersely set down as 'arrant nonsense,' and I was characterised as 'a sentimentalist who talks nonsense about the children of Taliesin and Ossian, and whose dainty taste requires something more flimsy than the strong sense and sturdy morality of ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... were too young for it, but to me it was a very jolly time, though I suppose I was an ingredient in your troubles. Yes, we brought ourselves up; but I maintain that it was better alternative than being drilled so hard as never to think of anything but arrant ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him to love his half-sister despite himself, and awe and repentance convert the savage, who joys at the news of his brother's reported death, to a loyal and devoted subject of the same brother. But Judar with all his goodness proved himself an arrant softy and was no match for two atrocious villains. And there may be overmuch of forgiveness as of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... boat," says the narrative, "we found more than seven hundred natives, who had assembled from all directions. They began by demanding stuffs and iron in exchange for their wares, and soon some of them proved themselves arrant thieves. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the Feather, tho our Friend took him for an Officer in the Guards, has proved to be [an arrant Linnen-Draper. [1]] ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... 'owls to Athens'—an absurd undertaking, considering the excellent supply already on the spot. Had it been my intention, in presenting Nigrinus with a volume of my composition, to indulge him of all people with a display of literary skill, I should indeed have been an arrant 'owl-fancier in Athens.' As however my object is merely to communicate to you my present sentiments, and the profound impression produced upon me by your eloquence, I may fairly plead Not Guilty, even to the charge of Thucydides, that 'Men are bold from ignorance, where mature consideration would ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... an arrant coward, and he knew that Hodge was really longing for a challenge. Wat felt sure that he would receive a severe drubbing at the hands of the dark-haired boy whom he had angered, and the thoughts of such punishment ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... them. But Kitty, flighty little butterfly as she seemed, had stores of tact and finesse in that little brain of hers, and the power of developing a fine reserve which had already wilted more than one of the young men of the house. For Kitty was none of your arrant and promiscuous flirts who count "all fish that come to their net." She was choice and dainty in her flirtations, but, possibly, none the less dangerous ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... Boyles' camp the distance was about twelve miles. With a pack train McKay was in no hurry; as a matter of fact, Donald was never in a hurry when there was danger about. He was an arrant coward, but had some brave men of the Wascos with him. I speak advisedly of what ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... good Roderic," said the voice of Erland the Old; "we had better have tarried till daylight. It may be that they have already discovered what you have done. Truly you were an arrant simpleton to leave the weapon in your brother's breast. 'Twould have served our further ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... great an extent monopolized the therapeutic use of water, and so much arrant nonsense has been talked in that pure element's name, that we are in danger of overlooking its wonderful value as a curative means. It is one of the most powerful agents at the command of the practitioner, and should no more he trifled with than ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... the scriptures in the mother tongue, shall forfeit land, cattle, life, and goods from their heirs forever, and so be condemned for heretics to God, enemies to the crown, and most arrant traitors to ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... thing. While the wiser birds made up their minds never to be deceived by the sly bird again; for before this he had had it all his own way, because he was so big, and everybody thought that he was brave as well; but now that he had been put to the test, he had proved himself to be an arrant coward, and only brave enough to fight ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... shook his head in dismay at such arrant folly. "Young stripling, be warned," he said. "Know what is good for thee. Greek is the tongue ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Grady," said Father Collins. "I am afraid the minute I enter the church to preach. When I open my mouth, I lose my voice out of fear. That is what it is—fear. I am simply an arrant coward. I tell you, Grady, ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... by spear and crozier, All know the arrant cheat, And shun the square of pavement Uncertain at his feet! Yea, spare the wretch, each brooding And secret-leaguers' chief, And make no pistol-target ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... are often stigmatized as arrant cowards, who run away at the slightest provocation, their first thought being for the safety of their own skins. No doubt Chinese soldiers do run away—sometimes; at other times they fight to the death, as has been amply proved over and over again. It is the old story of marking the hits and ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... books," says Mr D—s, "is arrant nonsense." I am afraid this learned man does not sufficiently understand the extensive meaning of the word whisper. If he had rightly understood what is meant by the "senses whisp'ring the soul," in the Persian Princess, or what "whisp'ring like winds" ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... And some were red against the sky, And some with colors true were gay, And some in shame were born to die, For Flags of hate must pass away. Such symbols fall as men depart, Brief is the reign of arrant might; The vicious and the vile at heart Give way in time ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... observed the remarkable adherence to set forms of speech which characterizes the talkers of arrant nonsense! Precisely the same sheepish following of one given example distinguishes the ordering of ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... commands, and a high reputation with the people; which indeed every excellent man aims at; but whilst he pursues that only true honour, which nature has in view above all other objects, he finds himself busied in arrant trifles, and in pursuit of no conspicuous form of virtue, but only some shadowy representation of glory. For glory is a real and express substance, not a mere shadow. It consists in the united praise of good men, the free voice of those who form a true ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... pompous, windy airs and his covey of harlots. But in Wall Street he was a man of affairs and power; the very assurance that in social life made him ridiculous to a degree, was transmuted into a pillar of strength among the throng of speculators who themselves were mainly arrant bluffs. A dare-devil audacity there was about Fisk that impressed, misled and intimidated; a fine screen he served for Gould plotting ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... the savings-bank clerk a sum of money in gold. Pocketing the money, he hurried into his cab and drove away. The man was Villiers Wyckliffe, and there was anything but a pleasant look on his face, for at heart he was an arrant coward. "Confound those fellows," he muttered to himself, "they may get here at any time. I had to come back here for money, but I'll go back to Toowoomba again, as it is a handy place to make for the open country at a moment's notice. Who in the ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... her from belonging to another. That galling thought made the blood gush from his gaping wound. How that woman and her lover must deride him! And to think that they had sought to turn him to ridicule by a baseless charge, an arrant lie which still and ever made him smart, all proof of its falsity to the contrary. He, on his side, had accused them in the past without much belief in what he said, but now the charges he had imputed to them must come true, for they were free, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola |
