"Brag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... made up his mind, Quartermaster, more words are useless. If the riptyles near you are disposed to set about their hellish job, let them begin at once. They can burn wood, and I'll burn powder. If I were an Indian at the stake, I suppose I could brag as well as the rest of them; but, my gifts and natur' being both white, my turn is rather for doing than talking. You've said quite enough, considering you carry the king's commission; and should we all be consumed, none of us will ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Well Jack," said his fayther, "ha long is it? spaik up, that's a fine lad." "Why," he says, "it's th' length o' yo'r rule, an' my pocket comb, an' this piece o' band." "That's reight," said his fayther, "tha con goa hoam," put aw nooaticed 'at be did'nt brag abaat him quite ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... those who have them brag about them," said Jimmy. "And I know that the men who work for him, from the superintendent down to the yard boy, believe in them and say so, and would tear to pieces a man who says they aren't the best. That's ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... "The Japanese could not read in my face," said M. Witte, "what was passing in my heart." Isn't it wonderful? Would not the diplomatists of another age be ashamed of their confrere could they hear him brag of a rudimentary and long since dishonoured finesse? But the mere fact that M. Witte could make such a speech on American soil is a clear proof that the New World is not the proper field of diplomacy. The congresses of old were gay and secret. "Le congres," ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... that this party must be used up, except such as are too young to tell tales. We got to do it. They been acting terrible mean ever since we wouldn't sell them anything. If we let them go on now, they been making their brag that they'll raise a force in California and come back and wipe us out—and Johnston's army already marching on us from the east. Are we going to submit again to what we got in Missouri and in Illinois? No! Everybody is agreed about that. Now the Indians ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... true that Doria was awkwardly situated; Kheyr-ed-Din held the interior position, and that leader was a great believer in the adage that "if Brag is a good dog, Holdfast is a better." He was well aware of his numerical inferiority, and in consequence refused to listen to the frenzied appeals of the excited Moslems to be led against the Christian dogs. It may seem ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... River in de Dutch Fork of Newberry County. I was a slave of Cage Suber. He was a fair master, but nothing to brag about. I was small at slavery time and had to work in de white folks' house or around the house until I was big enough to go to de ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... but long, thin pikes, besides being more fierce than steady, the king hesitated. "Why trust to a plate of steel or rings of iron?" exclaimed Malise of Strathern. "I, who wear no armor, will go as far as any one with breastplate of mail." "You brag of what you dare not do!" said the Norman Alan de Percy. But the King found himself obliged to yield the precedence to the Galwegians, trusting far more to the lowland knights and men-at-arms, whom he arrayed under his gallant son, Prince Henry, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... delightful piece of brag, but it is much more than that. It is literature; it is a Gospel of the Wild. It made a small Massachusetts pond famous, and the Mecca ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... which characterised the most extreme utterances of Christ. It is true that we cannot turn the cheek to the smiter; it is true that we cannot give our cloak to the robber; civilisation is too complicated, too vainglorious, too emotional. The robber would brag, and we should blush; in other words, the robber and we are alike sentimentalists. The command of Christ is impossible, but it is not insane; it is rather sanity preached to a planet of lunatics. If the whole world was suddenly stricken with a sense of humour it would find itself ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... suppose, because I am so close to it that it is like facing the wall of a precipice all the time. We have to stop here. The woman's daughter is coming down with a fever, which will not kill her, and she will have it to brag of all her life. She will date all earthly events from this ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... when the storm had somewhat abated. "I know that sort of talk as well as my old shoe. Haven't I listened to it for hours? For goodness' sake, quit it. It doesn't wash. Let us come to the point at once without all this idiotic brag and gassing. You wrote me a letter shouting danger and ruin. What did it mean? Anything real, or merely a melodramatic blowing off of steam? Tell me. Let us have it out and have finished with it. What do ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... to take a sly dig or two at the yarns some travelers tell when they get home. By this means the story illustrates one of the great sources of humor—monstrous exaggeration. It also shows what a foolish thing it is to be a boaster. Most people, at one time or another, are tempted to brag about their deeds, their possessions, or their smartness. If they would only think of Baron Munchausen, they would flee from ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... is a quick saying with the Spaniards, Artes inter haeredes non dividi. {25b} Yet these have inherited their fathers' lying, and they brag of it. He is a narrow-minded man that affects a triumph in any glorious study; but to triumph in a lie, and a lie themselves have forged, is frontless. Folly often goes beyond her bounds; but Impudence ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... bald, and bare of flesh; our teeth are equally in evidence; each of us has lost his eyes, and each is snub-nosed. Then as to the tomb and the costly marbles, I dare say such a fine erection gives the Halicarnassians something to brag about and show off to strangers: but I don't see, friend, that you are the better for it, unless it is that you claim to carry more weight than the rest of us, with all that marble on the top ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... ended the proudest and happiest time I ever had in my life. Indeed I almost had an adventure on my own account—une bonne fortune, as it was called at Brossard's by boys hardly older than myself. I did not brag of it, however, when I got ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... of boys could get Tip to go off with them, in swimming, or hunting, or simply running races. He was known through the whole town, and beloved for his many endearing qualities of heart. As to his mind, it was perhaps not much to brag of, and he certainly had some defects of character. He was incurably lazy, and his laziness grew upon him as he grew older, till hardly anything but the sight of a gun or a bone would move him. He lost his interest in politics, ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... for alas my trade is words, a barren burst of rhyme, Rubbed by a hundred rhymesters, battered a thousand times, Take them, you, that smile on strings, those nobler sounds than mine, The words that never lie, or brag, or ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... general, I suppose,' returned Jonas, looking up and down once more. 'I don't brag to have been any better than other sons; but I haven't been any worse, I ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... any c'lection for?" sarcastically retorted Peace, exasperated at the little sister's stupidity. "What does Henderson Meadows use his c'lection of stamps for? Just to brag about and see how many more kinds he can get ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... said Red Hannigan. "I heard you brag about being Barlow's stool, and I heard everything else you bragged about to Joe Ellison's girl. I'd bump you off right now if I had my gat with me and if I had any chance at a get-away. But I'll be looking after you, and the gang will ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... close. A little way behind the group came the other boys, their still half-dazed leader in their midst. Good Mr. Burke (who had succeeded Mr. Clarke as school-master) guessed as they came in and took their seats that there had been an altercation of some kind, and that his two brag scholars had been prominent in it; but he was wise in his generation and allowed the boys to settle their own differences without asking any questions unless he were appealed to, when his sympathy and interest were found to ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... duck. My third in squadron, not in fleet. My fourth in conquer, not in beat. My fifth in battle, not in wreck. My sixth in rigging, not in deck. My seventh in union, not in flag. My eighth in steadfast, not in brag. All these letters will show to you An officer gallant, tender, ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... was swiftly done. Seymour and the Thames squadron were to stay in the Straits and watch Parma. From every attainable source food and powder were collected for the rest—far short in both ways of what ought to have been, but, as Drake said, 'we were resolved to put on a brag and go on as if we needed nothing.' Before dawn the admiral and he were again off ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... Mrs. Deer, an old tidy wench, of fifty, pretty well bent by rheumatism, and so square in the lower half of her figure, and so spare in the upper, that she appeared to have been carved out of her own hips: "why, as to dat, he ain't good-looking to brag on, but I don't think he looks quite like ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... Cornhill Magazine owners strive to provide thee with facts as well as fiction; and though it does not become them to brag of their Ordinary, at least they invite thee to a table where thou shalt sit in good company. That story of the "Fox"* was written by one of the gallant seamen who sought for poor Franklin under the awful ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he wasn't? He brag his land was ten miles square and he had a thousand slaves. Them poor white folks looked up to him lak God Almighty; they sho' did. They would have stuck their hands in de fire if he had of asked them to do it. He had a fish pond on top of de house and terraces wid strawberries, ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... Solomon—and there's a pretty bit of cheek, sir: him, a reg'lar heathen, going and getting himself called by a Christian name! I should like to give him Solomon—you'll fight with the best of them, sir. I often think about it. You'll fight with the best of them, sir. And 'tain't brag, Mr Archie Maine, sir—you let me see one of them beggars coming at you with his pisoned kris or his chuck-spear, do you mean to tell me I wouldn't let him have the bayonet? And bad soldier or no, I can do the bayonet ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... much nowadays? Does the generation which loves to follow the trail with Allan Quatermain, and to ride with a Splendid Spur, does it call at all for the humours of the days of the Regency? Do those who have laughed over "The Wrong Box," ever laugh over Jack Brag? Do the students of Mr. Rudyard Kipling know anything of "Gilbert Gurney?" Somebody started the theory some time ago, that this was not a laughter-loving generation, that it lacked high spirits. It ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... helps of their own knowledge, discern the spiritual and hallowed difference. But, as I intend mainly to bear witness to those passages of the late bloody persecution in which I was myself both a soldier and a sufferer, it will not become me to brag of our motives and intents, as higher and holier than those of the great elder Worthies of "the Congregation." At the same time it is needful that I should rehearse as much of what happened in the ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... by his distress signal to come to the rescue of a sinking ship and then destroyed the rescuer, and I've been trying to figure out how the fellows sitting around him would take it. They'd get up and leave. He would be outcast as unspeakable and no brag or bluff or blare of victory would gloss over his act. We simply don't think the German way. We have a loyalty to humanity deeper than our patriotism. There are certain things self-respecting men can't do and live in Wichita. But there seem ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... Pill-box and Mr. Sawbones, and a single designing relative? Then he drew a strong picture of this free-born British citizen skulking and hiding at this moment from a gang of rogues and conspirators, who in France and other civilised countries that brag less of liberty than we do, would be themselves flying as criminals from the officers of justice; and he wound up with a warm appeal to the press to cast its shield over the victim of bad laws and ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... The bald fact is that there is no spot in the world where the Germans govern another race and are not hated. They know this, and are disquieted; they meet with coldness on all hands, and their remedy for the coldness is self-assertion and brag. The Russian statesman was right who remarked that modern Germany has been too early admitted into the comity of European nations. Her behaviour, in her new international relations, is like the behaviour of an uneasy, jealous upstart in an ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... I care about his opinions? let him preach and stick to his controversy with Father Tom—from whom he hadn't so much to brag of—but as for you, Fergus, you are, to spake plainly, a thorough ass. What d—d stuff you have been letting out of you! Go and find, if you can, some purer world for yourself to live in, for, let me tell you, you are not fit for this. There is no ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... He will talk all day if he can coax some one to listen to him. He is over there now visiting with Bob White. What those two can find to talk so much about is a mystery to me! It is real funny to listen to them! They both brag about the big things they have done ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... I thought, "how astonished they will be when I walk in! It will be something to brag of for many a day, to have walked fifteen miles ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... Jones's vast bounty consisted in paying them the day he dismissed them, instead of compelling them to loiter about two or three days waiting to be paid. It well became Colonel Jones, indeed, to brag of such an act, in face of the many inquests at which such verdicts as this were returned:—"Died of hunger, in consequence of not being paid by the Board of Works, a fortnight's wages being due ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... little different from the ordinary brag; I signaled inconspicuously to our stenographer to ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... have confessed to you, talking of my talents, my utter inability to remember in any comprehensive way what I read. I can vehemently applaud, or perversely stickle, at parts; but I cannot grasp at a whole. This infirmity (which is nothing to brag of) may be seen in my two little compositions, the tale and my play, in both which no reader, however partial, can find any story. I wrote such stuff about Chaucer, and got into such digressions, quite irreducible into 1 1/5 ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... their old game of brag, by puffing their ticket as a national and conservative ticket, the very thing they denied. Now let us look into the soundness and nationality of the HEAD of the ticket. We have before us a copy of a work published in 1839, by Robert Mayo, M. D., ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... had become too silent for him. But sometimes, at the dinner-hour, we would see him suddenly make his appearance, all covered with flowers, like a mausoleum. Ordinarily he would sit down to table with an oath, growled out from the very bottom of his chest, and brag, between every two mouthfuls, of his good fortune with the ladies as a vieux brave. Then, when the dinner was over, he would fold up his napkin in the shape of a bishop's mitre, gulp down half a decanter of brandy, ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... down at this moment to make room for more streets of mean little houses,—the kind of thing, and not a dull house of faded gentry, which perhaps the neighborhood requires. The house was dull, and so were we, its last inhabitants; and the furniture was faded, even a little dingy,—nothing to brag of. I do not, however, intend to convey a suggestion that we were faded gentry, for that was not the case. My father, indeed, was rich, and had no need to spare any expense in making his life and his house bright if he pleased; but he did not ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... was not surprised, for he had all along believed that a fellow who could lift his hand to strike a small girl must be a coward at heart, no matter how much he might bluster and brag. ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... Mrs. Mountain, in a tone which implied that Samson had made a discovery of the first importance, and that this discovery unexpectedly confirmed her own argument. 'Let 'em have the least little bit of a chance for a brag, ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... can't help being an ass, but don't swagger or brag about it. Go easy—and, by the way, whatever you do, forget you're an exhibitioner. It's not your fault, I know, but it's a sort of thing to be lived down up here. Be nobody, that's the rule! ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... my dolly's jacket!" cried Susie, dancing around and hugging it in glee. "It will, mamma! A real live baby! Now Tilde needn't brag of theirs. We will take it home, won't ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... did—stand against the entire ship. Neither the Purser, the Captain nor the crew dared oppose its opinions or wishes; in fact, the Alley thought of running down to Zanzibar and taking a whack at the lions before "Bwana Tumbo" even saw them. We don't like to brag, but one of our members could, with one eye shut, hit any button on the metal man's coat in the shooting gallery, and with both shut could bring down a wildebeeste. The mission of the Alley and its fate now lie in the "womb of time," and we must not hustle its ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... she told him, "I'm going to brag that I was the very first girl in all the world ever to be kissed in a ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... licence proceeds. All the particular being summed up together, I do not find one man of my country, who pays so dear for the defence of our laws both in loss and damages (as the lawyers say) as myself; and some there are who vapour and brag of their zeal and constancy, that if things were justly weighed, do much less than I. My house, as one that has ever been open and free to all comers, and civil to all (for I could never persuade myself to make it a garrison ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... idea that the head and the hands are the only seemly and presentable members of the organism, and that the other members are unworthy and indecent, is obviously as onesided and lopsided as that which honors certain classes in the commonwealth and despises others. Why should the head brag of its ascendancy and domination, and the heart be smothered up and hidden? It will only be a life far more in the open air than that which we lead at present, which will restore the balance and ultimately bring us back to ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... a movement of brag, bluster, or bluff. It is a test of our sincerity. It requires solid and silent self-sacrifice. It challenges our honesty and our capacity for national work. It is a movement that aims at translating ideas into action. And the more we do, the more we ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... puff, gasp; spout; inflate, puff up, distend; explode, shatter; (Colloq.) boast, brag, bluster, vaunt, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... hear the robins brag about the sweetness of their song, Nor do they stop their music gay whene'er a poor man comes along. God taught them how to sing an' when they'd learned the art He sent them here To use their talents day by day the dreary lives o' men to cheer. An' ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... may ruffle your temper, and you may call your partner an ass, or your partner may call you an ass. To-night the greatest good humor prevailed, though several pounds changed hands. They played Loo, "Klobbiyos," Napoleon, Vingt-et-un, and especially Brag. Solo whist had not yet come in to drive everything else out. Old Hyams did not spiel, because he could not afford to, and Hannah Jacobs because she did not care to. These and a few other guests left early. But the family party stayed late. On a warm ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... sailed away From a leaking ship, in Chaleur Bay,— Sailed away from a sinking wreck, With his own town's-people on her deck! "Lay by! lay by!" they called to him. Back he answered, "Sink or swim! Brag of your catch of fish again!" And off he sailed through the fog and rain! Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... I might tell you all about my Clyde, but have not because of two things. One is I could not even begin without telling you what a good man he is, and I didn't want you to think I could do nothing but brag. The other reason is the haste I married in. I am ashamed of that. I am afraid you will think me a Becky Sharp of a person. But although I married in haste, I have no cause to repent. That is very fortunate because I have never had one bit of leisure ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... anonymous, by one MICHAEL RANFFT), pp. 53, 61.] wherever hot service was on hand. At Malplaquet, in those murderous inexpugnable French Lines, bloodiest of obstinate Fights (upwards of thirty thousand left on the ground), the Prussians brag that it was they who picked their way through a certain peat-bog, reckoned impassable; and got fairly in upon the French wing,—to the huge comfort of Marlborough, and little Eugene his brisk comrade on that occasion. Marlborough knew well the worth of these ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... named by a wiseacre American navy man back in the twentieth century—was nothing to brag about. Thousands of square miles of powdered ice that has had nothing to do but blow around for twenty million years is not at all inspiring after the first few minutes unless one is obsessed by the morbid beauty ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... foolish, fond; making her mere-breathed name their bond upon their bond." And my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling napping. Here I had found a man not made from dust; one who had no narrow boasts of birthplace or country, one who, if he bragged at all, would brag of his whole round globe against the Martians and ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... swarthy sons of the Incas could by no means find 'Tonio, or one of his tribe, when given the chance to lead and the backing of armed troopers. 'Tonio, well or wounded, was far too wary for them and, after hours of brag and bluster, not a vestige of him did they discover beyond a few scattered footprints and that one revolver, concerning which, it seems, Munoz told sensational tales. He declared he had found it glinting in the moonlight just at the foot and to the right of the trail leading from ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... intent to whiten theft And sacrilege with sanctitudes of law, Girt by his warriors and his Witena, Enthroned sat. 'What boots it?' laughed a thane; 'Laurence has fled! we battle with dead men!' 'Ay, ay,' the King replied, 'I told you oft Sages can brag; your dreamer weaves his dream: But honest flesh rules all!' While thus they spake Confusion filled the hall: through guarded gates A priest advanced with mitre and with Cross, A monk that seemed not monk, ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... show the peculiar mixture of brag, cajolery, and threats, involved in the attitude of the South, as expressed by the same favorite Southern mouthpiece, toward the Border-States on the one hand, and the Middle and New England States on the other, a further extract from this (February 7th) speech of the Texan ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... best bow," Noey used to say, "Haint made o' ash ner hick'ry thataway!— But you git mulberry—the bearin'-tree, Now mind ye! and you fetch the piece to me, And lem me git it seasoned; then, i gum! I'll make a bow 'at you kin brag on some! Er—ef you can't git mulberry,—you bring Me a' old locus' hitch-post, and i jing! I'll make a bow o' that 'at common bows Won't dast to pick on ner turn up their nose!" And Noey knew the woods, and all ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... boy," he said, with his shrewd smile, "never brag of catching a fish until he is on dry ground. I've seen older folks doing that in more ways than one, and so making fools of themselves. It's no use to boast of anything until it's done, nor then, either, for it speaks ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the fight," said she; "would that you had fallen rather by the hand of that brave man who was my husband. You used to brag that you were a better man with hands and spear than Menelaus. Go, then, and challenge him again—but I should advise you not to do so, for if you are foolish enough to meet him in single combat, you will soon ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... the boat," he said, "but that's hopeless. The more we paid for it the louder the owner would brag. The Germans would be 'on' in a minute. We've simply got to steal it. It's up to you to find out the man's proper name and address, and we'll send him the money from the first British ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... not brag when he spoke of his beauty as a boy, his handsome figure as a young man. These had brought him wealth and position; gained, it was whispered, in vilest service to his lord. In these days he had in his employ a chu[u]gen named ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... to tell you," said Wildeve. "But I—well, I will speak frankly—I did not like to mention it when I saw, Eustacia, that your star was not high. The sight of a man lying wearied out with hard work, as your husband lay, made me feel that to brag of my own fortune to you would be greatly out of place. Yet, as you stood there beside him, I could not help feeling too that in many respects he was a richer man ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Jack replied quite good-temperedly, "only no one cares to brag about their relations unless they want to be called a snob or a bore. It wouldn't do, you see, for a man to go about declaring that he had an uncle who was miles ahead of everybody else's uncle, or an aunt who could give a start to any other aunt in ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... Winkle will ever be associated in the loving memory of play-goers his Bob Acres in Sheridan's "Rivals," thought by many to be his capital part—a personification where all the foibles of the would-be man-of-the-world: his self-conceit, his brag, his cowardice, are transformed into virtues and captivate our hearts, dissolved in the brimming humor which yet never overflows the just measure, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... it at leisure. I don't want to brag, but I hope I've been found faithful. It's rather hard to tell poor John Bur, the workhouse boy, after clothing, feeding, and making him your man of trust, for two and twenty years, that you wonder he don't run away from you, now ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... But I'm glad we met them, because I can tell the Sibleys of it. They think so much of titles, and brag about Lady Watts Barclay, whose husband is only a brewer knighted. I shall buy a plaid like the one the lord's daughter wore, and wave it in the faces of those girls; they do put on SUCH airs because they have been ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... Chia, "every one says that there's nothing you haven't gone through and nothing you haven't seen, and don't you even know what this gauze is? Will you again brag by ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... know how "Fred Hitchcock was." I had to take a long second look to dig out from this bunch of rags and filth my one-time Beau Brummel acquaintance at home. His eyes were bleared, and told all too surely the cause of the transformation. His brag was that he had skipped every fight since he enlisted. "It's lots more fun," he said, "to climb a tree well in the rear and see the show. It's perfectly safe, you know, and then you don't get yourself killed and planted. What is the ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... great honour, though some profit, and a little snatching up of a few loose trifles such as the Society Islands, which we had, according to our custom, carelessly or benevolently left to gleaners), French arms, despite a great deal of brag and swagger, obtained little glory, while French diplomacy let itself wallow in one of the foulest sloughs in history, the matter of the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... after her mother's death, so she and Duncan had lots of time to tell each other all they knew. Eliphalet, he got to know a good deal about the girls she went to school with, and Kitty, she learned all about his family. He didn't tell her about the title for a long time, as he wasn't one to brag. But he described to her the little old house at Salem. And one evening toward the end of the summer, the wedding-day having been appointed for early in September, she told him that she didn't want to bridal tour at ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... and said the same in fewer words, and so I bid them good-morning. I told them, too, that if some of those people who made so much noise didn't look out, they would get turned off the place, just as Venus and her gang got turned off last year. The fact is, they are trying to play brag, as such people often will; but they will all go to work in a few days, ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... liking the man although his manners were hardly to his taste. Braund did not brag, but it was easy to see that he considered money a passport to any society. He was good-looking although his features were somewhat coarse, and his abrupt manner of speaking might have ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... doing a grand work, and I say it's a good thing for them. Since we've studied this subject, it's enough to frighten one to read what is sent us about our American boys and girls. Do you know, Laura, that with all our brag about our schools and colleges, that really are wonderful, we're turning out more criminals than any other civilized country in the world, except Spain and Italy? The cause of it is said to be lack of proper ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... don't mean by this that I want you to be one of those fellows who swell out like a ready-made shirt and brag that they "never borrow and never lend." They always think that this shows that they are sound, conservative business men, but, as a matter of fact, it simply stamps them as mighty mean little cusses. It's very superior, I know, to say ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... 'em—that buck was. The horns on his head were like an old-fashioned round-posted chair, and if they hadn't a dozen prongs on 'em, you may skin me! He wasn't as big as an ox, but a two-year-old that could match him, could brag of a pretty rapid growth. I crept up behind a little clump of bushes to about fifteen rods of where he stood on the sandy beach, and sighting carefully at his head, let drive. My gun hung fire a little, owin' to the night-dews, but that buck went down, and after kickin' a moment, laid still, and ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... the ruffled pork-butcher. 'Our best men never got it out of books. Now, you tell me—you've got a spiflicating style of talk about you—no brag, you tell me—course, the best man wins, if you mean that: now, if I was one of 'em, and I fetches you a bit of a flick, how then? Would you be ready to step out ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... justly poised; nor should you wonder More at the strength of body than of mind; 'Tis equally the same to see me plunge Headlong into the Seine, all over armed, And plow against the torrent to my point, As 'twas to hear my judgment on the Germans, This to another man would be a brag; Or at the court among my enemies, To be, as I am here, quite off my guard, Would make me such another thing as Grillon, A blunt, hot, honest, downright, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... is the only man that finds good in it which others brag of, but doe not, for it is meate, drinke, and clothes to him. No man opens his ware with greater seriousness, or challenges your judgment more in the operation. His Shop is the Randenvous of spitting, where men dialogue ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... our times that did behold This motion strange of this unwieldy plant Now boldly brag with us that are men old, That of our age they no advantage want, Though in our youth we saw an ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... That the head of his pick was stuck fast in the ground. 'Cease now!' cried St Cuthman, 'vain is your toil! Come forth from the dyke! Leave your pick in the soil! You agreed to work 'tween sunset and morn, And lo! the glimmer of day is born! In vain was your fag, And your senseless brag.' Dizzy and dazed with sulphureous vapour, Old Nick was deceived by St Ursula's taper. 'The dawn!' yelled the Devil, 'in vain was my boast, That I'd have your soul, for I've lost it, I've lost!' 'Away!' cried St Cuthman, 'Foul fiend! away! See yonder approaches ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... not help noticing the blank alarm which this announcement caused among the youth with whom he had been playing the ancient game of brag. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... a visitor at our home. He was a great brag and not noted for truth telling. He was very fond of telling how he shot the renegade Inkpadutah. This was all imagination. He had an old flint lock musket with the flint gone and would illustrate his story by crawling and skulking, generally, to ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... is his trick!" growled Seaman Kellogg hoarsely. "Many a time I've heard him brag that he'd get even for the punishments that were put upon him. And now he has gone and ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... doe speake English When I'de move pittie; when dissemble, Irish; Dutch when I reele; and tho I feed on scalions If I should brag Gentility I'de ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... ever needed to know, though there has been times, sech ez when my wife's mother took the phthisic an' I had the asthma, thet I was obligated to write to the doctor about it, thet I was thankful for my experience in the blue-back speller. Them was our brag-words, phthisic and asthma was. They's a few other words I've always hoped to have a chance to spell in the reg'lar co'se of life, sech ez y-a-c-h-t, yacht, but I suppose, livin' in a little inland town, which a yacht is a boat, ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... under the law as a Covenant of Works who are open profane, and ungodly wretches, such as delight not only in sin, but also make their boast of the same, and brag at the thoughts of committing of it. Now, as for such as these are, there is a Scripture in the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy Chapter 1, verses 9, 10, which is a notable one to this purpose, "The law," saith he, "is not made for a righteous man," not as it is a Covenant of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Taine's Graindorge. His real name was Vries. He was a negro from the Dutch West Indies, a veritable bull, with a huge body and a black, bald physiognomy, made to stand outside a tent at a fair, and be his own crier to the public. His conversation was one incessant brag, in atrocious French. Although he had lived seventeen years in France, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... storms is seldom heralded by any striking or unusual phenomenon. The real weather gods are free from brag and bluster; but the sham gods fill the sky with portentous signs and omens. I recall one 5th of March as a day that would have filled the ancient observers with dreadful forebodings. At ten o'clock the sun was attended by four extraordinary sun-dogs. A large bright halo encompassed ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... the evening. Must have been losing," answered Lavrushka. "I know by now, if he wins he comes back early to brag about it, but if he stays out till morning it means he's lost and will come back in a rage. Will ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... one of the leading pastimes of the day, rooms were set aside at these dancing assemblies for those who preferred "brag" and other fashionable games with cards. But far the greater number preferred to dance, and to those who did, the various figures and steps were seemingly a rather serious matter, not to be looked upon as a source of mere amusement. The Marquis de Chastellux ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... words which they borrow from one another, and the use to which they put them. Thus the French, borrowing 'hablar' from the Spaniards, with whom it means simply to speak, give it in 'habler' the sense of to brag; the Spaniards paying them off in exactly their own coin, for of 'parler' which in like manner is but to speak in French, they make 'parlar,' which means to prate, to chat. [Footnote: See Darmesteter, The Life of Words, Eng. ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... a good one, Mr. Horsley," he said as he returned the livery man's brag team, "but it has two drawbacks." "Oh, indeed; and may I inquire what ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... harmless way. So it is natural to suppose they knew each other's game perfectly well. George took the hint given him by the old women along the road, and when he got to Yorktown he saw clear enough that his old friend Johnston was playing a game of brag with his big sand hills. And to show Mr. Johnston that he was not to be outdone in that line of art, George, when he had settled his army down in the soft ground, went to work satisfying the nation that he could build just as big sand heaps as any other general. In short, my son, ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams
... they brag mightily on thur genteelity. I reckon you're about right thur—them, storekeepers ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... safe and sensible, the Morrison o' the Morrisons had only to reach his hand to her and say, 'Coom, lass!' But noo that she is back wi' head high and notions alaft, he'd no accept her! She's nowt but a draft signed by Sham o' Shoddy and sent through the Bank o' Brag and Blaw! No! He'd no' accept her! And now back wi' ye to yer tickety-tack! I hae my orders, and the Queen o' Sheba might yammer and be no' ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... have trailed her rose-spattered flounce over the marble floors just as unconcernedly, and she would have proceeded just as calmly to disabuse the mind of the princess of any idea that the possession of a mere man, be he prince or peasant, was anything to brag of. ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Danes have nothing to brag of over us Northmen; for many a place have we laid in ashes to ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... all true patriots ought to unite in redeeming the land from the imputation that such books are regarded as casting honor upon the section. God forbid we should really be brought so low as that we must perforce brag of such works; and God be merciful to that man (he is an Atlanta editor) who boasted that sixteen thousand of these books had been sold in the South! This last damning fact ought to have been concealed at the risk of life, limb, and fortune." Lanier himself saw the futility of such praise ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... positively that the McLeods sprang from the best and most honorable clan of old Scotland. We have improved some in manners, for we no longer drive our foes into caves, and smoke them to death. (We only wish we could.) We no longer brag that we were not beholden to Noah, but had boats of our own—that would relate us too nearly to Lillith— but still we are ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... expect they will hear much about it," Chris said. "You may be sure the Boers will not say much; they make a big brag over every success, but they won't care to publish such a thing as this. Probably their papers will only say: 'An explosion of a trifling nature occurred on the Portuguese side of Komati-poort. Some barrels of powder exploded; it is unknown whether it ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... out of Metalls; to which question he freely replyed, that he had never separated a true Mercury from any Metal; nor had ever seen it really done by any man else. And though Gold is, of all Metalls, That, whose Mercury Chymists have most endeavoured to extract, and which they do the most brag they have extracted; yet the Experienced Angelus Sala, in his Spagyrical account of the seven Terrestrial Planets (that is the seven metalls) affords us this memorable Testimony, to, our present purpose; Quanquam (saies he) &c. experientia tamen (quam stultorum Magistrum [Errata: ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... issue disappear altogether behind the bitter mutual reproaches. In his unrestrained anger, Erasmus avails himself of the most unworthy weapons. He eggs his German friends on to write against Lee and to ridicule him in all his folly and brag, and then he assures all his English friends: 'All Germany is literally furious with Lee; I have the greatest ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... housekeeping experiment was a great success; she and 'Manda Grier had two rooms now, and they lived better than ever they had, for less money. Of course, Statira said, it was not up to the St. Albans, which Lemuel had told them of at first a little braggingly. In fact she liked to have him brag of it, and of the splendours of his position and surroundings. She was very curious, but not envious of anything, and it became a joke with her and 'Manda Grier, who pretended ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... sense, Cadaverous, of corpses and of tombs Predestined; while,—like monsters in the glooms,— Bristling with battle, shadowy and immense, The Nations rise in wild apocalypse.— Where now the boast Earth makes of civilization? Its brag of Christianity?—In vain We seek to see them in the dread eclipse Of hell and horror, all the devastation Of Death triumphant on his hills ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... bravado, defiance. The epithet 'fearful' probably means that fear is behind the attempt to intimidate by display and brag. Dr. Wright ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... his hand. "Blair and I, and you too, Mr. Fullerton, not to mention Roche, are all business men, and we don't brag about money. But you know that if I fitted out and endowed ten steamers, I should still be a fairly comfortable man. If you can't keep a steamer going with L4,000 a year, you don't deserve to have one, and if I choose ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... weighty and crushing and so completely out of the French mode of fighting that the Slasher was mentally as well as bodily stunned by them and gave up, muttering, "I'm floored. Except the Skeleton with his iron bones and the Schoolmaster, no one till now could brag of having set ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... not taken the mare and come over here this morning, the rascally police with their search-warrant might have been down upon Mr. Kearney without a warning. They were all stiff and cold enough at first: they are nothing to brag of in the way of cordiality even yet—Dick especially—but they have asked me to stay and dine, and, I take it, it is the right thing to do. Send me over some things to dress with—and believe ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... "O, you can brag; but when a fellow can go and set a man's barn afire, without wincing, he's worse than I am; that's all ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... That semel'n anno ridet Apollo. I have assur'd them twenty times, That Phoebus help'd me in my rhymes; Phoebus inspired me from above, And he and I were hand and glove. But, finding me so dull and dry since, They'll call it all poetic license; And when I brag of aid divine, Think Eusden's[1] right as good as mine. Nor do I ask for Stella's sake; 'Tis my own credit lies at stake: And Stella will be sung, while I Can only be a stander by. Apollo, having thought a little, Return'd this answer ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... make; may it be happy to her, but in my opinion he has not a good-natured look. The younger brother was a servant, a great while, to my fair neighbour, but could not be received; and in earnest I could not blame her. I was his confidante and heard him make his addresses; not that I brag of the favour he did me, for anybody might have been so that had been as often there, and he was less scrupulous in that point than one would have been that had had less reason. But in my life I never heard a man say more, nor less to the purpose; and if his brother have not a better gift ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... going to die, boy, I may let you off the birching which your impertinence merits. You have all the old brag of your father." ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... a fellow of Link's stamp might do. He is just fool enough to brag about what he hoped to do rather than go and do it. It's an outrage that he should call you ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... he had was performed ill, at best unpleasantly. 'Great practical method and expertness' he may brag of; but is there not also great practical pride, though deep-hidden, only the deeper-seated? So shy a man can never have been popular. We figure to ourselves, how in those days he may have played strange freaks with ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... used affectedly, like "humour," in many senses, often very vaguely and freely ridiculed by Jonson; humour, disposition, whims, brag(ging), hector(ing), etc. ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... smiled, and played with his watch chain. "I should hate to brag," he said, but anyone could see from the absence of a diamond ring on his little finger that he was a person of weight in ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... of the other men. "The kid is bound to be a regular, all right. He doesn't brag, and I don't believe he's looking for any write-up ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... perceiued the ships to be gone, they would not only shew themselues standing vpon high cliffes, and call vs to come ouer vnto them: but also would come in their Botes very neere to vs, as it were to brag at vs: whereof our Generall hauing aduertisement, sent for the Captaines and Gentlemen of the ships, to accompany and attend vpon him, with the Captaine also of the Anne Francis, who was but the night before come ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... New Hebrides—the martyr isle of Erromanga and all the rest. Look at the Austrian expedition that was cut to pieces in the Solomons, in the bush of Guadalcanar. And look at the traders themselves, with a score of years' experience, making their brag that no nigger would ever get them, and whose heads to this day are ornamenting the rafters of the canoe houses. There was old Johnny Simons—twenty-six years on the raw edges of Melanesia, swore he knew the ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... almost as Xenocrates in Athens, ad senectam fere to learn wisdom as he did, penned up most part in my study. For I have been brought up a student in the most flourishing college of Europe, [30]augustissimo collegio, and can brag with [31]Jovius, almost, in ea luce domicilii Vacicani, totius orbis celeberrimi, per 37 annos multa opportunaque didici; for thirty years I have continued (having the use of as good [32]libraries as ever he had) a scholar, and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... boss is satisfied, and I should like to tell the other chaps, if I may. I won't, sir, if you say I oughtn't to, for I don't want you to think because you young gentlemen treat me friendly like that I am all chatter and brag." ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... little valiant, great in villainy! Thou ever strong upon the stronger side! Thou fortune's champion, thou dost never fight But when her humorous ladyship is by To teach thee safety! Thou art perjured too, And sooth'st up greatness. What a fool art thou, A ramping fool; to brag, and stamp, and sweat, Upon ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... does not brag much, ye see, I kin offer him small wages," said Dan'l, with a wink. "It's kinder takin' ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... of an old saying at my home," I replied, "which ran something like this, 'Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... my nineteenth year," said Simeon. "I'm no' big for my age, I ken; but I can throw ony man that I get grups on, and haud ony beast whatsomever. I can ploo wi' the best an' maw—Weel, I'm no' gaun to brag, but ye can ask Maister Golder—that is an elder o' your ain, an' comes at least twa Sabbaths afore every Communion to ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... me long as you like," he said, with a laugh. "I'm not much to look at. And, Jane, neither you nor Lassiter, can brag. You're paler than I ever saw you. Lassiter, here, he wears a bloody bandage under his hat. That reminds me. Some one took a flying shot at me down in the sage. It made Wrangle run some.... Well, perhaps you've more to tell me than I've got to ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... he was talking! What empty brag it was! Suppose, just for the sake of the joke, I did put my hand in his, and did wish, right out, what it was plain he knew. If I wished, what harm would it do! It would be the purest jest. Out of his own mouth he would be confounded, for it was certain ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... in Holland, being only governed by a count, or rather that they governed him. Nay, if they had any king at all in whom they could boast, it certainly was the king of England, who had hitherto been their protector, and without whose aid they had never been able to brag of their States. This retort made the Spaniards and Portuguese laugh heartily at the poor Hollander, and made ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... on the shuddering edge Of some great storm, it waves its woven joy, Which no man shall destroy, In shine or shower, in peace or battle-time. Up with the flag! The winds are wild to toss it, and to brag Of England's high renown,— And of the throne where Chivalry has sat Acclaimed in bower and town For England's high renown!— And of these happy isles where men are free And masters of the sea, The million-mouthed sea, That calls to us from shore to furthest shore— That fought for us of yore,— ...
— The Song of the Flag - A National Ode • Eric Mackay
... son; and when I am a man I may be like him. Verner, do I brag, To think I some time may be like my father? If so, then is it he that teaches me; For, ever as I wonder at his skill, He calls me boy, and says I must do more Ere I become ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... years, I should say, than either Von Heeringen or Von Zwehl; too young, I judged, to have got his training in the blood- and-iron school of Bismarck and Von Moltke of which the other two must have been brag-scholars. Both of them, I think, were Prussians, but this general was a Saxon from the South. Indeed, as I now recall, he said his home in peace times was in Dresden. He seemed less simple of manner than they; they in turn lacked ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... there is no harm," replied Albert, "only I do; and so it is worse for me than for you." Then he added, looking curiously at his friend, "Tell me honestly, Frank, did you enjoy having cigarette smoke puffed in your face, being called 'Cully,' and hearing silly brag about 'mashes,' and how they 'worked' some other fellow? Did it occur to you that those same rouge-finished queens of the ballet would describe us, and how they 'worked' us for a wine supper, to other jays, and that no doubt they have done so to one or a dozen since that ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... give answer? They are whimpering to and fro— And what should they know of England who only England know?— The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag, They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... to brag," remarked Thad. "Perhaps the shoe would be on the other foot, and he might kick the lot of us out of his territory. But all the same, let's hope our trail won't cross ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... by it that is a newer testament,—the gospel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got up early, and kept up early, and to be where he is to be in season, in the foremost rank of time. It is an expression of the health and soundness of Nature, a brag for all the world,—healthiness as of a spring burst forth, a new fountain of the Muses, to celebrate this last instant of time. Where he lives no fugitive slave laws are passed. Who has not betrayed his master many times since last he ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... committing their eternal praise, Their full-fed heroes, their pacific may'rs, Their annual trophies, and their monthly wars: Though long my party built on me their hopes, For writing pamphlets, and for roasting Popes; Yet lo! in me what authors have to brag on! Reduc'd at last to hiss in my own dragon. Avert in Heav'n! that thou, my Cibber, e'er Shouldst wag a serpent-tail in Smithfield fair! Like the vile straw that's blown about the streets, The needy poet sticks to all he meets; Coach'd, carted, trod upon, now loose, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... I listened, I was dangerously near admiring him. He was certainly exaggerating; but it couldn't all be brag. The life of this spy of the first water, of international fame, must be rather marvelous; to defy one's enemies with success, to journey calmly through their capitals, to stroll undetected among their agents of justice—were not things any fool could do. He carried his life in his hand, this ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... blessed men, when the Lord knows the generality are left out of that blessed condition. 'Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called' (1 Cor 1:26). Ah! did they that do now so brag, that nobody dare scarce look on them, but believe this, it would make them hang down their heads and cry, O ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... fact than anyone is likely to be over anything you do in your life. And if his Lordship came in at that door now, he'd meet me as a man meets a man. Whereas you—you'd run round him sniffing like the lickspittle you are—and if he didn't tread on you, you'd go and brag to all your other pimply friends that you'd been talking to an ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... came to town to buy a side of bacon or a sack of flour on time he was alluded to as being on a business trip; and when nothing else good could be said of a fellow, we would puff him on his enthusiastic and steadfast Democracy. The way to run a county paper is to brag on all the people all the time and keep a good list of subscribers, and the patent medicine fellows will pay the running expense. So one winter, as I was ranging around the mountains near Colonel Miller's farm, I met up with Blacksmith George Towry, a jovial, good-natured ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... brag. Again and again he rose on his hind feet and dropped heavily to the ground. "Look at me," he said. "See how I will crush any bird that tries to take the ball from me." The swift deer, the mountain goat, and the rabbit were at their best speed. Indeed, ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor
... such. And to be treated as anything but what you really are may seem pleasant to the imagination when the treatment is above your merits; but in actual experience it is often quite the reverse. When I was a very small boy, my romantic imagination, stimulated by early doses of fiction, led me to brag to a still smaller boy so outrageously that he, being a simple soul, really believed me to be an invincible hero. I cannot remember whether this pleased me much; but I do remember very distinctly that one day this admirer of mine, who had a pet goat, found the ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... half gentry, or mock gentry, seemed to consider it as the most indisputable privilege of a gentleman not to pay his debts. They were ever ready to meet civil law with military brag of war. Whenever a swaggering debtor of this species was pressed for payment, he began by protesting or confessing that 'he considered himself used in an ungentlemanlike manner;' and ended by offering ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... I am on to the little old town now, all right! They all know me up there. As soon as I get off the ferry, perfect strangers come up, call me by name, shake hands, and slip me a card. I don't mean to brag, but I know the location of every poolroom in the city! I have a friend in New York who writes the dramatic criticisms for the moving-picture shows; he puts me in touch with the theatrical and newspaper element, ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... think, you drunken wag, It was any thing to brag, To be cornered in my hen-roost, with two pullets in a bag? You are used to dirty dens; You have often slept in pens; I've a mind to take you out there now, and roost you ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... to-night. At any rate, the lineage of the Roysons has not been disputed during many centuries. Our name is part of our proof, and there has been a Richard Royson associated with Westmoreland ever since Coeur-de-Lion returned from Palestine. That is the kind of family asset a boy will brag of. Joined to a certain proficiency in games, it supplies a ready- made nickname. But the wonderful and wholly inexplicable thing is that while I have been standing here, watching our head-light dancing over the desert, the fantastic conceit ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... have led them willingly enough, had their bayonets fixed, when some one hoisted the white flag, and by this act the remnants of two gallant regiments became prisoners of war. "Flags of truce!" said an "old brag" who recounted the story, with tears in his voice; "I wish they would leave the damned rags at home, or dye them all khaki colour, so that neither Dutchmen nor ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... here at home, boys, in old Hoosierdom, Where strangers allus joke us when they come, And brag o' their old States and interprize— Yit settle here; and 'fore they realize, They're "hoosier" as the rest of us, and live Right here at home, boys, ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... quickly in the West, madam," said Dave. There was nothing in his voice to suggest that he had caught the note in hers. "Most of our business men—at least, those bred in the country—have thrown a lasso in their day. You should hear them brag of their steer-roping yet in the Ranchmen's Club." Irene's eyes danced. Dave had already turned the tables; where her mother had implied contempt he had set up a note of pride. It was a matter of pride among these square-built, daring Western men that they had graduated into ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... you'd get if you didn't stop hootin' at people who was passin'," remarked Mrs. Nitschkan, knocking the ashes from her pipe out on the hearth and then carefully refilling it. "But you're none so good now that you need brag. I don't know that playin' monkey tricks to frighten folks ain't just as good a way to put in the time as sittin' 'round holdin' hands with ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... famous trotting-ground, The betting men were gathered round From far and near; the "cracks" were there Whose deeds the sporting prints declare The swift g. m., Old Hiram's nag, The fleet s. h., Dan Pfeiffer's brag, With these a third—and who is he That stands beside his fast b. g.? Budd Doble, whose catarrhal name So fills the nasal trump of fame. There too stood many a noted steed Of Messenger and Morgan breed; Green horses also, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... fleets crept slowly up Channel, the English some six miles astern of the Armada. Once they closed up, and a few shots were exchanged with the galleasses in Recalde's rearguard. But Howard did not want to fight. He was only "putting on a brag countenance," for he was woefully short of ammunition, and writing urgently for much-needed supplies. The wind had fallen, and in the afternoon some of the galleons were drifting along, heeled over by shifting guns and stores to enable the carpenters slung over the sides to plug shot-holes ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... at once, the motive of this gathering on the top of the volcano of Conchagua, five thousand feet above the sea, wearily attained at no small expenditure of effort and perspiration. Was it love of adventure merely? ambition to do something whereof to brag about to admiring aunts or country cousins? Hardly. The beauty of the wonderful panorama which spreads before the group of strangers is too much neglected, their instruments are too carefully adjusted and noted, and their consultations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... night to tell you in detail, Kenneth. But I did it. It's no mere brag to say that I could walk into the Chicago, Peoria & Davenport general offices here to-morrow morning and organize a through service over the P. S-W. and the three stub lines within twenty-four hours, if ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... led the way into the stables, where he lingered to slap his mare on the back and brag about her, and then Mark had to be introduced to the pig. 'What I call a 'andsome pig, yer know,' he remarked; 'a perfect picture, he is' (a picture that needed cleaning, Mark thought)—'you come down to me in another three weeks or so, and we'll try a bit off of that chap'—an ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... his noble grace And grant him a place Endlesse to dwell, With the deuyll of hell, For and he were there We nede neuer feere, Of the fendys blake; For I vndertake He wolde so brag and crake, That he wolde then make The deuyls to quake, To ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... (indeed, they refused to consider it at all), and the congregation, when it had thought things over, apparently decided that there might be worse things in the pulpit than "the gal." It was even known to brag of what it called my "spunk," and perhaps it was this quality, rather than any other, which I most needed in that particular parish at that time. As for me, when the fight was over I dropped it from my mind, and ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw |
