"Bumptious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mrs. Sumfit; "and do be good creatures, and begin about my Dahly, and where she got that Bumptious gownd, and the bonnet with blue flowers lyin' by on the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... high-plumed, high-flown, high-toned. haughty lofty, high, mighty, swollen, puffed up, flushed, blown; vainglorious; purse-proud, fine; proud as a peacock, proud as Lucifer; bloated with pride. supercilious, disdainful, bumptious, magisterial, imperious, high and mighty, overweening, consequential; arrogant &c. 885; unblushing &c. 880. stiff, stiff-necked; starch; perked stuck-up; in buckram, strait- laced; prim &c. (affected) 855. on one's dignity, on one's high horses,on one's tight ropes, on one's high ropes; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... glittering generalities," she jeered at him, "then listen to this: A man's job, first, last, and all the time, is to be chivalrous to a woman! And not a bumptious boor!" ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... (for he tells his stories in propria persona) is not to some extent justified. "Dora" is very sensitive and six months ago would never have permitted Mr. COPPLESTONE to reveal to our enemies either the bumptious egoism of a nameless First Lord or the platitudinous vacillations of an anonymous Premier, even in the interests of popular fiction. Though we concede his audacity in allowing his superlative sleuth to stop a general strike of engineers by threatening ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... and activities of the creature are such as to establish the delusion that it is not altogether amicable in its attitude towards even such a bumptious and authoritative product of Nature as man. Its agitated demonstrations—whatever their vital purpose may be—to the superficial observer are danger signals, a means of self-preservation, as a substitute for the hard calcareous armour bestowed ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... I finally got back to Hampshire, worn out by my ordeal and feeling as though I'd aged ten years, there was a message from Miss Francis on my desk. Even her bumptious rudeness could not conceal the jubilation with ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... the weavers of the royal tapestry-factories, and all sorts of persons and subjects connected with the king and his court. But in Holland, Rembrandt and Frans Hals and Vermeer painted the barnyard of the merchant's house, and they painted his rather dowdy wife and his healthy but bumptious children and the ships which had brought him his wealth. In Italy on the other hand, where the Pope remained the largest patron of the arts, Michelangelo and Correggio continued to paint Madonnas and Saints, while in England, where the aristocracy was very rich and powerful and in France where ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... Bulgaria. English people naturally like the Bulgars at first sight. The Bulgar is a good fighting man, and that makes a strong appeal to the man of the world. He is simple, not bumptious, gives himself no airs of traditional culture or modern education, and therefore recommends himself. The cynical and false opinion of 1914-15 regarding Bulgaria—that she would come in to the war on the side that bid ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... ruled by Diaz, the struggle in which Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Salvador had been engaged was soon renewed between the first two belligerents. Since diplomatic interposition no longer availed, American marines were landed in Nicaragua, and the bumptious Zelaya was induced to have his country meet its neighbors in a conference at Washington. Under the auspices of the United States and Mexico, in December, 1907, representatives of the five republics signed a series of conventions providing for peace and cooperation. An ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... difference, Jack,—eh? Do I really seem as ready to bounce out of my chair and tackle somebody as that picture makes me look? If I do I need to have a tourniquet applied somewhere about my neck to stop the flow of blood to my bumptious head." ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... dispatched on the previous evening, with a wagon-load of provisions and comforts, and with orders to make the necessary arrangements for a boat and crew with fisherman Piotr. But, for reasons which seemed too voluble and complicated for adequate expression, Piotr had been as slow of movement as my bumptious yamtschik of the posting-station, and nothing was ready. Piotr, like many elderly peasants, might sit for the portrait of his apostolic namesake. But he approved of more wine "for the stomach's sake" than any apostle ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... in the least bumptious. He began very nervously with a carefully prepared Shakespearean quotation—"'I am no orator as Brutus is,'" in compliment to Jenkinson. Then he gave me a lift. He said that my presence there was a proof, if proof ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... A bumptious young American farmer went to England to learn his business, but where he went he pretended that it was far easier to teach the farmers than to learn anything from them. "I've got an idea," he said one day ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... this question would have been considered the bumptious presumption of flamboyant fancy. It isn't so considered to-day. Rather than a flight of fancy, the question is forced on thinking minds by the hard facts of the multiplication table. Between 1897 and 1911 there came to Canada 723,424 British colonists; and ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... B., that's flat," declared Blix; "the idea, 'matrimony if suitable'—patronizing enough! I know just what kind of an old man B. P. T. is. I know he would want K. D. B. to warm his slippers, and would be fretful and grumpy. B. P. T., just an abbreviation of bumptious. ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... resignation was named, Tom's thoughts had turned to Hardy. Now was the time—he had such confidence in the man, that the idea of getting him in for next race entirely changed the aspect of affairs to him, and made him feel as "bumptious" again as he had done in the morning. So with this idea in his head, he hung about till the Captain had made his toilet, and joined himself to him and Miller as ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... the state committee uttered the colonel's rising fears. The chairman had lost his sneer and his bumptious confidence. His face was red, he was sweating, he was staring out over the convention and snapping ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... great trades-unions of the world file past, one with the odd word 'Russia' on its banner; another boasting itself 'Germany'—this with a particularly bumptious and self-important young man walking backward in front of it, in the manner of a Salvation Army captain, and imperiously waving an iron wand; still another 'nation' calling itself 'France'; and yet another boasting the biggest brass band, and called 'England.' Other smaller ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... most abrupt change. I had never seen her furiously angry. She's a typical high echelon Washington secretary, cool, extremely well-mannered, cheerful without being bumptious. But this time she was ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... passions to conceal; And likewise to regard your friends As creatures sent to serve your ends. Be prompt to lie: there is no wit In telling truth, to lose by it. And knock down worth, bespatter merit: Don't stint—all will your scandal credit. Be bumptious, bully, swear, and fight— And all ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... had been a man of the world he would have divined that the present was a rare opportunity for catching his bumptious young friend by the ear, and making him carry out his threat then and there. But, being a simple-minded new boy, unlearned in the ways of the world, he merely said "Pooh!" and walked on, leaving his assailant in possession of the field, calling out "coward!" and ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... of the other's good nature, and in spite of his manner. Henry Vizetelly, who evidently bore him no particular goodwill, wrote to me his recollections of the man in these words: "He was not the amiable person depicted by Yates in his 'Recollections.' He was vulgar and bumptious in manner until he became polished by concerting with 'swells' after the success of his entertainments. He always had a keen eye for the main chance, and never neglected an opportunity for self-advertisement. ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... what we couldn't have realised in England; and I am sure, in spite of the bouleversement of the bachelor regime, it is a great pleasure to the men we are here. Our Winnipeg acquaintances tell us that A—— is quite a changed man, so cheery and even bumptious, and that everything is now "What ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... the middle class who seldom or never voted before will vote now, and the greater part of the new voters will in the main be wiser as to their electoral responsibilities and more seriously desirous to discharge them for the common good than the bumptious singers of "Rule Britannia," "Our dear old Church of England," and all ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... delightful attempts at human speech, we should be in a far more wise and tolerant temper. A child has a knack of making experiments in life, generally healthy in motive, but often intolerable in a domestic commonwealth. If we only treated all commercial buccaneers and bumptious tyrants on the same terms, if we gently chided their brutalities as rather quaint mistakes in the conduct of life, if we simply told them that they would 'understand when they were older,' we should probably be adopting ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... as big as all out-of-doors, and e'en BUMBLE was hardly as bumptious. He'd make my London a Paradise, which is a prospect that's perfectly scrumptious. But oh! he is big, with the funniest rig; a Titan who, if he should tumble, Might squelch me as flat as an opera-hat, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... undeniable that many eccentricities and false moves on the part of William II. have been grossly exaggerated and placed before the public in a false light, showing him up as a conceited, bumptious and silly person, whereas not only his state of health, but his entourage should have been blamed for whatever he did that was out of place. During a great many years the young prince suffered from what is called technically otitis ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... explained Alfred, and Jimmy remembered guiltily that he had been very bumptious with the fellow. "You know the place," continued Alfred, "the LaSalle—a restaurant where I am known—where she is known—where my best friends dine—where Henri has looked after me for years. That shows how desperate she is. She must be mad about the fool. She's lost all sense of decency." And ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... see us, that the instant he arrived at the palace and told him we wished to visit him, the king caused "fifty big men and four hundred small ones" to be executed, because, he said, his subjects were so bumptious they would not allow any visitors to come near him, else he would have had ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Shakespeare's method—noticed by Maurice Morgann—of making a character act and speak from those parts of the composition which are inferred only and not distinctly shown; but to the initiated, including Southampton and his friends, who knew the bumptious self-sufficiency of Shakespeare's living model, and who followed the developing characterisation from play to play, the effect of such bold dramatic strokes must have been ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... cheerful johar? There are four trees before this bungalow, and at present two vultures are perching on each—horrible creatures, with long, scraggy necks. I pointed them out to Boggley, who was immediately reminded of a tale of a bumptious young civilian, new to the country, who was told, by one who had suffered many things at his hands, that the birds were wild turkeys, a much-valued delicacy; hearing which the youth promptly shot some and sent ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas |
