"Coxcomb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disposed to think that there must have been some genuine good qualities in Boswell to have been attracted by such a man as Johnson, and to have kept faithful to his worship in spite of rebuffs and snubbings innumerable. Macaulay speaks of Boswell as an altogether contemptible person—as a coxcomb and a bore—weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous; and without wit, humour, or eloquence. But Carlyle is doubtless more just in his characterisation of the biographer, in whom—vain and foolish though he was in many respects—he sees a man penetrated ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... he had entertained more miscellaneous parties than any other man in London. At one time he had received the Duke of Cumberland, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Nairne the optician, and Leoni the singer. It was at his table that Dr. Johnson made that excellent reply to a pert coxcomb who baited him during dinner. "Pray now," said he to the Doctor, "what would you give, old gentleman, to be as young and sprightly as I am?" "Why, Sir, I think," replied Johnson, "I would almost be content to be as ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Gentleman. I make free to tell you in a Word, if this passes, there's an End of good Manhood in the King's Dominions. How must all the Important Quarrels, which happen in Life, among men of Honour, be decided? Must a heedless sawcy Coxcomb frown, or tread upon a Gentleman's Toes with Impunity? No, I suppose, the great Cause of Honour must be determined by the womanish Revenge of Scolding; and when two Peers or Gentlemen have had some manly Difference, they must chuse their Seconds from Billingsgate ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... emissary of your father's here some time since, a young coxcomb, one Twineall, who informed me concerning your secret sacrifices to the muses, and added, that some of your verses had been greatly admired by the ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... she is exquisite, George! I have seen nothing like her in my time," lisped a superb coxcomb, attired in a splendid civilian's suit of Pompadour and silver, to a young cornet of the Life Guard who ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... gently touched up the newest stranger—the lion of the day, the gorgeous journeyman tailor from Quincy. He was a simpering coxcomb of the first water, and the "loudest" dressed man in the State. He was an inveterate woman-killer. Every week he wrote lushy "poetry" for the Journal, about his newest conquest. His rhymes for my week were headed, "TO MARY IN H—L," meaning to Mary in ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... that she is promised by her mother to Sir Credulous Easy, a bumpkinly knight from Devonshire. Lodwick, who is a close friend of Leander, has been previously known to Sir Credulous, and resolving to trick and befool the coxcomb warmly welcomes him on his arrival in town. He persuades him, in fine, to give a ridiculous serenade, or, rather, a hideous hubbub, of noisy instruments under his mistress' window. A little before this Lady Knowell with a party of friends has visited Sir Patient, who is her next neighbour, and ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... this question without a cause, said they; for a great number of others who have passed this way from your country of Touraine seemed as mere jolt-headed doddipolls as ever were scored o'er the coxcomb, yet spoke as correct as other folks. But there has been here from other countries a pack of I know not what overweening self-conceited prigs, as moody as so many mules and as stout as any Scotch lairds, and nothing ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... young man, from your father's letter to me, I was taught to expect a well-bred modest man as a visitor here, but now I find him no better than a coxcomb and a bully; but he will be down here presently, and shall hear ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... a gentleman of the town, ceremonious and a coxcomb, but a man of honor. LADY ALLONBY, a woman of fashion, and widow to Lord Stephen Allonby. MISS ALLONBY, daughter to Lord Stephen by a former marriage, of a considerable fortune in her own hands. FOOTMEN to Lady Allonby; and in the Proem ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... fop, fine gentleman; swell; dandy, dandiprat|!; exquisite, coxcomb, beau, macaroni, blade, blood, buck, man about town, fast man; fribble, milliner|!; Jemmy Jessamy|!, carpet knight; masher, dude. fine ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... paved the way, With your confounded fantasies, to more Immoral conduct by the fancied sway Your system feigns o'er the controulless core Of human hearts, than all the long array Of poets and romancers:—You 're a bore, A charlatan, a coxcomb—and have been, At best, no ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... and use them in sentences: railed, maundered, coxcomb, parasite, conclave, turgid, ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... the thought of her first fall from virtue, even when her husband's atrocities have set her free? Do you suppose that I have no soul, no beliefs, no religion? Your glee this evening has been really too barefaced; you have paraded me odiously. Really, a schoolboy would have been less of a coxcomb. And the ladies have dissected me with their side-glances and their satirical remarks. Every woman has some care for her reputation, and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... from his want of personal vanity; on this account he determined on a journey to Paris, when Paris was the center of politeness; he there learnt to dress, to dance, and to move his hands gracefully in conversation; and returned a most consummate coxcomb. But after a very few years he relapsed into rusticity of ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... unfeminine folly of which fashionable society showed him many samples. Jo knew that 'young Laurence' was regarded as a most eligible parti by worldly mamas, was much smiled upon by their daughters, and flattered enough by ladies of all ages to make a coxcomb of him, so she watched him rather jealously, fearing he would be spoiled, and rejoiced more than she confessed to find that he still believed in modest girls. Returning suddenly to her admonitory tone, she said, dropping her voice, "If you must have a 'vent', Teddy, go and devote ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... as she caressed him; "what a piece of vanity is this! A boy of seventeen thinking he knows himself by heart. Out upon you, Roy, for a conceited coxcomb! Why, we all know you better than you know yourself; and surely I ought to be the best ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... solacement, were it only of a stomachic character, is undeniable enough. That he was vain, heedless, a babbler; had much of the sycophant, alternating with the braggadocio, curiously spiced too with an all-pervading dash of the coxcomb; that he gloried much when the Tailor, by a court-suit, had made a new man of him; that he appeared at the Shakespeare Jubilee with a riband, imprinted "Corsica Boswell," round his hat; and in short, if you will, lived no day ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... under blossoms, and riding at evening on the bat; and his domestic namesake in the Rape of the Lock (the imagination of the drawing-room) saving a lady's petticoat from the coffee with his plumes, and directing atoms of snuff into a coxcomb's nose. In the Orlando Furioso (Canto xv, st. 65) is a wild story of a cannibal necromancer, who laughs at being cut to pieces, coming together again like quicksilver, and picking up his head when it is cut off, sometimes by the hair, sometimes by the nose! This, which would ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... to those, who spend An idle courtship on the fair, they well Deserve their fate, if they're disdain'd;—her charms To rush upon, and conquer opposition, Gains the Fair one's praise; an active lover Suits, who lies aside the coxcomb's empty whine, And forces ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... Canadians on him was that their new governor-general came to them a valetudinarian. There seemed to be other and more serious elements of weakness. Charles Greville spoke of him with just a tinge of good-natured contempt as "very good humoured, pleasing and intelligent, but the greatest coxcomb I ever saw, and the vainest dog, though his vanity is not offensive or arrogant";[6] and a writer in the Colonial Gazette, whose words reached Canada {78} almost on the day when the new governor arrived, warned Canadians of the imbecility of character which the world attributed ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... some unrecorded character by the doctrine of signatures," Suggests Mr. Ellacombe, [19] that it would stop the growth of children. Thus Shakespeare, in his "Midsummer Night's Dream" (Act iii. sc. 2), alludes to it as the "hindering knot-grass," and in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Coxcomb" (Act ii. sc. 2) it ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... coxcomb! I wish that I could live to see our hands trempes dans le sang odieux de cette nation infernale, rather than our petits maitres here, in Caca du Dauphin, Boue de Paris, Bile repandue du Comte d'Artois, ou vomis (sic) de la Reine. Ce sont les ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... eggs as fast as they are laid. He has just enough brains to be sentimental, jealous, and boundlessly fond of himself. His wives, too, are foolish enough to worship him, until—there is an egg in the nest. That event makes them wise. They understand this strutting coxcomb, and quietly turning their backs on him, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... I would answer your scurrilities in Print; but this I disdain, sirrah. Good stout Ash and good strong Cordovan leather are the things fittest to meet your impertinences with;" and so I held out my Foot, and shook my Staff at the titivilitium coxcomb; and he was so civil to me during the rest of the evening as to allow me to pay his ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... I shall not be considered an overweening coxcomb for saying that, on the whole, I found more favor with the ladies than with the gentlemen; ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... harpsichord—and my dear father bringing in this happy letter from your son! I must confess this romantic kind of fancy-sketching makes me feel rather oddly: very unlike what I felt a few months ago, when I was a mere coxcomb—indifferent, unreflecting, unappreciating, and fit for nothing better than to hold pins at my lady's toilet. Well, it is now made evident to me that we never know the blessings bestowed on us until we are separated from the possession of them. Absence tightens the ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... Major Conway. I say that L'Isle is an impudent coxcomb. The most presumptuous fellow I know. I will find or make an occasion to give him a ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... theories were strongly opposed and he was continually in hot water. In his zeal to defend Turner or Millais or Burne-Jones he was rather slashing in his criticism of other artists. The libel suit brought against him by Whistler, whom he described as a coxcomb who flung a pot of paint in the face of the public, is still talked about in England. The jury (fancy a jury wrestling with a question of art!) found Ruskin guilty, and decided that he should pay for the artist's damaged reputation the sum of one farthing. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... for, suppose Jules 45 a coxcomb as much as you choose, still, for this mere coxcombry, you will have brushed off—what do folks style ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... you like," I replied warmly, for I was greatly taken with the frank manly tone of the young man, whom I had last known as a conceited frivolous coxcomb. "Half a dozen. Shall ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... characteristic of compilers of peerages, thinks "that he was esteemed one of the most accomplished persons of the time, being a gentleman, not only of fine learning, but famed for his piety and exemplary life." Dorothy thinks otherwise, and writes of him as "the vainest, impertinent, self-conceited, learned coxcomb that ever yet I saw." Peerages in Dorothy's style would perhaps be unprofitable writing. The "Emperor," as Dorothy calls him in writing to Temple, may feel thankful that his epitaph was in others hands than ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... suspicious and captious yourself, nor to suppose that things, because they may be, are therefore meant at you. The manners of well-bred people secure one from those indirect and mean attacks; but if, by chance, a flippant woman or a pert coxcomb lets off anything of that kind, it is much better not to seem to understand, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... a soldier? Not for his epaulettes and red coat, but because one knows that, coxcomb though he be at home here, there is the power in him of that same self-sacrifice; that, when he is called, he will go and die, that he may be of use to his country. And yet—it may seem invidious to say so just now—but there are other sorts of self-sacrifice, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... at their first meeting, and he saith, "Comrade, for thou hast e'er been my true and loyal comrade, Marian—sweet comrade-cousin—this is the matter that doth eat my heart. Dost think there is aught between Patience and that young coxcomb?" ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... and dignity of that passion when felt for a worthy object;—their eye is captivated, the exterior pleases, the heart and mind are not known, and, after six months union, they are surprised to find the beau ideal metamorphosed into a fool or a coxcomb. This is the issue of what are ordinarily called love-matches, because they are considered as such. "Cupid is indeed often blamed for deeds in which he has no share." In the opinion of the wise, the mischief is occasioned by the action of vivid imaginations ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... Court of King's Bench, would have blushed to think that his great-grandnephew was to be a Puritan preacher. With more reason might Dr. Doddridge have blushed to think that his great-grandson was to be a coxcomb. But so it has proved. Twenty years ago Mr. John Doddridge Humphreys gave to the world five octavos of his ancestor's correspondence, which, on the whole, we deem the most eminent instance, in modern times, of editorial incompetency. But the book contains many curiosities to reward the dust-sifting ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... begone. Faulkner, perceiving the error he had committed, instantly returned home, and resuming his usual dress, again went to the Dean, when he was very cordially received. "Ah, George," said he, "I am so glad to see you, for here has been an impudent coxcomb, bedizened in silks and gold lace, who wanted to pass himself off for you; but I soon sent the fellow about his business; for I knew you to be always a plain dressed and honest man, just as you now appear ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... a half-witted spark, a fugitive from justice, and, to boot, an impudent coxcomb whom I have had ten minds already to pitch over the ship's side. He was hidden here on board before we came, having killed a man at Court, he brags, and seeking shelter in Scotland till the storm be past. But here ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... and—at the club, let us say prefer the company of a lively, handsome, well-dressed, gentleman like young man, who amuses me, to that of a slouching, ill-washed, misanthropic H-murderer, a ceaselessly prating coxcomb, or what not; has not society—the aggregate you and I—a right to the same choice? Harry was liked because he was likeable; because he was rich, handsome, jovial, well-born, well-bred, brave; because, with jolly topers, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... long reflection on the short but excellent speech of the plumed director to the ambassador of Cappadocia. The imperial ambassador was not in waiting, but they found for Austria a good Judean representation. With great judgment his highness the Grand Duke had sent the most atheistic coxcomb to be found in Florence to represent, at the bar of impiety, the house of apostolic majesty, and the descendants of the pious, though high-minded, Maria Theresa. He was sent to humble the whole race of Austria before those grim assassins, reeking with the blood ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... fatal Consequence to a good Genius to grasp at too much. "A certain Magistrate (says Bruyere) arriving, by his Merit, to the first Dignities of the Gown, thought himself qualified for every Thing. He printed a Treatise of Morality, and published himself a Coxcomb." Universal Genij and universal Scholars are generally excellent at nothing. He is certainly the wisest Man, who endeavours to be perfectly furnished for some Business, and regards other Matters as no more than ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... to apprehend; they appear in the glance cast either at the building or at the windows of the apartment; in a slow or loitering gait, in the rubbing of hands, on the part of a fool, in the bounding gait of a coxcomb, or the involuntary arrest of his footsteps, which marks the man who is deeply moved; in a word, you see upon the stoop certain questions as clearly proposed to you as if a provincial academy had offered ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... enough for that, thought Caponsacchi, and in this spirit he took the vows. He did his formal duties, and was equally diligent "at his post where beauty and fashion rule"—a fribble and a coxcomb, in short, as he described himself to the judges at the murder-trial. . . . After three or four years of this, he found himself, "in prosecution of his calling," at the theatre one night with fat little Canon Conti, a kinsman of the Franceschini. He was in the mood proper enough for the place, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... not a bit the wiser for any of his discoveries, nor I never met with any one that was. But it is in the nature of greatness to propagate an idea of itself, as wave impels wave, circle without circle. It is a contradiction in terms for a coxcomb to be a great man. A really great man has always an idea of something greater than himself. I have observed that certain sectaries and polemical writers have no higher compliment to pay their most ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the stern from the bows of a ship, what you say is truth," returned the other, with some austerity. "Hark ye, Mr Ark, I've a mind to furnish the coxcomb a lesson in respect for his superiors and give him a row to whet his appetite. By the Lord, I will; and he may write home an account of this manoeuvre, too, in his next despatches. Fill away the after-yards, sir; ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... deserved idolatry of Shakespeare and Milton was equalled by that paid to this pedantic coxcomb in his own time. He is called in the title-page of his plays (for, besides "Euphues," he wrote what he styled "Court Comedies"), "the only rare poet of that time; the witty, comical, facetiously quick, and unparalleled John Lillie." Moreover, his editor, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... or three adjuncts, as Peter Kipperson, a "march of intellect" man, Erpingham, one of Spoonbill's companions in debauchery, Ellen Fitzpatrick, one of his victims, Dr. Greendale's successor, Charles Pringle; and Zephaniah Pringle, a literary coxcomb of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... embroidered vest had made of me a totally different personage, and I marvelled at the power of transformation owned by a few yards of cloth cut after a certain pattern. The spirit of my costume penetrated my very skin and within ten minutes more I had become something of a coxcomb. ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... a mere coxcomb or dandy; but here the poet implies a man about town who is rich enough to ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... back. When he has mended what Fluellen calls his 'ploody coxcomb,' he will take out a summons ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... When coxcomb waiters know their trade, Nor mix their sauces[4] with cookey's; When John's no longer chamber maid, And ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... "This coxcomb says he was sent specially by Sir Henry to obtain from you some papers of great moment, which will ensure his immediate release. He bears Sir Henry's signet, and the knave hath ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... reasons fail, Have one sure refuge left—and that's to rail. Fop, coxcomb, fool, are thunder'd through the pit; And this is all their equipage of wit. We wonder how the devil this difference grows, Betwixt our fools in verse, and yours in prose: For, 'faith, the quarrel rightly understood, 'Tis civil war with ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Tawdrey is by the wishes of his mother and the lady's father designed for Celinda, who loves Bellmour, nephew to Lord Plotwell. A coxcomb of the first water, Sir Timothy receives a sharp rebuff when he opens his suit, and accordingly he challenges Bellmour, but fails to appear at the place of meeting. Celinda's old nurse, at night, admits Bellmour to her mistress' chamber, where they are surprized ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... America to offer my sword to Louis XVI., not to involve myself in party intrigues. I therefore decided to "emigrate." Brussels was the headquarters of the most distinguished emigres. There I found my trifling baggage, which had arrived before me. The coxcomb emigres were hateful to me. I was eager to see those like myself, with ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... "Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London," published in 1716, advises in passing a coxcomb— ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... of impudence fairly clanged on Madden's temper. He felt a desire to tell this coxcomb just what he thought of him. If Caradoc had remained facing the American, Madden might have done so, but it feels foolish to rail at a profile. Madden wheeled angrily, tramped across the bridge, then down the high side of the dock ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... bustling interference of the lover himself. The French original has infinitely the superiority; the character of the luckless lover is drawn with an exquisitely finer pencil. Lelie is an inconsequential, light-headed, gentleman-like coxcomb, but Sir Martin Marplot is a fool. In the English drama, the author seems to have considered his hero as so thoroughly stupid, that he rewards the address of the intriguing domestic with the hand of the lady. The French author gave no occasion ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... who make up aristocratic circles, such as are above them are deemed of superior, and such as are below of inferior, value. Thus, if a young, ignorant, and vicious coxcomb happens to have been born a lord, the aged, the virtuous, the learned, and the well-bred of another class must give his convenience the precedence, and must address him in terms of respect. So sometimes, when a man of "noble birth" is ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... philanthropy is impolite, that heroism is ungenteel, that truth, honor, freedom, humanity, strongly asserted, are marks of a vulgar mind; and many a person, daring enough to defend his opinions anywhere else, by speech or by the sword, quails in the parlor before some supercilious coxcomb, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... preserve me from it, my dear; he is the most intolerable coxcomb in the world. No, I assure you, I love my husband! You may laugh as you choose; it is true. I know it may seem ridiculous, but consider, he has made my fortune, he is no miser, and he is everything to me, for it has been my unhappy lot to be ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... of the Federals was a young coxcomb of a captain with a waxed mustache and blond hair. As long as he felt uncertain about the strength of the assailants, he had remained extremely quiet and prudent; but now that they had driven the rebels back without allowing them a chance ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... beautiful Claudia was the envy of all the women, the handsome Vincent was not less the envy of all the men present. "Puppy"; "coxcomb"; "Jackanape"; "swell"; "Viscount, indeed! more probably some foreign blackleg or barber"; "It is perfectly ridiculous the manner in which American girls throw themselves under the feet of these titled foreign paupers," were some of the low-breathed blessings ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... in a long journey perhaps, have no connection with any people, but such who have a design upon their purse. At every Auberge some officious coxcomb lies in wait to ensnare them, and under one pretence or other, introduces himself; he will offer to shew you the town; if you accept it, you are saddled with an impertinent visiter the whole time you ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... model. Another was a remarkable discretion which hardly once permitted a fault of taste in this whole enormous book where he must have had to pick his steps with pitfalls on every side of him. They say that he was a fool and a coxcomb in private life. He is never so with a pen in his hand. Of all his numerous arguments with Johnson, where he ventured some little squeak of remonstrance, before the roaring "No, sir!" came to silence him, there are few in which his views were not, as experience proved, the wiser. On ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... boldly up to the master, and told him that M'Gill had in my hearing cursed him in a most shocking manner, and called him vile names. He called M'Gill, and charged him with the crime, and the proud young coxcomb was so stunned at the atrocity of the charge that his face grew as red as crimson, and the words stuck in his throat as he feebly denied it. His guilt was manifest, and he was again flogged most nobly and dismissed the school ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... thorough "raff"—selfish, treacherous, fickle, incapable of considering either the happiness or the reputation of women, theatrical in his ways and language, venal, insolent, ungrateful. Schlegel, though he too had some touch of genius in him, was half pedant, half coxcomb, and full of intellectual and moral faultiness. The rest of her mighty herd of male friends and hangers-on ranged from Mathieu de Montmorency—of whom, in the words of Medora Trevilian it may be said, that he was "only an excellent person"—through respectable ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... to color, thus forfeiting all his pretensions to the character of a self-possessed man of the world and elegant coxcomb; but this is equally forlorn with his attempt not to observe the mischievous glance and satirical lip of the ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... man, whose father had made a large fortune in London, as an army- contractor. He seemed to emulate the manners of young Englishmen of fortune. He was a good-natured fellow, not without information or literature; but a most egregious coxcomb. He had been in the habit of attending the House of Commons, and had once spoken, as he informed me, with great applause in a debating society. For this he appeared to have qualified himself with laudable industry: for he was perfect ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... fault. The book of man he read with nicest art, And ransack'd all the secrets of the heart; Exerted penetration's utmost force, And traced each passion to its proper source; Then, strongly mark'd, in liveliest colours drew, And brought each foible forth to public view: 280 The coxcomb felt a lash in every word, And fools, hung out, their brother fools deterr'd. His comic humour kept the world in awe, And Laughter frighten'd Folly more than Law. But, hark! the trumpet sounds, the crowd gives way, And the procession comes in just array. Now should I, in ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... ourselves if we do not. If I did not, I should be looking on mist, hearing a perpetual boom instead of music. I remember hearing Mr. Whitford say that cynicism is intellectual dandyism without the coxcomb's feathers; and it seems to me that cynics are only happy in making the world as barren to others as they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... situations of Gil Blas; yet, when a character in humble life occasionally occurs in a performance of our own growth, exclaim, with an air of disgust, "Was ever anything so mean! sure, this writer must have been very conversant with the lowest scenes of life;"—who, when Swift or Pope represents a coxcomb in the act of swearing, scruple not to laugh at the ridiculous execrations; but, in a less reputed author, condemn the use of such profane expletives;—who eagerly explore the jakes of Rabelais, for amusement, and even extract humour from the dean's description of a lady's dressing-room; yet in ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... bonnet woo Malvina's charms; While sans culottes stoop up the mountain high, And steal from me Maria's prying eye. Blest Highland bonnet! Once my proudest dress, Now prouder still, Maria's temples press. I see her wave thy towering plumes afar, And call each coxcomb to the wordy war. I see her face the first of Ireland's sons,[110] And even out-Irish his Hibernian bronze; The crafty colonel[111] leaves the tartan'd lines, For other wars, where he a hero shines; The hopeful youth, in Scottish ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... never thought yourself old till you listened to the impudent trash of that coxcomb at ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Prodigal Sons, To-day is a prodigious coxcomb, but To-morrow is a very poltroon, taking fright at the big words of his predecessor. To-day is the truculent captain of old world comedy, To-morrow ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... of this play are admirably designed, but not so happily finished as the author meant them to be—witness, Bob Handy, who begins a self-conceited coxcomb, and ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton
... obstinacy to bestow on anybody. Lastly, I never will hear the biography compared with Boswell's except under vigorous protest. For I do say that it is mere folly to put into opposite scales a book, however amusing and curious, written by an unconscious coxcomb like that, and one which surveys and grandly understands the characters of all the illustrious company that move ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... is the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, are never rectified; once a coxcomb and always a coxcomb.—Johnson. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... shame to myself—this business of Hector and Blanche kept Spencer and me away last dispensary day; and partly it was that young coxcomb, Henry Ward, thought it not worth while to trouble me about a simple epidemic. Simple epidemic indeed!' repeated Dr. May, changing his tone from ironical mimicry to hot indignation. 'I hope he will be gratified with ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... considered as making a book valuable, were utterly wanting to him. He had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have sufficed to make him conspicuous; but, because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have made ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... mean?' continued Guy, his passion kindling more and more. 'Proofs? I should like to see them! The man is crazy! I to confess! Ha!' as he came towards the end, 'I see it,—I see it. It is Philip, is it, that I have to thank. Meddling coxcomb! I'll make him repent it,' added he, with a grim fierceness of determination. Slandering me to them! And that,'—looking at the words with regard to Amy,—'that passes all. He shall see what it is to ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Rastignac, the 'English system' at my finger-ends, and I very soon saw myself without a penny. I fell at once into that precarious way of life which industriously hides cold and miserable depths beneath an elusive surface of luxury; I was a coxcomb without conquests, a penniless fop, a nameless gallant. The old sufferings were renewed, but less sharply; no doubt I was growing used to the painful crisis. Very often my sole diet consisted of the scanty provision of cakes and tea ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... It's not that I care a straw whether the old place was bought by Tom, Dick, or Harry, but I can't stand his having concealed the fact from me after so much, I may say, confidential conversation about it and our affairs generally. When I meet him again the young coxcomb shall have a piece of ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... account of him last year to me, he seemed a bit of a coxcomb, personally. Poor fellow! to be sure, he had had a long seasoning of adversity, which is not so hard to bear as t'other thing. I hope that this won't throw him back into the 'slough ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... multiplied. It was no doubt questionable propriety to say that 'nature lost her legs in paradise, and has not found them since,' or that 'an angel might preach such doctrine as was commonly preached till his wings dropped off without doing any good,' or to tell us that 'he once went to Jesus as a coxcomb and gave himself fine airs.' But it is far more easy to laugh at and to criticise the foibles of the good man than to imitate his devotedness to his Masters service, and the moral courage which enabled him ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... great a fop for some of the staid company that will be there; and for me in particular. Men are known by their companions; and a fop [as Tourville, for example] takes great pains to hang out a sign by his dress of what he has in his shop. Thou, indeed, art an exception; dressing like a coxcomb, yet a very clever fellow. Nevertheless so clumsy a beau, that thou seemest to me to owe thyself a double spite, making thy ungracefulness appear the more ungraceful, by thy remarkable tawdriness, when ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... Dona Perfecta, rising suddenly to her feet. "Coxcomb, do you suppose that my daughter ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... what is there they will not choose, If only you will but oppose their choice?) Till Beppo should return from his long cruise, And bid once more her faithful heart rejoice, A man some women like, and yet abuse— A Coxcomb was he by the public voice; A Count of wealth, they said as well as quality, And in his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... there you've nicked it. There's the devil upon devil. Oh, the pride and joy of heart 'twould be to me to have my son and heir resemble such a duke; to have a fleering coxcomb scoff and cry, 'Mr. your son's mighty like his Grace, has just his smile and air of's face.' Then replies another, 'Methinks he has more of the Marquess of such a place about his nose and eyes, though he has my Lord what-d'ye-call's ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... inquired. "Nay, for there she stands-and her pretty lover by her side. 'Slife, what a coxcomb the ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... it up and down for half a dozen pages with a gusto that drove home to many minds the conviction, the strange conviction, that our greatest biography was written by one of the very smallest men that ever lived, 'a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect'—by a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb; by one 'who, if he had not been a great fool, would never have been a great writer.' So far Macaulay, anno Domini 1831, in the vigorous pages of the Edinburgh Review. A year later appears in Fraser's Magazine another theory by another hand, ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... The Excursion and the Ode to Duty. Arnold was of course with Michael heart and soul, and was only interested in our Lucifer. He approached his subject in a spirit of undue deprecation. He thought it necessary to cite Scherer's opinion that Byron is but a coxcomb and a rhetorician: partly, it would appear, for the pleasure of seeming to agree with it in a kind of way and partly to have the satisfaction of distinguishing and of showing it to be a mistake. Then, he could not quote ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... I can hereafter do good to my fellow-creatures as a poet, and as a metaphysician, they will know it; and any other fame than this, I consider as a serious evil, that would only take me from out the number and sympathy of ordinary men, to make a coxcomb of me. As to the inns or hotels at Hamburgh, I should recommend you to some German inn. Wordsworth and I were at the 'Der Wilde Man,' and dirty as it was, I could not find any inn in Germany very much cleaner, except at ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... his lordship, walking into a coffee-house, and taking up the evening paper, began poring over its paragraphs. A coxcomb in an adjoining box, who had frequently called to the waiter for the paper, walked over to Lord Camelford's box, and, seeing him lay down the paper for the moment while he was sipping his coffee, took it up, and walked off with it without ceremony. His lordship bore the performance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... wretchedness and wants of others. Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity. The difference between the 'Great Vulgar and the Small' is mostly in outward circumstances. The coxcomb criticises the dress of the clown, as the pedant cavils at the bad grammar of the illiterate, or the prude is shocked at the backslidings of her frail acquaintance. Those who have the fewest resources in themselves naturally seek the food of their self-love ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Anerley's general style of welcoming a guest, but he hated new-fangled Frenchified manners, as he told his good wife, when he boasted by-and-by how finely he had put that old coxcomb down. "You never should have done it," was all the praise he got. "Mr. Mordacks is a business man, and business men always must relieve their minds." For no sooner now was the general factor introduced to Mistress Anerley than she perceived clearly that the object ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... which have been taken with his name and standing. But with all his quickness of feeling, his manners were easy and courteous, simply because his nature was warm and kindly, and with all his natural fastidiousness there was nothing of the coxcomb about him. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in that book an entirely profitless and monstrous story, in which the principal characters are a coxcomb, an idiot, a madman, a savage blackguard, a foolish tavern-keeper, a mean old maid, and a conceited apprentice,—mixed up with a certain quantity of ordinary operatic pastoral stuff, about a pretty Dolly in ribbons, a lover with a wooden leg, and an heroic locksmith. ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... time of his matriculation in Chaussee d'Antin, was a romantic-looking sloven. From this to a very dashing coxcomb is but half a step, and, to be rid of the coxcombry and retain a look of fashion, is still within the easy limits of imitation. But—to obtain superiority of presence, with no apparent aid from dress and no describable manner, and to display, ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... heedless fellows went away dreadfully mortified. The unbeliever paid the bet, but he was deeply vexed, called the other a coxcomb, and a week afterwards killed him ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt |
