"Vaunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she blazed at him. "I might have guessed that in some such cutthroat manner would your vaunt of winning me at the ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... Of some the abundance of an idle brain Will judged be, and painted forgery, Rather than matter of just memory: Since none that breatheth living air, doth know Where is that happy land of faery Which I so much do vaunt, but no where show, But vouch antiquities, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... lie Which hope too long has whispered. So I sought The sleep which would not come, and night was fraught With old emotions weeping silently. I heard your voice again, and knew the things Which you had promised proved an empty vaunt. I felt your clinging hands while night's broad wings Cherished our love in darkness. From the lawn A sudden, quivering birdnote, like a taunt. My arms held nothing but the ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... my destiny: Rosalvo knows no medium: Rosalvo can never act like common men," and thereupon proceeds to prove by his extraordinary actions that this is no idle vaunt. He lives a double life: in the guise of Abellino, he joins the banditti, and by inexplicable methods rids Venice of her enemies; in the guise of a noble Florentine, Flodoardo, he woos the Doge's daughter, Rosabella. The ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... worst man that has ever been in the world; pray for him.' But like all Andalusians he was a braggart; for a love of chocolate, which appears to have been his besetting sin, is insufficient foundation for such a vaunt: a vice of that order is adequately punished by the corpulence it must occasion. However, legend, representing don Miguel as the most dissolute of libertines, is more friendly. The grave sister who escorts the visitor relates that one day in church don Miguel saw a beautiful nun, and undaunted ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... penetrating into inhospitable lands or into regions encompassed by all the terrors of the unknown, will perhaps think that I was jesting when I gave the inventory of my luggage in the last chapter and that from sheer vaunt I did not mention the support of some Geographical or Commercial Society and neither the tons of goods which would follow in my wake, nor the numerous waggons and armed battalion that had ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... a great wrong by the supposition that I mention these circumstances to make a vaunt of my courage; I am sure that the fact of my having undertaken this journey alone will be sufficient to clear me from the imputation of cowardice. I wish merely to give future travellers a hint as to the best ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... you—I can not believe that a lie on the belief of which has depended our highest development. You may say you have a higher to bring in. But that higher you have become capable of by the precedent lie. Yet you vaunt truth! You would sink us low indeed, making out falsehood our best nourishment—at some period of our history at least. If, however, what I call true and high, you call false and low—my assertion that you have never seen that of which I so speak will not help—then is there nothing ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... truth and the virtuous lives of some, but that God might leave them to be snared, hardened, and emboldened to run upon their unavoidable destruction by the lies and lightness of others? They begin to vaunt it already, and to say, Where is the word of the Lord as to this? let it come now. But when Agag said, "Surely the bitterness of death is passed," then was the time for him to ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... the impression that a male child had been born, and was alive. I swore to her, if ever it crossed my path, to hunt it down; never to let it rest; to pursue it with the bitterest and most unrelenting animosity; to vent upon it the hatred that I deeply felt, and to spit upon the empty vaunt of that insulting will by draggin it, if I could, to the very gallows-foot. She was right. He came in my way at last. I began well; and, but for babbling drabs, I would have ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... multitude of miserable, sunken, and ignorant human beings, that to carry them all along with us is impossible, and perforce they must for the most part be left by us in their degradation and wretchedness. But evidently the conception of free- trade, on which our Liberal friends vaunt themselves, and in which they think they have found the secret of national prosperity,— evidently, I say, the mere unfettered pursuit of the production of wealth, and the mere mechanical multiplying, for this end, of manufactures ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... splendid and formidable marksman. Mr. G——, in preparing for the duel, happening to cast his eyes on his adversary, perceived that he had slily placed his arm in such a position, as must ensure, on the honourable gentleman's fire, the fulfilment of his vaunt to make him "a dead man." No time was to be lost; the young Englishman's life depended upon dispatch; and, instantly firing, he proved himself as good a marksman as Monsieur ——, by sending his ball, with the utmost precision, through the wily manoeuvrer's elbow, from whence it passed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... moment of passion made big boasts of what they would do "some day." Few ever made so tremendous a vaunt; fewer still ever so completely fulfilled their threats; and, perhaps, no one ever struggled so patiently, so nobly, nor against such tremendous obstacles before the goal was reached, as did this angry little Swede, known to history as Gustavus Vasa. He was born ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... not vaunt Large demesnes, to feed my pleasure; I have favours where you want, That would buy respect with treasure. You have lands lie here and there, But my wealth is everywhere; And this addeth to my store— Fortune cannot ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... Fortune hath expeld, My friends, come let vs march in iolity, Ile triumph Monarke-like ore conquering Rome, Or end my conquests with my countryes spoyles, Dolo. O noble Princely resolution. These or not victoryes that we so call, That onely blood and murtherous spoyles can vaunt: But this shalbe thy victory braue Prince, That thou hast conquered thy owne climing thoughts, And with thy vertue beat ambition downe, 1490 And this no lesse inblazon shall thy fame. Then those great deeds and chiualrous attempts, ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... Goldsmith's dialogue lies in entire naturalness. The author of "The School for Scandal" creates for his comedies an atmosphere of superheated wit and intellectualism, which, whilst inevitably pleasing, is beyond probability. Certain novelists vaunt and revel in the creation of impossibly vivacious wits. Nature has a finer grace; its faithful reflection is purer art. Those true to natural humour and the spontaneous rather than the fabricated repartee ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... commendation; if it be supposed that, by casting the characters of the drama, assigning to each his part, to one the attack, to another the cry of onset; or if it be thought that, by a loud and empty vaunt of anticipated victory, any laurels are to be won here; if it be imagined, especially, that any, or all of these things will shake any purpose of mine, I can tell the honorable member, once for all, that he is greatly ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... dramatic works as could have been desired in the rascally interest of those "harlotry players" who thought it, forsooth, "against their peculiar profit to have them come in print." But I am not sure that it was altogether a noble or at all a rational modesty which made him utter the avowal or the vaunt: "It never was any great ambition in me, to be in this kind voluminously read." For, eight years after this well-known passage was in print, when publishing a "Chronographicall History of all the Kings, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts, and hurricanes, spout Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity of the world! Crack nature's molds, all germens spill at once, That make ingrateful men! Rumble thy belly ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... conduct of the profound Clarendon, and the sensible Sir Robert Walpole, who, like the other two ministers, equally became the victims of this imprudent passion for the ostentatious pomp of a palace. This magnificence looked like the vaunt of insolence in the eyes of the people, and covered the ministers ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... achievement? Nobody cares whom she knows—nobody that is, but a climber like herself. To those who were born and who live, no matter how quietly, in the security of a perfectly good ledge above and away from the social ladder's rungs, the evidence of one frantically climbing and trying to vaunt her exalted position ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... for that the king has thus courteously kept them. Alexander is welcome; for there is no lack of aught that he wishes nor is there any baron in the Court so high that he does not speak him fair and welcome him. For he is not foolish nor boastful nor doth he vaunt his noble birth. He makes himself known to Sir Gawain and to the others one by one. He makes himself much loved by each; even Sir Gawain loves him so much that he hails him as friend and comrade. The Greeks had taken in the town at the house of a citizen the best lodging ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... great displeasure; because he grudged 1010 that any other man ever more glories of mid-earth held under heaven than himself: 'Art thou the Beowulf who with Breca strove on {the} wide sea, in {a} swimming strife, where ye from pride 1020 tempted {the} fords, and for foolish vaunt in {the} deep water ventured {your} lives? Nor you any man, nor friend nor foe, might blame {for your} sorrowful voyage, when on {the} sea ye row'd, when ye {the} ocean-stream, 1030 with {your} arms deck'd, measur'd {the} sea-ways, with {your} hands vibrated {them}, glided o'er ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... error, for it has none; but the clank of steam-engines, and the shouts of politicians, and the struggle for gain or bread, and the loud denunciations of stupid bigots, have wellnigh smothered poor Fancy among us. We boast of our science, and vaunt our superior morality. Does the latter exist? In spite of all the forms which our policy has invented to secure it—in spite of all the preachers, all the meeting-houses, and all the legislative enactments—if any person will take upon himself the painful labor of purchasing and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... beggar'd men had done the venturous deed: The glory was to France alone, the danger was their meed. And what cared they for idle thanks from foreign prince and peer? What virtue had such honey'd words the exiled heart to cheer? What matter'd it that men should vaunt and loud and fondly swear, That higher feat of chivalry was never wrought elsewhere? They bore within their breasts the grief that fame can never heal,— The deep, unutterable woe which none save exiles feel. Their hearts were yearning for the land they ne'er might see again,— For ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... he muttered. "To think that in the London of today we should live in abject terror of a band of Mongolian ruffians! Why do you remain here, man? You vaunt the prowess of your department— why are you not scouring every haunt of Chinamen in the East End? Spread your net widely enough, and you will surely get hold of some minor scoundrel who will talk for fear or money. Bribe him to the point where he cannot refuse ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... hear: I see the practice of the world unheed The foolish vaunt, the blatant boast that ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... ward-room mess, On you how the riving thunder-bolt clapped. With a bead in your eye and beads in your glass, And a grip o' the flipper, it was part and pass: "Hal, must it be: Well, if come indeed the shock, To North or to South, let the victory cleave, Vaunt it he may on his dung-hill the cock, But Uncle Sam's ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... remembrance of my debt, I homeward turn. Farewell, my pet! When here again thy pilgrim comes, He shall bring store of seeds and crumbs. Henceforth I prize thy wiry chant O'er all that mass and minster vaunt: For men mishear thy call in spring, As 'twould accost some frivolous wing, Crying out of the hazel copse, "Phe—be!" And in winter, "Chic-a-dee-dee!" I think old Caesar must have heard In Northern Gaul my dauntless bird, And, echoed in some frosty wold, Borrowed thy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... all consequential allusions to the other world, and the genteel deities among whom thou hast circled. Sport not too jauntily thy raiment, because it is novel in Mardi; nor boast of the fleetness of thy Chamois, because it is unlike a canoe. Vaunt not of thy pedigree, Taji; for Media himself will measure it with thee there by the furlong. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... skin to his face, that it seemed to hold his eyes open and lift his eyebrows up. A man with a pervading appearance on him of being inflated like a balloon, and ready to start. A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. A man who was continually proclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty. A man who was the Bully ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... used to say that "he was but a quarter of an hour behind the handsomest man in England;" and this vaunt of his is said not to have been disproved by circumstances. Swift, when neither young, nor handsome, nor rich, nor even amiable, inspired the two most extraordinary passions upon record, Vanessa's ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... ye ken That strang necessity supreme is 'Mang sons o' men. I hae a wife and twa wee laddies, They maun hae brose and brats o' duddies; Ye ken yoursels my heart right proud is, I need na vaunt, But I'll sned besoms, thraw ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... absorbed the Savonnerie, but that was after it had been established in the Louvre. Pierre Dupont who was director of tapestry works under Henri IV even goes so far as to vaunt the works of French production over those of "La Turquie." The taste of the day was doubtless far better pleased with the French colour and drawing than with the designs of ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... the roof of a lofty shed, and seeing a Wolf below, loaded him with all manner of reproaches. Upon which, the Wolf, looking up, replied, "Do not vaunt yourself, vain creature, and think you mortify me; for I look upon this ill language as not coming from you, but from the ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... answered the Grand Master. "Bear with me, brother, although I should something vaunt myself. Thou knowest the life I have led, keeping each point of my Order, striving with devils embodied and disembodied, striking down the roaring lion, who goeth about seeking whom he may devour, like a good knight and devout priest, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... minister was firm. He watched and waited his opportunity; he kept his eye settled upon them, to profit by the first opening which their folly should offer to the dreadful artillery of law. At last, said the minister, we will put to proof this vaunt of yours. We dare not bring you to trial, is your boast. Now, we will see that settled; and, at the same time, we will try whether we cannot put you down for ever. That trial was made, and with what perfection of success the reader knows; for let us remind him, that the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... lion where the honour of the family of Ravenswood was concerned; but his was that considerate valour which does not delight in unnecessary risks. This, however, was a secondary consideration; the main point was to veil the indigence of the housekeeping at the castle, and to make good his vaunt of the cheer which his resources could procure, without Lockhard's assistance, and without supplies from his master. This was as prime a point of honour with him as with the generous elephant with whom we have already compared him, who, being overtasked, broke his ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... sore: And this God is our God for evermore Through life, through death, while clod returns to clod. For though He slay us we will trust in Him; We will flock home to Him by divers ways: Yea, though He slay us we will vaunt His praise, Serving and loving with the Cherubim, Watching and loving with the Seraphim, Our very selves His praise ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... of folk,—what shall I clepe them? what? That vaunt themselves of women, and by name, That yet to them ne'er promised this or that, Nor knew them more, in sooth, than mine ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... English by their "Murrays;" and I think they make a shrewd guess at the nationality of us Americans by the speed with which we pass from one thing to another, and by our national ignorance of all languages but English. They must also hear us vaunt the superiority of our own land in unpleasant comparisons, and I do not think they believe us, or like us, for our boastings. I am sure they would say to us, if they could, "Quando finira mai quella guerra? Che sangue! ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... is timid and shrinking up to the last moment, and new miracles have constantly to be wrought to encourage and strengthen him. The 32,000 men with whom he takes the field he is ordered by Jehovah to send away all but l,000 and again all but 300, "lest Israel vaunt themselves against Me, and say, Mine own hand hath saved me." The weapons with which the nocturnal attack of the 300 is made are torches, pitchers, and trumpets; the men have not a hand left to hold swords (vii. 20); and the hostile army has ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... art to add, by taking thought, One cubit to thy stature? and hast thou, Or such as thou, Nature's whole fabric wrought? Not thine such vaunt—not thine to disavow The lustre of thy genuine origin. To the Most Highest, as thine author, bow With rapture of exulting faith, wherein Devotion's cravings their desire achieve, The bright ideal that they imaged, win. Rejoice that thus ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... college on those windy fields that so puff up a beginner in knowledge and in life; his whole mind had been given up already to those terrible problems of the soul that both humble and exalt the man who spends his life among them. Beattie's future congregation will not vaunt themselves about their minister's ability or scholarship or eloquence; his sermons will soon push his people back behind all such superficial matters. Beattie's preaching and his whole pastorate will soon become another illustration of the truth that ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... vaunt-courier to announce the coming of his master."—Tooke's Diversions, Vol. i, p. 49. "The parti-coloured shutter appeared to come close up before him."—Kirkham's Elocution, p. 233. "When the day broke upon this handfull of forlorn but dauntless ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... "Victoria" accordingly, as the mediaeval herald must proudly have remembered, so strengthened his associations with the Holy Roman Empire with something of that vague and shadowy historic dignity which the Scot was wont to value so much, and vaunt so high. On the eagle's breast is a shield, tressured like the royal standard, since Perth was the national capital until the "King's Tragedy" of 1457; but instead of the ruddy lion the shield bears the lamb with the banner ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... thy liver. To such labors look thou for no termination, until some god shall appear as a substitute in thy pangs, and shall be willing to go both to gloomy Hades, and to the murky depths around Tartarus. Wherefore advise thee, since this is no fictitious vaunt, but uttered in great earnestness; for the divine mouth knows not how to utter falsehood, but will bring every word to pass. But do thou look around and reflect, and never for a moment deem ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... welcome, to use the term familiar to ourselves. This might be very brief or at considerable length; it might suggest inquiries of any of the company or merely pledge an attentive and courteous hearing to whatever the guest might utter; it might refer to the past glory of the castle and its lord, or vaunt its ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... 'mid vain vaunt Of wisdom ignorant, A little kiss upon the feet of Love My hasty verse has stayed Sometimes a space to plant: It has not wholly strayed, Not wholly missed near sweet, fanning proud ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... rage, of scorn, of despair, a despot's vehemence of will, a rebel's scoff at authority; yet, ever and anon, some swell of lofty thought, some burst of passionate genius,—abrupt variations from the vaunt of superb defiance to ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... flatter kings. Royal pride and luxury could not be moderated even on this theatre of death, and the bearers of the sceptre who had brought such ills on France and on humanity seemed even in the grave to vaunt a vanished splendor. The strong hand of the Republic should pitilessly efface these haughty epitaphs, and demolish these mausoleums which might recall the frightful memory ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... though pleasure follows the one, pain the other. For rebukes and censure produce repentance and shame, the one bringing grief, the other fear, and these they mostly make use of for purposes of correction. And so Diogenes, when Plato was being praised, said, "What has he to vaunt of, who has been a philosopher so long, and yet never gave pain to anyone?" For one could not say, to use the words of Xenocrates, that the mathematics are such handles to philosophy as are the emotions of young men, such as shame, desire, repentance, pleasure, pain, ambition, whereon ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... of good accrues to no one witched by thy Narcissus eye: Ne'er let braggarts vaunt their virtue, if thy ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... that the Philistines, who were His scourge for the Israelites, should vaunt themselves over Him, or should believe that of their own strength they had prevailed. Wonderful is He! He takes the wicked to punish His people, and the wicked are but tools in His hand, and He uses them for ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... streets of New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, Charleston, Natchez, or St. Louis, he would be torn in pieces by the citizens with one accord, and that if any one should attempt to bring his murderers to punishment, he would be torn in pieces also. The editors of southern newspapers openly vaunt, that every abolitionist who sets foot in their soil, shall, if he be discovered, be hung at once, without judge or jury. What mockery to quote the letter of the law in those states, to show that abolitionists would have secured to them the legal ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the Bootham, Micklegate, and Monk Bars, and only one, Walmgate, was suffered to retain this interesting feature. It is a wonder they spared those curious stone half-length figures of men, sculptured in a menacing attitude in the act of hurling large stones downwards, which vaunt themselves on the summit of Monk Bar—probably intended to deceive invaders—or that interesting stone platform only twenty-two inches wide, which was the only foothold available for the martial burghers who guarded the city ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... vengeance now implants it selfe, Upon the hauty mountains of my brest: Plaies with her goary coulours of revenge, Whom I respect as leaves of boasting greene, That change their coulour when the winter comes, When I shall vaunt as ...
— Massacre at Paris • Christopher Marlowe
... rude monastic chemistry. But the more elaborate chemistry of our own days has reversed all these motions of our simple ancestors, with results in every stage that to them would have realized the most fantastic amongst the promises of thaumaturgy. Insolent vaunt of Paracelsus, that he would restore the original rose or violet out of the ashes settling from its combustion—that is now rivalled in this modern achievement. The traces of each successive handwriting, regularly effaced, as had been imagined, have, in the inverse order, been regularly called ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... from every tarnish free May boldly vaunt her purity, But ah, how keen, however bright, The sabre glitter to the sight, Its splendor's lost, its polish vain, Till some bold ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... princess, who was the descendant of a long line of emperors. Mohammed II., having overrun all Greece, flushed with victory, was collecting his forces for the invasion of the Italian peninsula, and his vaunt, that he would feed his horse from the altar of St. Peters, had thrilled the ear of Catholic Europe. The pope, Paul II., anxious to rouse all the Christian powers against the Turks, wished to make the marriage of the Grecian princess promotive of his political views. Her beauty, her genius and ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... Pierce, like a bitter dart, Anguish and terror; Hark to the foemen's vaunt, Boasting and bitter taunt Of Saxon warrior. Nay, do not triumph so, Do not rejoice as though Your deeds were glorious; Not your own valour brave, Numbers, not courage, have Made you victorious. Those who on every side, Have marked the battle's tide, Praying for Cymru's arms, Filled ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... mountains and offer sacrifices on their summits. The literary class had ancient rule and precedent for every step in this ceremony, and so sharply criticised the emperor's disregard of these observances that they roused his anger. "You vaunt the simplicity of the ancients," he impatiently said; "you should then be satisfied with me, for I act in a simpler fashion than they did." Finally he closed the controversy with the stern remark, "When I have need of you I will let you know ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... makes no claim to the possession of them; it carries them through their processes and does not vaunt its ability in doing so; it brings them to maturity and exercises no control over them;—this is ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... to have peace, but I find he is disposed to have a personal warfare with me. He says that my oath would not be taken against the bare word of Charles H. Lanphier or Thomas L. Harris. Well, that is altogether a matter of opinion. It is certainly not for me to vaunt my word against oaths of these gentlemen, but I will tell Judge Douglas again the facts upon which I "dared" to say they proved a forgery. I pointed out at Galesburgh that the publication of these resolutions in the Illinois State ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... boasting too frequently of myself in company, he said to me, 'Boswell, you often vaunt so much, as to provoke ridicule. You put me in mind of a man who was standing in the kitchen of an inn with his back to the fire, and thus accosted the person next him, "Do you know, Sir, who I am?" "No, Sir, (said the other,) I have not that advantage." "Sir, (said ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... his own ruinous way), but not to the extent of being burdened with the cub half a dozen times a week. Gourlay was merely boasting—as young blades are apt to do of acquaintance with older roisterers. They think it makes them seem men of the world. And in his desire to vaunt his comradeship with Allan, John failed to see that Allardyce was scooping ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... their own, their children's heritage, To leave more ample space for fearful wealth. Plunder in some most harmless guise they swathe, Call it some very meek and hallowed name, Some known and borne by their good forefathers, And own and vaunt it thus redeemed from sin. These are the plagues heaven sends o'er every land Before it sink, the portents of the street, Not of the air, lest nations should complain Of distance or of dimness in the signs, Flaring from far to Wisdom's eye alone: These are the last! these, ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... not vaunt that gains my loss, For when that he and time hath proved her, She may him bring to Weeping-Cross: I say no ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... happens to be the hired labourer chosen to carry out the conception; a sort of mechanic in whom boastfulness looks absurd; as absurd as if one of the stonemasons working at the cornice of a cathedral were to vaunt himself as the designer of the whole edifice. And when a work, any work, is completed, it passes out of the labourer's hands; it belongs to the age and the people for whom it was accomplished, and, if deserving, goes on belonging ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... other Publishers, who make the Works of other People their own, without acknowledging the Piracy they are guilty of, or so much as paying the least Complement to the Authors of their Wisdom: No, Gentlemen and Ladies, I am not the Daw in the Fable, that would vaunt and strut in your Plumes. And besides, I know very well you might have me upon the Hank according to Law, and treat me as a Highwayman or Robber; for you might safely swear upon your Honours, that I had stole the whole Book from your recreative Minutes. ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... have quarrelled. Or rather, since it does not take two to do that wretched deed, she has quarrelled. It was some little thing that he said—neither sneer nor vaunt, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... By him overthrown? Thy girdle broke, Or thou hadst felt the conqueror's yoke. Thy crowding warriors proved thy shield, They saved and dragged thee from the field; By them unrescued then, wouldst thou Have lived to vaunt thy prowess now?" ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... marching now in fields of Thrasymene, Where Mars did mate[1] the Carthaginians; Nor sporting in the dalliance of love, In courts of kings where state is overturn'd; Nor in the pomp of proud audacious deeds, Intends our Muse to vaunt[2] her[3] heavenly verse: Only this, gentlemen,—we must perform The form of Faustus' fortunes, good or bad: To patient judgments we appeal our plaud, And speak for Faustus in his infancy. Now is he born, his parents base of stock, In Germany, within a town call'd Rhodes: Of riper ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... these mighty agencies had laboured in the work of destruction during the interval while Hasdrubal continued to vaunt and to gormandize, appeared so soon as the Roman army proceeded in the spring of 608 to attack the inner town. Hasdrubal gave orders to set fire to the outer harbour and made himself ready to repel the expected assault on the Cothon; but Laelius succeeded in scaling ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... side and then to the other, cutting the air with the swiftness of lightning, and making a noise with its wings not unlike the rushing of a bullet. Unfortunately for the wood-chopper, notwithstanding his vaunt, he did not see this bird until it was too late to fire as it approached, and he pulled the trigger at the unlucky moment when it was darting immediately over his head. The bird continued its ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... other nations are wont to vaunt the glory of their achievements, and reap joy from the remembrance of their forefathers: Absalon, Chief Pontiff of the Danes, whose zeal ever burned high for the glorification of our land, and who would not suffer it to be defrauded of like renown and record, cast ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... length of more than one man's lifetime after, the reign of Mistress Clorinda Wildairs was a memory recalled over the bottle at the dining-table among men, some of whom had but heard their fathers vaunt her beauties. It seemed as if in her person there was not a single flaw, or indeed a charm, which had not reached the highest point of beauty. For shape she might have vied with young Diana, mounted side by side with ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the necessity of "making man sole sponsor of himself." Ever and again, of course, he was betrayed by the bewildering and defiant puzzle of life: seeing in the face of the child the seed of sorrow, "in the green tree an ambushed flame, in Phosphor a vaunt-guard of Night." Yet never of him could be written that thrilling saying which Sainte-Beuve uttered of Pascal, "That lost traveller who yearns for home, who, strayed without a guide in a dark forest, takes many times the wrong road, goes, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... likely to appear to us even more viciousthan that of other men. To be sure, we remember Sir Philip Sidney's contention, supported by his anecdote of the loquacious horseman, that men of all callings are equally disposed to vaunt themselves. If the poet seems especially voluble about his merits, this may be owing to the fact that, words being the tools of his trade, he is more apt than other men in giving expression to his self-importance. But our specific ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... of darts, will it not fall unbound, Except, disrobed of thy vain earthly vaunt, Thou bring it to be blessed where saints ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... canst not lend The least delight: Thy favors cannot gain a friend, They are so slight: Thy morning pleasures make an end To please at night: Poor are the wants that thou supply'st, And yet thou vaunt'st, and yet thou vy'st With heaven: fond earth, thou boasts; false world, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... provoking indignant remonstrances from Mistress Pennyquick. But I refused to let her coddle me, and as my appetite never failed, and I throve amazingly, the good woman at last ceased to lament, and, as I discovered, was wont behind my back to vaunt my ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... venom Shoots like a burning arrow 'cross his bowels, And drinks his marrow up.—Heard you that groan? It was his last.—See how the great Goliath, Just like a child that brawl'd itself to rest, Lies still.—What mean'st thou then, O mighty boaster! 280 To vaunt of nerves of thine? What means the bull, Unconscious of his strength, to play the coward, And flee before a feeble thing like man, That, knowing well the slackness of his arm, Trusts only in the well-invented knife? With study pale, and midnight vigils spent, The star-surveying sage, close ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... assure him that he had been, simple as he sat there, engaged in seven plots in Cromwell's time; and, as he proudly added, with some of the tallest men of England. The matchless look and air with which Sir Geoffrey made this vaunt, set all a-laughing, and increased the ridicule with which the whole trial began to be received; so that it was amidst shaking sides and watery eyes that a general verdict of Not Guilty was pronounced, and the prisoners dismissed ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... a profession peculiarly favoured by Heaven, seeing that we may hope for salvation, although we daily commit actions of so great violence. But then, Ranald, in all services of Europe, it is the custom of the dying soldier not to vaunt him of such doings, or to recommend them to his fellows; but, on the contrary, to express contrition for the same, and to repeat, or have repeated to him, some comfortable prayer; which, if you please, I will intercede with his Excellency's chaplain to prefer ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... complexion is white dashed with red and he is well-bred, pleasant and generous and doth thus and thus." And he went on to describe to her now his beauty and loveliness and then his perfection and bounty and ceased not to vaunt his charms and the generosity of his disposition, till he had made her in love with him; for there is no sillier cuckold than he who vaunteth to his wife another man's handsome looks and unusual liberality in money matters. So, when ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... only meant for a counter-vaunt, the retaliation of a pang for it was evident the savages knew that among their captives were the wife and daughter of our chief. These were placed conspicuously in front, upon the very brow of ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... truth they are extremely silly, what, if to give them their due, I dub them with the title of wise fools: and herein they copy after the example of some modern orators, who swell to that proportion of conceitedness, as to vaunt themselves for so many giants of eloquence, if with a double-tongued fluency they can plead indifferently for either side, and deem it a very doughty exploit if they can but interlard a Latin sentence with some Greek word, which for seeming garnish they crowd ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... Foulon the barbarous vaunt; "I will force the people to eat hay;" and without any order from the constituted authorities, some peasants, neighbours of the old minister, arrest him, take him to Paris, his son-in-law experiences the same fate, and the famished populace ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... slowly, yet as one who expected some such answer. "In age we are not unsuited, nor perhaps in fortune, while of rank I have enough, more than you guess perhaps. I vaunt not myself, yet women have thought me not uncomely. I should be a good friend to the house whence I took a wife, where perchance a day may come when friends will be needed; and lastly, I desire her not for what she may bring with her, though wealth is always welcome, but—I pray you ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... fervent than I wont. For Daphne's wrongs and 'scapes in Thetis' lap, All gods are subject to the like mishap. Stars daily fall ('tis use is all in all), And men account the fall but nature's course. Vaunting my jewels hasting to the west, Or rising early from the grey-ey'd morn, What do I vaunt but your large bountyhood, And show how liberal a lord I serve? Music and poetry, my two last crimes, Are those two exercises of delight, Wherewith long labours I do weary out. The dying swan is not forbid to sing: The waves of Hebrus[46] play'd on Orpheus' ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... belt. I shall deliberately destroy your credit as an essayist, as a journalist, as a critic, as a Liberal, as everything that offers your laziness a refuge, until starvation and shame drive you to serious dramatic parturition. I shall repeat my public challenge to you; vaunt my superiority; insult your corpulence; torture Belloc; if necessary, call on you and steal your wife's affections by intellectual and athletic displays, until you contribute something to the British drama. You are played out as an essayist: your ardor ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... later, he writes, "I am tired of railing against Destiny and myself.... There are moments in which I despair of all that is good, in which I feel it has been enjoined upon me to work against everything that makes a vaunt of specious happiness." But he took no manful and resolute steps to battle against his unhappy state; he continued to correspond with the lady of his affections, to gaze upon her portrait, to write to his friend about her, and to dwell upon the past, the ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... he turn'd, and sternly spake aloud:— "Rise! wherefore dost thou vainly question thus 365 Of Rustum? I am here, whom thou hast call'd By challenge forth; make good thy vaunt, deg. or yield! deg.367 Is it with Rustum only thou wouldst fight? Rash boy, men look on Rustum's face and flee! For well I know, that did great Rustum stand 370 Before thy face this day, and were ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... with speed to the head of Langside-hill, and set down the footmen with their culverings at the head of a straight lane, where there were some cottage houses and yards of great advantage. Which soldiers with their continual shot killed divers of the vaunt guard, led by the Hamiltons, who, courageously and fiercely ascending up the hill, were already out of breath, when the Regent's vaunt guard joined with them. Where the worthy Lord Hume fought on foot with his pike in his hand very manfully, assisted by the ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... necessary to say, that as he shared the hospitality, so he has not left unsung the praises of Penshurst. Where is the circle which shall again combine so many claims to our admiration and respect? What age shall presume to vaunt itself for genius or for virtue above the age ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... "A vaunt of war, father. Call they not him the Good Duke? When we lay before Paris, the English put about a like lying tale concerning us, as if we should sack ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... Good Templars, Sons of Temperance, and all the fanatical anti-alcoholists. These zealous reformers are so blindly infatuated with their hatred for alcohol, that tea seems to them its natural antithesis, and they vaunt it as if it were a celestial boon. And such people are a political ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... God is no more idle now than He was at the beginning, but that He is still and forever shaping the human chaos into the instruments and means of beauty. It may also suggest to that scholar- pride, that vanity of technique, which is so apt to vaunt itself in the teacher, that the best he can do, after all, is to let the pupil teach himself. If he comes with divine authority to the thing he attempts, he will know how to use the appliances, of which the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... thou art slain, and by an unknown man! Dearer to the red jackels shalt thou be Than to thy friends, and to thy father old,' And, with a fearless mien, Sohrab replied:— 'Unknown thou art; yet thy fierce vaunt is vain. Thou dost not slay me, proud and boastful man! No! Rustum slays me, and this filial heart. For were I matched with ten such men as thee, And I were that which till to-day I was, They should be lying here, I standing there. But that beloved name unnerved ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... young man tore open the letter, and, in company with his wife, read, with mingled emotions of pain and indignation, the following singular but characteristic compound of malicious vaunt and ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... hands; but no wings grow from his temples, nor lion supports his head. A moth just issuing from his chrysalis is the only being which seems to have felt his soporific influence; whereas the other god I have mentioned may vaunt the glory of subduing the most ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... enemy's mizzen-mast falling showed high seamanlike qualities, both in promptness and accuracy of execution; in short, that, considering the capacity of the American captain as evidenced by his action, and the odds in his favor, nothing could be more misplaced than Captain Dacres' vaunt before the Court: "I am so well aware that the success of my opponent was owing to fortune, that it is my earnest wish to be once more opposed to the 'Constitution,' with the same officers and crew under my command, in a frigate of similar force to the 'Guerriere.'"[432] In ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... to be scann'd by long descent From ancestors illustrious, I could vaunt A lineage of the greatest; and recount, Among my fathers, names of ancient story, Heroes and god-like patriots, who subdu'd The world by arms and virtue. But that be their own praise; Nor will I borrow merit from the dead, ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... disfigurement. Her one arm was cast about the priest's breast; her face was hidden on it. But for all that, I knew her—knew her, shuddering for the woman whose badges I was even now wearing, whose gift I bore at my side; and I remembered the priest's vaunt of a few hours before, made in her presence, "There is no man in Paris shall ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... wife and twa wee laddies; They maun hae brose and brats o' duddies; Ye ken yoursels my heart right proud is— I need na vaunt But I'll sned besoms, thraw ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Thus did he vaunt; but his arrow had not killed Diomed, who withdrew and made for the chariot and horses of Sthenelus, the son of Capaneus. "Dear son of Capaneus," said he, "come down from your chariot, and draw the ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... not then a poet's dream, An idle vaunt of song, Such as beneath the moon's soft gleam On vacant ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... Give me a fresh horse; Rally the vaunt-guard, or the day is lost, Yield, yield! I give you the honour of arms Shake my sword over ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... quite erroneously, gives me forty-eight; Josephine, with that raw alacrity in leaping at computations peculiar to the illiterate, oppressed me with fifty. Which of us three knew best? I should like to ask. But it is of little consequence. The Easterns generally vaunt themselves on not knowing the day of their birth. And wisdom comes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... used to say that 'he was but a quarter of an hour behind the handsomest man in England;' and this vaunt of his is said not to have been disproved by circumstances. Swift, when neither young, nor handsome, nor rich, nor even amiable, inspired the two most extraordinary passions upon record, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... her glassy scepters vaunt; Not scepters, no, but reeds, soon bruised, soon broken; And let this worldly pomp our wits enchant; All fades, and scarcely leaves behind a token. Those golden palaces, those gorgeous halls, With furniture superfluously fair; Those stately courts, ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... rebuke the almost innocent self-congratulation, but recognises in it an appeal to his faithfulness. It was really a prayer, though it sounded like a vaunt, and it is answered by renewed assurances. To part with outward things for Christ's sake or for the kingdom's sake—which is the same thing—is to win them again with all their sweetness a hundred-fold sweeter. Gifts given to Him come ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in peace, O Spectres, who haunt My labouring mind, I have fought and failed. I have not quailed, I was all unmailed And naked I strove, 'tis my only vaunt. ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... I am, there I am Love, No less in shepherds' than in heroes' hearts, The unequal lot grows equal at my will, My chiefest vaunt, my miracle ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... told that I was just like Dr. Johnson. Seeing that Dr. Johnson was heavily seamed with small-pox, had a waistcoat all over gravy, snorted and rolled as he walked, and was probably the ugliest man in London, I mention this identification as a fact and not as a vaunt. I had nothing to do with the arrangement; and such fleeting suggestions as I made were not taken so seriously as they might have been. I requested that a row of posts be erected across the lawn, so that I might touch all of them but one, and then go back and touch that. Failing this, I felt ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... gazing mournfully, doubtingly. "Will you have another coffee-cake?" says some one, and we remember that we are at Spillman's also. And, indeed, we might be more sensible to stay with our party always; eat cakes, drink wine, laugh at the old world, vaunt the new, read Baedeker and the Bible, say our orthodox Protestant prayers, with a special "Lead us not into Romanism" codicil, and go to bed, and dream of our own golden houses, Paris dresses, and ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... unsafe, and you captured and slew more Roman citizens almost than Philip himself; and to our ships conveying provisions to our armies the coast of Macedonia itself was less dangerous, than the promontory of Malea. Cease, therefore, to vaunt your good faith, and the obligations of treaties; and, dropping a popular style of discourse, speak as a tyrant, and ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... morning received his Diploma as Doctor of Laws from the University of Oxford. He did not vaunt of his new dignity, but I understood he was highly pleased ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... few faults shut up like dead flowerets! Are balm seeds not here To console us? The land has none left such as he on the bier. Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!"—And then, the glad 55 chaunt Of the marriage—first go the young maidens, next, she whom we vaunt As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling.—And then, the great march Wherein man runs to man to assist him and buttress an arch Naught can break; who shall harm them, our friends?—Then, the chorus intoned As the Levites go up to the altar in glory ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... that the blood torrent should flow at once through the Netherlands, in order that the promised golden river, a yard deep, according to his vaunt, should begin to irrigate the thirsty soil of Spain. It is obvious, from the fundamental laws which were made to define treason at the same moment in which they established the council, that any man might be at any instant summoned to the court. Every man, whether innocent ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fact is that theirs has been actually the cause of Order, of Conservatism, of Tranquillity and the Constitution. Had they proved recreant to their faith and trust, France would ere this have been plunged into convulsions through the mutual jealousies and hostilities of the factions who vaunt themselves collectively the party of Order; they have been withheld from cutting each other's throats by the calm, determined, watchful, intrepid attitude ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... doth vaunt how chastely he hath liv'd Since he hath been in town, seven years[472] and more, For that he swears he hath four only swiv'd, A maid, a wife, a widow, and a whore: Then, Liber, thou hast swiv'd all womenkind, For a fifth sort, I know, thou ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... When the king was asked, whether the customs of Youriba involved the same human sacrifices as those of Dahomy, his majesty shook his head, shrugged up his shoulders, and exclaimed, "No, no! no king of Youriba could sacrifice human beings." He added, but probably without sufficient grounds for the vaunt, that, if he so commanded, the king of Dahomy must also desist from the practice; that he must obey him. It is, however, stated, on the authority of Lander, that when a king of Youriba dies, the caboceer of Jannah, three other head caboceers, four women, and a great many ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... love the jewels in Love's zone, And gold-tipped darts he hath for painless play In idle, scornful hours he flings away; And some that listen to his lute's soft tone Do love to vaunt the silver praise their own; Some prize his blindfold sight; and there be they Who kissed the wings which brought him yesterday And thank his wings ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Beck), who seems to be the leading exponent on this floor of the party that is arrayed against the principle of this bill, has been pleased, in season and out of season, to cast odium upon the Negro and to vaunt the chivalry of his State, I may be pardoned for calling attention to another portion of the same dispatch. Referring to the various regiments under his command, and their conduct on that field which terminated the second war of American Independence, General Jackson says. "At the very moment when ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... examples of the paragons of paillardice, and offer to match with my testiculatory ability the Priapaean prowess of the fabulous fornicators, Hercules, Proculus Caesar, and Mahomet, who in his Alkoran doth vaunt that in his cods he had the vigour of three score bully ruffians; but let no zealous Christian trust the rogue,—the filthy ribald rascal is a liar. Nor shalt thou need to urge authorities, or bring forth the instance of the Indian prince ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... a Percy, not by name, for that had been lost in the female line some generations before, but the pedigree in my possession shows how just was her vaunt in that respect. For vaunt it she did, to us at least, often bringing it forward to check any tendency to behavior unbefitting those who claimed ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... applaud; Then were the chiefs of Iran shamed through me." And then he turn'd, and sternly spake aloud:— "Rise! wherefore dost thou vainly question thus Of Rustum? I am here, whom thou hast call'd By challenge forth; make good thy vaunt, or yield! Is it with Rustum only thou wouldst fight? Rash boy, men look on Rustum's face and flee! For well I know, that did great Rustum stand Before thy face this day, and were reveal'd, There would be then no talk of fighting more. But being what I am, I tell thee this— Do thou record ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... is worthy of special mention. Coal not being much in evidence in the diamond fields—where the sun is ever shining with all its might—paraffin was an important factor in the culinary sphere. When, therefore, a few gentlemen formed a syndicate, to vaunt their loyalty in a crisis by cornering all the kerosene in town, another outcry followed. They bought all they could lay hands on at market price (sixteen and six per case), and next day imperturbably continued buying at twenty-five shillings. On Tuesday the wide-awake vendors asked fifty ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... the Jew and through him to the world, granted visible rewards and visible punishments, that was not the permanent scheme. God's administration is hid from vulgar eyes truly, but also from the eyes "of the wise and prudent." Man's wisdom may not vaunt itself. God's moral system is no well-lit room in which all furnishings are visible; rather a twilight gloom, where men and women grope. We know enough. Virtue is made very evident, and vice very despicable, and God very apparent—and these be the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... of the night had been profitable to Lige; it was his true aim that had brought down one of the live guerrilleros. On his asserting this, his comrades had laughed at it, as an idle vaunt; but Quackenboss proved his assertion to be correct by picking his bullet out of the man's body, and holding it up before their eyes. The peculiar "bore" of his rifle rendered the bullet easy of identification, and all agreed that Lige ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... triumphal chaunt, Matched with thine would be all But an empty vaunt— A thing wherein we feel there is some ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... expectation, tickling skittish spirits On one and other side, Troyan and Greek, Sets all on hazard. And hither am I come A prologue arm'd, but not in confidence Of author's pen or actor's voice, but suited In like conditions as our argument, To tell you, fair beholders, that our play Leaps o'er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils, Beginning in the middle; starting thence away, To what may be digested in a play. Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are; Now good or bad, 'tis but the chance ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... and furthermore, what originated in a necessity has been mounted into a vaunt. In towns there is large rivalry in building tall houses. If one gentleman builds his house four stories high, and another gentleman comes next door and builds five stories high, then the former, not to be looked down upon that way, immediately sends for his architect and ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... the assertion was an evident implied query to me, to which I could give no positive answer. As is known, few of the seamen, as of private soldiers in the army, sympathized sufficiently with the Confederacy to join it. Indeed, the vaunt I have heard attributed to Southern officers of the old navy, which, though never uttered in my ears, was very consonant to the Southern spirit as I then knew it, that Southern officers with Yankee ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... the District Court opened. Men who had come for a long distance to vaunt their ignorance and other qualifications as jurors could be seen on the streets. Here and there you could see the familiar faces of those who had served as jurors for years and yet had never lost a case. ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... mind—were you not, dearest? What book, though, could now divert me? Only such books as have never existed on earth. Novels are rubbish, and written for fools and for the idle. Believe me, dearest, I know it through long experience. Even should they vaunt Shakespeare to you, I tell you that Shakespeare is rubbish, and proper only for ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... most obliging. I profess I vaunt myself very happy in your kindness. Be sure that I shall know how to ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... for this reason, the British Museum does not contain the French original; but those who cannot attain to this lose the less, because the substance of the book is the principal thing. This makes it one of the liveliest of the whole group, and one does not feel it an idle vaunt when at the end the author observes cheerfully of his at last united hero and heroine, "Since we have so long enjoyed them, let us have so much justice as to think it fitting now that they should likewise enjoy each other." Yet the unresting and unerring spirit of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... wonder if the lad felt his blood run cold as he listened to the Indian's vaunt, and it is little wonder that his head swam until he was near in reality to the very faintness ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... would leap up, and the drum and the dancers would cease as he struck a post with his tomahawk, and in a loud voice recounted his exploits. Then the music and the dance began anew, till another warrior caught the martial fire, and bounded into the circle to brandish his tomahawk and vaunt his prowess. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... advantages his experience could suggest. His eye lighted, as it glanced rapidly over these several particulars of his command, and his lips moved like those of a man who uttered an inward self-gratulation, or who indulged in some vaunt, that propriety suggested should go no farther than ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... (ll. 86-103): and parallel reflections will give us much food for thought. But, in any case, let us realize that the Prometheus is not a human play: with the possible exception of Io, every character in it is an immortal being. It is not as a vaunt, but as a fact, that Prometheus declares, as against Zeus (l. 1053), that "Me at least He shall never ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... to the image in the fire, Erst filmed in dark. Enough said now of this: For the other helps of man hid underground, The iron and the brass, silver and gold, Can any dare affirm he found them out Before me? None, I know, unless he choose To lie in his vaunt. In one word learn the whole: That all arts come to mortals from Prometheus. Aeschylus: Prometheus. ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... that thou take my goods and her into thy charge and do with them and her that which thou deemest may be for the solacement of my soul. And thou, dearest lady, I prithee forget me not after my death, so I may vaunt me, in the other world, of being beloved here below of the fairest lady ever nature formed; of which two things an you will give me entire assurance, I shall depart without misgiving ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of land or sky Made one, in view of common sense, Of greater worth and consequence! What see ye, men, in this parade, That food for wonder need be made? The bulk which makes a child afraid? In truth, I take myself to be, In all aspects, as good as he.' And further might have gone his vaunt; But, darting down, the cat Convinced him that a rat Is ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... mediator. That deceitful mediator then, by whom in Thy secret judgments pride deserved to be deluded, hath one thing in common with man, that is sin; another he would seem to have in common with God; and not being clothed with the mortality of flesh, would vaunt himself to be immortal. But since the wages of sin is death, this hath he in common with men, that with them he should ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... Ursula left Wiggiston. Miss Inger went to Nottingham. There was an engagement between her and Tom Brangwen, which the uncle seemed to vaunt as if it were an assurance of ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... little household settled down to its altered conditions; and in a week everybody looked and acted much as usual, so soon does novelty wear off and do mortals readjust themselves. Jack and Harriet seemed happy; but the former, at least, was too fastidious to vaunt his affections in even the little public of his lifelong friends. He spent hours swinging in a hammock, reading philosophy and smoking; occasionally he read aloud to his aunt and Harriet, and in the afternoon he usually took his wife for ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... words "letter" and "spirit," to contrast the two doctrines; to emphasize his office and show its advantage over all others, however eminent the teachers whom they boast, and however great the spiritual unction which they vaunt. It is of design that he does not term the two dispensations "Law" and "Gospel," but names them according to the respective effects produced. He honors the Gospel with a superior term—"ministration of the ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther |
