"Arrant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... words, he made a first experimental trip into the province afterwards occupied by Scott. The 'Mysterious Mother' is in the same taste; and his interest in Ossian, in Chatterton, and in Percy's Relics, is another proof of his anticipation of the coming change of sentiment. He was an arrant trifler, it is true; too delicately constituted for real work in literature and politics, and inclined to take a cynical view of his contemporaries generally, he turned for amusement to antiquarianism, and was the first ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... arrant ruffians as I had ever seen before me, and I saw I must not hesitate. 'Two or none, M. Fresnoy,' I said firmly. 'I gave you a commission for two, and two I will take—Matthew and Mark, or Luke ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... will give me leave To tell you what I now perceive, You'll find yourself an arrant chouse, If y' were but at a Meeting-House. — 1250 'Tis true, quoth he, we ne'er come there, Because, w' have let ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... A plague upon you all for arrant cowards! Looke how a dunghill cocke not rightly bred Doth come into the pitt with greater grace, Brislinge his feathers, settinge upp his plumes, Clappinge his winges and crowinge lowder out Then doth a cocke of game that meanes to fight; Yett after, when he ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... air. He is nice in his habits and is said to have likable traits. A tame one in a Shoshone camp was the butt of much sport and enjoyed it. He could all but talk and was another with the children, but an arrant thief. The raven will eat most things that come his way,—eggs and young of ground-nesting birds, seeds even, lizards and grasshoppers, which he catches cleverly; and whatever he is about, let a coyote trot ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... throats with huzzas for the 'star-spangled banner' and the American eagle? And a caviller might perhaps go farther, and ask the significant question, Are we not known all over the world as a race of arrant braggarts? ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... curiosities, interesting as they are, can hardly compete with the tales of old Polperro privateers and smugglers. Polperro built its own boats as it bred its own seamen, and both were excellent. That they were arrant smugglers was a characteristic of the times and of the locality; it is not for us to judge them. That they were men of piety is proved by the epitaph of that smuggler who prays for the pardon of the Preventive man who had shot ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... observed the remarkable adherence to set forms of speech which characterizes the talkers of arrant nonsense! Precisely the same sheepish following of one given example distinguishes the ordering of ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... do certaine affaires. Whiche when hee had dispatched, in retourning homewardes, it chaunced as he departed out of Ferrara, and riding towardes Verona, hee mette certayne men on horsebacke, whiche semed to be Marchauntes, but in verie deede were arrant theues: with whome he kepte companie, and without suspicion what they were, rode together familiarly talking. These good felowes seing this Marchaunt and thinking that he had money about hym, determined to robbe him, when they sawe their aduauntage, and to the intent he should ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... we have the testimony of Aubrey, who was at Stratford probably about the year 1680. He was an arrant and inveterate hunter after anecdotes, and seems to have caught up, without sifting, whatever quaint or curious matter came in his way. So that no great reliance can attach to what he says, unless it is sustained by other authority. But in this case his words ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... in vain that they attempted to get near enough to one of these wary animals to warrant a shot. It is only by great good luck that anybody ever shoots a coyote, although in countries where they abound every man's hand is against them; they are such arrant thieves, ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... I shall not report you," said his companion, with a friendly squeeze of the arm. "He is not only a great brute, but he is an arrant coward into the bargain. The men do not mind being cuffed and bullied, because they are used to it; but when they see their officer never expose himself, and always shouting from the rear 'Get on, you pigs!' they don't ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... people who assume that gushing women are shallow, but this is jumping at conclusions. A recent novel gives us a picture of "a tall soldier," who, in camp, was very full of brag and bluster. We are quite sure that when the fight comes on this man with the lubricated tongue will prove an arrant coward; we assume that he will run at the first smell of smoke. But we are wrong—he stuck; and when the flag was carried down in the rush, he rescued it and bore it bravely so far to the front that when ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... case of arrant cruelty to a man of my temper," said the Prince. "To be expected to behave like an ordinary creature, with grins and smiles and decent paces, when I have just heard what I have longed to hear for years. But I will revenge myself by making a noise about ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... implied snub to his vanity was, however, more than compensated by his wicked anticipation of the pretty perplexity of his fair friend when HE should appear at dinner with the flower in his own buttonhole. It would serve her right, the arrant flirt! But here he was interrupted by the entrance of a tall housemaid ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Had he commanded the troops from the beginning, and remained inside the city, it is just possible that the fate of the war might have been less disastrous. As it was, Malatesta Baglioni, the Commander-in-Chief, turned out an arrant scoundrel. He held secret correspondence with Clement and the Prince of Orange. It was he who finally sold Florence to her foes, 'putting on his head,' as the Doge of Venice said before the Senate, 'the cap of the biggest ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... extremes has run. The frantic hero's wild delirium past, Now insipidity succeeds bombast: So slow Melpomene's cold numbers creep, Here dulness seems her drowsy court to keep, And we are scarce awake, whilst you are fast asleep. Thalia, once so ill-behaved and rude, Reform'd, is now become an arrant prude; Retailing nightly to the yawning pit The purest morals, undefiled by wit! Our author offers, in these motley scenes, A slight remonstrance to the drama's queens: Nor let the goddesses be over nice; Free-spoken subjects give the best advice. ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... Parisian populace, even when a man grown, it is always the street Arab; to paint the child is to paint the city; and it is for that reason that we have studied this eagle in this arrant sparrow. It is in the faubourgs, above all, we maintain, that the Parisian race appears; there is the pure blood; there is the true physiognomy; there this people toils and suffers, and suffering and toil are the two faces of man. There exist there immense numbers of unknown beings, among whom ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... doings of the Anti-Colonization Meeting of colored freemen. From that time forth, the colored people generally have had no sympathy with the colonization scheme, nor confidence in its leaders, looking upon them all, as arrant hypocrites, seeking every opportunity to deceive them. In a word, the monster was crippled in its infancy, and has never as yet recovered from the stroke. It is true, that like its ancient sire, that ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... am! She's shrewd and stingy, her lavish gifts to the poor are merely made for the sake of the praise and eulogy heaped upon her by her admiring friends. Manley Knight, renowed for his bravery in the war, is an arrant coward. His soul is a thing of whining terror, his heroism but a mask. Oh, I know—I read these people truly, when they sit to me—off guard and unconsciously ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... 'as arrant a poltroon as ever I met. I tell you, you must either fight him, or publish a statement of your own unparalleled disgrace. Don't think you shall get out ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... while not what may be called a heavy eater, I am willing to admit that there were times when I felt distinctly empty. Curiously enough, my philosophy did little to relieve me of that physical condition, for as someone has said, "Philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey." ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... her sex) comes sooner to the stable mind of maturity than any man; and Jenkin was to the end of a most deliberate growth. In the next chapter, when I come to deal with his telegraphic voyages and give some taste of his correspondence, the reader will still find him at twenty-five an arrant school-boy. His wife besides was more thoroughly educated than he. In many ways she was able to teach him, and he proud to be taught; in many ways she outshone him, and he delighted to be outshone. All these superiorities, and others that, after the manner of lovers, he ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the artist. "The arrant hypocrite. She gives you tobacco, does she? Did you understand what we were talking ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... Times, i. 556. Swift has appended a note, "an arrant rascal," but Finch's great offence with the dean was probably his advancement by George I. rather than his conduct of state trials ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... wide, perhaps, and rather full-lipped, and somewhere at one corner—I can never be quite certain of its exact location, because its appearance is, as a rule, so very meteoric—but somewhere there is a dimple. Now, if ever there was an arrant traitor in this world it is that dimple; for let her expression be ever so guileless, let her wistful eyes be raised with a look of tears in their blue depths, despite herself that dimple will spring into life and undo it all ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... were written to prove their pre-historic origin, and to claim for them a history that in our day reads as arrant nonsense. In 1784, a short pipe was asserted to have been found between the jaws of the skull of an ancient Milesian exhumed at Bannockstown, county Kildare. Upon this discovery, an elaborate and learned paper was written in the 'Anthologia Hibernica,' ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... is that the knight errant not to say the arrant wight of the Romance, Abu Sayd of Saruj accuses before the Wali of Baghdad his pretended pupil, in reality his son, to have appropriated a poem of his by lopping off two feet of every Bayt. If this is done in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... speak; No holy rage or frantic fires did stir Or flash about the spacious theatre. No clap of hands, or shout, or praise's proof Did crack the play-house sides, or cleave her roof. Artless the scene was, and that monstrous sin Of deep and arrant ignorance came in: Such ignorance as theirs was who once hiss'd At thy unequall'd play, the Alchemist; Oh, fie upon 'em! Lastly, too, all wit In utter darkness did, and still will sit, Sleeping the luckless age out, till that she Her resurrection ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... imbued with a nature of silent firmness, a spirit of independence which prompted her to live apart; she never took things as other people did, but would one day evince perfect fairness, and the next day arrant injustice. She would sometimes throw the market into confusion by suddenly increasing or lowering the prices at her stall, without anyone being able to guess her reason for doing so. She herself would refuse ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... I knew that they had done this expressly, deliberately. But at the moment when head and body were severed, and fell into the trough, I groaned, and apprehended, not with my mind, but with my heart and my whole being, that all the arguments which I had heard anent the death-penalty were arrant nonsense; that, no matter how many people might assemble in order to perpetrate a murder, no matter what they might call themselves, murder is murder, the vilest sin in the world, and that that crime had been committed before my very eyes. By my presence and non-interference, ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... himself rather dullish company to himself, he thought he would have a good time with Souter John and Tam O'Shanter, otherwise called Somnus and Morpheus, two very good fellows, though one was not very bright, and the other an arrant rattlebrain, who, though much listened to by some, no wise man would ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... loses one. The boy to whom I allude won all the marbles of the school. Of course he had some principle of guessing; and this lay in mere observation and admeasurement of the astuteness of his opponents. For example, an arrant simpleton is his opponent, and, holding up his closed hand asks, 'Are they even or odd?' Our schoolboy replies, 'Odd,' and loses; but upon the second trial he wins, for he then says to himself, 'The simpleton had them even upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just sufficient to ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... exclaimed, as the other ended; "and a thousand pities is it that so honest a fellow should be so arrant a knave. But, Harry, we can never let him go at large after all, our loyalty and our religion forbid it. We must tack ship, and stand after him; if fair words won't bring him to reason, I see no other remedy ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... it could be proved by the stamp itself that it had not been in existence on the date impressed on the envelope, then the fraud would be quite apparent. And if there had been such fraud, then would the testimony of all those four witnesses be crushed into arrant perjury. They had produced the fraudulent document, and by it would be thoroughly condemned. There could be no necessity for ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... the luggage! 'Tis expressly against the law of arms. 'Tis as arrant a piece of knavery, mark you now, as can be offer't; in your conscience, now, ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... me; art thou not an arrant, all-grasping, intermeddling, monopolising, heathenish old scamp, to be one day making legs, and the next day coffins to clap them in, and yet again life-buoys out of those same coffins? Thou art as unprincipled as the gods, and as much of ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... like change of heart came, through a mutual love of the birds of heaven, to a real pirate who chanced upon a cabin in the forest's solitude and here confessed his life to its inmate, Audubon, who left this "striking incident" a record in his works. However, "Dick Fid, that arrant old foretop man, and his comrade, Negro Sip, are the true lovers of the narrative;—the last, indeed, is a noble creature, a hero under the skin of Congo." "The Red Rover" is all a book of the sea. In Sir Walter Scott's journal, January, 1828, appears: "I have read Cooper's new ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... He wasn't like other boys one bit, she always said. He had such a queer, topsy-turvy way of looking at things; would express the most outrageous opinions with an innocent unconsciousness that made her long to box his ears, and support the most arrant absurdities by arguments that conveyed not the smallest meaning to her intellect. Look at him now, for instance; a cripple for life, and pretending to see nothing in it but a joke, and expressing as much admiration for his horrible wooden ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... Addison, "has sprinkled several of his works with them; and in his book on Oratory, quotes abundance of sayings as pieces of wit, which, upon examination, prove arrant puns."—'Essay on ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... bethought them of employing the court fool to communicate the disastrous intelligence. Accordingly, that dignified individual took an opportunity of remarking to the king that he considered the English arrant cowards. ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... he thought he might throw to the winds; he was sure that no one believed them; but there was, he admitted, one cowardice of which his two friends had often been guilty, and it was a cowardice for which they need not blush; he meant the cowardice, the arrant, the noble cowardice of being afraid not to do what they thought right, and of being afraid to do what they knew to ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... mind of Quasimodo this flight had but one significance—he was dealing with an arrant coward; and he based his subsequent acts upon this premise, forgetting that brave men run when need says must. It would have surprised him exceedingly to learn that he was not driving, that he was being led. Hawksley wanted his enemy alone, where no one would see to interfere. ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... absurdity as a great philosophical principle, would be a mystery, if we did not know how infidelity perverts men's understandings, and, while puffing them up with infinite conceit of their own wisdom, transforms them into the most arrant and ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... 'Brother, you are an arrant ring-maker and a horse-breaker; you'll make a hempen ring to break your own neck of a ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... by spear and crozier, All know the arrant cheat, And shun the square of pavement Uncertain at his feet! Yea, spare the wretch, each brooding And secret-leaguers' chief, And make no pistol-target Of stars upon ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... men must walk at least before they dance. Say, does thy blood rebel, thy bosom move With wretched avarice, or as wretched love? Know, there are words and spells, which can control Between the fits this fever of the soul: Know, there are rhymes, which fresh and fresh applied Will cure the arrant'st puppy of his pride. Be furious, envious, slothful, mad, or drunk, Slave to a wife, or vassal to a punk, A Switz, a High Dutch, or a Low Dutch bear; All that we ask is but a patient ear. 'Tis the first virtue, vices ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... de fus er secon' year atter I wuz a plow-boy. Hit wuz right in de height ob de season, an' Marse War'—dat was de oberseer—he sent me to der Cou't House ob an ebenin' to do some sort ob arrant for him. When I was a comin' home, jes about an hour ob sun, I rides up wid a sort o' hard-favored man in a gig, an' he looks at me an' at de hoss, when I goes ter ride by, mighty sharp like; an' fust I knows he axes me my name; an' I tole him. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... them to talk of their wealth and such surroundings do the talking for them and do it more effectively. He would have preferred even a vulgar glitter to the unobtrusiveness of those rooms. But he knew that Susan was right, and he was a very human arrant coward about admitting that ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... in 1889, or of baby farming. They grow up street arabs, slum waifs, the driftwood of society, its flotsam and jetsam, or plankton, fighting for a warn corner in their resorts or living in crowded tenement-houses that rent for more than a house on Fifth Avenue. Arrant cowards singly, they dare and do anything together. A gang stole a team in East New York and drove down the avenue, shopping to throw in supplies, one member sitting in the back of the wagon and shooting at all who interfered. One gang specialized on stealing baby carriages, depositing ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... in his soul she might voice it. He could evade the questions of the volatile Winnie, but there was no getting by Kathlyn with evasions. Frowning, he replaced the order in the box, which he put away in a drawer. It was all arrant nonsense, anyhow; nothing could possibly happen; if there did, he would feel certain that he no longer dwelt in a real workaday world. The idle whim of a sardonic old ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... "You will prove yourselves arrant knaves, I doubt not," answered the baron; "but, villains, you shall be more grievously bruised by me than ever was the sheriff by my daughter (a pretty tale truly!), if you do not forthwith ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... of any mathematical problem, a tendency to a diminution in both; but to talk of 'eminently prolific' peeresses, and still maintain that the rapid extinction in peerages is owing to their not bearing male children exclusively, is arrant nonsense." ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... over to where the man sat. The disposition of the Coaita is mild in the extreme— it has none of the painful, restless vivacity of its kindred, the Cebi, and no trace of the surly, untameable temper of its still nearer relatives, the Mycetes, or howling monkeys. It is, however, an arrant thief, and shows considerable cunning in pilfering small articles of clothing, which it conceals in its sleeping place. The natives of the Upper Amazons procure the Coaita, when full grown, by shooting it with the blowpipe ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... Arrant thieves as foxes are, with regard to their domestic virtues they eminently shine. Both parents take the greatest interest in rearing and educating their offspring. They provide, in their burrow, a comfortable nest, lined with ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... in consequence of a threatening oracle, committed the government of his kingdom into the hands of a nobleman Philanax, and retired into a rural 'desert' along with his wife Gynecia and his daughters Philoclea and Pamela. Here they live in company with the 'most arrant dotish clowne' Dametas, his wife Miso and daughter Mopsa, rustic characters which supply a coarsely farcical element in the plot, certainly no less out of place and inharmonious in the play than in the romance. There are also the cousins ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... were well deserved, Chauliac's conduct during the black death which ravaged Avignon in 1348, shortly after his arrival in the Papal City, would have been sufficient of itself to attest. The occurrence of the plague in a city usually gave rise to an exhibition of the most arrant cowardice, and all who could, fled. In many of the European cities the physicians joined the fugitives, and the ailing were left to care for themselves. With a few notable exceptions, this was the case at Avignon, but ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... considering the excellent supply already on the spot. Had it been my intention, in presenting Nigrinus with a volume of my composition, to indulge him of all people with a display of literary skill, I should indeed have been an arrant 'owl-fancier in Athens.' As however my object is merely to communicate to you my present sentiments, and the profound impression produced upon me by your eloquence, I may fairly plead Not Guilty, even to the charge of Thucydides, that 'Men are bold from ignorance, where mature consideration would ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... "Arrant nonsense!" was the vigorous reply. "A great empire, from hemisphere to hemisphere, can be kept together a good deal better by democratic control. Force is always the arriere pensee of the individual and ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... arrant coward. He had set out with the intention of ruining the Moon Valley herd, and killing all who attempted to resist him, but ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... listener studied her thoughtfully, then he said: "I'm immensely flattered that you like me well enough to make me your confessor. Now I'm going to confess to you that I also am an arrant coward." ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... blue-eyed dunce! How shamefully your guardian neglects your education! Never even heard of the Ellewomen? Why, they compose the most brilliant society all over the world. Iduna was a silly creature, with a large warm heart, and loved her husband devotedly; and in order to cure her of this arrant absurd folly she was carried away and shut up with the Ellewomen, very fair creatures always smiling sweetly. The more bitterly the foolish young wife wept and implored their pity, the more pleasantly they smiled at her; and when she examined them closely she found ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... of Fridolin, where two men are pushing Robert into the burning iron furnace. It is the man who has his arm on Robert's breast. Physiognomy here spoke the truth; this chief had been a notorious murderer, and was an arrant coward to boot. At the point where the boat landed, Mr. Bushby accompanied me a few hundred yards on the road: I could not help admiring the cool impudence of the hoary old villain, whom we left lying in the boat, when he shouted ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... been their own practice, they expected no quarter. The Chinese troops, as distinguished from the Manchus, behaved differently; they took to their heels before a shot had been fired. This behaviour, which seems to be nothing more than arrant cowardice, is nevertheless open to a more favourable interpretation. The yoke of the Manchu dynasty was already beginning to press heavily, and these men felt that they had no particular cause to fight for, certainly not ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... yourself, good Roderic," said the voice of Erland the Old; "we had better have tarried till daylight. It may be that they have already discovered what you have done. Truly you were an arrant simpleton to leave the weapon in your brother's breast. 'Twould have served our further ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... the Creator never yet communicated directly with the creature; that man has not seen with mortal eyes beyond the veil that shrouds the two eternities, it does not follow that religious faith is but arrant folly, that God is non-extant and man but the pitiful creature of blind force. The dumb brute knows many things it was never taught, and might not man, the greatest of the animal creation, be gifted with a knowledge ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... cries the bailiff; and again ordered the followers to lay hold of their prisoner, saying, "He has assaulted me already, and endeavoured a rescue. I shan't trust such a fellow to walk at liberty. A gentleman, indeed! ay, ay, Newgate is the properest place for such gentry; as arrant carrion as ever was ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... understood to be the case in this quarter, from men who are of no party, but well disposed to the present administration. How should it be otherwise, when no stone has been left unturned that could impress on the minds of the people the most arrant misrepresentation of facts: that their rights have not only been neglected, but absolutely sold; that there are no reciprocal advantages in the treaty; that the benefits are all on the side of Great Britain; and, what seems to have had more weight with them ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... solitudes so deep that even our unsuspecting hearts sometimes quaked with fear of dark and lonesomeness; and then we came trooping back at the sound of the bell, untamed, happy little savages, ready to settle, with a long breath, to the afternoon's drowsy routine. Arrant nonsense that! the boundary of British America and the conjugation of the verb to be! Who that might loll away the hours upon a bank in silken ease, needed aught even of computation or the tongues? He alone had ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... most arrant nonsense, Fan. You must be a goose, or what is almost as bad, a hypocrite, to say that I have any love or tenderness in me. I confess that I did once have a little affection for you, but that ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... quaking and wondering how I should begin my explanation for this second call. I was a most arrant coward when I mounted the veranda. The carefully rehearsed calm of my leather face vanished and I made the discouraging discovery that my features were out of control. The door of the house was open. I rapped loudly and frowned. A shuffling step, which never could be Patricia's, nor ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... and disposed of according to law. When the inn-keeper, station-holder, posting-master, alderman, or other proper functionary on the premises, fails to present this book and require the traveler to sign his name in it, he (the arrant violator of laws) is fined; but the traveler need not flatter himself that the rule does not work both ways, for he also is fined if he refuses or intentionally neglects to write his name in the said book. The number of horses to be kept at fast stations is fixed by law, and no traveler ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... "An arrant impostor," put in the Sub-Pacha, "with the airs of a god. I thought to risk losing my arm when I cuffed him on the ear, but lo! 'tis stronger than ever." And ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... word in reply; but after some time he raised his head and said, "I cannot get rid of the idea, nor will anyone in the world remove it, or make me think otherwise—and he would be a blockhead who would hold or believe anything else than that that arrant knave Master Elisabad made free ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... sign on the little house was an arrant piece of hypocrisy. Nothing but the direst extremity could have caused him to allow an alien step on that sacred threshold. The ploughing up of the flower-beds and planting of the corn had served a double purpose. It showed the too curious public the finality of his break ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... upon. And some were red against the sky, And some with colors true were gay, And some in shame were born to die, For Flags of hate must pass away. Such symbols fall as men depart, Brief is the reign of arrant might; The vicious and the vile at heart Give way in time ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... not within our competence to confirm or deny claims of social scientists as to the dependence of the individual on the position of his racial or religious group in the community. It would, however, be arrant dogmatism, quite outside the scope of our authority in passing on the powers of a State, for us to deny that the Illinois legislature may warrantably believe that a man's job and his educational opportunities and the dignity accorded him may depend ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... reach ye," the old man said cheerily, putting out his hand. "Wish ye luck? I guess I will! Ye're a good boy, Jemmy. I don't know what your arrant is, an' I don't need to know, but ...
— Judith Lynn - A Story of the Sea • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... debars him, Nor sickness nor age, no treachery-sorrow Becloudeth his spirit, conflict nowhere, No sword-hate, appeareth, but all of the world doth Wend as he wisheth; the worse he knoweth not, 90 Till arrant arrogance inward pervading, Waxeth and springeth, when the warder is sleeping, The guard of the soul: with sorrows encompassed, Too sound is his slumber, the slayer is near him, Who with bow ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... fathers? Who has ever read or heard of such monstrous robbery? Do we not also have the people who need them, while out of our poverty we must enrich the ass-drivers and stable-boys, nay, the harlots and knaves at Rome, who look upon us as nothing else but arrant fools, and make us the objects ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... must learn to understand me better or I shall have to run away in self-defence. When you talk in that style I feel like an arrant hypocrite. I give you my word that I've been swearing ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... the stars, her glance roved uneasily. Had she fallen upon an adventure? Was Dennison's theory correct regarding the beads? She rose and went to the dresser, inspecting the beads carefully. Positively glass! That Anthony Cleigh should be seeking a string of glass beads seemed arrant nonsense. ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... did I never see, or read of. For taking away his guests, sir, to-day, that's the cause: and he declares it behind your back with such threatenings and contempts—He said to Dauphine, you were the arrant'st ass— ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... leave such ideas to the ignorant and uneducated. I should be unworthy of the progressive teachings of my time if I believed such arrant nonsense." ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... impudence enough to venture from my concealment; indeed, I felt like an arrant poacher, until I read one or two of Ovid's Metamorphoses, when I pictured myself as some sylvan deity, and she a coy wood nymph of whom I was in pursuit. There is something extremely delicious in these early awakenings of the tender passion. I can feel, even at this moment, the thrilling ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... gallantries filled his mind with desires for their resumption. Two years of naval-military discipline were quite enough for him, and he returned home again. He found Donna Eleanora de Garzia a grown woman and a woman of the world; an arrant flirt, like her protectress, the Duchess Isabella; dividing her time between the Villa Poggio Baroncelli and his father's villa ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... registers that he was born at Antium. Pliny charges Gaetulicus as guilty of an arrant forgery, merely to soothe the vanity of a conceited young prince, by giving him the lustre of being born in a city sacred to Hercules; and says that he advanced this false assertion with the more assurance, because, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... unfortunate that at this moment the places of these two men should have been taken by two as arrant fanatics as ever drew breath. For thirteen out of the fifteen years following Winthrop's death, the governor of Massachusetts was John Endicott, a sturdy pioneer, whose services to the colony had been great. He was honest and ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... the company may be assumed to be arrant rascals—rascals male and rascals female—chevaliers d'industrie, the offscourings of all the shut-up gambling-houses in Europe, demireps and lorettes, single ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... would be mere sentimentalizing. To protest against the intrigue, bribery, and corruption of public life, to desire that her sons might follow some business that did not involve lying, cheating, and a hard, grinding selfishness, would be arrant nonsense. In this way man has been moulding woman to his ideas by direct and positive influences, while she, if not a negation, has used indirect means to control him, and in most cases developed the very characteristics both in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... morning, very early, before the sun was up, I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup; But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, Had stayed at home behind me and was fast ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... fence-rail, sends a thrilling song. The bluebird is the true voice of early spring, as is the bobolink of later spring. Bobolinks and apple-blossoms come together in the prodigal time of May. Our Northern spring is the most arrant of coquettes,—the most delicious in allurement, the swiftest in retreat. One day she seems to pour her whole heart out to us, and we think she is ours once and for all; next day she pelts us with sleet; buffets, freezes ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... not according to our own imaginations nor according to abstract ideas of right; by no means according to mere general theories of government, the resort to which appears to me, in our present situation, no better than arrant trifling. I shall therefore endeavor, with your leave, to lay before you some of the most material of these circumstances in as full and as clear a manner as I ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... ready money; you carry it about you: give and take is square-dealing; for in my conscience he's as arrant a maid as you are. I was fain to use violence to him, to pull him hither: and he pulled, and I pulled: for you must know he's absolutely the strongest youth in Troy. T'other day he took Helen in one hand, and Paris in t'other, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... matched by a thrice marvellous adventure of Brom Bones, who made light of the Galloping Hessian as an arrant jockey. He affirmed that on returning one night from the neighbouring village of Sing Sing, he had been overtaken by this midnight trooper; that the had offered to race with him for a bowl of punch, and should have won it ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... well-filled room, and at one of the tables I espied my quarry in company with St. Auban and Montmedy—the very gentlemen who were to fight beside him that evening—and one Vilmorin, as arrant a coxcomb and poltroon as could be found in France. With my beaver cocked at the back of my head, and a general bearing that for aggressiveness would be hard to surpass, I strode up to their table, and stood ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... average, and, as such, should be ranked mentally above them: no light research, and tact, and industry, and head-and-hand labour, are sufficient for a volume; even certain stolid performances in print do not shake my judgment; for arrant blockheads as sundry authors undoubtedly are, the average (mark, not all men, but the average) unwriting man is an author's intellectual inferior. All men, however well capable, have not perchance the appetite, nor the industry, nor the opportunity to fabricate a volume; ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... you have nothing to do but all to write according to my directions, and doubling down the paper, to hand it to a neighbor, so that each time you have a different slip. When it is finished, I will read them aloud, supplying some words which will make sense—or, what is much better, arrant nonsense—of the whole. So begin by writing a term descriptive ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... like an arrant scamp, And aids the contractor to rob the camp; Both of them serving the South in its sin, And all of them helping ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... murmurous, yet guttural, was the utterance, mixed with puffy breath-sounds at the languid lips. This state was accompanied by an intense contraction of the pupils, absence of the knee-jerk, considerable rigor, and a rapt and arrant expression. I got into the habit of sitting long hours at her bed-side, quite fascinated by her, trying to catch the import of that opiate and visionary language which came puffing and fluttering in deliberate monotone from her lips. Gradually, in the course of months, my ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... leaders veered round again, jumping violently, and carrying the wagon perilously near the gully. William Mount and Walter Hart sprang to the horses' heads, while the ladies screamed in concert. Aunt Faith was an arrant coward where riding was concerned. "I would rather get out and walk all the way home than sit in this wagon a moment longer," ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... masters, let us share, and then to horse before day. An the Prince and Pointz be not two arrant cowards, there's no equity stirring: there's no more valour in that Pointz ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... carry him off in a short time; and he had been already bled so much, and so often, that he could bear it no longer. The unfortunate patient, shocked at this declaration, replies, "Sir, you have always pretended to be a regular doctor; but now I find you are an arrant quack. I had an excellent constitution when I first fell into your hands, but you have quite destroyed it; and now I find I have no other chance for saving my life, but by calling for the help of some regular physician." In the debate, the members on both sides seemed to wander ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... don't call them bondis, nor are they decent men, but arrant robbers and malefactors. I would gladly pay a large portion of my property for them not to have come just at this time. It is an ill return that you make to Thorfinn for having saved you from shipwreck and kept you this winter like a free man, ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... My folks will think I'm dead ef I don't get along home, sence the horse and sleigh have gone ahead empty. I've done my arrant and had my joke; now I want my pay, Tilly," and Gad took a hearty kiss from the rosy cheeks of his "little sweetheart," as he called her. His own cheeks tingled with the smart slap she gave him as she ran away, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... convinced that the inhabitants of our bay were as arrant cannibals as any of the other tribes on the island, still I could not but feel a particular and most unqualified repugnance to the aforesaid Typees. Even before visiting the Marquesas, I had heard from ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... reign of Pelias brought. She—while in various forms she tries Her furious spirit to disguise, At one place in her flight bestow'd Her brother's limbs upon the road; And at another could betray The daughters their own sire to slay." How think you now?—What arrant trash! And our assertions much too rash!— Since prior to th' Aegean fleet Did Minos piracy defeat, And made adventures on the sea. How then shall you and I agree? Since, stern as Cato's self, you hate All tales ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... amiability; and she even went so far as to take ostensible measures for their reconciliation. In the bosom of confidence, particularly among the friends of Don Juan Estrada-Rosa, she was not contented with saying that Fernanda was superior to her ex-lover in every feeling, but she proclaimed Luis as an arrant impostor, hypocrite, &c. And when she saw him the next day in Jacoba's house, she embraced him, choking ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... Salomon; I have been about a deed of darkness to night: O Lord, I saw fifteen spirits in the forest, like white bulls; if I lie, I am an arrant thief: mortality haunts us—grass and hay! the devils at our heels, and ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... Arrant, in 1898 dat was, and us have three chillen but dey all dead. Us git sep'rate in 1917 and I marries Mary Durham in 1921, and us still livin' together. Us have no chillen. Mammy have ten chillen but I'm de only one what am livin' now, 'cause ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... merchandise, which enable him to return to the city in the capacity of a merchant, which he had professed himself when he married the princess. The vazir, who had from the first believed him to be an arrant impostor, lays a plot with the King to worm out of him the secret of his wealth, and succeeds so well at a private supper, when Maruf is elevated with wine, that he obtains possession of the ring, summons the genie, and causes him to carry both the King ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... small low room, with its sloping ceiling of varnished wood, at the top of the house, I felt that after all I had learnt nothing really new respecting that disturbing young gentleman. Quinby had already proved himself such an arrant gossip as to discount every word that he had said before I placed him in his proper type: it is one which I have encountered elsewhere, that of the middle-aged bachelor who will and must talk, and he had confessed his celibacy ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... an arrant ass Who pays to ride up Kirkstone Pass, For he will find, in spite of talking, He'll have to walk ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... replied that strong-minded lady, "that Tugwell is an arrant old fox; and if he gets the fifty guineas, he will put every farthing ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... historical critics, as redeeming portions of the ancient record from mistaken disparagement as legendary. That further study may accredit as facts, or at least as founded on facts, some other marvels in that record cannot, except by arrant dogmatism, be pronounced improbable. Nevertheless, it cannot be expected that the legendary element, which both the Old and the New Testament in greater and less degree exhibit, can ever be eliminated. Such stories as that ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... old Richelieu was better fitted with a set of arrant scoundrels. There was the cunning right hand of Hawk Rufe, the slick, villainous intriguer, Lem Marks. No diplomatic imp, serving his master in the kingdoms of the world, moved with more unscrupulous smoothness. There ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... Sympathy pretend His cedar fragrance with our Chiefs to blend? There, where the gnarled monuments of sand Howl their dark whirlwinds to the levin brand; Conclusive tenderness; fraternal grog, Tidy conjunction; adamantine bog, Impetuous arrant toadstool; Thundering quince, Repentant dog-star, inessential Prince, Expound. Pre-Adamite eventful gun, Crush retribution, currant-jelly, pun, Oh! eligible Darkness, fender, sting, Heav'n-born Insanity, courageous thing. Intending, bending, scouring, piercing all, Death like pomatum, tea, ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... unmistakable signs in Sandy himself of what would have been called arrant terror in any other man. His face was so bloodless that the pallor showed even through the leathery tan; one eye stared wildly, the other being sheltered under a clumsy patch which could not quite conceal the ugly bruise beneath. Under his great moustache his lips were as puffed ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... unswerving faithfulness and untiring assiduity for years courted the arts and sciences, and had learned dark secrets and received signal favours from them. He was therefore prepared to take part against unlearned wretches, and arrant quacks, whose impudent addresses and saucy pretences had brought scandal upon ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... head? By Spain we of course mean the Spanish nation—for as for the country, it is so much impassible matter, so much rock and sand, chalk and clay—with which we have for the moment nothing to do. It has pleased her to play an arrant jade's part, the part of a mula falsa, a vicious mule, and now, and not for the first time, the brute has been chastised—there she lies on the road amidst the dust, the blood running from her nose. Did our readers ever peruse the book of the adventures of ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the apparition, the poor natives—arrant believers in ghosts—dropped the trembling consul, and fled in all directions. After giving full vent to her rage, Mother Tot hobbled away, and left the three revellers to stagger home ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... severe. "The Creation" libretto stands to the present day as an example of all that is jejune and incongruous in words for music. The theme has in itself so many elements of inspiration that it is a matter for wonder how, for more than a century, English-speaking audiences have listened to the arrant nonsense with which Haydn's music is associated. As has been well observed, "the suburban love-making of our first parents, and the lengthy references to the habits of the worm and the leviathan are almost more than modern flesh ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... portrayed by Fuller Mellish, delivers that arrant bit of nonsense "The Seven Ages of Man" in such a manner as a man might tell a rather serious story in a drawing room. "The Seven Ages of Man," of course, is just as much of an aria as La Donna e Mobile. It always awakens applause, but this time the applause was deserved. Mr. ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... guineas from him as a welcome to England, before the old gentleman fell ill of a pleurisy, which in four days' time deprived him of his life; and as he had no will, his estate of L300 a year, and about L700 in money (which he had lent out on securities), descended to his sister's son, as arrant a booby as ever breathed, and deprived Tim both of his present ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... a few who would denounce Thackeray and Besant and Mr. Kipling as arrant plagiarists; but critics of a more delicate perception of the principles of art would rather praise these authors for the ingenuity with which they had successively made use of Cooper's original device. Indeed, the more delicate the perceptions of the critic ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... this place the glorious liberty of a republic, or more properly, an aristocracy, the common people being here as arrant slaves as the French; but the old nobles pay little respect to the doge, who is but two years in his office, and whose wife, at that very time, assumes no rank above another noble lady. 'Tis true, the family of ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... begin then. We have a very brutal master, a perfect glutton for beans,[10] and most bad-tempered; 'tis Demos of the Pnyx,[11] an intolerable old man and half deaf. The beginning of last month he bought a slave, a Paphlagonian tanner, an arrant rogue, the incarnation of calumny. This man of leather knows his old master thoroughly; he plays the fawning cur, flatters, cajoles; wheedles, and dupes him at will with little scraps of leavings, which he allows him to get. "Dear Demos," he will say, "try a single case and you will have done enough; ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... a good horse in the stable, but may make an arrant jade on the journey"—to paraphrase Goldsmith—and the only way in which these irreconcilable differences could be settled was by bullet and bayonet, which settled them right ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... should be," continued Jem, "for these were arrant scoundrels; one of them I knew, and his name is Doctor Chord. He fell off his horse on the roadway at once and pleaded for mercy. I ordered the others instantly to hold their hands above their heads, and they did ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... year old when his father died, and the discipline of such a restless spirit as he exhibited in early childhood seems to have been a task almost beyond the poor widow's powers. An incorrigible spirit of mischief possessed him. He was an arrant scape-grace, plundering cupboards, gardens, and orchards, lifting the gates of mill-races by night, and playing a thousand other practical and not always innocent jokes. Neither counsel nor punishment availed, and the entire weight of his good qualities, as a counterbalance, barely ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... Denzil, fostered by an arrant demagogue!" exclaimed Masaroon, with a contemptuous shake of his shoulder ribbons. "You hate the King ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Snell was an arrant coward, and he knew that Hodge was really longing for a challenge. Wat felt sure that he would receive a severe drubbing at the hands of the dark-haired boy whom he had angered, and the thoughts of such punishment filled ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... ACIS ARRANT, generally known to his jocular intimates as Knave ARRANT, had been living in luxury with his cousin's weak mother, whom he had contrived to marry. To effect this, however, he had been compelled to tear a will into little pieces, and had, at the same time, ruined ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... overshadowed by the presence of some titanic contemporary. It would be a mere impertinence to state such an axiom of art as this, were it not the plain truth that almost all criticism of contemporaries is based upon an arrant neglect of it; and if it were not for the fact that I am about to string out a long, long list of American music-makers whose ability I think noteworthy,—a list whose length may lead many a wiseacre ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... forgotten thee— Thou "Silky" John of other years, Gone from this dreary vale of tears, A passing shade, and more's the pity, For thou wert ever gay and witty. And Charles Baines, an old time lawyer, Stood here professional top sawyer; He owned a bull dog, arrant thief! Who plundered Agar Yielding's beef; And when friend Yielding sought for law, To deal with canine of such maw, "Why, there is just one simple way," Said Charley, "Make the owner pay;" "I thank you for your ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... you waste your time talking any more such arrant nonsense. Now, the two of you are as cold and shivery as can be, and I doubt not, as hungry also. Come straight away to the house. This thing has ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... because you are not sufficiently acquainted with him. I admit that he is an arrant thief of fruit, and that, as his advocate, I have a difficult case. I shall not plead for him until summer, when he is in such imminent danger of capital punishment He's a little beauty, though, with his ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... with a name I can't make out, and she won't tell me, though I asked her, where she got franks, as also whether the lodgings were let, to neither of which a word of answer. * * * * is the name on the frank: see if you can decypher it by a Red-book. I suspect her grievously of being an arrant jilt, to say no more—yet I love her dearly. Do you know I'm going to write to that sweet rogue presently, having a whole evening to myself in advance of my work? Now mark, before you set about your exposition of the new Apocalypse of the ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... zirrah: and tweare not an old fellow, and sent after an arrant, chid give thee something, but chud be no money: But hold thee, for I see thou art somewhat testorne; hold thee, there's vorty shillings: bring thy master a veeld, chil give thee vorty more; look thou bring him: chil ...
— The London Prodigal • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... one after the deakin sold himself Mr. Stickin'-Plaster I had an arrant three four mile or so up past his place, an' when I was comin' back, along 'bout four or half past, it come on to rain like all possessed. I had my old umbrel'—though it didn't hender me f'm gettin' more or less wet—an' I sent the old mare along fer all she knew. As I come along ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... And now that twenty years of self-abnegation were at last finding their reward, now that the King had come into his own, and the King's faithful friends were being compensated in accordance with the length of the King's purse, would it not be arrant cowardice and disloyalty for her—an only child—to oppose her father's will in the ordering of her own future, to refuse the rich marriage which would help to restore dignity and grandeur to the ancient name and ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... give her hand unless her heart went with it; because I respected his affection too much to trifle with it, and not at all on your account. Believe me, that from the time I first learned that you were married, every thought of you was rigidly repelled, and it was arrant presumption in you to suppose anything else," she continued, proudly, the angry tears suffusing ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... hats were to be seen at every corner. They looked like dark phantoms more than men, for the cloak covered up at least half the face. Underneath the cloak was carried el Spadino, a sword of enormous length. Persons who wore this costume were treated with great respect, though they were mostly arrant rogues; still they might possibly be powerful noblemen ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... neither more nor less than a net of silken flattery. Your good guide, your dear guide, your pet guide, whom Neighbor So-and-so, going abroad, must look up immediately on his arrival, this invaluable creature, depend upon it, is an arrant flatterer. He does not go out of his way for you; he does not tell it you to your face; but, somehow or other, (if he knows his vocation,) he makes you believe, that, of all the travellers he ever escorted, (and he has been a travellers' escort from his infancy,) you are the first, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... dead," said Basha, in a grim tone, "and mind you, we'll see trouble from this." Basha was an arrant rebel, and hated the very sight of a red coat. "What are you doing here," she continued, addressing him, "killin' honest folks, when you'd better 've staid cross seas in yer ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... aspect. But we discovered that she had begged one of Mr Hoggins's worn-out hats to hang up in her lobby, and we (at least I) had doubts as to whether she really would enjoy the little adventure of having her house broken into, as she protested she should. Miss Matty made no secret of being an arrant coward, but she went regularly through her housekeeper's duty of inspection—only the hour for this became earlier and earlier, till at last we went the rounds at half-past six, and Miss Matty adjourned to bed soon ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... needed but one quality to be perfect. He should have been an arrant coward. He was a blustering braggart, always boasting of the men he had slain, and the odds he had contended against; filled with stories of his own valour, but alas! he shot straight, and rarely missed his mark, ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... bottom on it, but the joke's atop, plain for annybody to see," said Fuller. "But Miss Bly the's come here this mornin' of a funny sort of a arrant, to my thinking, though her seems to fancy it's as solemn a business as ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... wind, which carries the pollen grains from one bunch of blossoms to another. Then the nuts gradually swell out to an enormous size, and ripen very slowly, even under the brilliant tropical sun. (I will admit that the tropics are hot, though in other respects I hold them to be arrant impostors, like that precocious American youth who announced on his tenth birthday that in his opinion life wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.) But the worst thing about the coco-nut palm, the missionaries always say, is the fatal fact ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... cheaply, contemptuously. The kind who, if another gets in his way, removes him ... but carefully, lest his own highly-valuable skin be put in jeopardy. If he could get some one else to do the dirty work, so much the better. Such conscienceless killers were, Hanlon knew, usually arrant cowards. ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... an arrant humbug to affect to despise the honor that the world seems disposed to bestow upon us. I say us, for I cannot and will not take it all to myself. I may have been the originator of the idea, but I could have done ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... regardless of Great Britain's claims, and "Fifty-four forty or fight!" became one of the battle-cries of the campaign. Clay, inveterate trimmer and compromiser that he was, professed to be for the annexation of Texas, provided it could be accomplished without war with Mexico, which was arrant nonsense, since Mexico had given notice that she would consider annexation an act of war. The result of Clay's attitude, and of a widespread distrust of his policies, was that Polk was elected ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... as she spoke, and she rose to seat herself at the table, giving a friendly smile at the trim maid who had replaced the arrant "housekeeper." ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... wearing the Feather, tho our Friend took him for an Officer in the Guards, has proved to be [an arrant Linnen-Draper. [1]] ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele |
