"Brag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... jibbed a bit when I heard people talking about England in the way that awful stockbroker in the hotel talks about it," Gilbert was saying, "and I loathe the Kipling flag-flapper, all bounce and brag and bloodies ... but I feel fond of England to-day, Quinny, and nothing else seems to matter much. And anyhow fighting's such a filthy job that it ought to be shared by everybody that can take a hand in it at all. It doesn't seem right somehow to do your ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... 'You needn't brag about it,' returned Fledgeby, disappointed in his desire to heighten the contrast between his bed and the streets. 'But you're always bragging about something. Got the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... sewer; Well, 'e knows what it is, for I'll lay 'e's bin there. And you'd make a 'orse into cat'smeat on skewer. My eye, but just ain't you a nice-spoken pair! I ain't goin' to foller you two like a shadder, Your 'eads is a darned sight too swelled up with brag. If you don't want to bust and go pop like a bladder, Why you'd best take my tip—put 'em both in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... order to please and pacify Sarudine," he began, speaking seriously, "the more so as I attach not the slightest importance to them. But, in the first place, Sarudine, being a fool, would not understand my motive, and, instead of holding his tongue, would brag about it. In the second place, I thoroughly dislike Sarudine, so that, under these circumstances, I don't see that there is any sense in ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... Sam, brag away. Everything over there is ten times bigger and better than here—the apples are the size of pumpkins, and the brooks are so wide you can't see across them, and it takes you years to ride round a single farm! We know! You needn't tell ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... 377.).—I do not know whether it has ever been suggested, but I feel inclined to read "lawsuits." He has just boasted of himself as "one that knows the law;" and it seems natural enough that he should go on to brag of being a rich fellow enough, "and a fellow that hath had lawsuits" of his own, and actually figured as plaintiff or defendant. Suppose the words taken down from the mouth of an actor, and the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 187, May 28, 1853 • Various
... by some one, and Mr. Lebyadkin has, it seems, for many years received a yearly grant from the seducer by way of compensation for the wound to his honour, so it would seem at least from his chatter, though I believe it's only drunken talk. It's simply his brag. Besides, that sort of thing is done much cheaper. But that he has a sum of money is perfectly certain. Ten days ago he was walking barefoot, and now I've seen hundreds in his hands. His sister has fits of some sort every day, she shrieks and he 'keeps her ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ordered from headquarters that this party must be used up, except such as are too young to tell tales. We got to do it. They been acting terrible mean ever since we wouldn't sell them anything. If we let them go on now, they been making their brag that they'll raise a force in California and come back and wipe us out—and Johnston's army already marching on us from the east. Are we going to submit again to what we got in Missouri and in Illinois? No! Everybody is agreed about that. Now the Indians have ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... so," said Roberts thoughtfully. "I felt ready for anything when those war canoes were coming on, and I believe I should feel just the same if the lads were standing ready to board the schooner. But I don't know; perhaps I should be all of a squirm. I don't want to brag. It all depends. Those who make the most fuss, Frank, do the least. ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... billiards as well as most men. Look here now! Daly's dead. We can't bring him to life again, can we? If you shoot me, you'll be nothing to the good, and have every spare man in the three colonies at your heels. This is a game of brag, though the stakes are high. I'll play a card. Listen. You shall have a hundred fivers—500 Pounds in notes—by to-morrow at four o'clock, if you'll let Mrs. Knightley and the doctor ride to Bathurst for the ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... are out of the wood, Dandy Mrs. Kit has jilted two men, and may a third, so you'd better not brag of your wisdom too soon, for she may make a fool of you yet," said Charlie, cynically, his views of life being very gloomy ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... snob," said Johnson, unmollified. "If you want to brag about your ancestors, do it. Leave mine alone. Stick to your ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... brag of your agility and strength, Jean," she laughingly remarked; "but you can't take cherries when they are offered to you. What a clumsy ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... Shannon should arouse fervid enthusiasm in the breast of every Briton. The wounds inflicted by Hull, Decatur, and Bainbridge still rankled, but they were now forgotten and the loud British boastings equaled all the tales of Yankee brag. A member of Parliament declared that the "action which Broke fought with the Chesapeake was in every respect unexampled. It was not—and he knew it was a bold assertion which he made—to be surpassed ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... only man that finds good in it which others brag of but do not; for it is meat, drink, and clothes to him. No man opens his ware with greater seriousness, or challenges your judgment more in the approbation. His shop is the rendezvous of spitting, where ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... dome, the night sky is a beautiful thing, even though Deimos and Phobos are nothing to brag about. If you walk outside, maybe as far as the rocket field, ...
— Fee of the Frontier • Horace Brown Fyfe
... that way. That same day he went to work building him a new shack; and he swears that the next man who gets near enough to set it afire won't live to get away and brag about it. Two days afterward Hallock showed up again, and the old fellow ran him off with ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... only four acts in the play now, and I'll have to make five. I want to give Haxard's speech as fully as possible, for that's what I study the man in, and make my confidences to the audience about him. I shall make him butter himself, but all with the utmost humility, and brag of everything that he ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... were in a maze. Had they been served with a mess of brag, or was the fellow really capable? One thing was clear—the interest in the race had taken a rise perceptible in the judge's stand not less ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... through the solitary stump-dotted street, past windowless, deserted buildings which were the saloons and dance-halls of better days, to foregather around the huge stove in the rear of Hod Burrage's general store, which was decrepit Hilarity's sole remaining enterprise, and there to brag and maunder over the dead town's ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... see, I've been away from Boston so long, and am back so short a time, that I can't realize your luxuries and conveniences. In Florence we ALWAYS walk up. They have ascenseurs in a few great hotels, and they brag of it in immense signs on ...
— The Elevator • William D. Howells
... personal appearance was against him. One of his fore legs was shaped like the handle of our punch-ladle, and the remaining three legs, about the fetlock, were slightly bunchy. Besides, he had no tail to brag of; and his back had a very hollow sweep from his high haunches to his low shoulder-blades. I was much pleased, however, with the fondness and pride manifested by his owner, as he held up, by both sides of the bridle, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... do," faltered Elizabeth. "Brag 'll kill him if I leave him here—and your grandpa won't ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... the pleasantest people in Italy are the army gentlemen. There is the race's gentleness in their ways, in spite of their ferocious trade, and an American freedom of style. They brag in a manner that makes one feel at home immediately; and met in travel, they are ready ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... may be the reason for it, my experience in life is that it is never wise to brag about anything. At any rate, on a hunting trip, to come to a particular instance, wait until you are safe at home till you begin to do so. Of the truth of this ancient adage I was now destined to experience a particularly ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... man! 'Cos I don't lie; but just as ... Why should one mind them—such muck as they are! "Here you are," I say; that's me. A priest told me, the devil's the biggest bragger! "As soon," says he, "as you begin to brag, you get frightened; and as soon as you fear men, then the hoofed one just collars you and pushes you where he likes!" But as I don't fear men, I'm easy! I can spit in the devil's beard, and at the sow his mother! He can't do me no harm! There, put ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... there," said an experienced orchardist to me the other day. We were talking about the recently started theory that the best bearing orchards are to be found on the low lands of the prairies. "You just wait and see if these brag orchards ever bear another crop! It will be as it was after the severe winter of 1874 and '75, when the following autumn many of our orchards bore so profusely. The succeeding year the majority of the trees were as dead as smelts, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... Fruits, Herbs, Plants, Flowers, and Roots, I know of none in England either for Pleasure or Use, but what are very common there, and thrive as well or better in that Soil and Climate than this for the generality; for though they cannot brag of Gooseberries and Currants, yet they may of Cherries, Strawberries, &c. in which they excel: Besides they have the Advantage of several from other Parts of America, there being Heat and Cold sufficient for any; except ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning; Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives 'genus' a better discerning. Let them brag of their heathenish gods, 5 Their Lethes, their Styxes, and Stygians: Their Quis, and their Quaes, and their Quods, They're all but a parcel of Pigeons. Toroddle, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... her mother's death, so she and Duncan had lots of time to tell each other all they knew. Eliphalet, he got to know a good deal about the girls she went to school with, and Kitty, she learned all about his family. He didn't tell her about the title for a long time, as he wasn't one to brag. But he described to her the little old house at Salem. And one evening toward the end of the summer, the wedding-day having been appointed for early in September, she told him that she didn't want to bridal tour at all; she just wanted to go down to the little ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... proudest and happiest time I ever had in my life. Indeed I almost had an adventure on my own account—une bonne fortune, as it was called at Brossard's by boys hardly older than myself. I did not brag of it, however, when I got back ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... wearily, "this is a rotten corncrib. It's sprained and spavined and Lord knows what. It's full of bugs and ants and spiders and dust and passe corncobs and it's architecturally incorrect, but if you and the marshal will hike off somewhere else and brag about his badge, I'll buy it. I've ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... and those who brag of being good Spaniards ought to imitate him. You can see very well now, since the Suez Canal was opened, corruption has come here. Before, when we had to double the Cape, there were not so many worthless people ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... always remember'd it at leisure. I don't want to brag, but I hope I've been found faithful. It's rather hard to tell poor John Bur, the workhouse boy, after clothing, feeding, and making him your man of trust, for two and twenty years, that you wonder he don't run away from you, now ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... its own reward, let me without brag or boasting be allowed to state, that, in my own case, it did not disappoint my exertions. I had sat down a tenant, and I was now not only the landlord of my own house and shop, but of all the back tenements to the head of the garden, as also of the row of one-story houses behind, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... walk round so as to be able to say I'd seen the other things, and brag about them when they turned up in Virgil or Livy, and set old Crabtree right when he came a cropper over them, presuming on our knowing less than he did. There was too much for a fellow to do for him to waste time over such rot as antiquities. You can always find as many antiquities ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... is a boy, None but cowherds regard him, His dart is a toy, Great opinion hath marred him: The fear of the wag Hath made him so brag; Chide him, he'll flie thee And not come nigh thee. Little boy, pretty knave, shoot not at random, For if you hit me, slave, ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... she would shout. 'You are raking in the money and buying your wife silk handkerchiefs, but the poor farm labourers have to creep on all fours. It's "Cut the corn, Sobieska and Maciek, and I will brag about like a gentleman!" You will see, he will soon call himself "Pan Slimaczinski."[1] He is the devil's own son, ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... no telling what a fellow of Link's stamp might do. He is just fool enough to brag about what he hoped to do rather than go and do it. It's an outrage that he should call ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... for long as I been in dey protection. I suffers now more den I is ever think bout would come to me. Yes, mam, I done raise over 20 head of white chillun. Dat de God truth. I been in de white folks kitchen all my days en if I feel right, I think dey ought to take of me in my old age. I don' brag on myself, but if I could work like I used to, I wouldn' ax nothin from nobody. I had a family of white people to send for me de other week to come en live wid dem en dey would take care of me, but I never had nobody to trust aun' Sallie wid. You see, child, she ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... manufacturing interests of Haha Bay on the American scale; and to enrich the whole region, buying land of those who wished to sell, and employing all those who desired to work. If he was impatient for the verification of these promises by Northwick, he was too polite to urge it; and did nothing worse than brag to him as he bragged about him. He probably had his own opinion of Northwick's reasons for the silence he maintained concerning himself in all respects; he knew from the tag fastened to the bag Northwick had bought in Quebec ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... have commenced their old game of brag, by puffing their ticket as a national and conservative ticket, the very thing they denied. Now let us look into the soundness and nationality of the HEAD of the ticket. We have before us a copy of a work published in 1839, by Robert Mayo, ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... man—and we spent an hour talking over the time when Petey manufactured excitement in wholesale lots at Siwash, with me for his first assistant and favorite apprentice. Those are my proudest memories. I won my track S. and got honorably mentioned in three Commencement exercises; but when I want to brag of my college career do I mention these things? Not unless I have a lot of time. When I want to paralyze an alumnus of some rival college with admiration and envy, I tell him how Petey and I manufactured a real Wild West college—buildings, ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... commenced to brag before him, praising the upright conduct of Danveld, and the impression it made upon the ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... I listened, I was dangerously near admiring him. He was certainly exaggerating; but it couldn't all be brag. The life of this spy of the first water, of international fame, must be rather marvelous; to defy one's enemies with success, to journey calmly through their capitals, to stroll undetected among their agents of justice—were not things any fool could do. He carried his life in his hand, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... you are o'er subjects so, as wise And noble husbands seem o'er loyal wives; Who claim not, yet confess their liberties, And brag to strangers of ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... at fencing, at billiards, it was all the same. The moment victory was within his grasp his interest waned. Only last night he had lost his title as the best fencer in the club; disqualified in the preliminaries, too, by a tyro who would never cease to brag about the accident. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... parents, and without their inviting you? Don't you know what that sort of thing means out here? Chelles did it to brag about you at his club. He wants to ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... Admiral, after the election was over, "Do you know, I had a mind to have stood myself; if I had, what would you have said?"—"That it was all a game of brag, and that, as you had the shuffling of the pack, there was no knowing what ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... other replied with a sigh of relief, "I don't know how to tell you about it. It had me scared to death. That's so. Even McDowell shirked it. He told me Steve had to get the whole yarn before he got into Reindeer. That's the sort of folk we are. And it's not a thing to brag about." ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... idea the fame of the professor had penetrated beyond the precincts of the university—if a university has precincts. He told me it had all the modern improvements, but I suspected at the time that was merely Renny's brag." ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better. Bear that in mind, will you?" repeated Mr. Jaggers, shutting his eyes and nodding his head at Joe, as if he were forgiving him something. "Now, I return to this young fellow. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... men, short and stumpy, but with shoulders like an ape, was standing on a table boasting about his strength. He was stripped to the waist and Tom could see the powerful arms and chest beneath the black hair that covered his body. As he continued to brag, the prisoners laughed and jeered, calling him Monkey. The man's face reddened and he offered to fight anyone in the room. A short, thin man with a hawk nose sitting next to Tom yelled, "Monkey," and ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... conscription will succeed in the North, and that the war will be indefinitely prolonged. I say "No," and that however mad and villainous the North is, the war will finish by reason of its not supplying soldiers. We shall see. The more they brag the more I don't believe ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... own lives, nor by the number that were already slain, as thinking it better to suffer whatever came upon them, at their very altars, than to omit any thing that their laws required of them. And that this is not a mere brag, or an encomium to manifest a degree of our piety that was false, but is the real truth, I appeal to those that have written of the acts of Pompey; and, among them, to Strabo and Nicolaus [of Damascus]; and besides these two, Titus Livius, the writer ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... the error of thy ways, Angus MacLean? If it should be given me to pluck thee as a brand from the burning! Thee will not again brag of war and revenge, nor sing vain and ruthless songs, nor use dice or cards, nor will thee swear ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... peculiar mixture of brag, cajolery, and threats, involved in the attitude of the South, as expressed by the same favorite Southern mouthpiece, toward the Border-States on the one hand, and the Middle and New England States on the other, a further extract from this (February ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... do what I brag o'!' she added, throwing her stocking on the patch of green sward about the stone, and starting to her feet with a laugh. 'Is't to be ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... replied Ross in answer to the invitation; then, after a pause, he added: "we didn't want to brag about it, but ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... arouses unpleasant feelings, he is unpopular and a nuisance and a danger in the view of his fellows. The underlying idea underneath courtesy and social regulations is to avoid anger and humiliation. Controversial subjects are avoided, and one must not brag or display concern because these things cause anger and disgust. Politeness and tact are essential to turn away wrath, to avoid that ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... "I make no brag of it, mind you," said the Cornal, waving his hand as if he would be excused for mentioning it. "I am but saying it to show that I ken a little of bloody wars, and the art and trade of sogering. There are gifts demanded for the same that seriatim I would enumerate. First there is natural ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... Regent Street,—with the church spire, which has the attractiveness and symmetry of an exaggerated marlin-spike, for a vanishing point,—are of themselves enough to show that the people here have no taste, and no feeling for this department of the Fine Arts, however much they may brag and bluster. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... more politely—but that's what it would amount to. Believe me, you'll never make people here swallow you and the governor as the late King and Queen of Fairyland—it's a jolly sight too thick! Besides, there's nothing particular in what we've done there to brag about—what?" ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... cafeterias. We have flowers on the tables. People don't just eat in them, they dine. They take their guests there. Our cafeterias have galleries with rocking chairs and stationery. They have distinctive architecture. We take visitors to see them. We brag about them, and when we wish to be especially ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... of those first visits to Frampton, when all the shops had seemed to be there for her, and she their natural mistress! How ready people had been to trust her in the village! How tempting it had been to brag and make a mystery! That old skinflint, Mrs. Moulsey, at "the shop," she had been ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... He will talk all day if he can coax some one to listen to him. He is over there now visiting with Bob White. What those two can find to talk so much about is a mystery to me! It is real funny to listen to them! They both brag about the big things they have done or ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... vaunts in the name of patriotism his own nation's superiority over another. The typical patriot, Henry V., once makes the common boast that one Englishman is equal to three Frenchmen, but he apologises for the brag as soon as it is out of his mouth. (He fears the air of France ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... said the little lad. "Not much to brag of, however. Merely bobbish, pretty bobbish. In answer to your second question, I take pleasure in informing you," he added, "that I ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... patriots ought to unite in redeeming the land from the imputation that such books are regarded as casting honor upon the section. God forbid we should really be brought so low as that we must perforce brag of such works; and God be merciful to that man (he is an Atlanta editor) who boasted that sixteen thousand of these books had been sold in the South! This last damning fact ought to have been concealed at the risk of life, limb, and fortune." Lanier himself saw the futility of such praise ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... Presidency they put the ball an' chain o' slavery on every citizen of this fair land. Bryant told 'em that sixteen to one would do the work, and what did they say? Huh, they said he was a fool and didn't know how to figure. I tell you if he was a fool, Solomon was a idiot. Who was the'r brag man up in Yankeedom?—why, Abe Lincoln—an' what did he ever do but set back in the White House and tell smutty jokes, while the rest o' the country was walkin' on its uppers, eatin' hardtack, ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... he has spirit enough, to be a traytor. But I am beholding to him for a life And he may brag he gave your grace a wife. A [O?] good old man, he could not choose but feele For shame some small remorse to see you kneele. Pray God he gave me not into your hand That he might be the ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... depreciate, disparage. Bind, secure, fetter, shackle, gyve. Bit, jot, mite, particle, grain, atom, speck, mote, whit, iota, tittle, scintilla. Bluff, blunt, outspoken, downright, brusk, curt, crusty. Boast, brag, vaunt, vapor, gasconade. Body, corpse, remains, relics, carcass, cadaver, corpus. Bombastic, sophomoric, turgid, tumid, grandiose, grandiloquent, magniloquent. Boorish, churlish, loutish, clownish, rustic, ill-bred. Booty, plunder, loot, spoil. Brittle, frangible, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Mistriss be so mild that she condescends and passes by this some times; they are immediately, in their own conceits, as wise again as their Mistriss; and dare, when they come among their tailing Gossips, brag that they can bend their Mistriss to their Bow; and if their Mistriss bids them do any thing, they do it when it pleases them, or at their own oportunity; for their Mistriss is troubled with ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... more fierce than steady, the king hesitated. "Why trust to a plate of steel or rings of iron?" exclaimed Malise of Strathern. "I, who wear no armor, will go as far as any one with breastplate of mail." "You brag of what you dare not do!" said the Norman Alan de Percy. But the King found himself obliged to yield the precedence to the Galwegians, trusting far more to the lowland knights and men-at-arms, whom he arrayed under his gallant ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Castilian accounts, listened with awe to this strain of glorification from the Spanish commander. Yet it is possible that the envoy was a better diplomatist than they imagined; and that he understood it was only the game of brag at which he was playing with ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... would be loth to speak anything that might sound of any insolent brag or challenge, especially being now as a dead man to this world and willing to put my head under every man's foot, and to kiss the ground they tread upon. Yet have I such a courage in avouching the Majesty of Jhesus my King, and such ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... I went on, 'is one of the types. He's lived twenty years on one street without learning as much as you would in getting a once-over shave from a lockjawed barber in a Kansas crossroads town. But he's a New Yorker, and he'll brag about that all the time when he isn't picking up live wires or getting in front of street cars or paying out money to wire-tappers or standing under a safe that's being hoisted into a skyscraper. When a New Yorker does loosen up,' ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... were to be dismissed on Saturday, the 20th of March, and Colonel Jones's vast bounty consisted in paying them the day he dismissed them, instead of compelling them to loiter about two or three days waiting to be paid. It well became Colonel Jones, indeed, to brag of such an act, in face of the many inquests at which such verdicts as this were returned:—"Died of hunger, in consequence of not being paid by the Board of Works, a fortnight's wages being due at ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... object, the word to should be used before the first verb and omitted before the others; as, "He taught me to read, write, and cipher." "The most accomplished way of using books at present is to serve them as some do lords— learn their titles and then brag ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... doth the greedy K.C.B. Delight to brag and fight, And gather medals all the day And wear them ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... such a goose! But I'm glad we met them, because I can tell the Sibleys of it. They think so much of titles, and brag about Lady Watts Barclay, whose husband is only a brewer knighted. I shall buy a plaid like the one the lord's daughter wore, and wave it in the faces of those girls; they do put on SUCH airs because they have been in ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... seller is the only man that finds good in it which others brag of, but doe not, for it is meate, drinke, and clothes to him. No man opens his ware with greater seriousness, or challenges your judgment more in the operation. His Shop is the Randenvous of spitting, where men dialogue with ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... the case, the Brewsters could ride on Chicago society's very crest! But they never brag about their money!" ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... right—shame to it surely if it isn't. When it sells it sells—it brings money like potatoes or beer. If there's dishonour one way and inconvenience the other, it certainly is comfortable, but it as certainly isn't glorious to have escaped them. People of delicacy don't brag either about their probity or about their luck. Success be hanged!—I want to sell. It's a question of life and death. I must study the way. I've studied too much the other way—I know the other way now, every inch of it. I must cultivate ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... "Henry Thomas, James & Sons," the District Contract Agent's vague reply on the file before me commences: "Sir (or Madam);" and I feel now, as I did then, that it is not in the best of taste for him to brag as he does about his telephone and his "Private Branch Exchange" on the very paper on which he writes to baffled applicants ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... handful of flowers, my pocketful of nuts, or little string of fish they palled upon me and I began immediately to feel an uneasy sense of disappointment, of disillusion, knowing I had miserably failed. The bombastic brag to my mother and her praise were a kind of mockery and falsehood. Illusion followed illusion, defeat followed defeat, yet the morrow was ever to be their healer and compensation. How often have I been soothed ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... like all egomaniacs before him. He wants to brag. We get into a Subterro Jetjeep and drive about twenty miles through the underground countryside to the entrance to a cave guarded by some extra tall Subterrors. Hitler the Third leads us into the spelunker's nightmare and we finally come to a big metal door about eighty ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... forty-two years, and I'm prouder of that fact than anyone is likely to be over anything you do in your life. And if his Lordship came in at that door now, he'd meet me as a man meets a man. Whereas you—you'd run round him sniffing like the lickspittle you are—and if he didn't tread on you, you'd go and brag to all your other pimply friends that you'd been talking to ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... same commandments, that men "must not steal," in the same breath referring to the white man's crime (when it finds them out) as "getting into trouble over some shooting affair with blacks." Truly we British-born have reason to brag of our "inborn sense ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... not believe it, Jim, but I am an alumnus of the Homeburg band. Didn't suspect that I was anything but an ordinary citizen, did you? But it's a fact. I am a band man. I'm too modest to brag about it, but I was carrying a horn and had a uniform before I was eighteen. I suppose there is nothing, not even the fire department, that fills a small town boy with such wild ambition as a band. When I was twelve, I used to watch that band in its more sublime passages, feeling that ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... Grandfather used to have to oversee his hands on the lower place? Jim, you know, in consideration of his elevation, was granted several privileges not allowed the others. Among them was the privilege of getting drunk every Saturday night. Then it was he would stalk and brag among those he ruled while they looked at him in awe and reverence. But he had the touch of the philosopher in him and would finally say: 'Come, touch me, boys; come, look at me; come, feel me—I'm nothin' but a common man, although I ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... Fenris Company had abandoned, and tried to make a living out of the planet. At least, they stayed alive. There are now twenty-odd thousand of us, and while we are still very poor, we are very tough, and we brag about it. ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... time. She come of her own accord—said she jest couldn't git back to sleep. She loves children, Mr. Mostyn, an' she seems to think as much o' Robby as if he was her own. I ketched 'er cryin' last night when she was settin' waitin' in the dark for 'im to git to sleep. La, la, folks brag powerful on Miss Dolly, but they don't know half o' the good she does on the quiet. She tries to keep 'em from findin' out what she does. I know I'm grateful to 'er. If the Lord don't give me a chance to repay 'er for her kindness to me an' mine I'll never be satisfied." ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... brag about the sweetness of their song, Nor do they stop their music gay whene'er a poor man comes along. God taught them how to sing an' when they'd learned the art He sent them here To use their talents day by day the dreary lives o' men to cheer. An' rich or poor an' sad ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... is the weak people who bluster like the northwind, and storm and brag. Strong people are usually quiet. There is an old saying that "if you are right you can afford to keep your temper, and if you are wrong you cannot afford to lose it." Be gentle. You will win more that ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... sake, Alexander, don't belittle me ner mek light of me ternight. I kain't endure hit. Heven't ye got no idee how master much I loves ye? Don't ye see thet ther two of us war made fer each other? I don't aim ter brag none—but ye knows I'm ther only man hyar-abouts thet understands ye—thet ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... points at issue disappear altogether behind the bitter mutual reproaches. In his unrestrained anger, Erasmus avails himself of the most unworthy weapons. He eggs his German friends on to write against Lee and to ridicule him in all his folly and brag, and then he assures all his English friends: 'All Germany is literally furious with Lee; I have the greatest trouble in ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... she could have brought herself to go to him, he was in no state to give aid. The O'Beirnes were out of the question; she could not tell them. Youth has no pity, makes no allowance, expects the utmost, and a hundred times they had heard James brag and brawl. They would not understand, they would not believe. And Uncle Ulick ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... your hats, hair and heels must be flat; your denials must be particularly flat. Always take your meals in your jacket and a hurry, never with the rest of your family; never have time to eat enough, but always have time to brag ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... temper, I had trash enough to have cloy'd his eyes withal, His covetous eyes; such as I scorn to tread on: Richer than e're he saw yet, and more tempting; Had I known he had stoop'd at that, I had sav'd mine honour, I had been happy still: but let him take it, And let him brag how poorly I am rewarded: Let him goe conquer still weak wretched Ladies: Love has his angry Quiver too, his deadly, And when he finds scorn, armed at the strongest: I am a fool to fret thus, for a fool: An old blind fool too: I lose my health? I will not: ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Fort Sumner way," he told his fellow-wolves, nor did he take the trouble to lower his voice because he saw several cow-boys from neighboring outfits among his auditors. It was a tradition among those who lived by the forty-five thus to brag and then—make good. And it was a firmly established habit in Lincoln County to mind your own business; so the project, while it became generally ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... killed, the only captain slain. The Resolution burned; but, as they say, most of her crew and commander saved. This is all, only we keep the sea, which denotes a victory, or at least that we are not beaten; but no great matters to brag of, God knows. ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... business, and don't talk so much," said Falkenberg. "I don't see what you've got to brag about, anyway." ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... not tell from Harry's story exactly how much encouragement Laura had given him, nor what hopes he might justly have of winning her. He had never seen him desponding before. The "brag" appeared to be all taken out of him, and his airy manner only asserted itself now and then in a comical imitation of its ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner |
