"Brag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Oh, it's all right; I'm not sayin' any-thin'! I know it's all proper an' regular for girls back East to use their eyes. But out hyar it's bound to result disastrous. All the boys talk about among themselves is Miss Dot's eyes, an' all they brag about is which feller is the luckiest. Anyway, sure Ed's wife knows it. An' Monty up an' told her that it was fine for her to come out an' see how swell Ed was prancin' round under the light of Miss Dot's brown eyes. Beulah calls over Ed, figgertively speakin', ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... ever hear of Nantucket? It is a port in the United States; and our harpooner happened to be there full four years after we lost this whale. Some Yankee whalers were treating him to the best of grog, and it was brag Briton, brag Yankee, according to custom whenever these two met. Well, our man had no more invention than a stone; so he was getting the worst of it till he bethought him of this whale; so he up and told how he had struck a right whale in the ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... I brag about being busy, but I'm not the only busy person about this wickyup. Olie and Dinky-Dunk talk about summer-fallowing and double-discing and drag-harrowing and fire-guarding, and I'm beginning to understand what ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... Partridge! 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 are ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... made up his mind, Quartermaster, more words are useless. If the riptyles near you are disposed to set about their hellish job, let them begin at once. They can burn wood, and I'll burn powder. If I were an Indian at the stake, I suppose I could brag as well as the rest of them; but, my gifts and natur' being both white, my turn is rather for doing than talking. You've said quite enough, considering you carry the king's commission; and should we all be consumed, none of us will ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Oh, brag to me about your modest, self-sacrificing spinsters! Mighty agreeable and willing was Miss Elvira to go and be a tonic to Madame Hazel—and, incidentally, be handy for a rich mill owner to waste roses on! The pair of them! Didn't know anything about it until she got to Lindale? You're ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... [U.S.], tivoli. cards, card games; whist, rubber; round game; loo, cribbage, besique^, euchre, drole^, ecarte [Fr.], picquet^, allfours^, quadrille, omber, reverse, Pope Joan, commit; boston, boaston^; blackjack, twenty- one, vingtun [Fr.]; quinze [Fr.], thirty-one, put, speculation, connections, brag, cassino^, lottery, commerce, snip-snap-snoren^, lift smoke, blind hookey, Polish bank, Earl of Coventry, Napoleon, patience, pairs; banker; blind poker, draw poker, straight poker, stud poker; bluff, bridge, bridge whist; lotto, monte, three-card monte, nap, penny-ante, poker, reversis^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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, you notice ...
— Fee of the Frontier • Horace Brown Fyfe
... Seventy pounds for the high field. The gentleman who shall be fortunate enough to win this pool will have something to brag about in future days. Come, now, how much for the high field? Seventy-five? Good! ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... you say; "it is all very well for a writer to affect to be indifferent to a critique from the Times. You bear it as a boy bears a flogging at school, without crying out; but don't swagger and brag as if ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... under the law as a Covenant of Works who are open profane, and ungodly wretches, such as delight not only in sin, but also make their boast of the same, and brag at the thoughts of committing of it. Now, as for such as these are, there is a Scripture in the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy Chapter 1, verses 9, 10, which is a notable one to this purpose, "The law," saith ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "When in her wrath the Nation broke Her easy rest of love and peace, I was the latest who awoke. I sighed at passion's mad increase. I strained the traitors to my heart. I said, 'We vex them; let us cease.' I would not play the common part. Tamely I heard the Southrons' brag: I said, 'Their wrongs have made them smart.' At length they struck our ancient flag,— Their flag as ours, the traitors damned!— And braved it with their patchwork-rag. I rose, when other men had calmed Their anger in the marching throng; I rose, as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... covetous eyes,) such as I scorn to tread on, Richer than e'er he saw yet, and more tempting; Had I known he'd stoop'd at that, I'd saved mine honor— I had been happy still! But let him take it. And let him brag how poorly I'm rewarded; Let him go 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 ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... Poole, a nibbler at astrology, sometimes a gardener, an apparitor, a drawer of linen; as quoifs, handkerchiefs; a plaisterer and a bricklayer; he would brag many times he had been of seventeen professions; was very good company for drolling, as you yourself very well remember (most honoured Sir);[3] he pretended to poetry; and that posterity may have a taste of it, you shall have here inserted two verses of his ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... ain't. I've had to give up here, but a little windfall come to us t'other day from an old uncle in Vermont. It ain't nothin' to brag of, but it'll give us a start an' we thought that while we had the money we'd do somethin' that we've been wantin' to do for years an' years—give a Chris'mas—an' we've done it. The money'll go some way an' we may never have another chance. Bart is a good boy ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... noticing the blank alarm which this announcement caused among the youth with whom he had been playing the ancient game of brag. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... 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 men dialogue with their noses, and their communication ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... will fit my dolly's jacket!" cried Susie, dancing around and hugging it in glee. "It will, mamma! A real live baby! Now Tilde needn't brag of theirs. We will take it home, ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... do," he said, as he shook hands. "Real glad to know you. Yes, I got a letter from John Laning, my brother-in-law, tellin' me all about you. He says as how you want a guide fer these parts. Well, I don't want to brag, but I reckon I know the lay o' the land 'round here about as good as any o' 'em, and a ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... easily enough, but you'll never live to brag about it. If the officers don't hang you, Hank Hazletine will make daylight shine through your hide! He is ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... spwortsmen brag When they've a-won a neaeme, so's, That they do vind, or they do bag, Zoo many head o' geaeme, so's; Vor when our cwein is woonce a-won, By heads o' sundry sizes, Why, who can slight what we've a-done? We've all a-won ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... 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 then darted behind ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... to brag, to boast, to threaten to make you grieve, fear and suffer—the brute, the poltroon, the miscreant!" hissed the ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... said the old schoolmaster. 'I had no right to brag of my Greek to the gentleman, and he has answered ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to brag of it," cried the Little Colonel, angry that her mother's opinion had been so flatly contradicted. But there was no time for a quarrel. The boys had come up with them, and Lloyd had to make the necessary introductions. ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... sorry for it," said Marmaduke, emphatically. "It was a mean thing for Douglas to do, with all his brag about his honor." ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... southern temperament, the faults that accompany these traits, are plainly stated by the great novelist. Enthusiasm turns to hypocrisy, or brag; the love of what glitters, to a passion for luxury at any cost; sociability, the desire to please, become weakness and fulsome flattery. The orator beats his breast, his voice is hoarse, choked with emotion, his tears flow ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... much of a brag to make, Belle. The truth is, no fellow is safe until he has been commissioned as an ensign, and that's at least two years after he has graduated from the Naval Academy. Why even after examination, you know, a fellow has to go to sea for two years, as a midshipman, and then take another ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... made the offerings of respect, esteem, and gratitude: these you have given me so mighty and peculiar reasons to have, in the highest degree, for your lordship, that if they can add a price to what they go along with, proportionable to their own greatness, I can with confidence brag, I here make your lordship the richest present you ever received. This I am sure, I am under the greatest obligations to seek all occasions to acknowledge a long train of favours I have received from your lordship; favours, though great and important in themselves, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... we'll just remind the angels that we don't need so much looking after now that we're living here. I'll never forget how s'prised Hec Abbott was when he found out that we'd all been 'dopted together. I wonder what Hec is doing about now? He can't brag any more about the good times they have at his house. We are just—what in the world is that ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... straight. He said also: "He rough-hews everything he handles, including his neighbours' nerves; he has no mercy or pity or consideration for anyone serving him, and yet he's the kindest heart towards children and animals, and the good he does to them is about the only thing he don't brag about." ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... dislikes to show emotion or to brag or to be praised when he is present. To outsiders and to soldiers of other nations sent to help him, he likes to make the duties and the dangers seem as disagreeable, as horrible, and as inevitable as he possibly can, but when he has discharged a particularly ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... path which leadeth unto pain, But unto eternal life full narrow is the way.[167] He that is not led by God's spirit surely goeth astray; And all that ever he doth shall be clean abhorred; Although he brag and boast never so much of God's word. O subtle Satan, full deceitful is thy snare; Who is able thy falsehood to disclose? What is the man, that thou doest favour or spare, And doest not[168] tempt him eternal ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... Lordship's. But, as preterits are sometimes put by enallage for participles, a reference of them to this figure may afford a mode of explanation in parsing, whenever they are introduced by a preposition, and not by a nominative: as, "A kind of conquest Caesar made here; but made not here his brag Of, came, and saw, and overcame"—Shak., Cymb., iii, 1. That is,—"of having come, and seen, and overcome." Here, however, by assuming that a sentence is the object of the preposition, we may suppose ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... years, I should say, than either Von Heeringen or Von Zwehl; too young, I judged, to have got his training in the blood- and-iron school of Bismarck and Von Moltke of which the other two must have been brag-scholars. Both of them, I think, were Prussians, but this general was a Saxon from the South. Indeed, as I now recall, he said his home in peace times was in Dresden. He seemed less simple of manner than they; they ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... endeavoring to serve the South by blindly plastering it with absurd praises, I think all true 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 ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... have trailed her rose-spattered flounce over the marble floors just as unconcernedly, and she would have proceeded just as calmly to disabuse the mind of the princess of any idea that the possession of a mere man, be he prince or peasant, was anything to brag of. ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the half-wise, twaddle; when you talk to the ignorant, brag; when you talk to the sagacious, look very ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tell you," said Wildeve. "But I—well, I will speak frankly—I did not like to mention it when I saw, Eustacia, that your star was not high. The sight of a man lying wearied out with hard work, as your husband lay, made me feel that to brag of my own fortune to you would be greatly out of place. Yet, as you stood there beside him, I could not help feeling too that in many respects he was a ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... made o' ash ner hick'ry thataway!— But you git mulberry—the bearin'-tree, Now mind ye! and you fetch the piece to me, And lem me git it seasoned; then, i gum! I'll make a bow 'at you kin brag on some! Er—ef you can't git mulberry,—you bring Me a' old locus' hitch-post, and i jing! I'll make a bow o' that 'at common bows Won't dast to pick on ner turn up their nose!" And Noey knew the woods, and all the trees, And thickets, ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... provided for that purpose and for other purposes. Two separate currents of the water that flowed caught up Hyman Ginsburg and Pasquale Gallino and carried them along differing channels toward differing destinies. While Hyman was in the grammar grades, a brag pupil, Pasquale was in the Protectory, a branded incorrigible. While Hyman was attending high school, Pasquale was attending reform school. When Hyman, a man grown, was taking his examinations with the idea of getting on ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... sir," replied Ross in answer to the invitation; then, after a pause, he added: "we didn't want to brag about it, but you ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... 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 coming out here, nor did Filipinos go abroad to be corrupted ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... us on a better understandable basis than anything else did, unless it was the fact that we never had much personal use for each other's ways. George is the vainest man I ever see, and the biggest brag. He could blow the biggest geyser in the Yosemite valley back into its hole with one whisper. I am a quiet man, and fond of studiousness and thought. The more we used to see each other, personally, the less we seemed to like to be together. If he ever had slapped me on the back and snivelled ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... just about concluded that I ain't ben reading the right kind. You know the books you find in cattle- camps an' fo'c's'ls ain't the same you've got in this house, for instance. Well, that's the sort of readin' matter I've ben accustomed to. And yet—an' I ain't just makin' a brag of it—I've ben different from the people I've herded with. Not that I'm any better than the sailors an' cow-punchers I travelled with,—I was cow-punchin' for a short time, you know,—but I always liked books, read everything ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... not help liking the man although his manners were hardly to his taste. Braund did not brag, but it was easy to see that he considered money a passport to any society. He was good-looking although his features were somewhat coarse, and his abrupt manner of speaking might have offended ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... was a fat old knight named Sir John Falstaff. Once Falstaff was boasting that he and three men had beaten and almost killed two men in buckram suits who had attacked and tried to rob them. The prince led him on and gave him a chance to brag as much as he wanted to, until finally Falstaff swore that there were at least a hundred robbers and that he himself fought with fifty. Then Prince Hal told their companions that only two men had attacked Falstaff and his friends, and that he and another ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.
... characters of the members not on hand, started in to go on about the revivals and how much good they was doin'. 'Most everybody had some relation, if 'twa'n't nothin' more'n a husband, that had stopped smokin' and chewin'. Everybody had some brand from the burnin' to brag about—everybody but Hannah; she could only set there and say she'd done her best, but that Kenelm still ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of militia for Canada. We had about three miles of continuous rifle range; and good ranges they were, considering they were got together in less than two weeks. I will admit that the roads leading to the ranges were nothing to brag about, yet, taking it all in all, even they were ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... river. The tench would bite like fun on a morning like this. There were plenty of big worms, too, in the old watering-pot, tough as worms should be after a good scouring in a heap of wet moss. Just another five minutes and he'd get up, and when he met Adela at breakfast he could brag about what a good one he was at early rising, and show her all ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... grandchildren," she told him, "I'm going to brag that I was the very first girl in all the world ever to be ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... arranged that it costs much less thought, effort, and worry to "get about" in Manhattan than in Middlesex. In saying this I may perhaps offend American susceptibilities. There is nothing we moderns are more apt to brag of than the nervous overstrain of our life. But sincerity comes before courtesy, and I must gently but firmly decline to allow New York a monopoly of neurasthenia, or of the conditions ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... of so much crowing; Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is better," went on a third, and each man had his remark upon Colleton's seeming timidity. Scorn and indignation were in all faces around him; and Forrester, at length awakened from his stupor by the tide of fierce comment setting in upon his ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... now, you hear human people swell and brag and strut round about how they are different from the animals and have something they call a soul that the animals haven't got, but that's just the natural conceit of this electricity or something before it has found out much about itself. Not different from ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... justly celebrated. He thinks this one has been even more so that any of the others. He wishes he was back here at Blue Ruin, where a man can go out doors for half an hour without getting ostracized by the elements. He says they brag a good deal on their ozone there, but he allows that it can be overdone. He states that when the ozone in Dakota is feeling pretty well and humping itself and curling up sheet-iron roofs and blowing trains of the track, a man has to tie a clothes-line to himself, with ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... can live up three pair of stairs. "Is there," says the enthusiastic for the first time in her life, "so delightful a sight in the world as the four honors in one's own hand, unless it be the three natural aces at brag?" Can comedy be finer than this? Has not every person some Matthews and James in their acquaintance—one all passion, and the other all indifference and vapid self-complacency? James, the good-natured fellow, with passions and without ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... money—two for the show—three to make ready—and four for to GO!" Another silence. "By jingo, Bill Hammersley, you've beat me! Ha, ha! That WAS a jump! What say?" Silence once more. "You say you can do even better than that? Now, Bill, don't brag. Oh! you say you've often jumped farther? Oh! you say that was up in Scotland, where you had a spring-board? Oho! All right; let's see how far you can jump when you really try. There! Heels on the walk again. That's right; swing ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... expect they will hear much about it," Chris said. "You may be sure the Boers will not say much; they make a big brag over every success, but they won't care to publish such a thing as this. Probably their papers will only say: 'An explosion of a trifling nature occurred on the Portuguese side of Komati-poort. Some barrels of powder exploded; it is unknown whether ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... fail, though, to give him an abridged recital of it, loaded with comments and reflections. He was more his own master than on the preceding day, having had time to recover himself, we cherishing hopes that the Marechal would be sent to the right about. It was here that I heard of the brag of the Marechal de Villeroy concerning the struggle he had had with Dubois, and of the challenges and insults he had uttered with a confidence which rendered his ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... proportions of a revolution. The unparalleled prosperity of the States caused the Americans—never backward in blowing their own trumpet—to assume an attitude of overweening confidence in themselves, and to brag offensively of what they considered to be their duty to mankind, namely, to convert all the world—by force if necessary—to republican principles. Such was the commencement of the great crisis in ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... 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 ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... want to brag, but you wont find a soul in Surrey to come here and live as I have lived. You will have to take a Paddy; the Paddies are spreading, the old housekeeping race is going. Hepsey and I are the last of the ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... rely on, And tis said that your Ancestors vanquished the Lion; Allowed—But I'm told, that at present your race[B] In Kamstchatka but fills a subordinate place." Here a great dog observ'd—"Don't think me romantic, Yet my Parents were born beyond the Atlantic; But to brag of descent is not in my plan; For merit more sterling I'm valu'd by man: Through the journey of life, I his footsteps attend, By night I'm his guardian, by day I'm his friend; My pastime's to dive in the River or Sea, For the ...
— The Council of Dogs • William Roscoe
... in the Shetlands, says a news agency, has never heard of Mr. LLOYD GEORGE. We have no wish to brag, but we have often seen his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... everybody else. When Cellini goes out and kills a man before breakfast, he absolves himself by showing that the man richly deserved his fate. The braggart and bully are really cowards at the last. A man who is wholly brave would not think to brag of it. He would be as brave in his calm moments as in moments of frenzy—take old John Brown, for instance. But when Cellini had a job on hand he first worked himself into a torrent of righteous wrath. He poses as the injured one, the victim of double, deep-dyed conspiracies, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 an Earl. . ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... will not thee profane with impious shag, Nor poison thee with nigger-head and twist, Nor with Kentucky, though the planters brag That it hath virtues ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... squealer!" said Red Hannigan. "I heard you brag about being Barlow's stool, and I heard everything else you bragged about to Joe Ellison's girl. I'd bump you off right now if I had my gat with me and if I had any chance at a get-away. But I'll be looking after you, and the gang will be looking after you, till you die—the same ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... 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
... glad you feel that way," said Whitwell, with a little apparent surprise. "I don't want to meddle, any; but I know what Cynthy is—I no need to brag her up—and I don't feel so over and above certain 't I know what he is. He's a good deal of a mixture, if you want to know how he strikes me. I don't mean I don't like him; I do; the fellow's got a way with him that makes me ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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
... they brag mightily on thur genteelity. I reckon you're about right thur—them, storekeepers air stuck-up enough ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... And, alas! we too frequently allow to escape from us some expression of that satisfaction which one rival tradesman has in the downfall of another. "Here you are with all your boasting," is what we say. "You were going to whip all creation the other day; and it has come to this! Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better. Pray remember that, if ever you find yourselves on your legs again." That little advice about the two dogs is very well, and was not altogether inapplicable. But this is not the time in which it should be given. Putting aside slight asperities, we will ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... alone with his brother, Charles dropped his egotistic brag and dramatic bluster, and touched craftily upon the dare-devil, boyish life they had led together. He was shrewd enough to see and understand that this was his most ingratiating role, and he played it "to the limit," as Bertha would ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... think you are of much account with all your brag. Reckons he could lick you in a ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... made worse. Gallus Vibius so much bent his mind to find out the essence and motions of madness, that, in the end, he himself went out of his wits, and to such a degree, that he could never after recover his judgment, and might brag that he was become a fool by too much wisdom. Some there are who through fear anticipate the hangman; and there was the man, whose eyes being unbound to have his pardon read to him, was found stark ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters; though but a moment's consideration will teach, that however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... was his life, what was the life of any man, of a million of men, compared with defeat? At that moment he would have flung himself into the fire to secure victory for his side. I do not wish to make him out an exceptional hero, and he was not a fellow to brag, but it is certain that at that crisis he felt no fear whatever, no more than when having got hold of the ball in a football match at Harton, ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... whispering to one another that I am not small of stature; but when you come to Giant Town you will see greater folk still. So do not brag too much of your own powers, for the Giant folk will not put up with the boasting of such insignificant little ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... of boys could get Tip to go off with them, in swimming, or hunting, or simply running races. He was known through the whole town, and beloved for his many endearing qualities of heart. As to his mind, it was perhaps not much to brag of, and he certainly had some defects of character. He was incurably lazy, and his laziness grew upon him as he grew older, till hardly anything but the sight of a gun or a bone would move him. He lost his interest in politics, and, though there ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... Sandy was less than half an hour, I watched him one day when he didn't know who I was—so I figured him for a man and a half and raised him a dollar a day. He doesn't know it, however. If he did, he'd brag about it, and I'd have to pay as much to men half as good. When he's chopped for us twenty years, fire him and give him that. He's earned it. Thus endeth the first lesson, my son. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... a quick saying with the Spaniards, Artes inter haeredes non dividi. {25b} Yet these have inherited their fathers' lying, and they brag of it. He is a narrow-minded man that affects a triumph in any glorious study; but to triumph in a lie, and a lie themselves have forged, is frontless. Folly often goes beyond her bounds; but Impudence ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... sink low within his breast. 'Wherever the money came from, whose property it may have been or be, it has been used; and now your only safety is in making the best use of it. A little daring, a little audacity—it is that which ruins men. When you sit down to play brag, you must brag it out, or ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... his noble grace And grant him a place Endlesse to dwell, With the deuyll of hell, For and he were there We nede neuer feere, Of the fendys blake; For I vndertake He wolde so brag and crake, That he wolde then make The deuyls to quake, To shudder ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... evacuation, took over all the equipment and installations the 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
... youth aforesaid! our Cornhill Magazine owners strive to provide thee with facts as well as fiction; and though it does not become them to brag of their Ordinary, at least they invite thee to a table where thou shalt sit in good company. That story of the "Fox"* was written by one of the gallant seamen who sought for poor Franklin under the awful ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... true story in your life, but you always want the truth to start with, don't you? I'm to give you the truth, and let you do what you want with it, is that the idea? No dice, Mr. Shandor. And you even have the gall to brag about it!" ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... their bond." And my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling napping. Here I had found a man not made from dust; one who had no narrow boasts of birthplace or country, one who, if he bragged at all, would brag of his whole round globe against the Martians and the inhabitants of ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... to have a splendid future. I don't think I told you about Mr. Tan Horn's conversation with me at Montreal he said "we are a great deal too quiet in Canada; we don't puff ourselves enough or make enough of our advantages and our doings. Why, we live next door to fifty millions of liars and we must brag or ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... before-hand what such a Doctor would prescribe, and hence it is they have nick-named some Physicians of no mean practice, by the Medicines they frequently use, which names in respect to the persons, I shall conceal; and of such Physicians, they brag they can prescribe as well as they. But if a Physician advise things unknown to them, or out of the common tract, then they say the Doctor intends to ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... Englishmen has to serve once more. The 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 keeping ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... beefsteak. Fish is better. Get a lover to eat, rouse up his appetites, and, to the same extent, you lessen his affections. Hot suppers keep down the sensibilities; and, gran'pa, after ours, to-night, you shall have the fiddle. If I don't make her speak to you to-night, my name's Brag, and you need never again ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... patronizing way to get us to give up our home and go into apartments, selling up and letting apartments themselves! Them! They hadn't a tenth of the fight in them my little colonial mother had, for all their big bosoms and tall brag about their independence and the fine offers they had when they were single. Some of the men too were in misfortune after a while. Some disaster sent up a big wave which washed them off their little rafts. I used to wonder what became of ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... 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 am ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... mind, made Phoebe almost more animated and brilliant than usual. Her eyes shone with the anxiety and excitement of the crisis, and a little, too, with the glory and delight of success; for though Clarence Copperhead was not very much to brag of in his own person, he still had been the object before her for some time back, and she had got him. And yet Phoebe was not mercenary, though she was not "in love" with her heavy lover in the ordinary sense of the word. She went towards him now, and stood near him, looking at him with a smile. ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the generation which loves to follow the trail with Allan Quatermain, and to ride with a Splendid Spur, does it call at all for the humours of the days of the Regency? Do those who have laughed over "The Wrong Box," ever laugh over Jack Brag? Do the students of Mr. Rudyard Kipling know anything of "Gilbert Gurney?" Somebody started the theory some time ago, that this was not a laughter-loving generation, that it lacked high spirits. It has been maintained that if a writer appeared now, with ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... blacksmith's shop that uster be; the fringe of alder and buckeye by the crossing below your house—p'ints where they kin fetch you without a show. Thar's two ways o' meetin' them thar. One way ez to pull up and trust to luck and brag. The other way is to whip up and yell, and send the whole six kiting by ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... His opponent, with brag, bluster, pomposity, cheap wit, and insincerity, served him as a magnificent foil. Never again were wind and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... sense, Cadaverous, of corpses and of tombs Predestined; while,—like monsters in the glooms,— Bristling with battle, shadowy and immense, The Nations rise in wild apocalypse.— Where now the boast Earth makes of civilization? Its brag of Christianity?—In vain We seek to see them in the dread eclipse Of hell and horror, all the devastation Of Death triumphant ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... "You'll never need to steal a horse. The man that knows what you know never need be poor like me. I know who you are now; you're not one of these tourists. You're the boro Romany rye [the tall gypsy gentleman]. And go your way, and brag about it in your house,—and well you may,—that Old Moll of the Roads couldn't take you in, and that you found her out. Never another rye but you will ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... this empty, tinkling symbol of a man. She wrote him a kind letter enclosing the money. It takes but little imagination to understand what such a creature would do with the cash; that he would hasten to celebrate the success of his cunning by a revel at which he could brag to some loose companion how neatly he had cheated a generous and noble woman. But he did something more, almost inconceivable in its baseness; he took that letter to the Queen's Proctor and showed it to that archive of centuried ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... to come and hunt near Petra, and brag about it afterward; after you have well discounted the lies they made their sculptors tell on huge stone monoliths when they got back home, they remain a pretty peppery line of potentates. But for imagination, self-esteem, ambition, gall, and picturesque depravity they were children—mere ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy |
