"Pompous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... triumphal blue, th' riotous day, Her silvern galley beats the black flood white, Whilst the long sillage hoards some close delight Of incense, flutes, and stir of silk array. From forth the pompous poop, her royal sway, Near where the mystic hawk stands poised for flight, The Queen, erect, stares out, flushed, exquisite, Like some great golden ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... migrate into your mind. The fine star-dust and nebulous blur in Orion, "the portentous year of Mizar and Alcor," must come down and be dealt with in your household thought. What if you shall come to discern that the play and playground of all this pompous history are radiations from yourself, and that the sun borrows his beams? What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... with too; but if she had, such was the greatness of her Grief, that sure she would have soon grown Blind with weeping. In short, after a great many soft Vows, and Promises of an inviolable Faith, they parted with a pompous sort of pleasing Woe; their Concern was of such a mixture of Joy and Sadness, as the Weather seems, when it both rains and shines. And now the last, the very last Adieu's was over, for the Farewels of Lovers hardly ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... damp their spirits; and as for their bodies—they were used to it! In the afternoon Mackenzie assembled the whole tribe, and made them the following speech, which was translated by English Chief in a very pompous manner, for that excellent red-skin was fully alive to the dignity ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... Windy McPherson. For years he had wondered why some sensible solid person like Valmore or Wildman did not rise, and in a matter-of-fact way tell the world that no such thing as the Civil War had ever been fought, that it was merely a figment in the minds of pompous old men demanding unearned glory of their fellows. Now hurrying along the street with burning cheeks, he decided that after all there must have been such a war. He had had the same feeling about birthplaces and there could be no ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... strewed, Doffed by that peer, and scattered far and wide; And I a pious knight and courteous viewed Those arms collecting upon every side, Who, in the guise of trophy, to a tree Fastened that fair and pompous panoply. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... faces, came and bore away the body, no longer like the form of the father she had loved. He had gone from her forever. Pompous funeral rites, little in accordance with the crash that soon succeeded them, were superintended by Marien, who, in the absence of near relatives, took charge of everything. He seemed to be deeply affected, and behaved with all possible kindness and consideration to Jacqueline, who could ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... You see he was a sceptical young man, and his kinsmen dead and gone had passed certainly, in his imaginations of them, into no other world, save, perhaps, into some stiffer, slower, sleepier, and more pompous phase of ceremony—the last degree of court etiquette—as they lay there in the great, low-pitched, grand-ducal vault, in their coffins, dusted once a year for All Souls' Day, when the court officials descended thither, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... not completed till 1447, under Domenico Diedo. The right wing was altered in 1481, and further damaging alterations were made in 1664 by Vincenzo Bembo, who was so proud of his work that he put up a pompous inscription. There are numerous coats of arms of podestas and busts on the facade, the earliest of which is dated 1432. Under the portico were the "bocche del leone" for secret denunciations, and, though the masks are gone, the chests ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... could mimic anyone from the young Italian at "Correlli's" to pompous Mrs. Belmont Nevill, who owned millions that she didn't know how to use. So now she had brought Miss Peabody before her guardian so vividly that the latter added, in surprise, "That must be a recent accomplishment, Lucy. You never did ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... she said, so loudly that a man in the next box leaned over, and then as "Siegfried's Trauermarsch" sounded, the coffin was carried in pompous procession from the building. There was a brief conflict between the ushers and a lot of women over the flowers on the stage, and every one, babbling and relieved, went out into the daylight.... The widows waited ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... religion, because he cannot refute them. He speaks with the utmost gravity of the fine arts, the fashions, and even matters the most trivial, and he turns into ridicule the most sacred subjects. In the midst of his own circle of fops and silly women, he utters his shallow conceits with all the pompous assurance of ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... man of good understanding and talents, with the advantage of a liberal education. Though somewhat pompous, he was an entertaining companion; and his literary performances have no inconsiderable share of merit. He was a friendly and very hospitable man. Both he and his wife (who has been celebrated for her beauty), though upon the stage for many years, maintained an uniform decency of character; ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... Pastorals, corrupt himself with foreign manners; for if he hath once vitiated the healthful habit, as I may say, of Expression, which Bucolicks necessarily require, 'tis impossible he should be fit for that task. Yet let him not affect pompous or dazling Expressions, for such belong to Epicks, or Tragedians. Let his words sometimes tast of the Country, not that I mean, of which Volusius's Annals, upon which Catullus hath made that biting Epigram, are full; for though the ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... the imaginary paradise of blessings and privileges to which baptism is to introduce the millions of our infants? Why should the holy Lord God, our Saviour, be represented as mocking his church by promises of mysterious, pompous nothings?" ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... greeted the regiment held the happy mean between theatrical gush and a sermon. It was adorned with pompous imagery, and contained numerous eulogiums of the reigning family. "Christian humility" and "God's assistance" played a great part therein, and it dealt rude thrusts at those who waged war in secret upon the sup-porters of throne and altar. The acidulated vituperative voice of the major ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... with faded frescoes on their plastered walls and with dim, echoing arcades. And so into the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele—there is no more charming little square in Italy—with its fountain and its two stone giants and the pompous statue of an incredibly ugly King astride a prancing horse and a monument to Peace set up by Napoleon to commemorate a treaty which was the cause of many wars. At the back of the piazza, like the back-drop on a stage, rises a towering sugar-loaf mound, thrown up, so ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... neither read nor write, was seized with a nervous fever, during which, according to the asseverations of all the priests and monks of the neighborhood, she became 'possessed,' and, as it appeared, by a very learned devil. She continued incessantly talking Latin, Greek and Hebrew in very pompous tones, and with most distinct enunciation. Sheets full of her ravings were taken down from her own mouth, and were found to consist of sentences coherent and intelligible each for itself but with little ...
— The Trained Memory • Warren Hilton
... were the first time I told you they were,' he said, and opened a despatch given him by his porter, a tall, black, elderly negro with gray hair. I pushed my way in and asked him, in my most dulcet tone, if I could get an upper berth to New Orleans. I called him 'Captain', thinking him a pompous old fellow. He was just beginning to speak to someone else, but I caught him and he looked across the crowd and said 'New Orleans!' My heart sank at the tone, and he went on talking to some other man. 'I told you that I would give you a lower berth, sir, I can give you ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... was very anxious to see more of the war for myself than is possible at a soup-kitchen, and I asked at the British Mission if I might be given permission to go into the British lines. Major —— in giving me a flat refusal, was a little pompous and important I thought, and he said it was impossible to get near ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... dance was over, the Marshal asked for an encore on the War Dance. Joe gave a very realistic performance that time. Once he came quite near the foreign warrior, brandishing his tomahawk and chanting. A pompous newspaper man decided to be a hero and pushed in between Joe and Marshal Foch. The General gave the self-appointed protector one look, and he was edged outside the circle and told to stay there, while Joe went ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... to visit the Continent at an early age, "these lapwings, that go from under the wing of their dam with the shell on their heads, run wild." They hasten southwards, where in Italy they view the "proud majesty of pompous ceremonies, wherewith the hearts of children and fools are easily taken."[202] To the persuasive power of the Jesuits Hall devotes several pages, and makes an impassioned plea to the authorities to prevent Englishmen ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... down on the window seat and leaned throbbing temples against the cool glass. She had been on her feet since five that morning, doing everybody's bidding, scolded and hurried by a nervous matron. Mrs. Lippett, behind the scenes, did not always maintain that calm and pompous dignity with which she faced an audience of Trustees and lady visitors. Jerusha gazed out across a broad stretch of frozen lawn, beyond the tall iron paling that marked the confines of the asylum, down undulating ridges sprinkled with country estates, to the spires of ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... with the storming of Kalat er-rum, a fortress on the Upper Euphrates in the neighbourhood of Bireh, the possession of which was important both for the defence of Northern Syria and for attacks on Armenia and Asia Minor. In spite of many pompous declarations that this was only the beginning of greater conquests in Asia Minor and Irak, he retired as soon as the Ilkhan Kaikhatu sent a strong detachment of troops against him. Later on he threatened the Prince of Armenia-Minor with war, and obliged him to hand over ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... murdered not only that accuser, but all future accusation; and not only defeated, but totally vitiated and reversed all the ends for which this country, to its eternal and indelible dishonor, had sent out a pompous embassy of justice to the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... longer than they saw fit." * When the War of 1812 began, these backwoods troops were pitted against British regulars who were powerfully supported by Indian allies. The officers of these untrained American troops were, like Hull, pompous, broken-down, political incapables; while to the men themselves may fairly be applied Amos Kendall's disgusted characterization of a Kentucky muster: "The soldiers are under no more restraint than a herd of swine. Reasoning, remonstrating, threatening, and ridiculing their ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... "sacrilege," especially when he was the loser thereby, was the unpardonable sin itself in the eyes of Thorold, as he hoped it might be in the eyes of St. Peter. Joyfully therefore he joined his friend Ivo Taillebois; when, "with his usual pompous verbosity," saith Peter of Blois, writing on this very matter, he asked him to join ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... Montrose, and wrote to the newspapers; but all in vain. The tragedy could not be performed. That the stage lost much it would be rash to assert. "Alasco" was published, and those who read it—they were not many—found it certainly harmless; but not less certainly pompous and wearisome. However, that Shee was furnished with a legitimate grievance was generally agreed, although in "Blackwood's Magazine," then very intense in its Toryism, it was hinted that the dramatist, his religion and ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... you in here at a good salary and let you keep on with this March Hare job? Not, of course, in precisely its present form but along the same general lines. We could make a paying proposition out of that paper, I am sure of it. It would need a good deal of improving," continued the great man in a pompous, patronizing tone, "but there is an idea there that could be developed into something worth while, unless ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... were at breakfast, when the servant entered, as usual, with the letter-bag. Mr. Beaufort, who was always important and pompous in the small ceremonials of life, unlocked the precious deposit with slow dignity, drew forth the newspapers, which he threw on the table, and which the gentlemen of the party eagerly seized; then, diving out one by one, jerked first a letter to Camilla, next a letter to ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... thou trust, And pompous rites in domes august? See mouldering stones and metal's rust Belie the vaunt, That man can bless one pile of dust ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... before a pompous individual with an extra large moustache and a double allowance of gold lace on his cap and charged not only with defrauding the revenue, but with forcibly resisting an officer in the execution of his duty. ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... idolatrously-minded might not find their paths. And since the pulling down of those churches wanted neither this happy intent not happy event, I must say that the bitter invectives given forth against it, by some who carry a favourable eye to the pompous bravery of the Romish whore, and have deformed too much of that which was by them reformed, are to be detested by all such as wish the eternal exile of idolatrous monuments out of the Lord's land, yet let these Momus-like spirits ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... children. I believe that will be all I shall have to say, except that Lady Glencora,—the Duchess, I mean,—wishes that Adelaide should be married from our house. If this be so I shall, of course, hope to have the honour of giving my cousin away." The Duke was by no means a pompous man, and probably there was no man in England of so high rank who thought so little of his rank. But he was stiff and somewhat ungainly, and the task which he was called upon to execute had been very disagreeable to him. He bowed when he had finished his speech, and ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... cook — ah, he could cook! I believe that he would have made a palatable dish of those gaiters of his heroic grandfather which he was so fond of talking about. Then he was a good-tempered little man, and merry as a monkey, whilst his pompous, vainglorious talk was a source of infinite amusement to us; and what is more, he never bore malice. Of course, his being so pronounced a coward was a great drawback to him, but now that we knew his weakness we could more or less guard against it. So, after warning ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... for his trepidation as he waited for the front door to open, and Hunt seemed to him aggressively large and pompous, and he would have preferred an assumption on the part of the servant that he knew the relative positions of the library and drawing-room. But Hunt was resolved on explanation, and as they went up-stairs he pointed out the room where Lady Seeley died, and ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... sufficiently modest to admit that he knew nothing of foreign countries and he might have suspended judgment about them; but the mere fact that he had travelled filled him with a deep conviction that he knew all about the places he had visited, and this conviction, enunciated with pompous emphasis, supplanted the real knowledge and understanding derived from honest observation. Like so many people who do not possess the faculty of experiencing, he continually appealed to his own experience and continually ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... receiving what they could not oppose, were offended at the Presumption of being wiser than they: [3] They could not raise their little Ideas above the Consideration of him, in those Circumstances familiar to them, or conceive that he who appear'd not more Terrible or Pompous, should have any thing more Exalted than themselves; he in that Place therefore would not longer ineffectually exert a Power which was incapable of conquering the Prepossession of their ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... cloud, and cloud assumes the stability of land. For, after all, the only really tangible thing we possess is man's Will; and let the presence and action of that be withdrawn but for a few moments, and that mysterious Something which we vainly endeavor to push off into the Void by our pompous nothings of brick and plaster and stone closes down upon us with the descending sky, writing Delendum on all behind us, Unknown on all before. At that time, the only actual Now, that stands between these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... well his gold and silver nose Would never win another." Thus the sky Darkened above Uraniborg, and those Who dwelt within it, till one evil day, One seeming happy day, when Tycho marked The seven-hundredth star upon his chart, Two pompous officers from Walchendorp, The chancellor, knocked at Tycho's eastern gate. "We are sent," they said, "to see and to report What use you make of these estates of yours. Your alchemy has turned more gold to lead Than Denmark can ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... healthy woman cause ever-rustling curls of foam to drift towards the beach. Also, careening on to its port quarter under a full set of bellying sails, a Turkish felucca was gliding towards Sukhum; and, as it held on its course, it put me in mind of a certain pompous engineer of the town who had been wont to inflate his fat cheeks and say: "Be quiet, you, or I will have you locked up!" This man had, for some reason or another, an extraordinary weakness for causing arrests to be made; and, exceedingly do I rejoice to think that by now the ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... command were mine, And every boast Ambition could desire, The pompous Gifts, sweet Bard, I would resign For the aft ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... man, enormously muscular, with a high head like a block, straight in front, behind and on either side; keen, shifty, pig eyes, pompous cheeks, a raw, wide mouth; slovenly dress, with a big diamond as a collar button and another on his puffy little finger. He was about forty years old, had graduated from blacksmith too lazy to ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... secured for the defence of their city. At their request, Judge Weldon accompanied them to the Executive Mansion and introduced them to the President. The spokesman of the delegation, after depicting at length and in somewhat pompous manner, the dangers that threatened the great metropolis, took occasion, in manner at once conclusive, to state that he spoke with authority, that the gentlemen represented property aggregating in value many hundreds of millions of dollars. At ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... revels, to the debauching of our prime gentry both male and female,—nor at his own cost, but on the public revenue,—and all this to do nothing but bestow the eating and drinking of excessive dainties, to set a pompous face upon the superficial actings of State, to pageant himself up and down in progress among the perpetual bowings and cringings of ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... impress their audience that they know far more about the subject than the lecturer. But worst of all is the chairman who knows absolutely nothing about the subject or about yourself. I remember one evening some pompous chairman getting up and saying: "I have great pleasure this evening in introducing to you Mr. Furniss. I know you have all heard of Mr. Furniss, and anyone connected as I am with engineering must look upon one of his great achievements with ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... You know quite well it is all for your good. You cannot be comfortable with all those sparks in you; and, indeed, I am charitably disposed to believe" (here he became very pompous) "that they are the cause of all your bad temper; so we must have them all out, every one; else we shall be reduced to the painful necessity of cutting your claws, and pulling out your eye-teeth. ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... Ellangowan family, though now a memory only, because a certain baron of that house was traditionally, reported to have caused the founder of the Hazlewood family hold his stirrup until he mounted into his saddle. In his general department he was pompous and important, affecting a specious of florid elocution, which often became ridiculous from his misarranging the triads and quaternions with which he loaded ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... mischievous peering glances of Colombina. Belviso would have sustained it had he been present. Adone, his understudy, took his place. My own share in the mummery was humble and confusing. In toga and cothurnus I had to read a pompous prologue, and did it amid shouts of "Basta! basta!" from the audience. I don't believe that I was more thankful than they were when I had done. The less I say about the rest of the evening and night the better. The people of Certaldo more than maintain the popular reputation ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... the cleargie, Baldwine archbishop of Canturburie, and Hubert who succeeded him in that se, also Hugh bishop of Lincolne, a man for his worthinesse of life highlie to be commended. Moreouer, William bishop of Elie, who though otherwise he was to be dispraised for his ambition and pompous hautinesse, yet the king vsed his seruice for a time greatlie to his profit and aduancement of the publike affaires. Also of learned men we find diuerse in these daies that flourished here in this land, as Baldwine of Deuonshire that came to the bishop of Worcester ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (6 of 12) - Richard the First • Raphael Holinshed
... obstinacy and pompous vanity were aroused. "Tink dis nigger can't shoot, eh? You-alls just watch an' Chris will show you ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... his office with the object of either intimidating or bribing him as the circumstances seemed to advise. He bragged of horsewhips and duels, but returned rather noncommittal. The next evening the Bulletin reported Jones's visit simply as an item of news, faithfully, sarcastically, and in a pompous vein. There followed no comment whatever. The next number, now eagerly purchased by every one, was more interesting because of its hints of future disclosures rather than because of its actual information. ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... contained a verbatim report of the attack on the Marmion "bloods" made by Radowitz at the dinner of the college debating society about a fortnight earlier. It was witty and damaging in the highest degree, and each man as he read it had vowed vengeance. Falloden had been especially mocked in it. Some pompous tricks of manner peculiar to Falloden in his insolent moods, had been worked into a pseudo-scientific examination of the qualities proper to a "blood," with the happiest effect. Falloden grew white as he read it. Perhaps on the morrow it would ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... set out on the famous embassy to Persia; for which the way had been paved by the success of the mission of my friend, Amedee Jaubert. This embassy was not merely one of those pompous legations such as Charlemagne, Louis XIV., and Louis XVI. received from the Empress Irene, the King of Siam, and Tippoo Saib. It was connected with ideas which Bonaparte had conceived at the very dawn of his power. It was, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... gain very much, however, by my inspection. Our visitor bore every mark of being an average commonplace British tradesman, obese, pompous, and slow. He wore rather baggy gray shepherd's check trousers, a not over-clean black frock-coat, unbuttoned in the front, and a drab waistcoat with a heavy brassy Albert chain, and a square pierced bit of metal dangling down as an ornament. A frayed top hat and a faded ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... principal actors in the day's doings the affair was an unmitigated annoyance, and even their own great and true happiness could not lighten the excessive fatigue of the pompous ceremony and of the still more pompous reception which followed it. To describe that day would be to make out a catalogue of gorgeous equipages, gorgeous costumes, gorgeous decorations. Many pages would not suffice to enumerate ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... best persons and make life serene around him by the dignity and sweetness of his behavior, could he afford to circumvent the favor of the caucus and the press, and covet relations so hollow and pompous as those of a politician? Surely nobody would be a charlatan who ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the least of them, and, worse than that, she had, in a very fury of temper, told him that he "needn't take that pompous"—yes, "pompous" had been her unpleasant word—"tone" with her, when he had inquired, more in sorrow than in anger, if this ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... in the ecclesiastical glory of an archbishop, but the face underneath, to the deep surprise and scandal of Sir Norman, was that of the fastest young roue of Charles court, after him came another pompous dignitary, in such unheard of magnificence that the unseen looker-on set him down for a prime minister, or a lord high chancellor, at the very least. The somewhat gaudy-looking gentlemen who stepped after the pious prelate and peer wore the stars and garters of foreign courts, and were evidently ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... god: while the venerable Plutarch objects to him that he carried all his thoughts beyond nature; that he wrote not to men of character but to the mob; that his style is at once obscure, licentious, tragical, pompous and mean—sometimes inflated and serious to bombast—sometimes ludicrous, even to puerility; that he makes none of his personages speak in any distinct character, so that in his scenes the son cannot be known from the father—the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... then opened the disputation with a pompous and insolent speech about "one Campion," an "unnatural man to his country, degenerated from an Englishman, an apostate in religion, a fugitive from this realm, unloyal to his prince." Campion sat with his eyes cast down, until the minister ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... the stage. Till Garrick, led on by Nature herself, introduced her school, the theatre presented a stage on which scarce a vestige of the human character as it really existed, was to be seen. But pompous monotony of speech held the highest praise, and "DECLAMATION ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... the crowd in the lobby stopped talking abruptly, then began again on an obviously changed subject. The word had gotten around, apparently. Handley, the head of the Latin Department, greeted him with a distantly polite nod. Pompous old owl; regarded himself, for some reason, as a sort of unofficial Dean of the Faculty. Probably didn't want to be seen fraternizing with controversial characters. One of the younger men, with a thin face and a mop of unruly hair, advanced to meet him as he came ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... to have meditated an expedition to Britain at the time of his pompous ovation at Puteoli, mentioned in c. xiii.; but if Julius Caesar could gain no permanent footing in this island, it was very improbable that a prince of Caligula's character would ever seriously attempt it, and we shall presently see that ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... to his horse, he cantered heavily away, not forgetting to wave a pompous farewell to Angele. De la Foret was smiling as he turned to Angele. She looked wonderingly at him, for she had felt that she must comfort him, and she looked not for this ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... came upon a pompous yet servile German who could not by any means have been mistaken for anything but the last word in restoration. I have never seen any one in my life whose appearance suggested a more complete state of rehabilitation. His frock coat was new, it had the unfailing smell of new wool freshly ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... the fireplace towards the window, patrolling with his fore-finger round the inside of his stock, then along his whiskers and the curves of his hair. He now walked to Miss Garth's work-table, opened a book which lay there and read the title aloud with pompous emphasis as if he were ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... in its flippant or pompous, becomes terrible in its malignant, expression. Thus, the headstrong young men who pushed the French Revolution of 1789 into the excesses of the Reign of Terror were well-intentioned reformers, driven into crime by the fanaticism of mental conceit. This is especially true of Robespierre and St. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... the dear old Home, in the Long Ago. Who was the fireman and engineer? Why, this great, pompous man of business, whose short note his sister has just laid down—of course, he was the ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... de Werth, and the Austrians possessed themselves of all the works which had been thrown up on the Rhine. France had been the sufferer in the contest with Spain; and the event had by no means justified the pompous expectations which had accompanied the opening of the campaign. Every place which the Swedes had held in the interior of Germany was lost; and only the principal towns in Pomerania still remained in their hands. But a single campaign raised them from this state ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... An architecture of pompous ostentation and riotous overloading of ornament, the Baroque, now took the place of the classical beauty of the Renaissance and art degraded became the slave of wealth, until the great Cardinal Albani erected his villa to serve ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... Arius to office or be cast out of his own, Arius convened punctually with his followers. As the procession was wending its way to the church, Arius suddenly felt ill and was compelled to seek privacy. The pompous procession halted, waiting his return, when the message came that his lungs and liver had passed from him, causing his death. The narrative comments: Mortem dignam blasphema et foetida mente—a death worthy such a blasphemous ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... the Emperor to be true; but he thought to himself, "I must not stop now." And the courtiers walked behind him with pompous air, gravely holding up the ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... really, in himself—if it be possible. You ought at least to get into some simple human relation with him, as you would with the youngest and most ignorant of your brothers and sisters born of the same father and mother; approaching him, not with pompous lecturing or fault-finding, still less with that abomination called condescension, but with the humble service of the elder to the younger, in whatever he may be helped by you without injury to him. Never was there a more injurious mistake than that it is the business ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... a big, burly, rough-and-ready Yorkshireman—stout, somewhat pompous, about forty, with hair wearing bald on the forehead: the personification of the successful business man. "My dear Emmie," he said, in a loud voice, with a North Country accent, "the cooks have got to live. They've got to live like the rest of us. I can never persuade you ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... money," said I. For to say the truth, I was rather pompous and important about my charitable deeds, and did not dislike playing the part of Sir Bountiful in the cottages. In this case, too, it was a kindness not to take the woman back to the hall, for she had left the sick child alone; and when I arrived at the cottage with the money ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... lofty dome Proclaims the united art of Greece and Rome. What though whole hecatombs his crew regale, And each dependant slumbers o'er his ale, While the remains, through mouths unnumber'd pass'd, Indulge the beggar and the dogs at last: Say, friend, is it benevolence of soul, Or pompous vanity, that prompts the whole? 140 These sons of sloth, who by profusion thrive, His pride inveigled from the public hive: And numbers pine in solitary woe, Who furnish'd out this phantasy of show. When silent misery assail'd his eyes, Did e'er his throbbing bosom sympathise? Or ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... river are worked out by Boas; the transformation from the hunting to the agricultural mode of life was accompanied by changes in belief and worship quite as radical. These have been carefully studied by Cushing, Stevenson and Fewkes. The pompous ceremonials of the civilized tribes of Mexico and the Cordilleras in South America, when analysed, reveal only a higher grade of the prevailing idea. Im Thurn says of the Carib: "All objects, animate and inanimate, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the hero of a comedy so called. He is a pompous country gentleman, who comes to Paris to marry Julie, daughter of Oronte (2 syl.); but Julie loves Eraste (2 syl.), and this young man plays off so many tricks, and devises so many mystifications upon M. de Pourceaugnac, that he is fain to give up his ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... proceeded to battle. He knew no fear. A thousand lives would have been a small gift had he the power to lay them on the altar of his cause. He pitted the perfection of details against the wily strategy of his own colour and the pompous superiority of the white man's tactics. On the trail care was taken to cover up or obliterate his footprints. When a fire became necessary he burned fine dry twigs so that the burning of green boughs ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... high-sounding name of 'Theory of the Earth.' Starting from a small number of facts, badly observed, connecting them by fantastic suppositions, it pretended to go back to the origin of worlds, to, as it were, play with them, and to create their history. Its arbitrary methods, its pompous language, altogether seemed to render it foreign to the other sciences, and, indeed, the professional savants for a long time cast it out of ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... such a show place! Jewellers' windows gleamed along the path with remarkable frequency. Florist shops, furriers, haberdashers, confectioners—all followed in rapid succession. The street was full of coaches. Pompous doormen in immense coats, shiny brass belts and buttons, waited in front of expensive salesrooms. Coachmen in tan boots, white tights, and blue jackets waited obsequiously for the mistresses of carriages who were shopping inside. The whole ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... is over; the pompous black pyramid at the Louvre is only a skeleton now; all the flags have been miraculously whisked away during the night, and the fine chandeliers which glittered down the Champs Elysees for full half a mile, have been consigned to their dens and darkness. Will they ever be ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pompous to behold, which was in number foure score and eight thousand men, encamped about the citie of Aleppo, and the Grand Signior himselfe was lodged within the towne, in a goodly castle, situated vpon a high mountaine: at the foote whereof runneth a goodly riuer, which ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... responded the elder, shaking his head in a pompous way. "I went to administer consolation. I'm just coming from there now. It is an awful judgment on that man: no chance for repentance, overtook by hell, as I told Mrs. Davis, in a moment! But the Lord must be praised for his justice: that ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... fallen to dusty death. Other hours she spent with Mr. Charles Stagg in the long room downstairs, or, when Mistress Stagg had customers, in the theatre itself. As in the branded schoolmaster chance had given her a teacher skilled in imparting knowledge, so in this small and pompous man, who beneath a garb of fustian hugged to himself a genuine reverence and understanding of his art, she found an instructor more able, perhaps, than had been a greater actor. In the chill and empty playhouse, upon the narrow stage where, sitting in the September sunshine, she had asked of ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... a time, but was a sort of pompous tomtit, with a short breath and a large aquiline opinion of himself. He was one of the arrogant old pie-plants whose growth was fostered by the beetle-bellied administration at home. He went back on board the City of Rome one day, ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... incapable of forming accurate conceptions of a vast, complex social organization, and of the conditions which enable it to subsist. Their talent lies in making a speech, in dashing off an editorial, in composing a pamphlet, and in drawing up reports in more or less pompous and dogmatic style; the genre admitted, a few of them who are gifted become eloquent, but that is all. Among those are the lawyers, notaries, bailiffs and former petty provincial judges and attorneys who furnish the leading actors and two-thirds of the members of the Legislative ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the obligation to partake of a lukewarm dinner in an overheated room is as imperative as it is detestable. For the rest, at Tours there is a certain Rue Royale which has pretensions to the monumental; it was constructed a hundred years ago, and the houses, all alike, have on a moderate scale a pompous eighteenth-century look. It connects the Palais de Justice, the most important secular building in the town, with the long bridge which spans the Loire—the spacious, solid bridge pronounced by Balzac, in "Le Cure de Tours," "one of the finest monuments of French architecture." ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... system; species that really have a root, a name, and pretensions hereditary or legitimately acquired. These each affect philosophy, and represent it too; they of the caste hereditary in grande tenue, they of the new men with much pompous parade of words, and all the Delphic mystics of the schools. They are none of your journeymen—your everyday spouters—in the Commons or common places. They exhibit only on state occasions, after ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... know God, but whatever else He is, I feel sure that He is not a precise stickler-god, that He is not pompous about spiritual manners, a huge, literal-minded, Proper Person, who cannot make allowances for human nature, who cannot hear what humble, rough men like these, hewing their vast desires for Him out of darkness, and out of little ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... thicken: the people in court, from Simon Crood, pompous and aloof in his new grandeur of chief magistrate, to Spizey the bellman, equally pompous in his ancient livery, were already open-mouthed with wonder at the new and startling development. But the sudden advent ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... "Pompous old ass," he muttered savagely. "He may have a worse scandal in his house now than he ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gain no audience in Paris, where the University of the Sorbonne opposed their doctrines and declared that these were contrary to all the philosophy of ancient times. The capital of France constantly proclaimed loyalty to Rome by the pompous processions which filed out of its magnificent churches and paraded the streets to awe the mob, always swayed by the violence of fanatic priests. The Huguenots did not attempt to capture a stronghold, where it was boasted that "the novices of the convents and the priests' ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... secretary always can, and sometimes does, silence his subordinate by the tacit might of his superior dignity. He says: "I do not think there is much in all that. Many errors were committed at the time you refer to which we need not now discuss." A pompous man easily sweeps away the suggestions of those beneath him. But though a minister may so deal with his subordinate, he cannot so deal with his king. The social force of admitted superiority by which he overturned his under-secretary is now not ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... of John Bull are pompous, and somewhat affected; Jonathan's feet move as nimbly as his tongue. John Bull laughs loud and long; Jonathan does not laugh, but smiles slightly. John Bull seats himself calmly to make a good dinner, as if he were bent on some great ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... voice in the tones of factitious tragedy—no need to lengthen my face artificially. It feels all of a sudden quite a yard and a half long. Polly has stopped barking: he is now calling, "Barb'ra! Barb'ra!" in father's voice, and he hits off the pompous severity of his tone with such awful accuracy, that did not my eyes assure me to the contrary, I could swear that my ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... had no charms for them; and, while her cousins had lovers, or danglers, by the dozen, Isabella found herself, to her infinite satisfaction, completely deserted and neglected, by all the starched and pompous fools that visited her uncle, during a stay of some months ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... whoso laughs this day shall weep * The next: then perish house of fume and fret! Endless its frays and forays, and its thralls * Are ne'er redeemed, while endless risks beset. How many gloried in its pomps and pride, * Till proud and pompous did all bounds forget, Then showing back of shield she made them swill[FN372] * Full draught, and claimed all her vengeance debt. For know her strokes fall swift and sure, altho' * Long bide she and forslow the course of Fate: So look ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... that it would be unbecoming on my part to tax a young lady with so mean an act as that of listening; nevertheless, each of the gentlemen in the studio thought proper to speak in so loud and indeed so pompous a voice that Miss Algernon could not avoid overhearing them. It was surely natural, then, that when Mr. Stanmore's name was brought into the colloquy she should have drawn nearer the door of the partition, ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... doctors are indeed pompous, self-sufficient, affectedly solemn, venal and unfeeling with a ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... tall gentleman, with somewhat iron features, but a fine head of gray hair; rather an imposing personage; not the least pompous though; quite a man of the world, and took a business view of ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... his pompous way, leaned back in his chair, his thumbs in his armholes, his manner that of ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... safety of the bearer, in case he had been placed sentinel at his Majesty's door, and kept his horses ready caparisoned, with a view of attending his sovereign to the field. Notwithstanding all these pompous preparations, had he been put to the proof, he would have infallibly crept out of his engagements, through some sneaking evasion, his imagination being very fertile in such saving pretences. Yet he will talk sometimes so fervently, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... political debts with free and easy cessions of American lands, Clarendon, Albemarle, and Shaftesbury were among the first and luckiest in the scramble. When the representatives of themselves and their partners arrived in Carolina in 1670, bringing with them that pompous and preposterous anachronism, the "Fundamental Constitutions," contrived by the combined wisdom of Shaftesbury and John Locke to impose a feudal government upon an immense domain of wilderness, they found the ground already occupied with a scanty and curiously mixed population, which ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... off its balance; I don't know how much, but it's off a point or two, sure; off enough to explain this mess of perplexities, anyway. These dreadful chromos which he takes for old masters; these villainous portraits—which to his frantic mind represent Rossmores; the hatchments; the pompous name of this ramshackle old crib— Rossmore Towers; and that odd assertion of his, that I was expected. How could I be expected? that is, Lord Berkeley. He knows by the papers that that person was burned ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... their way who was thought handsome, always pronounced that he was not by any means equal to James's friend. Lady Thorndale delighted to talk over James with him, and thank him for his kindness; and Lord Thorndale, rather a pompous man himself, liked his somewhat stately manners, and talked politics with him, sincerely wishing he was his neighbour at Redclyffe, and calculating how much good he would do there. Philip listened with interest to accounts ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hands with amusement, while the sweat of anguish stood on the old slave's face, and to prolong the delightful joke, he took good care not to help the miserable old man when his unaccustomed tongue came to some insuperable difficulty. When, at length, the negro had finished the pompous announcement, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
