"Put on airs" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... under Baxter's orders; and if Rounders chose to think that what was good enough for me was not good enough for him, he must go his own way and suffer accordingly. In fortune and in station I was so immeasurably superior to him that it nettled me a little to see him put on airs at the table to which I had invited him. But Rounders was Rounders, and I did not allow ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... helper was a young gentleman in trouble, but that the trouble, whatever it might be, involved nothing criminal or dishonest. That he was a gentleman, he was sure—his bearing and manner proved that; but he was a gentleman who did not "put on airs." Not that there was any reason why he should put on airs, but, so far as that was concerned, there was no apparent reason for the monumental conceit and condescension of some of the inflated city boarders in the village. Brown was not ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... neared the village the "boy" who preceded them began to shout the great news that the white men were coming to make whole the injured man, and the occupants of the huts, to the number of about two hundred men, women, and children, swarmed out to gaze upon the strangers. The guide, who was inclined to put on airs, upon the strength of being the bearer of the white men's muti, would fain have made the most of the occasion by pausing in the centre of the village and haranguing his fellows, but Dick nipped the intention ruthlessly ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... my pardon," Gertie went on, "you put on airs. You ask me to forgive you as if you was doing me ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... awakening it was inevitable but that literature should share. And biographies, histories, pictorials, and juveniles, in Europe and America, testify to the general consciousness. Into this last-named class the little book at the head of this notice modestly essays to enter. Had it put on airs and spread itself out into the broad-margined and large-lettered octavo, it might have stood in libraries as a worthy compeer of the ablest chronicles. Such a presentation would not have been beyond its desert, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... ever saw grass put into a flower pot,' said Miss Prissy, 'but I must say it looks as handsome as a picture. Mary, I must say,' she added, in an aside, 'I think that Madame de Frontignac is the sweetest dressing and appearing creature I ever saw; she don't dress up nor put on airs, but she seems to see in a minute how things ought to go; and if it's only a bit of grass, or leaf, or wild vine, that she puts in her hair, why, it seems to come just right. I should like to make ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... clothe the body, and, if he succeeds, his children are admitted to the intimacy of princes; but no success can open that door to the children of a man who trades in food, wherewith to sustain the body. We can none of us afford to put on airs here in America, with butchers and Dutch peasant traders only three or four generations back of our 'best families.' As for me, mother, remember my loved father was a broker. That would damn him in the eyes of some people, you know, cultured ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... they both like to be the most important people in sight, so they've started a sort of continuous performance of their own, a kind of social Coney Island, where everybody is welcome who can make noise enough and doesn't put on airs. I think it's awfully good fun myself—some of the artistic set, you know, any pretty actress that's going, and so on. This week, for instance, they have Audrey Anstell, who made such a hit last spring in 'The Winning of Winny'; and Paul Morpeth—he's painting ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... go to Grosvenors. Grandma doesn't care for them. She says he was only a pig buyer, and settled down there about the time she came here, and now they try to ape the swells and put on airs. They only come here to try to get on terms with some of the swell men. I wouldn't take him over there to please ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... you so proud about, Johnny Chuck?" he demanded, in his harsh voice, "If I didn't have a better looking coat than you've got, I wouldn't put on airs!" ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess
... I put on fine airs," said Hetty, trembling with indignation. "I did not put on airs. They wanted me to perform, and I could not do it. If I had done it Phyllis would have been the first to blame me. I remember how she scorned me for doing ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... high-born fellow-citizen whose progenitors have not worked in their shirt-sleeves for the last two generations full as much as I ought to. But grand-pere oblige; a person with a known grandfather is too distinguished to find it necessary to put on airs. The few Royal Princes I have happened to know were very easy people to get along with, and had not half the social knee-action I have often seen in the collapsed dowagers who lifted their eyebrows at me in ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... Ch'in Chung," she exclaimed, "is a relative of the Chia family, but is it likely that Jung Erh isn't, in like manner, a relative of the Chia family; and when relatives are many, there's no need to put on airs! Besides, does his conduct consist, for the most part, of anything that would make one get any face? In fact, Pao-y himself shouldn't do injury to himself by condescending to look at him. But, as things have come to this pass, give me time and I'll go to the Eastern mansion and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the blacksmith, sternly, half rising from his seat with every trace of his former weakness vanished from his hardset face; "do you mean to say that they put on airs to ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... miles from her old home; but her new master was an uncommonly hard man, and would not permit her to go and see her children. He said it would only make her worse, and his slaves should learn that they were not to put on airs and have whims. It was their business to live for him. Didn't he pay enough for them, and see that they were well fed and clothed, and what more did they want? This he called kind treatment. Very kind, indeed, not to allow a mother to go and see her own children! But when she was taken with ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... of the room. Mrs. Cameron was a handsome, well-dressed woman, with an expression that was discontented and, at times, petulant. Yet her face had a good deal of plain common sense in it, and not even the most critical of the Racicot folks could say that she "put on airs." Her husband was a small, white-haired man, with a fresh, young-looking face. He was popular in Racicot, for he mingled freely with the sailors and fishermen. Moreover, Dalveigh was an ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... only shows how a man tries to take credit for what he has n't had a finger in. Brereton, who, since he was made a general and got so thick with the governor, has put on airs enough to kill a cat, told your Sukey, as now is cook here, that 't was he went aboard the pest-ship with the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... however—I think it was just before I got into trouble with the police—I began to see that I was a conceited ass for hating the Major so much. It was absurd for me, I said, to put on airs, when the difference between him and me was just that he had been brought up in one way and I in another. I hated the things he did and said, not because they were wrong, but because they were what I ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... a great many of our leadin' citizens, had sent a Yankee postmaster to Talcottville to administer the postal affairs of the town. No sooner had this man taken possession than he began to be exclusive, suh, and to put on airs. The vehy fust air he put on was to build a fence in his office and compel our people to transact their business through a hole. This in itself was vehy gallin', suh, for up to that time the mail had always been dumped out on the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... any of Tony's pretty dresses. She didn't take them out of her trunks. She was quiet and steady. Folks respected her industry and tried to treat her as if nothing had happened. They talked, to be sure; but not like they would if she'd put on airs. She was so crushed and quiet that nobody seemed to want to humble her. She never went anywhere. All that summer she never once came to see me. At first I was hurt, but I got to feel that it was because this house ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... as pretty as a doll, but just as stiff and stuck-up," pronounced Willard sternly. "And your father's only the cashier of the bank, and just because the Everards have taken your mother up is no reason for her to put on airs and get a second girl ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... with a doleful imitation of Mrs Asplin's Irish accent. "If this isn't a lesson to you, Mariquita Saville, there's no hope left! It's most perturbing to have one's secret faults exhibited to the public gaze. It will be quite an age before I dare put on airs to Hector, after this!" ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... forests of the south and southeast are the Mountaineer Indians, as they are called by all English speaking people; or, if we wish to put on airs and assume French we may call them the Montaignais Indians. In the North are the Nascaupees, today the most primitive Indians on the North American continent. In the west ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... since he was able to snatch you from your ink-well. I know him personally very little, but I know his work by heart. What talent! and how original and polished! I think that the foreigners do better than we do. They do not pose, while we either put on airs or grovel: the Frenchman has no longer a social milieu, he has ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... "Jonesy put on airs after that. He felt he was a hard citizen. And then he had the misfortune to speak harshly to Arizona Jenkins when Old Dry Belt was in liquor. Then he got roped and dragged through the slough. He cried like a baby whilst I helped him scrape the mud off, but not because he was scared! No, sir! ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... would perhaps make you smile. But I've seen enough of you already to feel that you are inclined to be kind and neighborly, and the best way to show this will be in helping me to good, sound, practical, common-sense advice. But you mustn't put on airs, or be impatient with me. Shrewd as you are, I could show you some ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... agreeable boy." "Nor anyone else, I expect. He appears to think he can put on airs, and expects everybody to bow down to him because his father is a ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... willing that the colored man should get into the lifeboat of Christ, although those white men might be totally depraved, and if they had justice done them, according to his doctrine. would be eternally damned—and yet he has the impudence to put on airs, although he ought to be eternally damned, and go and sit by the colored man. His doctrine of religion, the color line, has not my respect. I believe in the religion of humanity, and it is far better to love our fellow-men than to love God, because we can ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... with them. There you are, shoulder-straps!—but where are your companies? where are your men? Incompetents! never tell me of chances of battle, of getting stray'd, and the like. I think this is your work, this retreat, after all. Sneak, blow, put on airs there in Willard's sumptuous parlors and bar-rooms, or anywhere—no explanation shall save you. Bull Run is your work; had you been half or one-tenth worthy your men, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... I am. Gad'rabotin, don't you put on airs with me! I'm for the tribute, so off with the bag ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the annoyances—doubtless unforeseen by Mademoiselle Querouaille on quitting France, and to which La Valliere and Montespan were not exposed in the Court of the Grand Monarque, where vice itself put on airs of grandeur and majesty. It must be owned, however, that Madame de Sevigne exaggerates when she pretends to establish a sort of equilibrium between the position of the actress and that of the Duchess. The triumphs of Nell Gwynne were triumphs of the alcove; whilst her Grace of ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... seriously. "I cannot understand why you have found it necessary to remind me that I am a millionaire on a small scale, as fortunes are measured in our country, and that I am the owner of the Guardian-Mother. You make it appear as though I regarded you as my inferior. Have I ever put on airs in my ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... noted itself eminently respectable, and put on airs; let its front and back parlors to single gentlemen or widows; and looked over its wire blinds in superb disdain at the umbrella-mender, or genteel ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... she was a good girl in every respect; but she did put on airs and ape the wealthy girls she saw. What garments she owned had been ultra-fashionable in cut, if poor in texture, when she had come to college. But fashions change so frequently nowadays that already ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... answered De Vere gruffly; "he can't put on airs with me any more; and if he goes to that party and pays any attention to Nellie Dutton, ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... throwing fits. But I don't care. I never have to be scared about falling down and busting my head. Sometimes they run around in circles trying to find a place to sit down quick, only they don't. Low-grade epilecs are disgusting, and high-grade epilecs put on airs. I'm glad I ain't an epilec. There ain't anything to them. They just talk ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... what, Morris, you have the monopoly of your line of business in this neighborhood, and so you put on airs and make people wait. I wish to goodness we could induce some other professor of odd jobs to come and settle among us," said ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... his hardest to do away with most of the old-fashioned pomp and grandeur of a royal court. As he said to Bumpo and me, if he must be a king he meant to be a thoroughly democratic one, that is a king who is chummy and friendly with his subjects and doesn't put on airs. And when he drew up the plans for the City of New Popsipetel he had no palace shown of any kind. A little cottage in a back street was all that he had provided ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... independence, the sons of the Puritans would have resented their presence. The provincial officers were, without exception, civilians. British regular officers, good, bad, or indifferent, were apt to put on airs of superiority which galled the democratic susceptibilities of the natives, who, rather than endure a standing military force imposed by the mother-country, preferred to suffer if they must, and ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... light, and, clapping the talented actor on the shoulder, said: "Glad you've come, old fellow. You and I will get along fine. The other dippies here are so dashed dignified. What I say is if a man is mad, he needn't put on airs about it." ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... purple with rage. "You don't say so! Why, who the blazes are you any way? Don't you try to put on airs with me, young feller, ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke |
