"Swagger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... swagger stick in the hand of the police officer found its target. "Shut up, you mule-stealin' baboon. Come on here! You git fifty years in jail if ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... purpose of imitating Johnson, whose general learning and power of expression I do not deny, but many of whose Ramblers are little better than a sort of pageant, where trite and obvious maxims are made to swagger in lofty and mystic language, and get some credit only because they are not easily understood. There are some of the great moralist's papers which I cannot peruse without thinking on a second-rate masquerade, where the best-known ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... one or two small parcels which apparently belonged to the girl at his side. He was a handsome man, tall and rather spare, with dark eyes and a soldierly look. His movements were quick and forceful, but a hint of what Mrs. Keith called swagger somewhat spoiled his bearing. She thought he allowed his self-confidence to be seen too plainly. The girl formed a marked contrast to him; she was short and slender, her hair and eyes were brown, while her prettiness, for ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... Dr. Keate nature had accorded a stature of only about five feet, or say five feet one; but by costume, voice, manner (including a little swagger), and character he made himself in every way the capital figure on the Eton stage, and his departure marked, I imagine, the departure of the old race of English public school masters, as the name of Dr. Busby seems to mark its introduction. In connection with his ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... a new companion, a stranger to Mr. Trumbull and every one else, whose appearance, however, led to the supposition that he might be a relative of the horse-dealer's—also "given to indulgence." His large whiskers, imposing swagger, and swing of the leg, made him a striking figure; but his suit of black, rather shabby at the edges, caused the prejudicial inference that he was not able to afford himself as much indulgence ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... are marvellously akin; and such differences as you will see in them are superficial merely. I spoke of Whistler's vanity in life, and I spoke of his timidity and reverence in art. That contradiction is itself merely superficial. Bob Acres was timid, but he was also vain. His swagger was not an empty assumption to cloak his fears; he really did regard himself as a masterful and dare-devil fellow, except when he was actually fighting. Similarly, except when he was at his work, Whistler, doubtless, really did think of himself as a brilliant effortless butterfly. The pose was, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... or newsboy, he is an adept in all the tricks of the trade; and as a fast young man about town among his kind, he is worthy his white prototype: the swagger, the impertinent look, the coarse remark, the loud laugh, are all in the best style. As a lounger and starer also, on the street corners of a Sunday afternoon, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... cobby dinner-rolls from the confectioner's, with crisp, browny crust, cut open and stuffed with butter and potted meat, and little green pieces of lettuce. They had them that way at supper at the Masons' party, and they were superb! And cakes and fruit! Do, mother, let us have a real swagger lunch ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... London house. The narrow lodgings cause you to hear and overhear. Nothing is more curious to listen to than a young child's dramatic voice. The child, being a boy, assumes a deep, strong, and ultra-masculine note, and a swagger in his walk, and gives himself the name of the tallest of his father's friends. The tone is not only manly; it is a tone of affairs, and withal careless; it is intended to suggest business, and also the possession of a ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... retains this great fund of precious "properties," this prodigious capital decoratively invested and scintillating throughout Christendom at effectively- scattered points. You see I am forced to agree after all, in spite of the sliding shutter and the profane swagger of the sacristan, that a certain pastoral majesty saved the situation, or at least made irony gape. Yet it was from a natural desire to breathe a sweeter air that I immediately afterwards undertook the interminable climb to the roof of the cathedral. This is another world of wonders, and one ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Didn't you know? Oh, there's an awfully swagger party on downstairs. They were all trooping ...
— Fanny and the Servant Problem • Jerome K. Jerome
... a feeling of triumph and began to assume a masterful air that was indeed trying to one of her disposition. Before his friends he boasted that his energetic defense of his honor had worked a marvel in his home; in her presence he made bold to take on a swagger and an authority ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... him joomp ovver my swagger-cane, an' shek hands, an' beg, an' lie dead, an' a lot o' them tricks as laadies teeaches dogs, though I doan't haud with it mysen, for it's makin' a fool o' a good dog ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... flame against maroon and purple cadences ... an instant swagger of defiance in the midst of a litany to death the all-powerful. That is ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... I triumph, that is certain!—That animal of a Jeliotte is not such a simpleton!—There are many who, if they were in my place, would swagger!" ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... therefore he was quite careless about it. And he felt as every man feels in the taut moment of such terror that his chief danger was terror itself; his only possible strength would be a coolness amounting to carelessness, a carelessness amounting almost to a suicidal swagger. His one wild chance of coming out safely would be in not too desperately desiring to be safe. There might be footholds down that awful facade, if only he could not care whether they were footholds or no. If he were foolhardy he might escape; if he were wise he would ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... son of Wulf, came down the street in the dim twilight, on foot, walking with a swagger. Out of the saddle he was seen to be short and stunted, with legs badly bowed. His breath proclaimed loudly that he had stopped at sundry wine-shops on the way. He was passing unconcernedly, when a whinny from a horse standing before a door caught ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... With the innate ability of the Spaniard to adapt himself to the customs of all foreign countries he imitated the manner of the English inhabitants of Gibraltar. He had bought himself a pipe, wore a traveling cap, turned up trousers and a swagger stick. The day on which he arrived, even before night-fall, they already knew throughout Gibraltar who he was and whither he was bound. Two days later the shopkeepers greeted him from the doors of their shops, and the idlers, gathered on ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the other with a swagger. "That's how yer paw used ter put it. Your maw warn't much good no how, with her finicky notions 'bout eddicati'n an' sech. A little pone and baken with plenty good ol' red eye's good 'nough fer us. Yer ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... they would keep secret cannot be concealed. The mask which men would wear slips aside and discloses the face beneath it. (1) Time reveals character. As the years pass along, a man generally gets to be known for what he is. For example, if a man is a coward and enlists in the army, he may swagger about and look like a real soldier, but a time will come when the spirit of the man will show itself, and he will be set down at his real value. Or a young man in an office may act dishonestly and go on perhaps for long doing so, and ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... believe it; you didn't know me that first night; you had never seen me but once before, and you couldn't have known me. How did you know me to-night? You won't answer, or if you do you'll say you knew me by my swagger. Anything to insult a woman. I'd like to be a man for a few hours just to see how they feel toward women—just how much more contempt they feel than they show. I tell you, you didn't ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... shield against an enemy so actual as to be a mere nuisance; whereas the stick is a sword against enemies so entirely imaginary as to be a pure pleasure. The stick is not merely a sword, but a court sword; it is a thing of purely ceremonial swagger. One cannot express the emotion in any way except by saying that a man feels more like a man with a stick in his hand, just as he feels more like a man with a sword at his side. But nobody ever had any swelling sentiments about an umbrella; it is a convenience, like a door scraper. An ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... of his day. We see before us the long-haired followers of Braccio and the Baglioni; their handsome savage faces; their brawny limbs clad in the particoloured hose and jackets of that period; feathered caps stuck sideways on their heads; a splendid swagger in their straddling legs. Female beauty lay outside the sphere of Signorelli's sympathy; and in the Monte Oliveto cloister he was not called upon to paint it. But none of the Italian masters felt more keenly, or more powerfully represented ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... 30,000 Neapolitan troops, said to be the finest in Europe. This, however, did not prevent them from being annihilated by 15,000 French, when General Championnet evacuated Rome. The King entered with all the swagger of an Oriental potentate. The Neapolitans followed the French to Castellana, and when the latter faced up to them they stampeded in disordered panic. Some were wounded, but few were killed, and the King, forgetting in his fright ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... me. He slid my cubby door closed behind him. He stood with his head towering close against my ceiling. His cloak was discarded. In his leather clothes, and with his clanking sword-ornament, his aspect carried the swagger of a brigand of old. He was bareheaded; the light from one of my tubes fell upon his grinning, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... been much like Christian fathers of modern days in their indulgences. The lad was now nineteen years old, and does not appear to have been willing, at the first parental attempt, to give up his military appanages and that swagger of the young officer which is so dear to the would-be military mind. Cicero tells him that if he joined the army he would find his cousin treated with greater favor than himself. Young Quintus was ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... behaved with insolence in proportion to the money they spent, or the time they had been at the university. The chief difference was that those who were less rich and less hardened than he had less spirit: that is, had less noise, nonsense and swagger. But, though the scene was not what I expected, it was new, and in a certain sense enlivening, and my flowing spirits were soon at their ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... I know your goodness? A stupid heart gone sour with jealousy, To feel its blood too dull and thick for sinning.— Yes, Huff would figure a wicked thought, but had No notion how, and flung the clay aside.— O they were gaudy colours both! But now Fear has bleacht their swagger and left them blank, Fear of a loon that cried, End ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... the grounds in much more open fashion. He was a man in the late twenties; well-set up, neatly, even sprucely, dressed; and he walked with a slight swagger. He looked very much at home and very certain of ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... Ugolone, lumbering along behind the van. If they jumped it must be almost on top of him, and in the darkness he looked as big as a house and very alarming. Even Beppo lost his swagger, and as for Beppina, she was speechless with terror. The woman continued to ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... heard all the questions and the landlord's answers, and could not even pretend that he did not hear them. "I am my cousin's clerk," said he, putting on his hat, and coming up to Mr Toogood with a swagger. "My name is Dan Stringer, and I'm Mr John Stringer's cousin. I've lived with Mr John Stringer for twelve year and more, and I'm a'most as well known in Barchester as himself. Have you anything ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... she would make some awful blunder, and that they would refuse to let us have the horse and wagon, for I knew that I could not have stood the test as she did; and then, too, these colonial horses seem to have such a good opinion of themselves, and they carry their heads with a swagger that is entirely different from the meek, downtrodden air of the Turpins, and Smilers, and Sharpers of the old country; and their names are as bumptious as themselves. Fancy a horse being named Rockefeller! ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... said the man; "if it comes to that, I've business enough. Perhaps you'll just pay me this debt," he continued, changing his fawning manner into a bullying swagger. "I've waited ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... crooked street, filled by a gay colorful throng that slackened its pace and lowered its voice before a gray, weathered old church. A beggar crouching on the steps, mouthing his whining song. A constant stream of worshipers passing in and out through the great open door: plumed cavaliers, their arrogant swagger for the nonce put off; gray pilgrims, weary and dusty, with blistered feet and splintered staves; mailed soldiers ready to march for the wars; tired-eyed crusaders home from a futile quest; a haughty ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... bold. He shrinks from nothing. Like Danton, he may cry, "l'audace! l'audace! toujours l'au-dace!" but even his audacity cannot compass this work. The Senator copies the British officer who, with boastful swagger, said that with the hilt of his sword he would cram the "stamps" down the throats of the American people, and he will meet a similar failure. He may convulse this country with a civil feud. Like the ancient madman, he may set fire to this Temple of Constitutional Liberty, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... weaving, or some ingenious mechanical toy that Oberlies had picked up in Germany. He was an older man than Yoeder, wore a short beard that was white and curly, like his hair, and though he was low in stature, his puffy red face and full blue eyes, and a certain swagger about his carriage, gave him a look of importance. He was boastful and quick-tempered, but until the war broke out in Europe nobody had ever had any trouble with him. Since then he had constantly found fault and complained,—everything was ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... a portly man, dark-complexioned, and German in appearance. There was a cunning, rather sinister expression on his face; he had small, black eyes, and a full, shaggy beard, while a pompous swagger in his bearing betrayed an arrogant disposition and ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... has he of sword or dagger, Cockt hat or ringlets of Geramb; Tho' Peers may laugh and Papists swagger, He doesn't ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the route of their advance knew them at a glance by their uniform, their Indian tan, and their jaunty swagger and gave a cheer as they passed. They touched the chord of romance in the hearts of officers, who regarded them as an archaic survival which sentiment permitted in an isolated instance in Africa, where it excellently served. And officers looked at one another and shook their ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... the shy philosopher a temperament which must have commended itself to Mr Arnold almost as strongly as his literary quality, and very closely indeed connected with that—the temperament of equity, of epieikeia, of freedom from swagger and brag and self-assertion. And here, once more, the things receive precisely their right treatment, the treatment proportioned and adjusted at once to their own value and nature and to the use ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... Paris; the smart ones, I mean. Wait now, Herbinger, you know who I mean, the fellow who's in one of the jobbers' offices; yes, of course, you must know him, he's one of the best-known men in Paris, that great big fair-haired boy who wears such swagger clothes; he always has a flower in his buttonhole and a light-coloured overcoat with a fold down the back; he goes about with that old image, takes her to all the first-nights. Very well! He gave a ball the other night, and all the smart people in Paris were there. I should have loved to go! but ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... back in the public street, deserting McLean in the presence of Cheyenne; and when Cheyenne saw this, and learned how she had been Mrs. Lusk for eight long, if intermittent, years, Cheyenne laughed loudly. Lin McLean laughed, too, and went about his business, ready to swagger at the necessary moment, and with the necessary kind of joke always ready to shield his hurt spirit. And soon, of course, the matter grew stale, seldom raked up in the Bow Leg country where Lin had been at work; so lately he had ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... had of Dan withered in the summer. When he came home for the holidays, he brought with him an unmistakable swagger and a supply of coloured neckerchiefs. On his first visit to Uplands he called Virginia "my pretty child," and said "Good day, little lady," to Betty. He carried himself like an Indian, as the Governor put it, and he was very lithe and muscular, though he did not measure up to Champe by ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... is to be paid with them, then he thinks his work shall be done. And this is the difficulty you will be under in such a case. For the common soldier when he goes to the market or alehouse will offer this money, and if it be refused, perhaps he will swagger and hector, and threaten to beat the butcher or alewife, or take the goods by force, and throw them the bad halfpence. In this and the like cases, the shopkeeper or victualler, or any other tradesman has no more to do, than to demand ten times the price of his goods, if it is to be ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... leopard are the whiskers. You cannot get a skin from a native with them on, and gay, reckless young hunters wear them stuck in their hair and swagger tremendously while the Elders shake their heads and keep a keen eye ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... middle-aged, with thin shoulders and a paunch. He carried himself with a hell-raising swagger, left over from a time twenty years gone. His skin had the waxy look of lost floridity, his tuft of white hair was coarse and thin, his eyelids hung in the off-side droop that amateur physiognomists like to associate ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... golden balls, with the swagger and general air of ownership I thought most likely to impose upon the self-satisfied female who presided over the desk, I ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... a sickly grin. There sat Unc' Billy Possum in a pine tree right over his head. He knew now that there was no backing out; he had got to go on. He tried to swagger and look very bold ...
— The Adventures of Prickly Porky • Thornton W. Burgess
... to accept these terms. He saved a small sum out of the wreck of his fortune, and with his family removed to the West, where they were obliged to adopt a very different style of living. Randolph is now an office boy at a salary of four dollars a week, and is no longer able to swagger and boast as he has done hitherto. Mr. Tomkins, Linton's father, was elected president of the Groveton Bank in place of Mr. Duncan, much to the satisfaction ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... it is, your Majesty," said ALICE in a severe tone (she was always rather fond of scolding the White Queen), "it'll never do to swagger about all over the place like that! Dignitaries have to be dignified, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... point," said Pigeon, "is that F.S. corps are 'swagger'—the correct thing. It 'ud never do to be drawn for the Militia, don't you know," he drawled, trying to render the ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... twirling his club with many intricate and artful movements, turning now and then to cast his watchful eye adown the pacific thoroughfare, the officer, with his stalwart form and slight swagger, made a fine picture of a guardian of the peace. The vicinity was one that kept early hours. Now and then you might see the lights of a cigar store or of an all-night lunch counter; but the majority of the doors belonged ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... his own wife." There is indeed the old Irish hero faring forth to battle as a lover to the love tryst! How natural, how inevitable with warriors of such absurd and magnificent susceptibility, such boyish love of swagger, how natural, I say, the free and generous emotion combined with an overmastering sense of personal honour, and a determination to win at all costs, which are so prominent in the Leinster version of ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... his scarlet-trimmed winter greens, tapped the toe of one boot with his swagger-stick. "With all respect, sir," he said, "I feel that if we do no more than hold the line, we're lending moral comfort to the foes of prosperity. Attack! That's my battle-plan, ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... Custer believed in the mailed hand, and if given the power he declared he would settle the Indian Question in America once and forever. His confidence and assumption and what Senator Dawes called swagger were not to their liking. Anyway, Custer was attracting altogether too much attention—the people followed him on Pennsylvania Avenue ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... the Austrians and the other foreigners listen to the military music in the Piazza. They are both young, our friends; they have both glossy silk hats; they have both light canes and an innocent swagger. Inconceivably mild are these youth, and in their ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... fellow, with a bold, piratical swagger, which gave an impression that he would not hesitate at the most audacious acts of atrocity which he might suppose would forward the object he happened to have in view. He put out his hand in the most ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... kindliness and courtesy that communicated itself to all with whom they came in contact. The cowboys, Beulah soon discovered, were as unlike the cowboys of fiction and of her imagination as a Manitoba steer is unlike his Alberta brother; they did not carry revolvers, nor swagger in high boots, nor rip the air with their profanity; and their table manners reminded her of George and Harry Grant, and the Grants were outstanding examples of right living in the Plainville district. And Mrs. Arthurs, gentle ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... there was a good deal of turmoil in the streets. I saw one or two pretty debates, but, remembering my new resolution to abide by law and order, I came safely past them and turned up the less-frequented street that held my inn, when at the corner, under the big lamp, a young man with something of a swagger about him, in spite of the meanness of his dress, came out from the shadow of the wall and looked me ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... not! I guess I got some brains around me," he added, inspired by Sam's presence to assume a slight swagger. "They'd have to get up pretty early to find any good ole revolaver, once I ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... hitched their horses to their wagons, and were quietly going about their business, when with a great whoop and hurrah, which frightened their horses and made them break loose from their wagons, a company of men came in sight, and with swagger and bluster, took possession of the polls, and proceeded to do the voting. Meantime whisky flowed like water, and the men, far gone in liquor, turned the place into a bedlam. In utter humiliation and disgust ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... same, yet there is no denying that you spoke to those men in a most overbearing manner. Why, you could not have been more downright had you been an officer of the Emperor himself. What passed through my mind as I listened was, 'Where did this youth get his swagger?' You ordered Kurzbold out of the ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... the bushes, forgetting the burden of his weapons and his pack of food. In truth, he swaggered a bit, but it was a gay and gallant swagger, and it became him. He walked for some distance, feeling that he had been changed from a seaman into a warrior, and then from a warrior into an explorer, which was his present character. But he did not see at present the variety and majesty that all explorers wish to find. The country continued ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in too many tests of Oak Creek whiskey, called "Pizen" by the natives. The cow-boys were picturesque enough. in their wide sombreros, woolly chaps, gay shirts, and a swagger that matched their trick of shooting. The miners were swarthy, bearded foreigners, who wore long boots, loose shirts, and belts from which ugly-looking ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... 885. proud man, highflier[obs3]; fine gentleman, fine lady. V. be proud &c. adj.; put a good face on; look one in the face; stalk abroad, perk oneself up; think no small beer of oneself; presume, swagger, strut; rear one's head, lift up one's head, hold up one's head; hold one's head high, look big, take the wall, " bear like the Turk no rival near the throne " [Pope], carry with a high hand; ride the high horse, mount on one's high horse; set ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... "I—shall have to learn to swagger," she said. "But I'm afraid I shall never do it as ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... the front garden of the Carvils. His tall shadow strode with a swagger; she turned her back on the window and waited, watching the shape, of which the footfalls seemed the most material part. The light fell on a tilted hat; a powerful shoulder, that seemed to cleave the darkness; ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... entered the room with a swagger. He made a great noise with his heavy boots and with his spurs as ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... dapper-figured man, clad in clothes of an eminently sporting cut, and of very loud pattern; he sported a bright blue necktie, a flower in his lapel, and a tall white hat, which he wore at a rakish angle. The other was a big, portly, bearded man with a Falstaffian swagger and a rakish eye, who chaffed the barmaid as he entered, and gave her a good-humoured chuck under the chin as he passed her. These two also sank into chairs which seemed to have been specially designed to meet them, and the stout man slapped the arms ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... combatants. After which he rebuked Billy Silver with a swagger-stick. Wren's share in the business he overlooked. He was by way of being a patron of Wren's, and he disliked Billy Silver, partly for his own sake and partly because he hated his brother, with whom he had come into contact once or twice during his career ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... darted out over the emptying aisles; and, even as she pinned on her velveteen poke-bonnet at a too-swagger angle, and fluffed out a few carefully provided curls across her brow, she kept watch and with obvious subterfuge slid into her little unlined silk coat with a deliberation not ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... he called him a "jester," while Mr. Edmunds, by a ready pun, as aptly described the other side of him by declaring that the Senator from Massachusetts probably meant a "sug-gester." Retaining the dragoon swagger, which he had acquired at West Point, a jovial nature, indifferent to the decorum of public life, he seemed to have been tossed into the Senate, where other people had with difficulty found their way by hard climbing or ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... the revolted slaves was to get as far away from their late masters as possible. In spite of their fatigue, they rowed hard until daybreak. At first there was some difficulty with the European riff-raff. These wanted to swagger about on deck and bully the Indians; but neither Hernando nor his two English friends would hear of it. They had chosen the able-bodied sailors from amongst the rowers, and placed them on deck to attend to helm and sails. All not wanted for this ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... gazed at her fearfully. For the first time in the eight years since his marriage he was encountering the girl again. But a girl no longer. Her figure was slim as ever—or perhaps not quite, for a certain boyish swagger, a sort of insolent adolescence, had gone the way of the first blooming of her cheeks. But she was beautiful; dignity was there now, and the charming lines of a fortuitous nine-and-twenty; and she sat in the car with such perfect ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... put so much impetuosity, so much daring to the square inch, into any day before. He lounged back a little in his chair, put his hands in his pockets and tried to feel swaggering and at ease. Madame Beattie, he knew, wouldn't object to swagger. And if it would help him dramatically, so much the better. "Madame Beattie," he repeated, "I've a proposition to make to you. I thought of it within the ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... perceived one of the beeldars, or officers of the caliph's household, pass by him. "That would be a nice office," thought Yussuf, "and the caliph does not count his people like the cadi. It requires but an impudent swagger, and you are taken upon your own representation." Accordingly, nowise disheartened, and determined to earn his six dirhems, he returned home, squeezed his waist into as narrow a compass as he could, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... their marks at various points. Several crows are walking about a newly sowed wheat-field we pass through, and we pause to note their graceful movements and glossy coats. I have seen no bird walk the ground with just the same air the crow does. It is not exactly pride; there is no strut or swagger in it, though perhaps just a little condescension; it is the contented, complaisant, and self-possessed gait of a lord over his domains. All these acres are mine, he says, and all these crops; men plow and sow for me, and I stay here or go there, and find life sweet ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... up, Puncto reverso, bristling towards the eye; He that can hang two handsome tools at his side, Go in disguis'd attire, wear iron enough, Is held a tall man and a soldier. He that with greatest grace can swear Gog's-zounds, Or in a tavern make a drunken fray, Can cheat at dice, swagger in bawdy-houses, Wear velvet on his face, and with a grace Can face it out with,—As I am a soldier! He that can clap his sword upon the board, He's a brave man—and such ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... I'm egotistical and ostentatious. Oh, very! Disgustingly vain, in fact. If I were unconscious of it, I'd be unbearable, but—it amuses me as much as it amuses others, and that takes the curse off of it. I am delighted at some of my own antics. I love to swagger and I adore an audience, but to be laughed at by others would kill me. Ridicule! Scorn! I'm insensible to ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... hand, and yet with an imbecile attempt at a swagger, that he knocked at his new friend's door in Pall Mall when the appointed hour arrived. Mr Bailey quickly answered to the summons. He was not proud and was kindly disposed to take notice of Jonas; but Jonas had ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... with the world for an honest world, in which nations keep their word; for a world in which nations do not live by swagger or by threat; for a world in which men think of the ways in which they can conquer the common cruelties of nature instead of inventing more horrible cruelties to inflict upon the spirit and body of man; for a world in which the ambition or the philosophy of ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... ill And be dumb, And let every varlet undo us? Shall we doubt Of each lout That doth come, With a voice Like the noise Of a drum, And a sword or a buff-coat, to us? Shall we lose our estates By plunder and rates, To bedeck those proud upstarts that swagger? Rather fight for your meat Which those locusts do eat, Now every man's ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... a matter of fact, that's just a bit of useful swank. The names we're trading under are swagger names and we ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... my darlints," said Dan, as he entered the kitchen with a swagger, and laid his hat and riding-whip on the dresser, at the same time seating himself on the edge of a small table that stood near the window. This seat he preferred to a chair, partly because it enabled ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... flowers of nature, they are, a simple nature at that, and never to be thought of in the same day as the gorgeous, expansive, proud flowers of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century decoration. Those splendid later blossoms flaunt their richness with assured swagger and demand of man his homage, quite forgetting it is the flower's best ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... front; tried on before the glass a narrow-brimmed hat of his son's, which appeared to fit him perfectly, and, leaving his cane in the corner where he had deposited it, he took up a small bamboo switch, cut the air with it once or twice, and walked about with that easy swagger which was one ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... from the table with a little swagger, ruffling it gaily in his triumph over me; and so young, so small he seemed, to be boasting of his manhood and his prowess in the warfare of love, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... been able to afford it Bob would not have bought expensive articles. He did not make any claim about his ability to punch cattle, and he knew instinctively that real riders would resent any attempt on his part to swagger as they did. A remark dropped by Blister ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... it was soon evident he had been taking a superfluous quantity of wine. His voice was thick, and he spoke excessively loud in order to be intelligible. There was something like a defying desperation in his tones, in the dare-devil swagger of his movement, and the almost iron pressure of his grasp upon my fingers. I subdued my own passions—nay, they were subdued—singularly so, by the resolution I had made before his entrance, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... but a bumpkin fowl, He sleeps in his nest till morn; But my blessing upon the jolly owl, That all night blows his horn. Then up with your cup till you stagger in speech, And match me this catch till you swagger and screech, And drink till you wink, my merry men each; For, though hours be late and weather be foul, We'll drink to the health of the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... if I choose to go over to China, or to live in India, I should like to know who is to prevent me? This is the very thing above all others for me. I'll go off to the room where they are all assembled, and ask them why they want to disinherit me. I'll just swagger like Danjuro [91] the actor, and frighten them into giving me fifty or seventy ounces of silver to get rid of me, and put the money in my purse, and be off to Kioto or Osaka, where I'll set up a tea-house on my own account; and enjoy myself to my ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... man entered the room with a face much flushed, and with more than his usual mixture of jovial brusquerie and opulent swagger. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wishing some one else to stand first in the breach, leaving them time for drill, equipment, and preparation. One figure impressed itself very strongly on my memory. A sturdy form, a head with more than ordinary marks of intelligence, but a bearing with more of swagger than of self-poised courage, yet evidently a man of some importance in his own community, stood before the seat of the governor, the bright lights of the chandelier over the table lighting strongly both their figures. The officer was wrapped in a heavy blanket or carriage lap-robe, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... for me, timid ones, room, make room! Little I care for your fret and fume— I laugh at sorrow and jeer defeat; To doubt and doubters I give the lie, And fear is stilled as I swagger by, And life's a fight and I seek the fray; I am the ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... Turkish negotiators saw fit to imitate the coon and come down. Whether they would have done so had they known the weakness of Diebitch may be questioned; but again it may be questioned whether, that weakness unknown, he could not have occupied Constantinople on the swagger. His master was prepared promptly to reinforce him; Constantinople was perhaps nearer its fall in 1828 than in 1878, and certainly Diebitch was much smarter than were the Grand Duke Nicholas, his fossil Nepokoitschitsky, and his ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... up, with a sort of swagger. He wes less intoxicated than Turner, but ugly enough. He faced the ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sometimes we are inclined to droop apologetic heads, because we know that some women are sentimental, that they don't all "look at things in the large," as men invariably do. In view, however, of the record of this youthful movement of ours, we have a right rather to swagger than to apologize. ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... eyes met his without self-consciousness. He attempted a swagger. "I don't want to know everybody. How do they happen to ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... he sings has endeared the songs of Dibdin to the heart of the British sailor; and in this lies the proof of their genuineness. His songs are simple and melodious; there is a manly ring in their word and rhythm; they have the swagger and the fearlessness of the typical tar; they have, too, the beat of his true heart, his kindly waggery, his sturdy fidelity to his country and his king. There is nothing quite like them in any ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... surveying the tips of Lucien's boots (he had brought the pair from Angouleme, and was wearing them out). "My dear fellow, I strongly recommend you to put your ink on your boots to save blacking, and to take your pens for toothpicks, so that when you come away from Flicoteaux's you can swagger along this picturesque alley looking as if you had dined. Get a situation of any sort or description. Run errands for a bailiff if you have the heart, be a shopman if your back is strong enough, enlist ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... bear it no longer. Not even for you, not even for the chance of getting Christian back. It's empty swagger to say that I wish to GOD I'd the chance of giving my life to get him back for you. But you must come home now. I've bitten my lip through in holding my tongue, but I won't see you kneel another minute at the feet of that sulky ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... said you played the piano nicely; but Ethel is all for handsome men, tall, erect six-footers, with a little swing and swagger to them. She thought you small and finicky. But Ethel's rich enough to ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... a warm night in April. Bewsher dropped in upon Morton in his chambers. Very handsome he looked, too, I dare say, in his evening clothes, with an opera-coat thrown back from his shoulders. I remember well myself his grand air, with a touch of cavalry swagger about it. I've no doubt he leaned against the chimney-piece and tapped his leg with his stick. And the upshot of it was ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... with autumn outside the camp limits, and then to the end of the long street of barracks, where was a picket fence and a sentry walking to and fro, to and fro. His brows contracted for a moment. Then he walked with a sort of swagger towards the fourth building ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... "quisby"; Each crank in his bonnet has his bee. They swagger, dod rot'em!— Like loud Bully Bottom When playing the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... temper of the students is admirable. Rarely if ever do they betray any traces of the hectoring spirit which still lingers at Heidelberg, for instance. But for the display of corps-caps and cannon boots and an occasional swagger in the street, one might pass an entire semester in Leipsic without realizing that the city contains three thousand students. Undoubtedly, the young men perceive, like their colleagues of Yale, that their surroundings are too much ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... the smarter young bachelors up-stairs he smoked a cigarette. But he sneaked away. He paused at the bend in the stairs. Below him was Gertie, silver-gowned, wonderful. He wanted to go down to her. He would have given up his chance for a motor-car to be able to swagger down like an Eddie Klemm. For the Carl Ericson who sailed his ice-boat over inch-thick ice was timid now. He poked into the library, and in a nausea of discomfort he conversed with Mrs. Cowles, Mrs. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... already started for the ball-ground, but at this taunt he turned back, thrust his hands into his pockets, put on a swagger, and stammered: "No, I'm not ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... and folly. They have no notion of such a thing. They always put their best foot forward; and argue that you would do the same if you had any such wonderful talents as people say. You had better, therefore, play off the great man at once—hector, swagger, talk big, and ride the high horse over them: you may by this means extort outward respect or common civility; but you will get nothing (with low people) by forbearance and good-nature but open insult or silent contempt. Coleridge always talks to people ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... his proposed son-in-law. Mr. Crowe, fully crediting the power confided to him, did as he was bidden. He was very harsh to the poor Captain; but in such a condition a man can hardly expect that people should not be harsh to him. The Captain endeavoured to hold up his head, and to swagger, and to assume an air of pinchbeck respectability. But the attorney would not permit it. He required that the man should own himself to be penniless, a scoundrel, only anxious to be bought; and the Captain at last admitted the facts. The figure was the one ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... at his Royal Chamberlain, who dodged it with his usual cleverness, and then he said with an attempt to swagger: ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Park, where a big company of girl guides was drilling, watched by a crowd of curious on-lookers. Across a belt of grass some boy scouts were performing similar evolutions, marching with all the extra polish and swagger they could command, just to show the guides that girls were all very well in their way, but that no one with skirts could really hope to do credit to a uniform. Cecilia ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... tea and the officers like to carry their canes and swagger sticks with them "over the top" into battle. A brave, unpretending man, who likes his own ways and wishes to be allowed to follow them and who is willing to fight and die that others also may be free—such ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... Ludhurst") for the occasion, Needless to say that I was delighted when I saw the article in print, and yet more so when I received for it a couple of guineas, which I speedily expended on gloves, neckties, and a walking-stick. Here let me say that we were rather swagger young fellows at Bonaparte. We did not have to wear hideous ill-fitting uniforms like other Lyceens, but endeavoured to present a very smart appearance. Thus we made it a practice to wear gloves and to carry ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... believes in virtue, but who is virtuous? Nations have made an idol of Liberty, but what nation on the face of the earth is free? My youth is still like a blue and cloudless sky. If I set myself to obtain wealth or power, does it mean that I must make up my mind to lie, and fawn, and cringe, and swagger, and flatter, and dissemble? To consent to be the servant of others who have likewise fawned, and lied, and flattered? Must I cringe to them before I can hope to be their accomplice? Well, then, I decline. I mean to work nobly and with a single heart. I ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... as if the chaise would never cease to lung and swagger over rough, unused roads, and when at last it did mend its way, Katherine had ceased thinking and fallen fast asleep, nor did she wake during hours of travel, until the great coach came to a sudden halt. She looked through the window. Dawn streaked ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... lead, showed a tendency to swagger. She bounced and tossed. The fair lad, swaying to the motions of his horse, rode the fretting ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... 165 dragging or trailing the skirts walking without the usual strut or swagger: here it means assuming the humble manners of a slave in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... more remarks of a very personal and pungent nature the little fellow marched off with a delicious swagger and an heroical air. I at once turned to the warder and asked, "Who is that little fellow?" "The Governor!" he gasped out. "If he had only heard you!" and then followed a pantomime that implied something very dreadful. Then I marched off ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... after another, hopes in each one to find those qualities which she has elected to admire, and finally submits to be satisfied with far less than she had at first supposed could satisfy her. As for young men, they are mostly fools, and they talk of love with a vast deal of swagger and bravery, laughing it to scorn, as a landsman talks of seasickness, telling you it is nothing but an impression and a mere lack of courage, till one day the land-bred boaster puts to sea in a Channel steamer, and experiences a new sensation, and becomes a very sick man indeed before ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... a boy about fourteen years old, a muscular, sturdy chunk of a lad. He walks with his heels down, his calves bulged out behind, his head up, and the regular, proper swagger of a bandsman. He hasn't any uniform, but he's all right. He plays a solo B part, and he and the other solo cornet spell each other. On the repeat of every strain my boy rests, and rubs his lips with his forefinger, while he looks at the populace with bright, expectant eyes. When he blows, ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... her the odds of the rifle and the steed; give the man some commonplace employment to take the swagger out of him; let him come home reasonably tired and cross at night,—do you suppose he would find the 'kind' eyes and the 'smile'? I forgot to tell you that the Hunter of the Prairies is always welcomed by ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... talking in undertones among themselves, as though they were unaware of my presence. At the moment, I felt firmly persuaded that the three of them were engrossed solely with the question of whether I should merely PASS the examination or whether I should pass it WELL, and that it was only swagger which made them pretend that they did not care either way, and behave as though they ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... Edinburgh that formed the climax of his career. But no detailed knowledge of circumstances is necessary to rouse interest in a man who wrote like that. You may be offended by the self-consciousness and the swagger, or you may be charmed by the frankness and dash, but you can not remain indifferent. Burns had many moods besides those reflected in these sentences, but here we can see as vividly as in any of his poetry the fundamental characteristics of the man—sensitive, passionate, independent, and as proud ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... the Lecture Bureau may be found in a swagger Club any evening with a Bourbon H. B. at his Right, a stack of Student Lamps at his Left and Two Small Pair pressed closely against ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... Mendez had thought, declares it impossible; every one hangs back. Upon which Diego Mendez with a fine gesture comes forward and volunteers; makes his little dramatic effect and has his little ovation. Thoroughly Spanish this, significant of that mixture of vanity and bravery, of swagger and fearlessness, which is characteristic of the best in Spain. It was a desperately brave thing to venture upon, this voyage from Jamaica to Espanola in a native canoe and across a sea visited by dreadful hurricanes; and the volunteer was entitled ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young |
