"Swagger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... half-military, half-fop; and a long sword buckled round his waist, knocked against his fantastic grasshopper legs. His hair was frizzled; his countenance, a most extraordinary one; his manner, a mixture of the hero and the bully, of noble dignity and truculent swagger, as if Ancient Pistol had taken the part of Coriolanus, and had not become proficient wholly in ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... those astonishing adventures with Kipling. I may read him to-day with enjoyment, but safe from excitation. This is due, perhaps, to a stringy constitution, subject to bilious doubts, which loves to see lusty Youth cock its hat when most nervous, swagger with merry insolence to hide the uncertainty which comes of self-conscious inexperience, assume a cynical shrewdness to protect its credulity, and imitate the abandon of the hard fellow who has been to Hong Kong, Tal Tal, and Delagoa ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... 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 ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... when he found that he had to wear a sword, it stirred a boyish dream. As he passed out of the room he flung the folds across his shoulder with a gesture, his sword stood out at an angle, and he had all the swagger of a troubadour. For these disguises ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... perfect simplicity and directness and an entire absence of parade. The negro troops are marching steadily, soberly, with high seriousness of purpose, and their white leader rides beside them, drawn sword in hand, but with no military swagger, courageous, yet with a hint of melancholy, ready not only to lay down his life but to face, if need be, an ignominious death for the cause he believes to be just. And above them, laden with poppy ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... society in my juvenile estimation, during my short escapade from the middy's berth, had its charms, and I was rolling in with a tolerable swagger, when ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... avoided?" Amos asked, impatiently; for the tone in which the barber's apprentice spoke, and the swagger he had assumed, grated ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... buckles; the glinting bridles, reins and saddles; Lord Tybar's exquisitely poised figure, so perfectly maintaining and carrying up the symmetry of his horse as to suggest the horse would be disfigured, truncated, were he to dismount; his taking swagger, his ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... mortified me so much as the queen's dwarf; who being of the lowest stature that was ever in that country (for I verily think he was not full thirty feet high), became so insolent at seeing a creature so much beneath him, that he would always affect to swagger and look big as he passed by me in the queen's antechamber, while I was standing on some table talking with the lords or ladies of the court, and he seldom failed of a smart word or two upon my littleness; against which I could only revenge myself by calling him brother, challenging him to wrestle, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... himself for his shortcomings and willingness to live on a kind Government, because he had been hardly used by fate in the matter of his inheritance. As the property that might have been his was just beyond his reach, he had a small swagger of superiority in the gas office, and the tradition was well established there that he belonged to a family "land poor,"—the most genteel form of poverty if any form of poverty can be genteel. Even old farmer Samuel had tottered about the Square on his malacca stick and exchanged the time of ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... down the blinds for one day; his habit when you are out, of sitting up on his back legs and begging you with his front paws to come and do something—a trick entirely of his own invention, for no one would think of teaching him anything; his funny nautical roll when he walks, which is nearly a swagger, and gives him always the air of having just come back from some rather dashing adventure; beyond all this there is still something. And whatever it is, it is something, which every now and then compels you to bend down and catch hold of his long silky ears, to look into ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... eyes; And should his humour, and his mimic art, Bear due proportion to his outer part, As once 'twas said of Macklin in the Jew, 'This is the very Falstaff Shakspeare drew.' To you, with diffidence, he bids me say, Should you approve, you may command his stay, To lie and swagger here another day. If not, to better men he'll leave his sack, And go as ballast, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... 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 long enough." ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... them," Reuben Hawkshaw said, energetically. "They swagger as if they were the lords of the world, and hold all others as of no account beside them. If you resolve on this enterprise I shall, of course, do my utmost to avoid them; but should they try to lay hand on us, I shall be right glad to show them that we ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... they heard some one enter the house and descend the kitchen stairs. 'Arry presented himself. He threw his hat upon a chair, and came forward with a swagger to seat himself ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... daring to look for the swag he had thrown down, or the hat which had been knocked from his head. There was only one instinct or desire in his being—the instinct which drives the wounded rat back to its hole to die, the instinct of self-preservation working in its meanest range. His swagger and bluster had been hopelessly crushed out of him by the vigour of Palmer Billy's attack; and to have been, as he considered, twice deserted by his own comrades, rendered his subjugation even ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... on a swagger dress this time!' cried Mr. Tom, who, though he had never been to Oxford, was a genuine free-trader in slang, and was ready to import ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... cried. "You know I wouldn't have dreamed of taking a passage on a ship like that. She's a floating Waldorf, everyone says so. Dress and swagger society and—Oh, you idiot! I wanted quiet! I wanted ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... running speedily drew near. Most of them were out of breath, and all looked very much excited. The leader, who was quite a character in the Southern town, and a fierce appearing individual, with a military swagger, which Phil believed to be wholly assumed, immediately addressed himself to the two young Northerners on the new-fangled motor boat, which had been the wonder of the townspeople ever since it was dropped off the cars to be launched in the so-called "river" ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... should be a man of some personal courage, never shrink from a row, nor be afraid to' fight a duel. He should be able to bully, bluster, swagger and swear, as occasion may require; nay, in desperate cases, such us peaching, &c. he should not object even to assassination. He should invite large parties to dine with him frequently, and have a particular sort of wine for particular companies. He should likewise be able to swallow a tolerable ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Channel, all with a very light and engaging pen, and then spreads himself on any old far-off thing that interests him, such as the theatre, perhaps a little self-consciously and with a pleasant air of swagger most forgivable and, indeed, enjoyable. His chief preoccupation is with art and letters, it is clear; but, turning from them to the handling of urgent things and difficult men, he faces the business ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... stop indoors and write a lot of rotten letters on a jolly morning like this, when I want to go around my property and set everything and everybody to rights, and swagger about and enjoy myself! Certainly not! I'll be—I'll see you—Stop a minute, though! Why, of course, dear Badger! What is my pleasure or convenience compared with that of others! You wish it done, and ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... she dropped these words—they would have been admirable on the stage—made him reply with prompt ease: "What I meant just now was that you're not to tell him, after all my swagger, that I consider that you and I are really required to save ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... I went out in the street. I had gone about a block when a recruiting Sergeant who had followed me out of the office tapped me on the shoulder with his swagger stick and said: "Say, I can get you in the Army. We have a 'Leftenant' down at the other office who can do anything. He has just come out of the O. T. C. (Officers' Training Corps) and does not know what neutrality ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... cause to regret it thereafter, for throughout that tedious march he found his roystering companion singularly meek and kindly. Indeed he seemed a different man. His old swagger and roaring bluster disappeared; he drank less, diced less, blasphemed less, and stormed less than in the old days before the halt at Penrith; but rode, a silent, thoughtful figure, so self-contained and of so ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... I would fain see all the Poets of our time pen such another play as that was; they'll prate and swagger, and keep a stir of art and devices, when (by God's so) they are the most shallow, pitiful fellows that live upon the ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... she had the 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
... eye gleams at once. He takes a stealthy look at her, and begins to twirl his moustache nervously, with his left hand akimbo on his hip. Finally, striking the ground with his heels in something of a cavalry swagger, he strolls over to the left of the table, opposite her, and says) Louka: do you know what the ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... 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
... classifying its tenders is a good one and should be acted upon. As it is now, the justice there dispensed is so mixed and doctored that it satisfies only the vitiated taste of the roughs. The proceedings in the McFARLAND and JACKSON case show that swagger, not study—bullying, not brains, are in a fair way to become the important qualifications of a counsel. The lawyers should organize in their own defence and classify themselves. Mr. PUNCHINELLO suggests the following ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... motionless. She knew now what had happened. He had grappled with the man's will just as once he had grappled with hers. And he had conquered. She expected him to approach her with the royal swagger of victory, and involuntarily she shrank, dreading to encounter him in that mood, painfully aware of ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... Sir, 'twas from my knowledge, And shall have no protection. And to you Sir, You have shew'd more heat than wit, and from your self Have borrowed power, I never gave you here, To do these vile unmanly things: my house Is no blind street to swagger in; and my favours Not doting yet on your unknown deserts So far, that I should make you Master of my business; My credit yet stands fairer with the people Than to be tried with swords; and they that come To ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... decision the next morning. A long deferred interview with his stepfather was necessary. Having made up his mind, he entered the room in which his stepfather sat. His air was manly and his bearing that of a boy who respects himself, but there was none of the swagger which some boys think it necessary to exhibit when they wish to ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... (coachman) and kurumaya (rickshaw runner). However, since the alarming discovery that a professional burglar had, Diogenes-like, been occupying an old tub in a corner of the wide grounds, a policeman has been allowed to patrol the garden; but he has to drop that omnipotent swagger which marks his presence ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... Colebyville that morning in the new buggy, rather pleased to be the centre of observation and remark. He quite liked to swagger before these country people whom he chose otherwise to ignore. He was well dressed, his buggy was the admired of all admirers, and he was newly married. Country gossip had some pleasing qualifications. When he had arrived at Colebyville, ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... they replied "Oh, boy!" with great smacking of tongues and shaking of heads. Some one took a piece of chalk and scrawled on the side of the train, "We won the war—now we're going home," and the officers laughed and let it stay. They were all getting what swagger they could out of this ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... with themselves. The muckraker had not yet lifted his voice in the land. The millionaire was still an object of pride and emulation, Exhibit A in the display of American superiority over all creation. No foreign danger threatened, no foreign responsibility restrained the provincial swagger. In short, the United States was 'feeling ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... explanation of this phenomenon from a very wise man the other day, and, although he insisted that his attention had never been called to it before, he was willing to admit that it was so, and he explained it on the theory that so many sons of dukes and earls and lords and the swagger set in England had come to India to engage in tea growing that they had created a caste of their own; so that whenever a man said he was a tea planter the public immediately assumed that his father belonged ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... my face to the wall again; but this time not in anger. And that dogged fashion Mr. Sutherland had of taking his own way did me many a good turn. Often have I heard those bragging captains of the Hudson's Bay mercenaries swagger into the little cottage sitting-room, while I lay in bed on the other side of the thin board partition, and relate to Mr. Sutherland all the incidents of ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... certainly were chiefly of that nature that it required a most resolute and unbounded— an absolute Christianly-simple faith to believe them: and since the majority of Klaus's auditors were not excessively that way disposed, the accounts of the boy were held for so much downright swagger; and the poor ghost-seer acquired, to the no small vexation of his parent, the unenviable nickname of Mike's Lying Klaus. It was very singular, however, and could not fail to be remarked by every reflecting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... could see him swagger along the sand and step out around the fallen logs. The nearer he came the bigger his horns looked; each palm was like an enormous silver fish-fork with twenty prongs. Then he went out of my sight for a minute as he passed around a little bay in the southwest corner, getting nearer and nearer ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... the negative. To the Royalist view of the points in dispute Milton opposes the Independent view. A refutation, which follows each step of an adverse book, is necessarily devoid of originality. But Milton is worse than tedious; his reply is in a tone of rude railing and insolent swagger, which would have been always unbecoming, but which at this moment was ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... a 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. ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... on, and had got some distance from the main road, when he saw that which brought him to a sudden stop—a man approaching from the opposite direction. In the dim light, the figure was as yet barely discernible, but there was a certain something in its gait—the confidential swagger of the policeman—which caught the practised eye of Zorillo, involuntarily drawing from him ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... stepped out of the doorway to the sidewalk. He was a big fellow, with something of the slouch and swagger that are to be observed in the ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... place of voting, on the prairie, and 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 many of the squatters went home. Caleb May did not get ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... know!" Barton exclaimed, returning to his customary swagger. It was quite enough that the matter was generally talked about, and he had said nothing to settle it, in either way. But his manner, more than his words, convinced Gilbert that there was no betrothal as yet, and that the vanity ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... thought the other Gracchus, this supposed His brother Mucius; so they praised and prosed. Our tuneful race the selfsame madness goads: My friend writes elegies, and I write odes: O how we puff each other! "'Tis divine; The Muses had a hand in every line." Remark our swagger as we pass the dome Built to receive the future bards of Rome; Then follow us and listen what we say, How each by turns awards and takes the bay. Like Samnite fencers, with elaborate art We hit in tierce ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... the light to the man's face. It was black. A surprised hum—a faint hum that sounded like the suppressed mutter of the word "Nigger"—ran along the deck and escaped out into the night. The nigger seemed not to hear. He balanced himself where he stood in a swagger that marked time. After a moment he said calmly:—"My name ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... only real culture in Germany. I have been at pains to examine the literature of the German Synagogue, which if Germanism were Judiasm, ought to show a double dose of original sin. But so far from finding any swagger of a Chosen People, whether Jewish or German, I find in its most popular work—Lazarus's "Soziale Ethik im Judentum"—published as late as November, 1913, by the League of German Jews—a grave indictment of ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... trumpet-blasts and the angry murmurs of the defeated heathen. Threatening fists were shaken in the air, while behind the carceres the drivers and owners of the red party scolded, squabbled and stormed; and Hippias, who by his audacious swagger had given away the race to their hated foe—to the Blues, the Christians—narrowly escaped being torn ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... time his benighted mind would swagger him into droll ideas of attempting to chastise his Imperial prisoner, at another, his childish fear of the consequences of his chastisement was pathetic, and when one droll farce after another broke down, he shielded himself with manifestations ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... so much, as the queen's dwarf, who being of the lowest stature that ever in that country (for I verily think he was not full thirty feet high) became so insolent at seeing a creature so much beneath him, that he would always affect to swagger, and look big, as he passed by me in the queen's ante-chamber, while I was standing on some table, talking with the lords or ladies of the court, and he seldom failed of a smart word or two upon my littleness; against which I could only revenge myself, by calling him ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... the lessons in the midst of which his childhood had been passed. He had at his tongue's tip all the slang of the stables and all the blackguardisms of the betting-ring; and boy—almost child—as he was, he affected the swagger and habits of a "fast man," like a ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... limited sense of the word. Nor is it difficult to observe in 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 which their critic is intending to make of them. ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... from his sitting-room balcony to the one below. And my emeralds were not in the japanned box after all; and just as he had assured himself of the fact, the folding-doors opened "as it might be these," and there stood Dan Levy "in a suit of swagger silk pyjamas." ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... stood near the entrance to their shack watching the eddying currents of almost naked humanity they saw Pud-Pud detach himself from his companions and swagger toward ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... merriment, and indeed an irresponsible gaiety was a salient characteristic of the man. One would have called him handsome, though his mouth was a trifle slack, and there was a certain assurance in his manner that just fell short of swagger. He was the kind of man one likes at first sight, but for all that not the kind his hard-bitten neighbours would have chosen to stand by them through the strain of drought and ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... wi' ratlin tow, Begins to jow an' croon; Some swagger hame, the best they dow, Some wait the afternoon. At slaps the billies halt a blink, Till lasses strip their shoon: Wi' faith an' hope, an' love an' drink, They're a' in famous tune ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... wonderful eye for details," said Bailey: "I spotted that new boat-hook at once. The other nigger is a funny little chap. He never used to swagger with the ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... composed, the poet had just returned to his native county after the triumphant season in 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, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... would be his right-hand man, as the Judge playfully called him. To himself Tommy promised that it would not be his own fault if he did not measure up to the Judge's estimate of what a right hand man should be. Bet was amused to notice the slight swagger that Tommy assumed as he took his place beside his friend in the car. She exchanged a smile of ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... Age without him. And this was not due to wholly superficial things like his dandyism, his dark, sinister good looks and a great deal of the mere polished melodrama that he wrote. There was something in his all-round interests; in the variety of things he tried; in his half-aristocratic swagger as poet and politician, that made him in some ways a real touchstone of the time. It is noticeable about him that he is always turning up everywhere and that he brings other people out, generally in a ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... don't you get out of a fellow's way?" snapped Herbert, supporting the machine and glaring round at Phil. He bore little resemblance to the usual dapper, immaculate, self-possessed young fellow from the city whose tailored clothes and swagger manners had aroused the envy and admiration of a ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... dentist on the boat, Marcus's gorge rose within him at McTeague's boasting swagger. When McTeague had slapped him on the back, Marcus had retired to some little distance while he recovered his breath, and glared at the dentist fiercely as he strode up and down, glorying in the admiring ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... billicock hat, brown breeches, and gaiters nearly up to his knees. I don't know that a young man in the country could wear more suitable attire. And he was a well-made man, just such a one as, in this dress, would take the eye of a country girl. There was a little bit of dash about him, just a touch of swagger, which better breeding might have prevented. But it was not enough to make him odious to an unprejudiced observer. I could fancy that an old lady from London, with an eye in her head for manly symmetry, would have liked to look at Larry, and would ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... them haul up to the Adams Street curb. His heart was tired of tall buildings and the endless grimace of windows. Here was a chariot out of another world. Motor vagabonds. Scooting into a city with a swagger to their dust-caked ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... to their post, Mr. George strides through the streets with a massive kind of swagger and a grave- enough face. It is eight o'clock now, and the day is fast drawing in. He stops hard by Waterloo Bridge and reads a playbill, decides to go to Astley's Theatre. Being there, is much delighted with the horses and the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... to gather from them what their words might mean. They, deep in their conversation, did not notice her. Then, with a feeling of extraordinary relief—she hardly knew why—she saw a familiar, substantial person coming along the promenade with a sort of friendly swagger. She went forward to meet him, still feeling as though she were walking ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... half-dozen of natives who stood upon the deck, gazing in wonder at all they saw, "here's for you;" and he handed them a tray of broken biscuit and a can of water. Then thrusting his hands into his pockets, he walked up and down the deck with an enormous swagger, whistling vociferously. ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... it, and some of his accustomed swagger began to return. "I don't know what the flowery phrases are all about, but the symbols refer to common proteins, lipins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and biomins," he said. "What is this, ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... 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, ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... occasion, when they might erect Hornes on a tradesman's noddle, or neglect The violation of a virgin's bed With promise to requite her maiden-head. Basely low-minded we esteeme that man Who cannot swagger well, or (if he can) Who doth not with implacable desire, Follow revenge with a consuming fire. Extortious rascals, when they are alone, Bethinke how closely they have pick'd each bone, Nay, with a frolicke humour, they will brag, How blancke ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... 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 hard ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... w' rattlin tow, Begins to jow an' croon; Some swagger hame the best they dow, Some wait the afternoon, At slaps the billies halt a blink, Till lasses strip their shoon; Wi' faith an' hope, an' love an' drink, They're a' in famous tune For ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... Dick, chuckling with delight at being completely understood. "I couldn't resist one little bit of sheer swagger. It's a French trick, and you wouldn't understand; but it's got at by slewing round the head a trifle, and a tiny, tiny foreshortening of one side of the face from the angle of the chin to the top of the left ear. That, and deepening the shadow under the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... was for the moment the leader of the House. Though he has still some of the ingenuous shyness of youth—though he is modest with all his honours—though he has charmed everybody by the utter absence of swagger and side in his dazzling elevation—there is a ready adaptability about Mr. Asquith to a Parliamentary situation, which is as astonishing as it is rare in men who have spent their lives in the atmosphere of the law courts. The aptitude with which the right word always comes to his lips—his ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... rose with a swagger and a rustle of his silk gown, and proceeded to set forth the theory of the defense. He said he did not purpose to call any witnesses. The hypothesis of the prosecution was so inherently childish and inconsequential, and so dependent upon ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... turned across Hyde 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 paused to ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... the praise bestowed upon him and gave his shoulders a swagger. "Speakin' of that, boss," he said, "reminds me of a chap who rode into Cabin Gulch a few weeks ago. Braced right into Beard's place, where we was all playin' faro, an' he asks for Jack Kells. Right off we all thought he was a guy who had a grievance, an' some of us was for pluggin' ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... countenance, sat under the shade of a neighbouring tree smoking a pipe of that excessive shortness and blackness that seems to be peculiarly beloved by Irishmen in the humbler ranks of life. The man was very, tall and broad-shouldered, and carried himself with a free-and-easy swagger, as he rose and approached ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... down at 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 ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... as twenty-one buttons—and, mind you, not sham, buttons, as I used to think, out of swagger; but every button demanded entrance into a practicable button hole. Or the boots themselves were mere shoes with many buttoned spats drawn over them. All the boots had high heels and the woman walked so as to put a severe strain on her arched instep ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... ends; engage the whole estate, And force your spouse to sign it: you shall have Three or four thousand more to roar and swagger, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... "This swagger about killing birds is mere cant," sez this wobbling old wag. From Arran he'd tramp to Dunrobin without the least chance of a bag! "Peaceful hills," that's his patter, my pippin; no gillies, no luncheons, no game! Wy, he ought to be tossed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... stage-doors of our minor theatres in the daytime? You will rarely pass one of these entrances without seeing a group of three or four men conversing on the pavement, with an indescribable public-house-parlour swagger, and a kind of conscious air, peculiar to people of this description. They always seem to think they are exhibiting; the lamps are ever before them. That young fellow in the faded brown coat, and very full light green trousers, pulls down the wristbands of ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... wished to be discreet—to take care not to swagger because they were gentlefolk. I felt them willing to recognise this as something of a drawback, at the same time that I guessed at an underlying sense—their consolation in adversity—that they HAD their points. They certainly had; but these advantages ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... years. His mother, who kept a large and prosperous boarding-house, regarded Tip as being one of the manliest fellows in the world. She abetted his idleness by supplying him with too much money. Tip dressed well, though a bit loudly, and walked with a swagger. He was in a fair way to go through life without becoming anything ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... flew in every direction as thirty or more horses raced across it, and the usual retinue of foot runners raised an ecstatic yell as Mrs. Pat forged ahead and sent her big horse over the fence at the end of the field in a style that happily combined swagger ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... odors. The old hero, with his lewdness and rhodomontade, is excused from the stage. We have had enough of him. Even Cyrano de Bergerac is so out of keeping with the new notion of the heroic, that the translator of the drama must apologize for his hero's swagger. We love his worth, though despising his theatrical air and acts. We are done with the actor, and want the man. And this new hero is proof of a new life in the soul, and, therefore, more welcome than the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... braying began. "If you love Swagger Literature, put your telephone on to Bruggles, the Greatest Author of all Time. The Greatest Thinker of all Time. Teaches you Morals up to your Scalp! The very image of Socrates, except the back of his head, which is like Shakspeare. He has six toes, dresses in red, and never cleans ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... interest among all classes of the French as the great chartist demonstration has done. For days and days it was a leading topic in the newspapers, and for days the general subject of conversation. Both newspapers and talkers, relying on the big swagger of the Chartists, and the undisguised alarm of the government, confidently expected a stern and terrible straggle, with barricades, and bayonets, and pikes, and deluges of blood, and awful slaughter. To this expectation many added the hope of seeing a complete ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... is a house, s.c. a thieves' lodging-house; "spellken," a play-house; "high toby-spice" is robbery on horseback, as distinguished from "spice," i.e. footpad robbery; to "flash the muzzle" is to show off the face, to swagger openly; "blowing" or "blowen" is a doxy or trull; and "nutty" is, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... party. He was delighted at the change of duty, because, as Norvin discovered, it brought him to the side of Lucrezia Ferara. Thus it happened that Martel had reason to regret the choice of his bodyguard, for on the very first visit Ippolito began to strut and swagger before the girl and allowed the secret to escape him, whereupon it ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... other and battled. The eye is a more potent weapon than the rapier. The shallow, shifty ones of the gunman fell before the deep, steady ones of the Arizonan. "Slim" Jim, with a touch of swagger to save his face, stepped into the cab and sat down. Clay followed ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... the next evening, with the very swagger young lady who stood beside her mother, receiving, ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... one-storied building, reading the ancient London papers that are lying about. Professional guides, arrayed in picturesque Buffalo Bill outfits, with spurs and hunting-knives and slouch hats, are among those present, and amateur sportsmen in crisp khaki and sun helmets and new puttees swagger back and forth to the bar. There is no denying the fact that there is considerable drinking in Nairobi. There was as much before we got there as there was after we got there, however. After the arrival of the European steamer at Mombasa ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... is "quisby"; Each crank in his bonnet has his bee. They swagger, dod rot'em!— Like loud Bully Bottom When playing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... had fought bravely on the field of battle, was a sportsman and had about him that frank and abundant gaiete de coeur, which powerfully attracts the less exuberant Englishman. For his part CASANUOVA (that was his name) bore all his successes with good-nature and without swagger. Of course there were whispers about him. Where so many women worshipped, it was certain that two or three would lose their heads. Amongst this limited number was little Mrs. MILLETT, one of Lady CALLENDER's most intimate friends. She made ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... course. Chauffeurs do not swagger through the world dressing for dinner each night and distributing gold in their leisure moments. But Smith's bump of inquisitiveness was well developed, as the phrenologists say, and he was already impressed by the fact that no firm could afford to ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... expand, bloat, puff up, tumefy, intumesce; increase, augment; heave, surge; protuberate; strut, swagger. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... 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 name ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... 'em fitted; I'll buy me a swagger-cane; They'll let me free o' the barricks to walk on the Hoe again In the name o' William Parsons, that used to be Edward Clay, An' — any pore beggar that wants it can draw my fourpence ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... you'd think I swagger, I should say—than anybody! If you leave your place there, where shall you ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... into each other's arms, with a cry of "Camille!" "Armand!" Or if a man enters the greenroom with his hat on, and a half-dozen people call, "Do you take this for an ale-house, that you can enter with such a swagger?" and the hat comes off with a laughing apology. Or if the man with the cane is everlastingly practising "carte and tierce" on somebody, or doing a broadsword fight with any one who has an umbrella. If a woman passes with her eyes cast down, reading a letter, and some ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... off. Presently a great uproar was heard; and it was found that he had gone below, and had eaten up all the servants' dinner; so they all joined together to punish him, and after some trouble, contrived to kick him out of the house; and very foolish he looked, in spite of his tipsy swagger. ...
— The Dogs' Dinner Party • Unknown
... of sword or dagger, Cockt hat or ringlets of Geramb; Tho' Peers may laugh and Papists swagger, He doesn't care one ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... bolts, amid shouts from his men of "The young gaffer! We'll all stick to him!" And in spite of his youth, George was at once installed as captain of the little Fairburn band. He had always been highly popular with the men of the colliery; they liked his entire freedom from vain show and swagger, and his pleasant-spoken manner. ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... through a crack in the hut, I saw the messengers arrive, and they were great truculent-looking fellows. There were four of them, and evidently they had travelled night and day. They entered with a swagger and squatted down ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... at the effect throughout Europe if an English milord were to be found with a parcel of Orsini bombs in his possession! every ragamuffin from Naples to St. Petersburg would rejoice; the army of cutthroats would march with a new swagger." ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... 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 ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... shred of rusty hair hanging from the left side of her head, and one little tuft just above and a little forward of her right ear, has her underjaw wired on one side where it had worked loose, small bone of left forearm gone—lost in a fight has a kind of swagger in her gait and a 'gallus' way of going with: her arms akimbo and her nostrils in the air has been pretty free and easy, and is all damaged and battered up till she looks like a queensware crate in ruins—maybe you ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... seems to have the power of making point take the place of weight. Yet, oddly enough, there is an occasional air of masculine loose-jointedness about her movements, a half-defiant sort of slouch and swagger which would probably carry much farther in her Old World than in our easier-moving New World, where disdain of decorum can not be regarded as quite such ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... waves. This fundamental affection for the things of which 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 ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... she sat there smiling, while the clumsy dragoons came rattling up, beaming at my red riding-breeches, and all saluting the Countess with a cheerful yet respectful swagger that touched me deeply as I noted the lines of hunger in their ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... He would contrast these two pictures of Empire. Perhaps, then, he would realise that the true secret of the strength of the modern British Empire lay neither in militarism nor Imperialism, neither in swagger nor bounce nor boasting nor pride, but in the gradual development of that amazing policy of generosity and goodwill which is best typified in the ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... crisis one day when Maxwell was informed that some one was waiting to see him in the parlor. The visitor was dressed in very pronounced clothes, and carried himself with a self-assertive swagger. Maxwell had seen him in Bascom's office, and knew who was waiting for him long before he reached the parlor, by the odor of patchouli which penetrated ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... the rustler, and the outlaw spurred their ponies on eastward when the valley of the San Pedro was too hot for them and took refuge here among their kind. On occasion the bolder ones among them ventured back to show themselves on Tombstone's streets or swagger into Charleston's dance-halls; but never for long and never unless they were ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... Cunningham could not understand a word of what the fakir said, but the pantomime was obvious. His was the voice and the manner of the professional beggar who has no more need to whine but still would ingratiate. It was the bullying, brazen swagger and the voice that traffics in filth and impudence instead of wit; and, in payment for his evening bellyful he was pouring out abuse of Cunningham that grew viler and yet viler as Cunningham came nearer ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... of sympathy or concern, he takes fire in an instant; swears that he is the richest and stoutest fellow in the country; talks of laying out large sums to adorn his house or buy another estate; and with a valiant swagger and grasping of his cudgel longs exceedingly to have ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... himself and smiled. Rapidly he subdued his rebelliously shaking nerves, so that by the time he reached the tenanted portion of the palace he had gained control of himself. He walked with chin high and something of a swagger. To the banquet hall he went, knowing that his chiefs awaited him there and as he entered they arose and upon the faces of many were incredulity and amaze, for they had not thought to see O-Tar the jeddak again after ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... told him that there would be no contest of the will, and still less any opposition on the part of the objectionable relative, Brown. When the wagon which contained his personal effects and the few articles of furniture necessary for his occupancy of the cabin arrived, the exaggerated swagger which his companions had put on in their passage through the settlement gave way to a pastoral indolence, equally half real, half affected. Lying on their backs under a buckeye, they permitted Rice to voice the general sentiment. "There's a suthin' soothin' and dreamy ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte |
