"Swaggering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Vice, he commonly acted the part of a broad, rampant jester and buffoon, full of mad pranks and mischief-making, liberally dashed with a sort of tumultuous, swaggering fun. He was arrayed in fantastic garb, with something of drollery in its appearance, so as to aid the comic effect of his action, and armed with a dagger of lath, perhaps as symbolical that his use of weapons was but to the end of provoking his own ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... tandem, and at that moment was seized with a violent fit of sneezing—(sternutatory paroxysm he called it)—at the conclusion of which I was a mile down the Woodstock Road. He had seen me in pink, as we used to call it, swaggering in the open sunshine across a grass-plat in the court; but spied out opportunely a servitor, one Todhunter by name, who was going to morning chapel with his shoestring untied, and forthwith sprung towards that ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... well, which was nearly dry, and then volunteered to lead us to others; and away he went, swaggering along and clicking his tongue in great glee, occasionally breaking out into shrieks of laughter. When we arrived at one dry rock-hole and then another, it dawned upon me what the secret joke had been that so amused our friend; and I ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... employ for his clerical talents had addled his brain. He had a gift for chess and mechanical invention, and in the early days had saved himself from starvation by the sale of some ingenious patents to a swaggering co-religionist who owned race-horses and a music-hall, but he sank into squaring the circle and inventing perpetual motion. He lived now on the casual crumbs of indigent neighbors, for the charitable organizations ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... man-nature to be mewed up as she does us," said Angel, swaggering, "and, I don't know what you mean to do, Mary Ellen, but we mean to take a day off, so there!" He nodded his curly ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... it is that we should only carry a beggarly little dirk," said Bob Roberts to himself, as he tried to look sneeringly at the young ensign before him; for the latter came across the deck with rather a swaggering stride, and stood before ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... had opened suddenly, and a young fellow came swaggering in with the air of one who is the master. He was a handsome, dashing young man of about the same age and build as McMurdo himself. Under his broad-brimmed black felt hat, which he had not troubled to remove, a ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... business with him, and either very little penetration or a furious deal of prejudice, might almost have been taken in. To me, after my first two interviews, he was as plain as print; I saw him to be perfectly selfish, with a perfect innocency in the same; and I would hearken to his swaggering talk (of arms, and "an old soldier," and "a poor Highland gentleman," and "the strength of my country and my friends") as I might to the babbling of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we are remarking on them now, and he is holding his head as high as if he had sought and won a queen. He is right; she will prove a sensible, cheerful wife to him. Bourhope will have the cleverest, best wife in the county, for all your swaggering. And that is something, when a man comes to be old and has an old wife like me. Not old, Balquin? away with you. I wish the Provost heard you. Do you think to flatter me because I am in spirits about my cousin's match? No, it is ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... like me. If Gerald had died and I had lost him that way, I know quite well I shouldn't be feeling as I do now. I should have been broken-hearted, but it wouldn't have been the same. It's my pride that is hurt. I have always been a bossy, cocksure little creature, swaggering about the world like an English sparrow; and now I'm paying for it! Oh, Ginger, I'm paying for it! I wonder if running away is going to do me any good at all. Perhaps, if Mr. Faucitt has some real hard work for me ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... last paper when the two approached him. He did not understand their object until Tim, swaggering up to him, said offensively, "You'd better clear out; ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... school-house of my boyhood. The fourth of those spectre desks measuring back from the stove, was where Tim and I sat day after day together, with heads bowed over open books and eyes aslant. That was not the same Tim who had passed me a while before, swaggering and singing in the joy of his conquest; that was not the same Tim who had stood before me that very afternoon in all the pomp of well-cut clothes, drawing on his whitened hands a pair of woman's gloves; that was not the same Tim who by his artful lies had won what ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... beautiful sight to see little Vicky swaggering out to meet his enemy, while the townsfolk flocked to the walls to witness the fight. Never was such a valiant weaver till the elephant, descrying its tiny antagonist, trumpeted fiercely, and charged right at him, and then, alas! all the little man's courage disappeared, and forgetting ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... scarcely-organized government, to make it a kind of rendezvous, where they might dispose of their ill-gotten spoils, and concert new depredations. Crews of these desperadoes, the runagates of every country and clime, might be seen swaggering, in open day, about the streets of the little burgh; elbowing its quiet Mynheers; trafficking away their rich outlandish plunder, at half price, to the wary merchant, and then squandering their gains in taverns; drinking, gambling, singing, swearing, shouting, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... testify with sorrow and with tears. He weighed eleven pounds. He kept himself in training; and, where others lived for love or wealth or art, Ash-Can Sam existed for a finish fight alone. At the present speaking he came swaggering around a corner, and paused in astonishment at the sight of a stranger sitting in the middle of the street. The insolence of it! ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... Muse of chivalrous men! the sacred quest, the doughty deeds, the battery of low churls, the fearsome ride and grewsome perils of the Flower of Simpson's Bar! Alack! she is dainty, this Muse! She will have none of this bucking brute and swaggering, ragged rider, and I must fain follow him in ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... [His son-in-law, Hon. John Collier.] I have worked hard for a dignity which will enable me to put down his aristocratic swaggering. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... be no difficulty there," said Chandos. "Pardieu! a roistering, swaggering dare-devil archer is worth his price on the French border. There are two hundred such who march behind my own person, and I would ask nothing better than to see you ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... de France! Never!" retorted Miraudin with an air of swaggering audacity, "All women are ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... "Those swaggering Englishmen will keep coming on. They are too stupid to turn back. The eternal sameness of it all will so distress us we shall awake one morning, find them at our bedsides, give a kick, and die from sheer ennui. They'll use our ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... greater dishonour to be no Ciceronian than no Christian, as if Cicero, if he should now come to life again, would not speak of Christian things in other words than in his time he spoke of his own religion!... What is the sense of this hateful swaggering with the name Ciceronian? I will tell you briefly, in your ear. With that pearl-powder they cover the paganism that is dearer to them than the glory of Christ.' To Erasmus Cicero's style is by no means the ideal one. He prefers something more solid, succinct, vigorous, less polished, ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... crowd, Where merry comrades boasting loud Each named with pride his favourite lass, And in her honour drain'd his glass; Upon my elbows I would lean, With easy quiet view the scene, Nor give my tongue the rein until Each swaggering blade had talked his fill. Then smiling I my beard would stroke, The while, with brimming glass, I spoke; "Each to his taste!—but to my mind, Where in the country will you find, A maid, as my dear Gretchen fair, Who with my sister can compare?" Cling! Clang! so rang the jovial ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... points to the way for which one is seeking. All at once my little boy, who had been playing in the field, called out, "Oh, look at the Gobble-gobble,"—the name by which he called the male-turkey. The cock, his great tail spread, his throat swelling, was swaggering across the field, making an immense amount of noisy disturbance. A group of females and young birds, many of them almost full grown, were near to where we were sitting; they had been rooting about in the ground getting their food. Their fear at the approach of the strutting male was manifest. ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... to Gilbert and Ninian, then to John Marsh and his father and to the boy in Stephen's Green who had been told to dig a trench, but thought that he was digging his grave ... and then, inconsequently, he saw in his imagination the ridiculous figure of a looter whom he had seen in Sackville Street, swaggering up and down, clothed in evening dress, and carrying a lady's sunshade. He had a panama hat on his head, and was wearing very thick-soled brown boots ... and loosely tied about his waist were ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... An' ay he gies the tozie drab The tither skelpin' kiss, While she held up her greedy gab Just like an aumous dish. Ilk smack still, did crack still, Just like a cadger's whip, Then staggering and swaggering He roar'd ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... opportunities of noticing the general amenity which exists in the intercourse even of the poorest classes. The only really rude people we saw, were travelling traders, especially those from the capital, who thought to add to their importance by a little swaggering. ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... the winter comes at length, With swaggering gait and giant strength, And with his strong arms in a trice Binds up the streams in chains of ice, What need I sigh for pleasures gone, The twilight eve, the rosy dawn? My heart is changed as much as they— 'Tis winter ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... a cluster of kyas and rondavels, shaped in a half-moon, with a flat space between the houses, where grew a big merula tree. All around was a medley of little fires, with men squatted beside them. Here and there a party had finished their meal, and were swaggering about with a great shouting. The mob into which I had fallen was of this sort, and I saw others within the confines of the camp. But around the merula tree there was a gathering of chiefs, if I could judge by the comparative quiet and dignity of the men, who ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... he been an old man in a humble station of life, instead of a proud and swaggering officer, I should not have minded so much. But, as it was, I could not, and would not, brook ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Judge Ware's visit had passed through the Four Peaks country like the rumor of an Indian uprising and every man rode into Hidden Water with an eye out for calico, some with a foolish grin, some downcast and reserved, some swaggering in the natural pride of the lady's man. But a becoming modesty had kept Lucy Ware indoors, and Kitty had limited herself to a furtive survey of the scene from behind what was left of Sallie Winship's lace curtains. With the ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... came forward, hands in his pockets, self-possessed, even a little swaggering, and his pale face and bold eyes showed the gravity of the situation and ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... was sitting one morning, surrounded by country people, some asking his advice, some his assistance, others making their grievances known. Amongst the rest was a farmer rather advanced in life, a swaggering sort of fellow, who was desirous to carry his point by impressing the Liberator with the idea of his peculiar honesty and respectability. He was anxious that O'Connell should decide a matter in dispute between him and a neighboring farmer who, he wished to insinuate, was not as good as he ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... of the door, swaggering a little. His kpi was cocked defiantly. His legs, in the cavalry boots, showed a faint bend. He unconsciously fell into a sort of indefinable, flat, stumping gait, barely noticeable to one who had never seen it before, but recognizable, instantly, ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... overwhelm Drusenin with kindness. The Russian keeps his sentinels as {91} vigilant as ever pacing before the doors of the hut; but he goes unguarded and unharmed among the native dwellings. Perhaps, poor Drusenin was not above swaggering a little, belted in the gay uniform Russian officers loved to wear, to the confounding of the poor Aleut who looked on the pistols in belt, the cutlass dangling at heel, the bright shoulder straps and colored cuffs, as insignia of a power almighty. Anyway, after Drusenin had ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... saintly Jesuit; or whether, on the other hand, he married beneath him, was thrown into gaol, was sentenced to a public whipping, was pardoned and released, and died at the age of twenty-three, full of swaggering and impenitent impudence. Was there but one James de la Cloche, a scion of the noblest of European royal lines? Did he, after professions of a holy vocation, suddenly assume the most secular of characters, jilting Poverty and Obedience for an earthly bride? ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... to the hotel; that's what I did when I had taken a good walk about the little town, and admired myself almost homesick looking at fine horses tied to hitching-posts and fine men swaggering about in the abandon of cow-boy costumes. One thing I have learned already, and the discovery shocked me a little at first; the cow-boy considers himself better clay than the farmer—the 'sod-buster' he calls him—and treats him with good-humoured ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... man-of-war's boat came alongside. I observed that all her crew were armed, and that she had a lieutenant and midshipman in her, both roughish-looking characters. They at once stepped on board with an independent, swaggering air. The lieutenant desired the captain to muster all hands. My heart sank as I heard the order. I was on the point of stowing myself away, for as I did not belong to the ship, I hoped to escape. Before I had time to do so, however, the ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... way, where all their friends are assembled—Messrs. Jones, Rapp, Manhug, &c. A pot of "Hospital Medoc" is consumed by each of the thirsty candidates, and off they go, jumping Jim Crow down Union-street, and swaggering along the pavement six abreast, as they sing several extempore variations of their own upon a glee which details divers peculiarities in the economy of certain small pigs, pleasantly enlivened by grunts and whistles, and the occasional asseveration of the singers that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... genteel timidities in the conduct of his life. He loved to force his personality upon the world. He would please himself, and shine. Had he lived in the Paris of 1830, and joined his lot with the Romantics, we can conceive him writing Jehan for Jean, swaggering in Gautier's red waistcoat, and horrifying Bourgeois in a public cafe ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now it would seem as if in an august Assembly itself, traitorous Royalism, in its despair, had taken to a new course: that of cutting off Patriotism by systematic duel! Bully-swordsmen, 'Spadassins' of that party, go swaggering; or indeed they can be had for a trifle of money. 'Twelve Spadassins' were seen, by the yellow eye of Journalism, 'arriving recently out of Switzerland;' also 'a considerable number of Assassins, nombre considerable d'assassins, exercising in fencing-schools and at pistol-targets.' ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... witness, since it took place in his own office-parlour, he could not help thinking that Edgar, with his perfect temper, unfailing courtesy, calm self-respect, and steady sense of honour towards the young lady, showed himself the true gentleman in contrast with the swaggering little Major, who seemed to expect that he could bluster the young man out of his presumption, and was quite unprepared for Edgar's cool analysis of his threats. But instead of, like Tom Underwood, cooling down into moderation and kindness so soon as his bolt was ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be divided into two great classes; those who go for improvement in the sciences or the arts, and those who go for mere amusement. As a whole, the former have struck me as being singularly respectable, equally removed from an apish servility and a swaggering pretension of superiority; while, I fear, a majority of the latter have a ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... of tar and salt was something new. I saw the most wonderful figureheads, that had all been far over the ocean. I saw, besides, many old sailors, with rings in their ears, and whiskers curled in ringlets, and tarry pigtails, and their swaggering, clumsy sea-walk; and if I had seen as many kings or archbishops I could not have been ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and swaggering. But at night he tumbled and tossed upon his bed and could not sleep. ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... have forgotten some of the details which reached me; however, I have preserved the essential parts. Lord John (to whom it is all due) said very little, Lansdowne not much; Hobhouse was talkative, but nobody listened to him; Melbourne, when it was over, swaggering like any Bobadil, and talking about 'fellows being frightened at their own shadows,' and a deal of bravery when he began to breathe ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... luminous than the portrait of Sarah Purfoy, the clever, self-possessed adventuress with the single redeeming quality of an invincible love for her worthless and villainous convict-husband? or that of Frere, the swaggering, red-whiskered, coarsely good-humoured convict-driver, glorying in his knowledge of the heights and depths of criminal ingenuity and vice, and frankly ignorant of ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... correspondents and doctors glad, And the little man, unask'd to dine, Sat down and shar'd in all we had. For none said nay, this ready hand Reach'd after pillau, and fowl, and drink, And he toss'd off his liquor without a wink, And wielded a knife like a warrior's brand. With a buccaneering, swaggering look He sang his song, and he crack'd his jest, And he bullied the waiter and curs'd the cook With a ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... said in a suppressed scream, dancing up and down, 'he's after her: she've hit en!' For there appeared upon the path the figure of Anne Garland, and, hastening on at some little distance behind her, the swaggering shape of Festus. She became conscious of his approach, and moved more quickly. He moved more quickly still, and overtook her. She turned as if in answer to a call from him, and he walked on beside her, till they were out of sight. The old man then played upon an imaginary ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... "leave me alone, and busy yourself about your own affairs." After so tart a reply, Thornton thought it useless to say more; he remounted, and with a silent and swaggering nod of familiarity, soon rode away ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not say that the older cynics and critics already alluded to at once improved the occasion. 'What more could be expected? Women, the world over, were noted for this sort of thing! This long-haired, swaggering bully, with his air of mystery, had captivated them, as he always had done since the days of Homer. Simple merit, which sat lowly in barrooms, and conceived projects for the public good around the humble, unostentatious stove, was nowhere! Youth could not too soon learn this bitter ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... exactly what impression I may have produced on her. But in my cousin Milly I saw a girl who looked younger than her years, plump, but with a slender waist, with light hair, lighter than mine, and very blue eyes, rather round; on the whole very good-looking. She had an odd swaggering walk, a toss of her head, and a saucy and imperious, but rather good-natured and honest countenance. She talked rather loud, with a good ringing voice, and a boisterous laugh when ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... fact, when they are used in operations against rebellious natives, their officers permit and sometimes actively encourage their relapse into the barbarous custom of taking heads. An official who was stationed in Sandakan during the insurrection of 1908 told me that for days the police came swaggering into town with dripping heads hanging from their belts and that they piled these grisly trophies in a pyramid eight feet high on the parade ground in front of the government buildings. Imagine, if you please, ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... Pshaw! Is it not as plain as impudence, That you're in love with this young swaggering beggar, 205 Bethlen Bathory? When he was accused, Why pressed you forward? Why did ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... its past splendor—its owner had stuck so much over his left ear, that it seemed as if only a miracle of equilibrium could keep it in its place. There was altogether in the countenance and in the carriage and bearing of the man (who seemed from forty to forty-five years of age, and who advanced swaggering and keeping the middle of the road, curling his mustache with one hand, and with the other signing to the carriages to give place), such a character of insolent carelessness, that the cavalier who watched him smiled involuntarily, as he murmured to himself, "I believe ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... prepared and had my mind made up long ago," cried Peterkin, swaggering about the deck with his hands thrust into his breeches pockets. "The fact is, Jack, I don't believe that Tararo will be so ungrateful as to eat us, and I'm quite sure that he'll be too happy to grant us whatever we ask; so the sooner we go in ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... brave stage-robber did the business with such swaggering bravado that I admired him. I love brave men instinctively. Had I not killed M. de Barjols I should have liked to be his friend. It is true I could not tell how brave he was until I had killed him. But let us talk ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... his hat cocked over his eye. Blind, in his pride, to his shoes untied, he went with a swift jig-jog, Off on the quest, with a strange unrest, hunting the Feasible Dog. And this is the song, as he dashed along, that he sang with a swaggering swing— (Now how had I heard him singing a song if he hadn't ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... apparently, "without Parliament." The Council ought not to be thus influenced by "glorious and unquiet spirits." Cranmer calls Knox, as Throckmorton later called Queen Mary's Bothwell, "glorious" in the sense of the Latin gloriosus, "swaggering," ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... and good natured, full of high spirits, and inclined to practical jokes of a pretty stiff character. Of course there was the inevitable bully, swaggering fiercely and truculently back and forth, his belt full of weapons. Nobody took him very seriously; but, on the other hand, everybody seemed to take mighty good care not to run definitely counter to him. In the course of his wanderings he came to our end of the bar, ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... you to defend Lady Diana to me, I assure you," returned Major Vandyke. "Whatever she may have done, I'm ready to forgive her, if she's willing to stand by me. But I won't have March swaggering around and boasting that she gives him ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to keep off the dust; having given a final glance of disdain at the clerk in the linens, across; having reached under the counter for his stiff black hat of good quality and his silver-topped cane; having donned the hat and hung the stick to his arm with two swaggering gestures; having prepared his offensive, so ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... The swaggering imperiousness in Edward's tone nettled Fortner as much as the order itself. "I don't make a practice of layin' down my gun for no man," he said proudly. "I'm ez good Union ez ary of you'uns dar be, an' I don't take no orders from ye. I could've killed ye both, ef I'd a wanted ter, ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... horsemen approaching them. It was easy to see by their dress and general appearance that he who rode at their head was their lord, with two companions of inferior rank, and that the rest were his retainers. They had a particular swaggering look which showed that they belonged to a class of persons common in those days, who followed the fortunes of any lawless noble who could employ them, and were ever ready to commit any deed of violence their master might ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... and an unmistakable oath escaped his lips. All the same, he forced a kind of sickly smile to his face, as a big man, with an exceedingly red face and an exceedingly offensive swaggering manner, came into the dining-room. The stranger was quite well dressed, nothing about his garments offended the eye or outraged good taste, yet, all the same, the man had "bounder" written all over him in large letters. His impudent red face, his aggressively ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... she did, if she do," he murmured hopelessly, "she never will let me know it, since her father forbids a thought of me; and now here is this trial of skill at the duke's order come to make things worse, and if that swaggering Berengario of Fano win her, then truly will I join the free lances and pray heaven send ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... they reached their own quarters they found that Smallbones had received an intimation that there might be jousts, and that the offices of the armourers would be required. He was very busy packing up his tools, but loudly hilarious, and Sir John Fulford, with a flask of wine beside him, was swaggering and shouting orders to the men as though he were the head of ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... more than usually communicative mood, and was narrating a number of astounding stories of plunderings and burnings on the high seas. He dwelt upon them with peculiar relish, heightening the frightful particulars in proportion to their effect on his peaceful auditors. He gave a swaggering detail of the capture of a Spanish merchantman. She was lying becalmed during a long summer's day, just off from the island which was one of the lurking places of the pirates. They had reconnoitered her with their spyglasses from the shore, and ascertained her character and ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... was it a day gloomy and dark, a day of clouds and of thick darkness with Mansoul. Now they saw that they had been foolish, and began to perceive what the company and prattle of Mr. Carnal- Security had done, and what desperate damage his swaggering words had brought poor Mansoul into. But what further it was likely to cost them they were ignorant of. Now Mr. Godly-Fear began again to be in repute with the men of the town; yea, they were ready to look upon him ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... seem to be useless, may be reckoned the high tossing and swaggering preaching, either mountingly eloquent, or profoundly learned. For there be a sort of Divines, who, if they but happen of an unlucky hard word all the week, they think themselves not careful of their flock, if they lay it not up till Sunday, ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... evening the girls were standing on the sidewalk outside the printing office, awaiting the arrival of Arthur with the surrey, when a group of the Royal workmen appeared in the dim light, swaggering three abreast and indulging in offensive language. Uncle John's nieces withdrew to the protection of the doorway, but a big bearded fellow in a red shirt discovered them, and, lurching forward, pushed his evil countenance in Patsy's face, calling to his fellows in harsh tones that he ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... white butter; bundles of fire-wood are heaped up close by, and pails of goat's or camel's milk abound; and amid all these sit rows of countrywomen, haggling with tall Persians, who in broken Arabic try to beat down the prices, and generally end by paying only double what they ought. The swaggering, broad-faced, Bagdad camel-drivers, and ill-looking, sallow youths stand idle everywhere, insulting those whom they dare, and cringing to their betters like slaves. Persian gentlemen, too, with grand hooked noses, high caps, and quaintly-cut ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... enjoyed the Kid Show, immensely. The trained cockatoos, the big snakes, the many freak people, the brief but snappy minstrel show, were some of the varied features. But best of all, Welborn watched the antics of his little friend of the morning adventure. He came on the little stage, first as a swaggering general, then as an admiral, last as a real doughboy of the United States Army. Dancing, bowing, and waving the flag, he won generous applause. Later, he came on as Cupid with bow and arrow, and made some fine shots into a target representing a heart. ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... went on; however, he left with a good certificate, as he had powerful interests. During his last year at school he came in for an estate of two hundred serfs, and as almost all of us were poor he took up a swaggering tone among us. He was vulgar in the extreme, but at the same time he was a good-natured fellow, even in his swaggering. In spite of superficial, fantastic and sham notions of honour and dignity, all but very few of us positively grovelled before Zverkov, and the more so the more ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... over a hill. They turned and saw Madrid cut out of darkness against the starlight. Before them sown plains, gulches full of mist, and the tremulous lights on many carts that jogged along, each behind three jingling slow mules. A cock crowed. All at once a voice burst suddenly in swaggering tremolo out of the darkness of the road beneath them, rising, rising, then fading off, then flaring up hotly like a red scarf waved on a windy day, like the swoop of a hawk, like a rocket ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... hilarious greetings as I strolled up the street, trying to walk in a straight masculine way, but hideously conscious of blushing cheeks and nervous gait. I so far forgot myself that, in my eagerness to display my male superiority, I jostled against a lady, and disgraced myself by swaggering on without even apologising for my rudeness—when, to my consternation, the lady ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... swaggering sea roll he came striding across the wide arid space between the wharf side and the buildings, puffing at a big black cigar as he walked, and glancing about him curiously, as though he could not quite understand the utter quietude and deserted aspect of the place. Apparently, however, ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... drooping moustache and again scrutinized the frank and exceedingly attractive youth. His astonishing perfection of feature was obvious to anybody. Yet any inconsiderable human—a peasant of the Campagna, a Venetian gondolier, a swaggering brigand of Macedonia—could be astonishingly beautiful. And, being astonishingly beautiful, that was the beginning and end of him. But behind this merely physical attractiveness of his guest glowed a lambent intelligence, quick as lightning. There was humorous challenge in those ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the dying hand may shelter? Hast thou not taught the loud and boisterous voice the new song of tenderness and pity, whispering like a dove? Within thy school the rude and harsh have learned the nurse's gentle art, and the world's swaggering warriors serve as acolytes before thy shadowy altar. The peasant's cottage owes to thee its transformation to cathedral splendour, the censers gently swinging when thou sayest the soul's great mass, at even, or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning. ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... we swaggering here, so near the cradle of the Fairy Queen? What, a play tow'rd; I'll be an auditor; An actor too, perhaps, if I ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare
... clan, the members collected together in various little squads about the cave, and engaged in conversation, some in a loud, braggadocio, swaggering tone, others in low, murmuring voices, audible only to themselves, and still others in confidential whispers. Of those who have figured heretofore in the incidents of this story, we may mention the hard-featured, desperado-looking ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... rich in the service of a careless master, and richer by money-lending transactions with his master's friends, knew Miss Sandbrook, and was aware that a lady's word might be safer than a spendthrift's bond. He tried swaggering, in the hope of alarming her into a promise to fulfil his demand uninvestigated; but she was on her guard; and he, reflecting that she must probably apply to others for the means of paying, gave her the papers, and ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... customers! The islanders all had the reputation of hard drinkers—and an innkeeper hardly invites occasion to lower his receipts. The inn stood in old Mrs. Faircloth's name, it is true; but the son profited, at all events vicariously, by its prosperity. A swaggering fellow, with an inordinate opinion of his own ability and merits; but in that he shared a family failing. For arrogance and assumption the whole clan ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... swaggering letter from America, demanding hush-money. It did not come till she was too ill to open it—only in the last week before her death, and it was left till we settled ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... His swaggering gait, with heels that pounded heavily, was gone. He slunk forward, soft-footed. His head, usually so buoyantly erect, was now sunk lower and forward. His high color had faded to a drab olive. In fact, from a free-swinging, jovial, somewhat overbearing demeanor, ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... doctor went his way, and met Joe swaggering in one of the passages, while Janet and her colleague dragged along between them a ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... a sense of adventurous satisfaction—her house with its yellow window frames and doors, with its new curtains of swaggering design—her high-pooped waggons—the coat with the brass buttons that old Stuppeny wore when he drove behind her to market—her dreams of giant sheep upon her innings—all appealed to something fundamental in her which was big and boastful. She even liked the gossip with which she ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... officials with whom she and her children were brought in almost daily contact, for my father, being an all too generous man, kept open house. But although she was always sweet-tempered and sometimes merry with the hard-drinking old Peninsular veterans, and the noisy and swaggering subalterns of the ill-famed 102nd Regiment (or New South Wales Corps), she always shuddered and looked pale and ill at ease when she saw among my father's guests the coarse, stern face of the minister, and her ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... with the proverbial carelessness of freebooters, they were welcome visitors to the thrifty traders of New-York. Crews of these desperadoes, therefore, the runagates of every country and every clime, might be seen swaggering in open day about the streets, elbowing its quiet inhabitants, trafficking their rich outlandish plunder at half or quarter price to the wary merchant; and then squandering their prize-money in taverns, drinking, gambling, ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... seated in my quarters playing cards with young Morat, of the horse chasseurs, when the door opened and in walked Lasalle, who was our Colonel. You know what a fine, swaggering fellow he was, and the sky-blue uniform of the Tenth suited him to a marvel. My faith, we youngsters were so taken by him that we all swore and diced and drank and played the deuce whether we liked it or no, just that we might resemble our Colonel! We forgot that it was not ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... while, as was his usual way, he took complete possession of the house: swaggering all over it;—into the stable to look after his horse; into the kitchen to look after his supper. He had something to say or do with every one; smoked with the Dutchmen; drank with the Germans; slapped the men on the shoulders, tickled the women under the ribs:-never since the days of Ally Croaker ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... the camels don't care if you laugh at them With their bumpy humps like a capital M, They lurch and sway And seem to say, As they wrinkle their noses, long and gray, "This swaggering stride is quite the plan, It's the way we walked ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein
... affectation of indifference, it was plain that he kept a watchful eye upon his listener, and was ready to fasten resentfully upon the first sign of horror, or even disapproval. For all his efforts, the tone of his disclosures was at once swaggering and suspicious; but he need have had no anxiety as to the spirit in which they would be received. It was clear that Julia brought to his judgment no remembrance of ordinary human standards of conduct. To her he was above such criticisms, as ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... itinerary," said the Mariner, approving his Albatross, "but I warn you I shall claim half the credit. When you see me swaggering, and hear me boasting of the plans my friend Brederode and I have mapped out, contradict me if you dare. I will defy you in some things, or I shall burst of sheer spite; and we can test it now, if you ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... swaggering little braggart!" Nejdanov almost shouted from above, but at this moment the door opened and, to his great ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... said, "Our sole design is "To suffocate his Royal Highness!" The Leader of this vile sedition Was a huge Catholic Petition, With grievances so full and heavy, It threatened worst of all the bevy; Then Common-Hall Addresses came In swaggering sheets and took their aim Right at the Regent's well-drest head, As if determined to be read. Next Tradesmen's bills began to fly, And Tradesmen's bills, we know, mount high; Nay even Death-warrants thought they'd best Be lively too and join ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... approached him swaggering, then hesitated, stood still, took off his hat, and held it ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... likewise see good minced-pie Here standing swaggering on the table; The lofty walls so large and high I'll level down if I be able; For they be furnished with good plums, And spiced well with pepper and salt, Every prune as big as both my thumbs To drive down bravely the ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... On arriving at the room, a large sala in the neighbourhood of the Plaza, we found it filled with hunters, trappers, traders, and teamsters, all swaggering about in their usual mountain rig. Mixed among them were some two or three score of the natives, with an equal number of senoritas, all of whom, by their style of dress, I recognise as poblanas, or persons of the ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... origin, but possibly connected with a Teutonic word seen in many compounds, as the Low Ger. bullerjaan, meaning "noisy"; the word has also, with less probability, been derived from the Dutch boel, and Ger. Buhle, a lover), originally a fine, swaggering fellow, as in "Bully Bottom" in A Midsummer Night's Dream, later an overbearing ruffian, especially a coward who abuses his strength by ill-treating the weak; more technically a souteneur, a man who lives on the earnings of a prostitute. The term in its early use of "fine" ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... amazingly, but there was no help for it. I could starve no longer, so up I went to the level where your father was standing with the captain, and in a swaggering sort of tone, said that I had come back, and wanted to join my comrades. The captain looked at me, and referred me to your father, who said that he would consult with the rest when they came to dinner, as ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... to do but gather in Paddy and return to the inn. I found my countryman swaggering to and fro before the crowd. Some ignoramus, or some wit, had dubbed him the King of Ireland, and he was playing to ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... open-handed to the contents the saucy street urchins, or, handing round, amidst the startled wayfarers, pyramids of horse cakes, trays of barley-sugar and peppermints, like real princes dispensing the coin of the realm. Where are those noisy gangs of swaggering raftsmen—those voyageurs from the pays d'en haut, with their glittering costumes—hats festooned with red or blue ribbons, sashes of variegated colors, barred shirts— tightly wedged, three by three, in caleches, like Neapolitans— patrolling ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... bitterly he would malign, With many a snare their pathway line! But ye, O happy husbands, ye With him were friends eternally: The crafty spouse caressed him, who By Faublas in his youth was schooled,(5) And the suspicious veteran old, The pompous, swaggering cuckold too, Who floats contentedly through life, Proud of his dinners and ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... normal to childhood and youth, and that are likewise normal or habitual to the earlier stages of culture. Unless the difference is traceable entirely to a fundamental difference between persistent ethnic types, the traits that distinguish the swaggering delinquent and the punctilious gentleman of leisure from the common crowd are, in some measure, marks of an arrested spiritual development. They mark an immature phase, as compared with the stage of development attained ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... preferred any of these epithets to the one Winch had fastened upon him. Perhaps it was to show how little he deserved it, that he made his conduct appear as unclerical as possible—smoking, swaggering, and, I am sorry to add, swearing. Imbibing unconsciously the spirit of his companions, and imitating by degrees their habits and conversation, he became profane before he knew it,—excusing himself on the plea that ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... didn't say; but he carried himself with as much swaggering importance as if it were he, and not Mr. Selincourt, who intended buying up as much of Roaring Water Portage as he could lay hands upon," Miles answered, in a grumpy tone. The group of men at the door had moved outside, where it was cooler, ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... brilliant plumage, antlers, combs and wattles. Thus the shy, retiring, reticent, self-effacing, languishing, adoring excesses of maidenhood and the peculiar psychological manifestations of the late forties must probably be understood from this point of view. So, also, must the bold, swaggering, assertive, compelling bearing of youth be interpreted. The shy or modish, dandified, lackadaisical cane-carrying youth is naturally ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... waiter, you have to pay ten shillings for a bottle of claret; and whence, if you look out of the window, you gaze on a view which is so rich that it seems to knock you down with its splendor—a view that has its hair curled like the swaggering waiter: I say, I quitted the "Rose Cottage Hotel" with deep regret, believing that I should see nothing so pleasant as its gardens, and its veal cutlets, and its dear little bowling-green, elsewhere. But the time comes when people must go out of town, and so I got on the ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his elbow, and when he saw my listening face he stopped to give me a slow wink. "Will monsieur turn pupil to learn swaggering?" he asked, with an upward cock of the eye. "I had thought him too old ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... wouldst have thought it time to take strong measures to check the swaggering of our young men and the foolish provocations that cost more than one life. One would stick a peacock's feather in his cap and go strutting along with folded arms and swelling breast, and when the Goths scowled at him and called him by well-deserved names, ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said he, giving the constable a look of blighting scorn; and, swaggering by like a mighty conqueror, joined Cleek at the compartment door. "Nailed it at the second rap, guv'ner," he said in an undertone. "Fell down on Gamage's, picked myself up on Loader, Tottenham Court Road; 14127 A, manufactured Stockholm. Valve tightened—old ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... at any rate, and be civil!" cried the older man. "You seem a swaggering sort, with your talk of love and luck, and such are sure to get their combs cut early enough here among Englishmen. I'll not tolerate your allusion to a lady you have never met, and one ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... at me, as if I had been to blame for this partiality; then changed again into his usual swaggering civility, shook me by the hand, and set off down to the boat, with the money under his arms, and whistling as he went the pathetic air of "Shule Aroon." It was the first time I had heard that tune; I was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mothered up-stream by two funny, clucking tugs. Behind the brigantine a travel-worn Atlantic liner was scolding itself hoarse about the right of way. Outward bound, empty cattle boats, rough and rusty, were swaggering down to the sea, with the careless, independent thumbs-in-armholes air of so many navvies off ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... apologies to all to whom they were due. He invited a few friends to dine the same evening with the terrible colonel, and of course he did not forget to send a special messenger to Clementine. Fougas, after speaking to the people, returned to his hosts, swinging himself along with a swaggering air, set himself astride a chair, took hold of the ends of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... don't regard it as a pleasure. I will give you some description of them, which may help you to identify them. One is a tall man, very nearly as tall as yourself; the other is at least three inches shorter. Both have dark hair, which they wear long. They have a swaggering walk, and ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... outraging of human instincts, in the debauching of ideals and the falsifying of hope, in hellish oppression and ghastly torture, that can never be adequately estimated. Her benevolent instruments of colonization were cannon and saintly relics. Her agents were swaggering soldiers and bigoted friars. Her system involved the impression of her language and her undemonstrable religious beliefs upon the harmless aborigines. The fruits of this system, which still linger after three centuries, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... of officers had no faith in the plot, and they regarded it with indifference. A few expressed hostility to it. One captain, who had been a prisoner before and seemed glad to have been captured again, a bloated, overgrown, swaggering, filthy bully, of course a coward, formerly a keeper of a low groggery and said to have been commissioned for political reasons, was repeatedly heard to say in sneering tones in the hearing of rebel sentries, "Some of our officers have got escape on the brain," with other words to the like effect. ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... wealth. Behind him his serving wench, her blue whimple over her head, and one hand thrust forth to bear the lanthorn which threw a golden bar of light along her master's path. Behind them a group of swaggering, half-drunken Yorkshire dalesmen, speaking a dialect which their own southland countrymen could scarce comprehend, their jerkins marked with the pelican, which showed that they had come over in the train of the north-country ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... throats of all his prisoners, many of them the leading merchants of the town. While waiting for the Governor's reply, Richards and his companions scandalized the towns-folk of Charleston by their outrageous and swaggering conduct. ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... arriving, the French shophand doffs his apron and his air of deference. He puts on a high hat and a frock coat that have been on a peg behind the door all the morning, gathers up his cane and his gloves; and, becoming on the instant a swagger and a swaggering boulevardier, he saunters to his favorite sidewalk cafe for a cordial glassful of a pink or green or purple drink. When his little hour of glory is over and done with he returns to his counter, sheds his grandeur and is once more your humble and ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... till Jim came in. Jim grew worse and worse, and she hurried away as she saw him swaggering toward the door; but there were tears in her eyes as she turned away. She passed her friend of the summer in Regent Street, and looked back for a moment. He had nodded, but was talking busily with a tall man, who eyed Nelly sharply. She had found that he lived in Chelsea, and ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... came out of the place, some of them staggering. With the new arrivals came one whom Dick and his friends rightly guessed to be Miller—-a thickset man, with swaggering manner, ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... twenty-five, the hand of Death already tightly fastened upon his meagre frame, coughing, hollow-cheeked, insignificant, flat-nosed, almost repulsive, who dragged himself to the witness chair, and the swaggering athlete who glared at him from the bar surrounded by his cordon of able counsel. As Ammon fixed his penetrating gaze upon his former client, Miller turned pale and dropped his eyes. Then the prosecutor, realizing the danger of letting the old hypnotic power return, ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train |
