"Debonair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... baptized are, As it suits my simple skill, Not the lofty rank you fill; Unmeet for such great service I; Yet my God, so debonair, All ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... know a bottle-man Smiling and debonair, And he has promised me I can Choose of his precious ware! In age and shape and color, too, His dainty goods excel— Aha, my friends, if you but knew— But ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... most closely to the general feeling, and the general voice asked what Lady May was thinking of. There was warrant for the question in the wondering despair of Lady Mildmay and the sad embarrassment of debonair Sir Winterton. The Mildmays knew all about it, the whole thing had happened in their house; but Sir Winterton, challenged with the story about Sir Rufus, could only hum and ha, and Lady Mildmay had not denied the interview between Quisante's ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... salutations with the brief coldness which was now my habitual manner, and we parted. From the window of my saloon I could see him sauntering easily down the hotel steps and from thence along the street. How I cursed him as he stepped jauntily on—how I hated his debonair grace and easy manner! I watched the even poise of his handsome head and shoulders, I noted the assured tread, the air of conscious vanity—the whole demeanor of the man bespoke his perfect self-satisfaction and his absolute confidence in the brightness of the future that awaited him when that stipulated ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... lithe grace of youth garbed in the picturesque regalia of the vaquero, Flandrau was a taking enough picture to hold the roving eye of any girl. A good many centered upon him now, as he sauntered forward toward the Cullison box cool and easy and debonair. More than one pulse quickened at sight of him, for his gallantry, his peril and his boyishness combined to enwrap him in the atmosphere of romance. Few of the observers knew what a wary vigilance lay behind ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... thou enemy of gloom, Grandson of Momus, blithe and debonair, Who, aping Pan, with an inverted broom, Can'st brush the cobwebs from the brows ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... here, and see what the reminder means; if only because the debonair Mirza, with whom we have been well pleased, is now to become another person in name and character, commanding our sympathies as before, but for a very ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... green, old and faded, a black jacket rusty, with the sleeves patched, and a scarlet sash tied loosely about the waist. On the back of her cropped yellow curls was a velveteen cap, rakishly tipped, and she stood debonair beneath the folds of the curtain with a ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... broad-blown, debonair, passed him, in a costume of sterling and royal magnificence, copied from a portrait of Francis First whom he in feature resembled. At his side, with gold cymbals in her hands, went a figure in floating robes of daffodil gauze, a dancer from one of the ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... wife," volunteered Markel, with a debonair wave of his pudgy hand, and trying to ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... found a considerable sprinkling of photographs; for the most part either of very debonair-looking young ladies or old women of the lodging-house persuasion. But one among them was the means of ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... it flourished only accentuated their own misgivings. They were tired before the train drew in to St. Marys and decided to discuss nothing that evening. At the works station Clark met them. He was cheerful and debonair. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... has arrived. It is therefore fitting that grave thoughts should be abandoned; and seeing that not only prowess, humility, and discretion are the virtues of a knight, but that he should also be blithe and debonair, Gladness comes to raise him from his bed and equip him for the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... chance arrived a damsel at the place, Who was (though mean and rustic was her wear) Of royal presence and of beauteous face, And lofty manners, sagely debonair: Her have I left unsung so long a space, That you will hardly recognise the fair. Angelica, in her (if known not) scan, The lofty daughter of Catay's ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... sidled the two men of the other company, dragging their hose. Keith now recognized them. One was a vivid, debonair, all-confident, magnetic individual named Talbot Ward, a merchant, promoter, speculator, whom everybody liked and trusted; the other a fair Hercules of a man, slow and powerful in everything, called ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... Alb was looking particularly debonair, and taking pattern by him, I turned away from my aunt's husband, pretending that I had neither seen ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... in and out of a lawn apron. One tress of her abundant hair was grey, which stood out against the dark background of the rest and gave her a serene purity, an austere strength, but yet like a nun's coif seemed to make the face beneath more youthful, and like a cavalier's plume more debonair. She could not have been over thirty-five when Mark first knew her, perhaps not so much; but he thought of her as ageless in the way a child thinks of its mother, and if any woman should ever be able to be to him something of what ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... number of very young men looked around at him with hostile eyes; Malcourt's brows lifted a trifle; then he shot an ironical glance at Shiela and, as the circle about her disintegrated, sauntered up, bland, debonair, to accept his conge. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... soldiers wear Button'd up high about the throat, But easy, flowing, debonair— In short a civil ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... parties in contest, and with the knights came their esquires in attendance. Now these knights were all in full armor, shining very bright, and the esquires were clad in raiment of many textures and various colors, so that they were very gay and debonair. So, with all this throng moving along the highway toward the meadow of battle, it seemed as though the entire world was alive with gay and ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... poorly displayed, Ill thriving in unwonted soil and air Far from its native springtime's genial care; So on my ready tongue hath Love assayed In a strange speech to wake new flower and blade, While I of thee, proud yet so debonair, Sing songs whose sense is to my people lost— Yield the fair Thames, and the fair Arno gain. Love willed it so, and I, at others' cost, Already knew Love never willed in vain: Would my heart slow and bosom hard were found To him who plants from ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... decline was mitigated by the fact that certain of those friends who had known him at his highest point of success still esteemed him as a character. Mr. Power was one of these friends. His inexplicable debts were a byword in his circle; he was a debonair young man. ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... answered, smiling back at him, for he too looked unusually debonair, and the thought of entering the ballroom on the arm of such a personable man caused Amy to pity the four plain Misses Davis from the bottom ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... was the desire for Guy, the sight of his handsome, debonair countenance, the ring of his careless laugh. As soon as she saw Guy she knew she would be at home, even in the land of strangers, as she had never been at the Manor since the advent of her father's second wife. She had no misgivings on that point, or she had ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... corner of the mouth below the fair moustache forbade the familiar mockery in his pleasant face. In moments of repose the cross of strain, almost suggestive of a squint, appeared in his blue eyes. He was no longer debonair, no longer the lightly laughing philosopher, the preacher of paradox seeing flippancy in the Money Article and sorrowful wisdom in Little Tich. He was morose and irritable. He had acquired a nervous ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... mysterious dangers. How debonair he would stroll among them! He wished to explore the unknown; felt the need of a splendid adventure, and had a happy premonition that one was coming nearer and nearer. He favored himself with a hopeful vision of the apartment on fire, Robert ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... He had undertaken to march, and he meant to march, that was all. In the front with which he veiled his suffering there was no lessening of his old careless confidence—if his dash had hardened into endurance it wore still an expression that was almost debonair. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... little to them. But there was something big and significant in their presence behind Hough. Gamblers leagued against a crooked gambling-hell! Durade had lost a fortune, yet not all his fortune. He seemed a haggard, flaming-eyed wreck of the once debonair Durade. His hair was wet and dishevelled, his collar was open, his hand wavered. Blood trickled down from his lower lip. He saw nothing except the gold, the cards, and that steel-nerved, gray-faced, implacable Hough. Behind him lined up his gang, nervous, strained, ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... her Yeats's poems, tucked it under his arm, and they trotted off. In Madison Square they saw a gallant and courtly old man with military shoulders and pink cheeks, a debonair gray mustache, and a smile of unquenchable youth, greeting April with a narcissus in his buttonhole. He was feeding the sparrows with crumbs and smiled to see one of them fly off, carrying a long wisp of hay, bustling away to build for himself and his sparrow bride a bungalow ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... face dropped into her hands. When at last she glanced up another couple, likewise immaculate of attire, likewise debonair and smiling, were seated at the little table. She turned to her companion. His cigar was still glowing brightly. He had ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... view of the King and royal family. The King is the same in age as I knew him in youth at Holyrood House—debonair and courteous in the highest degree. Mad. Dauphine resembles very much the prints of Marie Antoinette, in the profile especially. She is not, however, beautiful, her features being too strong, but they announce a great deal of character, and the princess whom Bonaparte ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Sanders and his classmate Jervis, both of whom had known the "Parson" in his cadet days, but from the somewhat immeasurable altitude of a two years' start, yet they were the younger looking now, gay, debonair bachelors, pillars of the social gatherings at the post and most delightful partners, and, having completed their duties with tattoo roll-call, they were now in search of these reigning belles and an opportunity to talk over the hop projected for the coming Wednesday ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... St. George, according to The Golden Legend, "said to the maid: 'Deliver to me your girdle, and bind it about the neck of the dragon, and be not afeard.' When she had done so, the dragon followed her as it had been a meek beast and debonair." It was later, and not until St. George had baptized the King and all his people (which was his reward), that he smote off the ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... self, Monty was now almost a physical wreck, haggard, thin and defiant, a shadow of the once debonair young New Yorker, an object of pity and scorn. Ashamed and despairing, he had almost lacked the courage to face Mrs. Gray. The consolation he once gained through her he now denied himself and his suffering, peculiar as it was, was very real. In absolute recklessness ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... like crashing seas, Foams upward to the painted frieze, Echoes and ebbs. Still surges in, To yelp of hautboy and violin, Plumed and bedazzling, rosed and rare, Dance-bemused, with cheek aglow, Stooping the green-twined portal through, Sighing with laughter, debonair, That concourse of the proud and fair— And lo! 'La, la! Mamma ... Mamma!' Falls a small cry in the dark and calls— 'I ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... me anither thoosand shots,' gasps Willie, 'and there'll be a vacant seat in the sergeant's mess;' and so the afternoon wears away and the landscape is littered wi' shell cases, but high in the air, glitterin' in the dyin' rays of the sun, sits the debonair scoot, cool, resolute, ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... brimming with exultant joy. An intoxication seized him that lifted him at once over all his sorrow, and placed him almost in that very spot wherein he stood ten days ago; gay, debonair, light of heart as a boy, untouched by grief or the dread of grief. It was a divine madness. He threw off his clothes, admired his shapely body for a moment as he poised on the bank, and flung himself in headlong with a shout. He felt as he slipped ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... bring consolation to Archie. A sudden bright light had been vouchsafed to Archie, and he now saw an admirably ripe and fruity scheme for ending his troubles. What could be simpler than to toddle down one flight of stairs and in an easy and debonair manner ask the chappie's permission to use his telephone? And what could be simpler, once he was at the 'phone, than to get in touch with somebody at the Cosmopolis who would send down a few trousers and what not in a kit bag. It was a priceless solution, thought Archie, as ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... zest, as she cudgelled her brains to imagine what she was about to hear. Ralph was evidently in trouble of some sort, and his parents for once inclined to take a serious stand. Yet anything more gay and debonair than the manner with which the culprit handed round refreshments and waited on his father's guests it would be impossible to imagine. Darsie watched him across the room, and noted that wherever he passed faces brightened. As he cracked jokes ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... betted on Charlie, the Debonair Pride of Ashley. Guess what he said? He said, 'This is ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... beauty! Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps at night, Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all, Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding, (No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,) Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return'd, Launch'd o'er the prairies wide, across the lakes, To the free skies unpent and ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... had gone straight to France after the Kentish knight was killed, men would have said he feared being slain like the knight. It was his duty to show himself debonair to his English people as it was De Aquila's duty to see that he took no harm while he did it, But it was a great burden! De Aquila, Hugh, and I ceased work on the ships, and scoured all the Honour of the Eagle—all ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... Edith, spick, span and debonair as always (although during the war he had discarded his buttonhole). He was occupied, as he usually was in his leisure time, not in playing the piano or composing, but—in making photograph frames! ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... testify that you are in the presence of the Vice-gerent of Heaven.—Vera weel, George, that is done in a comely manner.—Then, sir, ye sail kneel, and make as if ye would kiss the hem of our garment, the latch of our shoe, or such like.—Very weel enacted—whilk we, as being willing to be debonair and pleasing towards our lieges, prevent thus,—and motion to you to rise;—whilk, having a boon to ask, as yet you obey not, but, gliding your hand into your pouch, bring forth your Supplication, and place it reverentially in our open palm." The goldsmith, who had complied with ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... taste and try this temper, sirs, Mood it and brood it in your breast; Or if ye ween, for worldly stirs, That man does right to mar his rest, Let me be deft, and debonair, I am ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... was the long slow dip of white voyageurs, not the quick choppy stroke of the Indian; and before Sargeant could rub the amazement out of his eyes, three white men, with a blanket for sail, came swirling down the current, beached their canoe, and, doffing caps in a debonair manner, presented themselves before the Hudson's Bay man dourly sitting on a cannon in the gateway. The nonchalant gentleman who introduced the others was Jean Pere, dressed as a wood-runner, voyaging and hunting in ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... more than one humble home in Port Agnew, it had been said that the two McKaye girls were secretly ashamed of their father. This because frequently, in a light and debonair manner, Elizabeth and Jane apologized for their father and exhibited toward him an indulgent attitude, as is frequently the case with overeducated and supercultured young ladies who cannot recall a time when their slightest wish has not been gratified ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... mentioned a third reason: that this same Danny O'Rourke, red-haired, smiling, and debonair was listed on the Air Fire Force of the United States with the highest rating that the A. F. F. has to give its pilots. But Danny would have grinned at such a suggestion and would have countered with a denial ...
— The Hammer of Thor • Charles Willard Diffin
... addicted to Probity and Vertue, than the rest of the Indians; who immediately published an Edict, that all the Inhabitants should come and cohabit with them. The Indian Lords and Subjects gave them a Debonair and Brotherly Reception, serving them with wonderful Alacrity, furnishing them with dayly Provisions in so plentiful a manner, that they might have sufficed a more numerous Company; for it is the Mode among Indians ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... down the passage without haste and reached the outer door. She opened it without fumbling, and in a moment Saltash's debonair accents came to him. ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... it backed up to the door with much gong-clanging, and the capable young medico, in his white linen coat, ready, active, confident, with his smooth face half debonair, half grim, danced ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... in silence; Frank was evidently thinking deeply, and Carroll was following some weary round of conjecture for the thousandth time when she stopped at her number. Frank looked at it and then at her, startled out of his usual debonair ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... tear-compelling Calvary was at the opposite pole from those debonair Golgothas adopted by the Church ever since the Renaissance. This lockjaw Christ was not the Christ of the rich, the Adonis of Galilee, the exquisite dandy, the handsome youth with the curly brown tresses, divided beard, and insipid doll-like features, whom the faithful have adored for ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... of the hospital was preparing to set out in search of wounded men on the firing line under direction of Lieut. de Broqueville, son of the Belgian War Minister. The Lieutenant, very cool and debonair, was arranging the order of the day with Dr. Munro. Lady Dorothie Feilding and the two other women in field kit stood by their cars, waiting for the password. There were four stretcher-bearers, including Mr. Gleeson, an American, who has worked ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... was untroubled as the sky, And all our talk was delicate and shy, Though in that cage of words wild thoughts were pent Like prisoned birds that some sweet accident Might yet release to sing again, and fly. We passed between long lines of poplar trees . . . Where, summer comrades gay and debonair, The south wind and the sunlight danced . . . you smiled, With great glad eyes, as bright as summer seas, To feel their twinkling fingers in your hair . . And then you kissed me, quickly, like ...
— The Inn of Dreams • Olive Custance
... in the arms of the oldest girl. They all had the gentle quiet and ease of the father—but they were unkempt little creatures, uncombed, unwashed, in sad-colored clothes. That's the difference between the negro and the white man of this region. The negro is cheerful, debonair, he sings, he dances, and he wears all the colors of the rainbow. An old black woman who carries home my wash wore the other day a purple petticoat with a scarlet skirt looped above it, an old ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... Column, and most of the performers were A.S.C. men. The most popular vocalist turned up on his own, however, viz. Captain the Maclean, of Lochbuie (of the 19th Hussars), who is quite an artist in his way. This gay, debonair Scotsman is simply worshipped by the men. One of the latter (himself holding the D.C.M. and the French Medaille Militaire for conspicuous bravery at Landrecies) told me Maclean was the bravest man he had ever seen; he is always at ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... over without rebuke Seward's part in the affair of Sumter, which might so easily have been made to appear treacherous, and in shouldering himself with all responsibility for the failure of the Charleston expedition. In the wave of excitement following the surrender, even so debonair a minister as Seward must have realized how fortunate it was for him that his chief did not tell all he knew. About this time Seward began to perceive that Lincoln had a will of his own, and that it was not safe to trifle further with the President. Seward thereupon ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... him so perturbed. He usually approached these conflicts with his father with a passing grimace, exhibited sufficient repentance to get what he wanted, and emerged more debonair than ever. It was disturbing to see him so ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... gay party, mostly made up of young and prosperous ranchmen, and the girls belonging to their little world. Nor among them could have been found any one more brightly debonair and ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... Denys you are right," said the cure. "But, que voulez-vous? the saints are debonair, and have been flesh themselves, and know man's frailty and absurdity. 'Tis the Bishop of Avignon ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... on the platform who did not evince some degree of pleasure at the approach of the new-comer. The last warm rays of the sun, already sinking behind the mountains, seemed rather to take pride in showing what a debonair young fellow he was, in glowing kindly upon his handsome face and strong, graceful figure, and touching up to ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... what he hoped was a charming, debonair and apologetic voice. It was quite a lot to get into one voice, but he tried his very hardest. ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... he came into the little drawing-room, where Hermione was waiting to receive him, he looked young and debonair, though still pale from his recent touch ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... brilliant color—white teeth, ocean-blue eyes, and poppied cheeks. His square little figure was very boyish in the thin silk shirt and baggy knickerbockers, and a wide hat, slipping from his yellow mane, added a last debonair touch to his picturesque little person. He was flushed, but ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... my cost) I looked around for some weapon, since I had none and was all but naked, and whipping up a jagged and serviceable stone, stood awaiting him with this in my fist. And down the beach he comes, jocund and debonair in his finery, albeit something pale by reason of excess and my rapier work. And now I come to look at you, Martin, he was just such another as you as to face and feature, though lacking your beef and bone. Now he beholding me where I stood, flourishes off his belaced hat and, making me ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... one of these mysterious visitants appeared in the Heavens. It was in the reign of Lewis the Debonair. Directly the King perceived the comet, he sent for an astrologer, and asked what he was to conclude from the apparition. As the answers were unsatisfactory he tried to avert the augury by prayers to Heaven, by ordaining a general fast to all his Court, and by building churches. Notwithstanding, ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... which Sue once laughed at; but it has lost its silky curl and stands straight out now from the corners of his mouth, its points reaching almost to the line of his ears. There is, too, beneath it a small imperial, giving to his face the debonair look of a cavalier, and which accentuates more than any other one thing his Southern birth and training. As you follow the subtle outlines of his body you find too, that he is better proportioned than he was in his early manhood; ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... gin, and other liqueurs, for the entertainment of such highly esteemed visitors; and so long as one of them occupied the colossal armchair, her husband was quite a different Dale. He was then such a much better listener than usual, so quick to see a joke and so easy to be tickled by it, so debonair that he would swallow almost insulting criticism of his favorite politicians. As she thought of these things her eyelids fluttered and her lips parted mirthfully. She never asked any questions as to Dale's more secret methods of dealing with customers' servants. Obviously he got on well with ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... number of formal visits. General Yanushkhevitch, Chief of the Staff, had held that same position when the Grand Duke Nicholas had been commander-in-chief at the Stavka. Tall, handsome and debonair, he was a man whom it was a pleasure to meet, although he may not perhaps intellectually have been quite equal to the great responsibilities placed on his shoulders in the early days of the war. This distinguished ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... The debonair Florentino, turned from Itchoua his disapproving eyes. Florentino would hesitate; he would not kill. This is divined in the expression of ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... the laughter in his handsome, dark face, and the careless grace of the fellow as he stood beneath the dripping umbrella debonair as a young prince, in perfectly fitting blue serge-he wore no overcoat; mine was buttoned up to the chin, and ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... blushing Claire? Maid of the sylph-like air, Blooming and debonair, Whither so early? Chasing the merry morn, Down through the golden corn? List'ning the hunter's ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... and yet again applied his handkerchief to his stinging eyes. Whoever could have seen him now must have failed to recognize the radiant Gianapolis so well-known in Bohemian society, the Gianapolis about whom floated a halo of mystery, but who at all times was such a good fellow and so debonair. He took up his hat and gloves, turned, and resolutely strode to the door. Once he glanced back over his shoulder, but shrugged with a sort of self-contempt, and ascended to ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... a change from a free, debonair, and courtly sort of behavior, which we had formerly found there, into so strict a gravity as they now received us with, did not a little amuse us, and disappointed our expectations of such a pleasant visit as ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... mind swiftly encompassed the pitiful awakening that was coming to this joyous home-comer. Before she could master her emotions, he was disappearing over the brass rail at the end of the observation-car; even as he waved her a debonair farewell, she caught the look of surprise and puzzlement in his black eyes. Wherefore, she knew the quick tears ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... subterfuge. Now, look here, ask her again, and be more debonair and dashing this time. What you want is to endue her with the spirit of revelry. Perhaps you'd better go to the bar first and have a dry ginger-ale, and then you'll feel ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... met at Camp Cooke in compliance with orders from division headquarters at 'Frisco had, three weeks later, practically finished the case of Brevet-Captain Nevins, and that debonair person, who had appeared before it on the first day, suave, laughing, and almost insolently defiant, had wilted visibly as, day after day, the judge advocate unfolded the mass of evidence against him. ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... two persons see another in exactly the same light. Be that as it may, it is extremely doubtful if Uncle Bill Griswold would have immediately recognized in the debonair raconteur who held a circle breathless in the Bartlesville Commercial Club the saffron-colored, wild-eyed dude whom he had fished off the slide rock with a pair of "galluses" attached to a ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... four-and-twenty,' Mr. Thomasson answered, pluming himself and speaking in his softest tones. 'And the most charming, I assure you, the most debonair of men. But do I hear ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... approaching them, and the criminologist noted with relief that they evidenced their afternoon libations even so early. Eyes dulled with over-stimulus were the less analytical. Chance was favoring him. The newcomers were garbed in that debonair and "cultured" modishness so dear to the hearts of magazine illustrators. Faces, weak with sunken cheek lines, strong in creases of selfishness, darkened by the brush strokes of nocturnal excesses and seared, all of them with the brand mark of inbred rascality, identified ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... boy scout was a stroke of genius, his "call of the wild" being by far the best whim of the evening. Miss EVA LEONARD-BOYNE as Ninetta, the orphan, did her little job tenderly and prettily, but I couldn't believe in Ninetta in that galley, and I doubt if she did. Mr. GORDON ASH was the debonair hero. I do most solemnly entreat him to consider the example of some of the elders in his profession who have adopted a laugh as their principal bit of business. It may turn into a millstone. Was he not laughing the same ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... a man, Polly?" Jim inquired. "You were so dashing and debonair, that I bet every fellow in the room felt big ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... right hand lead with thee The mountain nymph (not much U.P.). Come, and sip it as you go, And let my not-too-gouty toe Join the dance with them and thee In sweet unrationed revelry; While the grocer, free of care, Bustles blithe and debonair, And the milkman lilts his lay, And the butcher beams all day, And every warrior tells his tale Over the spicy nut-brown ale. Peace, if thou canst really bring These delights, do haste, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... been so early, Bawn?" my grandmother asked, while Uncle Luke came and set a chair for me and stood smiling at me; I was glad that in those waste places of the earth he had not forgotten those fine debonair ways which of old had made the women ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... ivy-crowned Bacchus bore: Or whether (as some sager sing) The frolic wind that breathes the spring, Zephyr, with Aurora playing, As he met her once a-Maying, There, on beds of violets blue, And fresh-blown roses washed in dew, Filled her with thee, a daughter fair, So buxom, blithe, and debonair. Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful Jollity, Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, Nods and becks and wreathed smiles Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter holding both ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... hardly changed—a little thinner, perhaps, but not a day older in his paint; the same reckless, debonair creature whom Marion had loved, who had wounded her and grieved her, whom she had discarded at last with bitter anger, whom she had never forgotten, ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... vestments that I scarcely recognized the man, whom I had always seen before in dull forest garb, yet I permitted him to take my hand and assist me gallantly to the shore. Faith, but he appeared like a new person with his embroidered coat, buckled shoes and powdered hair, smiling and debonair, whispering compliments to me, as he helped me across a strip of mud to the drier ground beyond. But I liked him none the better, for there was the same cold stare to his eyes, and a cruel sting to his words which he could not hide. The man was the same whatever the cut ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... were back—well, no matter when or where; But you remember, I know, Lisette. I saw you, dainty and debonair, With the very same look that you used to wear In the days I should forget. And your lips, as red as the vintage we quaffed, Were pearl-edged bumpers ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... came up the cement path to the house, was a figure of the new era which was in time to be so disastrous to stiff hats and skirted coats; and his appearance afforded a debonair contrast to that of the queer-looking duck capering: at the Amberson Ball in an old dress coat, and chugging up National Avenue through the snow in his nightmare of a sewing-machine. Eugene, this afternoon, was richly in the new outdoor mode: motoring coat ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... his Bellaroba with all his heart: no debonair Lionella could decoy him to be untrue. But he was debonair himself, of high courage, and mettlesome; and he may have gone a little too far. He was now become her confidant, secretary, bosom friend. Whence came ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... lead by Holcomb, were seen picking their way along the trail; Margaret keeping close to the young woodsman and plying him with innumerable questions. She thought she had never seen him look so handsome, debonair and manly. Then, too, his wide knowledge of the woods was a delight to her. Little by little he explained, as he followed the trail, those secrets of woodcraft not ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... under the yew trees at home, and she left him. She ran from the intrusion of her parents at home, to her bedroom, where, looking out on the moonlit country, she stretched up her arms, hard, hard, in bliss, agony offering herself to the blond, debonair presence of the night. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... a manner meant to be debonair, but his thought was divided and uncontrollable impulse drew his glance shiftily to ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... cool, debonair, surrounded by a crowd afoot, Horrock at heel, his old eyes dim with joy, his grim mouth set; and after him two lads leading our horses, and O'Neil and Harkness mounted, curbing the triumph ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... mere sublunary hopes. There is every reason to believe that in the realms of the blessed the library, like that of Major Ponto, will be small though well selected. Mr. Blades had, as his friend Dr. Garnett observes, a debonair spirit—there was nothing fiery or controversial about him. His attitude towards the human race and its treatment of rare books was rather mournful than angry. For example, under the head of 'Fire,' he has occasion to refer to that ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... that with one king he had plenty to do, by assaulting Limasol and putting armies to flight in the plains about Nikosia. Shall I sing the battle of the fifty against five thousand; tell how King Richard with precisely half a hundred knights came cantering against the sun and a host, as gay and debonair as to a driving of stags? They say that he himself led the charge, covered in a wonderful silken surcoat, colour of a bullfinch's breast, and wrought upon in black and white heraldry. They say that ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... love! I thought you were gay and fair, Merry of mien and debonair. What then means this brow so black, Whose sullen gloom twin eyes give back, Poor ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... for Merlin had her taught, and she learned much of egromancy (magic or necromancy); and the best work-woman she was with her hands that any man knew in any land, and she had the fairest head and the fairest hands under heaven, and shoulders well-shapen; and she had fair eloquence and full debonair she was, as long as she was in her right wit; and when she was wroth with any man, she was evil to meet." This lady was one of Merlin's pupils, but the one whom he loved most and instructed the most ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... arrayed in the armor of some stern warrior, or the velvet doublet of some gay cavalier, the dark eyes of a debonair knight looked down upon me with familiar fellowship. There was pride of birth, and the passion of conquest in every line of his haughty, sensuous face. I seemed to breathe the same moral atmosphere that had surrounded me ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... attributes as the work of Laurence Grant White. Pan is enjoying the music of the two long pipes he blows-playing one of the unplaced wild lilts of nature, we may be sure. This sense of enjoyment and his debonair little swagger are festive and delightful. His mischievous gaiety communicates itself to the beholder. This humorous quality appears in another merry little god by the same sculptor, her ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... his debonair manner Dave still had a bad headache and was so sore around the body that he could scarcely move without groaning. He kept his teeth clamped on the pain because he had been brought up in the outdoor code of the West which demands of a man that he grin and ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... fray with a leg perched flippantly about the horn of his saddle, a cigarette hanging from his lips, which emitted smoke and original slogans of clever invention. Buckley would have given a year's pay to attain that devil- may-care method. Once the debonair youth said to him: "Buck, you go into a scrap like it was a funeral. Not," he added, with a complimentary wave of his tin cup, "but ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... table's further end I see In his old place our Poet's vis-a-vis, The great PROFESSOR, strong, broad-shouldered, square, In life's rich noontide, joyous, debonair. His social hour no leaden care alloys, His laugh rings loud and mirthful as a boy's,— That lusty laugh the Puritan forgot,— What ear has heard it and remembers not? How often, halting at some wide crevasse Amid the windings of his Alpine pass, High up the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... his unkempt, bristling hair, His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, His lack of all we prize as debonair, Of power or will to ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... sight of my figure in the antechamber beyond, and resuming in an instant his former debonair manner, he bowed very low and opened his lips as if about to ask a question. But he evidently thought better of it, for he strode by me and made his way to the front door without a word. Being an intruder myself, I did not like to stop him. But I ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... time's pedestrian muse Shouts paeans to the earth-born giant, Whose brows Apollo's wreath refuse, Whose strength to Charis is unpliant. Demos distrusts the debonair, Yet Demos found himself disarming To gracious GRANVILLE; unaware Won by the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... which mitigate its unavoidable horror. Such have been the characteristics always of the secular wars between the British and the French. From the old glittering days of knighthood, with their high and gallant courtesy, through the eighteenth century campaigns where the debonair guards of France and England exchanged salutations before their volleys, down to the last great Napoleonic struggle, the tradition of chivalry has always survived. We read how in the Peninsula the pickets of the two armies, each of them ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... dismantled dining-room, despite all that he had passed through, his greeting had the diffident, boyish manner of her recollection; and despite a night on the ground his brown uniform was without creases, giving him a well-groomed, even debonair, appearance. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... a case of mutual attraction. He swung his tail and crest before her, comeliest and most debonair of all her suitors; and she, with an engaging smile, swung a responsive tail at him. Crest she had none, and, of course, her tail could not compare with his in beauty. The higher we get in the natural orders, the more distinctly does decoration ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... still gallant figure, scrupulously attired; a blue frock-coat with a ribboned button-hole, a well-turned boot, hat a little too hidalgoish, but quite new. There was something respectable and substantial about him, notwithstanding his moustaches, and a carriage a degree too debonair for his years. He did not look like a carbonaro or a ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... so bright and gay, Oh, years! that slip so fast away, Keep her, I pray thee, fresh and fair, Dainty, bewitching, debonair, For life is but ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... for uttering some words too true for an age unaccustomed to the perpetual veracity of our newspapers. Count Wala, who was also an abbot, had the misfortune to speak of Judith of Bavaria as "the adulterous woman," and when her husband, Louis le Debonair, came back to the throne after the conspiracy of his sons, the lady naturally wanted Wala killed; but Louis compromised by throwing him into the rock of Chillon. This is what Wala's friends say: others say that he was one of the conspirators against ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... Nicolette my sweet friend would not grace if it were hers? Were she Empress of Constantinople or of Germany, were she Queen of France or of England, there were but little in it, so noble is she and gracious and debonair and endued with ...
— Aucassin and Nicolette - translated from the Old French • Anonymous
... to the house was less gay than the visit to the oak. The baronet himself made a feverish effort to appear blithe and debonair as before; but it was not successful. Fortunately, the carriages were all at the door as they reached the house, and luncheon being over, nothing delayed the parting compliments of the guests. As the last carriage drove away, Sir Miles beckoned to Gabriel, and bade him ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... experiments, finding them discouraging; and though at times he considered it humorously man-about-town to say to a smoking friend, "Well, I'll tackle one o' your ole coffin-nails," he had never made a purchase of tobacco in his life. But it struck him now that it would be rather debonair to disport himself with a package of Little ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... as debonair, unarm'd, As bending angels; that's their fame in peace. But when they would seem soldiers, they have galls, Good arms, strong joints, true swords; and, Jove's accord, Nothing so full of heart. But peace, Aeneas, Peace, ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... say that he was a self-possessed and plucky little gentleman,—the same gallant little gentleman, dangling here at the end of a rope, with the steady, irresistible force of gravitation pulling him to his doom, as he had ever been in his gay, debonair progress through a safe and friendly world. He forced his thoughts away from the horror to come. His imagination could be kept out of that yawning horror, though his body must be inevitably drawn down into it as ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... Paul Burton sat opposite Loraine Haswell at one of the small and snowy tables, he sought to cloak his nervousness under a guise of debonair ease and soon the woman was embarked upon the ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... regret. Beatrice Cary was the next in line, and his search went no farther than her flushed, eager face. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "I have found the enchantress herself! Miss——" He hesitated, for an instant unaccountably shaken out of his debonair self-possession. Webb sprang to the rescue with a formal introduction, and Travers proceeded, if not entirely with his old equanimity. "I beg your pardon, Miss Cary," he apologized. "Your face is, strangely enough, so familiar to me that ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... "Singing Arrow will come to the window, and you are to make love to her. After a time—not too long—you are to beguile her inside. I think the guards will be complaisant, if you play your part well. Be as debonair as possible. A soldier is always tempted to be lenient ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... quiet, too." Eva, the expert, wrestling with Carrie over the problem of the new spring dress. They never guessed that the commonplace man in the frayed old smoking-jacket had banished them all from the room long ago; had banished himself, for that matter. In his place was a tall, debonair, and rather dangerously handsome man to whom six o'clock spelled evening clothes. The kind of a man who can lean up against a mantel, or propose a toast, or give an order to a man-servant, or whisper a gallant speech in a lady's ear with equal ease. The shabby old house on Calumet Avenue was transformed ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... thirty-seventh anniversary of her accession. The poet George Peele pictured in blank verse the gorgeous scene, and likened the Earl of Southampton to that ancient type of chivalry, Bevis of Southampton, so 'valiant in arms,' so 'gentle and debonair,' did he appear to ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... handsome, debonair young millionaire paid the good landlady an exorbitant price to ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... her there Sea-dreaming in the moted air, A Siren sweet and debonair, With wristlets woven of colored weeds, And oblong lucent amber beads Of sea-kelp shining in her hair. And as I mused on dreams, and how The something in us never sleeps, But laughs or sings or moans or weeps, She turned,—and on her breast and brow I saw the tint that seemed not won From ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... indifferent music really well. And they roar over the facial extravagances of Ford Sterling and his friends Fatty and Mabel; they applaud, and Miss Twelve Years Old secretly admires the airy adventures of the debonair Max Linder—she thinks he is a dear, only she daren't tell Mother and Father so, or they would be startled. And then there is Mr. C. Chaplin—always there is Mr. C. Chaplin. Personally, I loathe the cinematograph. It is, I ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... to the Highlands of Wales and Scotland, the last home of our fathers' creed. The two back seats were of black oak, richly carved. In the one sat the General and Kate, and across the passage Viscount Hay, Lord Kilspindie's eldest son, a young man of noble build and carriage, handsome and debonair, who never moved during the sermon save twice, and then he looked at the ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... this temper, sirs; Mood it and brood it in your breast; Or if ye ween, for worldly stirs, That man does right to mar his rest, Let me be left, and debonair; I am content; I do ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... pole across his shoulders. In the neighbourhood of the hotel, the Yosemite House, travelling salesmen, drummers for jewelry firms of San Francisco, commercial agents, insurance men, well-dressed, metropolitan, debonair, stood about cracking jokes, or hurried in and out of the flapping white doors of the Yosemite barroom. The Yosemite 'bus and City 'bus passed up the street, on the way from the morning train, each with its two or three passengers. A very narrow wagon, belonging to the Cole & Colemore ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... mad pace. So did Arthur Updyke. It was rather to be expected of Arthur, however. His duties at the City Drug Store seemed to encourage a debonair lightness of conduct. He treated his blond ringlets assiduously from the stock of pomades; he was as fastidious about his fingernails as we might expect one to be in an environment of manicure implements and nail beautifiers; it was his privilege to make free with the varied assortment ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... eyes are brown, oh, Edith's eyes are brown! I will not boast the midnight of her hair, Nor yet because her radiant cheek is fair, And like the touch of autumn's thistle down; I will not swear I have not seen her frown; She may be rich and proud and debonair, For aught I know, I'm sure I do not care: But oh, her eyes, her eyes are ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... who had startled her first. As they saw her dismay, their chuckle broke into a roar, then split into vocabulary. Magdalena ran faster than she had ever run in her life before. Suddenly she saw Colonel Belmont sauntering down California Street, debonair as ever. His long moustaches swept his shoulders. His soft hat was on the back of his head, framing his bold handsome dissipated face. His frock-coat, but for the lower button, was open, and stood out about the dazzling shirt, well revealed ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... seemed to have completely laid hold of the little group of men gathered round the body of Sir Geoffrey Kynaston; to have bereft them of all reasoning power and thought, to have numbed even their limbs and physical instincts. It was only a few minutes ago since they had left him, careless and debonair, with his thoughts intent upon the business, or rather the sport, of the hour. His laugh had been the loudest, his enjoyment the keenest, and his gun the most deadly of them all. But now he lay there cold and lifeless, with his heart's blood staining ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
