"Aplomb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Barry Lake's aplomb was equal to most situations, but it failed him here; for a moment he could only stare. The contrast between the picture in his mind's eye, of the plain, square-toed, high-principled and rather pathetic champion of the Cause—pathetic in the light of what she ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the note proper to the heir of Jervaise. He had the aplomb to carry that off. He stood on the hearthrug, austere and self-controlled, consciously aristocrat, ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... nuthatch which goes scudding up and down the tree trunks with as much ease and aplomb as a fly gliding over a window-pane. I have already told you something about him. I had long been aware that he wedged grains of corn, sunflower seeds, and kernels of nuts in the crannies of the bark; but one day he invented ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... into the conversation with great aplomb. He has been holding on vigorously to Mr. Dysart's right hand for the last five minutes, after a brief but brilliant skirmish with Mabel as to the possession of it—a skirmish brought to a bloodless conclusion ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... friend Count Bunker—gom all ze vay from Austria," responded the Baron, with no glimmer of his customary aplomb. ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... mere admiration of so much impudence, that transcended words, and had very soon conquered animosity. I took a fancy to the man, he was so vast a humbug. I began to see a kind of beauty in him, his aplomb was so majestic. I never knew a rogue to cut so fat; his villainy was ample, like his belly, and I could scarce find it in my heart to hold him responsible for either. He was good enough to drop into the autobiographical; telling me how the farm, in spite of the war ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to stand on his head and cover his face with his paws. Then he did several back flips and wailed aloud in his misery and woe, his yelps of distress quite filling the empyrean. But only for the space of a few seconds. Recovering his customary aplomb he made a flying leap for the top of the gate, his yelps now succeeded by ambitious growls—and in self-defense The Laird was forced to spray him again as he clung momentarily on top of the palings. With a sob Jerry dropped back and buried his nose in the dust, while The Laird beat a hurried retreat ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... days when he had been fortuitously and almost indifferently made city treasurer. His method of dressing had so much improved since he had been inducted into office, and his manner expressed so much more good feeling, confidence, aplomb, that he would not have recognized himself if he had been permitted to see himself as had those who had known him before. An old, nervous shifting of the eyes had almost ceased, and a feeling of restfulness, which had previously been restlessness, and had sprung from a sense of ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... half-closed the better to see her work, or rolling, between her fingers, little bread-pellets. As to the piano, the more quickly her fingers glided over it the more he wondered. She struck the notes with aplomb, and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the other end of the village when the window was open, and often the bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad bare-headed ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... charming?" laughed my uncle. "Just look! he has made his little flourish and thinks he's a very clever fellow! I do like that—upon my soul I do! What youthful aplomb, what life in that foolish flourish! And what boy is this?" he asked, suddenly turning ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... has entered my blood—I am Samuel no longer, I am Larinski." He blessed the microscope, which enfeebled the sight of old women; he blessed Count Abel Larinski, who had made of him his twin brother. Before the end of the repast he had recovered all his assurance, all his aplomb. He began to take part in the conversation: he recounted in a sorrowful tone a sorrowful little story; he retailed sundry playful anecdotes with a melancholy grace and sprightliness; he expressed the most chivalrous sentiments; shaking his lion's mane, he spoke of the prisoner ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... article which appeared under the above title in the issue of Punch for January 14th, the setting of the nautical episode, in which the subject of the story conducted himself with so much aplomb and resourcefulness, was derived from a personal experience related to the author; but Mr. Punch has his assurance that Reginald McTaggart was not intended even remotely to represent any ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... physical world may escape him. Yet he should be absorbed in the other world to such a degree that blindness, even, is a blessing to him, enabling him to "see, no longer blinded by his eyes." The question of the poet's health arose. He should have the exuberance and aplomb of the young animal; no, he should have a body frail enough to enable him, like the mediaeval mystic, to escape from its importunatedemands upon ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... wrinkled, had that look of prenatural wisdom which dwarfs sometimes have, and his little black eyes were incredibly bright. He was evidently something of a dandy, for his clothes were immaculate. I admired again the aplomb with which ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... grumbled Dentatsu. He rubbed his eyes as one who had just gone to sleep. Jimbei carried him off to the cleaning processes of early morn. The return found the table laid with the meal. With quietness and despatch Jimbei settled all matters with the aplomb of the practised traveller. Before he was well awake Dentatsu found himself following after through the dark streets. "Surely the maid has mistaken the hour.[23] 'Tis yet the darkness of night."—"Not likely," ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... anything can equal the aplomb of a child that has always had his own way and has developed normally. The Kid, for instance, had been wandering in the wild places—this was the morning of the sixth day. The whole of Northern Montana waited anxiously for news of ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... describes how Browning called at the house (he was acquainted with her father), and finding that gentleman out, asked with a kind of abrupt politeness if he might play on the piano. This touch is very characteristic of the mingled aplomb and unconsciousness of Browning's social manner. "He was then," she writes, "slim and dark, and very handsome, and—may I hint it?—just a trifle of a dandy, addicted to lemon-coloured kid gloves and such things, quite the glass of fashion and the mould of form. But ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... his Perugian jargon, crying out: "By the body of God, I will take care that Benvegnato teaches Benvenuto how to live." He afterwards commissioned one of the captains who were with him (braver perhaps than the others, but with less aplomb, as being but a youth) to seek me out. The fellow came to visit me in the place of by retirement; that was the palace of a great Neapolitan nobleman, who had become acquainted with me in my art, and had besides taken a fancy to me because of my physical ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... for he had acquired aplomb in his journeys round the globe, but he gave her a glance of sad reproach, while Madame de ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... spirits for the moment. Loiseau, nonplussed at first, soon regained his aplomb and burst into a roar of laughter. "Sour ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... follow the law of his being with exact compliance. Whitman hates doubt, deprecates discussion, and discourages to his utmost the craving, carping sensibilities of the conscience. We are to imitate, to use one of his absurd and happy phrases, "the satisfaction and aplomb of animals." If he preaches a sort of ranting Christianity in morals, a fit consequent to the ranting optimism of his cosmology, it is because he declares it to be the original deliverance of the human heart; or at least, for he would be honestly historical in method, of the human heart as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other guests. "Parting is such sweet sorrow" in some cases that it becomes awkward and embarrassing because so prolonged. Especially does it seem difficult for the youth who has not yet attained the aplomb which makes him at ease in society, to "tear himself away." Remember that a too abrupt departure, though regrettable, is better than ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... soldiers. They were so easily led into traps. They bunched together when under fire instead of scattering for cover. They did not know how to read sign on the warmest trail. These range-riders were different. If they were not as wary as the Utes, they made up for it by the dash and aplomb with which they ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine |
