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More "Bluster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of la Garda spoke, bringing back his confidence with a bluster. "Morano has sold his soul to Satan," he said, "in exchange for Satan's aid, and Satan has taught his tongue Latin and guides his fingers in the affairs of the pen." And so said all la Garda, rejoicing at finding an explanation where ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... is beginning to bluster;" said Trysail, who had witnessed the descent of his commander, at that moment and on such an errand, with great dissatisfaction. "Although his shot fell short, it is too much to let a Frenchman have ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... engagement, which soon became general. On the whole, I come to the conclusion that, in the proceedings of the Chinese Plenipotentiaries and Commander-in-Chief in this instance, there was that mixture of stupidity, want of straightforwardness, suspicion, and bluster, which characterises so generally the conduct of affairs in this country; but I cannot believe that, after the experience which Sang-ko-lin-sin had already had of our superiority in the field, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... dwell apart from men; he was a part of men. "The Mystic" is an admirable conception of the soul, living remote from society and action, seeing our world as through a smoke. Mysticism has its truth and power. Many of us bluster and do, and do not stand apart and dwell enough ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... know that he was going to run in?" said Gymbert, trying to bluster. "He crossed my horse, and it is his own fault if he was in the way of ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... quality, good or evil, at its highest? Here are the rough crust over a kindly heart, the explosive temper, the arrogance, the insular narrowness, the want of sympathy and insight, the rudeness of perception, the positiveness, the overbearing bluster, the strong deep-seated religious principle, and every other characteristic of the cruder, rougher John Bull who was the great grandfather of the present ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hair's-breadth from the path he had marked out, took leave of his mother, and a formal farewell of the gentleman who described himself as the best of fathers. Beecot senior, turkey-cock and tyrant, was more subdued now that he found bluster would not carry his point. But the wave of common-sense came too late. Paul departed bag and baggage, and his sire swore to the empty air. Even Mrs. Beecot was not available, as ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... With all this bluster, I saw that old Katchiba was in a great dilemma, and that he would give anything for a shower, but that lie did not know how to get out of the scrape. It was a common freak of the tribes to sacrifice the rain-maker should ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... you're a d——d Yankee," said the planter. "You're welcome to your opinion, old Blowhard," responded Lemon. "This is a free country; I am a Yankee—all but the d——d—and now what do you propose to do about it?" (All this in an assumed tone of bluster, as the best adapted to the situation.) "We'll see! we'll see!" rejoined the planter, and at once started in a direct line for his house. Lemon lost no time, but returned as quickly as possible to his comrade, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... own judgment, independent of opinion. He began to consult his lieutenants, asking their advice, distrusting his own opinions. He made mistakes, blunders, and when those were brought to his notice, took refuge in bluster. He knew it to be bluster—knew that sooner or later his subordinates would recognise it as such. How long could he maintain his position? So only he could keep his grip upon the lever of control till the battle was ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... said he, "throwing shells into the town till they sent me out 400 hostages." The simple truth is that in spite of his long pedigree and good blood Bismarck was not quite a gentleman in our sense of the word; and as this accounts for his ferocious bluster and truculent bloodthirsty utterances when he was in power in the war time, so it was the keynote to his more recent undignified attitude and howls of querulous impatience of his altered situation. It must be said of him, however, that he was a man ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... him uncomfortable. The artist was reasserting the old superiority over him which the visitor had found so irritating, and it was Iron's instinct to meet this by an air of bluster. ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... slip, there would have been more ground for imputing to him an incapacity to distinguish between truth and falsehood. Freeman's "Last Words on Mr. Froude" show no sign of penitence or good feeling, and they end with characteristic bluster about the truth, from which he had so grievously departed. But Froude was ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... regarded him as a very strange boy; but that was only because he was a little out of his element. He would have preferred to be among men who did not bluster and swear; but, in spite of them, he had the courage and the fortitude to be true to himself. The little angel still maintained her ascendency in ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... storm-wind may bluster and blow, Tearing the trees from the root-broken ground, Or the wild sea-surf may leap and may flow In solemn silence ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... Brilliana's eyes as she gave the Puritan a bow for his praise. The Cavalier, a viola da gamba of anger, pegged his string of bluster tighter. ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... agent of one of the great London theatres was present. He was on the lookout for something that might be got up as a prodigy. The theatre, it seems, was in desperate condition—nothing but a miracle could save it. He pitched upon me for that miracle. I had a remarkable bluster in my style, and swagger in my gait, and having taken to drink a little during my troubles, my voice was somewhat cracked; so that it seemed like two voices run into one. The thought struck the agent to bring me out as a theatrical wonder; as the ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... is lost, and nothing will be lost. But I fear these two men. They do not bluster and talk at random like the others. They are so very quiet that they may ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... the war began Joffre has developed some of the qualities notable in our own General Grant. There is not a particle of show or bluster about him. He dresses as plainly as possible, talks little and seems to prefer solitude. But his will is imperious and he does not hesitate when anything is to be done, whether it is pleasant or otherwise. For his ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... County man looked at Joe in some surprise. He had expected to frighten the boy with his bluster, but it didn't seem ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... made, the States government yielded at once, and yielded without bluster. I cannot say I much admired Mr. Seward's long letter. It was full of smart special pleading, and savored strongly, as Mr. Seward's productions always do, of the personal author. Mr. Seward was making an effort ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... may bluster as much as he pleases— Our friend, Mr. FISH, is sustained by the law, And old Mr. BENNETT just bellows to tease us; Sic semper e pluribus unum ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... thing in the world for the thief and swindler to talk with the greatest apparent earnestness and sincerity and honesty. Pious talk very frequently is the haze in which an avaricious and greedy soul hides itself. Bluff, bluster, and boasting are the sops which the coward throws to his own vanity, while the quietest, sweetest, and gentlest tones often sheath the fierce heart of the born fighter, as a velvet glove is said to ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... and silver, man and woman, For things that's raided, made, dug, or human, 'Meriky's the coming nation; She's-bound to conquer all creation! Per'aps you call this brag and bluster; No, 'taint nuther, for we muster The best of brain, the mighty dollar; We'll ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... this terrible speech, Villiers had crouched on the ground, half terrified, while his wife towered over him, magnificent in her anger. At the end, however, he recovered himself a little, and began to bluster. ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... our Courages tho, I tell you that now, Gload; but like an angry Wench, when it had huft and bluster'd it self weary, it ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... a certain amount of bluster on the part of two, the cowboys dropped their guns, and Delmar said: "Gather 'em ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... the veiled hostility that met him everywhere, faced Steptoe Service and made his request, that dignitary felt a chill go down his spine. Like Old Pete he felt the man beneath the surface. He met him, however, with bluster and refused all reopening of a matter which he declared settled with the burial of the snow-packer in the sliding canyons where ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... million rifles. Come now, don't be fools. The Governor alone up there in Montreal has enough men to drive you all into the hills of Maine in a week. You think you've got the start of Colborne? Why, he has known every movement of Papineau and your rebels for the last two months. You can bluster and riot to-day, but look out for to-morrow. I am the only Englishman here among you. Kill me; but watch what your end will be! For every hair of my head there will be one less habitant in this province. You haul down the British flag, and string up your tricolour ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... now began to raise their heads, yet they could not, for some time, do more than bluster and quibble. There is an excellent criticism on them by that distinguished statesman, poet, scholar, and brave soldier, Sir Philip Sydney. "Some of their pieces were only 'dumb shews,' some with choruses, ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... soul! it is the night—the night; Against thy door drifts up the silent snow, Blocking thy threshold: 'Fall' thou sayest, 'fall, fall Cold snow, and lie and be trod underfoot. Am not I fallen? wake up and pipe, O wind, Dull wind, and heat and bluster at my door: Merciful wind, sing me a hoarse rough song, For there is other music made to-night That I would fain not hear. Wake, thou still sea, Heavily plunge. Shoot on, white waterfall. O, I could long like thy cold icicles Freeze, freeze, and hang upon the frosty clift ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... cares for anything but the show and bluster which are threatening our ruin? English food, not long ago the best in the world, is falling off in quality, and even our national genius for cooking shows a decline; to anyone who knows England, these are facts significant enough. Foolish persons ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... delivered at the House of Commons. Fergus O'Connor dissuaded them from any collision with the authorities. In a speech full of bombast and egotism, he declared that he was personally marked out for slaughter by the authorities. Thus, after all the bluster of this great tribune, as his followers called him, he showed the white feather. He was not prepared, like Smith O'Brien, gallantly to go out, with his life in his hand, and verify, by exposing himself to every peril and penalty, the words ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... brought me here to bluster at me and frighten me into running away out of the section," he reflected. ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... Southerner, and the response to it which thrilled all States, South or North, outside South Carolina, had set the seal to Webster's doctrines. There had been loud and ominous talk of secession lately; it was certainly not mere bluster; Northerners in the main were cautious politicians and had been tempted to go far to conciliate it. But if the claim of Southern States were put in practice, the whole North would now regard it not as a respectable claim, but as ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... he loves her best," said Mr. Mount, snuff-taking in graceful Court fashion, "for he hath loved a dozen since; but she is a shrew, and can rave and bluster at him till he would hang her with jewels, and give her his crown itself to quieten her furies. 'Tis the pretty orange wench and actor woman Nell Gwynne who will please him longest, for she is a good-humoured baggage and witty, ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... into his chair with the utmost complacency. This was not the kind of man with whom mere bluster counted. ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... of his bluster and convinced him that the elusive Mamise was some tremendous super-spy. He became servile at once, and took pride in being the lackey of her unexplained and unexplaining majesty. Mamise liked him even less in ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... their demand? Have you read the Kaiser's speeches? If you have not a copy, I advise you to buy it; they will soon be out of print, and you won't have any more of the same sort again. They are full of the clatter and bluster of German militarists—the mailed fist, the shining armour. Poor old mailed fist—its knuckles are getting a little bruised. Poor shining armour—the shine is being knocked out of it. But there is the same swagger ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... stagnated in the sunless swamps of a theosophy, from which a cloud of sedulous ephemera still suck a little spiritual moisture. In another it led to the sacramental and sacerdotal developments of Anglicanism. In a third, among men with strong practical energy, to the benevolent bluster of a sort of Christianity which is called muscular because it is not intellectual. It would be an error to suppose that these and the other streams that have sprung from the same source, did not in the days of their fulness fertilise and gladden many lands. The wordy pietism of one school, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... children's children. Never mind how big may be the ships of the enemy, or how many guns they may carry, let British seamen when they meet them, as we do nowadays, feel sure that they will conquer, and I am very sure that conquer they will; ay, however the Frenchmen may bluster and boast of their mountain ships, just as ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... one who won't so lightly let me off; He has the advantage, and he won't forego it, That lawyer's clerk—and 'tis to you I owe it; You raked the ashes of our faded flames, And you may take your oath he won't be still If once I mutter but a syllable Against the brazen bluster of his claims. These civil-service gentlemen, they say, Are very potent in the press to-day. A trumpery paragraph can lay me low, Once printed in that Samson-like Gazette That with the jaw of asses fells its foe, And runs away ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... Kenton's tongue to say that it was a good thing for him Dick was not there. But partly the sense that this would be unbecoming bluster, and partly the suffocating resentment of the fellow's impudence, limited his response to a formless gasp, and Bittridge went on: "But I'm glad to find you here, judge. I didn't know that you were in town. Family all well in New York?" He was not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... with leveled pistols, dominated the car. And the threat of the weapons themselves was not more sinister than the purpose that glinted in the ferocious eyes above the improvised masks. There was no mere bluff and bluster in that steady gaze. They were ready to shoot and shoot to kill. Their lives were already forfeit to the law, anyway, and in that rough country they would get "a short shrift and a long rope" if their plans went astray. They might ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... Ladybrig murder, our fancies and the wind together played Eleanor and me sad tricks. When once we began to listen we seemed to hear a whole tragedy going on close outside. We could distinguish footsteps and voices through the bluster, and then a struggle in the shrubbery, and a thud, and a groan, and then a roar of wind, half drowning the sound of flying footsteps—and then an awful pause, and at last faint groaning, and a bump, as of some poor wounded body falling against the house. At this point ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... looks very much as though Marvin was really the Russian Government, which I have always suspected. They had this to gain by publishing the Memorandum—that they showed themselves the real victors in the Congress of Berlin, in spite of all our bluster, and they damaged Lord Beaconsfield, who was their enemy. Marvin could never have got a copy, and always pretended that he had learned the whole document by heart, which, considering its length and the total absence ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... Ned, and his tones were firm, with no bluster nor bluff in them, "we came out here to find Tom Swift, and were going to find him! We have reason to believe he's here—at least, he started for here," he substituted, as he wished to make no statement he could not prove. "Now we don't claim we have any right ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... Mistress Set both meat and drink before him, At the boat-stern then she placed him, There to work the copper paddle. And she bade the wind blow strongly, And the north wind fiercely bluster. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... treachery and shipping them off to the King's galleys was a bold stroke,—too bold, perhaps. Governor Frontenac would never have done this; he knew the Iroquois temper too well. Governor la Barre, for all his bluster, would not have dared. It was certain that this new governor, Denonville, was not a coward; but as Menard reflected, going back over his own fifteen years of frontier life, he knew that this policy of brute force would be sorely ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... bully and bluster as much as you like," he said sulkily; "the difficulty about the money is not the only difficulty. You would be for taking strong measures with the women yourself—if you knew as much ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... Haldimand of Canada, who hoped to win the Vermonters over to the British cause. He seems to have assured Haldimand's agent that "I shall do everything in my power to make this state a British province.'' In March 1781 he wrote to Congress, with characteristic bluster, "I am as resolutely determined to defend the independence of Vermont as congress that of the United States, and rather than fail will retire with the hardy Green Mountain Boys into the desolate caverns of the mountains and wage war with human nature ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... continued to bluster and Paul hung sullenly about the drawing room. I had got through with both of them, however. Whether the butler—and the other servants—backed me up, or not, I believed that ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... this man when he spoke to himself in his solitude of his purpose of resigning the titled heiress. To the arguments, the entreaties, or the threats of others he would pay no heed. The Countess might bluster about her rank, and he would heed her not at all. He cared nothing for the whole tribe of Lovels. If Lady Anna asked for release, she should be released. But not till she had heard his words. How scalding these words might be, ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... against republican institutions. And it is time the traitors of the South should know that the Free States are becoming every day more united in sentiment and more earnest in resolve, and that, so soon as they are thoroughly satisfied that secession is something more than empty bluster, a public spirit will be aroused that will be content with no half-measures, and which no Executive, however unwilling, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... of its poised externals most brilliantly sensitive, most leapingly responsive to all strong stimuli—a temperament moreover that the war and the armistice between them had turned wholly toward the stimuli of fever—and Ted had made it with neither bravado nor bluster and without any particular sense of doing very much—and now this girl was going to smash it and him together as if she were doing nothing more important than ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... and appetites: for ill successe faileth not in a beginning, the grounde whereof abhorring reason, is planted and layed vppon the sandie foundacion of pleasure, which is shaken and ouerthrowen, by the least winde and tempest that Fortune can bluster ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... Lords thought that the threats used against them in the course of the election meant nothing and were only a kind of bluster to get the Budget passed, they were grievously mistaken. It must have been hard for them to realize that Lloyd George meant all the presumptuous things he said. He was never more in earnest. A cut-and-dried plan had been arranged ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... said Pen, laughing, as he nursed his leg, which reminded him of his wound from time to time. "But I don't believe it. It's only bluster and brag, of which I think our fellows ought to be ashamed. Why, you've more than once seen the French soldiers ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... left-hand columnar group, placed at the edge of the picture after the manner of Leonardo. The woman and child lighten the mass of foliage on the right and make a beautiful pattern. The white town of Castelfranco sings against the threatening sky, the winds bluster through the space, the trees shiver with the coming storm. Here and there leafy boughs are struck in with a slight, crisp touch, in which we can follow readily the painter's ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... the trembling wretch tried first to bluster and then to explain. Carroll was again summoned and affirmed emphatically that he and Crawley had been separated for the greater part of one day, and that while together they had not ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... and faith is darkness. For here reason gropes like a blind man,—is ever changing from this to that, and knows not what it does. But if we speak in this manner to the worldly, learned, or wise, they begin to cry out and bluster against it. Therefore St. Peter is a bold Apostle indeed, in that he dares make that darkness that ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... the others, resentful of the distrust that Taterleg had shown, but more than half of his courage and bluster taken away from him with his gun. He was swearing more volubly than ever to cover his other deficiencies; but he was a man to be feared only when he had his weapon ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... watched her open-mouthed—amazed. How did she know all this? It made strange music in his ears, for, in spite of all his bluster, he hungered for praise; for applause. Pearl's words fell like a shower on a ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... take On those that are, Reuenge: Crimes, like Lands Are not inherited, then deere Countryman, Bring in thy rankes, but leaue without thy rage, Spare thy Athenian Cradle, and those Kin Which in the bluster of thy wrath must fall With those that haue offended, like a Shepheard, Approach the Fold, and cull th' infected forth, But kill ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... woman, I know you're in there, and with whom. Just wait, wait!" Instantly, like a libertine stirred by fear of discovery in the open, he recovered his strength and hurled himself madly upon the ventriloquist whose voice continued to bluster outside the room. In this wise he experienced the pleasures ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... almost a boy again. The spring was in his blood! Moreover, he flattered himself that he had not begun to look old! Still, he was sensitive lest Carrissima should fancy he was making an ass of himself, and, as usual at such times, he began to bluster. ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... several places along the stream—these energetic and swarthy sons of the Incas could by no means find 'Tonio, or one of his tribe, when given the chance to lead and the backing of armed troopers. 'Tonio, well or wounded, was far too wary for them and, after hours of brag and bluster, not a vestige of him did they discover beyond a few scattered footprints and that one revolver, concerning which, it seems, Munoz told sensational tales. He declared he had found it glinting in the ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... adopted it as their platform, and elections have been carried upon it. Its value as a support to the dignity and self-importance of local politicians was readily apprehended by them; and it was in perfect harmony with the tone of bluster which pervaded our politics. The thorough refutation which it always encountered, whenever it was seriously considered, never seemed to do its popularity any harm. In truth, mere vaporing hurt nobody, and caused no great alarm. But ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... I have had," Katarina said with a laugh; "the awkwardness will soon wear off if she has to dress like this for a short time. As for me, I have learnt all a boy's tricks and ways. I can whistle and shout with any of them, can quarrel, and bluster, be saucy on occasion, and have only ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... asked, for him to have foreseen the Russian character, or have foretold their heroic sacrifice of Moscow, for which doubtless he himself would catch the blame? So now, if his allies stood firm, he would have another great army, and still conquer. Not all this was bluster, for his figures were in the main correct. Moreover, Russia's strength was steadily diminishing, a fact of which he was dimly aware. Of Kutusoff's two hundred thousand men only forty thousand remained when he entered Vilna after the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... here," began the lank man with that sort of persuasiveness which can turn instantly into bluster, "all this is pure foolishness, you know. We're here to stay. We've bought this place, and some other land to go with it, and we expect to stay right here and make a living. It happens that we expect to make a living off of sheep. Now, we don't want to start in by quarreling with our ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... Unfriendly debate, And disunion straight; When no reason in nature Can be given of the matter, Any more than for shapes or for different stature? If you love your dear selves, your religion or queen, Ye ought in good manners to be peaceable men: For nothing disgusts her Like making a bluster: And your making this riot, Is what she could cry at, Since all her concern's for our welfare and quiet. I would ask any man Of them all that maintain Their passive obedience With such mighty vehemence, That damn'd doctrine, I trow! What he means by it, ho', To trump it up now? Or to tell ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... thus expressed himself: "The attempt to introduce that restriction produced a violent agitation among the members from the slaveholding states, and it has been communicated to the states themselves, and to the territory of Missouri. The slave-drivers, as usual, whenever this topic is brought up, bluster and bully, talk of the white slaves of the Eastern States, and the dissolution of the Union, and of oceans of blood; and the Northern men, as usual, pocket all this hectoring, sit down in quiet, and submit to the slave-scourging republicanism ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... swag he had thrown down, or the hat which had been knocked from his head. There was only one instinct or desire in his being—the instinct which drives the wounded rat back to its hole to die, the instinct of self-preservation working in its meanest range. His swagger and bluster had been hopelessly crushed out of him by the vigour of Palmer Billy's attack; and to have been, as he considered, twice deserted by his own comrades, rendered ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... which had begun to blackguard The Blunder and Bluster's correspondent while he remained under the shelter of his pseudonym, now that his name was known, came out with double virulence, and filled half a sheet with filthy abuse of Harry, including collateral assaults on his brother, grandmother, and second ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... sort of creature. And though I should like it in him hereafter perhaps, yet I can't help despising him a little in my heart for it now. I believe, my dear, we all love your blustering fellows best; could we but direct the bluster, and bid it roar when and at ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... to interfere?" said Barker, turning fiercely to Russell. Russell, as usual, took not the slightest notice of him, and Barker, after a little more bluster, repeated the trick on another boy. This time Russell thought that every one might be on the look out for himself, and so went on with his work. But when ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... best of monarchs, add, to crown Thy bounty to the Dardans,—one, beside These many, nor let bluster bear thee down. A worthy husband for thy child provide, And peace shall with the lasting pact abide. Else, if such terror doth our souls enslave, Him now, in hope to turn away his pride, Him let us pray his proper right to waive, And, pitying, deign ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... came Taug, warily and with many pauses and much bluster, and still behind him came other bulls, snarling ferociously and uttering their uncanny challenges. Sheeta's yellow-green eyes glared terribly at Tarzan, and past Tarzan they shot brief glances at the apes of Kerchak advancing upon him. Discretion prompted ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... last few years of worry and bluster across the North Sea we have a little forgotten India in our calculations. As Germany faces round eastward again, as she must do before very long, we shall find India resuming its former central position in our ideas of international ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Troy ascribe to Pandarus that shameful traffic out of which his name has passed into the words 'to pander' and 'pandarism.' 'Rodomontade' is from Rodomonte, a hero of Boiardo; who yet, it must be owned, does not bluster and boast, as the word founded on his name seems to imply; adopted by Ariosto, it was by him changed into Rodamonte. 'Thrasonical' is from Thraso, the braggart of Roman comedy. Cervantes has given us 'quixotic'; Swift 'lilliputian'; to Moliere the French language owes 'tartuffe' ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... we camped and again a storm arose to pound and bluster all night. In spite of a choppy sea next day we reached the small island before the final crossing; and here, perforce, we stayed to await a calmer sea. Later we heard that during this very storm a canoe-load of Indians attempted the crossing and upset; none were ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... to bluster before his Virginie, Madame lays a finger on her lips and he is silent. He smokes his pipes and his cigars in a kiosk fifty feet from the chateau, and airs himself before he returns to the house. Proud of his subjection, he turns to her, like a bear drunk on grapes, and says, when anything ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... beauty, Pale with fright, yet blushing rosy At the simple joy of living, And before her modest presence Harsh winds calm their fiercest bluster, And the last resisting armies Of the Snow-king quickly vanish. Then she sends her sweetest fragrance Upward, like a breath of incense, To the sun, who cheers and thanks her With ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... down she could see the way they had gone; the crooked gulch, a garment's crease in the great lap of the table-land, sinking to the river. She saw no one, heard no sound but the senseless hurry and bluster of the winds,—coming from no one knew where, going none cared whither. It blew a gale in the bright sunlight, mocking her efforts to listen. She waved her hand to her uncle's lone figure in the hollow, to signify that she was going down on the other side. ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... as poor a critic As an honest friend: you stroke me on one cheek, Buffet the other. Come, you bluster, Antony! You know I know all this. I must not move Until I hear from Carew and the Duke. I fear the mine ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... ignore this and other sexual subjects, we may do whatever else we like: we may bully, we may bluster, we may rage, We may foam at the mouth; we may tear down Heaven with our prayers, we may exhaust ourselves with weeping over the sorrows of the poor; we may narcotize ourselves and others with the opiate of Christian resignation; we may dissolve the ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... "No, no, Jack, bluster won't do with me. I was an officer in Chicago before ever I came to this darned coal bunker, and I know a Chicago crook when I ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... far back as 1860 passed every week on its northward way up along the coast of Norway, was of a very sociable turn of mind. It ran with much shrieking and needless bluster in and out the calm, winding fjords, paid unceremonious little visits in every out-of-the-way nook and bay, dropped now and then a black heap of coal into the shining water, and sent thick volleys of smoke and shrill little echoes careering aimlessly among the mountains. It seemed, on ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... unintelligible bellowing in its sooty throat (the big flue, we mean, of its wide chimney), partly in complaint at the rude wind, but rather, as befits their century and a half of hostile intimacy, in tough defiance. A rumbling kind of a bluster roars behind the fire-board. A door has slammed above stairs. A window, perhaps, has been left open, or else is driven in by an unruly gust. It is not to be conceived, before-hand, what wonderful wind-instruments are these old timber mansions, and how haunted ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... just thinking! Thinking of a man whom I used to denounce as bad-tempered! A dear, kind, thoughtful, unselfish Englishman with a—a bluster! I can never call it temper again, after knowing Mr Travers! He has taught ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... taken advantage of that over- loyalty to betray the North. "We have worked for them, and fought for them, and paid for them," says the North. "By our labor we have raised their indolence to a par with our energy. While we have worked like men, we have allowed them to talk and bluster. We have warmed them in our bosom, and now they turn against us and sting us. The world sees that this is so. England, above all, must see it, and, seeing it, should speak out her true opinion." The North ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... sprang to his feet and began to bluster considerably in Portuguese; but poor Barney seemed awfully crest-fallen, arid the deep concern which wrinkled his face, and the genuine regret that sounded in the tones of his voice, at length soothed the indignant Brazilian, who frowned gravely, ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... bold and self-reliant, named his terms to Castellani—a half-interest in the business—and Castellani, swear and bully and bluster as he might, must accept. This made Sampey a rich man at once. Castellani, exceedingly gracious and friendly after the signing of the compact, proposed a quiet supper in his private apartments in celebration of the new arrangement, and presently ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... prairie, and hitched their horses to their wagons, and were quietly going about their business, when with a great whoop and hurrah, which frightened their horses and made them break loose from their wagons, a company of men came in sight, and with swagger and bluster, took possession of the polls, and proceeded to do the voting. Meantime whisky flowed like water, and the men, far gone in liquor, turned the place into a bedlam. In utter humiliation and disgust many of the squatters went ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... you not to expect plain sailing?" she continued with a knowing look; "and Ada Irvine is a perfect hurricane. She will swoop down on you at every opportunity, and bluster and blow; but let her alone ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... but he also was not forthcoming! Nil desperandum. It was moved and seconded and "ayed" that—Callaghan, Esq., be requested to address the meeting. After some hesitation, and a reference to his own "proverbial modesty," he proceeded to foam, and stamp, and thump, and bluster for "the vigorous prosecution of the war," till the American eagle should "stretch his wings over the halls of the Montezumas." At this stage of the proceedings, the spitting and smoke had become so offensive that I was compelled to retire; and I did so with no very high notions of the intelligence ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... prow, looking in and out of one flowery cove after another, scarcely stirring the turtle from his log, and leaving no wake behind! It seemed as if all the process of rowing had too much noise and bluster, and as if the sharp slender wherry, in particular, were rather too pert and dapper to win the confidence of the woods and waters. Time has dispelled the fear. As I rest poised upon the oars above some submerged shallow, diamonded with ripple-broken sunbeams, the fantastic Notonecta ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... with the capricious lawlessness of an Eastern despot. Chivalric deference to woman, and a disposition to protect and honor her, is a necessary element of a manly character in our Western civilization; but young Haldane was as truly an Oriental as if he had been permitted to bluster around a Turkish harem; and those whom he should have learned to wait upon with delicacy and tact became subservient to his varying moods, developing that essential brutality which mars the nature of every man who looks upon woman as an inferior and a servant. ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... false impression—a notion that she was afraid of him, was coquetting with him. She opened the door leading into the front part of the flat where the Quinlan family lived. "If you don't behave yourself, I'll call Mr. Quinlan," said she, not the least bluster or fear ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Maginn determined to do his best to rid them in future of this "superfluous swelling." So he indulged in a critical Donnybrook; but after hitting out and about at the Essay for three months he left it much as he found it.(19) He could not get to close quarters with Farmer's scholarship. His bluster compares ill with Farmer's gentler manner, and in some passages the quiet humour has proved too subtle for his animosity. There was more impartiality in the judgment of Johnson: "Dr. Farmer, you have done that which was never done before; that is, you have completely finished ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... all loathing their daily avocations for the time being, all spending their earnings, or borrowings, or stealings, on bits of pasteboard that admit them to their nightly banquet. The stage struck always copy the traits of the leading actor of the hour, whoever he may be, and grunt and bluster in imitation of "Ned"—meaning Forrest—or quack and stutter a la "Bill"—that is, Macready—as the wind of popular favor veers and changes. It is curious, at a representation of the "Gladiator," to winnow these young gentlemen from the mass by the lens of an ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... fate was against him, and that any further hostility towards the shadow was only a tempting of Providence. He lost his health, spirits, and everything but his courage. His countenance became pale and peaceful looking; the bluster departed from him; his body shrunk up like a withered parsnip. Thrice was he compelled to take in his clothes, and thrice did he ascertain that much of his time would be necessarily spent in pursuing his retreating person through the solitude ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... ripe pod, let the tempest break its heart into pieces, scattering thunders. Stop your bluster of dispraise and of self-praise, And with the calm of silent prayer on your foreheads ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore
... print it again and again. It is not we who say this of American citizens, but American citizens who say this of themselves. "Bull is odious. We can't bear Bull. He is haughty, arrogant, a braggart, and a blusterer; and we can't bear brag and bluster in our modest and decorous country. We hate Bull, and if he quarrels with us on a point in which we are in the wrong, we have goods of his in our custody, and we will rob him!" Suppose your London banker saying to you, "Sir, I have ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... him that he had been so long fighting Indians on the frontier that he had acquired some of their traits and habits. His system of discipline was based on these peculiarities. He aimed at a stoical command of himself as the means of commanding others, and avoided noisy bluster of every sort, going, perhaps, to an excess in brevity of speech and in enforcing his orders by the consequences of any disobedience. His subordinates recognized his purpose to be just, and soon learned to have the greatest confidence in him as a military officer. Unless ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... had well nigh exhausted the slender stock of evidence with which he had started. For a few minutes longer he tried by sheer bluster to conceal the poverty of the case, and last of all he handed one of Cobham's confessions to the Clerk of the Crown to be read in court. It entered into no particulars, which Cobham said their lordships must not expect from him, for he was so confounded that he had lost his memory, but ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... older dogs. The time had passed, he continued, for speeches and resolutions and votes of censure. Dogs must act if Man, the enemy, was to be finally crushed. I intervened at this point and told the Borzoi he must moderate his language, upon which he began to bluster, shouting that he would not be put down by an arrogant hireling of effete Militarism. One learns to practise self-control in the trenches, so I was able to repress an inclination to assert my authority then and there. It was no use striking at man himself, he went ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... who would intimidate him by his severity and awe him by the manifestation of his greatness. In fact, associating business success with his father's manners and methods, Allen had come to believe that force meant noise and bluster, and that firmness stood for an intolerance of discussion. But here, in the midst of his family, Robert Gorham displayed a side of his nature which Stephen Sanford had never seen; yet Allen was no less conscious of ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... and confident. There was no self-assurance or bluster about it, and yet it was convincing. ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Morton, laughing. "Just that one act shows the man's character to a T. Bluster, and then retreat. But suppose it should come to fighting, my boy. Hadn't you better go back to school, and stay till the ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... the younger man blankly, "what a ridiculous old humbug it is! And how he used to frighten me in the old days with his confounded cavalry bluster! I rather think I will look him up: and I'll dine with him three times a week if he likes. Meanwhile, it's time for me to go and meet old Rainham, and take him round to Brodonowski's. What a ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... caught in that whirling surge, Shot sheer to their dismal doom: Keel and mast only did ever emerge, Shattered, from out the all-gulping tomb!— Like the bluster of tempest, clearer and clearer, Comes its roaring nearer and ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... speeches? If you have not a copy I advise you to buy one; they will soon be out of print, and you will not have many more of the same sort. [Laughter and applause.] They are full of the glitter and bluster of German militarism—"mailed fist," and "shining armor." Poor old mailed fist! Its knuckles are getting a little bruised. Poor shining armor! The shine is being knocked out of it. [Applause.] There is the same swagger ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... began the old man, between bluster and whine, "I talked about them chaps to the superintendent of yo' mill, an' you-all said you didn't want none of that size. And one o' yo' men—he was a room boss, I reckon—spoke up right sassy to me—as sassy as Johnnie Consadine herself, ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... brook to bed, and threw a great mantle of snow over him; and the brook that had romped and prattled all the summer and told pretty tales to the grass and flowers,—the brook went to sleep too. With all his fierceness and bluster, the storm-king was very kind; he did not awaken the old oak-tree and the slumbering flowers. The little vine lay under the fleecy snow against the old stone wall and slept peacefully, and so did the violet and ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... by which Nikta entered the hut] Well, have you had enough spree? You've been puffing yourself up, but now you'll know how it feels! You'll lose some of your bluster! ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... arms are only constituted proportionately to their throats, they must do good fighting. I should think nothing would stand before them. Daisy, they will certainly bear down all opposition. Are you afraid? Here is the Fourth, and Washington safe yet, for all the Southern bluster." ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... sense, as the salesmen themselves use it, to cover all the people who are trying to convince some one else that what they have is worth while whether it is an idea or a washing machine or a packet of drawings)—there is a certain rough type of salesman who tries to bluster his way through. He never lasts long as a salesman, though unfortunately he survives a good many years in various kinds of business. Even he must ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... nearer; and his words came, now, in answer to the unfinished threat with cutting force. "What would you do, you big, hulking swine? You can bully a weakling not half your size; you can beat a helpless incompetent like a dog; you can bluster, and threaten a tenderfoot when you think he fears you; you can attack a man with a loaded quirt when you think him unable to defend himself;—show me what you can ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... reply with considerable force, whether you appeal to the mind or the heart of the prospect. But when his objection is stated in a powerless tone, even though it may be accompanied by curtness or bluster, you need not waste much force on your answering appeal to ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... politicians began to bluster like the season. Late one afternoon he was on his way to the office with a cartoon, the first in which he had seriously to attack Clayton. Benson, the managing editor of the Telegraph, had conceived it, and ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... surprisingly bold and self-reliant, named his terms to Castellani—a half-interest in the business—and Castellani, swear and bully and bluster as he might, must accept. This made Sampey a rich man at once. Castellani, exceedingly gracious and friendly after the signing of the compact, proposed a quiet supper in his private apartments in celebration of the new arrangement, ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... have been about it still. A sicker man than Urquhart, who made a hard death for himself, would have given up the battle, thrown himself at James's feet and asked no quarter. Urquhart was not so far gone as that; a little bluster remained. He did it badly. He didn't mean to be brutal; he meant to be honest; but it sounded brutal, and ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... O sweeter than the berry! O nymph more bright Than moonshine night, Like kidlings blithe and merry! Ripe as the melting luster; Yet hard to tame As raging flame, And fierce as storms that bluster! ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... pursuers dismounted and started forward, only to stop short. A scream had come to them, faint in the bluster of the storm, the racking scream of a woman in a tempest of anger. Suddenly the light seemed to bob about in the old house; it showed first at one window—then another—as though some one were running from room to room. Once two ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... another in London." He was interrupted by the first call for dinner, which the trumpeter announced at the bottom of the companionway. The trumpet blast was lost without resonance in the heavy air and the bluster of the waves. "What's more," he concluded, "she ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... himself—nay, because of it; it was impossible to use the weapon that a former kindness had placed in his hand. He looked at Leverich now with an expression which the latter quieted himself to meet. This was a situation, not for bluster and rage, but ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... contest your claims. I've filed a contest on this eighty, here, and I'm going to hold it. Let that soak into your minds. I don't want any trouble—I'm even willing to take a good deal in the way of bluster, rather than have trouble. But I'm going to stay. See?" He waved his pipe in a gesture of finality and continued to smoke and to watch them impersonally, leaning against the door in that lounging negligence which is so irritating to ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... Davis type don't bluster, my boy. They are to meet at Montgomery, Alabama, on February fourth. They'll organize the Cotton States into a Southern Confederacy. If they can win Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas, they may gobble Maryland, ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... however, could no longer be quieted. Through all the rhetoric, sophistry, and bluster of the conspirators he saw the diminishing resources of the Government and the rising power of the insurrection. With a last bold effort to rouse the President from his lethargy, he demanded, in the Cabinet meeting of the 13th, that the forts should be strengthened. But ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... (stroke) bato. Blow blovi. Blouse kitelo. Blow (of flowers) ekflori. Bludgeon bastonego. Blue blua. Bluish dubeblua. Blunder erarego. Blunt malakra. Blunt (mannered) malafabla. Blur malpurigi. Blush rugxigxi. Bluster fanfaroni. Boa boao. Boar porkviro. Board (food) nutrado—ajxo. Board (plank) tabulo. Board logxi. Boarder (house) logxanto. Boarder (school) edukato. Boarding school edukejo. Boarding-house logxantejo. Boast fanfaroni. Boast fanfarono. Boaster fanfaronulo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... correct. "I don't think that you quite put strength enough into your blame on one side, while you make at least enough of minor faults or eccentricities. To me it seems always that Whitman's great flaw is a fault of debility, not an excess of strength—I mean his bluster. His own personal and national self-reliance and arrogance, I need not tell you, I applaud, and sympathise and rejoice in; but the blatant ebullience of feeling and speech, at times, is feeble for so great a poet of so great a people. He is in part certainly the ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... of Voltaire the heroes of poetry and drama were fine gentlemen; in the days of Victor Hugo they bluster about in velvet and mustachios and gold chains, but they seem in nowise more poetical than their ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... years of worry and bluster across the North Sea we have a little forgotten India in our calculations. As Germany faces round eastward again, as she must do before very long, we shall find India resuming its former central position in our ideas of international politics. With ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... enough to try to outdo the newcomers, and degraded the quiet dignity of their patriarchal manner of life by speculations on the Stock Exchange. The intelligent middle classes, whose eyes and ears were filled with this bluster of the gold-orgy, found that their former way of living had now grown uncomfortable, their houses were too small, their bread too dry, their beer too common and their views of life began to climb upward in a measure which, whether they were willing ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... with the quiet sternness more formidable than all his bluster, "have not I forbidden you ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... which he delivered this speech had an almost magical effect upon the jealous Latin. His bluster sank suddenly and died. Muttering to himself and staring at Berry as at a wizard, he seized the girl by the arm and started to move rapidly away, wide-eyed and ill at ease.... With suppressed excitement and the tail of my eye, I watched him bear down ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... that he was going to run in?" said Gymbert, trying to bluster. "He crossed my horse, and it is his own fault if he was in ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... Mohegans from field to field, and from hut to hut, till they had thoroughly informed themselves of their numbers, condition, and prospects. The opposition they encountered, the ridicule and opprobrium showered upon them from certain quarters, the sullenness of the natives, the bluster of the white tenants, the brushwood and dry branches thrown across their pathway, could not discourage them. They saw no 'lions in the way,' while mercy, with pleading looks, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... tomahawk of the entire equipment which he himself did not examine—not a rifle which he himself did not personally test. He went over the boxes and bales which had been gathered here, and saw to their arrangement in the transport-wagons. He did all this without bluster or officiousness, but with the quiet care and thoroughness of the natural leader ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... the Lords thought that the threats used against them in the course of the election meant nothing and were only a kind of bluster to get the Budget passed, they were grievously mistaken. It must have been hard for them to realize that Lloyd George meant all the presumptuous things he said. He was never more in earnest. A cut-and-dried plan had been arranged between him and Mr. Asquith with regard to the Lords. The plan was ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... was looking intently. As soon as the tones of O'Shea's voice were carried away by the bluster of the wind, as far as the human beings there were concerned there was perfect stillness; the surf and the wind might have been sweeping ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... answered when their eyes fell on the robbers, who, with leveled pistols, dominated the car. And the threat of the weapons themselves was not more sinister than the purpose that glinted in the ferocious eyes above the improvised masks. There was no mere bluff and bluster in that steady gaze. They were ready to shoot and shoot to kill. Their lives were already forfeit to the law, anyway, and in that rough country they would get "a short shrift and a long rope" if their plans went astray. They might as well be ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... a nation so in want of a leader; never was it more plain, that, without a head, the people "bluster abroad as beasts," with plenty of the iron of purpose, but purpose without coherence, and with no cunning smith of circumstance to edge it with plan and helve it with direction. What the country was waiting for showed itself in the universal thrill of satisfaction when Major Anderson took the extraordinary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... owe me three hundred pounds, you've owed it me for years, and you have the impudence to take this attitude with me, have you? Now, I never bluster; I say what I mean. You just listen to me. Either you pay me what you owe me at once, or I call this meeting and make what I know public. You'll very soon find out where you are. And a good thing, too, for a more ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to me,' said Sir Felix, walking out of the room with much fraternal bluster. Then he went forth, and at once had himself driven to Paul Montague's lodgings. Had Hetta not been foolish enough to remind him of his duty, he would not now have undertaken the task. He too, no doubt, remembered ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... (68) first served this Rump in with mustard - The sauce was a compound of courage and custard; Sir Vane bless'd the creature, Noll snuffled and bluster'd, Which ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... "Porton, you can bluster all you please, but it won't do you any good," answered Dave, and his voice had a more positive ring to it than before. "You thought you could play this trick on me and get away with it, but I am going to show you it can't be done. I am going to hand you over to the authorities ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... we were water-bound was too apparent to admit of question, and since the elements were beyond our control, there was no telling when relief would come. Until the weather moderated in the hills to the west, there was no hope of crossing the river; but men grew hungry and nights were chilly, and bluster and bravado brought neither food nor warmth. A third wave was noticed within an hour, raising the water-gauge over a foot. The South Fork of the Big Cheyenne almost encircled the entire Black Hills country, and with a hundred mountain affluents ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... whatever might be his consciousness of strength. The small black eye of Colbert, dilated by envy, and the limpid eye of Louis XIV., inflamed by anger, signalled some pressing danger. Courtiers are, with regard to court rumors, like old soldiers, who distinguish through the blasts of wind and bluster of leaves the sound of the distant steps of an armed troop. They can, after having listened, tell pretty nearly how many men are marching, how many arms resound, how many cannons roll. Fouquet had ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Will it be believed, that after the action of St. Cas—a mere affair of cutting off a rearguard, as you are aware—they were so unfeeling as to fire away I don't know how much powder at the Invalides at Paris, and brag and bluster over our misfortune? Is there any magnanimity in hallooing and huzzaying because five or six hundred brave fellows have been caught by ten thousand on a seashore, and that fate has overtaken them which is said to befall the hindmost? I had a mind to design an authentic picture of ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... odd, lovable personality, possessed of so many interesting and peculiar and almost indescribable traits. Of all characters in fiction he perhaps most suggests Jack Falstaff, with his love of women, his bravado and bluster and his innate good nature and sympathy. Sympathy was really his outstanding characteristic, even more than humor, although the latter was always present. One might recite a thousand incidents of his generosity and out-of-hand charity, ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... jealous, revengeful god, enshrined among his skeletons, was having in his turn an anxious and doubtful time of it. Ever since his sacred blood had stained the dust of earth by the Frenchman's cottage and in his own temple, Tu-Kila-Kila, for all his bluster, had been deeply stirred and terrified in his inmost soul by that unlucky portent. A savage, even if he be a god, is always superstitious. Could it be that his own time was, indeed, drawing nigh? That he, who had remorselessly killed and eaten so many hundreds of human victims, was himself to fall ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... critic As an honest friend: you stroke me on one cheek, Buffet the other. Come, you bluster, Antony! You know I know all this. I must not move Until I hear from Carew and the Duke. I fear the mine ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... boys," retorted Mrs. Martin. "The more you treat 'em like boys, the better they think you use 'em. They always want motherin', an' somebody to come to. I always tell folks I've got five child'n, counting Mr. Martin the youngest. The more bluster they have, the more boys they be. Now Marthy knew that about brother Isr'el, an' she always ruled him by love an' easin' of him down from them high perches he was always settin' upon. Everything was always right with her an' all wrong with him when ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... restores A mind that lives for plaudits and encores. Nay, I forswear the drama, if to win Or lose the prize can make me plump or thin. Then too it tries an author's nerve, to find The class in numbers strong, though weak in mind, The brutal brainless mob, who, if a knight Disputes their judgment, bluster and show fight, Call in the middle of a play for bears Or boxers;—'tis for such the rabble cares. But e'en the knights have changed, and now they prize Delighted ears far less than dazzled eyes. The curtain is kept down four hours or more, While ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... brute, with all your bluster," he continued, turning round to Kirker, and looking him in the eye. "Up with that knife! quick! or I will send this bullet ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... of color that flowed into his bronzed cheeks and the strange, jubilant light in his eyes. She only knew that she was warm and full-fed, and the wind would bluster and threaten around her cabin ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... had seen her and, what was more, was in pursuit of her. He had been wanting for some time to have talk with Rosemary, but she had always, so it seemed, avoided him. Rosemary had never, at any time, liked Norman Douglas very well. His bluster, his temper, his noisy hilarity, had always antagonized her. Long ago she had often wondered how Ellen could possibly be attracted to him. Norman Douglas was perfectly aware of her dislike and he chuckled over it. It never worried Norman if people did ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... try to grab you?" asked Bumpus, with a tremor in his voice that he tried in vain to conceal by a great show of assumed bluster. ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... a flurry of bluster and racket, Went crowding and crowding right under his jacket; And it lifted him off from his two little feet, And it carried him bodily over the street. Mike laughed "He-he!" and he laughed "Ho-ho! Do you call this ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... cheek; and the overseer came to where Nicanor stood in chains, and looked at him. He was a very fat man, with little eyes sunk in unwholesome flesh, and was far haughtier than the great lord Eudemius himself. When he saw Nicanor's face, he began unexpectedly to curse and bluster, and said: ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... from our captain to the cook's boy. He was such a gallant youngster, and yet so gentle. In one cutting-out business we had, he climbed over the boatswain's shoulder, and was almost first on deck; how he came out of it without a scratch I can't think to this day. But he hadn't a bit of bluster in him, and was as kind as a woman to anyone who was wounded ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... to myself for a long time, and very gently led him up to the question of loving him hard in this new way, he might be induced to sip out of the cup just to see if he liked it—and it might be just what he craved, for the time being; but I doubt it. He would storm and bluster at the idea. ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... oath in the falsetto voice that the weak and the flabby possess and took one step forward. The man at the fire came to his feet and stood erect. He was tall, and the brown eyes talked for him better than threats or bluster. The vagrant shifted his gaze from ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... semiofficial St. Petersburg press, like the Novoe Vremya, had begun to bluster about the affair, egged on by the Russian Foreign Office, and Sir Edward Grey was compelled to invent some pretext for his manifest dread of displeasing Britain's "good friend Russia" about anything. Hence the birth of that wondrous and fearsome child, that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... gets clear at last, and we have to run to overtake the rest of the company. We begin to pant and complain, and bluster against those who are leading. Our feet go down haphazard; we stumble and hold ourselves up by the wails, so that our hands are plastered with mud. The march becomes a stampede, full of the noise of metal things and ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... credentials. You had better check them." Since they were as good as any real admiral's I didn't worry in the slightest. Ferraro went through them as carefully as he could in his rattled state, even checking the seals under UV. It gave him time to regain a bit of control and he used it to bluster. ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... at the last Congress meeting, in Surat, these two parties—the Moderates and the Extremists—came into bitter conflict. It was largely due to the past supineness of the Moderates who permitted the other party (which is a small but noisy minority) to resort to bluster in order to force their pet and bitter schemes of disorder upon the Congress. When, ultimately, the Moderates determined to exercise the rights of the majority, the others resorted to force and caused the Congress to be suspended in disorder, thus revealing ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... fear is that the perpetual bluster of a party in the States will at last set the patient British back up. And if our people begin to bluster too, and there should come into existence an exasperating war-party on both sides, there will be great danger ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... Father—there's no need to bluster in this fashion. Take up the poker and go and break into the door quiet and decent, like anyone else would do. And girls—off for your bonnets this moment I ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... do you prate, fool?" he questioned huskily, seeking to bluster it before the startled ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... achieved prosperity. After one election he showed a callous indifference to the hard work of the gang and complete disregard of his before-election promises. He counted upon the resentment wearing itself out, as usual, in threats and bluster. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... endless throng, And restless, turbid rivers seethe and rack, Like foaming cataracts, their bounding track; A devastating flood sweeps o'er the land, Tartarean darkness swathes the sable strand! O'er wolds and hills, o'er ocean's chafing waves The wild tornado's bluster wierdly raves; The white-heat bolt of every thundering roar The pitchy zenith coruscating o'er; The vast expanse of heaven pours forth its ire 'Mid swarthy ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... when the scores were posted. The contest had grown too tight for mere noise and bluster. A false step now by any patrol might drop it hopelessly to the rear. When Mr. Wall's commands still held the scouts in ranks, the faces they turned to him were ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... which as far back as 1860 passed every week on its northward way up along the coast of Norway, was of a very sociable turn of mind. It ran with much shrieking and needless bluster in and out the calm, winding fjords, paid unceremonious little visits in every out-of-the-way nook and bay, dropped now and then a black heap of coal into the shining water, and sent thick volleys of smoke and shrill little echoes careering aimlessly among the mountains. ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... embrace the conveniences of life, find them, when I most nearly consider them, very little more than wind. But what? We are all wind throughout; and, moreover, the wind itself, more discreet than we, loves to bluster and shift from corner to corner, and contents itself with its proper offices without desiring stability and solidity-qualities not ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... discreetly in Brilliana's eyes as she gave the Puritan a bow for his praise. The Cavalier, a viola da gamba of anger, pegged his string of bluster tighter. ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... that by purging itself of bloody violence, hatred, and revenge, and becoming the sentinel of affection, jealousy has lost any of its intensity. On the contrary, its depth is quintupled. The bluster and fury of savage violence is only a momentary ebullition of sensual passion, whereas the anguish of jealousy as we ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... fearful storm, the heavens seem As if they would vent themselves in streams of fire; So thick the darkness which usurps the day, That one might see the stars. The angry winds Bluster and howl like spirits loosed from hell. The firm earth trembles, and the aged elms Groaning, bow down their venerable tops. Yet this terrific tumult, o'er our heads, Which teacheth gentleness to savage beasts, So that they seek the shelter ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Young Ireland, really meaning what it says, is worth a little talk: the Heroism and Patriotism of a new generation; welling fresh and new from the breasts of Nature; and already poisoned by O'Connellism and the Old Irish atmosphere of bluster, falsity, fatuity, into one knows not what. Very sad to see. On the whole, no man ought, for any cause, to speak lies, or have anything to do with lies; but either hold his tongue, or speak a bit of the truth: that is the meaning of a tongue, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... fellow merely means to make a little bluster, and try if he can pick up a little money. There is nothing whatever actionable in the paper.... The article on Hazlitt, which will commence next number, will be a most powerful one, and this business will not deprive it ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... you what I'll do," whispered George, who, for all his bluster was as curious as myself. "We will try the rear door where there are fewer persons. Possibly we can make our way in there, and if we can, Slater will tell us all we ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... he hastily closed the window again. There was something in the incessant boom of that tumbling water which strangely disturbed him. He could better stand suspense than that. If only the wind would bluster again. That, at least, was intermittent in its fury and gave momentary relief to thoughts strained to ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... violence? —> 173. Violence.— N. violence, inclemency, vehemence, might, impetuosity; boisterousness &c. adj.; effervescence, ebullition; turbulence, bluster; uproar, callithump [obs3][U. S.], riot, row, rumpus, le diable a quatre[Fr], devil to pay, all the fat in the fire. severity &c. 739; ferocity, rage, fury; exacerbation, exasperation, malignity; fit, paroxysm; orgasm, climax, aphrodisia[obs3]; force, brute force; outrage; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a wrong platform at Victoria. What are you going to do about it?" Now you might think that the porter would reply, "Come off it, Mister; you don't kid me like that," or make some other disappointing and impolite remark; but not a bit of it. Bluster is the thing that pays. First of all he will apologise, and then he will fetch the station-master, and he will apologise too, and after a bit they will offer you a special train back to Streatham Common, probably the one the KING uses ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... who do see him, vastly admire him. What manner of beings these admirers are may be imagined from their idol. No contrast can be greater than that which exists between the Parisian Bobadils and the Provincial Mobiles. The latter are quiet and orderly, eager to drill and without a vestige of bluster—these poor peasants are of a very different stuff from the emasculated, conceited scum which has palmed itself off on Europe as representative Frenchmen. The families with whom they lodge speak with wonder of their sobriety, their decency, and their simple ways, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... the slide upon us. The chart-room was insulated. The hum of the current was obvious. Johnson noticed it. He started at the hostile faces of the surgeon and Balch. And he tried to bluster. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... black, and overcast, that some of them would grow moody, and chose to sit apart. On the contrary, it only proves the thing which I maintain. For even on shore, there are many people naturally gay and light-hearted, who, whenever the autumnal wind begins to bluster round the corners, and roar along the chimney-stacks, straight becomes cross, petulant, and irritable. What is more mellow than fine old ale? Yet thunder will sour the best ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... said Cleek, as he rose to his feet and shut a tight hand upon the collar of the manacled doctor; "got you, you dogs, and your little game is up. Oh, you needn't bluster, doctor; you needn't come the outraged innocence, Colonel. You'll, neither of you, bolster up the rascally claim of your worthy confederate, the Tackbun Claimant; and your game with the X-rays, your devil's trick of rotting away a ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... refused to tell them, and then they began to threaten and bluster. I was beginning to get frightened, but I made up my mind I wouldn't give in to them. And then—well, you came along, and I guess I never was so glad to see you, Jack! But, of course, they really did me no harm. How did it happen that you got here ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... pp. 60-63, in his SECOND form of the Book. The "M—" is an Abbe Duvernet; of no great mark otherwise. He got into Revolution trouble afterwards, but escaped with his head; and republished his Book, swollen out somewhat by new "Anecdotes" and republican bluster, in this second instance; signing himself T. J. D. V—(Paris, 1797). A vague but not dark or mendacious little Book; with traces of real EYESIGHT in it,—by one who had personally known Voltaire, or at least seen and heard him.] He retired ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... to see his debtor face to face: this was the heart of his dream. When he came back a second time and was again told that he could not see the Baron, he began to storm and bluster, and insisted that they should at least let him talk with ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Mr. Rabbit, "you know the road that leads to Brag is the shortest route to Bluster. Brother Buzzard and Brother Crow were quarreling because they had been bragging, and a little more and they'd have had a regular pitched battle ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... sufferers from his troubles. He removes Polja confidently enough from her surroundings—but only leaves the greater darkness behind him. Even he is as yet unable to transform the conditions of life—and he is therefore stigmatised by a little of the Russian bluster. ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... is too well recovered, I was going to say. I never saw him more gay, lively, and handsome. We had a good deal of bluster about some parts of the trust I had engaged in; and upon freedoms I had treated him with; in which, he would have it, that I had exceeded our agreed-upon limits; but on the arrival of our three old companions, and a nephew of Mr. Doleman's, (who had a good while been desirous ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... old man, his fury suddenly changing to a white heat of passion, which was more terrible than the bluster that had gone before. "Silence, lest I strike thee to the ground where thou standest, and plunge this dagger in thine heart sooner than hear thee blaspheme the Holy Church in which thou wast reared! How darest thou talk thus to me? as though yon accursed heretic of a ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... his possession for some considerable time, and even threatened the bookseller, when he insisted on detaining the book, with the police. This was rather unfortunate, for at that moment a constable passing by was called in, and, in spite of a great deal of bluster and many threats, the thief was marched off to the nearest police-station. The other book, it was found, had also been stolen that morning from another shop, and the ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... Sparsit from that position any more. It was in vain for Bounderby to bluster or to assert himself in any of his explosive ways; Mrs. Sparsit was resolved to have compassion on him, as a Victim. She was polite, obliging, cheerful, hopeful; but, the more polite, the more obliging, the more cheerful, the more hopeful, the more exemplary altogether, ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... felt almost a boy again. The spring was in his blood! Moreover, he flattered himself that he had not begun to look old! Still, he was sensitive lest Carrissima should fancy he was making an ass of himself, and, as usual at such times, he began to bluster. ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... going to lick this blizzard; I'm going to live the night. It can't down me with its bluster—I'm not the kind to be beat. On hands and knees will I buck it; with every breath will I fight; It's life, it's life that I fight for—never it seemed so sweet. I know that my face is frozen; my hands ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... His elbow rested on the chair-arm, his fingers were set, tips on his chin, and over them he surveyed his listeners with calmness. He did not raise his voice. It was his mild manner that made what he said sound so balefully savage. Bluster would have weakened it. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... at FOX AND GEESE, Are new-made polititians by thy book, And both can judge and conquer with a look. The hidden fate of princes you unfold; Court, clergy, commons, by your law control'd. Strange, serious wantoning all that they Bluster'd ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... like a poor and pitied widowhood. The cirque profan'd was, and all postures rack'd; For men did strut, and stride, and stare, not act. Then temper flew from words, and men did squeak, Look red, and blow, and bluster, but not speak; No holy rage or frantic fires did stir Or flash about the spacious theatre. No clap of hands, or shout, or praise's proof Did crack the play-house sides, or cleave her roof. Artless the scene was, and that monstrous sin Of deep and ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... the fertility of Rabelais' spirit most obviously shows itself. His book is an orgy of words; they pour out helter-skelter, wildly, into swirling sentences and huge catalogues that, in serried columns, overflow the page. Not quite wildly, though; for, amid all the rush and bluster, there is a powerful underlying art. The rhythms of this extraordinary prose are long and complex, but they exist; and they are controlled with the ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... months together, but will fly in cowardly terror the moment you turn upon them in righteous anger! I should just laugh at them, but I would drive them out, hold not a moment's parley with them. Of course, they will bluster and show fight, because you have let them have their own way for so long that they will not tamely submit to expulsion; but face them with iron determination, set your will against them like an immovable rock, and down they will go. Say to them: 'I am a spark of the divine ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... twenty guns with their horses, and about thirty battle flags. It was a tremendous capture, if he could hold his ground. No officer of the Union army ever showed to better advantage. The world may well forgive the touch of vanity and bluster in the undaunted Hancock, as he sent this despatch to Grant: "I have used up Johnson and am going into Hill." He found, however, that he should have terrible work even to keep the ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... other from side to side, and shout lustily for the police; and squalling women, and chattering men, and ignorant country people, and elegant mercers' apprentices, and gay-mannered grocers, hustle, and scream, and swear, and lecture, and threaten, and bluster—but not a single blow! The guardian of the public peace appears, and the combatants evanish into thin air; and in a few minutes after this dreadful melee, the violin strikes up a fresh waltz, and all goes "gaily ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... the deep tones of the provost, who was the leader, counsellor and friend of the Lansquenets. "A devout servant must not bluster at the holy Christmas-tide; he's permitted to drink a glass, Heaven be praised. Your house is to be greatly honored, Landlord! The recruiting for our most gracious commander, Count von Oberstein, is—to be done here. Do you hear, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to our Courages tho, I tell you that now, Gload; but like an angry Wench, when it had huft and bluster'd it self weary, it ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... of you, sir," said Dino. "Brian Luttrell's identity will not be disproved by bluster. There is not the least doubt about it. Mr. Brian Luttrell is alive and has been teaching in your father's family for the last few months under the name of ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... himself, and strokes of his own eloquence." So runs the complaint of Joseph Warton.[38] The distrust was not without ground. The danger that the method of Longinus in the hands of ungifted writers would become a cloak for critical ignorance and degenerate into empty bluster was already apparent.[39] Only rarely was there a reader who could distinguish between the false and the true application of the method. Gibbon did it in a passage which impressed itself upon the younger critics of Hazlitt's generation. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... nook when the party arrived. They were evidently six or seven—their conversation was the common bluster and boisterousness of their trade—and between their demands for supper, their coarse jokes, and their curses at the lubberliness or loitering of their associates from the other side of the Channel, (for, with all their accompliceship, they had the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... His opponent, with brag, bluster, pomposity, cheap wit, and insincerity, served him as a magnificent foil. Never again were wind and tide ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... fate was against him, and that any further hostility toward the shadow was only a tempting of Providence. He lost his health, spirits, and everything but his courage. His countenance became pale and peaceful-looking; the bluster departed from him; his body shrank up like a withered parsnip. Thrice was he compelled to take in his clothes, and thrice did he ascertain that much of his time would be necessarily spent in pursuing his retreating person through the solitude of ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... substitute with presents and fraternal messages; and now and then a King's ship, carrying an officer of the King's navy, or an ambassador of the King's Council, irresolutely loitering about the Bay of Algiers trying to mollify a surly despot, or perhaps to experiment in a little meaningless bluster, at which the Dey laughs in his sleeve, or even openly, for he knows he has only to persevere in his demands and every government in Europe will give in. Consuls may pull down their flags and threaten war; admirals may come and look stern, and even make a show ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... I have endeavored neither to creep nor to bluster, for no author is so likely to betray his translator into both these faults, as HOMER, though himself never guilty of either. I have cautiously avoided all terms of new invention, with an abundance ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... appetite; The joy assumed, while sorrow dimm'd the eyes, The forced sad smiles that follow'd sudden sighs; And every art, long used, but used in vain, To hide thy progress, Nature, and thy pain. Too eager caution shows some danger's near, The bully's bluster proves the coward's fear; His sober step the drunkard vainly tries, And nymphs expose the failings they disguise. First, whispering gossips were in parties seen, Then louder Scandal walk'd the village—green; Next babbling Folly told the growing ill, And busy Malice dropp'd it at the mill. ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... Omar attempted to bluster a little more, but had sense enough to perceive that he had already gone too far, and at length consented to grant the consuls' demands. The condemned consul was immediately set at liberty, and his brethren returned to his ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... parliamentary tactics and watchfulness of Senators Doane, Coon, Smith, White, Dinsmore, Harrington and Tefft carried the bill through the bluster of the minority to its final vote; by twenty-two for to eight against.[469] When Senator Howe's name was called ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... knowledge or consent; "How," said I, "would Pope have raved had he been served so?" "We should never," replied he, "have heard the last on't, to be sure; but then Pope was a narrow man: I will however," added he, "storm and bluster myself a little this time;"—so went to London in all the wrath he could muster up. At his return I asked ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... fertilizing, go on with something of the hilarity of a wake, rather than the despondency of other funerals. When the wind begins to come out of the northwest of set purpose, and to sweep the ground with low and searching fierceness, very different from the roistering, jolly bluster of early fall, I have put the strawberries under their coverlet of leaves, pruned the grape-vines and laid them under the soil, tied up the tender plants, given the fruit trees a good, solid meal about the roots; and so I turn away, writing Resurgam on the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... creature, of a martial front and a baby heart, most fortunate in his breadth of shoulder, his height, and the readiness of the choleric blood to come into his cheeks, the eagerness of his husky voice to bluster. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... In synod unbenign; and taught the fixed Their influence malignant when to shower— Which of them rising with the Sun or falling, Should prove tempestuous. To the winds they set Their corners, when with bluster to confound Sea, air, and shore; the thunder when to roll With terror through the ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... with a bluster that even exaggerated the theatrical character of the raid itself. Constance did not stop to weigh the value of his words, but through the door she brushed quickly. Adele might need her if ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... of the Palace. There have been some meetings, with resolutions to support the Bill, to express approbation of the Ministers, and to protest against the payment of taxes, and there will probably be a good deal of bustle and bluster here and elsewhere; but I do not believe in real tumults, particularly when the rabble and the unions know that there is a Government which will not stand such things, and that they will not be able to bandy compliments with the Duke as they did with ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... the left-hand columnar group, placed at the edge of the picture after the manner of Leonardo. The woman and child lighten the mass of foliage on the right and make a beautiful pattern. The white town of Castelfranco sings against the threatening sky, the winds bluster through the space, the trees shiver with the coming storm. Here and there leafy boughs are struck in with a slight, crisp touch, in which we can follow readily the ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... in the world for the thief and swindler to talk with the greatest apparent earnestness and sincerity and honesty. Pious talk very frequently is the haze in which an avaricious and greedy soul hides itself. Bluff, bluster, and boasting are the sops which the coward throws to his own vanity, while the quietest, sweetest, and gentlest tones often sheath the fierce heart of the born fighter, as a velvet glove is said to clothe ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... them, and fought for them, and paid for them," says the North. "By our labor we have raised their indolence to a par with our energy. While we have worked like men, we have allowed them to talk and bluster. We have warmed them in our bosom, and now they turn against us and sting us. The world sees that this is so. England, above all, must see it, and, seeing it, should speak out her true opinion." The North is hot with such thoughts as these; and one ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... bear is not usually a formidable opponent, and though he will sometimes charge home he is much more apt to bluster and bully than actually to come to close quarters. I myself have but once seen a man who had been hurt by one of these bears. This was an Indian. He had come on the beast close up in a thick wood, and had mortally wounded it with his gun; it had then closed with him, knocking the gun ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... which he assuredly never intended, to the Prussian ideal of a State. Nietzsche was too much averse from politics to intend such an application of his teaching, which is essentially individualistic, and he had nothing but contempt for the bluster and philistinism of the Prussian State in particular. We must admit, however, that in this unintentional way he contributed to the formation of that German temper which led to the war. General von ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... Arthur was no mystic. He did not dwell apart from men; he was a part of men. "The Mystic" is an admirable conception of the soul, living remote from society and action, seeing our world as through a smoke. Mysticism has its truth and power. Many of us bluster and do, and do not stand apart and dwell enough ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... "Don't bluster, son, or I shall grow peevish," Hood replied tolerantly. "At the present moment I feel like taking a walk under the mystical May stars. The night invites the soul to meditation; the stars may have the answer to all our perplexities. Stop fretting about your bonds ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... this bluster, Hymen. I've cornered you, and you know it. The flares in the offing yonder came from two preventive boats. Back-door and front I have you, as neat as a rat in a drain; so you may just turn that lantern of yours on the cargo, own ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... or four other hats, including the glossy castor of Joe Willis, the self-elected and would-be champion of the neighbourhood, a well-to-do young butcher of twenty-eight or thereabouts, and a great strapping fellow, with his full allowance of bluster. This is a capital show of gamesters, considering the amount of the prize; so, while they are picking their sticks and drawing their lots, I think I must tell you, as shortly as I can, how the noble old game of back-sword is played; for it is sadly gone out ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... International Polity (HEINEMANN), a series of lectures developing phases of the argument of the Great Illusion, Mr. NORMAN ANGELL incidentally deals with this greengrocery business. Nobody with knowledge of his shrewd and vigorous method will be surprised that without bluster or rhetoric he establishes a very clear verdict of acquittal. One has always the impression that the rationalist in him is deliberately repressing the mystic, lest his case be weakened by a suspicion of sentimentalism. For it must be obvious that not a cold, still ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... something and hang on," the red-faced man said to me. All his bluster had gone, and he seemed to have caught the contagion of preternatural calm. "And listen to the women scream," he said grimly—almost bitterly, I thought, as though he had been through ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... who had charge of the affairs of a tribe in the North, and he was as pleasant and cheery a Spirit as one would wish to see. Soon after, Wassamo heard a great rumbling and roaring, as of waters tumbling over rocks; and presently, with a vast bluster, and fairly shaking the lodge with his deep-throated hail of welcome to the old Sand-Spirit, in rolled another, who was the Guardian Spirit and special director of a great cataract ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... on his way to the telephone and addressing PHILIP with an evil expression.] You were always a bully and a blusterer, Mackworth; but, take my word for it, if you fancy you can bully Mr. Dunning, and bluster to my family, with any satisfactory results to yourself, you're ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... thickets;—what a privilege of fairy-land is this noiseless prow, looking in and out of one flowery cove after another, scarcely stirring the turtle from his log, and leaving no wake behind! It seemed as if all the process of rowing had too much noise and bluster, and as if the sharp slender wherry, in particular, were rather too pert and dapper to win the confidence of the woods and waters. Time has dispelled the fear. As I rest poised upon the oars above some submerged shallow, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... were tossed like footballs, legs and arms quarrelled in the air and yet lay quietly on the earth. Horses trampled upon heaps of carcasses, troops of carbines tumbled wounded from their horses, we besiege Moors and famine us, mutinies bluster and are calm. I vowed not to doff mine armour though my flesh were frozen to it and turn into iron, nor to cut head nor beard till they yielded. My hairs and oath are of one length for, with Caesar, thus write I mine own ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... now in the wrong, was a little frightened at the set speech, and began to bluster and stammer, but the swift descent of Malcolm's heavy riding whip on his shoulders and back made him voluble in curses. Then began a battle that could not last long with such odds on the side of justice. It was gazed at ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... willing. Once roused, they have always been dangerous and hard-fighting foes; but they have been over-difficult to rouse. Their educated classes, in particular, need to be perpetually reminded that, though it is an evil thing to brave a conflict needlessly, or to bully and bluster, it is an even worse thing to flinch from a fight for which there is legitimate provocation, or to live in supine, slothful, unprepared ease, helpless to avenge ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Punch," said Pen, laughing, as he nursed his leg, which reminded him of his wound from time to time. "But I don't believe it. It's only bluster and brag, of which I think our fellows ought to be ashamed. Why, you've more than once seen the French soldiers drive ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... first came, and tried to "throw a holy scare into him," as he put it. The old formula did not work in the case of the lean, long-jawed, bony-chinned man. He was polite, but obdurate, and his quick gray eyes seemed to read to their inner process of bluff and bluster as through tissue paper before a lamp. When they had tried to flash their guns on him, the climax of their play, he had beaten them to it. Two of them were carried back to the big ranchhouse in blankets, with bullets through their fleshy parts—not ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... the demand was made, the States government yielded at once, and yielded without bluster. I cannot say I much admired Mr. Seward's long letter. It was full of smart special pleading, and savored strongly, as Mr. Seward's productions always do, of the personal author. Mr. Seward was making an effort to place a great State paper on record, but the ars celare ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... he, "throwing shells into the town till they sent me out 400 hostages." The simple truth is that in spite of his long pedigree and good blood Bismarck was not quite a gentleman in our sense of the word; and as this accounts for his ferocious bluster and truculent bloodthirsty utterances when he was in power in the war time, so it was the keynote to his more recent undignified attitude and howls of querulous impatience of his altered situation. It must be said of him, however, that he was a man of cool and undaunted courage. ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... say to this war; in any reasonably governed country they should never have figured in the treaty; they had been inflicted before, and were due before. Before the rebellion began, the beach had rung with I know not what indiscreet bluster; the natives were to be read a lesson; Tamasese (by name) was to be hanged; and after what had been done to Mataafa, I was so innocent as to listen with awe. And now the rebellion has come, and this was the punishment! There might well have been a doubt ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... natural thing in the world for the thief and swindler to talk with the greatest apparent earnestness and sincerity and honesty. Pious talk very frequently is the haze in which an avaricious and greedy soul hides itself. Bluff, bluster, and boasting are the sops which the coward throws to his own vanity, while the quietest, sweetest, and gentlest tones often sheath the fierce heart of the born fighter, as a velvet glove is said to clothe ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... this fellow merely means to make a little bluster, and try if he can pick up a little money. There is nothing whatever actionable in the paper.... The article on Hazlitt, which will commence next number, will be a most powerful one, and this business will not deprive it of any of ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... slipped again into the darkness, and Parish, lifting the half-conscious figure from the bed, wrapped it in a bear-skin rug and carried it out into the sleety bluster. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... champion against the Evil One, the saint who walked with God, and daily lifted up his voice in prayer and defiance and thanksgiving—he was ever at hand, to cross-question, to insinuate, to surmise, to bluster, to interpret, to terrify, to perplex, to vociferate: surely, this paragon of learning and virtue must know more about the devil than any mere layman could pretend to know; and they must accept his assurance and guidance. "I stake my reputation," he shouted, "upon the truth ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... them, and then they began to threaten and bluster. I was beginning to get frightened, but I made up my mind I wouldn't give in to them. And then—well, you came along, and I guess I never was so glad to see you, Jack! But, of course, they really did me no harm. How did it happen that you ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... Norman role of privilege could be engrafted on a society imbued with the Saxon spirit of equality: and he clinched the absurdity of his thought by uttering the prediction, that, though the people might bluster a little when such reform was proposed, yet they never would resist by force; and if they did, a demonstration of British power, such as the presence of the King's troops in a few coast-towns and the occupation of a few harbors by the royal navy, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... clouds begin to gather and pile up in dark billowy masses that end in showers during the afternoon and evening. But not every rain cloud brings rain. Clouds of this character often look very threatening, but all their display of thunder and lightning is only bluff and bluster and ends in a fizzle with no rain. After such a demonstration the clouds either bring wind and a disagreeable dust storm, or, if a little rain starts to fall, the air is so dry that it evaporates in mid air, and none of it ever reaches the earth. In this ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... had disappeared. Doubtless she had gone in ignorance of this outrage, perhaps thinking him accosted by a chance acquaintance. At all events, she was gone, and there was now nothing to be gained from an attempt to bluster the detective down, but deeper shame and ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... the Polar regions, and the charming Narrative he gave of it. "What a feat, what a book!" exclaimed the Parisian cultivated circles, male and female, on that occasion; and Maupertuis, with plenty of bluster in him carefully suppressed, assents in a grandly modest way. His Portraits are in the Printshops ever since; one very singular Portrait, just coming out (at which there is some laughing): a coarse-featured, blusterous, rather triumphant-looking man, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... begun to blackguard The Blunder and Bluster's correspondent while he remained under the shelter of his pseudonym, now that his name was known, came out with double virulence, and filled half a sheet with filthy abuse of Harry, including collateral assaults ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the attitude and the language of Henry, he was thought to be hoping to accomplish much by bluster. It was certain that the bold and unexpected stroke of Leopold had produced much effect upon his mind, and for a time those admitted to his intimacy saw, or thought they saw, a decided change in his demeanour. To the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and bluster bolder, And at home, 'Boys,' says I, 'I used to be a soldier, But I was too brave to fly, And I'm, therefore, a parol-der, Of the noblest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the South has taken advantage of that over- loyalty to betray the North. "We have worked for them, and fought for them, and paid for them," says the North. "By our labor we have raised their indolence to a par with our energy. While we have worked like men, we have allowed them to talk and bluster. We have warmed them in our bosom, and now they turn against us and sting us. The world sees that this is so. England, above all, must see it, and, seeing it, should speak out her true opinion." The North is hot with ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... clapping of hollowed hands and the clicking of boomerangs the function began. And having danced to their own satisfaction and the delight of the crowd, the warriors with ostentation and bluster recited private grievances and challenged those against whom they had real or fancied wrongs to combat. Most of the noisy declamation was ill-founded. The many had no grievances and no intentions of fighting, but ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... a second and more gratuitous Crimea. But it was not only in Eastern Europe that his saving influence was felt. In Africa and India, and wherever British honor was involved, he was the resolute and unsparing enemy of that odious system of bluster and swagger and might against right, on which Lord Beaconsfield and his colleagues bestowed the ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... need to reply with considerable force, whether you appeal to the mind or the heart of the prospect. But when his objection is stated in a powerless tone, even though it may be accompanied by curtness or bluster, you need not waste much force on your answering appeal to ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... that position any more. It was in vain for Bounderby to bluster or to assert himself in any of his explosive ways; Mrs. Sparsit was resolved to have compassion on him, as a Victim. She was polite, obliging, cheerful, hopeful; but, the more polite, the more obliging, the more cheerful, the more hopeful, the more exemplary ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... you mind?" He felt rather small before the directness of her eyes, and tried to bluster himself on to his former level. "It's very silly of you, especially nowadays. There's no harm in ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... the feet of Moses and Whipper, because he was driven there. The old master has as yet made no sign of sympathy or friendship. I am profoundly convinced that if, instead of mourning over the lost cause, as in the past they were wont to bluster about the Yankees and slavery, these people had dealt wisely with the negro and generously with the Northern immigrant, these States, and South Carolina especially, would be free and powerful. I hail the Chamberlain movement in one of its ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... you?' he says. He always was comical, jest as comical as he could be. 'Get down there and look at her snout,' he said to me. 'Find out which of us is going to sink.' That was Fred all over—one of these fellows, all bluster, where it's a bucket of wind against a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "some sort of Reform" (As we all must, God help us! with very wry faces;) And loud as he likes let him bluster and storm About Corporate Rights, so he'll ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... his party and told them he would take them to Canada. Thus far no blood had been shed. The attacks had been made with such quiet skill, the surprise was complete. In spite of all the talk and bluster of frontier politicians no sane man in the State of Missouri could conceive of the possibility of such a daring crime. The victims were utterly unprepared for the assault. And no ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... understand that the world values men according to the resistance they interpose against it; according to the stamping down of feet and the presenting of shoulders and the squaring arms to take its blows. Cowards make a front before it and get on with amazing success; droves of poltroons bluster and storm, with empty shells of hearts inside their ribs, and kick up a fine dust in the arena, under the cloud of which they snatch down many of the laurels which have been hung up for worthier men. Success lies principally in understanding ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... mentally in the coils of a trying situation. His own position, as he knew, was not formidable. Rita had reproached him over and over for infidelity. He began to swell and bluster at once. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... think that you quite put strength enough into your blame on one side, while you make at least enough of minor faults or eccentricities. To me it seems always that Whitman's great flaw is a fault of debility, not an excess of strength—I mean his bluster. His own personal and national self-reliance and arrogance, I need not tell you, I applaud, and sympathise and rejoice in; but the blatant ebullience of feeling and speech, at times, is feeble for so great a poet ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... at auction, and Tim Bluster bid the most, Who always said "There want no hants nor any kind of ghost That ever walked a graveyard in the middle of the night Could make his nerves unsteady, or could fill ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... now the turn of Charras's bullies to bluster. They declared that Charras was the man called Vincent, displayed passports and papers, swore and protested. The Commissary's suspicions were ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... seclusion, we felt the breath of the tremendous excitement which swayed the public mind next day. Not bluster, nor even passion, but the stir of the people's heart. As we walked to church, we could hear it in half caught words of those we passed by, see it in the grave, intense air which characterised groups and faces; feel it in the atmosphere, which ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... added, with cowardly cunning, "they are going to do the same thing in Lorient, too—and everywhere—in Paris, in Bordeaux, in Marseilles—even in Quimperle! And when all these cities are flying the red flag it won't be comfortable for cities that fly the tricolor." He began to bluster. "I'm mayor of Paradise, and I won't be bullied! You get out of here with your circus and your foolish elephants! I haven't any gendarmes just now to drive you out, but you had better start, all ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... back a pace or two, and came quite close to the screen. I cowered behind it in alarm. I could see he was terrified. For a minute or two you talked with him, and urged him to confess. Bit by bit, as you went on, he recovered his nerve, and began to bluster. He didn't deny what you said: he saw it was no use: he just sneered ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... ordinary circumstances, are comfortable, self-asserting, sufficient, and even bold; the lines of which, under difficulties, collapse and become mean, spiritless, and insignificant. There are faces which, in their usual form, seem to bluster with prosperity, but which the loss of a dozen points at whist will reduce to that currish aspect which reminds one of a dog-whip. Mr. Camperdown's countenance, when Lord Fawn and Mr. Eustace left him, had fallen away into this meanness of appearance. He no longer carried ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... door by which Nikta entered the hut] Well, have you had enough spree? You've been puffing yourself up, but now you'll know how it feels! You'll lose some of your bluster! ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... treaties, which make up the history of Europe during the earlier half of the eighteenth century; nor is it easy to follow with patience the meddlesome activity of English diplomacy during that period, its protests and interventions, its subsidies and guarantees, its intrigues and finessings, its bluster and its lies. But wearisome as it all is, it succeeded in its end, and its end was a noble one. Of the twenty-five years between the Revolution and the Peace of Utrecht all but five were years of war, and the five were ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... nation when we ignore the very disadvantages that militate against true nationalism. We bluster about national sentiment and spend our money on paying to have ourselves Americanized. When we are tired trying to explain that, we fall back into dithyrambics on the Old Flag and ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... more numerous than the whites, and confident of their strength, began to bluster and to assert that whatever they did would be dictated by their own wishes and not by any fear of their visitors. Whether they desired to avoid a fight or not can only be conjectured, but they finally sent back to where the horses were tethered and caused five of the worst to ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... he heard of Turgot's appointment, wrote to a friend in France as follows: "So Turgot is controller general! He will not remain in office long enough to carry out his plans. He will punish some scoundrels; he will bluster about and lose his temper; he will be anxious to do good, but will run against obstacles and rogues at every turn. Public credit will fall; he will be detested; it will be said that he is not fitted for his task. Enthusiasm will cool; ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... not a movement of brag, bluster, or bluff. It is a test of our sincerity. It requires solid and silent self-sacrifice. It challenges our honesty and our capacity for national work. It is a movement that aims at translating ideas into action. And the more we do, the ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... "could for a moment doubt that this much-ado-about-nothing would end in a month. The Northern people are simply invincible. The rebels, a mere band of ragamuffins, will fly like chaff before the wind on our approach." Thus the wretched farces of bluster continued on either side until in blood, agony, and heartbreak, Americans learned ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... her sudden pallor he was taking fright again, and he began to bolster up his courage with bluster ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... exacerbate the feelings of those who disagreed with him. Now, a different order of things prevailed. Boulton was simply unendurable. His capacity was barely such as to enable him to discharge his official functions, and what he lacked in ability he made up for in bluster. He had an abominable temper, and a haughty, overbearing manner. He was always committing blunders which he refused to acknowledge, and he roared and bullied his way through one complication after ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... it has ceased to be a novel merit. Nothing would be easier than to show that the early Edinburgh articles were very far from perfect. Of Jeffrey we shall speak presently, and there is no doubt that Sydney at his best was, and is always, delightful. But the blundering bluster of Brougham, the solemn ineffectiveness of Horner (of whom I can never think without also thinking of Scott's delightful Shandean jest on him), the respectable erudition of the Scotch professors, cannot for one single moment be compared ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... of gale and bluster, sleet and storm, in almost every section of our broad domain,—and March at Warrener was to the full as blustering and conscienceless as in New England. There were a few days of sunshine during the first week; then came a fortnight of raging snow-storms. ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... Wonderland), the mass of Southey's work is already forgotten. Deserving of mention, however, are his Peninsular War and his Life of Nelson, both written in a straightforward style, portraying patriotism without the usual sham, and a first-class fighting man without brag or bluster. Curious readers may also be attracted by the epics of Southey (such as Madoc, the story of a Welsh prince who anticipated Columbus), which contain plenty of the marvelous adventures that give interest to the romances of Jules Verne ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... from which a cloud of sedulous ephemera still suck a little spiritual moisture. In another it led to the sacramental and sacerdotal developments of Anglicanism. In a third, among men with strong practical energy, to the benevolent bluster of a sort of Christianity which is called muscular because it is not intellectual. It would be an error to suppose that these and the other streams that have sprung from the same source, did not in the days of their fulness fertilise and gladden many lands. The wordy ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... alone with his brother, Charles dropped his egotistic brag and dramatic bluster, and touched craftily upon the dare-devil, boyish life they had led together. He was shrewd enough to see and understand that this was his most ingratiating role, and he played it "to the limit," as ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... eyes, which observe you from beneath bushy eyebrows, his firm and kindly mouth, his bristling mustache, the simplicity of his manners, his clean-cut, reserved language,—all that goes to show that there is nothing in him of bluster and affectation. He is truly 'Papa Joffre,' the father and even the grandfather of the poilus. It is the poilu himself beneath the white panache of this unique Marshal ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... terrible speech, Villiers had crouched on the ground, half terrified, while his wife towered over him, magnificent in her anger. At the end, however, he recovered himself a little, and began to bluster. ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... loves her best," said Mr. Mount, snuff-taking in graceful Court fashion, "for he hath loved a dozen since; but she is a shrew, and can rave and bluster at him till he would hang her with jewels, and give her his crown itself to quieten her furies. 'Tis the pretty orange wench and actor woman Nell Gwynne who will please him longest, for she is a good-humoured baggage and witty, ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... manly face for a moment stilled the bluster of the rough officer of the law, and he almost apologized as he told Job he was under the painful necessity of taking him to the county jail to answer to the charge of homicide—the murder of a girl named Jane Reed. Job winced under the ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... the Russian Government, which I have always suspected. They had this to gain by publishing the Memorandum—that they showed themselves the real victors in the Congress of Berlin, in spite of all our bluster, and they damaged Lord Beaconsfield, who was their enemy. Marvin could never have got a copy, and always pretended that he had learned the whole document by heart, which, considering its length and the total absence in the copy published in the Globe of the slightest error, even of punctuation, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... child to be hurt,—at the same time telling his prisoners that if any other New England village were treated as Deerfield had been, he would come back with a thousand Indians and leave them free to do what they pleased. With this bluster, he left the unfortunate peasants in the extremity of terror, after carrying off as many of them as were needed for purposes of exchange. A small detachment was sent to Beaubassin, where it committed ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... carrying an officer of the King's navy, or an ambassador of the King's Council, irresolutely loitering about the Bay of Algiers trying to mollify a surly despot, or perhaps to experiment in a little meaningless bluster, at which the Dey laughs in his sleeve, or even openly, for he knows he has only to persevere in his demands and every government in Europe will give in. Consuls may pull down their flags and threaten war; admirals may come and ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... began his lecture, and, you may depend upon it, by this time the lion was in him, and he went careering on. Hie views were extreme; he made them extravagant. I remember at one point—for he was a man without bluster, serene, self-poised, never disturbed in the least—he made an affirmation that was very bitter, and the cry arose over the whole congregation. He stood still, with a cold, bitter smile in his eye, and waited till they subsided, when he repeated ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... by the white man, they said, concealed, with the plague, in his cellars, 765 Ready to be let loose, and destroy his brother the red man! But when Standish refused, and said he would give them the Bible, Suddenly changing their tone, they began to boast and to bluster. Then Wattawamat advanced with a stride in front of the other, And, with a lofty demeanor, thus vauntingly spake to the Captain: 770 "Now Wattawamat can see, by the fiery eyes of the Captain, Angry is he in his heart; but the heart of the brave Wattawamat Is not afraid at the sight. ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... am in your way? That is to say, if I am elected, there'll be too much honesty in the City Hall to suit your plans? I can readily believe that. If you can convince me that I ought not to run for mayor, do so. I can accept any reasonable argument. But bluster will do no good. For a man of your accredited ability, you are making a poor move, even a ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... forward, and offered their copies of their freedom, as an earnest that they would voluntarily give him their votes; but it struck me that all was talk, and no one appeared to take any efficient steps to promote or secure the election of Sir John Jarvis, who himself appeared to be all bluster, and to be acting without the least system or arrangement, calculated to secure even the first requisites ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... is possible that I have grown coarser; indeed, I know that I associate on terms of equality and friendliness with men from whom I should formerly have shrunk. I can get angry, and stand on my rights, and bluster if need be, and on the whole I think I am no worse for that. My ear is not offended if I hear myself called 'boss;' why should it be? it is a word as well as another. Nay, I have even felt something like excitement when listening to political speeches, in which frequent ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... seizure of the Californias by the United States was only a question of time, was keenly willing to make an ally of the man who he foresaw would control them as long as he chose, both at home and in Washington. For the matter of that, he recognized the impotence of Mexico to interfere, beyond bluster, with plans any resolute Californian might choose to pursue; but it was important to Estenega's purpose that the governorship should be assured to him by the central government, and the eyes of the Mexican Congress directed elsewhere. ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... attacking your master, and being within an ace of qualifying yourself to be tried for murder,' interposed Ralph. 'I speak plainly, young man, bluster as ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... in Venetian dress is there to assist the left-hand columnar group, placed at the edge of the picture after the manner of Leonardo. The woman and child lighten the mass of foliage on the right and make a beautiful pattern. The white town of Castelfranco sings against the threatening sky, the winds bluster through the space, the trees shiver with the coming storm. Here and there leafy boughs are struck in with a slight, crisp touch, in which we can follow readily the painter's ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... guise of Amphitryon, or of Callisto, under the semblance of Diana, or of Danae for whose sake he became a shower of gold, seeing that in the telling thereof I should waste too much time. Nay, even the savage god of war, whose strength appalls the giants, repressed his wrathful bluster, being forced to such submission by this my son, and became gentle and loving. And the forger of Jupiter, and artificer of his three-pronged thunderbolts, though trained to handle fire, was smitten by a shaft more potent ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... and sweet as a wood-thrush note. Arthur was no mystic. He did not dwell apart from men; he was a part of men. "The Mystic" is an admirable conception of the soul, living remote from society and action, seeing our world as through a smoke. Mysticism has its truth and power. Many of us bluster and do, and do not stand apart and dwell ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... can bluster all you please, but it won't do you any good," answered Dave, and his voice had a more positive ring to it than before. "You thought you could play this trick on me and get away with it, but I am going to show you it can't be done. ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... They bluster at first: being (as I have said) much of the temper and habits, for good and evil, of English navvies. But they grow more and more uneasy, full of childish curiosity, and undefined dread. So into the town they go, on promise (which they will honourably keep, being German ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... a tribe in the North, and he was as pleasant and cheery a Spirit as one would wish to see. Soon after, Wassamo heard a great rumbling and roaring, as of waters tumbling over rocks; and presently, with a vast bluster, and fairly shaking the lodge with his deep-throated hail of welcome to the old Sand-Spirit, in rolled another, who was the Guardian Spirit and special director of a great cataract or water-fall not ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... dropped into forgetfulness, or the pirates must have approached in a wonderfully stealthy manner. English seamen, when they have fought bravely, as they always do, and have striven to the last, and are overpowered, do not struggle or bluster, but yield to their ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... frugal where there was any probability of considerable gain; but on the contrary, such as had been bred up in ignorance and hard labour, when they came to have plenty would extravagantly squander away their time and money in drinking and making a bluster." Indeed it is a melancholy proof how strangely power warps the minds of ordinary men, that there can be a doubt on this subject among persons who have been themselves educated. It tempts a suspicion that, ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... concessions, but there was no disposition to listen to them, and an evident satisfaction at the prospect of an amicable termination of the rising dispute. Nobody apprehends any other termination, for though the Lords will bluster, and fume, and fret, and there will be no small fermentation of mortified pride and vanity, there must be some difference of opinion at least, and the Duke of Wellington is quite sure to exert his influence to bring the majority to adopt ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... his chair. His elbow rested on the chair-arm, his fingers were set, tips on his chin, and over them he surveyed his listeners with calmness. He did not raise his voice. It was his mild manner that made what he said sound so balefully savage. Bluster would ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... "Free-Corps," did shining service;—and was approved of, he and they. And, a day or two after, was detached with a Fifteen Hundred of that kind, on more important business: First, to pick up one or two Bohemian Magazines lying handy; after which, to pay a visit to the Reich and its bluster about Execution-Army, and teach certain persons who it is they are thundering against in that awkwardly truculent manner! Errand shiningly done by Mayer, as perhaps we may hear,—and certainly as all ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... said Barker, turning fiercely to Russell. Russell, as usual, took not the slightest notice of him, and Barker, after a little more bluster, repeated the trick on another boy. This time Russell thought that every one might be on the look out for himself, and so went on with his work. But ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... little but eat and drink and shout and bluster," Mr. Adams answered. "We are being entertained here with meats and curds and custards and jellies and tarts and floating islands and Madeira wine. It is for you to induce the people of Philadelphia to begin to save. We need to learn Franklin's ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... "That's regular clap-trap: Don't bluster any more. Now DO be cool and take a nap! Such a ridiculous old chap Was never ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... and tweakings of the nose, which he was forced to suffer during the whole year besides. In truth, nothing could equal, much less surpass, the Pistolian spirit by which this lion-hearted gentleman was then animated. His frown, swagger, bluster, and authoritative shakings of his head, the annihilating ferocity of his look, and the inflated pomp of manner with which he addressed them, and "damned his honor," were all inimitable in their way. The father was more cautious ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... irresolute man, as well as a stupid one, was making a great bluster in Boston. His powers were despotic. Soldiers and frigates were his in abundance; he talked about arresting the patriots for treason, to be tried in England; and Parliament had passed an act relieving him and his men from all responsibility for killings ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... he seems to be a mighty meek sort of creature. And though I should like it in him hereafter perhaps, yet I can't help despising him a little in my heart for it now. I believe, my dear, we all love your blustering fellows best; could we but direct the bluster, and bid it roar when and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Millicent Chyne on the lips of another man. Women understand these things better than we do. They understand each other, and they seem to have a practical way of accepting human nature as it is which we never learn to apply to our fellowmen. They never bluster as we do, nor expect ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... Holt!" rejoined the Mormon, without moving from his seat—"keep cool! I expected this; but it's all bluster. I tell you ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... he replied with a laugh. 'All the same, I almost believed I was losing my head when Maurice St. Mabyn came into the room. Isn't he a splendid chap though? No noise, no bluster, no accusations. But ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... come not here, Bluster in thy proper sphere; Howl along the naked plain; There exert they joyless reign. Triumph o'er the wither'd flow'r, The leafless shrub, the ruin'd bower; But our cottage come not near, Other Springs inhabit here, Other sunshine decks our board ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... to say that it was a good thing for him Dick was not there. But partly the sense that this would be unbecoming bluster, and partly the suffocating resentment of the fellow's impudence, limited his response to a formless gasp, and Bittridge went on: "But I'm glad to find you here, judge. I didn't know that you were in town. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Since they were as good as any real admiral's I didn't worry in the slightest. Ferraro went through them as carefully as he could in his rattled state, even checking the seals under UV. It gave him time to regain a bit of control and he used it to bluster. ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... more useful. The most scathing comment on such a system of administration is furnished in the story told by Colonel Henderson. The fearful trials to which the United States were subjected expose the folly and self-deception of which even well-meaning party leaders are too often capable. Ministers bluster about fighting and yet refuse to spend enough money on the army to make it fit for use; and on both sides of the Atlantic the lessons taught by the Peninsula, the Crimea, and the Secession War ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... thing was to be done to prevent a rupture. And after all, what did it signify to my character in the opinion of Marianne and her friends, in what language my answer was couched? It must have been only to one end. My business was to declare myself a scoundrel, and whether I did it with a bow or a bluster was of little importance. 'I am ruined for ever in their opinion,' said I to myself; 'I am shut out for ever from their society, they already think me an unprincipled fellow, this letter will only make them think me ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... and chose to sit apart. On the contrary, it only proves the thing which I maintain. For even on shore, there are many people naturally gay and light-hearted, who, whenever the autumnal wind begins to bluster round the corners, and roar along the chimney-stacks, straight becomes cross, petulant, and irritable. What is more mellow than fine old ale? Yet thunder will sour the best nut-brown ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... to try to outdo the newcomers, and degraded the quiet dignity of their patriarchal manner of life by speculations on the Stock Exchange. The intelligent middle classes, whose eyes and ears were filled with this bluster of the gold-orgy, found that their former way of living had now grown uncomfortable, their houses were too small, their bread too dry, their beer too common and their views of life began to climb upward ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... then Dolly, feeling very frightened and miserable, told him of Portveldt's letter, the receipt of which she had concealed from every one but Foster. The D.A.A.C.G. laughed at first, but then added, "but all the same, though 'twas but empty bluster, I had better tell his Excellency about it; it is just possible that the Dutch have ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Victoria. What are you going to do about it?" Now you might think that the porter would reply, "Come off it, Mister; you don't kid me like that," or make some other disappointing and impolite remark; but not a bit of it. Bluster is the thing that pays. First of all he will apologise, and then he will fetch the station-master, and he will apologise too, and after a bit they will offer you a special train back to Streatham Common, probably the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... was impossible to use the weapon that a former kindness had placed in his hand. He looked at Leverich now with an expression which the latter quieted himself to meet. This was a situation, not for bluster and rage, but to be ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... magnate had committed not only one violation, but constant violations, of the criminal law. They were unmolested; having the power to prevent it they assuredly would not suffer themselves to undergo even the farce of prosecution. Such few prosecutions as were started with suspicious bluster by the Government against the Standard Oil Company, the Sugar Trust, the Tobacco Trust and other trusts proved to be absolutely harmless, and have had no result except to strengthen the position of the trusts. The great ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... Then canst thou know their mighty masses, then Canst view their caverns, as if builded there Of beetling crags; which, when the hurricanes In gathered storm have filled utterly, Then, prisoned in clouds, they rave around With mighty roarings, and within those dens Bluster like savage beasts, and now from here, And now from there, send growlings through the clouds, And seeking an outlet, whirl themselves about, And roll from 'mid the clouds the seeds of fire, And heap them multitudinously there, And in the hollow furnaces within Wheel flame around, until ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... warily and with many pauses and much bluster, and still behind him came other bulls, snarling ferociously and uttering their uncanny challenges. Sheeta's yellow-green eyes glared terribly at Tarzan, and past Tarzan they shot brief glances at the apes of Kerchak advancing upon him. Discretion prompted ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to his feet and began to bluster considerably in Portuguese; but poor Barney seemed awfully crest-fallen, arid the deep concern which wrinkled his face, and the genuine regret that sounded in the tones of his voice, at length soothed the indignant Brazilian, who frowned gravely, and waving his hand, ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... he said mendaciously, and in a guarded voice, so as not to waken his mother, from whom he had kept his escapade. This had not the desired effect of drawing a reply from Elspeth, and he tried bluster. ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... ACT OF AUTHORITY.—The storm of excitement that may make the child start, bears no relation to actual obedience. The inner firmness, that sees and feels a moral conviction and expects obedience, is only disguised and defeated by bluster. The more calm and direct it is, the greater certainty it has ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... Cevallos finally, declared sharply that the treaty would be ratified only on several conditions, one of which was that the Mobile Act should be revoked. Pinckney then threw discretion to the winds and announced that he would ask for his passports; but his bluster did not change Spanish policy, and he dared not ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... are both in my gift, Ma'am; I'll prove like a shot what I boldly assert. Don't heed your Old Flame, Ma'am, he's bitterly jealous, 'Tis natural, quite, with his nose out of joint; You just let him bluster and blow like old bellows, And try me instead—I will not disappoint! Old Flame? He's a very fuliginous "Flame," Ma'am; I wonder, I'm sure, how you've stood him so long; He has choked you for years—'tis a thundering shame, Ma'am! High time the Young Spark ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... as he rose and confronted Augusta Goold. There were blotches of purple red and spaces of pallor on his face; his hands twisted together; a sweat had broken out from his neck, and made his collar limp. His words were a stammering mixture of bluster ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... was neatly done. No calling the man down; no bluster," whispered Greg as the candidates again ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... everything. The Carmelites he overwhelmed with jibes; he would rail away from his pulpit against monks in general. They choked with rage at his sermons. Proud and stately, he went along the streets of Loudun like a Father of the Church; but by night he would steal, with less of bluster, down the ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... last fortnight Colonel Faversham had felt almost a boy again. The spring was in his blood! Moreover, he flattered himself that he had not begun to look old! Still, he was sensitive lest Carrissima should fancy he was making an ass of himself, and, as usual at such times, he began to bluster. ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... Curtis had been entirely non-plussed, the cut in the speech was lost in amazement; then bluster ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... recovered, I was going to say. I never saw him more gay, lively, and handsome. We had a good deal of bluster about some parts of the trust I had engaged in; and upon freedoms I had treated him with; in which, he would have it, that I had exceeded our agreed-upon limits; but on the arrival of our three old companions, and a nephew of Mr. Doleman's, ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... substituted for sound conclusions, then only to be accepted when based upon the solid ground of ascertained fact. In the childhood of every science dogmatism precedes induction, and in the absence of clear knowledge, foolish and wild-eyed visionaries have posed as discoverers again and again. Yet bluster and audacity have their use, if only to stimulate the timid and the dilatory to quicken their pace and move forwards. For my part, however, if it be necessary to choose between the two, I should prefer to err with the slow ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... too hard, had killed the man? A little tremor went over him, a prickling of the scalp. Killing Cliff had no part in his plans, would be too horrid a mischance. He wished now that he had left him alone, had let him bluster and threaten. Perhaps Cliff would not have had presence of mind enough to do what Johnny had feared he would do when he saw capture was inevitable: drop overboard what papers he carried that would incriminate him with the United States Federal officers. With empty pockets Cliff would be as free ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... shrewd enough man to know when to bluster and when to be friendly. He released the Indian captives at Ma-ta-oka's wish—well knowing that the little girl had been duly "coached" by her wily old father, but feeling that even the friendship of a child may often be of value to ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... enemy, or how many guns they may carry, let British seamen when they meet them, as we do nowadays, feel sure that they will conquer, and I am very sure that conquer they will; ay, however the Frenchmen may bluster and boast of their mountain ships, just as the ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... received at Washington, where it was accepted by the truculent administration, agreed to by the Senate, and finally embodied in a treaty. Mr. Webster's opposition had served its purpose in delaying action and saving bluster from being converted into actual war,—a practical conclusion by no means desired by the dominant party, who had talked so loud that they came very near blundering into hostilities merely as a matter of ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... donkeys feeding side by side; low-jointed cottages, with long, sloping roofs greened over with moss or grass, and other objects usually shadowed dimly in the background of the picture. It is these quiet hamlets and houses in the still depths of the country, away from the noise and bluster of railway life and motion, that best represent and perpetuate the primeval characteristics of a nation. These the American traveller will find invested with all the old charm with which his fancy clothed them. It will well repay him ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... In Synod unbenigne, and taught the fixt Thir influence malignant when to showre, Which of them rising with the Sun, or falling, Should prove tempestuous: To the Winds they set Thir corners, when with bluster to confound Sea, Aire, and Shoar, the Thunder when to rowle With terror through the dark Aereal Hall. Some say he bid his Angels turne ascanse The Poles of Earth twice ten degrees and more From the Suns Axle; they with labour push'd 670 Oblique ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... with brag, bluster, pomposity, cheap wit, and insincerity, served him as a magnificent foil. Never again were wind and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... you, you certainly went in at the back door to do it," he said. Madeira's God-bless-you's and God-love-you's were valuable crutches to his conversation. With them and his bluster he seemed able to cover a great deal ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... intimidate him by his severity and awe him by the manifestation of his greatness. In fact, associating business success with his father's manners and methods, Allen had come to believe that force meant noise and bluster, and that firmness stood for an intolerance of discussion. But here, in the midst of his family, Robert Gorham displayed a side of his nature which Stephen Sanford had never seen; yet Allen was no less ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... calmness exasperated Leverage. From this point of the interview, the chief of police would have dropped the attitude of trustful friendliness and resorted to a little practical third-degree stuff. He was fairly quivering with eagerness to bluster about the room and extract ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... no' offer to send him home in the spring-cart? It's sair wet for him to be walking in the wind and the rain the day.' Or: 'He had a fine bloom on his cheeks, I'll warrant, when he came in through this morning's bluster of wind.' Or again: 'He'll be riding to the hunt with my father to-day; have they put their pink coats on, ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... ha! you bluster well. Upon my life, You have the tilt-yard jargon to a breath. Pepe, if I should smite you on the cheek— Thus, gossip, thus—[Strikes him.] what would ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... at the sight of the boys and seemed about to indulge in his usual bluster, but a thought appeared to come to him suddenly that made him ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... swelling." So he indulged in a critical Donnybrook; but after hitting out and about at the Essay for three months he left it much as he found it.(19) He could not get to close quarters with Farmer's scholarship. His bluster compares ill with Farmer's gentler manner, and in some passages the quiet humour has proved too subtle for his animosity. There was more impartiality in the judgment of Johnson: "Dr. Farmer, you have done that which was never done before; that is, you have ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... time has come at last to serve his Majesty, threaten and bluster as you like," cried Larry, as he and the rest ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... arbitrary rules of hypocritical saints, whose severity will not permit them to associate with sinners. Their rigorous laws must be all-controlling. They do nothing but compel and drive. They exhibit no mercy, but perpetual reproach, censure, condemnation, blame and bluster. They can endure no imperfection. But among Christians many are sinners, many infirm. In fact, Christians associate only with these; not with saints. Christians reject none, but bear with all. Indeed, they are as sincerely interested for sinners as they would ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... troublesome question was settled; the time-honored friendship of two great peoples had suffered no interruption; and Roosevelt had secured for his country its just due, without public parade or bluster, by merely being ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... superintendent in an odd, uncomfortable tone, with the hint of "bluster" still in it. Win fancied she heard him add: "What salary?" In any case, the girl mentioned the sum of eight dollars, and at the same time scribbled something on a printed paper ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... thought that the threats used against them in the course of the election meant nothing and were only a kind of bluster to get the Budget passed, they were grievously mistaken. It must have been hard for them to realize that Lloyd George meant all the presumptuous things he said. He was never more in earnest. A cut-and-dried plan ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... impervious to the veiled hostility that met him everywhere, faced Steptoe Service and made his request, that dignitary felt a chill go down his spine. Like Old Pete he felt the man beneath the surface. He met him, however, with bluster and refused all reopening of a matter which he declared settled with the burial of the snow-packer in the sliding canyons where he ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... the garden ways are lonely! Winds that bluster, winds that shout, Battle with the strong laburnum, Toss the sad brown leaves about. In the gay herbaceous border, Now a scene of wild disorder, The last dear hollyhock has flamed ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... younger man blankly, "what a ridiculous old humbug it is! And how he used to frighten me in the old days with his confounded cavalry bluster! I rather think I will look him up: and I'll dine with him three times a week if he likes. Meanwhile, it's time for me to go and meet old Rainham, and take him round to Brodonowski's. What ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... Together with the stage's glory, stood Each like a poor and pitied widowhood. The cirque profan'd was, and all postures rack'd; For men did strut, and stride, and stare, not act. Then temper flew from words, and men did squeak, Look red, and blow, and bluster, but not speak; No holy rage or frantic fires did stir Or flash about the spacious theatre. No clap of hands, or shout, or praise's proof Did crack the play-house sides, or cleave her roof. Artless the scene was, and ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... of anger and his magnetism overawed courtiers and politicians as they did the gladiators whom he slew in the arena. The strain of madness in his blood provided cunning that could mask itself beneath a princely bluster of indifference to consequences. He could fear with an extravagance coequal to the fury of his love of danger, and his fear struck terror into men's hearts, as it stirred his mad ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... prolonged, but the end could not be doubtful. Mrs. Blake could scold and bluster, but Lottie was determined. The mother was in bondage to Mrs. Grundy: the daughter played the trump card of her utter recklessness and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... there's it now; I thought so: kneel'd and wept! a Pox upon thee—I took thee for a prettier Fellow— You shou'd have huft and bluster'd at her door, Been very impudent and saucy, Sir, Leud, ruffling, mad; courted at all hours and seasons; Let her not rest, nor eat, nor sleep, nor visit. Believe me, Charles, Women love Importunity. Watch her close, watch her like a ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... Commons. Fergus O'Connor dissuaded them from any collision with the authorities. In a speech full of bombast and egotism, he declared that he was personally marked out for slaughter by the authorities. Thus, after all the bluster of this great tribune, as his followers called him, he showed the white feather. He was not prepared, like Smith O'Brien, gallantly to go out, with his life in his hand, and verify, by exposing himself to every peril and penalty, the words ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... London theatres was present. He was on the lookout for something that might be got up as a prodigy. The theatre, it seems, was in desperate condition—nothing but a miracle could save it. He pitched upon me for that miracle. I had a remarkable bluster in my style, and swagger in my gait, and having taken to drink a little during my troubles, my voice was somewhat cracked; so that it seemed like two voices run into one. The thought struck the agent to bring me out as a theatrical ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... is a fearful storm, the heavens seem As if they would vent themselves in streams of fire; So thick the darkness which usurps the day, That one might see the stars. The angry winds Bluster and howl like spirits loosed from hell. The firm earth trembles, and the aged elms Groaning, bow down their venerable tops. Yet this terrific tumult, o'er our heads, Which teacheth gentleness to savage beasts, So that they seek the shelter of their caves, Appeaseth not the bloody strife of men— ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... need to bluster in this fashion. Take up the poker and go and break into the door quiet and decent, like anyone else would do. And girls—off for your bonnets this ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... his head. There was only one instinct or desire in his being—the instinct which drives the wounded rat back to its hole to die, the instinct of self-preservation working in its meanest range. His swagger and bluster had been hopelessly crushed out of him by the vigour of Palmer Billy's attack; and to have been, as he considered, twice deserted by his own comrades, rendered his subjugation even ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... just decision, as most well-informed Canadians knew at the time. The troublesome question was settled; the time-honored friendship of two great peoples had suffered no interruption; and Roosevelt had secured for his country its just due, without public parade or bluster, by merely being ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... Milsom, savagely; "who's afraid of a hunchback's bluster? I dare say he wanted the ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... to have fascinated Haydon. Harlan saw him shrink back, the bluster gone out of him, his face the color of ashes. He kept stepping back, until he brought up against the rear wall of the ranchhouse; and there he stood, watching Woodward, his eyes bulging ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... it here." Stanley began to bluster. "I remember distinctly putting it in this corner. Now, who's had it? There's no time to lose. Look sharp! The stick's got to ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... and in Conjunction with some that were not qualify'd by Law, but meerly Voluntarily, call'd in the Moon by a hard long Word, in English signifying PROJECTORS these erected Stocks in Shadows, Societies in Nubibus, and Bought and Sold meer Vapour, Wind, Emptiness and Bluster for Mony, till they drew People in to lay out their Cash, and then laught ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... to know that he was going to run in?" said Gymbert, trying to bluster. "He crossed my horse, and it is his own fault if he was in the way of ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... to the veiled hostility that met him everywhere, faced Steptoe Service and made his request, that dignitary felt a chill go down his spine. Like Old Pete he felt the man beneath the surface. He met him, however, with bluster and refused all reopening of a matter which he declared settled with the burial of the snow-packer in the sliding canyons where ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... the people is most closely restrained, there it gives the greatest shocks to peace and order; therefore would I say to all kings, let your demagogues lead crowds, lest they lead armies; let them bluster, lest they massacre; a little turbulence is, as it were, the rainbow of the state; it shows indeed that there is a passing shower; but it is a pledge that there shall ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sure, I say was, because one never sees it now-a-days, though fifty years ago, under the one designation or the other, it was played annually by the Hogmanay guizards, who, dressed for the occasion, set it forth with deliciously unsophisticated swagger and bluster in every house they visited that had a kitchen floor broad and wide enough for the operation. It formed the material of a chap-book which was regularly on sale at the "Johnnie-a'-thing" shops in the middle of last century, though now, I suppose, a copy could scarcely be had for ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... over his work, without bluster or self-gratulation, for very joy at having work to do. There is a keen practical insight about him, rarely combined, in these days, with his single-minded determination to do good in his generation. His eye is single, and his whole ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the chair-arm, his fingers were set, tips on his chin, and over them he surveyed his listeners with calmness. He did not raise his voice. It was his mild manner that made what he said sound so balefully savage. Bluster would have weakened it. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... career he never left any man, save a Roundhead, penniless upon the road; nor was it his custom to strip the master without giving the man a trifle for his pains. His courage, moreover, was equal to his understanding. Since he was afraid of nothing, it was not his habit to bluster when he was not determined to have his way. When once his pistol was levelled, when once the solemn order was given, the victim must either fight or surrender; and Hind was never the man to decline a combat with any ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... the rough Torre began to heave and move, And bluster into stormy sobs and say, 'I never loved him: an I meet with him, I care not howsoever great he be, Then will I strike at him and strike him down, Give me good fortune, I will strike him dead, For this discomfort he hath ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... administration is furnished in the story told by Colonel Henderson. The fearful trials to which the United States were subjected expose the folly and self-deception of which even well-meaning party leaders are too often capable. Ministers bluster about fighting and yet refuse to spend enough money on the army to make it fit for use; and on both sides of the Atlantic the lessons taught by the Peninsula, the Crimea, and the Secession War are but ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... "Your bluster won't serve you, sirrah. If you be a gentleman, which you make incredible, you may proceed in order and I'll consider if I may do you ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... yes. The volcano itself is harmless enough. It smokes unpleasantly now and then, splutters and rumbles as if about to obliterate all creation, but for all its bluster it only manages to spill a trickle or two of fresh lava down its sides—just tamely subsides after deluging Leavitt with a shower of cinders and ashes. But Leavitt won't leave it alone. He goes poking into the very crater, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... hardly civil, Fletcher," said Sandford, gravely, "and rather forgetful, besides. If I were you, I wouldn't bluster until a certain piece of paper was ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... long waiting, and of sitting dumb Upon his charger; so with greenest leer He vented his impatience in a sneer. "Is this," he said, "the glorious Table Round, And is its glory naught but empty sound? Braggarts! I put your bluster to the test, And find you quail before a merry jest!" Then the great king himself stood up in ire, With clenched hand raised, and eyes that gleamed dark fire, And fronting the Green Knight he cried: "Forbear! For by my sword ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... not unreasonable. Like every one else, they will "try it on," but if handled courteously, kindly, with geniality, and, above all, with complete candour, they will generally see reason. And remember one thing. In spite of all that has happened, our mistakes, our bluster, our occasional lapses from complete disingenuousness, the Afghans still like us. Moreover, their hereditary mistrust of Russia still inclines them to lean on us. We have lately concluded a treaty with Afghanistan—not ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... mentioning Luther's name to John almost before it was out of her mouth. John's instincts made him bluster and get off the subject of business and on to that of personalities at once. She did not reply to the taunt, but went quietly back to ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... in spite of that feeling of sharp practice toward himself—nay, because of it; it was impossible to use the weapon that a former kindness had placed in his hand. He looked at Leverich now with an expression which the latter quieted himself to meet. This was a situation, not for bluster and rage, but to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... think it—'twas hard, 'twas bitter hard, Dannie, t' be engaged in that dirty business. I'd not have ye black your soul with it; an' I was 'lowin, Dannie, afore the parson left us, t' teach un how t' manage the Honorable, t' tell un about the liquor an' the bluster, t' show un how t' scare the Honorable on the Water Street pavement, t' teach un t' threaten an' swear the coward's money from his pocket, for I wasn't wantin' you, Dannie, t' know the trial an' wickedness o' the foul ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... I worry about it?" he said to Grace. "When the North gets angry enough to put its foot down, all this bluster about State- rights, and these efforts to foist slavery on a people who are disgusted ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... beginning to bluster;" said Trysail, who had witnessed the descent of his commander, at that moment and on such an errand, with great dissatisfaction. "Although his shot fell short, it is too much to let a Frenchman have the credit of ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... (apparently) bent on promoting animosity, and on convincing us that they will rather rush into civil war than endure a Parliament in Dublin supreme over all Ireland: but however much this may be suspected as the bluster and cunning of a minority in Ulster, to ignore it totally may be unjust as well as unwise. And besides, I think that Ireland needs the practice of Local Government, varying locally, before that of a Central Irish Parliament. This forbids my desiring a complete ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... that they use burning words to others, whose words to them are never even warm. So it was with this man when he spoke to himself in his solitude of his purpose of resigning the titled heiress. To the arguments, the entreaties, or the threats of others he would pay no heed. The Countess might bluster about her rank, and he would heed her not at all. He cared nothing for the whole tribe of Lovels. If Lady Anna asked for release, she should be released. But not till she had heard his words. How ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... joy assumed, while sorrow dimm'd the eyes, The forced sad smiles that follow'd sudden sighs; And every art, long used, but used in vain, To hide thy progress, Nature, and thy pain. Too eager caution shows some danger's near, The bully's bluster proves the coward's fear; His sober step the drunkard vainly tries, And nymphs expose the failings they disguise. First, whispering gossips were in parties seen, Then louder Scandal walk'd the village—green; Next babbling Folly told ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... needlessly exacerbate the feelings of those who disagreed with him. Now, a different order of things prevailed. Boulton was simply unendurable. His capacity was barely such as to enable him to discharge his official functions, and what he lacked in ability he made up for in bluster. He had an abominable temper, and a haughty, overbearing manner. He was always committing blunders which he refused to acknowledge, and he roared and bullied his way through one complication after another in a fashion ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... than the cherry! O sweeter than the berry! O nymph more bright Than moonshine night, Like kidlings blithe and merry! Ripe as the melting cluster! No lily has such lustre; Yet hard to tame As raging flame, And fierce as storms that bluster! ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... nigh exhausted the slender stock of evidence with which he had started. For a few minutes longer he tried by sheer bluster to conceal the poverty of the case, and last of all he handed one of Cobham's confessions to the Clerk of the Crown to be read in court. It entered into no particulars, which Cobham said their lordships must not expect ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... fairness, and respect. Such a point of view precludes the use of satire, invective, or harsh epithets. These never carry conviction; in fact, they invariably destroy the effect that an otherwise good argument might produce. Ridicule and bluster may please those who already agree with the speaker, but with these people he should be little concerned; a debater worthy of the name seeks to change the opinions of those who disagree with him. For this reason he ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... second and more gratuitous Crimea. But it was not only in Eastern Europe that his saving influence was felt. In Africa and India, and wherever British honor was involved, he was the resolute and unsparing enemy of that odious system of bluster and swagger and might against right, on which Lord Beaconsfield and his colleagues bestowed the ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... lego, to bring together, and latro, to bark or bluster; possibly from lex, law, and latens, unknown. Hence, a company of men brought together to bluster, or a company of law makers who know ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... win the Vermonters over to the British cause. He seems to have assured Haldimand's agent that "I shall do everything in my power to make this state a British province.'' In March 1781 he wrote to Congress, with characteristic bluster, "I am as resolutely determined to defend the independence of Vermont as congress that of the United States, and rather than fail will retire with the hardy Green Mountain Boys into the desolate caverns of the mountains and wage ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... have gone on," said he, "throwing shells into the town till they sent me out 400 hostages." The simple truth is that in spite of his long pedigree and good blood Bismarck was not quite a gentleman in our sense of the word; and as this accounts for his ferocious bluster and truculent bloodthirsty utterances when he was in power in the war time, so it was the keynote to his more recent undignified attitude and howls of querulous impatience of his altered situation. It must be said of him, however, that he was a man of cool and undaunted courage. ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... some cold meat if you can. I'll go on to the baker's. We'll meet again opposite the church. If I'm not there in twenty minutes go back without me; I'll wait that long for you. Walk in as if you owned the shanty. There's nothing starts suspicion as quick as looking frightened. Bluster a bit if they look crooked at you, and ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... no desire that the old man should again take his stand behind the impenetrable screen of threat and bluster from which he had ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... confirmation, which he assuredly never intended, to the Prussian ideal of a State. Nietzsche was too much averse from politics to intend such an application of his teaching, which is essentially individualistic, and he had nothing but contempt for the bluster and philistinism of the Prussian State in particular. We must admit, however, that in this unintentional way he contributed to the formation of that German temper which led to the war. General von Bernhardi's admiring references to ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... semblance of Diana, or of Danae for whose sake he became a shower of gold, seeing that in the telling thereof I should waste too much time. Nay, even the savage god of war, whose strength appalls the giants, repressed his wrathful bluster, being forced to such submission by this my son, and became gentle and loving. And the forger of Jupiter, and artificer of his three-pronged thunderbolts, though trained to handle fire, was smitten by a shaft more potent than he himself had ever wrought. Nay I, ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of such testimony it seems a bold thing to assert that there was a vast amount of noise and bluster which caused a temporary panic, but little else, and that after all Hurd's view of the matter was nearer the truth. 'The truth of the case,' he writes, 'is no more than this. A few fashionable men make a noise in the world; and this clamour being echoed ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... discrimination as you have. Tell you to be gentle, and you think we want you to dissolve into milk-and-water; tell you to be polite, and you infer hypocrisy; to be neat, and you leap over into dandyism, fancying all the while that bluster is manliness. No, Sir. You may make shoes, you may run engines, you may carry coals; you may blow the huntsman's horn, hurl the base-ball, follow the plough, smite the anvil; your face may be brown, your veins ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... stands on the opposite side of the road, with its barns; and these are all the buildings in sight of the railroad station. On the Concord rail, in the train of cars, with the locomotive puffing, and blowing off its steam, and making a great bluster in that lonely place, while along the other railroad stretches the desolate track, with the withered weeds growing up betwixt the two lines of iron, all so desolate. And anon you hear a low thunder running along these iron rails; it grows louder; an ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... penetration in any one conversant with the ways of that wise but windy potentate, the sovereign people, to discover that not withstanding all the warlike bluster and bustle of the last chapter, the city of New Amsterdam was not a whit more prepared for war than before. The privy councillors of Peter Stuyvesant were aware of this; and, having received his private orders to put the city in an immediate posture of defense, they called a meeting of the oldest ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... giant I met in Canaan was one Mistake, a large, loose-jointed fellow, who, I found, made a tremendous bluster but was as weak as a pygmy. Really he is not a true Anakim, but a Gibeonite, who are foes until they are conquered, and then they become hewers of wood and drawers of water for us—they become our servants betimes [Joshua 9:21]. ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... was there anywhere sign of timber. Foliage, of course, there was none. Cottonwood and willow in favored nooks along the Platte were just beginning to shoot forth their tiny pea-green tendrils in answer to the caressing touch of the May-day sunshine. April had been a month of storm and bluster and huge, wanton wastes of snow, whirling and drifting down from the bleak range that veiled the valley of the Laramie from the rays of the westering sun; and any one who chose to stroll out from the fort and climb ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... or two, and came quite close to the screen. I cowered behind it in alarm. I could see he was terrified. For a minute or two you talked with him, and urged him to confess. Bit by bit, as you went on, he recovered his nerve, and began to bluster. He didn't deny what you said: he saw it was no use: ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... Malvey, red-headed, bluff and huge, of a gaunt frame, with large-knuckled hands and big feet. Malvey tossed a coin on the bar noisily, and in that one act Pete read him for what he was—a man who "bullied" his way through life with much bluster and profanity, but a man who, if he boasted, would make good his boast. What appeared to be hearty good-nature in Malvey was in reality a certain blatantly boisterous vigor—a vigor utterly soulless, and masking a nature at bottom as treacherous as The Spider's—but in contrast squalid ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... man blankly, "what a ridiculous old humbug it is! And how he used to frighten me in the old days with his confounded cavalry bluster! I rather think I will look him up: and I'll dine with him three times a week if he likes. Meanwhile, it's time for me to go and meet old Rainham, and take him round to ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... ascendancy over the disposition and passions of her father. The latter, like many another country squire—especially of that day—when his word and will were law to his tenants and dependants, was a very great man indeed, when dealing with them. He could bluster and threaten, and even carry his threats into execution with a confident swagger that had more of magisterial pride and the pomp of property in it, than a sense of either light or justice. But, on the other hand, let him meet a man of his ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... me here," said Brunow, throwing himself savagely into an arm-chair. "I won't bluster with you, but I decline to explain or justify a word I've said, and you can take what course ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... a small, mild gentleman, unassuming in manner, cautious, careful, quiet, precise, and, whilst attending to his duties regularly, he makes no bluster about them. He was ordained at the Church of the English Martyrs, in September, 1868. In the pulpit he is earnest, clear, and regular in his remarks. He makes no repetitions, flings himself into no attitudes, assumes no airs, but proceeds on to the end steadily and calmly. Both the priests ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... He was looking intently. As soon as the tones of O'Shea's voice were carried away by the bluster of the wind, as far as the human beings there were concerned there was perfect stillness; the surf and the wind might have been sweeping ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... father no' offer to send him home in the spring-cart? It's sair wet for him to be walking in the wind and the rain the day.' Or: 'He had a fine bloom on his cheeks, I'll warrant, when he came in through this morning's bluster of wind.' Or again: 'He'll be riding to the hunt with my father to-day; have they put their pink coats on, ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... father which the veteran's honour might not brook. However, there was something in the old soldier's dignity and long service that kept the arrogance of the younger man in check, and repressed all bluster ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... used dialect for dynamite to blow the front off hypocrisy or to shatter the cotton commercialism in which the New England conscience was encysted. Robert H. Newell, mirth-maker and mystic, satirized military ignorance and pinchbeck bluster to an immortality of contempt. Bret Harte in verse and story touched the parallels of tragedy and of comedy, of pathos, of bathos, and of humor, which love of life and lust of gold opened up amid the unapprehended ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Vienna and London was not unlike that of the sun and the wind in the proverbial saw. Viennese suavity induced Bonaparte to take off his coat and show himself as he really was: while the conscientious bluster of Grenville and Pitt made the First Consul button up his coat, and pose as the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... sepulchred on all sides round: Then canst thou know their mighty masses, then Canst view their caverns, as if builded there Of beetling crags; which, when the hurricanes In gathered storm have filled utterly, Then, prisoned in clouds, they rave around With mighty roarings, and within those dens Bluster like savage beasts, and now from here, And now from there, send growlings through the clouds, And seeking an outlet, whirl themselves about, And roll from 'mid the clouds the seeds of fire, And heap them multitudinously there, And in the hollow furnaces within Wheel flame around, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... much-ado-about-nothing would end in a month. The Northern people are simply invincible. The rebels, a mere band of ragamuffins, will fly like chaff before the wind on our approach." Thus the wretched farces of bluster continued on either side until in blood, agony, and heartbreak, Americans learned to ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... Arizona," said Jean, slowly. "I know little about ranchers or sheepmen. It's true my father sent for me. It's true, I dare say, that he bragged, for he was given to bluster an' blow. An' he's old now. I can't help it if he bragged about me. But if he has, an' if he's justified in his stand against you sheepmen, I'm goin' to do my best to ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... "Why, Brookes," he said, "you seem to think forever of these men showing fight. You don't know them as I know them. They have a deal of bluster and make a deal of noise, but when you seize them and hold them with a strong hand, there's naught of fight left in them. 'Tis like enough there'll not be so much as a musket fired to-day. I've had to do with 'em often enough before to know my gentlemen well by this ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... puckered his lips as though he was pretending to kiss her. Babbitt had so strong an impulse to go to Paul that he could feel his body uncoiling, his shoulders moving, but he felt, desperately, that he must be diplomatic, and not till he saw Paul paying the check did he bluster to the piano-salesman, "By golly-friend of mine over there—'scuse me second—just say ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... Murden, looking after him; "I have half a mind to tie him up and scar his back, and see if it will not make him a little more energetic." But with all of the bluster of the officer, I saw that he did not suspect the man's honesty, and I was ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... than to show that the early Edinburgh articles were very far from perfect. Of Jeffrey we shall speak presently, and there is no doubt that Sydney at his best was, and is always, delightful. But the blundering bluster of Brougham, the solemn ineffectiveness of Horner (of whom I can never think without also thinking of Scott's delightful Shandean jest on him), the respectable erudition of the Scotch professors, cannot for one single moment be compared with the work which, in Jeffrey's own later days, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Creek, after dinner, and in a little while the performance begins. There is nothing of the gentle pattering shower about a rain and wind storm on these elevated plains; it comes on with a blow and a bluster that threatens to take one off his feet. The rain is dashed about in the air by the wild, blustering wind, and comes from all directions at the same time. While you are frantically hanging on to your hat, the wind playfully unbuttons your rubber coat and lifts it ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... was all bluster and impotent defiance. I was as helpless as a squirming puppy held by the neck. I ran like a madman, but I ran the wrong way. The invisible crew passed me, and their voices faded. I heard them melt, melt into nothing. A sound, an impression,—that ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... the old man, his fury suddenly changing to a white heat of passion, which was more terrible than the bluster that had gone before. "Silence, lest I strike thee to the ground where thou standest, and plunge this dagger in thine heart sooner than hear thee blaspheme the Holy Church in which thou wast reared! How darest thou talk thus to ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... begins to bluster before his Virginie, Madame lays a finger on her lips and he is silent. He smokes his pipes and his cigars in a kiosk fifty feet from the chateau, and airs himself before he returns to the house. Proud of his subjection, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... d——d Yankee," said the planter. "You're welcome to your opinion, old Blowhard," responded Lemon. "This is a free country; I am a Yankee—all but the d——d—and now what do you propose to do about it?" (All this in an assumed tone of bluster, as the best adapted to the situation.) "We'll see! we'll see!" rejoined the planter, and at once started in a direct line for his house. Lemon lost no time, but returned as quickly as possible to his comrade, and without any deliberation they evacuated the enemy's ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... they had condemned Jesus—that of blasphemy in calling Himself 'the Son of God'—was not a crime known to Roman law, and to allege it would probably have ended in the whole matter being scornfully dismissed. So they stood on their dignity and tried to bluster. 'We have condemned Him; that is enough. We look to you to carry out the sentence at our bidding.' So the 'ecclesiastical authority' has often said to the 'secular arm' since then, and unfortunately the civil authority has not always been as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... prescribed it, and it was your crowning act of kindness to me, dear Mrs. Ormonde. It is possible that I have grown coarser; indeed, I know that I associate on terms of equality and friendliness with men from whom I should formerly have shrunk. I can get angry, and stand on my rights, and bluster if need be, and on the whole I think I am no worse for that. My ear is not offended if I hear myself called 'boss;' why should it be? it is a word as well as another. Nay, I have even felt something like excitement when listening to political speeches, in which frequent mention was made of 'the ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... she was sad and sorry and ashamed, because of the futile bustle and bluster and cheerful courageous activity about her. Not a cheek had blenched; not a hand had trembled; not a voice had been lifted to protest or counsel surrender, despite their meagre capacities for defense and their number, but a handful. What would these men say ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Gazette eight years before. If Froude had made such an astonishing slip, there would have been more ground for imputing to him an incapacity to distinguish between truth and falsehood. Freeman's "Last Words on Mr. Froude" show no sign of penitence or good feeling, and they end with characteristic bluster about the truth, from which he had so grievously departed. But Froude was never troubled ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... said the Blue-gum, when the darkness came to the mountain, "I am going to have a good sleep tonight. I'm a match still for old Daddy Wind, in spite of all his noise and bluster. And there are ways of dealing with white-ants, too. I've lived upon this mountain, tree ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... one gets clear at last, and we have to run to overtake the rest of the company. We begin to pant and complain, and bluster against those who are leading. Our feet go down haphazard; we stumble and hold ourselves up by the wails, so that our hands are plastered with mud. The march becomes a stampede, full of the noise of metal things and ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... (HEINEMANN), a series of lectures developing phases of the argument of the Great Illusion, Mr. NORMAN ANGELL incidentally deals with this greengrocery business. Nobody with knowledge of his shrewd and vigorous method will be surprised that without bluster or rhetoric he establishes a very clear verdict of acquittal. One has always the impression that the rationalist in him is deliberately repressing the mystic, lest his case be weakened by a suspicion of sentimentalism. For it must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... else could I do?" blustered Milo—though under the bluster ran a thread of placating timidity. "He saved my life, didn't ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... stage manager and, in presence of all assembled, curtly ordered him to leave "her theatre" immediately. At first he stood dumfounded, and, on her repeating her injunction more vehemently, he began to bluster back at her. A pretty scene ensued, he, with much Billingsgate, lustily demanding his money, she insisting he must come for it at the right time and place. In the end, she sent for the police, and the astonished stage manager found himself forcibly ejected. ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... brave to cover shame wi' bitter words, Tam Lorrigan. 'Tis the way of ye to bluster and bully until the neighbors all are affrighted to face ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... 'Don't bluster, Lukashka, but listen to me,' she answered, not pulling away her hands but holding the Cossack at arm's length. 'It's true I am a girl, but you listen to me! It does not depend on me, but if you love me I'll tell ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... not usually a formidable opponent, and though he will sometimes charge home he is much more apt to bluster and bully than actually to come to close quarters. I myself have but once seen a man who had been hurt by one of these bears. This was an Indian. He had come on the beast close up in a thick wood, and had mortally wounded it with his gun; it had then closed with him, knocking ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... as far back as 1860 passed every week on its northward way up along the coast of Norway, was of a very sociable turn of mind. It ran with much shrieking and needless bluster in and out the calm, winding fjords, paid unceremonious little visits in every out-of-the-way nook and bay, dropped now and then a black heap of coal into the shining water, and sent thick volleys of smoke and ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... a humbleness that seemed strangely gentle after all his bluster and brag, "will you look at this and tell me ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... thing, almost, but the integrity of the Constitution, and the essential interests of the country—to the cause of mutual harmony and mutual conciliation, no ground can be granted, not an inch, to menace and bluster. Indeed, menace and bluster, and the putting forth of daring, unconstitutional doctrines, are, at this very moment, the chief obstacles to mutual harmony and satisfactory accommodation. Men cannot well reason, and confer, and take counsel together, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... leader, recognizing the force of the murmur which greeted this outburst. "It is not any of these powers that I fear. They might bluster, and still not fight; and indeed they lack any rational cause for war. But what I fear, what all of us fear, gentlemen, is the danger here, inside our own ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... gift, O best of monarchs, add, to crown Thy bounty to the Dardans,—one, beside These many, nor let bluster bear thee down. A worthy husband for thy child provide, And peace shall with the lasting pact abide. Else, if such terror doth our souls enslave, Him now, in hope to turn away his pride, Him let us pray his proper right to waive, And, pitying, deign to yield what king ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... the sound political economy of obtaining the most for the least, but in the words and stern face of the child he saw how his act must appear to a mind unwarped by interest and unhardened by selfish years. Moreover, he could not bluster in the presence of death, and the thought that his greed had caused it chilled his heart with a sudden dread. He caught at the extenuation her words suggested, and said gravely, "You are right; I did not know. I would send food from my own table rather than any one should ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... fortnight Colonel Faversham had felt almost a boy again. The spring was in his blood! Moreover, he flattered himself that he had not begun to look old! Still, he was sensitive lest Carrissima should fancy he was making an ass of himself, and, as usual at such times, he began to bluster. ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... their tone, they began to boast and to bluster. Then Wattawamat advanced with a stride in front of the other, And, with a lofty demeanor, thus vauntingly spake to the Captain: "Now Wattawamat can see, by the fiery eyes of the Captain, Angry is he in his heart; but the heart of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... style, I have endeavored neither to creep nor to bluster, for no author is so likely to betray his translator into both these faults, as HOMER, though himself never guilty of either. I have cautiously avoided all terms of new invention, with an abundance of which, persons of more ingenuity ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... of an immediate breach with Austria, to make his ulterior aims so clear as to carry the Parliament with him in the policy of military reorganisation. Words frank even to brutality were uttered by him, but they sounded more like menace and bluster than the explanation of a well-considered plan. "Prussia must keep its forces together," he said in one of his first Parliamentary appearances, "its boundaries are not those of a sound State. The great questions of the time are to be decided not by speeches and votes of majorities but ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... direction it has stagnated in the sunless swamps of a theosophy, from which a cloud of sedulous ephemera still suck a little spiritual moisture. In another it led to the sacramental and sacerdotal developments of Anglicanism. In a third, among men with strong practical energy, to the benevolent bluster of a sort of Christianity which is called muscular because it is not intellectual. It would be an error to suppose that these and the other streams that have sprung from the same source, did not in the days of their fulness fertilise and ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... challenged Church for talking openly about the story that the Holland Land Company had, for legislative services rendered, cancelled a bond against him for twenty thousand dollars; but the world doubts Burr's bluster as it doubts his word. At present he is in a desperate way because Alexander Baring, in behalf of a friend, I.I. Augustine, is pressing for payment on a bond given to secure the price of land bought by Burr and Greenleaf, and he has been offering worthless ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... to have written the letter, and if I could only have been sure Wallop's threat was mere idle bluster I should ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Stoddard," began the old man, between bluster and whine, "I talked about them chaps to the superintendent of yo' mill, an' you-all said you didn't want none of that size. And one o' yo' men—he was a room boss, I reckon—spoke up right sassy to me—as sassy as Johnnie Consadine ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... intervening years that he was prepared to see a man who would intimidate him by his severity and awe him by the manifestation of his greatness. In fact, associating business success with his father's manners and methods, Allen had come to believe that force meant noise and bluster, and that firmness stood for an intolerance of discussion. But here, in the midst of his family, Robert Gorham displayed a side of his nature which Stephen Sanford had never seen; yet Allen was no less conscious of the man's power. The boy was more quick to sense than he was to analyze, ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... which he strives to render his dumb Instinctive Doings presentable when they are done. Such philosophies will arise; be preached as Mammon-Gospels, the ultimate Evangel of the World; be believed, with what is called belief, with much superficial bluster, and a kind of shallow satisfaction real in its way:—but they are ominous gospels! They are the sure, and even swift, forerunner of great changes. Expect that the old System of Society is done, is dying and fallen into dotage, when it begins to rave in that fashion. ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... That was nature. A man, with all of his bluster, cannot get away from nature. Don't the winters freeze and kill him? Doesn't water drown him, fire burn him? Love had no place in nature; hatred was a part of the one law, the primal law. The wolf kills the rabbit in hot rage; the black ant tears down the soft-bodied caterpillar not so ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... lift, Ma'am! No danger at all, no discomfort, no dirt! You love Sweetness and Light? They are both in my gift, Ma'am; I'll prove like a shot what I boldly assert. Don't heed your Old Flame, Ma'am, he's bitterly jealous, 'Tis natural, quite, with his nose out of joint; You just let him bluster and blow like old bellows, And try me instead—I will not disappoint! Old Flame? He's a very fuliginous "Flame," Ma'am; I wonder, I'm sure, how you've stood him so long; He has choked you for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... Marker. "Nothing is lost, and nothing will be lost. But I fear these two men. They do not bluster and talk at random like the others. They are so very quiet that they may ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... Martin. "The more you treat 'em like boys, the better they think you use 'em. They always want motherin', an' somebody to come to. I always tell folks I've got five child'n, counting Mr. Martin the youngest. The more bluster they have, the more boys they be. Now Marthy knew that about brother Isr'el, an' she always ruled him by love an' easin' of him down from them high perches he was always settin' upon. Everything was always right with her an' all wrong with him when they was young, but she could ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... should felicitate ourselves on the sacred privileges we enjoy—should pay the tribute of our respect to those whose courage crowned us with sovereignty and made us masters of our fate; but we should not, as too often happens, make it the occasion for senseless bravado and foolish bluster. We should rather employ it to promote good will among the nations of the earth, to link together in a kindlier brotherhood the various families of the great Caucasian race, to beat the barbarous sword into peaceful ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... borrowings, or stealings, on bits of pasteboard that admit them to their nightly banquet. The stage struck always copy the traits of the leading actor of the hour, whoever he may be, and grunt and bluster in imitation of "Ned"—meaning Forrest—or quack and stutter a la "Bill"—that is, Macready—as the wind of popular favor veers and changes. It is curious, at a representation of the "Gladiator," to winnow these young gentlemen from the mass by the lens of an opera ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... insulted, and asserted the book had been in his possession for some considerable time, and even threatened the bookseller, when he insisted on detaining the book, with the police. This was rather unfortunate, for at that moment a constable passing by was called in, and, in spite of a great deal of bluster and many threats, the thief was marched off to the nearest police-station. The other book, it was found, had also been stolen that morning from another shop, and the result was four ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... astonishing slip, there would have been more ground for imputing to him an incapacity to distinguish between truth and falsehood. Freeman's "Last Words on Mr. Froude" show no sign of penitence or good feeling, and they end with characteristic bluster about the truth, from which he had so grievously departed. But Froude was never troubled ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... had experience, a government which relying for its existence on the aid of an external power finds in its very feebleness support for tyranny. Murmurs are already heard of armed resistance. These mutterings, we are told, are nothing but bluster. It is at any rate that sort of "bluster" at which the justice and humanity of a loyal Englishman must take alarm. I have not yet learnt to look without horror on the possibility of civil war, nor to picture to myself without emotion the situation ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... the overseer came to where Nicanor stood in chains, and looked at him. He was a very fat man, with little eyes sunk in unwholesome flesh, and was far haughtier than the great lord Eudemius himself. When he saw Nicanor's face, he began unexpectedly to curse and bluster, and said: ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... to the soldiers of the Republic for capture and for subsequent guillotine. England is at war with us, there is nothing therefore further to fear from her. We might hang every Englishman we can lay hands on, and England could do no more than she is doing at the present moment: bombard our ports, bluster and threaten, join hands with Flanders, and Austria and Sardinia, and the ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of something and hang on," the red-faced man said to me. All his bluster had gone, and he seemed to have caught the contagion of preternatural calm. "And listen to the women scream," he said grimly—almost bitterly, I thought, as though he had been through the ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... falling on his face and neck. But the roar of the waterfall rang too persistently in his ears and he hastily closed the window again. There was something in the incessant boom of that tumbling water which strangely disturbed him. He could better stand suspense than that. If only the wind would bluster again. That, at least, was intermittent in its fury and gave momentary relief to thoughts strained to ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... castor of Joe Willis, the self-elected and would-be champion of the neighbourhood, a well-to-do young butcher of twenty-eight or thereabouts, and a great strapping fellow, with his full allowance of bluster. This is a capital show of gamesters, considering the amount of the prize; so, while they are picking their sticks and drawing their lots, I think I must tell you, as shortly as I can, how the noble old game of back-sword is played; for it is sadly gone out of late, even in the Vale, and ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... Captain," I heard myself saying. "I am perfectly capable of self-protection. And I expect to remain a friend of Mrs. Montoyo as long as she permits me. For your bluster and Daniel's I care not a sou. In fact, I consider you a pair ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... chaos of roaring battle. Hancock had taken twenty guns with their horses, and about thirty battle flags. It was a tremendous capture, if he could hold his ground. No officer of the Union army ever showed to better advantage. The world may well forgive the touch of vanity and bluster in the undaunted Hancock, as he sent this despatch to Grant: "I have used up Johnson and am going into Hill." He found, however, that he should have terrible work even to keep the ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... get under sail." Captain Hood at once determined to try what could be done, and with great presence of mind immediately ordered the crew to their respective stations, and directed that the Frenchmen should be taken below. They at first began to bluster, but the marines appearing with their half-pikes, soon forced them down below. Such was the alacrity of the officers and crew, that in less than three minutes every sail in the ship was set, and the yards ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... you going to do about it?" Now you might think that the porter would reply, "Come off it, Mister; you don't kid me like that," or make some other disappointing and impolite remark; but not a bit of it. Bluster is the thing that pays. First of all he will apologise, and then he will fetch the station-master, and he will apologise too, and after a bit they will offer you a special train back to Streatham Common, probably the one the KING uses when he goes to the seaside. But you will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... seen a fine courtesy, a simple desire to lay her best at her guest's disposal, a perfect composure, and a freedom from all effort, that were in their way the perfection of breeding. I have seen these often in the peasantry, in the poor. It is your middle classes, with their incessant flutter, and bluster, and twitter, and twaddle; with their perpetual strain after effect; with their deathless desire to get one rung of the ladder higher than they ever can get; with their preposterous affectations, their pedantic unrealities, their morbid dread ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... his limp silence began to worry Johnny. What if he had struck too hard, had killed the man? A little tremor went over him, a prickling of the scalp. Killing Cliff had no part in his plans, would be too horrid a mischance. He wished now that he had left him alone, had let him bluster and threaten. Perhaps Cliff would not have had presence of mind enough to do what Johnny had feared he would do when he saw capture was inevitable: drop overboard what papers he carried that would incriminate him with ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... look at them intrinsically. There is the same burly thick-necked strength of body as of soul;—built, in both cases, on what the old Marquis calls a fond gaillard. By nature, by course of breeding, indeed by nation, Mirabeau has much more of bluster; a noisy, forward, unresting man. But the characteristic of Mirabeau too is veracity and sense, power of true insight, superiority of vision. The thing that he says is worth remembering. It is a flash of insight ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... foe might rage, the Brigadier might bluster. Was I down-hearted? No! My spirit soared And dreamt of you and me with blended lustre Gracing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... hilltop—froth and spume thrown from a great wave somewhere beyond that cover—men limping, men supported by their comrades, men gasping and covered with sweat, men livid with nausea, men without arms, men carrying it off with bluster, and men too honestly frightened for any pretence. A number were legitimately there, wounded, ill, exhausted, useless on the field of battle; others were malingerers, and some were cowards—cowards for all time, or cowards for this time only. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... passage—grand, because it is true to human nature, true to the determined, prompt, kingly character of David. He does not complain, bluster, curse over the insult as a weak man might have done. He has been deeply hurt, and he is too high-minded to talk about it. He will do, and not talk. A dark purpose settles itself instantly in his mind. Perhaps he is ashamed of it, and dare not speak ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... bless you, you certainly went in at the back door to do it," he said. Madeira's God-bless-you's and God-love-you's were valuable crutches to his conversation. With them and his bluster he seemed able to cover a ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... which did not bring back Knowles, with his unwieldy heat and bluster. He found a flavor and meaning in the least of these hints of mine, gloating over the largess given and received in the world, for which money had no value. His bones used to straighten, and his eye glitter under the flabby brow, at the recital of any brave, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... to be the first really fine spring day they had had in this section. Until now, the spring had done its work under rain and bluster; and now, when it had all of a sudden become fine weather, the people were filled with such a longing after summer warmth and green woods that they could hardly perform their tasks. And when the wild geese rode by, high above the ground, cheerful and free, there wasn't one who did not drop ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... believe now but wut half on't is lies; For who'd thought the North wuz a-goin' to rise, Or take the pervokin'est kin' of a stump, 'Thout't wuz sunthin' ez pressin' ez Gabr'el's las' trump? Or who'd ha' supposed, arter sech swell an' bluster 'Bout the lick-ary-ten-on-ye fighters they'd muster, Raised by hand on briled lightnin', ez op'lent 'z you please In a primitive furrest o' femmily-trees, Who'd ha' thought thet them Southerners ever 'ud show Starns with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... excellent," he said. "For myself, two centuries have been spent in my family to teach me to love like a gentleman, and to deserve you like a man. What does this young man need? A few days of bluster, of assertion! A few weeks of gaming and of roistering, of self-asserted claims! Gad! Lady Catharine, this is passing bitter! And now you ask me ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... serpents crawled slowly from hill to hill without bluster of smoke. A dun-colored cloud of dust floated away to the right. The sky overhead was ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... Number 221 Washington street, Boston. It consists entirely of selections from the columns of Southern newspapers—all of them rabid, and we may very truly add, ridiculous; especially since the fortunes of war have made so much of their Bobadil bluster appear like the veriest folly. Many of them are old acquaintances—who, for instance, can have forgotten the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... with much brusque bluster to conceal his longings for the life he was too old to follow and many cynical injunctions about "skinning the skunk" and "knocking the head off anything that stood in my way" and "always profiting from ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Master Arthur! Master Lusam! wonder not why I thus blow and bluster; my mistress is dead! dead is my mistress! and therefore hang yourselves. O, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... fierce storm-wind may bluster and blow, Tearing the trees from the root-broken ground, Or the wild sea-surf may leap and may flow In solemn ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... found many Southern refugees, some of whom made a poor return for hospitality by endeavoring to use Canada as a base for border raids. Yet in the smaller towns and in the country sympathy was decidedly on the other side, particularly after the "Herald" had ceased its campaign of bluster and after Lincoln's proclamation had brought the moral issue again to the fore. The fact that a large number of Canadians, popularly set at forty thousand, enlisted in the Northern armies, is to be explained in part by the call of adventure and the lure of high bounties, ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... beautiful villas, evidently the homes of the ultra-wealthy. Close at hand we have the pleasant chink-chink of caulking hammers, for barges are built and repaired in this snug harbor. Now and then a river tug comes, with noisy bluster of smoke and steam, and amid much tightening and slackening of rope, and wild profanity, takes captive a laden barge,—as a cowboy might a refractory steer in the midst of a herd,—and hauls it off to be disgorged down stream. ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... stranger in Arizona," said Jean, slowly. "I know little about ranchers or sheepmen. It's true my father sent for me. It's true, I dare say, that he bragged, for he was given to bluster an' blow. An' he's old now. I can't help it if he bragged about me. But if he has, an' if he's justified in his stand against you sheepmen, I'm goin' to do my best to live up to ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... here, Bluster in thy proper sphere; Howl along the naked plain; There exert they joyless reign. Triumph o'er the wither'd flow'r, The leafless shrub, the ruin'd bower; But our cottage come not near, Other Springs inhabit here, Other sunshine decks our board Than they niggard skies afford. Gloomy Winter, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... a jolly good fellow though, in spite of his bluster and boisterous ways. There was a wealth of sunshine in his honest heart, and he evidently wanted to render everybody happy. He appeared to have entered into a compact with Santa Claus to make it his business to see that the boys and girls should not, in the end, be deprived of ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... the earth below Roared aloud; that thunder'd, and this shook: Bluster'd the tempests strong; the whirlwinds blow; The bitter storm drove hailstones in his look; But yet his arm grew neither weak nor slow, Nor of that fury heed or care he took, Till low to earth the wounded tree down bended; en fled the spirits ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... when we have yielded initiative to a woman, we are unable to recover it without uncivil bluster. So, therefore, women dealing with gentlemen are allowed unreasonable advantages. He had never granted it in colloquy or act to any woman but this one. Consequently, he was to see, that if the gentleman in him was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hypocritical saints, whose severity will not permit them to associate with sinners. Their rigorous laws must be all-controlling. They do nothing but compel and drive. They exhibit no mercy, but perpetual reproach, censure, condemnation, blame and bluster. They can endure no imperfection. But among Christians many are sinners, many infirm. In fact, Christians associate only with these; not with saints. Christians reject none, but bear with all. Indeed, they are as sincerely interested for sinners as they would ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... one suppose that by purging itself of bloody violence, hatred, and revenge, and becoming the sentinel of affection, jealousy has lost any of its intensity. On the contrary, its depth is quintupled. The bluster and fury of savage violence is only a momentary ebullition of sensual passion, whereas the anguish of jealousy as we feel ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... a special plea Has heard of old Tom Tewkesbury, Deaf as a post, and thick as mustard, He aim'd at wit, and bawl'd and bluster'd And died a Nisi Prius leader— That genius was my special pleader— That great man's office I attended, By Hawk and Buzzard recommended Attorneys both of wondrous skill, To pluck the goose and drive the quill. Three years I sat his smoky room in, Pens, paper, ink, and pounce consuming; ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... we're going to have war, Silas," said he, slowly; "but don't you think that your Mr. Lincoln scares me into that belief. I don't count his bluster worth a cent. No sirree! It's this youngster who comes out here from Boston and buys a nigger with all the money he's got in the world. And if he's an impetuous young fool; I'm ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... offended: For those that were, it is not square to take On those that are, Reuenge: Crimes, like Lands Are not inherited, then deere Countryman, Bring in thy rankes, but leaue without thy rage, Spare thy Athenian Cradle, and those Kin Which in the bluster of thy wrath must fall With those that haue offended, like a Shepheard, Approach the Fold, and cull th' infected ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... began to heave and move, And bluster into stormy sobs and say, 'I never loved him: an I meet with him, I care not howsoever great he be, Then will I strike at him and strike him down, Give me good fortune, I will strike him dead, For this discomfort he hath ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... and the fields of air Are mine, not his. By fatal lot to me The liquid empire fell, and trident of the sea. His pow'r to hollow caverns is confin'd: There let him reign, the jailer of the wind, With hoarse commands his breathing subjects call, And boast and bluster in his empty hall." He spoke; and, while he spoke, he smooth'd the sea, Dispell'd the darkness, and restor'd the day. Cymothoe, Triton, and the sea-green train Of beauteous nymphs, the daughters of the main, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... Township, Town against Town: Carpentras, long jealous of Avignon, is now turned out in open war with it;—and Jourdan Coupe-tete, your first General being killed in mutiny, closes his dye-shop; and does there visibly, with siege-artillery, above all with bluster and tumult, with the 'brave Brigands of Avignon,' beleaguer the rival Town, for two months, in the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... eloquence which, among all our associations, there ought to be a society to put down,—they would more honor their vocation, and effect its purpose of saving human souls. Let us not be so loudmouthed, or bluster as we do. Our declamation will have to hush its barbarian noise some time. Nothing but conversation will be left in heaven; and it were well, could we have on earth sober and thoughtful assemblies, at blood-warmth instead of fever-heat, rather than those over-crowded halls from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... usually angered his opponent in any argument. Once he could break that steady, iron, self-control he felt he would have the best of things. He could easily persuade David Spafford that everything was all right if he could get him off his guard and make him angry. An angry man could do little but bluster. ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... the buskin's pride, Together with the stage's glory, stood Each like a poor and pitied widowhood. The cirque profan'd was, and all postures rack'd; For men did strut, and stride, and stare, not act. Then temper flew from words, and men did squeak, Look red, and blow, and bluster, but not speak; No holy rage or frantic fires did stir Or flash about the spacious theatre. No clap of hands, or shout, or praise's proof Did crack the play-house sides, or cleave her roof. Artless the scene was, and that ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... made for the Christmas ball. Gay garlands were hung from ceiling and wall; The Yule log was laid, the tables arrayed, And the Lady Lorraine and her whole cavalcade, From the pompous old steward to the scullery-maid, Were all in a fluster, Excitement and bluster, And everything shone with a ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... be a frightful man to meet socially. I can hear a host saying "Shake hands with the Captain." One quite loses his taste for dinner parties. There is a sabre cut across the Captain's cheek. He is even more disreputable in appearance than his followers, with a bluster that marks ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... to do his best to rid them in future of this "superfluous swelling." So he indulged in a critical Donnybrook; but after hitting out and about at the Essay for three months he left it much as he found it.(19) He could not get to close quarters with Farmer's scholarship. His bluster compares ill with Farmer's gentler manner, and in some passages the quiet humour has proved too subtle for his animosity. There was more impartiality in the judgment of Johnson: "Dr. Farmer, you have done that which ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... began to bluster around the studio, damning Haggerty. There was something disturbingly warm and honest in Garry's eyes. Then with a sudden gesture of impatience he came back and his troubled glance ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... worst type for the Teacher until the right boy comes along; there is no use in the Teacher worrying himself until he does, because of the bully's bluster and bluff. Usually the normal boy will accept him at his face value, and it is only when a lad with self-assertion comes along that the sparks will fly. Then the bully will have to back down or take his ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... "How," said I, "would Pope have raved had he been served so?" "We should never," replied he, "have heard the last on't, to be sure; but then Pope was a narrow man: I will however," added he, "storm and bluster myself a little this time;"—so went to London in all the wrath he could muster up. At his return I asked ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... rolled round. The reception of it was stormy, even in Scandinavia, and led to violent outbursts of controversy. No work from the master's pen had roused more difference of opinion among the critics since the bluster over Ghosts fourteen years before. Those who prefer to absolute success in the creation of a work of art the personal flavor or perfume of the artist himself were predisposed to place Little Eyolf very high among his writings. Nowhere is he more independent of all other influences, nowhere ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... a pace or two, and came quite close to the screen. I cowered behind it in alarm. I could see he was terrified. For a minute or two you talked with him, and urged him to confess. Bit by bit, as you went on, he recovered his nerve, and began to bluster. He didn't deny what you said: he saw it was no use: ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... was just thinking! Thinking of a man whom I used to denounce as bad-tempered! A dear, kind, thoughtful, unselfish Englishman with a—a bluster! I can never call it temper again, after knowing Mr Travers! He has taught ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... United States. Delays followed until Cevallos finally, declared sharply that the treaty would be ratified only on several conditions, one of which was that the Mobile Act should be revoked. Pinckney then threw discretion to the winds and announced that he would ask for his passports; but his bluster did not change Spanish policy, and he dared not carry out ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... and if a single day passes without his seeing me he has orders to break the seal and make the contents public. So you see chance is still on my side. But now that you are warned there is no need for me to bluster. I am quite prepared to acknowledge your superior rank, and if you insist upon it, to speak ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... placed my notebooks there," I repeated, purposely trying to bluster, in the hope of intimidating him. "Every one saw me do it," I added, including the students near me in my glance. Several of them looked at me with curiosity, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... old-established inhabitants were many of them weak or silly enough to try to outdo the newcomers, and degraded the quiet dignity of their patriarchal manner of life by speculations on the Stock Exchange. The intelligent middle classes, whose eyes and ears were filled with this bluster of the gold-orgy, found that their former way of living had now grown uncomfortable, their houses were too small, their bread too dry, their beer too common and their views of life began to climb upward in a measure which, whether ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... and he of course gave a clear decision, not in the English way of compromise, which is the way of a barbarian and a coward, but like an honest man deciding 'twixt right and wrong. His judgment was wholly in favour of the Abbot of Cluny. The Earl then began to bluster and to attempt to appeal beyond the Pope; he even dared to place armed men at the Priory gate and to stop all communications with Cluny. The Abbot replied by an interdict upon Lewes, and things were in this confusion when the Pope appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury and the ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... retorted Mrs. Martin. "The more you treat 'em like boys, the better they think you use 'em. They always want motherin', an' somebody to come to. I always tell folks I've got five child'n, counting Mr. Martin the youngest. The more bluster they have, the more boys they be. Now Marthy knew that about brother Isr'el, an' she always ruled him by love an' easin' of him down from them high perches he was always settin' upon. Everything was always right with her an' all wrong ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Stuyvesant was sent over as governor. He had the sense to see that the real safety of the Dutch consisted not in bluster, but in settling a line between the possessions of the two nations as soon as possible. The charter of the West India Company called for the territory between forty and forty-five degrees north latitude, but to assert the full extent of the patent would have been to claim the jurisdiction ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... la Garda spoke, bringing back his confidence with a bluster. "Morano has sold his soul to Satan," he said, "in exchange for Satan's aid, and Satan has taught his tongue Latin and guides his fingers in the affairs of the pen." And so said all la Garda, rejoicing at finding an explanation where a moment ago there was none, as ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... one or two heavy blows with his foe Woof's courage returned, and he determined to dishearten his adversary by bluster. ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... but, from private inquiries, Stuart discovered that the Czar, in his private conference with Oubril, seemed more inclined towards peace than Czartoryski: when therefore the latter resigned, Oubril might well give way before Clarke's bluster. (Stuart's Despatch of August 9th, 1806, F.O., Russia, No. 63; also see Czartoryski's "Mems.," vol. ii., ch. xiv.; and Martens, "Traites," Suppl. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... know and I don't care," Barnes answered with a weak attempt at bluster. "They're mine now, and I'm ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... himself in his mother's house. When the band had reached the top of the Rue de la Banne, Macquart, who had stationed himself at the rear, detained four of his companions, big fellows who were not over-burdened with brains and whom he swayed by his tavern bluster. He easily persuaded them that the enemies of the Republic must be arrested immediately if they wished to prevent the greatest calamities. The truth was that he feared Pierre might escape him in the midst of the confusion which ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... civil, Fletcher," said Sandford, gravely, "and rather forgetful, besides. If I were you, I wouldn't bluster until a certain piece of paper was safe ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... could only be regarded as a deliberate challenge and provocation to Ulster. It seemed probable that the First Lord of the Admiralty had been selected for the mission in preference to any other Minister precisely because he was Lord Randolph's son. All this bluster about "fight and be right" was traceable, so Liberal Ministers doubtless reasoned, to that unhappy speech of "Winston's father"; let Winston go over to the same place and explain his father away. If he obtained a hearing in the Ulster Hall in ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... Victor Emmanuel and Count Cavour, her Majesty's Government preferred to turn its eyes to the 'gratifying prospect of a people building up the edifice of their liberties, and consolidating the work of their independence, amid the sympathies and good wishes of Europe.' Foreign Courts might bluster, protest, or sneer, but England was with her Foreign Minister; and 'Punch' summed up the verdict of the nation in generous words of ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... ever become anything else, it won't be to our credit," put in Roy. "If we can't stand up to bluster and sedition with that moral force at our backs, we shall deserve ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... her? If she did not how awkward it would be to give the explanation of who she was, and what her errand was, and why she was sent. Nevertheless, it must be done; so on she went, and standing within the little porch, she knocked faintly at the door; but in the bluster of the elements the sound was lost. Again she knocked, and now the murmur of women's voices inside was hushed, and some one came quickly to the door, and ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... enough, in spite of his position. He seemed to accept his imprisonment as one of the fortunes of war. He didn't threaten or bluster, although he tended to maintain an air of superiority that would have been ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... universal provider of intellectual fare, he deemed it his duty to settle this, amongst others of the eternal questions. The effort excited only the contempt of Leslie Stephen—"the peculiar Warburton mixture," he says "of sham logic and bluster." Yet that is hardly fair to the total result of Warburton's remarks. He tried to steer a middle path between the logical result of such Erastianism as that of the Independent Whig, on the one hand, and the excessive ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... and self-reliant, named his terms to Castellani—a half-interest in the business—and Castellani, swear and bully and bluster as he might, must accept. This made Sampey a rich man at once. Castellani, exceedingly gracious and friendly after the signing of the compact, proposed a quiet supper in his private apartments in ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... "I ..." He was inclined for a moment to bluster. He looked curiously at Jenny's profile, judicial in its severity. Then some kind of tact got the better of his first impulse. "Well, I thought one of you girls ..." he said. "Will you come, Em? ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... much as though Marvin was really the Russian Government, which I have always suspected. They had this to gain by publishing the Memorandum—that they showed themselves the real victors in the Congress of Berlin, in spite of all our bluster, and they damaged Lord Beaconsfield, who was their enemy. Marvin could never have got a copy, and always pretended that he had learned the whole document by heart, which, considering its length and the total absence in the copy published in the Globe of the slightest error, even of punctuation, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... had begun to blackguard The Blunder and Bluster's correspondent while he remained under the shelter of his pseudonym, now that his name was known, came out with double virulence, and filled half a sheet with filthy abuse of Harry, including collateral ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... moving toward Almaville, queen city of the South, measured by the results that developed from that night's journey, is fully entitled to all its fretting and fuming, brag and bluster of steam and smoke, and to its wearisome jangle of clanging bell and ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... Fat Jack's guttural elocution to cause uneasiness. He declared that if ever the postman brought such a thing into the village again he would never allow a letter to be delivered on his estate. But with all this bluster, the common people knew that their landlord wished them well, and they were ready to do ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... you, Andy," he said with his usual bluster, "this is the last day I will fool with that plane. Absolutely the last! If she doesn't go before night, she needn't go at all. I will get rid of her. Dad wrote me this morning that he had had a letter ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... hard-fighting foes; but they have been over-difficult to rouse. Their educated classes, in particular, need to be perpetually reminded that, though it is an evil thing to brave a conflict needlessly, or to bully and bluster, it is an even worse thing to flinch from a fight for which there is legitimate provocation, or to live in supine, slothful, unprepared ease, helpless to ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Flint, "that if you attempt to leave this room, I will give you into custody at once, and transport you, whatever may be the consequence to others. Come, come, let us have no more nonsense or bluster. We have strong reasons for believing that the story by which you have been extorting money, is a fabrication. If it be so, rely upon it we shall detect and punish you. Your only safe course is to make a clean breast of it whilst there is yet time. ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... among the Barnabotti, the class most indebted to the government, that these seditious movements generally arose; and Fulvia's cousin was one of the most notorious malcontents of his order. She had mistaken his revolutionary bluster for philosophic enlightenment; and, persuaded that he shared in her views, she rashly appealed to him for help. With the most eloquent expressions of sympathy he offered her a home under his own roof; but on reaching Venice she was but ill-received by his wife and family, who made no scruple of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... danger at all, no discomfort, no dirt! You love Sweetness and Light? They are both in my gift, Ma'am; I'll prove like a shot what I boldly assert. Don't heed your Old Flame, Ma'am, he's bitterly jealous, 'Tis natural, quite, with his nose out of joint; You just let him bluster and blow like old bellows, And try me instead—I will not disappoint! Old Flame? He's a very fuliginous "Flame," Ma'am; I wonder, I'm sure, how you've stood him so long; He has choked you for years—'tis ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... is bankrupt. No nation will assist her. A civilized nation would be ashamed to take her hand, to be her friend. She has not the power to put down the rebellion in Cuba. How then can she hope to conquer this country? She is full of brag and bluster. Of course she will play her hand for all it is worth, so far as talk goes. She will double her fists and make motions. She will assume the attitude of war, but she will never fight. Should she commence hostilities, the war would be short. She would lose her navy. The little commerce she has would ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... incredulous amazement. He wiped his glasses and read it again. And then without consultation with a single human being, and without a moment's hesitation he wrote a brief reply to the great man and his generous offer. There was no bluster, no wrath, no demand for an apology to his insulted dignity, but in the simplest and friendliest and most direct language he informed his Secretary that if a dictator were needed to save the country he would undertake the dangerous ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... be believed, that after the action of St. Cas—a mere affair of cutting off a rearguard, as you are aware—they were so unfeeling as to fire away I don't know how much powder at the Invalides at Paris, and brag and bluster over our misfortune? Is there any magnanimity in hallooing and huzzaying because five or six hundred brave fellows have been caught by ten thousand on a seashore, and that fate has overtaken them which is said to befall ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... but somewhat unintelligible bellowing in its sooty throat (the big flue, we mean, of its wide chimney), partly in complaint at the rude wind, but rather, as befits their century and a half of hostile intimacy, in tough defiance. A rumbling kind of a bluster roars behind the fire-board. A door has slammed above stairs. A window, perhaps, has been left open, or else is driven in by an unruly gust. It is not to be conceived, before-hand, what wonderful wind-instruments are these old timber mansions, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ignoratio elenchi in his teeth, and, at once, you have him annihilated. If he dares to reply, you can tell him from Lucan (here it is) that speeches are mere anemonae verborum, anemone words. The anemone, with great brilliancy, has no smell. Or, if he begins to bluster, you may be down upon him with insomnia Jovis, reveries of Jupiter—a phrase which Silius Italicus (see here!) applies to thoughts pompous and inflated. This will be sure and cut him to the heart. He can ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to be a mighty meek sort of creature. And though I should like it in him hereafter perhaps, yet I can't help despising him a little in my heart for it now. I believe, my dear, we all love your blustering fellows best; could we but direct the bluster, and bid it roar when and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... in Conjunction with some that were not qualify'd by Law, but meerly Voluntarily, call'd in the Moon by a hard long Word, in English signifying PROJECTORS these erected Stocks in Shadows, Societies in Nubibus, and Bought and Sold meer Vapour, Wind, Emptiness and Bluster for Mony, till they drew People in to lay out their Cash, and ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... consciousness of strength. The small black eye of Colbert, dilated by envy, and the limpid eye of Louis XIV., inflamed by anger, signalled some pressing danger. Courtiers are, with regard to court rumors, like old soldiers, who distinguish through the blasts of wind and bluster of leaves the sound of the distant steps of an armed troop. They can, after having listened, tell pretty nearly how many men are marching, how many arms resound, how many cannons roll. Fouquet had then ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... drama, if to win Or lose the prize can make me plump or thin. Then too it tries an author's nerve, to find The class in numbers strong, though weak in mind, The brutal brainless mob, who, if a knight Disputes their judgment, bluster and show fight, Call in the middle of a play for bears Or boxers;—'tis for such the rabble cares. But e'en the knights have changed, and now they prize Delighted ears far less than dazzled eyes. The curtain is kept down four hours or more, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... concerned. I was angry; I'll admit that. But I didna let him fash me. I just made up my mind that if I was no allowed to sing I'd have something to say to that basso before the evening was oot. And I looked at him, and listened to him bluster, and thought maybe I'd have a bit to do wi' him as well. I'm a wee man and a', but I'm awfu' strong from the work I did in the pit, and I'm never afraid ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... comment on such a system of administration is furnished in the story told by Colonel Henderson. The fearful trials to which the United States were subjected expose the folly and self-deception of which even well-meaning party leaders are too often capable. Ministers bluster about fighting and yet refuse to spend enough money on the army to make it fit for use; and on both sides of the Atlantic the lessons taught by the Peninsula, the Crimea, and the Secession ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... pious, grand truth. On the 21st of February, 1513, ten months since Gaston de Foix, the victor of Ravenna, had perished in the hour of his victory, Pope Julius II. died at Rome at the very moment when he seemed invited to enjoy all the triumph of his policy. He died without bluster and without disquietude, disavowing nought of his past life, and relinquishing none of his designs as to the future. He had been impassioned and skilful in the employment of moral force, whereby alone ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
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