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More "Boaster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... am no boaster of my love, Nor of my attributes; I have shared your splendour, And will partake your fortunes. You may live To find one slave more true than subject myriads: But this the Gods avert! I am content To be beloved on trust for what I feel, Rather than prove it to you in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... which is raised by impertinent Promisers is thus barren, their Confidence, even after Failures, is so great, that they subsist by still promising on. I have heretofore discoursed of the insignificant Liar, the Boaster, and the Castle-Builder, and treated them as no ill-designing Men, (tho' they are to be placed among the frivolously false ones) but Persons who fall into that Way purely to recommend themselves ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Hamlet, if only we had the wit to recognize ourselves in him. Or rather he is that element in us which we all like and despise in others, but which we will never for one moment confess to in ourselves—the coward, the boaster, the liar, but the child of nature. He, because he knows himself for all of these, can find his home in Sarostro's paradise. He does not want Sarostro's high wisdom; what he does want is a Papagena, an Eve, a child of nature like himself; and she is given to him. He has the ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... thine ear—while we lean our left shoulder on thine—our right on the Crutch. The time will come when thou wilt be, O Son of the Morning! even like unto the shadow by thy side! Was he not once a mountaineer? If he be a vainglorious boaster, give him the lie, Ben-y-glo and thy brotherhood—ye who so often heard our shouts mixed with the red-deer's belling—tossed back in exultation by Echo, Omnipresent Auditress ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... that Helen, with the intuitive discernment of a pure and upright mind, and the penetration of a quick-witted woman, should be the first to detect the falsehood and cowardice of the boaster Parolles, who imposes on ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... is a boaster and self-assertor, by nature; but it is so far true. For instance, we used to have a fair in our neighborhood—a very fine fair we thought it. You never saw such an one; but if you look at the engraving of Turner's ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... to the bottom Sank the pike in great confusion, And the mighty sturgeon, Nahma, Said to Ugudwash, the sun-fish, To the bream, with scales of crimson, "Take the bait of this great boaster, Break the line ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... Vain boaster, said the youthful knight, I scorn thy threats and thee: I trust to force thy brazen gates, And set ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... who has specially studied the language and customs of this interesting people:* "Look here, O Nicholas-god! Perhaps my neighbour, little Michael, has been slandering me to you, or perhaps he will do so. If he does, don't believe him. I have done him no ill, and wish him none. He is a worthless boaster and a babbler. He does not really honour you, and merely plays the hypocrite. But I honour you from my heart; and, behold, I place a taper before you!" Sometimes incidents occur which display a still more curious ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... surprised, but as every body attributed it to long practice, they were not so much astonished as I was, who knew it was wholly owing to chance. It was a lucky hit, and I made the most of it; success made me arrogant, and boy-like, I became a boaster. ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Gryphon, brother of Aquilant; but the faithless fair one took up with Mart[a]no, a most impudent boaster and a coward. Being at Damascus during a tournament in which Gryphon was the victor, Martano stole the armor of Gryphon, arrayed himself in it, took the prizes, and then decamped with the lady. Aquilant happened to see them, bound them, and took them back to Damascus, where Martano was hanged, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... life that others life might find, Shaming you with his toil, his bravery, Not by a word or look, no boaster he, He was always gentle to you, ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... since to-day either a glorious death awaits us or the achievement of a deed of noblest emprise in the rescue of so many Hellene lives. Maybe it is God who leads us thus, God who chooses to humble the proud boaster, boasting as though he were exceedingly wise, but for us, the beginning of whose every act is by heaven's grace, that same God reserves a higher grade of honour. One duty I would recall to you, to apply your minds to the execution ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... were over at the village of Two Lance, a long mile away, rounding up their pony herd to prevent the warriors making an assault on Red Dog's more distant township. A shot rang out from somewhere among the agency buildings, and the days of the boaster were numbered. Back, bearing the body, scurried the trio of friends, and in less than an hour, in fury and transport and grief and rage, the women were tearing their hair and prodding themselves with knives, while the warriors, singing the death-song, were painting ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... god of the Saracens, was another staple character in the Miracle-Plays; who is described by John Florio as "a great boaster, quarreller, killer, tamer or ruler of the universe, the child of the earthquake and of the thunder, the brother of death." That Shakespeare himself had suffered under the monstrous din of these "strutting and bellowing" stage-thumpers is shown by ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... had himself bound to the mast; and there were already sounds of unearthly sweetness in his ears. His conferences with his lovely hostess easily consoled him for his losses. In addition, he was triumphing over the boaster, for Mr. Pedlow, with a very ill grace and swearing (not under his breath), was losing too. The Countess, reiterating for the hundredth time that Cooley was a "wicked one," sweetly constituted herself his cup-bearer; kept his glass full and ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... not attach too much importance to what you have heard. Paul is a mere boy, and, of course, a boaster." ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... seem to have understood this cowardly boaster, received his story with shouts of laughter. But Knight was very glad to make off with his gun and ammunition, and leave them to settle the affair among themselves. When he came to the prairies he hid ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... Whig, who says in the Upper House, that whatever may be the distresses of the people, they shall not be gratified at the cost of one of the despotic privileges of the aristocracy. Go to!—I will have none of him. As to Lesborough, he is a fool and a boaster—who is always puffing his own vanity with the windiest pair of oratorical bellows that ever were made by air and brass, for the purpose of sound and smoke, 'signifying nothing.' Go to!—I will have ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... o' ferlies, That sits on the stane at his door, And tells about bogles, and mair lies Than tongue ever utter'd before. And there will be Bauldy, the boaster, Sae ready wi' hands and wi' tongue; Proud Paty and silly Sam Foster, Wha quarrel wi' auld and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... dreamer at my side awoke, And with such helpless anguish as they feel Who know that they are weak as well as vile. I saw, through all his forward promises, Excuses, prayers, and pledges that were oaths (What he, poor boaster, thought I could not see), That he was shorn of will, and that his heart Was as defenseless as a little child's;— That underneath his fair good fellowship He was debauched, and dead in love with sin;— That love of me had made him what I loved,— ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... boasting stinks; it would be more appropriate after my death than while I am alive. That boaster moreover has a peacock's plume on his helmet, and at the very outset I made a vow to obtain three of them and afterward as many fingers of the hand. ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Lion sneered. "If you think you can take us with you that far then why not to Jerusalem? The words of a boaster are a mask of doubt. Hah! Take us to Jerusalem! ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... have paid the bet, but he would have stood by what he had said, and everybody would have believed him. By declaring him the winner of the bet she has cut the matter short, and she has avoided a judgment by which she would have been dishonoured. The inconsiderate boaster was guilty of a double mistake for which he paid the penalty of his life, but his adversary was as much wanting in delicacy, for in such matters rightly-minded men do not venture upon betting. If the one who says yes is imprudent, the one who says no is a dupe. I like ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... gave Jacob their greetings. She had much to tell about them both, but Jacob thought it was queer that she had more to say about Ole than about Peter; for while Ole was a straight-forward fellow, it could not be denied that he was a bit of a boaster. ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... shall destroy me, all they who come lie in the dust before me. Now, therefore, I pray you rebuke me no more till you see me beaten or a recreant, and then bid me go from you." "There shall soon meet thee a knight who shall repay thee all thy deeds, thou boaster," answered she, "for, save King Arthur, he is the man of most worship in the world." "It will be the greater honour to encounter him," said ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... without decision," says John Foster, "can never be said to belong to himself; since if he dared to assert that he did, the puny force of some cause, about as powerful as a spider, may make a seizure of the unhappy boaster the very next minute, and contemptuously exhibit the futility of the determination by which he was to have proved the independence of his understanding and will. He belongs to whatever can make capture ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... came in the conversation, you know. She is no boaster. No sir-ee! She's the modestest, gentlest, sweetest little lady I ever saw. I just love her! Well, I answered a lot of letters for her, and she liked the way I did it, and she liked me, I guess, for she said she only hoped Miss Crowell ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... "Aha, boaster! and what is it you know? Why, nothing at all except to go out to merry-makings and lick your lips there. We'll soon see which he'll ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... roaring and foaming like a waterfall. My horse, and he was a good one, couldn't make it. But I did. And when I come to it on the return trip with the doctor, he gave one look and folded his arms. 'Mark,' he said, 'I'm no boaster, but my life is not without value. I think it's my duty not to attempt this crossing.' 'Jim,' I said, 'if you don't your soul will be scotched. Don't you know it? Folks'll point at you as the doctor that didn't dare.' 'It's not the daring, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... according to his cloth; I will try to get away as fast as I can." On this the giant said to him, "Go, little ragamuffin, and fetch me a jug of water." "Had I not better bring the well itself at once, and the spring too?" asked the boaster, and went with the pitcher to the water. "What! the well and the spring too," growled the giant in his beard, for he was rather clownish and stupid, and began to be afraid. "That knave is not a fool, he has ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... DRAWCANSIR, a blustering, bullying boaster in Buckingham's play the "Rehearsal"; he kills every one of the combatants, "sparing neither friend ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... ran; but where is the elk or the cabri?[80] Come!—where is the hunter will dare match his feet with the feet of Tamdoka? Let him think of Tate[AC] and beware, ere he stake his last robe on the trial." "Oho! Ho! Ho-heca!"[AD] they jeered, for they liked not the boast of the boaster; But to match him no warrior appeared, for his feet wore the wings of ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... abhorred the deification of the reason, and clung to that exalted supernaturalism which was the life and hope of blessed saints and martyrs in bygone ages, and which in "their contests with mail-clad infidelity was like the pebble which the shepherd of Israel hurled against the disdainful boaster who defied the power of Israel's God." And he was thus brought into close sympathy with the realism of the Fathers, who felt that all that is valuable in theology must radiate from the recognition of Almighty power ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... great boaster, He the marvelous story-teller, He the traveler and the talker, He the friend of old Nokomis, Made a bow for Hiawatha; From a branch of ash he made it, From an oak bough made the arrows, Tipped with flint, and winged with feathers, And the cord ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... on some of them, or put them through at a cost far beyond the profit. It came that way to a boaster of his intentions sometimes, especially so when a man spoke too quickly and assumed too much. Here he was standing face to a fight that did not appear to promise much more glory in the winning than in ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... him an Ambassador to the Court of Berlin; and in 1803 removed him in the same character to the Court of Madrid. In Prussia, his talents did not cause him to be dreaded, nor his personal qualities make him esteemed. In France, he is laughed at as a boaster, but not trusted as a warrior. In Spain, he is neither dreaded nor esteemed, neither laughed at nor courted; he is there universally despised. He studies to be thought a gentleman; but the native porter breaks through the veil of a ridiculously affected and outre politeness. Notwithstanding ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... and making them all prisoners without the loss of a man, that, although your report may be sanctioned by Sir George Prevost, it seems to me that the people of England will be incredulous until they see the exterminating boaster a prisoner in London. We find in a cover by General Sheaffe, that the first report of the cannon taken was one-third short of the real number. I shall hardly sleep until I have the satisfaction of hearing particulars of the wonderful excursion, ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... honour, he also had us served with a bird three times as large as Cleonymus,(1) and called the Boaster. ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... willing to own that my people have many ways, of which, as an honest man, I can't approve. It is one of their customs to write in books what they have done and seen, instead of telling them in their villages, where the lie can be given to the face of a cowardly boaster, and the brave soldier can call on his comrades to witness for the truth of his words. In consequence of this bad fashion, a man, who is too conscientious to misspend his days among the women, in learning the names of black marks, may never hear of ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... better them, for they should bind The feeble only; able men enlarge And shape them to their needs. Much must be done That lies in your discretion. At Detroit Hull vaunts his strength, and meditates invasion, And loyalty, unarmed, defenceless, bare, May let this boaster light upon our shores Without one manly motion of resistance. So whilst I open Parliament at York, Close it again, and knit our volunteers, Be yours the task to head invasion off. Act boldly, but discreetly, and so draw Our interest to the balance, ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... is Gascon. The Gascons are the natives of Gascony, a province in the south of France. It is proverbial among other Frenchmen that the Gascons are always boasting, and even in English we sometimes use the word Gascon to describe a great boaster, while gasconade is now a common term ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... he whistled that tune so much and because he had nose-bleed so much,—couldn't even ride a broncho but his nose would bleed for hours afterwards; and the other, "N'Yawk," so called from his native State. N'Yawk was a great boaster; said he wasn't afraid of no durned outlaw,—said his father had waded in bloody gore up to his neck and that he was a chip off the old block,—rather hoped the chase would come our way so he could ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... Andy was not a boaster as a rule; but whenever Percy Carberry started to show what a mighty conqueror of the air he had become, something seemed to rise up within the second Bird boy that made him ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... he who is harmoniously constituted, who is not covetous or mean, or a boaster, or a coward—can he, I say, ever be unjust or hard in ...
— The Republic • Plato
... two last-named were very old men. It would be absurd to call either of them a great commander, but it is indisputable that they all had great parts in great wars. Benningsen can scarcely be called a good general of the second class, and he is mostly spoken of as a foolish braggart and boaster; but it is a fact that he did some things at an important time which indicated his possession of qualities that were highly desirable in a general who was bound to act against Napoleon. Having, in 1807, obtained ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... and Helene and by the very small Victor who was now nearly a year old. Victor and Helene had heard of the threats of vengeance, but knowing Rene, they had smiled. Was not Rene a great boaster? And the very young Victor, who knew nothing of the threats, thought his big uncle a very brave figure in his blue capote, his red muffler, and his ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... flames were being kindled declared this Joan, who called herself the Maid, to be a liar, a plague, a deceiver of the people, a sorceress, superstitious, a blasphemer of God, presumptuous, a misbeliever in the faith of Christ, a boaster, idolatress, cruel, dissolute, a witch of devils, apostate, schismatic, and heretic. It was a heavy crime-sheet for a mere girl, and there was no knowing into what a monster she might grow up. So the Bishop of Beauvais could not well hesitate ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... speech to all alike; he was in desperate pursuit of a reputation for being able to comprehend and speak as no one else could, and before all wanted to be thought a valuable citizen. As a result of this and because he was the greatest boaster alive and thought no one equal to himself, but in his words and life alike looked down on all and would not live as any one else did, he was wearisome and burdensome, and was consequently both envied and hated even by those very persons ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... The fact that the bishop was going away made the matter worse, for just as she had found out that he was willing to help her, and that he might be able to keep Raybold away from them without actual violence—for she saw that the young boaster was afraid of him—he had told her he must leave, and in her heart she did not blame him. With great fear and anxiety she looked forward ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... boaster," he roared, "you lie in your words. Sindri, my brother, who would scorn to serve you, is the best smith ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... up; for after Ben Tinker had thrashed the little boaster he was satisfied, and Tommy did not dare to be cross. By this time they had ...
— Proud and Lazy - A Story for Little Folks • Oliver Optic
... at last he became a man, he sailed on the ship Argo, with Jason and the great heroes of that day, in search of the Golden Fleece. Many brave deeds were his in foreign lands; and when he came home again to Calydon, he brought with him a fair young wife, gentle Cleopatra, daughter of Idas the boaster. ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... spectator only that could find in their works that air of grandeur and dignity generally attributed to them. Raphael himself, he said, was very unequal, and many of his productions owed their glory only to tradition. Michael Angelo was a boaster, weakly vain of his knowledge of anatomy, and without a particle of grace. Real force of outline, grace of touch, and magic of colouring we must look for, he said, in the present age. Thence the conversation easily ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... A boaster is always to be suspected. His is a natural infirmity, which makes him forget what he is about, and run into a thousand extravagances that have no connection with the truth. With those who have a tolerable knowledge of the world, all his assertions, professions ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... Aetopeia.] The fyrst kind is called AEtopeia, that is an expressi of maners or mylde affeccions, and hath thre kyndes: of the whych the fyrst is a significacion or expression of maners somewhat longer, as of wittes, artes, vertues, vices. Thus we expresse Thraso a boaster, and Demea ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... the right, and unwilling to yield to the wrong. Above all we wish for honesty—tongues that are not used to say what the mind does not mean, and hearts that feel a little for others, as well as for themselves. A true-hearted girl could die for such a husband! while the boaster, and the double-tongued suitor gets to be as hateful to the sight, as he ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... his mother, in distress. "Geoffrey Cliffe is not a man to be trusted. You and I know that of old. He is a boaster, and—" ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ordinaire would blush to be found swaggering so. I am sure if you could consult the Duke of York, who is impaled on his column between the two clubs, and ask his late Royal Highness whether he thought he ought to remain there, he would say no. A brave, worthy man, not a braggart or boaster, to be put upon that heroic perch must be painful to him. Lord George Bentinck, I suppose, being in the midst of the family park in Cavendish Square, may conceive that he has a right to remain in his place. But look at William of Cumberland, with his hat cocked over his eye, prancing ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had horses served with champagne in pails," the old boaster, Athanase Georgevitch, protested jealously. He was an advocate, well-known for his table-feats, who claimed the hardest drinking reputation of any man in the capital, and he regretted not to have ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... was soon made up; for after Ben Tinker had thrashed the little boaster he was satisfied, and Tommy did not dare to be cross. By this time they had ...
— Proud and Lazy - A Story for Little Folks • Oliver Optic
... of Gryphon, brother of Aquilant; but the faithless fair one took up with Mart[a]no, a most impudent boaster and a coward. Being at Damascus during a tournament in which Gryphon was the victor, Martano stole the armor of Gryphon, arrayed himself in it, took the prizes, and then decamped with the lady. Aquilant happened ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... same work. What they did you may judge of, when I tell you that, while two hundred and seventy-three Englishmen fell that day, only eighty-eight Americans were killed. I will not talk of what I myself performed, for I despise a boaster, but I did my share of ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... vice which may be despised, but hardly detested. Falstaff is a character loaded with faults, and with those faults which naturally produce contempt. He is a thief, and a glutton, a coward, and a boaster, always ready to cheat the weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timorous and insult the defenceless. At once obsequious and malignant, he satirises in their absence those whom he lives by flattering. He is familiar with the prince only as an agent of vice, but of this familiarity ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... ever saw in my life; he is full of self-sufficiency and conceit, and believes himself equal to anything. He has no talent. I should like to see him opposed some day to one of our good generals; we should then see fine work. He is a boaster, and that is all. He is really one of the most silly men existing; and, besides all that, he is unlucky." Was not this opinion of Bonaparte, formed on the past, fully verified by ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... mocker," said Geburon, "that was not mocked, a deceiver that was not deceived, or a boaster that ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... door fastened against the fearful intruder. Davy, being foremost in the race, sat down, followed by his companion George, who, maugre his great apprehensions, could not forbear laughing heartily at the sudden melting away of the big-mouthed valour of this cowardly boaster. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... discovery! all my delicate management destroyed! known all over the country! I'm off! and yet to have travelled so far, and not to have one glimpse of her! but then to be pointed at as a poor devil in love, a silly inconsistent boaster! no, that wont do—but then I may see her—yes, I'll see her once—just once—for three minutes, or three minutes and a half at most—no longer positively—Ponder, Ponder! (enter Ponder) Ponder, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... own that my people have many ways, of which, as an honest man, I can't approve. It is one of their customs to write in books what they have done and seen, instead of telling them in their villages, where the lie can be given to the face of a cowardly boaster, and the brave soldier can call on his comrades to witness for the truth of his words. In consequence of this bad fashion, a man, who is too conscientious to misspend his days among the women, in learning the names of black ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... stood not far from the boaster, and he determined to silence him once for all. The next time he began to speak, he had barely said "Kerrump!" when the Crane had him by the leg. He croaked and struggled in vain, and in another moment he would have gone ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... "Boaster!" thought Borromee, "he stammers already, and has only drunk four. Come, then, we can go on," said he, and he drew out a fifth for Chicot and one ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... said his mother, in distress. "Geoffrey Cliffe is not a man to be trusted. You and I know that of old. He is a boaster, and—" ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... destroy me, all they who come lie in the dust before me. Now, therefore, I pray you rebuke me no more till you see me beaten or a recreant, and then bid me go from you." "There shall soon meet thee a knight who shall repay thee all thy deeds, thou boaster," answered she, "for, save King Arthur, he is the man of most worship in the world." "It will be the greater honour to encounter him," said ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... hollow. He evaded this by post-dating his discovery of the richness of the ore until he had reached Marysville. But he found some difficulty in recounting his good fortune: he was naturally no boaster, he had no desire to impress Collinson with his penetration, nor the undaunted energy he had displayed in getting up his company and opening the mine, so that he was actually embarrassed by his own understatement; and under the grave, patient eyes of his companion, told his story at best lamely. ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... giving ocular evidence that I was no idle boaster, making a complete gyration on my heels, in very ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... "I was never a boaster,"—replied Santoris, cheerfully—"But you shall keep whatever opinion you like of me." And he drew from his pocket a tiny crystal phial set in a sheath of gold. "A touch of this in your glass of wine will make ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... waterfall. My horse, and he was a good one, couldn't make it. But I did. And when I come to it on the return trip with the doctor, he gave one look and folded his arms. 'Mark,' he said, 'I'm no boaster, but my life is not without value. I think it's my duty not to attempt this crossing.' 'Jim,' I said, 'if you don't your soul will be scotched. Don't you know it? Folks'll point at you as the doctor that didn't dare.' ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... the interior such an article is only used by the principal people, and his bridle also was of curious workmanship. The horseman had an extravagant idea of his own consequence, and seemed to be a prodigious boaster. He wore abundance of clothing, most of which was superfluous, but it made him excessively vain. He informed the travellers that he had been despatched by the king of Jenna, to meet them in the path, and to escort them to the capital; but understanding ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... and the rest of our hero sires; and we consume the rents and tributes of Ulster which they by their prowess conquered to us, and which flow hither in abundance from every corner of the province. Valiant men, too, will one day come hither and slay us as I slew that boaster, and here in Emain Macha their bards will praise them. Then in the halls of the dead shall we say to our sires, 'All that you got for us by your blood and your sweat that have we lost, and the glory of the Red ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... welcomed by Victor and Helene and by the very small Victor who was now nearly a year old. Victor and Helene had heard of the threats of vengeance, but knowing Rene, they had smiled. Was not Rene a great boaster? And the very young Victor, who knew nothing of the threats, thought his big uncle a very brave figure in his blue capote, his red muffler, and his ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... translations, by means of which it may be hoped that the gifted Borrow will ere long vindicate his lasting claim to scholarship—a claim to which it is to be feared he is indifferent, for he is no boaster, and does himself no justice; or, if he boasts at all, prefers, as with a species of self-sarcasm, the mention of his lesser, on which he dwells with zest, to that of his greater and more enduring triumphs. The "Targum" consists of translations from the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... lacking, give way. fallido, -a frustrated, amiss. fama f. reputation, report, rumor; es —— it is said. famoso, -a famous, renowned, notorious. fanal m. lantern, light, beacon. fanfarrn m. boaster, bully. fango m. mud, mire, slime. fantasa f. fancy, imagination, caprice, whim. fantasma m. f. phantom, ghost, specter, scarecrow. fantstico, -a fantastic, imaginary. farsa f. farce, humbug. fascinar fascinate. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... I reflected that my captivity upon the Bass, in view of a great part of the coasts of Fife and Lothian, was a thing I should be thought more likely to have invented than endured; and in the eyes of these two gentlemen, at least, I must pass for a boaster and a coward. Now I would take this lightly enough; tell myself that so long as I stood well with Catriona Drummond, the opinion of the rest of man was but moonshine and spilled water; and thence pass off into those meditations of a lover which are ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was not going to give up because of first impressions. He had not met Montagu Jerrold before, but had heard of him often during the last three or four months since the Englishman "blew into" Lucky Star City. He was a boaster as well as a waster, no doubt; for according to himself, he knew "everybody at home," from the King down the whole gamut of the British peerage. Also he "claimed" to be an Oxford man, and it was that which, in this emergency, had focused Nick's ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... a boaster, Napoleon; and in your uncle's presence would be just as great a coward ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... Boaster though he was, there was little doubt as to Jordan's efficiency or his courage. He brought in the criminals he went out to get, some alive, some dead; prosecuted the first with zeal and collected the rewards with alacrity. The trouble ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... have to hedge on some of them, or put them through at a cost far beyond the profit. It came that way to a boaster of his intentions sometimes, especially so when a man spoke too quickly and assumed too much. Here he was standing face to a fight that did not appear to promise much more glory in the winning than in ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... wastrel and a boaster, but for all that Isak could bear him no grudge; he himself was too relieved at finding his neighbour in the house that evening instead of a stranger. Isak had the peasant's coolness of mind, his few feelings, stability, stubbornness; he chatted ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... thou art son of a god? A shameless boaster and a liar art thou! Hast ever spoken to thy divine sire? Give us some proof of thy sonship! No more child of the glorious Apollo art thou than are the vermin his children, that the sun breeds in the dust ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... the loins he came Of noble Dolon, and to war he brought The borrowed lustre of his grandsire's name, The strength and spirit of his sire of fame, Who for his meed, when offering to explore The Danaan camp, Pelides' car would claim. Poor fool! Tydides paid the boaster's score, And for Achilles' steeds he hankers now ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... I was both a coward and a boaster; but I have frequently remarked that the quality which we call cowardice in a child, is no more than implying a greater sense of danger, and consequently a superior intellect. We are all naturally cowards: education and observation teach us to discriminate between real ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... which will become loud anon if it be not checked, he smiles inwardly, and moralizes on the weakness of human nature. But the man who never jumps is not usually of a benevolent nature, and it is almost certain that he will make up a little story against the boaster. ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... he also had us served with a bird three times as large as Cleonymus,(1) and called the Boaster. ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... authority, Poundmaker, for many a year, has done little save to smoke, drink tea among the squaws, and tell lies, as long as the Saskatchewan river, about all the battles he fought when he was a young man, and how terrible was his name over all the plains. Poundmaker has always been successful as a boaster, and there is hardly a squaw on the whole reserve who does not think him to be one of the most illustrious and mighty men alive. Therefore he has never sued in vain for the hand of a pretty maiden without success; and he has now ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... "I am no boaster, neither do I claim the gift of prophecy, like some of our saints yonder. But I am persuaded that a day will come when your words will be put to the proof. You will have to choose not between King ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... been taught so much by Granny Fox that he began to feel very wise and very important. Reddy is naturally smart and he had been very quick to learn the tricks that old Granny Fox had taught him. But Reddy Fox is a boaster. Every day he swaggered about on the Green Meadows and bragged how smart he was. Blacky the Crow ...
— The Adventures of Reddy Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... where can lie the cause? Shall thy Implement have blame, A Boaster, that when he is tried, fails, and is put to shame? 10 Or is it good as others are, and be their eyes in fault? Their eyes, or minds? or, finally, is this ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... it was exported and the placing of a brand on each barrel. However this may be, we have Washington's own word for it, that his flour was as good in quality as any manufactured in America—and he was no boaster. ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... be disclosed at the last day. Vengeance pursued her steps, she was lost; the villain to whom she had sacrificed herself boasted of the favours he had received. The fatal report was conveyed to her injured husband. He refused to believe what he thought impossible, but honour obliged him to call the boaster to the field. The wretch received the challenge with much more contentment than concern; as he had resolution enough to murder any man whom he had injured, so he was certain, if he had the good fortune to conquer his antagonist, he should be looked upon ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Estrella's mountain-tide Back to the source, when tempest-chafed, to hie? Who, when Gascogne's vexed gulf is raging wide, Shall hush it as a nurse her infant's cry? His magic power let such vain boaster try, And when the torrent shall his voice obey, And Biscay's whirlwinds list his lullaby, Let him stand forth and bar mine eagles' way, And they shall heed his voice, and at ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... no fear. I am no boaster. But we cannot fight him here in Roan Kiti, which is open to the sea, and never can we make it a strong fort, for here we have no falat,{*} nor yet any great forest trees. But at Tokolme are many thousands ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... moment's warning, she must be told that Gudruna, in Laxdaela, threatened one of her three husbands with much the same treatment, and would have put her threat into execution if he had not behaved as she commanded him. In our Saga, too, the gudewife of Bjorn the boaster threatens him with a separation if he does not stand faithfully by Kari; and in another Saga of equal age and truthfulness, we hear of one great lady who parted from her husband, because, in playfully throwing a pillow of down at her, he unwittingly struck ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... plausible enough, the whole story. And if Mrs. East had snapped the dragoman up under the impression that he came from a man she had determined to meet, the fellow might be no more to blame than any other boaster, touting in his own interest. Still, I had an uneasy feeling that something lay hidden under Armenian plausibility. Bedr el Gemaly was perhaps a thief who had courted a chance for a big haul of jewellery. Yet if that were all, why hadn't he hopped off the tram, as it began to ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... very good, but he is so awkward and stupid that he constantly stumbles into trouble, thereby causing his acquaintances much unnecessary discomfiture and himself no end of embarrassment. He is, furthermore, a terrific boaster, as you will learn when you read of his many declarations of the pummeling he would give the ferocious Robber Fly, if ever he chanced to meet that devouring assassin. What Buster actually does when the unexpected encounter takes place will afford you a good laugh at his expense, and, ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Angus, the seer o' ferlies, That sits on the stane at his door, And tells about bogles, and mair lies Than tongue ever utter'd before. And there will be Bauldy, the boaster, Sae ready wi' hands and wi' tongue; Proud Paty and silly Sam Foster, Wha quarrel wi' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... uncontrolled boy, who spent most of his time in the street, played truant three days out of five, was a great boaster, and sneered at anything like goodness. He was vastly amusing, however, and generally was surrounded by a crowd of admiring lads who thought him quite a hero. He had completely fascinated Louis, who was blind to ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... quiet during the two days of the trip, as though he were fully conscious of the heavy responsibility that rested upon his young shoulders. I had called him a boaster and it had cut him to ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... trying to awe you with the fierce words of a boaster and a bully? Test me, by looking back a little, and discovering what I have abstained from for the sake of my purpose, since I have been here. A word or two from my lips, in answer to the questions with which I have been baited, day after day, by ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... Jim was a great boaster and blusterer, glorying in the marvelous and dangerous. Had he lived in the heroic age, I have no doubt he would have regaled the ears of his listeners with blood curdling stories of his battles with giants, his ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... if only we had the wit to recognize ourselves in him. Or rather he is that element in us which we all like and despise in others, but which we will never for one moment confess to in ourselves—the coward, the boaster, the liar, but the child of nature. He, because he knows himself for all of these, can find his home in Sarostro's paradise. He does not want Sarostro's high wisdom; what he does want is a Papagena, an Eve, a child of nature like himself; and she is given ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... his own mind, "a man must cut his coat according to his cloth; I will try to get away as fast as I can." On this the giant said to him, "Go, little ragamuffin, and fetch me a jug of water." "Had I not better bring the well itself at once, and the spring too?" asked the boaster, and went with the pitcher to the water. "What! the well and the spring too," growled the giant in his beard, for he was rather clownish and stupid, and began to be afraid. "That knave is not a fool, he has a wizard in ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... boasting that he knew many and various tricks. Another among the bystanders said: "I know how to play a trick which will make whomsoever I like pull off his breeches." The first man— the boaster—said: "You won't make me pull off mine, and I bet you a pair of hose on it." He who proposed the game, having accepted the offer, produced breeches and drew them across the face of him who bet the pair of hose and won ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... was a bit of a boaster, had bragged, one evening at mess, of his swimming, which he said was famous in his school days; 'twas a lie, but ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... man who had just entered, "it is well known that Vestein and her father and mother were all fully willing. The girl could as easily have gone out of the door as the window. Snackoll is a boaster. He is as great in his talk as a fox ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... was the imagination of the spectator only that could find in their works that air of grandeur and dignity generally attributed to them. Raphael himself, he said, was very unequal, and many of his productions owed their glory only to tradition. Michael Angelo was a boaster, weakly vain of his knowledge of anatomy, and without a particle of grace. Real force of outline, grace of touch, and magic of colouring we must look for, he said, in the present age. Thence the conversation easily glided ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... at my side awoke, And with such helpless anguish as they feel Who know that they are weak as well as vile. I saw, through all his forward promises, Excuses, prayers, and pledges that were oaths (What he, poor boaster, thought I could not see), That he was shorn of will, and that his heart Was as defenseless as a little child's;— That underneath his fair good fellowship He was debauched, and dead in love with sin;— That love of me had made him what I loved,— That I could only hold him till the wave ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... man! I have talked myself deaf and dumb and blind, and never got a response. Just look at this magnificent autumn landscape! Look at it! look at it! Feast your eye on it! You have traveled; you have seen boaster landscapes elsewhere. Come, now, deliver an honest opinion. What do you ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he said, with the same manly frankness he had always shown; "I have no desire to appear as a boaster or to make light of danger, but one of the truest adages is that it is not the barking dog that does ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... spake, a bird flew forth on the right hand, an eagle of lofty flight, and the host of the Achaians shouted thereat, encouraged by the omen, but renowned Hector answered: "Aias, thou blundering boaster, what sayest thou! Would that indeed I were for ever as surely the son of aegis-bearing Zeus, and that my mother were lady Hera, and that I were held in such honour as Apollo and Athene, as verily this day is to bring utter evil on all the Argives! And thou ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... you must not attach too much importance to what you have heard. Paul is a mere boy, and, of course, a boaster." ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... considered careful walk and placid mien, wend their way homeward, bearing their heavy udders to the house-mother, who, pail in hand awaiting their approach, pauses for a moment to mark the feathered boaster at her feet, as he makes his parting vaunt of a day well spent and summons "Partlet" to her vesper perch ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... made such a noise in the parish, such a boaster, so quarrelsome, so litigious, no one could come near him. "The fashion changeth." He lies still as a mouse now, and can resent no injury done to ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... it is true!" whispered the lithe boaster, with a gleeful quiver from head to foot. "Listen! First—purely, of course, for love of Anna—I have conspired with the General to marry her to Kincaid. And, second, also purely for love of her, I have ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... Spot couldn't help hearing what the Rooster said. And he hadn't even heart enough to answer that impertinent boaster. ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey
... while the flames were being kindled declared this Joan, who called herself the Maid, to be a liar, a plague, a deceiver of the people, a sorceress, superstitious, a blasphemer of God, presumptuous, a misbeliever in the faith of Christ, a boaster, idolatress, cruel, dissolute, a witch of devils, apostate, schismatic, and heretic. It was a heavy crime-sheet for a mere girl, and there was no knowing into what a monster she might grow up. So the Bishop of Beauvais could not well hesitate in pronouncing the final sentence whereby, to ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... one, for a smile of whose lip thou well knowest I would lay down my life—for a touch of whose hand thou well knowest I would sell me to the Evil One—thou hast blackened me, and I will be avenged—ho! chicken-hearted boaster before women, and black-hearted traitor among men, will nothing rouse thee? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... man of the stoicks; such is the divinity of the epicureans; and such is the flatterer of himself. Every other enjoyment malice may destroy; every other panegyrick envy may withhold; but no human power can deprive the boaster of his own encomiums. Infamy may hiss, or contempt may growl, the hirelings of the great may follow fortune, and the votaries of truth may attend on virtue; but his pleasures still remain the same; he can always listen with rapture to himself, and leave those who dare not repose ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... stolidity was largely training. Starling's quiet might mean instinctive imitation, but I feared it was something more sinister. While mine—— But I had no composure. I swaggered and shrugged and played harlequin and boaster. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... says John Foster, "can never be said to belong to himself; since if he dared to assert that he did, the puny force of some cause, about as powerful as a spider, may make a seizure of the unhappy boaster the very next minute, and contemptuously exhibit the futility of the determination by which he was to have proved the independence of his understanding and will. He belongs to whatever can make capture of him; and one thing after another vindicates its right to him by arresting ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... gold And lucid crimson. One might fancy it A noble bird, that laves its graceful form, And bathes its rosy bosom in the light. Look! how it swells and rears its snowy crest With haughty grandeur; while the blue expanse, In smiling patience lets the boaster pass, And swell his train with all the lazy vapours That hover in the air: an easy prey To the gigantic phantom, whose curl'd wing, Sweeps in these worthless triflers of the sky, And wraps them in his bosom. Go, vain shadow! Sick with the burthen ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... it were, to all his future tragedies. From this depth of nothingness Turgenef, however, soon rises to at least the semblance of strength; and while Rudin is at bottom as impotent as Tchulkaturin, he at least pretends to strength. Rudin, then, is the hero of phrases, the boaster; he promises marvels, he charms, he captivates; but it all ends in words, and Rudin perishes as needlessly as he lived needlessly. In "Fathers and Sons," however, Bazarof is no longer a talker; he already rises to indignation and rebellion; he lives out his spirit, ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... there to be afraid of?" asked another. "You are a little coward. Shut your eyes and go to sleep. See me! I am not afraid, if it is dark and gloomy. Oh, oh!" cried the boaster, for the owl had seized him and was carrying him away from home and his ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook
... situation much better than the promoters in England; and we can quite excuse him in his rage over the foolishness and greed of most of his companions. There was little nonsense about Smith in action, though he need not turn his hand on any man of that age as a boaster. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Cortaplumas (penknife) Chupaflores (humming-bird) Destripaterrones (navvy) Lavamanos (wash-hand stand) Limpiabotas (boot-black) Matamoros (boaster) Mondadientes (toothpick) Papahueros (ninny) Papamoscas (ninny) Papanatas (ninny) Paracaidas (parachute) Paraguas (umbrella) Pelagatos (ragamuffin) Pintamonas (slap-dasher or bad partner) Sacacorchos (corkscrew) Salvavidas ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... where is the elk or the cabri?[80] Come!—where is the hunter will dare match his feet with the feet of Tamdoka? Let him think of Tate[AC] and beware, ere he stake his last robe on the trial." "Oho! Ho! Ho-heca!"[AD] they jeered, for they liked not the boast of the boaster; But to match him no warrior appeared, for his feet wore ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... Ambassador to the Court of Berlin; and in 1803 removed him in the same character to the Court of Madrid. In Prussia, his talents did not cause him to be dreaded, nor his personal qualities make him esteemed. In France, he is laughed at as a boaster, but not trusted as a warrior. In Spain, he is neither dreaded nor esteemed, neither laughed at nor courted; he is there universally despised. He studies to be thought a gentleman; but the native porter breaks through the veil of a ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... gold. A dog in a gutter—a God on a throne: In slander electric—in justice a drone: A parrot in promise, and frail as a shade; A hooded immortal in life's masquerade; A sham-lacquered bauble, a bubble, a breath: A boaster ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... exclusively." "Insufferable puppy!" I said to myself. Then he told me of how his father thought he was dead, and asked if I had heard of his rallying twenty men at Manassas, and charging a Federal regiment, which instantly broke? I honestly told him, "No." "Iagoo, the great boaster," I decided. Abruptly he said there were very few nice young ladies in Baton Rouge. "Probably so, in his circle," I thought, while I dryly remarked, "Indeed?" "Oh, yes!" and still more abruptly he said, "Ain't you the youngest?—Yes! ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... is a bit of a boaster. I dare say his ancestor was a Gascon, poor fellow!—and he affects to say that you can't choose a coat, or buy a horse, without his approval and advice,—that he can turn you round his finger. Now this hurts ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... had said, and everybody would have believed him. By declaring him the winner of the bet she has cut the matter short, and she has avoided a judgment by which she would have been dishonoured. The inconsiderate boaster was guilty of a double mistake for which he paid the penalty of his life, but his adversary was as much wanting in delicacy, for in such matters rightly-minded men do not venture upon betting. If the one who says ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... be a great man, flattery and envy are killing you; if you be poor, every one is trampling upon and despising you; after having become an inventor, if you exalt your head and seek for praise, you will be called a boaster and a coxcomb; if you lead a godly life and resort to the church and the altar, you will be called a hypocrite; if you do not, then you are an infidel or a heretic; if you be merry, you will be called a buffoon; if you are silent, you will be called a morose wretch; if you ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... good criticism in the above Note, it is certain that Plautus did not take his 'Miles Gloriosus' from the Colax of Menander, as he himself informs us it was translated from a Greek play called Alazon, 'the Boaster,' and the Parasite is but a trifling character in that play, never appearing ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... daughter," said the King, "and bid her hatch them out for me. If she succeeds she shall have a bag of money for her pains, but if she fails you shall be beaten as a vain boaster." ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... destroy this city whether the Gods will or no, and that Zeus with his thunder shall not stay him, for that the thunder is but as the sun at noon. And on his shield he hath a man bearing a torch, and these words, 'I WILL BURN THIS CITY.' Who now shall stand against this boaster and ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... him where he was. There was in him a vein of madness which often burst forth in a blind fury. It had come upon him in battle, and he had awakened many a time to learn that he had been the hero of an exploit. He was not a boaster; he was not a broken soldier. He was a man whose violent temper had strewn his path with failures. . . . In love! Silently he mocked himself. In love, he, the tried veteran, of a hundred inconstancies! He smiled grimly beneath his mask. He passed ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... your words are the words of a boaster, who is bold only when he sees his enemy before him disarmed. Beware of what you do; you are walking in the dark! Do you believe the paltry handful of English whom you drove out of Calcutta count for anything in the strength ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... herself to be called the maid, a liar, pernicious, deceiver of the people, soothsayer, superstitious, a blasphemer against God, presumptuous, miscreant, boaster, idolatress, cruel, dissolute, an invoker of devils, ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... tenderfeet: one from Tennessee called "Daisy Belle," because he whistled that tune so much and because he had nose-bleed so much,—couldn't even ride a broncho but his nose would bleed for hours afterwards; and the other, "N'Yawk," so called from his native State. N'Yawk was a great boaster; said he wasn't afraid of no durned outlaw,—said his father had waded in bloody gore up to his neck and that he was a chip off the old block,—rather hoped the chase would come our way so he could try ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... hair, beard and whiskers. He lacks use of three fingers of left hand, walks with his legs rather wide apart, speaks somewhat peculiarly as though his tongue were too large for his mouth, and is a great boaster. He is a picture-frame maker. He occasionally cleans and repairs clocks and watches and sometimes deals in oleographs, engravings and pictures. He has been in penal servitude for burglary in Manchester. He has lived in Manchester, ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... sneering tone of voice, saying that he preferred men for his part with spunk enough to do such work themselves, and there was an argument, they protesting and he mocking them, until at last this man, whose neck the glass cut, demanded of him whether he, Yussuf Dakmar, was not in truth an empty boaster ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... history, woman, was a favorite topic, and we accordingly discussed it a great deal; that is, to tell the exact truth, I did. Although Brandon had seen many an adventure during his life on the continent, which would not do to write down here, he was as little of a boaster as any man I ever met, and, while I am in the truth-telling business, I was as great a braggart of my inches as ever drew the long-bow—in that line, I mean. Gods! I flush up hot, even now, when I think of it. So I talked a great deal and found myself infinitely pleased with ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... light of the eastern sky, and the men at last discovered whither their general was leading them. With the knowledge, which spread quickly through the ranks, that they were making for the communications of the boaster Pope, the regiments stepped out with renewed energy. "There was no need for speech, no breath to spare if there had been—only the shuffling tramp of marching feet, the rumbling of wheels, the creak and clank of harness and accoutrements, with an occasional order, uttered ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... my honour, he also had us served with a bird three times as large as Cleonymus,[165] and called the Boaster. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... madam,' he answered. 'Your cousin's province was never to come within a score miles of the cardinal. Being a drunkard and a boaster he was sent to Paris to get drunk and ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... mind of neither, you see, was there any doubt of what must be the issue. The calm confidence in which La Tour d'Azyr had spoken compelled itself to be shared. He was no vainglorious boaster, and they knew of what a force as a ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... play demands. He is a dwarf, even among puppets, and his dress invariably consists of black knee-breeches and white stockings, a very long, full-skirted black coat, and a three-cornered hat. His individual traits are displayed in all his characters, and he is ever a coward, a boaster, and a liar; a glutton and avaricious, but withal of an agreeable bonhomie that wins the heart. To tell the truth, I care little for the plays in which he has no part and I have learned to think a certain trick of his—lifting his leg rigidly to a horizontal line, by way of emphasis, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... It was my first field, sir, and I am wont to speak of it too boastingly. I shall become more modest, I hope, when I shall have a better right to be a boaster." ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... ear—while we lean our left shoulder on thine—our right on the Crutch. The time will come when thou wilt be, O Son of the Morning! even like unto the shadow by thy side! Was he not once a mountaineer? If he be a vainglorious boaster, give him the lie, Ben-y-glo and thy brotherhood—ye who so often heard our shouts mixed with the red-deer's belling—tossed back in exultation by Echo, Omnipresent ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... lawyer and an errant pickpocket, a reverend non-conformist and a canting mountebank, all blended together to compose an oglio of impertinence." There is a delightful sketch of one named "Captain All-man-sir," as big a boaster as Falstaff, and a more delicately etched portrait of the Town Wit, who is summed up as the "jack-pudding of society" in the judgment of all wise men, but an incomparable wit in his own. The peroration of this pamphlet, devoted to a wholesale ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... the language and customs of this interesting people:* "Look here, O Nicholas-god! Perhaps my neighbour, little Michael, has been slandering me to you, or perhaps he will do so. If he does, don't believe him. I have done him no ill, and wish him none. He is a worthless boaster and a babbler. He does not really honour you, and merely plays the hypocrite. But I honour you from my heart; and, behold, I place a taper before you!" Sometimes incidents occur which display a ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... established that reign here which now totters to its base? How, therefore, dares yon treacherous fiend to cast a stain on Satan's bravery? he who preys only on the defenceless—who sucks the blood of infants, and delights only in acts of ignoble cruelty and unequal contention. Away with the boaster who never joins in action, but, like a cormorant, hovers over the field, to feed upon the wounded, and overwhelm the dying. True bravery is as remote from rashness as from hesitation; let us counsel coolly, but let us execute our counselled purposes ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... Sylvia would assign to these pretensions their true value had given him courage to keep silence. So strong was his belief in her gratitude, that he scorned to beg for the pardon he had taught himself to believe that she would ask for him. So utter was his contempt for the coward and boaster who, dressed in brief authority, bore insidious false witness against him, that, when he heard his sentence of life banishment, he disdained to make known the true part he had played in the matter, preferring to wait for the more exquisite revenge, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... pleased the old chief mightily; for the Indian is nothing if not a boaster. At once Black Cat would have broken out in loud tirade on his friendship for me and contempt for the Sioux, but I cut him short and moved towards the hill, that overlooked the enemy's territory. A great cloud of dust whirled up from ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... BALDER, then raises himself to his full height, discards at once his assumed figure, and appears as LOKE). My weakness, mighty Balder? Do not scorn it! To dust and ashes, boaster, it shall crush thee. Not Loke's messenger, but Loke, stung thee. Already bellows the young god with torment: Hear, Odin! hear thy lov'd one, hear him howling! Delay thee not! enjoy his voice and feel it! Harmonious is it to the ears of ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... Lovelace, what hast thou to do (the lady all consistent with herself, and no hopes left for thee) but to hang, drown, or shoot thyself, for an outwitted boaster? ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... although the wage I promised him was a royal kaross and nothing less. So enough of Umslopogaas, the Woodpecker. Almost I wish that you had not lent him the charm, for then the King's men would have made an end of him, who knows too much and like some silly boaster, may shout out the truth when his axe is aloft and he is full of the beer of battle. For in battle he will live and in battle he will die, Macumazahn, as perhaps you ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... on his fur coat and mittens and quitted the cabin. He would find a certain long haired Indian he had seen that day, and prove to his brother that he was not simply a boaster. ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... in Tom's project that interested me, and I turned to him with eagerness. Adventure—something to prove that I had been no boaster, something to divert the current of my thoughts; it was the very thing, but I ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... and vulgar statements, culminating in the deplorable mental and moral expressions contained in the speeches, messages and telegrams of William II. He was a perfect type of the miles gloriosus, not a harmless but an irritating and dangerous boaster, who succeeded in piling up more loathing and hatred against his country than the most active and intelligently managed enemy propaganda could possibly ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... became a man, he sailed on the ship Argo, with Jason and the great heroes of that day, in search of the Golden Fleece. Many brave deeds were his in foreign lands; and when he came home again to Calydon, he brought with him a fair young wife, gentle Cleopatra, daughter of Idas the boaster. ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... Christian character of him who makes it. Easy to compose a sermon!—easy to compose what, when written, cannot be read; and what, when preached, cannot be listened to. We believe it; for in cases of this kind the ease is all on the part of the author. We believe further, we would fain say to the boaster, that you and such as you could scuttle and sink the Free Church with amazingly little trouble to yourselves. But is it easy, think you, to mature such thoughts as Butler matured? And yet these were embodied in sermons. Is it easy, think you, to ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... warm, nor asked whence or why we wandered. It was their thought that Old Kinoos had lost the sight of his eyes from age; nor did Old Kinoos say otherwise, nor did I, his daughter. Old Kinoos is a brave man, but Old Kinoos was never a boaster. And now, when I tell thee of how his blindness came to be, thou wilt know, beyond question, that the daughter of Kinoos cannot mother the children of a coward such ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... to yield to the wrong. Above all we wish for honesty—tongues that are not used to say what the mind does not mean, and hearts that feel a little for others, as well as for themselves. A true-hearted girl could die for such a husband! while the boaster, and the double-tongued suitor gets to be as hateful to the sight, as he is to ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... for a saint, and you would be a demon! You are a boaster! No; there is no man quite cunning enough, bold enough, thus to insinuate himself into the confidence and respect of men. It would be a frightful defiance cast ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... every body attributed it to long practice, they were not so much astonished as I was, who knew it was wholly owing to chance. It was a lucky hit, and I made the most of it; success made me arrogant, and boy-like, I became a boaster. ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... my dear tutor's lessons, together with the opportunity of conversing with the politest and most learned gentry of different nations, that I will discourse with you in two or three languages, if you please, when I have the happiness to see you. There's a learned boaster for you, my dear friend! (if the knowledge of different languages makes one learned.)—But I shall bring you an heart as entirely English as ever, for ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Expectation which is raised by impertinent Promisers is thus barren, their Confidence, even after Failures, is so great, that they subsist by still promising on. I have heretofore discoursed of the insignificant Liar, the Boaster, and the Castle-Builder, and treated them as no ill-designing Men, (tho' they are to be placed among the frivolously false ones) but Persons who fall into that Way purely to recommend themselves by their Vivacities; but indeed I cannot let heedless Promisers, though in the most minute Circumstances, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... services, I'm happy to obey. Of late your Brother Delights in hind'ring my advancement, And ev'ry boaster's rais'd above my merit, Barzaphernes alone commands his ear, His oracle ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... NYM, PISTOL, Mrs. QUICKLY, and BOY.] These followers of Falstaff figured conspicuously through the two parts of Shakespeare's Henry IV. Pistol is a swaggering, pompous braggadocio; Nym a boaster and a coward; and Bardolph a liar, thief, and coward, who has no ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... with rapture self-inspired, He would prove his words by deeds, Prove himself no boaster vain But a ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... house. A score of other darkies contributed, and the required amount was raised. It was not, however, to be delivered to the courageous Sam until his reappearance after the vigil. With this understanding the boaster betook himself to the ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... the American Colonies, went to the block, and his enemy, Danton, a little later, did the same; Mirabeau, the boaster, had died peacefully in his bed; Robespierre, who signed the death-warrant of Paine, "to save his own head," died the death he had reserved for Paine; Marat, "the terrible dwarf," horribly honest, fearfully ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... harbour'd in the conscious breast, Intimidates the brave, degrades the great; See Cali, dread of kings, and pride of armies, By treason levell'd with the dregs of men! Ere guilty fear depress'd the hoary chief, An angry murmur, a rebellious frown, Had stretch'd the fiery boaster in ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... only to raise a laugh at the expense of that boaster," said the prince, after they were gone, "or would you indeed fulfil ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... scream of laughter. "You hear that, Clopin? You hear that, my good servitors? This silly French noodle is going to get the things in spite of us. Oho, but you have a fine opinion of yourself, monsieur. You need work fast, too, pretty boaster, I can tell you. For the royal jewellers will require the Rainbow Pearl very soon to fix it in its place in the crown for the coronation ceremony, and if that thing his Majesty holds is offered to them, how long, think you, will it be ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... the Saracens, was another staple character in the Miracle-Plays; who is described by John Florio as "a great boaster, quarreller, killer, tamer or ruler of the universe, the child of the earthquake and of the thunder, the brother of death." That Shakespeare himself had suffered under the monstrous din of these "strutting and bellowing" stage-thumpers is shown by Hamlet's remonstrance with ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... be of yesterday, Annie, but our land bears no marks of recent origin. The most arrogant boaster of the Old World may feel himself humbled as he stands within the shadow of our forests, and looks up to trees which we might almost fancy to have waved over the heads of 'the patriarchs of an ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... soon discovered that the Moor was a conceited coxcomb and a barefaced boaster, and ere long began to suspect that he was an arrant coward. He was, however, good-humoured and chatty, and Ted, being in these respects like-minded, rather took a fancy to him, and ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... The consequence was, that I received another invitation from the governor, and Captain Delmar again informed me that I might tell my own story, which I did, modestly as before. I say modestly, for I never was a boaster at any time; and I really believe that I thought much less of the circumstances than those did to whom I narrated them. I had at that time but one wish, which was to find favour in the sight of Captain Delmar. I felt that all my prospects in life depended upon that; and aware of his disposition, ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... England then. He dined in high places and afterwards supped at the Savoy with the coryphees; and both in the high places and among the coryphees his jewels had made him welcome. This is truth I am telling you. He was a boaster. Well, after supper that night he threw a girl down the stairs. Never mind what she was—she was of the white ruling race, she was of the race that rules in India, he comes back to India and insolently boasts. Do you approve? Do you think ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... worshipful justice, a griping rook and a grave citizen, a worthy lawyer and an errant pickpocket, a reverend non-conformist and a canting mountebank, all blended together to compose an oglio of impertinence." There is a delightful sketch of one named "Captain All-man-sir," as big a boaster as Falstaff, and a more delicately etched portrait of the Town Wit, who is summed up as the "jack-pudding of society" in the judgment of all wise men, but an incomparable wit in his own. The peroration of this pamphlet, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... hedge on some of them, or put them through at a cost far beyond the profit. It came that way to a boaster of his intentions sometimes, especially so when a man spoke too quickly and assumed too much. Here he was standing face to a fight that did not appear to promise much more glory in the winning ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... blue cloth. His saddle was of Houssa manufacture, and uncommonly neat; in the interior such an article is only used by the principal people, and his bridle also was of curious workmanship. The horseman had an extravagant idea of his own consequence, and seemed to be a prodigious boaster. He wore abundance of clothing, most of which was superfluous, but it made him excessively vain. He informed the travellers that he had been despatched by the king of Jenna, to meet them in the path, and ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... said a young man who had just entered, "it is well known that Vestein and her father and mother were all fully willing. The girl could as easily have gone out of the door as the window. Snackoll is a boaster. He is as great in his talk as a fox ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... far from the boaster, and he determined to silence him once for all. The next time he began to speak, he had barely said "Kerrump!" when the Crane had him by the leg. He croaked and struggled in vain, and in another moment he would have gone down the ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... of honest poverty or to try to buy kisses with gold. Because kisses, as she knew, could never be true unless they were given for love; and love itself calls for respect, first of all—and who can respect a boaster? ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... Lisbeth told about Ole and Peter, and gave Jacob their greetings. She had much to tell about them both, but Jacob thought it was queer that she had more to say about Ole than about Peter; for while Ole was a straight-forward fellow, it could not be denied that he was a bit of a boaster. ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... dozen or two swords of all kinds. The new-comer paused near the platform on which the boaster stood and gazed at him ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... raid," he is confronted with the demand to produce his evidence, and the only evidence admissible is the scalps of the dead enemies. Should he make such an assertion without the proof, he would be laughed out of the camp as a silly boaster. ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... Somebody is a very fine woman. One of those boasters of beauty, one night at a tavern, relating his amazing amours, the toast-master called him to order, and a gentleman in a frolic, instead of naming any living lady for his toast, gave the Greek name of the tragic muse Melpomene; upon which the boaster of beauty, the moment he heard the word Melpomene, addresses the toast-master, "Oh! ho! Mr. Toastmaster, you are going a round of demireps. Ay, ay, Moll Pomene, I remember her very well; she was a very fine girl, and so was her sister, ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... brutal and vulgar statements, culminating in the deplorable mental and moral expressions contained in the speeches, messages and telegrams of William II. He was a perfect type of the miles gloriosus, not a harmless but an irritating and dangerous boaster, who succeeded in piling up more loathing and hatred against his country than the most active and intelligently managed enemy ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... the deification of the reason, and clung to that exalted supernaturalism which was the life and hope of blessed saints and martyrs in bygone ages, and which in "their contests with mail-clad infidelity was like the pebble which the shepherd of Israel hurled against the disdainful boaster who defied the power of Israel's God." And he was thus brought into close sympathy with the realism of the Fathers, who felt that all that is valuable in theology must radiate from the recognition of Almighty power in the renovation of society, and displayed, not according to our human ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... to see that you are no boaster, Saduko," said Panda. "Would that more of the Zulus were like you in that matter, for then I must not listen to so many loud songs about little things. At least, Bangu was killed and his proud tribe humbled, and, for reasons of state, I am glad that this happened without ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... Note Colman remarks: "Though there is much good criticism in the above Note, it is certain that Plautus did not take his 'Miles Gloriosus' from the Colax of Menander, as he himself informs us it was translated from a Greek play called Alazon, 'the Boaster,' and the Parasite is but a trifling character in that play, never ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... Crawfish, 'I ain't no boaster, but I offers a hundred to fifty, an' stands to make it up to a thousand dollars in wool or sheep, Julius Caesar is the fattest an' finest serpent in Arizona; also the ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... ship Argo, with Jason and the great heroes of that day, in search of the Golden Fleece. Many brave deeds were his in foreign lands; and when he came home again to Calydon, he brought with him a fair young wife, gentle Cleopatra, daughter of Idas the boaster. ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... them, entirely misinterpreted by the hearers. It struck like a dagger into the wounded and tender heart of Helen; it pierced Laura, and inflamed the high-spirited girl with scorn and anger. "And it was to this hardened libertine," she thought—"to this boaster of low intrigues, that I had given my heart away." "He breaks the most sacred laws," thought Helen. "He prefers the creature of his passion to his own mother; and when he is upbraided, he laughs, and glories ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... could find in their works that air of grandeur and dignity generally attributed to them. Raphael himself, he said, was very unequal, and many of his productions owed their glory only to tradition. Michael Angelo was a boaster, weakly vain of his knowledge of anatomy, and without a particle of grace. Real force of outline, grace of touch, and magic of colouring we must look for, he said, in the present age. Thence the conversation easily glided to his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... all." Smith evidently understood the situation much better than the promoters in England; and we can quite excuse him in his rage over the foolishness and greed of most of his companions. There was little nonsense about Smith in action, though he need not turn his hand on any man of that age as a boaster. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the great boaster, He the marvellous story-teller, He the traveller and the talker, He the friend of old Nokomis, Made a bow for Hiawatha; From a branch of ash he made it, From an oak-bough made the arrows, Tipped with flint, and winged with feathers, And the cord he ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... man who made such a noise in the parish, such a boaster, so quarrelsome, so litigious, no one could come near him. "The fashion changeth." He lies still as a mouse now, and can resent no injury ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... him: This is reserved for the braggadocio scene. We expect entertainment, but we don't well know of what kind. Poins, by his prediction, has given us a hint: But we do not see or feel Falstaff to be a Coward, much less a boaster; without which even Cowardice is not sufficiently ridiculous; and therefore it is, that on the stage we find them always connected. In this uncertainty on our part, he is, with much artful preparation, produced.—His entrance is delayed to stimulate our expectation; and, at ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... self-inspired, He would prove his words by deeds, Prove himself no boaster vain But a master in ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... and a boaster, but for all that Isak could bear him no grudge; he himself was too relieved at finding his neighbour in the house that evening instead of a stranger. Isak had the peasant's coolness of mind, his few feelings, stability, stubbornness; he chatted with Brede and nodded at his shallowness. "Another ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... my honour, he also had us served with a bird three times as large as Cleonymus,(1) and called the Boaster. ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... 'Strik, strik, ye proud boaster, your honour is gone, Your lands we will plunder, your ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... dwarf, even among puppets, and his dress invariably consists of black knee-breeches and white stockings, a very long, full-skirted black coat, and a three-cornered hat. His individual traits are displayed in all his characters, and he is ever a coward, a boaster, and a liar; a glutton and avaricious, but withal of an agreeable bonhomie that wins the heart. To tell the truth, I care little for the plays in which he has no part and I have learned to think a certain trick of his—lifting ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... men accustomed to war, sword in hand, are worth ten thousand archers in a surprise. Where is Menneville, that boaster, that braggart, who was to come back either dead or ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that unrich land of his, Unto a mighty lordship: yea, and Tullus next is this, Who breaks his country's sleep and stirs the slothful men to fight; And calleth on the weaponed hosts unused to war's delight But next unto him Ancus fares, a boaster overmuch; Yea and e'en now the people's breath too nigh his heart will touch. And wilt thou see the Tarquin kings and Brutus' lofty heart, And fasces brought aback again by his avenging part? He first the lordship consular and dreadful axe shall take; 819 ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... chief, who, lost to sense of shame, Late fled the field, and yet survives his fame? O hadst thou died beneath the righteous sword Of that brave man whom once I call'd my lord! The boaster Paris oft desired the day With Sparta's king to meet in single fray: Go now, once more thy rival's rage excite, Provoke Atrides, and renew the fight: Yet Helen bids thee stay, lest thou unskill'd Shouldst fall an ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... must not attach too much importance to what you have heard. Paul is a mere boy, and, of course, a boaster." ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... with the same manly frankness he had always shown; "I have no desire to appear as a boaster or to make light of danger, but one of the truest adages is that it is not the barking dog that does ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... the world,—but he is a bit of a boaster. I dare say his ancestor was a Gascon, poor fellow!—and he affects to say that you can't choose a coat, or buy a horse, without his approval and advice,—that he can turn you round his finger. Now this hurts your consequence ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and boasting that he knew many and various tricks. Another among the bystanders said: "I know how to play a trick which will make whomsoever I like pull off his breeches." The first man— the boaster—said: "You won't make me pull off mine, and I bet you a pair of hose on it." He who proposed the game, having accepted the offer, produced breeches and drew them across the face of him who bet the pair of hose and ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... heartily sick of receiving what I consider altogether undue praise. Ah!" he exclaimed suddenly, "the thought has just occurred to me of a way by which you can obtain confirmation of my story; and, as I value your good opinion and would not be regarded as a boaster and a liar, I entreat you to take it. I heard you tell the eight men who were rowers in my boat when I was captured, to call upon you today, that you might do something ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... satire upon a boaster who is telling of some extraordinary thing which he pretends to ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... long mile away, rounding up their pony herd to prevent the warriors making an assault on Red Dog's more distant township. A shot rang out from somewhere among the agency buildings, and the days of the boaster were numbered. Back, bearing the body, scurried the trio of friends, and in less than an hour, in fury and transport and grief and rage, the women were tearing their hair and prodding themselves with knives, while the warriors, singing the death-song, were painting themselves for battle. In ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... printing house which would entirely overshadow his own. This secrecy which was practiced also prevented any one from informing Franklin of the Governor's real character, as a vain, unreliable, gasconading boaster. ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... seer o' ferlies, That sits on the stane at his door, And tells about bogles, and mair lies Than tongue ever utter'd before. And there will be Bauldy, the boaster, Sae ready wi' hands and wi' tongue; Proud Paty and silly Sam Foster, Wha quarrel ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... have had himself bound to the mast; and there were already sounds of unearthly sweetness in his ears. His conferences with his lovely hostess easily consoled him for his losses. In addition, he was triumphing over the boaster, for Mr. Pedlow, with a very ill grace and swearing (not under his breath), was losing too. The Countess, reiterating for the hundredth time that Cooley was a "wicked one," sweetly constituted herself his cup-bearer; kept his glass full and brought ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... to have understood this cowardly boaster, received his story with shouts of laughter. But Knight was very glad to make off with his gun and ammunition, and leave them to settle the affair among themselves. When he came to the prairies he hid himself in the grass and waited till dark before venturing to ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... wise man of the stoicks; such is the divinity of the epicureans; and such is the flatterer of himself. Every other enjoyment malice may destroy; every other panegyrick envy may withhold; but no human power can deprive the boaster of his own encomiums. Infamy may hiss, or contempt may growl, the hirelings of the great may follow fortune, and the votaries of truth may attend on virtue; but his pleasures still remain the same; he can always listen with rapture to himself, and leave ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... safe in their little hut, and the door fastened against the fearful intruder. Davy, being foremost in the race, sat down, followed by his companion George, who, maugre his great apprehensions, could not forbear laughing heartily at the sudden melting away of the big-mouthed valour of this cowardly boaster. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... hand paid, he would pass the night alone in the haunted house. A score of other darkies contributed, and the required amount was raised. It was not, however, to be delivered to the courageous Sam until his reappearance after the vigil. With this understanding the boaster betook himself to the haunted ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... coolly as Kit did. But the old hunter, steady and brave as he was in peril, was a prudent man, and not at all disposed to be reckless. He knew that an Indian bullet could kill him, as well as another man, and he had none of that affectation of courage which so often belies the boaster and ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... friendship and good-will. But fitting that which wants with something that is able to supply it, next one that is willing to instruct I will place one that is as desirous to be instructed; next a morose, one good-natured; next a talkative old man a youth patient and eager for a story; next a boaster, a jeering smooth companion; and next an angry man, a quiet one. If I see a wealthy fellow bountiful and kind, I will take some poor honest man from his obscure place, and set him next, that something may run out of that full vessel to the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... was unsuccessfully waiting till the governor resolved his conscientious difficulties about the exchange of flags. At last I offered a bet of five hundred dollars against an equal sum; and next day a bag with the tempting thousand was tied to the end of my mainboom, with an invitation for the boaster to "follow and take." It was understood that, once clear of the harbor, the "Aguila" should have five minutes' start of the Montesquieu, after which we were to crowd sail and begin ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... not a boaster as a rule; but whenever Percy Carberry started to show what a mighty conqueror of the air he had become, something seemed to rise up within the second Bird boy that made him give vent to ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... are the words of a boaster, who is bold only when he sees his enemy before him disarmed. Beware of what you do; you are walking in the dark! Do you believe the paltry handful of English whom you drove out of Calcutta count for anything in the strength of our nation? If so, let me tell you there ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... the rest of our hero sires; and we consume the rents and tributes of Ulster which they by their prowess conquered to us, and which flow hither in abundance from every corner of the province. Valiant men, too, will one day come hither and slay us as I slew that boaster, and here in Emain Macha their bards will praise them. Then in the halls of the dead shall we say to our sires, 'All that you got for us by your blood and your sweat that have we lost, and the glory of the Red Branch is ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... said this boaster, "whatever I do, I cannot, upon my word, chase away this cat that threatens you without some help. But let me call together all the rats hereabouts and I'll play him a ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... boasting so confidently that I would find a good situation for Mrs. Rocke, lo and behold! I have proved myself as yet only a boaster." ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... called "Daisy Belle," because he whistled that tune so much and because he had nose-bleed so much,—couldn't even ride a broncho but his nose would bleed for hours afterwards; and the other, "N'Yawk," so called from his native State. N'Yawk was a great boaster; said he wasn't afraid of no durned outlaw,—said his father had waded in bloody gore up to his neck and that he was a chip off the old block,—rather hoped the chase would come our way so he could ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... would have had some boast to make, pointing to their own condition to prove their statements. I have heard of half a dozen men lying dead, or dying, at a street corner, victims to a single sword, yet was there never a corpse to be found in the morning. Your easy boaster is ever a ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... and during the contest she had been cut in the head by one of the rackets—an accident that she falsely attributed to her adversary in the game. She had an opportunity of proving her hatred, for directly that it was known how Wenonah had refused to marry Red Cloud, a stalwart boaster, openly preferring a younger warrior of the tribe, the ill-thinking Harpstenah sought out the disappointed suitor, who sat moodily apart, and thus advised him, "To-morrow is the Feast of Virgins, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... sense which may be admired but not esteemed, of vice which may be despised, but hardly detested. Falstaff is a character loaded with faults, and with those faults which naturally produce contempt. He is a thief, and a glutton, a coward, and a boaster, always ready to cheat the weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timorous and insult the defenceless. At once obsequious and malignant, he satirises in their absence those whom he lives by flattering. He is familiar with the prince only as an agent of vice, but of this familiarity he is so ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... and shabby-genteel drawing-rooms, which Carlyle calls sham gentility. He bears on his very brow the newest flunky-stamp. The poor young fellow, after all, is no villain; he has no kind of connexion with the horrid rascal SIR EMERSOM TENNENT alludes to—with the blackguard. That he is a boaster, a talker, an idiot, a nincompoop; that he scatters "words, words, words," as Polonius did of old; that he is bombastic, wordy, prosy, nonsensical, and a fool, no one will deny. But he is no rogue, though he utters rogueries and ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... speech. It was my first field, sir, and I am wont to speak of it too boastingly. I shall become more modest, I hope, when I shall have a better right to be a boaster." ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... the half-caste, drawing his knife from its sheath, flashed it before the assembled natives; "nay, no liar am I, neither a boaster; and by the gods of my mother's land I shall make this Parma give me more grog to drink before the night comes, else shall this knife eat into his heart. ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... records, Gathered freely of the evil, Wandered on in lusts and vices, Wandered on to spoil and plunder, Wandered on to want and sorrow, Misery, and pain, and anguish. Strange his dealings were and hidden; Oft would take the greatest boaster, Mighty in his own beholding, Who in pomp and riches loitered, In high seats of veneration, And would draw him downward, downward, Rob him of his pomp and splendor, Of his riches and his glory, Set him by the homeless beggar, Holden in the pangs of hunger, Gladly feeding on ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... "Now, thou boaster," I said, "wilt thou lead the way into yonder reeds, or shall I?" And I made as though ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... that were writ in the days of the fathers. But when he heard their defiance, the boast, the taunt and the insult, All the hot blood of his race, of Sir Hugh and of Thurston de Standish, 795 Boiled and beat in his heart, and swelled in the veins of his temples. Headlong he leaped on the boaster, and, snatching his knife from its scabbard, Plunged it into his heart, and, reeling backward, the savage Fell with his face to the sky, and a fiendlike fierceness upon it. Straight there arose from the forest the awful sound of the war-whoop, 800 And, like a ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... incident, the jests and antics of the buffoon. It has been said that Spenser never smiles. He not only smiles, with amusement or sly irony; he wrote what he must have laughed at as he wrote, and meant us to laugh at. He did not describe with a grave face the terrors and misadventures of the boaster Braggadochio and his Squire, whether or not a caricature of the Duke of Alencon and his "gentleman," the "petit singe," Simier. He did not write with a grave face the Irish row about the ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... have said, however, Jim was a great boaster and blusterer, glorying in the marvelous and dangerous. Had he lived in the heroic age, I have no doubt he would have regaled the ears of his listeners with blood curdling stories of his battles with giants, his fights with dragons and winged serpents. He claimed to ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... sneered. "If you think you can take us with you that far then why not to Jerusalem? The words of a boaster are a mask of doubt. Hah! Take us to ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... two brothers stood forth. They were large men, splendidly muscled, and with faces unusually ferocious, even for Solomon Islanders. One was Carin-Jama, otherwise The Silent; and the other was Bellin-Jama, The Boaster. Both had served on the Queensland plantations in the old days, and they were known as evil characters wherever white men ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... never a boaster,"—replied Santoris, cheerfully—"But you shall keep whatever opinion you like of me." And he drew from his pocket a tiny crystal phial set in a sheath of gold. "A touch of this in your glass of wine will make you feel ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... perceiving the person they saw to be Hatim, they instantly seized him and carried him along; the old man also, a little in the rear, followed them in silent grief. When they brought Hatim before Naufal, he asked, 'Who has seized and brought him here?' A worthless, hard-hearted [boaster] answered, 'Who could have performed such a deed except myself? This achievement belongs to my name, and I have planted the standard [of glory] in the sky.' Another vaunting fellow clamoured, 'I ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... cut his coat according to his cloth; I will try to get away as fast as I can." On this the giant said to him, "Go, little ragamuffin, and fetch me a jug of water." "Had I not better bring the well itself at once, and the spring too?" asked the boaster, and went with the pitcher to the water. "What! the well and the spring too," growled the giant in his beard, for he was rather clownish and stupid, and began to be afraid. "That knave is not a fool, he has a wizard in his body. Be on thy guard, old Hans, this ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... simulated, mock. faltar fail, be missing, be lacking, give way. fallido, -a frustrated, amiss. fama f. reputation, report, rumor; es —— it is said. famoso, -a famous, renowned, notorious. fanal m. lantern, light, beacon. fanfarrn m. boaster, bully. fango m. mud, mire, slime. fantasa f. fancy, imagination, caprice, whim. fantasma m. f. phantom, ghost, specter, scarecrow. fantstico, -a fantastic, imaginary. farsa f. farce, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... hearty meal, the wanderers launched into the usual topics of conversation in those regions. Sakalar was not a boaster, but the young men from Nijnei-Kolimsk were possessed of the usual characteristics of hunters and fishermen. They told with considerable vigor and effect long stories of their adventures, most exaggerated—and when not impossible, most improbable—of bears killed ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... promised him was a royal kaross and nothing less. So enough of Umslopogaas, the Woodpecker. Almost I wish that you had not lent him the charm, for then the King's men would have made an end of him, who knows too much and like some silly boaster, may shout out the truth when his axe is aloft and he is full of the beer of battle. For in battle he will live and in battle he will die, Macumazahn, as perhaps ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... were, to all his future tragedies. From this depth of nothingness Turgenef, however, soon rises to at least the semblance of strength; and while Rudin is at bottom as impotent as Tchulkaturin, he at least pretends to strength. Rudin, then, is the hero of phrases, the boaster; he promises marvels, he charms, he captivates; but it all ends in words, and Rudin perishes as needlessly as he lived needlessly. In "Fathers and Sons," however, Bazarof is no longer a talker; he already rises to indignation and rebellion; he lives out ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... consult the Duke of York, who is impaled on his column between the two clubs, and ask his late Royal Highness whether he thought he ought to remain there, he would say no. A brave, worthy man, not a braggart or boaster, to be put upon that heroic perch must be painful to him. Lord George Bentinck, I suppose, being in the midst of the family park in Cavendish Square, may conceive that he has a right to remain in his place. But look at William of Cumberland, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said, "You are the greatest boaster in the crowd![26] I am the best man here, and yet you talk of three from this side; and what are you ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... divine armor the heavy blows of these rude weapons fell harmless, while the spear of AEneas proved fatal to both those who wielded them. An insolent warrior named Pharus was defying the hero from a short distance with taunting speech, when he hurled a javelin, which struck the boaster full in the mouth, and transfixing the throat, silenced him forever. Now a band of seven brothers, the sons of Phorcus, all at once attacked AEneas with darts, throwing them together. Some of the weapons struck his helmet and ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... treacherous fiend to cast a stain on Satan's bravery? he who preys only on the defenceless—who sucks the blood of infants, and delights only in acts of ignoble cruelty and unequal contention. Away with the boaster who never joins in action, but, like a cormorant, hovers over the field, to feed upon the wounded, and overwhelm the dying. True bravery is as remote from rashness as from hesitation; let us counsel coolly, but let us execute our counselled purposes determinately. In power we have learned, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... work. What they did you may judge of, when I tell you that, while two hundred and seventy-three Englishmen fell that day, only eighty-eight Americans were killed. I will not talk of what I myself performed, for I despise a boaster, but I did my share of duty, ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... saw in my life; he is full of self-sufficiency and conceit, and believes himself equal to anything. He has no talent. I should like to see him opposed some day to one of our good generals; we should then see fine work. He is a boaster, and that is all. He is really one of the most silly men existing; and, besides all that, he is unlucky." Was not this opinion of Bonaparte, formed on the past, fully verified by ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... taught so much by Granny Fox that he began to feel very wise and very important. Reddy is naturally smart and he had been very quick to learn the tricks that old Granny Fox had taught him. But Reddy Fox is a boaster. Every day he swaggered about on the Green Meadows and bragged how smart he was. Blacky the Crow grew ...
— The Adventures of Reddy Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... he smiles inwardly, and moralizes on the weakness of human nature. But the man who never jumps is not usually of a benevolent nature, and it is almost certain that he will make up a little story against the boaster. ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... home to your daughter," said the King, "and bid her hatch them out for me. If she succeeds she shall have a bag of money for her pains, but if she fails you shall be beaten as a vain boaster." ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... excessive frankness of speech to all alike; he was in desperate pursuit of a reputation for being able to comprehend and speak as no one else could, and before all wanted to be thought a valuable citizen. As a result of this and because he was the greatest boaster alive and thought no one equal to himself, but in his words and life alike looked down on all and would not live as any one else did, he was wearisome and burdensome, and was consequently both envied and hated even by those ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... New Kalligeneia. Name given to Ceres, meaning, "bearer of lovely children." The Toxotes. A Syrian archer in the "Thesmophoriazusae." The Great King's Eye. Mock name given to an ambassador from Persia in the Acharnians. Kompolakuthes. Bully-boaster: with a play on ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Little boaster, vagrant king, Neither north nor south is yours, You've no kingdom that endures! Wandering every fall and spring, With your ruby crown so slender, Are you only a ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke
... words were uttered puzzled Nick and caused him to think that possibly the boaster was right after all, and he had made ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... Phoebus edge with tints of gold And lucid crimson. One might fancy it A noble bird, that laves its graceful form, And bathes its rosy bosom in the light. Look! how it swells and rears its snowy crest With haughty grandeur; while the blue expanse, In smiling patience lets the boaster pass, And swell his train with all the lazy vapours That hover in the air: an easy prey To the gigantic phantom, whose curl'd wing, Sweeps in these worthless triflers of the sky, And wraps them in his bosom. Go, vain shadow! Sick with the burthen of thy fancied ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... the shade of some live oaks, when a horseman came to the little village. He was a strange man, great in size, dressed in buckskin, very brown of countenance and with long hair, tied as the western Indians would wear it. He was something of a genial boaster, was this man, and he was known up and down the Texas border as the Ring Tailed Panther although his right name was Martin Palmer. But he had lived long among the Osage, Kiowa and Pawnee Indians, and he was renowned throughout all the Southwestern ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Tom Ross wuz right when he said the way them Greeks an' Trojans fought was plumb foolish. Do you think that me, Sol Hyde, is goin' to take a tin pan an' go beatin' on it down thar among the bushes, an' callin' on the biggest boaster o' all the savages to come out an' fight me? No, sir; I wouldn't go fifty yards before I'd tumble over, with ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... bottom Sank the pike in great confusion, And the mighty sturgeon, Nahma, Said to Ugudwash, the sun-fish, To the bream, with scales of crimson, "Take the bait of this great boaster, Break ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... expressed myself both to Rankeillor and to Stewart; I reflected that my captivity upon the Bass, in view of a great part of the coasts of Fife and Lothian, was a thing I should be thought more likely to have invented than endured; and in the eyes of these two gentlemen, at least, I must pass for a boaster and a coward. Now I would take this lightly enough; tell myself that so long as I stood well with Catriona Drummond, the opinion of the rest of man was but moonshine and spilled water; and thence pass off into those meditations ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is a great boaster and likes to brag of how smart he is and how brave he is, came with the rest of ...
— The Adventures of Prickly Porky • Thornton W. Burgess
... their pride and make them more humble, but also when they are in fear and dejection to raise them up again and give them confidence. Thus Cyrus talked big in perils and on battle-fields, though at other times he was no boaster. And the second Antigonus, though he was on all other occasions modest and far from vanity, yet in the sea-fight off Cos, when one of his friends said to him, "See you not how many more ships the enemy have got than ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... "Weakling at heart. Great boaster, doer of little deeds! Even you, who would be our mistress, he has abandoned—even his own son he has forsaken. A rotten breed, truly! And ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... Then did some mock and some jeer and Punch Costello fell hard again to his yale which Master Lenehan vowed he would do after and he was indeed but a word and a blow on any the least colour. But the braggart boaster cried that an old Nobodaddy was in his cups it was muchwhat indifferent and he would not lag behind his lead. But this was only to dye his desperation as cowed he crouched in Horne's hall. He drank indeed ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... he is a boaster and self-assertor, by nature; but it is so far true. For instance, we used to have a fair in our neighborhood—a very fine fair we thought it. You never saw such an one; but if you look at the engraving of Turner's "St. Catherine's Hill," you will see what it was like. There were curious ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... he's sober his bluff is on th' outside. Whin he's dhrunk he makes th' bluff to his own heart. Dhrink turns him inside out as well as upside down, an' while he's congratulatin' himsilf on th' fine man he is, th' neighbors know him f'r a boaster, a cow'rd, an' something iv a liar. That th' ladies see an' hate. They do not know that there is wan thing an' on'y wan thing to be said in favor iv dhrink, an' that is that it has caused manny a lady to be loved that otherwise ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... Gascon. The Gascons are the natives of Gascony, a province in the south of France. It is proverbial among other Frenchmen that the Gascons are always boasting, and even in English we sometimes use the word Gascon to describe a great boaster, while gasconade is now a common term for ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... "You hear that, Clopin? You hear that, my good servitors? This silly French noodle is going to get the things in spite of us. Oho, but you have a fine opinion of yourself, monsieur. You need work fast, too, pretty boaster, I can tell you. For the royal jewellers will require the Rainbow Pearl very soon to fix it in its place in the crown for the coronation ceremony, and if that thing his Majesty holds is offered to them, how long, think you, will it be before all Mauravania ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... George MacDougall drew on his fur coat and mittens and quitted the cabin. He would find a certain long haired Indian he had seen that day, and prove to his brother that he was not simply a boaster. ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... and reckless temper had kept him where he was. There was in him a vein of madness which often burst forth in a blind fury. It had come upon him in battle, and he had awakened many a time to learn that he had been the hero of an exploit. He was not a boaster; he was not a broken soldier. He was a man whose violent temper had strewn his path with failures. . . . In love! Silently he mocked himself. In love, he, the tried veteran, of a hundred inconstancies! He smiled grimly beneath his mask. He passed on, stealthily, till he reached ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... thou for this, vain boaster, to survey me, To descant on my strength, and give thy verdit? Come nearer, part not hence so slight inform'd; But take good heed my hand survey not thee. 1230 Har: O Baal-zebub! can my ears unus'd Hear these dishonours, and not ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... seized; that at Vienna, as well as at Berlin, I should be reclaimed; and that I could not make the least preparation for departure without his being informed of it; for he knew, he said, every thing that passed in my house. In that respect he was a boaster, and, as the event has proved, exhibited mere fatuity in matters of espionnage. But who would not have been terrified at the tone of assurance with which he told all my friends that I could not move a step without being ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... an empty business, which pleases nobody but the boaster, and I have no disposition to boast of what the Democratic Party has accomplished. It has merely done its duty. It has merely fulfilled its explicit promises. But there can be no violation of good taste in calling attention to the manner in which those promises have ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... renowned for his skill in all sports and pastimes. To please the company he rose from his seat and danced his merry dances to the music of flutes and drums. Then the sweet singer, Chibiabos, sang a melodious love-song, and when this was finished, Iagoo the Boaster, jealous of the praise and applause bestowed on the musician, told one of his most marvelous stories, and well pleased ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... the Secretary. "I am no boaster, neither do I claim the gift of prophecy, like some of our saints yonder. But I am persuaded that a day will come when your words will be put to the proof. You will have to choose not between King and Commons, but between England and France you ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... servant thou!" I cried. "Boaster! Had you told us that age and fat living had so stunted your wits as to have extinguished memory, I had taken a guide at Montauban to show us the way. Yet, here, with the sun and the Pyrenees to guide you, even had you no ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... match his feet with the feet of Tamdoka? Let him think of Tate[AC] and beware, ere he stake his last robe on the trial." "Oho! Ho! Ho-heca!"[AD] they jeered, for they liked not the boast of the boaster; But to match him no warrior appeared, for his feet wore the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... who is harmoniously constituted, who is not covetous or mean, or a boaster, or a coward—can he, I say, ever be unjust ...
— The Republic • Plato
... couldn't help hearing what the Rooster said. And he hadn't even heart enough to answer that impertinent boaster. ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey
... heed, Lionel!" said Rosamund. "I shall prove him as much a boaster as he has proved himself a villain. Never think that he will be able to work ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... fellow was asked, "Pray, sir, what may your business be?"—"O," replied the boaster, "I am but a cork-cutter: but then it is in a very large way!"—"Indeed!" replied the other; "then I presume you ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... ill spelling, for ill lines, And fly with hurry to Rathmines;[1] Thy fame, thy genius, now declines, proud boaster. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... might know something worth his, Nick Hilliard's, while to learn; and he was not going to give up because of first impressions. He had not met Montagu Jerrold before, but had heard of him often during the last three or four months since the Englishman "blew into" Lucky Star City. He was a boaster as well as a waster, no doubt; for according to himself, he knew "everybody at home," from the King down the whole gamut of the British peerage. Also he "claimed" to be an Oxford man, and it was that which, in this emergency, had ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Holland. In 1799, Bonaparte appointed him an Ambassador to the Court of Berlin; and in 1803 removed him in the same character to the Court of Madrid. In Prussia, his talents did not cause him to be dreaded, nor his personal qualities make him esteemed. In France, he is laughed at as a boaster, but not trusted as a warrior. In Spain, he is neither dreaded nor esteemed, neither laughed at nor courted; he is there universally despised. He studies to be thought a gentleman; but the native porter breaks ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... not responsible, let him talk unmolested; but Thor, coming home just then from one of his journeys, and hearing his threat to carry away the beloved Sif, flew into a terrible rage. He furiously brandished his hammer, with intent to annihilate the boaster. This the gods would not permit, however, and they quickly threw themselves between the irate Thunderer and their guest, imploring Thor to respect the sacred rights of hospitality, and not to desecrate their peace-stead ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... amazed myself at my success. Every body was surprised, but as every body attributed it to long practice, they were not so much astonished as I was, who knew it was wholly owing to chance. It was a lucky hit, and I made the most of it; success made me arrogant, and boy-like, I became a boaster. ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... to raise a laugh at the expense of that boaster," said the prince, after they were gone, "or would you indeed fulfil your ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... vain boaster!" exclaimed Cabell. "He has a good horse, I admit, but his spirit has become unduly inflated about it. You know, don't you, Lennox, that my colt, Cressy, has all Virginia beaten ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of Manuel was exceeding bitter. "Well, he will have the chance to prove what he can do. No gringo can come among us Californians and flap the wings and crow upon the tule thatch for naught. There has been overmuch crowing, Valencia. Me, I am glad that boaster must do something more than ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... but for his own impious boast In frenzy utter'd that he would escape The billows, even in the Gods' despight. Neptune that speech vain-glorious hearing, grasp'd 610 His trident, and the huge Gyraean rock Smiting indignant, dash'd it half away; Part stood, and part, on which the boaster sat When, first, the brainsick fury seiz'd him, fell, Bearing him with it down into the gulphs Of Ocean, where he drank the brine, and died. But thy own brother in his barks escaped That fate, by Juno saved; yet when, at length, He should have gain'd Malea's craggy shore, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... had once told Lucy Grey, whom she had always liked, and with whom she was more intimate than with any one else in Allington, unless it were Hannah Jerrold. Although very proud of her family name and family blood, she was no boaster, and no one in Allington would ever have known that one of her brothers had been in Parliament, and that his wife was a Lady Jane Trevellian, if chance had not thrown them in the way ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... lion is at hand. To whom, undaunted, Diomede replied. Archer shrew-tongued! spie-maiden! man of curls![14] Shouldst thou in arms attempt me face to face, 470 Thy bow and arrows should avail thee nought. Vain boaster! thou hast scratch'd my foot—no more— And I regard it as I might the stroke Of a weak woman or a simple child. The weapons of a dastard and a slave 475 Are ever such. More terrible are mine, And whom they pierce, though slightly pierced, he dies. His ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
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