"Swagger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for them. Riding astride. Sit her horse like a man. Weightcarrying huntress. No sidesaddle or pillion for her, not for Joe. First to the meet and in at the death. Strong as a brood mare some of those horsey women. Swagger around livery stables. Toss off a glass of brandy neat while you'd say knife. That one at the Grosvenor this morning. Up with her on the car: wishswish. Stonewall or fivebarred gate put her mount to it. Think that pugnosed driver did it out of spite. Who is this she ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... aft to relieve the wheel. There was a smirk on his face, and a swagger in his walk, as he came along the lee side of the poop. I noticed him leer confidentially at the mate, as he passed that worthy. That Cockney thought himself a very clever fellow, no doubt, having been taken into the confidence of the ship's masters, ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... true in the early stages of adolescence. The boy or girl is becoming conscious of himself as a person, and resents being treated as a child; the only way he knows of asserting his personality is by affecting an air of disdain toward those who presume to treat him as a child. This swagger is more likely to be put on when there is a third person present. It is therefore always safer to reserve your discussions and corrections to the time when you are alone with your girl or boy, and can place your ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... a boy about fourteen years old, a muscular, sturdy chunk of a lad. He walks with his heels down, his calves bulged out behind, his head up, and the regular, proper swagger of a bandsman. He hasn't any uniform, but he's all right. He plays a solo B part, and he and the other solo cornet spell each other. On the repeat of every strain my boy rests, and rubs his lips with his forefinger, while he looks at the populace with bright, expectant eyes. When he ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... room is as spacious and luxurious as heart can desire, lighted by half a dozen electric lamps, and with a private bath-room attached, which is itself nearly as large as the bedroom assigned me in the "swagger" hotel of New York—an establishment, by the way, of which it has been wittily said that its purpose is "to provide exclusiveness for the masses." All the comforts of the club are at my command; the rooms are delightful, the food and service excellent. In short, I could ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... society, Kenrick held it to be a logical consequence that, whatever he thought, he should speak on the other, and use his powers of speaking, which were considerable, to throw on Walter's illustrations and arguments all the ridicule he could. All this folly and virulence was now abandoned; the swagger which Kenrick had adopted was from that time entirely laid aside. At the very next meeting of the debating society he spoke, as indeed he generally thought, on the same side with Walter; and spoke, not in his usual flippant conceited style, but more seriously and earnestly, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... where we put up," said Stubbs presently, turning into a large and well-lighted hotel. "Put your best foot foremost now, and walk in like you owned the place. Can you swagger a bit?" ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... a stranger to Mr. Trumbull and every one else, whose appearance, however, led to the supposition that he might be a relative of the horse-dealer's—also "given to indulgence." His large whiskers, imposing swagger, and swing of the leg, made him a striking figure; but his suit of black, rather shabby at the edges, caused the prejudicial inference that he was not able to afford himself as ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Haer, wearing a colonel's uniform and flicking his swagger stick along his booted leg, stood in the doorway. His voice was lazily arrogant. "And Mr. Holland, I must say, the Middle caste seems to have taken over the house. Well, Major Mauser? I assume you do not labor under the illusion that you are welcome ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... universal interest among all classes of the French as the great chartist demonstration has done. For days and days it was a leading topic in the newspapers, and for days the general subject of conversation. Both newspapers and talkers, relying on the big swagger of the Chartists, and the undisguised alarm of the government, confidently expected a stern and terrible straggle, with barricades, and bayonets, and pikes, and deluges of blood, and awful slaughter. To this expectation many added ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... relieve me from the trouble of bearing my own name," he resumed, "cannot be of very lofty pretensions, or he would have aspired higher. I suspect him of being merely one of those silly young countrymen of mine, of whom so many crowd stage-coaches and packets, to swagger over their less ambitious fellow-mortals with the strut ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... was absurd, of course. Chauffeurs do not swagger through the world dressing for dinner each night and distributing gold in their leisure moments. But Smith's bump of inquisitiveness was well developed, as the phrenologists say, and he was already impressed ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... exhibit a precocious cleverness, but have no value and no interest today. One gets from Chatterton's letters and miscellanies an unpleasant impression of his character. There is not only the hectic quality of too early ripeness which one detects in Keats' correspondence; and the defiant swagger, the affectation of wickedness and knowingness that one encounters in the youthful Byron, and that is apt to attend the stormy burst of irregular genius upon the world; but there are things that imply a more radical unscrupulousness. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... at him in the dim light on the ferry-boat. No; he did not have the perfidious smirk or the brazen swagger of the lady-killer. Sincerity and modesty shone through his boreal tan. It seemed to her that it might be good to hear a little of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... I'd ever seen anything so stunning, and when I tried to come up and say a word, you never took any notice, but just went on laughing and joking with a lot of asses who only wanted to be able to swagger about afterward, and look knowing when ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... with delight at being completely understood. "I couldn't resist one little bit of sheer swagger. It's a French trick, and you wouldn't understand; but it's got at by slewing round the head a trifle, and a tiny, tiny foreshortening of one side of the face from the angle of the chin to the top of the left ear. That, and deepening the shadow under the lobe of the ear. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... something too ardently admiring to be trusted. She had seen the man's face. He was a big man, broad and straight and powerful, builded like a Vulcan. He was branded unmistakably as a rowdy; his very carriage, a sort of conscious swagger, the bold impudence of his face told that. The laughing face stood out before her eyes as she rode on, evil and reckless and handsome, with very bright blue eyes and hair curling in little yellow rings about the forehead from which the hat was pushed back. It was her first glimpse of the youngest ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... did he admire the great biography, but he called Boswell "such a biographer as no man but [Johnson] ever had, or ever deserved to have."[224] But he once said that many of the Ramblers were "little better than a sort of pageant, where trite and obvious maxims are made to swagger in lofty and mystic language, and get some credit only because they are ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... Bridge—old Thames marched all a-glitter. I watched his passage gratefully. It was that of a never-ending band. Playing all the way, too, but silently. Yet, the music was there. The pity was that one could not hear it. The pomp, the swagger, the swing of the Guards, the shifting movement, the bright array—all these were unmistakable. The very lilt of the air made itself felt. Very cheery. Certainly, the river was ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... swagger of bells from the trampling teams, Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze, The rich ripe rose as with incense steams— Midsummer days! Midsummer days! A soul from the honeysuckle strays, And the nightingale, as from prophet heights, Speaks to ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... to him, as he stood there palpably before us, one seemed to understand better than ever Thackeray's declaration in regard to those same menials in plush breeches, that a certain delightful "quivering swagger" of the calves about them, had for him always, as he expressed it, "a frantic fascination!" Immediately afterwards, however, as the Reader turned a new leaf, in place of the momentary apparition of that particular flunkey, three very different persons appeared to step across the threshold ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... End me no ends; engage the whole estate, And force your spouse to sign it: you shall have Three or four thousand more to roar and swagger, And revel in ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... fall the heavy rubber garment she had worn through the swamp. Then she removed her outer clothing and got into the uniform and into the long, polished boots quickly. There was even the swagger cane ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... piling them on the floor. A month before he would not have known how to grapple with such a situation, but his evenings with Joe Bevan had given him the habit of making up his mind and acting rapidly. Drummond was wont to keep a swagger-stick by his bedside for the better observance of law and order. Sheen possessed himself of this swagger-stick, and reasoned with the sportive youth. The rest of the dormitory looked on in interested silence. It was a critical moment, and on his handling of it depended Sheen's victory or defeat. ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... said the linesman, gazing curiously and anxiously round him as he deposited a bundle on the table, and laid his swagger cane beside it. ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... stand up to me bare-fisted. I want one chance before I go, to fight you, or any of you, or all of you! Or, if you are afraid to fight that way, give me a pistol—I never fired one until tonight—and let me shoot it out with you. Surely men who swagger around with pistols in their belts, and pride themselves on the use of them, ought not to be afraid to take a chance against a man who has never but once fired one!" There was an awkward pause and the pilgrim laughed harshly: "There isn't an ounce of sporting blood among you! You hunt ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... when he called him a "jester," while Mr. Edmunds, by a ready pun, as aptly described the other side of him by declaring that the Senator from Massachusetts probably meant a "sug-gester." Retaining the dragoon swagger, which he had acquired at West Point, a jovial nature, indifferent to the decorum of public life, he seemed to have been tossed into the Senate, where other people had with difficulty found their way by hard climbing ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... little snatching up of a few loose trifles such as the Society Islands, which we had, according to our custom, carelessly or benevolently left to gleaners), French arms, despite a great deal of brag and swagger, obtained little glory, while French diplomacy let itself wallow in one of the foulest sloughs in history, the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... light! Death is the common right Of toads and men, — Of earl and midge The privilege. Why swagger then? The gnat's supremacy Is ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... ability of the Spaniard to adapt himself to the customs of all foreign countries he imitated the manner of the English inhabitants of Gibraltar. He had bought himself a pipe, wore a traveling cap, turned up trousers and a swagger stick. The day on which he arrived, even before night-fall, they already knew throughout Gibraltar who he was and whither he was bound. Two days later the shopkeepers greeted him from the doors of their shops, and the idlers, gathered on the narrow square before the ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... would fain see all the Poets of our time pen such another play as that was; they'll prate and swagger, and keep a stir of art and devices, when (by God's so) they are the most shallow, pitiful fellows that live upon the face of the ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... wonderful new life that Martin had given her. A new life had begun for her on Christmas Day—in fact, it would be true to say that a new Joanna had begun. Something in her was broken, melted, changed out of all recognition—she was softer, weaker, more excited, more tender. She had lost much of her old swagger, her old cocksureness, for Martin had utterly surprised and tamed her. She had come to him in a scheming spirit of politics, and he had kept her in a spirit of devotion. She had come to him as Ansdore to North Farthing—but he had stripped ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... the limelit boards: With false moustache, set smirk and ogling eyes And straddling legs and swinging hips she tries To swagger it like a soldier, while the chords Of rampant ragtime jangle, clash, and clatter; And over the brassy blare and drumming din She strains to squirt her squeaky notes and thin ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... his best to put on a little swagger. He stuck one hand in his pocket, and twitched his hat a trifle on one side. Heathcote, too, instinctively let slip his jacket button so as to betray his watch- chain, and laughed rather loudly at something which nobody said. Poor young Aspinall attempted no such ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... cuif tak' up a quill, Wha ne'er did aught that he did well, To gar the muses rant and reel, An' flaunt and swagger, Nae doubt ye 'll say 't is that daft chiel ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... helpless as a turtle on its back, till the foster came and lifted him back to bed in her jaws. That was how he learned that it was not wise for very small pups to climb over the edges of beds. Towards evening, when many useful lessons had been learned, and the pup was beginning to swagger over the advantage given him by his new-found sense, in the matter of picking and choosing feeding-places, and demanding his foster-mother's attention by planting one foot on her eye, and so forth, Finn came to the conclusion that this new power ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... the middle, hung as a fringe or valance above, in the fashion sometimes affected by the other sex. He wore a heavy ring, of which the gold seemed fair, the diamond questionable, and the taste indifferent. There were the remains of a swagger in his body and limbs as he came forward, regarding Somerset with a confident smile, as if the wonder were, not why Mr. Dare should be present, but why Somerset should be present likewise; and the first tone that came from Dare's lips wound up his listener's opinion ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... genuineness has been set by the King and Queen. I met many different circles of people. From the highest to the lowest, there was a total absence of that arrogance which the American mind has so long associated with the English. For fear of being thought to swagger, an Englishman will understate his case. And so with the various English officers I met at the front. There was no swank. They were downright, unassuming, extremely efficient-looking men, quick to speak ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... ugly things he had expected, the ugly things of his far-away youth, when he had too promptly waked up to a sense of the ugly—these uncanny phenomena placed him rather, as it happened, under the charm; whereas the "swagger" things, the modern, the monstrous, the famous things, those he had more particularly, like thousands of ingenuous enquirers every year, come over to see, were exactly his sources of dismay. They were as so many set traps for displeasure, above all for reaction, ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... soil'd with rain) A hero all at once became, And (seeing others much the same In point of valour as himself, Who leave their courage on a shelf From year to year, till some such rout In proper season calls it out) 470 Strutted, look'd big, and swagger'd more Than ever hero did before; Look'd up, look'd down, look'd all around, Like Mavors, grimly smiled and frown'd; Seem'd Heaven, and Earth, and Hell to call To fight, that he might rout them all, And personated Valour's style So long, spectators to beguile, That, passing strange, and wondrous ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... been shot, and the other two men came jumping up to the door with their guns, but when they saw how many men we had they looked awful scairt. We all had our guns out, too!—Jap Kemp gave me one to carry—" Bud tried not to swagger as he told this, but it was almost too much for him. "Two of our men held the horses, and all the rest of us got down and went into the cabin. Jap Kemp, sounded his whistle and all our men done the same just ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... you'd think I swagger, I should say—than anybody! If you leave your place there, where shall you go?" he more ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... 'talents' and put him in training. He was a low, ignorant sailor; could scarcely write his own name; but he had biceps and a thick head. Didn't know when he was whipped. I can see him yet, as he used to look, with his giant shoulders and his swagger as he stepped into the ring. There was no nonsense about him—or his fist; could break a board with that. And how the shouts used to go up; 'the pet!' 'a quid on the pet!' 'ten bob on the stars and stripes!' meaning the costume he wore. Oh, ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... gorgeous red, when I puff out my chest and strut, than any robin's waistcoat or finch's tie.—A fine day. All is well. I curvet—I blow my horn. Conscious of having done my duty, I may quite properly assume the swagger of a musketeer, and the calm commanding bearing ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... failures and blunders, and there were hours when she still felt his dominion and exulted in it. But there were others when she saw his defects and was irritated by them: when his loudness and redness, his misplaced joviality, his familiarity with the servants, his alternating swagger and ceremony with her friends, jarred on perceptions that had developed in her unawares. Now and then she caught herself thinking that his two predecessors—who were gradually becoming merged in her memory—would have said this or that differently, behaved otherwise ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... you, sirs, was't not all well enough? Will you not grant that we can strut and huff? Men may be proud; but faith, for aught I see, They neither walk, nor cock, so well as we; And, for the fighting part, we may in time Grow up to swagger in heroic rhyme; For though we cannot boast of equal force, Yet, at some weapons, men have still the worse. Why should not then we women act alone? Or whence are men so necessary grown? Our's are so old, they ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... Frenchmen walked along the deck, that there was a good deal of swagger in their manner, but I only set it down to Gallic impudence. While this conversation was going on, one of our midshipmen, a smart youngster—Mowbray, I think, was his name—had been inquisitively examining the Frenchmen, and he now hurried up to the captain, and drew ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... once to Mrs. Bines and Psyche of the latest fashions for mourners. Crepe was more swagger than ever before, both as trimming and for ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... sons, seem to have been much like Christian fathers of modern days in their indulgences. The lad was now nineteen years old, and does not appear to have been willing, at the first parental attempt, to give up his military appanages and that swagger of the young officer which is so dear to the would-be military mind. Cicero tells him that if he joined the army he would find his cousin treated with greater favor than himself. Young Quintus was older, and had been already able to do something to push ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... drizzle of rain which prevented sight-seeing for those who had the wish, and the freedom, to go about. As for me, I was ordered by Lady Turnour to mend Mr. Stokes's socks, he having made peace by offering to "give her a swagger dinner in town." ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... few minutes afterwards a small, slender boy of fourteen, with only Eton's own inimitable self-confidence and delicious swagger printed upon his every line, drove up to the door, and, paying for the taxi in a lordly way, came into his mother's morning-room. There had been a gap in the family after Tristram's appearance, caused by the death, ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... the grounds in much more open fashion. He was a man in the late twenties; well-set up, neatly, even sprucely, dressed; and he walked with a slight swagger. He looked very much at home and very certain ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... expressed in his countenance, the muscular strength of his stalwart frame, all his physical powers were shown only to his fellow-men; a form of flattery which women appreciate, nay, which so intoxicates them, that every man with his mistress on his arm assumes a matador swagger that provokes a smile. Very well set up, in a closely fitting blue coat with solid gold buttons, in black trousers, spotless patent evening boots, and gloves of a fashionable hue, the only Brazilian touch in ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... the Lecture Bureau may be found in a swagger Club any evening with a Bourbon H. B. at his Right, a stack of Student Lamps at his Left and Two Small Pair pressed ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... to regret it thereafter, for throughout that tedious march he found his roystering companion singularly meek and kindly. Indeed he seemed a different man. His old swagger and roaring bluster disappeared; he drank less, diced less, blasphemed less, and stormed less than in the old days before the halt at Penrith; but rode, a silent, thoughtful figure, so self-contained and of so godly a mien as would have rejoiced the heart of the sourest Puritan. ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... then the front garden of the Carvils. His tall shadow strode with a swagger; she turned her back on the window and waited, watching the shape, of which the footfalls seemed the most material part. The light fell on a tilted hat; a powerful shoulder, that seemed to cleave the darkness; on a leg stepping out. He swung about and stood still, facing ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... the men liked him, for he had fought bravely on the field of battle, was a sportsman and had about him that frank and abundant gaiete de coeur, which powerfully attracts the less exuberant Englishman. For his part CASANUOVA (that was his name) bore all his successes with good-nature and without swagger. Of course there were whispers about him. Where so many women worshipped, it was certain that two or three would lose their heads. Amongst this limited number was little Mrs. MILLETT, one of Lady CALLENDER's most intimate friends. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... continued the venerable wreck, after a short pause,—"yes, I like my residence pretty well; I enjoy a calm conscience, and a clean shirt: what more can man desire? I have made acquaintance with a tame parrot, and I have taught it to say, whenever an English fool with a stiff neck and a loose swagger passes him—'True Briton—true Briton.' I take care of my health, and reflect upon old age. I have read Gil Blas, and the Whole Duty of Man; and, in short, what with instructing my parrot, and improving myself, I think I pass my time as creditably ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... orator. "He is still very young, but you may to some extent judge from the delicacy of his present work of the heights he will attain by diligence. Yasha!" A swarthy youth in a blue silk blouse and long glace boots, like a gipsy, came forward with a swagger, fingering the tassels of his belt, and merrily screwing up his big, impudent black ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... hurry, you old grampus," cried Mr. Brown, with a swagger and an indifferent look, as though he had been used to just such society as was present. "We are strangers here, but we have lived in the bush for a few years, and knows ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... was in correspondence with several—were thinking of joining. If they had been making a move he would have gone at once—very competitive, and with a strong sense of form, he could not bear to be left behind in anything—but to do it off his own bat might look like 'swagger'; because of course it wasn't really necessary. Besides, he did not want to go, for the other side of this young Forsyte recoiled from leaping before he looked. It was altogether mixed pickles within him, hot and sickly pickles, and he became quite ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... day, an older man than Hanson had imagined and of a different type. There was no smack of the circus ring about him, no swagger of the footlights; nor any hint of the emotional, gay temperament supposed to be the inheritance of southern blood. He was a saturnine, gnarled old Spaniard with lean jaws and beetling brows. His skin was like parchment. It clung to his bones and fell in heavy wrinkles ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... that he was very conversant with them, as much so as any captain of his day, and he always exposed himself courageously to danger. In difficulties, he was observed to be full of magnanimity and resource in getting out of them, always showing himself quite free from swagger and parade. In short, he was a personage worthy to re-establish an enfeebled and a corrupted state. I was fain to say these few words about him in passing, for, having known him and been much with him, and having profited ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... passport, I subsequently discovered the identity of the delinquent with an individual, whom doubtless many who were with Garibaldi during the campaign of the Two Sicilies will call to mind. He was then only remarkable for his Calabrian costume and excessive amount of swagger. When at Niksich I learned that he had escaped through that town into Montenegro, and he has not, ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... great disappointment to the Dons,' Carrel said with a short laugh, and he lit a cigarette with all the swagger of ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... French or German. His voice had been quiet and deferential, but by no means genteel; nor had it any hint of the roystering joviality of a sailor. More than anything else his gait, in its sedate unobtrusiveness, seemed to me utterly at variance with the rolling swagger which we conventionally associate ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... I found that I had risen to the dignity of Sergeant, and carried my Halberd with an assured strut and swagger, nobody dreaming that I was a wild Irish girl from the Wicklow Mountains. I might have risen, in time, to a commission and the Cross of St. Louis; but the piping times of peace turned all such brave grapes sour. I was glad enough, when the alternative was given me, of accompanying my Captain, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... altered the fashion of his hair, had fastened on large bushy eyebrows which he had obtained from a skilful perruquier in Cadiz, and a moustache of imposing size turned up at the tips; he wore high buff leather boots, and there was an air of military swagger about him, and he was altogether so changed that at the first glance the muleteer failed to recognize him. As soon as the mules were unburdened, Gerald found an opportunity of ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... of his accustomed swagger began to return. "I don't know what the flowery phrases are all about, but the symbols refer to common proteins, lipins, carbohydrates, vitamins, and biomins," he said. "What ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... The swagger went out of Hugh's walk and he stopped to let the men pass out of sight and hearing along the track. When they had gone a little away a quarrel broke out. Each man felt the others must be in some way responsible for his betrayal in the matter of the contest with Ed Hall and accusations ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... one must be To-day, to "fetch" Sassiety; Not too strict, of swagger free, And as "fly" as "fly" can be. Ever pushing, ever bold, (Else one's left "out in the cold") Thus Success you grasp, and hold. And may ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... that the fathers of our liberty had two legs apiece, and crossed them in concert with the utmost regularity. One might think, at first, that these narrow boots were as uncomfortable to the calesero as the Scottish instrument of torture of that name; but his little swagger when he is down, and his freedom in kicking when he is up, show that he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... that my proposal solved the difficulty. I besought him to make out the bill for my little entertainment as quickly as possible. Then I dismounted from my chair and beckoned to the dwarf, still sitting white and piteous, to join me. He obeyed like a frightened child who had been naughty. All his swagger and braggadocio were gone. His bosom heaved with suppressed sobs. He sat down on the chair I had vacated and buried his face on the ecarte table. We remained thus aloof from the crowd who were intent on the calculation at the baccarat table. At last the raven ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... employment of the time that brought in much money), and friend as he was of nearly all the men of letters of the time, it is expressly stated in one of the few personal notices we have of him, that he could not "swagger in a tavern or domineer in a hothouse" [house of ill-fame]—that is to say, that the hail-fellow well-met Bohemianism of the time, which had led Marlowe and many of his group to evil ends, and which was continued in ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Paix—well, alongside of him the most rapacious restaurant proprietor on Broadway is a kindly, Christian soul who is in business for his health—and not feeling very healthy at that. When you dine at one of the swagger boulevard places the head waiter always comes, just before you have finished, and places a display of fresh fruit before you, with a winning smile and a bow and a gesture, which, taken together, would seem to indicate that he is extending the compliments of the season ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Mac; it would take months of research to discover it. I can't explain your psychology, but I'll tell you something about my own. These swagger corduroys I'm wearing . . . when I bought them someone asked me why I chose corduroy, and I at once answered: 'Economy! They'll last ten years!' But that wasn't the real reason, I bought them because I wanted ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... made of wax shall lodge each member Close by the hinges of a block of timber. We then no more shall Master, master, whoot, The swagger, who th' alarum bell holds out; Could one seize on the dagger which he bears, Heads would be free from tingling in the ears, To baffle the whole storehouse of abuses. The thus ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... world got to seeming a bit dull, instead of moping and feeling sorry and waiting for something to happen, Jay looked about for some way of amusing himself. He was something of a bully,—a great deal of a bully, in fact,—this dashing rascal in a gay blue coat; and the more he could swagger, the better he ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... romantic notions of you as the emperor of the criminal world, if you kiss me as you did just now—you kissed me rather well—and then ask me to marry you? It isn't your role. You must light a cigarette now, pat the back of my hand, and swagger off to another of your ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... their studies. The temper of the students is admirable. Rarely if ever do they betray any traces of the hectoring spirit which still lingers at Heidelberg, for instance. But for the display of corps-caps and cannon boots and an occasional swagger in the street, one might pass an entire semester in Leipsic without realizing that the city contains three thousand students. Undoubtedly, the young men perceive, like their colleagues of Yale, that their surroundings are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... short man swagger tow'rds the footlights at Shoreditch, Sing out "Heave aho! my hearties," and perpetually hitch Up, by an ingenious movement, trousers innocent of brace, Briskly flourishing a cudgel in his ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... languages, but that they are accustomed, in the rough and varied colonial life, to looking after themselves and thinking for themselves, and trusting no one else to do it for them. You can see this self-reliance of theirs in their manner, in their gait and swagger and the way they walk, in the easy lift and fall of the carbines on their hips, the way they hold their heads and speak and look ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... weaving, or some ingenious mechanical toy that Oberlies had picked up in Germany. He was an older man than Yoeder, wore a short beard that was white and curly, like his hair, and though he was low in stature, his puffy red face and full blue eyes, and a certain swagger about his carriage, gave him a look of importance. He was boastful and quick-tempered, but until the war broke out in Europe nobody had ever had any trouble with him. Since then he had constantly found fault and complained,—everything was better ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... very meritorious parish-priest, of fair repute too as a preacher, who has striven for years, hard but unavailingly, to divest himself of the martial air he brought with him out of the K.D.G. He strides down the village street with a certain swagger and roll, as if the steel scabbard were still trailing at his heel, acknowledging rustic bows with a slight quick motion of the finger, like troopers' salutes; on the smooth shaven face is shadowed ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... me, my dear, with a whole ten pounds to spend as I liked. What fun we'd have! Most of it would have to go in useful things, but we'd take a sovereign or two and have a reckless burst just to see what it was like. A hansom to town, lunch at a real swagger restaurant; and, after that, good seats at a matinee, ices between the acts, and another hansom home, instead of shivering at the corner waiting for omnibuses. Oh, bliss! Oh, rapture! If it could only come true! If uncle ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... said the Prince, and he ordered out his pack of hippopotamuses at once. It was his custom to hunt big game with hippopotamuses, and people would not have minded that so much—but he would swagger about in the streets of the town with his pack yelping and gamboling at his heels, and when he did that, the green-grocer, who had his stall in the marketplace, always regretted it; and the crockery merchant, who spread his wares on the pavement, was ruined for life every ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... brown breeches, and gaiters nearly up to his knees. I don't know that a young man in the country could wear more suitable attire. And he was a well-made man, just such a one as, in this dress, would take the eye of a country girl. There was a little bit of dash about him, just a touch of swagger, which better breeding might have prevented. But it was not enough to make him odious to an unprejudiced observer. I could fancy that an old lady from London, with an eye in her head for manly symmetry, would have liked to look at Larry, ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... awfully good to chaps at school that I am sure you will insert this letter. SMITH MINOR, who takes in the Times, says, that a "PARENT" has been writing to say, that there should be a meeting of Fathers to swagger over the meeting of Head Masters. Well, this wouldn't be half a bad idea if it were properly conducted; but the "PARENT" seems to be a beast of a governor, who wants to cut down the holidays, and such like ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... have got on a swagger dress this time!' cried Mr. Tom, who, though he had never been to Oxford, was a genuine free-trader in slang, and was ready to ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... might mean. They, deep in their conversation, did not notice her. Then, with a feeling of extraordinary relief—she hardly knew why—she saw a familiar, substantial person coming along the promenade with a sort of friendly swagger. She went forward to meet him, still feeling as though she were ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... dull rage against the other two. How dared they pretend not to be afraid? It was all swagger—he knew that very well. Various unpleasant recollections began to rise in his mind. He remembered how that Indian spy had stalked the settler's cabin at Earl's Court. He could see him now, stealing over ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... of me presently, with a hang-dog look on him, as if he had been caught stealing jam. "What a lark it'll be when she's really gone!" he observed, with a swagger obviously assumed. ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... leave these Pedagogues to huff and swagger in the heighth of all their Arrogance. I cannot but think it great Pity, that in our Considerations, for Refinement of the English Tongue, so little Regard is had to Antiquity, and the Original of our ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... were t'other fair charmer away.' Baltazar, the Noble Soldier, is something of a bore. At first we are a little suspicious of him, for he seems to 'protest too much'; and even when these suspicions are set at rest his strut and swagger continue ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... sunrise the natives were astir in preparation for the great event. All of them discarded their tarred clothing, appearing in natty white "Americanos" and dinky straw hats, while some even sported swagger sticks. In the Philippines any white suit which consists of well fitting trousers and a coat buttoning up to the throat, as contradistinguished from baggy pantaloons with a camisa worn on the outside, ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... suddenly opened. Fenn entered and received a little chorus of welcome. He was wearing a rough black overcoat over his evening clothes, and a black bowler hat. He advanced to the table with a little familiar swagger. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... an actress for ogling she might reasonably reply, "But this is how I support my friend Anne in her sublime evolutionary effort." Whenever he laughed at an old-fashioned actor for ranting, the actor might answer, "My exaggeration is not more absurd than the tail of a peacock or the swagger of a cock; it is the way I preach the great fruitful lie of the life-force that I am a very fine fellow." We have remarked the end of Shaw's campaign in favour of progress. This ought really to have been the end of his campaign against romance. All the tricks of love that he called ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... a ludicrous account of Lord Byron's insisting upon taking precedence of the 'corps diplomatique' in a procession at Constantinople (when Canning was secretary), and upon Adair's refusing it, limping, with as much swagger as he could muster, up the hall, cocking a foreign military hat on his head. He found, however, he was wrong, and wrote a very frank letter acknowledging it, and offering to take his ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... menial and indecent occupations on the globe. But that pecooliarity, which is only skin-deep in the working Boche, is in the bone of the grandee. Your German aristocracy can't consort on terms of equality with any other Upper Ten Thousand. They swagger and bluff about the world, but they know very well that the world's sniggering at them. They're like a boss from Salt Creek Gully who's made his pile and bought a dress suit and dropped into a Newport ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... Joe Wilkinson and Dan came slowly up the street, toward the Boyd house. The light of battle was still in Dan's eyes, his clothes were torn and his collar missing, and he walked with the fine swagger ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... with the hearts of the village maidens by reason of his fascinating ways and pretty broken English), had just facetiously chucked two of the women dressers under the chin; and these damsels were simpering at this mark of condescension, and evidently much impressed by the swagger and braggadocio of the miniature warrior. However, Mlle. Girond (the boy-officer in question) no sooner caught sight of the new-comer than she instantly and demurely altered her demeanor; and as she ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... in the early days of my acquaintance with the family I was somewhat tempted to this opinion myself. For she not only flouted the old lady to her face, but would upon occasion disregard her utterly, and do it all with what I can only call a swagger that seemed to demand a local application of drastic measures. But Katje knew her victim, if such a word can be applied to the Vrouw Grobelaar, and never prodded her save on her armor. For instance, to say the ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... started for the ball-ground, but at this taunt he turned back, thrust his hands into his pockets, put on a swagger, and stammered: "No, I'm not afraid ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... delighted to meet him one day at Kolatschek's lodgings. The vicissitudes which had brought him to Zurich came to my knowledge afterwards in a somewhat offensive and aggressive manner. For the present, Herwegh put on an aristocratic swagger and gave himself the airs of a delicately nurtured and luxurious son of his times, to which a fairly liberal interpolation of French expletives at least added a certain distinction. Nevertheless, there was something ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... fourth cuspidor of beer and was in a delightful state of swagger and fight when he saw an unusual commotion up the street. What was it, thought Bonaparte—a crowd of boys and men surrounding another man with an organ and leading a little devil of a hairy thing, dressed ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... bootblack or newsboy, he is an adept in all the tricks of the trade; and as a fast young man about town among his kind, he is worthy his white prototype: the swagger, the impertinent look, the coarse remark, the loud laugh, are all in the best style. As a lounger and starer also, on the street corners of a Sunday afternoon, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... his irritation, he could not but admire the sort of affectionate swagger with which McVay rose to greet her, as if the brother of so tender a creature must ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... awkward cowardice, or fly into a passion, and appeal to the halter and the sword. Such a Government can never take itself for granted, because it knows that it is not taken for granted by the people. It never can possess the quiet assurance, the courteous dignity, without swagger, yet without hesitation, which belongs to hereditary legislators; by which term is to be understood, not merely kings, not merely noblemen, but every citizen of a free nation, however democratic, who has received from his forefathers ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... only too apt a pupil in the lessons in the midst of which his childhood had been passed. He had at his tongue's tip all the slang of the stables and all the blackguardisms of the betting-ring; and boy—almost child—as he was, he affected the swagger and habits of a "fast man," like a true ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... his tea and the officers like to carry their canes and swagger sticks with them "over the top" into battle. A brave, unpretending man, who likes his own ways and wishes to be allowed to follow them and who is willing to fight and die that others also may be free—such is the English Tommy. With ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... saved a small sum out of the wreck of his fortune, and with his family removed to the West, where they were obliged to adopt a very different style of living. Randolph is now an office boy at a salary of four dollars a week, and is no longer able to swagger and boast as he has done hitherto. Mr. Tomkins, Linton's father, was elected president of the Groveton Bank in place of Mr. Duncan, much to the satisfaction ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... marvellously akin; and such differences as you will see in them are superficial merely. I spoke of Whistler's vanity in life, and I spoke of his timidity and reverence in art. That contradiction is itself merely superficial. Bob Acres was timid, but he was also vain. His swagger was not an empty assumption to cloak his fears; he really did regard himself as a masterful and dare-devil fellow, except when he was actually fighting. Similarly, except when he was at his work, Whistler, doubtless, really did think of himself as a brilliant ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... And it was plain now that his courage was deserting him. But in proportion his cunning rose. He made a pitiful attempt at swagger as he walked up to his mark, and his fierce eyes watched every movement of his opponent. And Arizona's evident condition of starvation struck him forcibly, and the realization of it suggested to his scheming brain a ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... long after, attired in blue linen, with yellow boots, in the careless rig-out of a Parisian out for a holiday. He seemed, too, to have become more common, more jolly, more familiar, having assumed along with his would-be rustic garb a free and easy swagger which he thought suited the style of dress. His new apparel somewhat shocked M. and Madame de Meroul, who even at home on their estate always remained serious and respectable, as the particle "de" before their name exacted a certain amount of ceremonial ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant |
