Boast Quotes - Page 6

• Say, Britain, could you ever boast, Three poets in an age at most? Our chilling climate hardly bears A sprig of bays in fifty years.

  Jonathan Swift

  Years, Age, Climate

  'On Poetry' (1733) l. 5

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• A town that boasts inhabitants like me Can have no lack of good society.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Towns, Like Me

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1873). “Tales of a Wayside Inn”, p.138

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• Do not fall into the error of the artist who boasts of twenty years experience in his craft while in fact he has had only one year of experience - twenty times.

  Trevanian

  Fall, Artist, Errors

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• Big words do not smite like war-clubs, Boastful breath is not a bow-string, Taunts are not so sharp as arrows, Deeds are better things than words are, Actions mightier than boastings.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  War, Arrows, Deeds

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, J. D. McClatchy (2000). “Poems and Other Writings”, p.195, Library of America

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• Man's highest blessedness, In wisdom chiefly stands; And in the things that touch upon the Gods, 'Tis best in word or deed To shun unholy pride; Great words of boasting bring great punishments, And so to grey-haired age Teach wisdom at the last.

  Sophocles

  Wisdom, Pride, Men

  Sophocles, Edward Hayes PLUMPTRE (Dean of Wells.) (1867). “The Tragedies of Sophocles. A new translation, with a biographical essay by E. H. Plumptre”, p.177

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• That, Senators, is what a favour from gangs amounts to. They refrain from murdering someone; then they boast that they have spared him!

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Favour, Gang, Refrain

  "Philippics". Book by Marcus Tullius Cicero, 44 BC.

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• Jewel-Like the immortaldoes not boast of its length of yearsbut of the scintillating point of the moment.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Jewels, Moments, Length

  Rabindranath Tagore, “Fireflies”

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• Men may boast of their great actions; but they are more often the effects of chance than of design.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Men, Design, May

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• Give heed to the cause of the holy Roman Church, mother of all churches and teacher of the faith, whom you by the order of God, have consecrated by your blood. Against the Roman Church, you warned, lying teachers are rising, introducing ruinous sects, and drawing upon themselves speedy doom. Their tongues are fire, a restless evil, full of deadly poison. They have bitter zeal, contention in their hearts, and boast and lie against the truth.

  Pope Leo X

  Mother, Teacher, Lying

  "Exsurge Domine". Papal bull by Pope Leo X, 1520.

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• If an author be supposed to involve his thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to obstruct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind eager in the pursuit of truth; if he writes not to make others learned, but to boast the learning which he possesses himself, and wishes to be admired rather than understood, he counteracts the first end of writing, and justly suffers the utmost severity of censure, or the more afflicting severity of neglect.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Mind, Suffering

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”

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• If a story is funny, and I made it up, then the big message is, `Aren't I clever?' .. If a story is funny and it actually happened, the big message is, `Isn't the world funny?' And actually I think that's a better message. I kind of want to think that about the world -- and it sounds less like boasting.

  Dave Gorman

  Clever, Thinking, Sound

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• The statesmen of the world who boast and threaten that they have Doomsday weapons are far more dangerous, and far more estranged from 'reality',than many of the people on whom the label 'psychotic' is affixed

  R. D. Laing

  Reality, People, Labels

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• We love the blather and boast, the charge and counter-charge of campaigning. Governing is a tougher deal.

  Hugh Sidey

  Politics, Blather, Deals

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• No language can fitly express the meanness, the baseness, the brutality, with which the world has ever treated its victims of one age and boasts of the next. Dante is worshipped at that grave to which he was hurried by persecution. Milton, in his own day, was "Mr. Milton, the blind adder, that spit his venom on the king's person"; and soon after, "the mighty orb of song." These absurd transitions from hatred to apotheosis, this recognition just at the moment when it becomes a mockery, saddens all intellectual history.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Song, Kings, Hatred

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Literature and life, lects”, p.4

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• Duke Chartres used to boast that no man could have less real value for character than himself, yet he would gladly give twenty thousand pounds for a good one, because he could immediately make double that sum by means of it.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Real, Character, Mean

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.377

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• Death puts an end to rivalship and competition. The dead can boast no advantage over us, nor can we triumph over them.

  William Hazlitt

  Competition, Triumph, Advantage

  William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.525

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• It has long been my boast that I can read or eat anything. But unfortunately, although I eat like a Hoover, I read so slowly that I am always on the smart book three years after everyone else has finished.

  Katharine Whitehorn

  Smart, Book, Reading

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• It is in general more profitable to reckon up our defeats than to boast of our attainments.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Basketball, Defeat, Attainment

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• The pretender sees no one but himself, Because he has the veil of conceit in front; If he were endowed with a God discerning eye, He would see that no one is weaker than himself.

  Bill Vaughan

  Eye, Veils, Conceit

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• Anglers boast of the innocence of their pastime; yet it puts fellow-creatures to the torture. They pique themselves on their meditative faculties; and yet their only excuse is a want of thought.

  Leigh Hunt

  Sea, Fishing, Rivers

  Leigh Hunt (1859). “Works”, p.38

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• If all you boast of your great art be true; Sure, willing poverty lives most in you.

  Ben Jonson

  Art, Poverty, Being True

  Ben Jonson (1838). “The Works of Ben Jonson”, p.665

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• Capitalism has been fully restored in Yugoslavia, as is well-known, but this capitalism knows how to disguise. Yugoslavia portrays itself as a socialist state, but of a special kind, as the world has never seen it before! The Titoites even boast that their state has nothing in common with the first socialist state which emerged from the socialist October Revolution and which was founded by Lenin and Stalin on the basis of the scientific theory of Marx and Engels.

  Enver Hoxha

  Yugoslavia, October Revolution, Special

  "Yugoslav "Self-Administration" - Capitalist Theory and Practice". "Directions of the Development of the Political System of Socialist Self-Administration", Institute of Marxist-Leninist studies of the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Albania, Tirana, 1978.

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• Had but my deeds been like my words, ah, then I had been numbered too with holy men.

  Bill Vaughan

  Men, Deeds, Holy

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• By the Revolution the Germans have made themselves pariahs among the nations, incapable of winning allies, helots in the service of foreigners and foreign capital, and deprived of all self-respect. In twenty years' time, the German people will curse the parties who now boast of having made the Revolution.

  Erich Ludendorff

  Party, Winning, Self

  "My War Memories, 1914-1918". Book by Erich Ludendorff, 1919.

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• Listening a cultivated person of today that jokes and almost boasts about his scientific ignorance, is as sad as listening a scientist that boasts about not having read any poem.

  Carlo Rovelli

  Ignorance, Listening, Today

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