Coxcomb Quotes & Sayings

You will excuse my being so much overpowered. If I find him conversible, I shall be glad of his acquaintance; but if he is only a chattering coxcomb, he will not occupy much of my time or thoughts. — Jane Austen

A coxcomb is the blockhead's man of merit. — Jean De La Bruyere

It is always easy to shut a book, but not quite so easy to get rid of a lettered coxcomb. — Charles Caleb Colton

For a long time, I dressed like an idiot. In college, I had a fully shaved head with just two horns. Like, a coxcomb of hair that I would sculpt into two horns. I looked like a crazy person. — Kurt Braunohler

The best thing next to wit is a consciousness that it is not in us; without wit, a man might then know how to behave himself, so as not to appear to be a fool or a coxcomb. — Jean De La Bruyere

Of all the fools that pride can boast, A Coxcomb claims distinction most. — John Gay

You're the star," said Tristran, comprehension dawning. "And you're a clodpoll," said the girl, bitterly, "and a ninny, a numbskull, a lackwit and a coxcomb! — Neil Gaiman

Swearing is, as I have said, learning to the ignorant, eloquence to the blockhead, vivacity to the stupid, and wit to the coxcomb. — Mary Collyer

At which Charion Pratt blushed girlishly, to her own furious embarrassment, yet the eye she cast upon the little coxcomb was not unlike that which a certain toad had once cast upon her: for there is never anything but apparent paradox in the choices made by lovers. — Michael Moorcock

A coxcomb is one whom simpletons believe to be a man of merit. — Jean De La Bruyere

I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face. — John Ruskin

Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A coxcomb is four-fifths affectation and one-fifth vanity. — Thomas Chandler Haliburton

A coxcomb is ugly all over with the effectation of a fine gentleman. — Samuel Johnson

The difference 'twixt poet and coxcomb is precisely that the latter stops gaps like a ship fitter caulking seams, merely to keep the boat afloat, while the former doth his work as doth a man with a maid: he fills the gap, but with vigor, finesse, and care; there's beauty and delight as well as utility in his plugging — John Barth

A coxcomb begins by determining that his own profession is the first; and he finishes by deciding that he is the first of profession. — Charles Caleb Colton

You would compliment a coxcomb doing a good act, but you would not praise an angel. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I sometimes, in my sprightly moments, consider myself, in my great chair at school, as some dictator at the head of a common-wealth. In this little state I can discover all the great geniuses, all the surprising actions and revolutions of the great world in miniature. I have several renowned generals but three feet high, and several deep-projecting politicians in petticoats. I have others catching and dissecting flies, accumulating remarkable pebbles, cockleshells, etc., with as ardent curiosity as any virtuoso in the Royal Society ... . At one table sits Mr. Insipid foppling and fluttering, spinning his whirligig, or playing with his fingers as gaily and wittily as any Frenchified coxcomb brandishes his cane and rattles his snuff box. At another sits the polemical divine, plodding and wrangling in his mind about Adam's fall in which we sinned, all as his primer has it. — John Adams

All the world says of a coxcomb that he is a coxcomb; but no one dares to say so to his face, and he dies without knowing it. — Jean De La Bruyere

And angling too, that solitary vice, What Izaak Walton sings or says: The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb, in his gullet Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it. — Lord Byron

Nature in her whole drama never drew such a part; she has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man's own making ... — Joseph Addison

Once a coxcomb, always a coxcomb. — Samuel Johnson

There are two distinct sorts of what we call bashfulness; this, the awkwardness of a booby, which a few steps into the world will convert into the pertness of a coxcomb; that, a consciousness, which the most delicate feelings produce, and the most extensive knowledge cannot always remove. — Henry MacKenzie

We picture the world as thick with conquering and elate humanity, but here, with the bugles of the tempest peeling, it was hard to imagine a peopled earth. One viewed the existence of man then as a marvel, and conceded a glamour of wonder to these lice which were caused to cling to a whirling, fire-smitten, ice-locked, disease-stricken, space-lost bulb. The conceit of man was explained by this storm to be the very engine of life. One was a coxcomb not to die in it. — Stephen Crane

Foppery is never cured; it is the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, are never rectified; once a coxcomb always a coxcomb. — Samuel Johnson