C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Blustering
A killing tongue and a quiet sword.
Splitting the air with noise.
The devil may be bullied, but not the Deity.
Loudness is impotence.
Ever the characteristic manners of cowardice.
Bold at the council board, but cautious in the field.
The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.
They that have voice of lions and act of hares,—are they not monsters?
Without big words, how could many people say small things?
A brave man is sometimes a desperado: a bully is always a coward.
Wine and the sun will make vinegar without any shouting to help them.
True courage scorns to vent her prowess in a storm of words; and to the valiant action speaks alone.
There are braying men in the world, as well as braying asses; for what is loud and senseless talking any other than a way of braying?
The insignificant, the empty, is usually the loud; and after the manner of a drum, is louder even because of its emptiness.
It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow-necked bottles; the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out.
That, of course, they are many in number, or that, after all, they are, other than the little, shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour.
Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposing beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.
Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. In springing a mine, that which has done the most extensive mischief makes the smallest report; and again, if we consider the effect of lightning, it is probable that he that is killed by it hears no noise; but the thunderclap which follows, and which most alarms the ignorant, is the surest proof of their safety.