popinjays

"What's it to be to-night?" he began, as he walked up to us; but he suddenly saw our pyjama outfit, and was very rude about it, calling us "popinjays," and "degenerate æsthetes."

Tell England A Study in a Generation Ernest Raymond 1931

Tolstoy believed great leaders are puffed-up popinjays.

Tolstoy, Hayek, and David Brooks, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

Evangelicalism has been mortally infected with the Calvinist virus, turning them into moral scolds and idiotic popinjays.

Think Progress » American Family Association Pins SeaWorld Death On Lack Of Christianity: ‘Bible Ignored, Trainer Died’ 2010

Tolstoy believed great leaders are puffed-up popinjays.

EconLog: Institutional Economics Archives 2010

I speak of our Congress, and the other strutting popinjays around the world.

The “Obama, knave or fool?” question… 2010

After I fought fairly and danced in the lists with all your princes and popinjays, raising my visor and proffering lances at the beck and call of a brassy Solamnic trumpet!

Virginity Sydney Kilgore 2010

Tolstoy believed great leaders are puffed-up popinjays.

EconLog: July 2007 Archives 2007

Tolstoy, you see, "believed great leaders were puffed-up popinjays," and that "societies move and breathe on their own, through the jostling of mentalities and habits."

Ellis Weiner: Our Mister Brooks II: Reloaded 2008

But doubtless his service must be to mount guard over the popinjays and Indian peacocks, which the Venetian ambassador had lately presented to the King — it could be nothing else; and such duty being only fit for a beardless boy (here he twirled his own grim mustaches), he was glad the lot had fallen on his fair nephew.

Quentin Durward 2008

But gayer men and better courtiers soon jostled aside my rude homage, and I think your Grace cannot but remember times, when my awkward attempts to take the manners that pleased you, were the sport of the court-popinjays, the Marys and the

The Abbot 2008