No more delay, vain boaster, but begin. [ Dryden ]

Where boasting ends, there dignity begins. [ Young ]

Fools carry their daggers in their open mouths. [ H. W. Shaw ]

Conceit, more rich in matter than in words,
Brags of his substance, not of ornament:
They are but beggars that can count their worth. [ William Shakespeare ]

The man that once did sell the lion's skin
While the beast lived, was killed with hunting him. [ William Shakespeare ]

Sure there is none but fears a future state;
And when the most obdurate swear they do not.
Their trembling hearts belie their boasting tongues. [ Dryden ]

The honor is overpaid when he that did the act is commentator. [ Shirley ]

It will come to pass that every braggart shall be found an ass. [ Shakespeare ]

The less people speak of their greatness the more we think of it. [ Bacon ]

Pride, in boasting of family antiquity, makes duration stand for merit. [ Zimmermann ]

Commonly they use their feet for defence, whose tongue is their weapon. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed; nature never pretends. [ Lavater ]

With all his tumid boasts, he's like the sword-fish, who only wears his weapon in his mouth. [ Madden ]

Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished; but nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred. [ Charles Buxton ]

We wound our modesty, and make foul the clearness of our deservings, when of ourselves we publish them. [ William Shakespeare ]

A gentleman that loves to hear himself talk will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month. [ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet ]

There are men who pride themselves on their insensibility to love: it is like boasting of having been always stupid. [ S. de Castres ]

Men of real merit, and whose noble and glorious deeds we are ready to acknowledge, are yet not to be endured when they vaunt their own actions. [ Aeschines ]

There is this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it. [ Emerson ]

Boasting and bravado may exist in the breast even of the coward, if he is successful through a mere lucky hit: but a just contempt of an enemy can alone arise in those who feel that they are superior to their opponent by the prudence of their measures. [ Thucydides ]

One man affirms that he has rode post a hundred miles in six hours: probably it is a lie; but supposing it to be true, what then? Why, he is a very good post-boy; that is all. Another asserts, and probably not without oaths, that he has drunk six or eight bottles of wine at a sitting; out of charity I will believe him a liar; for, if I do not, I must think him a beast. [ Chesterfield ]

Lord Bacon told Sir Edward Coke when he boasted, The less you speak of your greatness, the more I shall think of it. Mirrors are the accompaniments of dandies, not heroes. The men of history were not perpetually looking in the glass to make sure of their own size. Absorbed in their work they did it, and did it so well that the wondering world saw them to be great, and labeled them accordingly. [ Rev. S. Coley ]