"Conceit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will not believe it, nor will I rank you among Christians, unless I see you in the Church of Christ." The other, in banter, replied, "Do walls then make Christians?" And this he often said, that he was already a Christian; and Simplicianus as often made the same answer, and the conceit of the "walls" was by the other as often renewed. For he feared to offend his friends, proud daemon-worshippers, from the height of whose Babylonian dignity, as from cedars of Libanus, which the Lord had not yet broken down, he supposed ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... reality it belongs to neither. The Japanese have roamed all over the country during these last two years, and have spent time and money lavishly in propaganda. They first tried to orientate the Mongol mind towards a direct connection with themselves, but their avarice and conceit offend all the people with whom they come into contact. This direct method of getting control of Mongolia had therefore to be abandoned in favour of a round-about but more dangerous policy. Colonel Semianoff is only half Russian, his mother being a Mongolian woman of high birth. He speaks Mongolian ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... laugh. The doctor had one annoying habit—imagined he had the right to poke fun at everybody simply because he was a doctor. "The man's riddled with conceit, like all these ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... neere by gratious heauens assignd When Philips Sonne must fall in Babilon, In his triumphing proud persumption: But see where melancholy Brutus walkes, 1390 Whose minde is hammering on no meane conceit: Then sound him Cassius, see how hee is inclined, How fares young Brutus in this tottering state. Bru. Euen as an idle gazer, that beholdes, His Countries wrackes and cannot succor bring. Cassi. But wil Brute alwaies in this dreame remaine, And not bee mooued with ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... notion, conception, thought, apprehension, impression, perception, image, [Grk], sentiment, reflection, observation, consideration; abstract idea; archetype, formative notion; guiding conception, organizing conception; image in the mind, regulative principle. view &c. (opinion) 484; theory &c. 514; conceit, fancy; phantasy &c. (imagination) 515.point of view &c. (aspect) 448; field ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... about it at all—as being the supreme country in the world. He didn't force his opinion down anyone's throat; it simply was so. If the other fellow didn't agree, the funeral was his, not Vane's. He had to the full what the uninitiated regard as conceit; on matters connected with literature, or art, or music his knowledge was microscopic. Moreover, he regarded with suspicion anyone who talked intelligently on such subjects. On the other hand, he had been in the eleven at ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... difficulty, unless he had fallen into a pit. In the meanwhile, the poor miner, it seems, had succeeded in reaching the Salts Room, filling his sack, and retracing his steps half way back to the Grand Gallery; when finding the distance greater than he thought it ought to be, the conceit entered his unlucky brain that he might perhaps be going wrong. No sooner had the suspicion struck him, than he fell into a violent terror, dropped his sack, ran backwards, then returned, then ran back again—each ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... his family had, at an early age, inspired him with courage and self-conceit, so that in his blind, frivolous presumption, the only person, as he thought, who exceeded his own fascination was possibly ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... beauty" might lose its romance, when seen for the second time. Something like this must be the explanation; and I confess to you, Padre, that the failure of the prince to keep our tryst was the biggest disappointment and the sharpest humiliation of my life. It took most of the conceit out of me, and since then I've never been vain of my alleged "looks" or "charm" for more than two minutes on end. I've invariably said to myself, "Remember Jim Wyndham, and how he didn't think you worth the bother of coming back ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to fight a duel with the Notary, don't think that I thirst for human blood; God forbid! I wanted to amuse you, I wanted, so to speak, to arrange a comedy for you, to renew a conceit that I invented forty years ago, a splendid one! You are younger men, and do not remember about it, but in my time it was famous from this forest to ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... Fountaine about thirty yeares since, or more. For he also formerly had spent some time at the Spaw in Germany; so that he was very able to compare those with this of ours. Nay, hee had futhermore so good an opinion, and so high a conceit of this, that hee did not onely direct, and advise others to it, but himselfe also (for most part) would use it ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... multitudes or the sex. It must be vain to have a sheen. Captivating melodies (to prove to you the unavoidableness of self-satisfaction when you know that you have hit perfection), listen to them closely, have an inner pipe of that conceit almost ludicrous when you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to tell the doctor just how much value he placed on that life. But to what purpose? Doctors lived in their own peculiar atmosphere of conceit and self-deception, crowing like a hen over a new-laid egg whenever they chanced to bring back a soul to the miseries from which it had struggled to escape. It would be a waste of words, for Norris would never understand. Would Marion? Cold terror seized him at the thought of the coming, the ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... neglected, and he inherited an estate of five thousand a year. Miss Darnel, however, had penetration enough to discover and despise him, as a strange composition of rapacity and profusion, absurdity and good sense, bashfulness and impudence, self-conceit and diffidence, awkwardness and ostentation, insolence and good-nature, rashness and timidity. He was continually surrounded and preyed upon by certain vermin called Led Captains and Buffoons, who showed him in leading-strings like a sucking giant, rifled his pockets without ceremony, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... of culture, useful and beautiful because useful; feminine purity and delicacy and refinement giving their luster and their power to the most absolute science—woman learned without infidelity and wise without conceit, the crowned queen of the world by right of that Knowledge which is Power and that Beauty ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... unscrupulous mutineers— Lascars, or Manilla-men; who, having murdered the Europeans of the crew, might not be willing to let strangers depart unmolested. Or yet worse, the entire ship's company might have been swept away by a fever, its infection still lurking in the poisoned hull. And though the first conceit, as the last, was a mere surmise, it was nevertheless deemed prudent to secure the hatches, which for the present we accordingly barred down with the oars of our boat. This done, we went about the deck in search of water. And finding some ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... with a laugh full of self-conceit; bade the musketeer good-night, and went down to his back shop, which he used as a bedroom. D'Artagnan resumed his original position upon his chair, and his brow, which had been unruffled for a moment, became more pensive than ever. He had already forgotten the whims and dreams ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... had had no greater faults than he, with better grace their modern representatives might indulge their genius for his defamation. At best, as we might suppose, it is the little men, the men of narrow range and narrow heart—men dwarfed by egotism, bigotry, and self-conceit—who see the most of these defects. Nobler minds, contemplating him from loftier standpoints, observe but little of them, and even honor them above the excellencies of common men. "The proofs that he was in some things like other men," says Lessing, "are to me as precious as the most dazzling ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... lowly as well as to the high. Paul does not use the little word "mind" undesignedly. "High things" have their place and they are not pernicious. But to "mind" them, to be absorbed in them with the whole heart, to be puffed up with conceit because of our relation to them, enjoying them to the disadvantage of ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... but Leslie gave him another hint. He had found her strolling past the office as he ran out to post some letters, the day before his departure. He was absolutely without conceit, but he could not help noticing that somehow Miss Leslie Graham nearly always happened, by the strangest coincidence, to be on the street just as he was leaving ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... overwhelmed by the first full view of the extent of the injuries he had inflicted, the first perception that pride and malevolence had been the true source of his prejudice and misconceptions, and for the first time conscious of the long-fostered conceit that had been his bane from boyhood. All had flashed on him with the discovery of the true purpose of the demand which he thought had justified his persecution. He saw the glory of Guy's character and the part he had acted,—the scales of self-admiration fell from his eyes, and ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... boldly, "and you're all out of it, clever as you are. It was not Vane's doing, the running on the pile, but mine. I did it to take some of the conceit and bullying out of you, so you may say ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... formally gave his consent to a match which effectually secured St. Mesmin's fortunes, and was as much above anything the young fellow could reasonably expect as his audacity and coolness exceeded the common conceit ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... blame it all on me and let yourself out entirely. Now let me tell you something, my bucko: it was your over-weening conceit, your jealousy of Springer and Grant, your itching desire to see them get their bumps, that led you, as much as anything else, to bet against Oakdale in that first game. You were sore on Eliot, too, because he didn't put ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... his good fortune, SAUNDERS accumulated a pile of most egregious testimonials, and these he regarded as the mainspring of success in life. He had early discovered in himself a singular capacity for drawing salaries, and as he had unbounded conceit and unqualified ignorance, he conceived himself to be fit for any post in life to which a salary is attached. He had also really great gifts as a crampon, or hanger-on, and neglected no opportunity, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... Self-contempt attacked self-conceit like an acid. He saw Michael Lanyard a sorry figure, sitting stultified with self-pity ... crying over ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... as the first-mate would not be put out of any conceit with the garments, in spite of their appearance, and as others began to be similarly in need, they had perforce to follow his example, when penguin trousers may be said to have "become the rage" on the island—even Mr Lathrope, who had laughed at Mr McCarthy for wearing them, having ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... victory, drew back his thirteen thousand men in good order to guard Hungary. As Napoleon himself had been in a dangerous condition of over-confidence before Aspern, so now his soldiery were clearly in the same plight. Self-conceit had made them unreliable. Bernadotte's corps had displayed something very much like cowardice and mutiny at the last. The army still fought in the main like the perfect machine it was, but the individual men had lost ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... "He thinks he has learned all there is to learn. It isn't the least use in the world to try to tell him anything. When young folks feel the way he does, it is a waste of time to talk to them. He has got to be shown. There is nothing like experience to take the conceit ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... between us. We belong to two different civilizations, and, until we recognize what separates us, we are talking like Pyramus and Thisbe,—without any hole in the wall to talk through. Therefore, on the whole, if he were a superior fellow, incapable of mistaking it for personal conceit, I think I would let out the fact of the real American feeling about Old-World folks. They are children to us in certain points of view. They are playing with toys we have done with for whole generations. That silly little drum they are always beating ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... lustily, affected a monstrous wicked look, assured that he was impressing all who stood about with some conceit of the rakehelly ways he ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... making, what he called, poetry of his own; for, of course, our little hero was a poet. All the common usages of life, all the ways of the world, and all the customs of society, seemed to be quite unknown to him; add to these good qualities, a magnificent conceit, a cowardice inconceivable, and a face so irresistibly comic, that every one who first beheld it was compelled to burst out a-laughing, and you will have some notion of this strange little gentleman. He was very proud of his voice, and uttered all his sentences ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... safe in my sylvan home, I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome; And when I am stretched beneath the pines, Where the evening star so holy shines, I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, At the sophist schools, and the learned clan; For what are they all in their high conceit, When man in the ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... call the 'right' instinct is just the remnant of the old man-made race hatred in you. It's just a part of the old conceit of the Caucasian." ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... some extracts from the newspapers. The unanimity of sentiment is without example in this country, and were it not that I know at their exact value the worth of newspaper laudations, I might be puffed up a little in my own conceit. After the explanations by ministers I had to make a speech, but was so excited and nervous at the events of the last few days that I nearly broke down. However, after a little I got over it, and made (as Mowat alleges) the most telling speech I ever made. There was great cheering when I sat ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... Mr. Mahaffy's description of the "Clouds" contains an account of this defeat, which sets forth the amusing conceit and sophistry of Aristophanes' explanation of it. He alludes here to the prevailing custom of several dramatic ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the day while he worked. After all, that is the true artist. Erraticalness is by no means the thing that makes a man great, though he sometimes becomes great in spite of it, but for the most part it is carefully cultivated through conceit. ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... the people in and near Manchester, and they had also been excited to acts of desperation and violence, by some of those who professed to be their leaders. As for Johnson, the brush-maker, he was a composition of vanity, emptiness, and conceit, such as I never before saw concentrated in one person. It was the most ridiculous thing in the world to see him assuming the most pompous and lofty tone, while every one about him did not fail openly to express contempt for his insignificance and folly. In truth, even amidst all his pomposity, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... we would sit down and reason of "righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come." Had slavery fortified itself in a college, we would load our cannons with cold facts, and wing our arrows with arguments. But we happen to live in the world,—the world made up of thought and impulse, of self-conceit and self-interest, of weak men and wicked. To conquer, we must reach all. Our object is not to make every man a Christian or a philosopher, but to induce every one to aid in the abolition of slavery. We expect to ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... brand Till it is burnt out; Fire is kindled from fire; A man gets knowledge By talk with a man, But becomes wilful by self-conceit. Ha'vama'l. ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... an upstart crow beautified with our feathers that, with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shakescene in a countrie ... but it is pittie men of such rare wit should be subject to the pleasures of such rude grooms." The reference to "Shakescene" and the "Tygers heart," which is a quotation from III Henry VI,[3] makes it almost certain that Shakespeare and his play ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... proceeded to take the conceit out of Pluffles as you remove the ribs of an umbrella before re-covering.' However, you couldn't ask me anything seriously that I ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... to accomplish that much. But it was not everybody who could escape the consequences of his crime. It required an acute brain to plan after events so that shrewd detectives would be baffled. There was a complacent conceit about Melville Hardlock, which was as much a part of him as his intense selfishness, and this conceit led him to believe that the future path he had outlined for himself would ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... a noble but most unfortunate husband, who honestly strove to do right, but whose extraordinary instincts were against him. Try it, Maria. I have thought the matter over carefully and well, and it is the only chance I see for you. It would have been a happy conceit on the part of Caruthers if he had started with his neck and broken that first; but since he has seen fit to choose a different policy and string himself out as long as possible, I do not think we ought to upbraid him for it if he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... much with him, and interested him in matters that seldom claim the attention of youths of his age, had something to do with his manner, but behind his usual calm exterior there was an amount of conceit not always apparent to others, a conceit that placed himself above the ordinary High School boys who had been his daily associates. This they had felt intuitively, and with his precise habits and nicety of dress had caused him ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... therefore he thought he might safely defy her. Come sit, says my lady; then whips up her scissar, And cuts out his coxcomb in silk in a trice, sir. Dan sat with attention, and saw with surprise How she lengthen'd his chin, how she hollow'd his eyes; But flatter'd himself with a secret conceit, That his thin lantern jaws all her art would defeat. Lady Betty observed it, then pulls out a pin, And varies the grain of the stuff to his grin: And, to make roasted silk to resemble his raw-bone, She raised up a thread to the jet of his ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... it," she answered, not able to forbear smiling; "but sit down then, you great, long-legged fellow, you put me out of conceit with this room; you make ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... well enough, if you like to be overhauled and put out of conceit with yourself,—it may do you good; but I wouldn't go to 'the governor' with my verses, if I were you. For either he will think what you have written is something wonderful, almost as good as he could have written himself,—in fact, he always did believe in hereditary ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.' Again: with this view, the disputed passages—those in which critics have agreed that the genius is found wanting—the meretricious ornaments sometimes crowded in—the occasional bad taste displayed—in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... of unprofitable but curious hints as to the work of unseen forces, that one does not weary easily of it. I am not speaking here of megalomaniacs who rest uneasy under the crown of their unbounded conceit—who really never rest in this world, and when out of it go on fretting and fuming on the straitened circumstances of their last habitation, where all men must lie in obscure equality. Neither am I thinking of those ambitious minds who, always looking forward to some aim of aggrandizement, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... said Hans, with bitter irony. "You have measured my conceit and know that it out-tops all ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... house aware of the learned member's illness, the abrupt termination of his address on such a plea, and at such a moment, might appear an ingenious and rhetorical artifice. In his argument, Mr. Roebuck charged the government, the officials at home, and those in command abroad, with incapacity, conceit, and indifference to the welfare of the soldiery. When at last the house divided, the motion was supported by 305 members, and opposed by only 148, leaving a majority of 157—one of the largest, on a great public question involving ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... deceit, jugglery, or veiled bribe. But he generally wore his heart on his sleeve; and those who perforce had business relations with him soon discovered that, though utterly unscrupulous, his character was continuously revealed through his small conceit, which caused him so to work as to be seen of men and gain their cheap plaudits for his sharp, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... hurled, Their habitation shook;—it fell, And perished, save one narrow cell; Whither at length, a Wretch retired Who neither grovelled nor aspired: He, struggling in the net of pride, The future scorned, the past defied; Still tempering, from the unguilty forge Of vain conceit, an ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... return "absurd as frightful." . . . He cannot. Experience is not whole without "some wonder linked with fear"—the colours! The shafts ray from her "midmost home"; she "dwells there, hearted." True, but this is not experience, and she shall not conceit herself into believing it to be. She shall not set up the "pert pretence to match the male achievement": she shall learn that men make women "easy victors," when their rough effaces itself to smooth for woman's sake. ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... Bess would do," she thought, without the slightest trace of conceit, "if she didn't have me to anchor her down all ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... him rather as something definite, which he could take up and fashion to his own pleasure, than as a succession of days and years which would inevitably mould and influence him in their course. It is not wholly conceit, perhaps, which so assures these clever lads of the vastness of their untried capabilities, that there are moments when they feel as if they could grasp heaven and earth in their wide consciousness; it is rather a want of experience and clearness ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... to climb and slide down again, with "shrieks of delight." When you are past shrieking, having no human articulate voice to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude of their valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with cutaneous eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive hiccough of self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two sorrowfullest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, taking the deep inner significance of them, are the English mobs in the valley of Chamouni, amusing themselves with firing rusty howitzers; ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... silence. Miss Vance was lost in thought. Was George Waldeaux equally eager to keep his wife's memory alive? Now that the conceit had been beaten out of him, he would not make a bad husband. And her child ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... the title of a very pretty conceit which followed. A fisherman enters, and in a long recitative describes the scenery at the sea-shore of Miwo, in the province of Suruga, at the foot of Fuji-Yama, the Peerless Mountain. The waves are still, and there is a great calm; ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... stopped before he entered, speaking more softly to the eunuch for fear of being heard by the princess. "To convince you," said he; "there is neither presumption, nor whim, nor youthful conceit in my undertaking, I leave it to your choice whether I shall cure the princess in her presence, or where we are, without going any farther, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... that she was different from the Gyp of this hour yesterday—the last time when, in possession of his senses, he had seen or spoken to her. The novelty of her revolt stirred him in strange ways, wounded his self-conceit, inspired a curious fear, and yet excited his senses. He came ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... which women frequently jump may usually be shown by careful interrogation to be founded upon observation of actual fact, their habit of stating inferences often leads them to claim knowledge of the impossible—"wiser in [their] own conceit than seven men that can ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... Much of the conceit and ridicule of the character of Mr. Ventilate was apparent, even to my eye, at our first meeting. But he was a person of great practice, and had the reputation of a sound lawyer: which signifies a man who has patience to read reports, and a facility at quoting them. Beside, I ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... men lying in unmarked graves in African soil to-day who ought to be alive and well, others who have been done to death by the crass ignorance, the appalling stupidity, the damnable conceit which will brook no teaching. I have seen men die like dogs, men who left comfortable homes in the old land to go forth to uphold the power and prestige of our nation's flag. I have seen them gasping out their lives like stricken sheep, just in the springtide ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... Armadas, "I think we have stumbled upon a pretty conceit intended to do honor to our master. Methinks His Royal Highness here has the right on't—the man who made that ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... supporting in its prison of flesh the pains of constitutional disease, and triumphing over physical confinement and affliction. His carriage was erect—there was a soldierly affectation, of which, indeed, the hero of Buena Vista gave evidence through his life, having the singular conceit that his genius was military and fitter for arms than for the council. He had a precise manner, and an austerity that was at first forbidding; but his voice was always clear and firm. Although not a scholar in the pedantic sense of the term, and making ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... Without undue conceit Shelby was quite conscious of his great success, and as he walked home with Carlotta from the Crane house, he begged her to consent to ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... the belief that we can lay down the burden of our wretched little makeshift individualities for ever at each lift towards the goal of evolution, which can only be a being that cannot be improved upon. After all, what man is capable of the insane self-conceit of believing that an eternity of himself would be tolerable even to himself? Those who try to believe it postulate that they shall be made perfect first. But if you make me perfect I shall no longer be myself, nor will it be possible for me to conceive ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... It is not a conglomerate idea, but a single one. Now, if there is no God, we have a clear, definite idea of nothing. How will you account for this? Are you not now unable to give a reason for your premises? Is it not the truth that fools are wiser in their own conceit than men ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... introduction most unfamiliar to me, and seemed bristling with audacity and conceit; but I recognized the heartiness of his purpose, and hastened to ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... modified my conceit. I was always the dunce of the party—the smallest child knew more of woodcraft than I did, and had something to tell of everything. Seeing Oogahnahbayah, a small eagle-hawk, flying over, they would say, 'He eats the emu eggs.' He flies ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... checking these, so that in addition to loving my parents I was soon taught to honour and obey them. Then, when I was five years old, I was sent to school, where, mixing with other boys, any especial conceit of myself that I might have had was quickly nipped in the bud. At school, in addition to a fair, useful education, I was taught to reverence and respect my seniors and superiors, to be obedient, to submit to ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... call to lay doon t' law, on sic matters at aw. Mappen tha'll recolleck t' Bible—headstrong as tha art i' thy aan conceit. Bit t' Bible says 'How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough—whose taak is o' bullocks?' Aa coom on that yestherday—an A've bin sair exercised ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his father, "take yourself off, it you cannot maintain civility. And your mother does not like fishing-tackle at the breakfast-table go! I believe," he said as Ransom bounded away, "I believe conceit is ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... are others to consider. For me, would it not be the better part to show her that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be my first consideration? Certainly there is nothing in a man I despise more than conceit in affairs of this sort. When I hear one of my sex boasting of his 'conquests,' I turn from him in disgust. 'Conquest' implies effort; and to lay one's self out for victories over the other sex always reminds me of pigeon-shooting. ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... that at least he is a free man, and need lick nobody's boots; and let him cast an eye upon the chronicles of shameful humiliation, childish deference, grovelling servility, and whimsical reward or punishment, favour, or neglect, that marked the "golden age" when musicians found patrons from whose conceit or ennui they might wheedle a most ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... for, your Majesty. It is an army of bourgeois and craftsmen, stout fellows who could doubtless defend their walls against an attack, or might fight stoutly shoulder to shoulder, but they have an over-weening conceit in themselves, and deem that all that is necessary in war is to carry a pike or a pole-axe and use it stoutly. A party of children would do as well, or better, were they set to besiege a town. Leadership there is none. Parties go out to skirmish with the garrison; ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and to the next ages." Scarcely was he dead when the first portion of this legacy received some part of its fulfilment in the touching and often quoted words of Ben Jonson:—"My conceit of his person was never increased toward him by his place or honors; but I have and do reverence him for the greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever, by his work, one of the greatest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... trifle bombastic and suggests the Teutonic superlative; "So bigger as never vas," and the "Xmas 1898" reads like the advertisement of a department store: "Gents pants for Xmas gifts." But we must admit that the stamp is a pretty conceit, in spite of these defects and of the ambition of the artist, which has spread the "thin red line" over territory that has not otherwise been acquired. In addition to the things to be learned from the pictorial part of stamps, there are other things which attract the attention of the thoughtful ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... Gertrude were so afraid he would lower himself if he looked at any boy below his own social position,—he used to stand up for you,—yes, he did,—and fight; of course not in a brutal way with fists," and she laughed at her own conceit, "but in that higher, finer manner, with no shield or weapon save his love for you. I used to like to see you together,—you so sturdy and manful and true, and he delicate and ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... very different;—but Mr. Vivian wouldn't think of such a thing. He understands the nature of things, and knows his own position. There is a conceit ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... gained his object in being kept back at the post, that he might pursue his wooing. Satisfied of the wealth and social standing of the lady, he felt no doubt whatever that if given a fair field he could win her, and win her he would. If unlimited conceit has not yet been mentioned or indicated as one of Mr. Gleason's prominent traits, the omission is indeed important. He felt that up to the time of Truscott's coming his progress had been satisfactory. Officers and ladies were already making sly allusions in his presence ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... Nobly resolv'd, sweet friends and followers! These lords perhaps do scorn our estimates, And think we prattle with distemper'd spirits: But, since they measure our deserts so mean, That in conceit [36] bear empires on our spears, Affecting thoughts coequal with the clouds, They shall be kept our forced followers Till with their eyes they ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... Vanity, ambition, conceit, insincerity, impudence, arrogance, and ungratefulness were the outstanding traits of Agricola's character. Luther said that Agricola, swelled with vanity and ambition, was more vexatious to him than any pope; that he was fit only for the profession of a jester, etc. December 6, 1540, Luther ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... me for a minute. I let her go, knowing what her errand was. She came back with a box of paint and powders; and I said nothing to check her. I saw, in the glass, my skin take a false fairness, my cheeks a false color, my eyes a false brightness—and I never shrank from it. No! I let the odious conceit go on; I even admired the extraordinary delicacy and dexterity with which it was all done. "Anything" (I thought to myself, in the madness of that miserable time) "so long as it helps me to win the Major's confidence! Anything, so long as I discover what those last words ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... fool that is!" thought the one. "Because he has written a twopenny novel, his absurd head is turned, and a kicking would take his conceit ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... made his Eve thus reverently submissive to her Adam, he little thought of bright girls in the nineteenth century, well versed in science, philosophy, and the languages, sitting in the senior class of a college of the American republic, laughing his male conceit ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... invited him to dine at his house; for though my uncle was a bachelor, he did not choose to dine at a 'traiteur' (the name 'restaurateur' was not then introduced). He told my mother that Napoleon was very morose. 'I fear,' added he, 'that that young man has more self-conceit than is suitable to his condition. When he dined with me he began to declaim violently against the luxury of the young men of the military school. After a little he turned the conversation on Mania, and the present education ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... him; it was a delicate tribute to her that he ate nothing; and the fact that Hugh Van Orden and Petheridge Jukesbury—as she believed—acted in precisely the same way for precisely the same reason, merely demonstrated, of course, their overwhelming conceit and presumption. ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... conceit and vanity and vainglory. Go away! My head is fit to split. Natalina, why haven't you given me my smelling salts? And why will you always ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... hitherto there had been nothing approachable in his opinion to the felucca—which, by the bye, I have forgotten to say was called the Esmeralda—but now she was dwarfed into insignificance in every respect by the Dolphin, and her young skipper quite put out of conceit with her. However, I consoled myself, if not him, with the reflection that, the Dolphin once out of sight, he would forget all about her. Having given the craft a thorough overhaul, we sauntered off to the naval ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... lady supporting one corner of the pulpit canopy, which looked like a fringed damask table-cloth in a high wind, at the first attempt of a basilisk to pose up there in the organ loft, she would point her gold trumpet at him, and puff him out of existence! I laughed to myself over this conceit, which, at the time, I thought very amusing, and sat and chaffed myself and everything else, from the old harpy outside the railing, who had made me pay ten centimes for my chair, before she would let me in (she was more like a basilisk, I told myself, than ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... she writes him, "I should certainly fall in love with you." Prof. Stowe could also write a love-letter: "There is no woman like you in this wide world. Who else has so much talent with so little self-conceit; so much reputation with so little affectation; so much literature with so little nonsense; so much enterprise with so little extravagance; so much tongue with so little scold; so much sweetness with so little softness; ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... distinction; but his lot was thrown upon stormy 10 times, and a most difficult crisis amongst tribes whose native ferocity was exasperated by debasing forms of superstition, and by a nationality as well as an inflated conceit of their own merit absolutely unparalleled; whilst the circumstances of their hard and trying position under 15 the jealous surveillance of an irresistible lord paramount, in the person of the Russian Czar, gave a fiercer edge ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... for feeling hurt and annoyed; yet what mainly hurt and annoyed her (though she would not confess it) was that this sailor and this girl had each taken her as one on equal terms with themselves. She was a sensible girl, by far too sensible to nurse on second thoughts a conceit that she was their superior simply because she spoke better English. Yet habit had taught her to expect some degree of deference from those who spoke incorrectly; and we are all touchier upon our vaguely reasoned claims than upon those of which we ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... call their own, they looked upon themselves as a strong intermediate power between the sovereign and the citizen, and believed themselves called upon to hasten to the rescue of the oppressed state, which looked imploringly to them for succor. This idea was ludicrous only so far as their self-conceit was concerned in it; the advantages which they contrived to draw from it were substantial enough. The Protestant merchants, who held in their hands the chief part of the wealth of the Netherlands, and who believed they could not at any price purchase too dearly the undisturbed exercise of their ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... system produces a most pernicious influence. Children soon perceive the position thus allowed them, and take every advantage of it. They soon learn to dispute parental requirements, acquire habits of forwardness and conceit, assume disrespectful manners and address, maintain their views with pertinacity, and yield to authority with ill-humor and resentment, as if ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... exposition of the weak sides of great men, inasmuch as it reads them a valuable lesson on their own infallibility, and tends to lower the molehills of conceit that are raised in the world as stumbling-blocks along every road of petty ambition. It would, however, be but a sorry toil for the most cynical critic to illustrate these vagaries otherwise than so many slips and trippings of the tongue and pen, to which all men ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... Fame," very adroitly improves on a witty conceit of Butler. It is curious to observe that while Butler had made a remote allusion of a window to a pillory, a conceit is grafted on this conceit, with even ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... of triumph for Vesalius; of triumph deserved, because earned by patient and accurate toil in a good cause: but Vesalius, being but a mortal man, may have contracted in those same days a temper of imperiousness and self-conceit, such as he showed afterwards when his pupil Fallopius dared to add fresh discoveries to those of his master. And yet, in spite of all Vesalius knew, how little he knew! How humbling to his pride it would have been had he known then—perhaps he does know now—that he had actually again and again ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... grace all his own, and saying in a high, pragmatical voice, "How d'ye do, Miss Helstone?" dropped into a seat at Caroline's elbow, to her unmitigated annoyance, for she had a peculiar antipathy to Donne, on account of his stultified and immovable self-conceit and his incurable narrowness of mind. Malone, grinning most unmeaningly, inducted himself into the corresponding seat on the other side. She was thus blessed in a pair of supporters, neither of whom, she ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte |
