"Supercilious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... glanced involuntarily at her, and I knew it was impossible. My eyes swept over the form beside me, as she sat cold, impassive; her attitude one of quiet ease, her whole mien the essence of calm self-possession. That excess of pride and dignity and supercilious arrogance that in Lucia replaced, at times, her seductive plasticity at others, had always exercised a violent attraction over me. And now, when this pride seemed joined with a positive hostility to myself, ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... persons in extremity, who refused to subscribe to the bull Unigenitus, all of them declared they acted according to the direction of the archbishop of Paris. Application being made to this haughty prelate, he treated the deputies of the parliament with the most supercilious contempt, and even seemed to brave the power and authority of that body. They, on the other hand, proceeded to take cognizance of the recusant clergy, until their sovereign ordered them to desist. Then they presented remonstrances to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... upon him by the disguise he had chosen to assume. He had never sought for work, and had done as little of it as he possibly could, and he had held aloof from the people around him, treating them with a supercilious indifference which they were not slow to resent. Under such conditions it was by no means surprising that he was decidedly unpopular in the neighbourhood, and the dislike to him was heightened by ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... of Morrell, seated with what seemed to Keith a smug, superior, supercilious confidence in the best of the office chairs, was more than Keith could stand. He was bursting with anger at ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... din they chased each other across the sky; These, and such as these, I, elate, saw—saw with wonder, yet pensive and masterful, All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me, Yet there with my soul I fed, I fed content, supercilious. ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... not one of that supercilious breed of Americans which toadies to an alleged European culture by finding fault with his own people," he hastened to assure her. "What distresses me is the knowledge that we are a very moral nation, that we have never ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... two such men—on the maitre d'hotel for his entire absence of all sensitiveness, and on the chef de cuisine for his unpolished excess of it was only natural. Yet it must not be supposed that with either of them he indulged that air of supercilious patronage with which he was accustomed to treat all not absolutely above him in the social scale; it would have been simply thrown away upon the one, the other would have kicked him for it, even if he had to get upon a chair to do so. Still Monsieur Jasmin ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... desert they would long ago have been pitched over the battlements. The mote in their neighbor's eyes—so small that it takes a microscope to find it—gives them more trouble than the beam which obscures their own optics. With air sometimes supercilious and sometimes Pharisaical, and always blasphemous, they take the razor of the divine judgment and sharpen it on the hone of their own hard hearts, and then go to work on men sprawled out at full length under disaster, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... Some of these were fine ladies of superficial minds, who came from mere curiosity, so as to be able to say that they had seen a sewing-machine. I was often struck with the shallow, unmeaning questions which these butterflies of fashion propounded to us. Some of them made the supercilious, but disreputable boast, that they had never taken a stitch in the whole course of their lives. But the great throng of inquirers consisted of women who had families dependent on their needles, and of young girls like myself, obliged also to depend upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... would be lifted swiftly to the face of some one speaking, and then go down again, with no sign of agreeing or disagreeing—indeed, with no sign of her thought at all; but she had thoughts of course; why should she not show them, as her cousins did? It was almost supercilious, to the fancy of Anne and Letitia; Matilda and Maria were fascinated. Then her hands were more delicate than those of Mrs. Englefield's children; and there were one or two costly rings on them. Anne and Letty did not understand their value, ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... his turn. He was a great friend of hers, she had said on the way to the club, and was, without doubt, a very perfect person with his wide-set eyes and well-groomed head, his smooth moustache and the cleft on his chin. He didn't like him. He had decided that at a first glance. He was too supercilious and self-assured and had a way of looking clean through men's heads. He conveyed the impression of having bought the earth,—and Joan. A pity he was too old for a year or two of Yale. That would make him a bit more of ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... died out like the chiming of a great bell receding into immeasurable distance. The supercilious tones of the professor had yielded to the sweetness and the light of the Greater Mind whose instrument he had momentarily become. It was charged at the last with a golden resonance that seemed to echo down vast spaceless corridors beyond the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... would not have such a number of guests at your table, of consequence your hospitality would not shine so bright for the glory of the West Riding.' The young 'squire, tickled by this ironical observation, exclaimed, 'O che burla!' — his mother eyed me in silence with a supercilious air; and the father of the feast, taking a bumper of October, 'My service to you, cousin Bramble (said he), I have always heard there was something keen and biting in the air of ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... This was bad enough, but its effect was intensified by the demeanour of the Lieutenant-Governor and several military officers who were in attendance upon him. It seemed to the deputation that those gentlemen regarded them with supercilious impertinence; as a something which viceroyalty must be content, for the nonce, to endure, but as being altogether beyond the pale of their sympathies or interests. Nothing could have been in worse taste than such conduct as ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... sad struggles, lonely griefs, and subsequent shame-faced consolations were recalled to her? What pangs had the poor little thing, as she thought how much she had loved him, and that she loved him no more? There he stood, about whom she was going to die ten months since, dandified, supercilious, with a black crape to his white hat, and jet buttons in his shirt front: and a pink in his coat, that some one else had probably given him: with the tightest lavender-colored gloves sewn with black: and the smallest of canes. And Mr. Huxter wore no gloves, and great blucher ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to remember. For one sometimes hears ignorant persons speak of technique with a certain supercilious contempt, as though it were a mere negligible and inferior element in an artist's equipment and not the art itself, the mere virtuosity of an accomplished fiddler who seems to say anything with his fiddle, ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... a certain supercilious consciousness that he is figuring in a novel, and that it will not do for him to thwart the eccentricities of mysterious fiction by any commonplace deference to the mere meteorological weaknesses of ordinary human nature, does not allow the fact ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... began with awful solemnity, "and send the great Ranunculus to loose the binding chain of concupiscence, heaving the multitudinous aquacity upon the heads of this wicked and sententious generation, whelming these diametrical scoffers in a supercilious Constantinople!" ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... A liturgy, for example, is intolerable, because it is a slur upon the extemporary effusions of ministers of the Gospel. "Well may men of eminent gifts set forth as many forms and helps to prayer as they please; but to impose them on ministers lawfully called and sufficiently tried ... is a supercilious tyranny, impropriating the Spirit of God to themselves." Milton, we know, did not habitually attend public worship at any of the conventicles of the sectaries, or perhaps he might have found reason to modify ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... had at first patiently and with a smile listened to these raving invectives, felt himself at last wounded by them; and the supercilious and presumptuous manner in which the young man of barely seventeen years spoke of the highest offices of the state, and of the king ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... the English, and Burnes professed to his Government his fullest confidences in the sincerity of those declarations. But the tone of Lord Auckland's reply, addressed to the Dost, was so dictatorial and supercilious as to indicate the writer's intention that it should give offence. It had that effect, and Burnes' mission at once became hopeless. Yet, as a last resort, Dost Mahomed lowered his pride so far ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... have the same effect upon intelligences unable to pierce beyond external appearance, and influenced often rather by example than precept, we are obliged to refute a false charge, lest we should countenance the crime which we have never committed. To turn away from an accusation with supercilious silence, is equally in the power of him that is hardened by villany, and inspirited by innocence. The wall of brass which Horace erects upon a clear conscience, may be sometimes raised by impudence or power; and we should always wish to preserve the dignity of virtue by adorning ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... of this habit of ascending to a superlunary home, was the loss of an exact sense of how she was behaving below. At the Berkshire mansion, she wore a supercilious air, almost as icy as she accused the place of being. Emma knew she must have seen in the library a row of her literary ventures, exquisitely bound; but there was no allusion to the books. Mary Paynham's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for?" inquired Shirley, to whom the overlooker's somewhat pragmatical manners were familiar, and who was often at war with him; for Joe, holding supercilious theories about women in general, resented greatly, in his secret soul, the fact of his master and his master's mill being, in a manner, under petticoat government, and had felt as wormwood and gall certain business visits of the heiress to the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... ghosts,—never wos, an' never will be. All ghosts is sciencrific dolusions, nothing more; and it's only the hignorant an' supercilious as b'lieves in 'em. I don't; an', wots more," added Jo, with ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... might reflect sometimes the feeling of unfriendliness which he was aware of in the supercilious Rudi. The latter exhibited a negligent attitude of indifference toward Gard, though it was cloaked under casualness. There was a sinister air about the young engineer, and she would be bound to follow submissively anyone breathing the ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... about such things it made her rather sorry. But she bore up for Barty's sake, and the resigned, half-humorous courtesy with which she assented to these fables was really more humiliating to a sensitive, haughty soul than any mere supercilious disdain; not that she ever wished to humiliate, but she was easily bored, and thought that kind of conversation ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... deserted him, and he did a thing deplorable. In one of his blind accesses of fury, heedless of the faithful and watchful Rabecque's arresting tug at his sleeve, he stepped forward, and brought a heavy hand down upon the supercilious gentleman's shoulder. He took him in the instant in which, with one foot off the ground and the other on the step of the carriage, the foreigner was easily thrown' off his balance; he dragged him violently backward, span him round and dropped him floundering in ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... strung together like a grotesque living necklace, sauntered past, led by a loose-robed Pathan, as supercilious of aspect as the shuffling brutes who bobbed and gurgled in his wake. Or it might be a group of bullock-carts going down to Kushalghur, to meet consignments of stores and all the minor necessaries of life,—for in those days Kohat was innocent of shops. At rare intervals, colourless ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... moment he was sitting upright, shaking a mandatory fist at Patsy as she disappeared through the door. "Remember—no help from the quality! I hate them as much as you do, and I won't have them coming around with their inquisitive, patronizing, supercilious offers of assistance to a—beggar. I tell you I want to be left alone! If you bring any one back with you I'll burn the stable down ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... us to the station of the Tiflis & Baku Railway, and he loses a wheel and upsets us into the street on the way. The station is a stone building, strong enough almost for a fort. Military uniforms adorn every employee, from the supercilious station-master to the ill-paid wretch that handles our baggage. Mine is the first bicycle the Tiflis & Baku Railroad has ever carried. Having no precedent to govern themselves by, and, withal, ever eager to fleece ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... in spite of her bright hazel eyes and pretty fluffy hair; there was a supercilious lift to her eyebrows, an unamiable droop to the corners of her mouth. Peggy did not make this analysis; she only thought, "I shall not like ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... that blows nobody good, and animals had a gorgeous time in those days. Very few weren't sacred for some reason or other. It was death and destruction to kill a cat. And I don't think that cats have forgotten to this day the importance they had in Egypt. It's made them the most supercilious of animals. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... irreconcileable aversion towards the whole fabric of the Episcopalian church. This party, during the two preceding reigns being chiefly composed of the dregs of the people, were regarded as of little consequence, and treated with supercilious contempt by the administration. But in the reign of King Charles the first they had amazingly increased, and many men of opulence and distinction had joined them, from motives of discontent or ambition, ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... with property of all sorts (from wives to water rights), had occasion for the services of a safe man, found it both reposeful and profitable to confide in Soames. That slight superciliousness of his, combined with an air of mousing amongst precedents, was in his favour too—a man would not be supercilious ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... atmosphere of hostility. She read it in the countenances of the passersby on the sidewalk, in the cold eyes staring at her from the windows, in the bank president's uncompromising attitude, even in the cashier's supercilious inventory as he ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... with the prospect of a speedy meeting with Uncle Jim to resent his former associate's supercilious haste, or even to wonder why Uncle Jim had not informed him that he had returned. It was not the first time that he had felt how wide was the gulf between himself and these others, and the thought drew him closer to his ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... to lord it over all the rest, not by the force of argument, but an assumed superiority to which he had no right. This nettled lord Falkland, and made him exert his spirit to humble and oppose the supercilious churchman. This conduct of his lordship's, gave Mr. Hampden occasion to court him to his party, who was justly placed by the brilliance of his powers, at the head of the opposition; but after a longer study of the laws of the realm, and conversation with the celebrated Edward Hyde, Earl ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... Uncle Ned was old, wizened, wrinkled as a raisin, but he eyed Anniky over with a supercilious gaze, and said with dignity: "Ef I wanted ter marry, I could git ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... to the fire-place, turned his back to it, and without uttering a word, faced the stranger, who eyed him from head to foot with a cool, supercilious stare; then looked at the girl, as ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... the folding chair, I sat as far forward as my own shape and the car's allowed; Sir Samuel's fat knees in my back, Lady Turnour's sharp voice in my ears. And for scenery, I had Bertie's aggressive shoulders and supercilious gesticulations. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... complete silence and under the professor's supercilious smile, Tommy got up and went below. Had I tried to enter the cabin, the old ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... reply. And Soames gave him askance a look of dogged dislike—for in spite of his fastidious air and that supercilious, dandified taciturnity, Soames, with his set lips and squared chin, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to persuade the majority, since not long after this he arose and walked home without assistance; hence most men suspected him of being inflated with pride and hated him for his supercilious behavior, when it was they themselves who had made him disdainful by the extreme nature of their honors. After this occurrence suspicion was increased by the fact that somewhat later he submitted to being made ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... arguments and idle words, it is not to be presumed but that a man, so attended and feared, has not in him more than ordinary sufficiency; and that he to whom the king has given so many offices and commissions and charges, he so supercilious and proud, has not a great deal more in him, than another who salutes him at so great a distance, and who has no employment at all. Not only the words, but the grimaces also of these people, are considered and put into ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... cost him nothing to thrill and fascinate these girls with the story of how he had been shot through the leg. It pleased him to see Helen's green eyes dilate, to see Bessy Bell shudder. Presently Lane turned to speak to the supercilious Swann. ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... Easter Sunday—Oh, ages and ages ago," she faltered. "Why, I couldn't have been more than nine years old at the time." A trifle self-consciously she turned her face away from Zillah Forsyth's supercilious smile. "And I was coming home from a Sunday school festival in my best white muslin dress with a big pot of purple pansies in my hand," she hastened somewhat nervously to explain. "And just at the ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... we cannot have everything we want, is to take the sure road to the defeat of our most cherished objects." These are timely words, and they reveal a state of feeling among colored people which finds all too fertile a soil in the tendency to ignore, or discriminate, or, at best, grant but a supercilious recognition, which still in great measure controls Southern sentiment. The colored people are naturally loyal and conservative. It is possible, now, so to develop these qualities, that they shall be national ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 08, August, 1885 • Various
... Nicholas Burr?" he asked in a slightly supercilious voice. "The judge has told me about you. So you won't be a farmer, eh? And you won't stay in your class? Well, come in and we'll see what we can ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... his heart was true, and his arm was strong. Compared with Mr. Belcher, with all his wealth, he was nobility personified. Compared with the sordid men around her, with whom he would be an object of supercilious contempt, he seemed like a demigod. His eccentricities, his generosities, his originalities of thought and fancy, were a feast to her. There was more of him than she could find in any of her acquaintances—more that was fresh, piquant, stimulating, and ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... would all make Fortunes from the orders that would be given to them for fresh Tombs. Not a mealy-mouthed Burgess now, whose great-grandfather sold stocking hose to my Lord Duke of Northumberland, but sets himself up for a Percy; not a supercilious Cit, whose Uncle married a cast-off waiting-woman from Arundel Castle, but vaunts himself on his alliance with the noble house of Howard; not a starveling Scrivener, whose ancestor, as the playwright has it, got his Skull cracked by John of Gaunt for crowding among the Marshalmen in the Tilt ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Lodge, where he could think with pleasure of his own importance, and, unshackled by business, occupy himself solely in being civil to all the world. For, though elated by his rank, it did not render him supercilious; on the contrary, he was all attention to everybody. By nature inoffensive, friendly, and obliging, his presentation at St. James's had made ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... always," she said, "been far above what I consider the littleness of those people who think to show their superiority by abusing the stage, or rather by treating with supercilious contempt those who ornament the stage. Something," she added, with an air of patronage, "is due ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... capricious, languid, and languescent study needs. At home, no man makes any proper demand on me, and the audience I address is a handful of men and women too widely scattered than that they can dictate to me that which they are justly entitled to say. Whether supercilious or respectful, they do not say anything that can be heard. Of course, I have only myself to please, and my work is slighted as soon as it has lost its first attraction. It is to be hoped, if one should cross the sea, that the terror of your ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... devils." But it may be doubted if the wise and good have the right to cut the Providential bond which connects them with the foolish and the bad, and set up an aristocratic humanity of their own, ten times more supercilious than the aristocracy of blood. Divorce the loftiest qualities from humility and geniality, and they quickly contract a pharisaic taint; and if there is anything which makes the wretched more wretched, it is the insolent condescension ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... to follow the boys through the day's routine. Grant found his companion very obliging, and very ready to give him the information he needed. Many boys would have been supercilious and perhaps been disposed to play tricks on a country boy, but Harry was not one of them. He took a friendly interest in Grant, answered all his questions, and did his best to qualify him for the position he ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... duellist, the master of the roistering watch-beating Paunsfords. He is not visible as pictured to the vivid fancy of the author of Kenilworth, the youthful aspirant, graceful, eager, slender, dark, restless, and supercilious, with a sonnet or an epigram ever ready on his lips to delight friends ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... himself entrenched in the affectation of a supercilious indifference, he smiled haughtily, and gave a look of dramatic appeal to ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... appears to have been aware of the fact. It was not that he despised politics as Walpole affected to do, or that he regarded party struggles as "barbarous and absurd faction," as Hume did; still less did he pass by them with the supercilious indifference of a mystic whose eyes are fixed on the individual spirit of man as the one spring of good and evil. He never rose to the level of the ordinary citizen or even partisan, who takes an exaggerated view perhaps of the importance ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... us?" asked Adrian Van der Werff, irritated by the supercilious, arrogant tone of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... looking for a Mr. Von Barwig," he said. "I was directed to come here. Is this the right place, sir?" The man's manner was polite enough, but there was a decided attitude of superiority in his somewhat supercilious tone. Jenny ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... at school under the name of P'an. His style was Wen Ch'i. His natural habits were extravagant; his language haughty and supercilious. He had, of course, also been to school, but all he knew was a limited number of characters, and those not well. The whole day long, his sole delight was in cock-fighting and horse-racing, rambling over hills and doing ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... high-mettled^, high-handed, high- plumed, high-flown, high-toned. haughty lofty, high, mighty, swollen, puffed up, flushed, blown; vainglorious; purse-proud, fine; proud as a peacock, proud as Lucifer; bloated with pride. supercilious, disdainful, bumptious, magisterial, imperious, high and mighty, overweening, consequential; arrogant &c 885; unblushing &c 880. stiff, stiff-necked; starch; perked stuck-up; in buckram, strait- laced; prim &c (affected) 855. on one's dignity, on one's high ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... his direction for a moment, raised his eyebrows, glanced away, then back, in the most supercilious manner, and ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... of fancy for the most ambitious dream. In the very room in which he had been thrust aside at parties, forgotten in corners, left behind when the others went in to supper, he was now sitting the centre of interest, with his former supercilious hosts hanging on his words. When he had done, had all too soon come to the end of his delightful task, he looked round at them triumphantly; and his triumph was immediately dashed out of him by Dellwig, who said with his harshest ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... have been heartier and more enthusiastic than was the appreciation of this Burmese dignitary. The soldier element was at first somewhat stiff, but as the dinner proceeded the generals warmed in conversation with the Resident. But the aides were obstinately supercilious, and only partially thawed in acknowledgment of compliments on the splendour of their jewelry. Functionaries attached to the personal suite of his Majesty wore huge ear-gems as a distinguishing mark. The aides had these in blazing ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... and honest liberty. As little must he offer to bind that which God hath loosened as to loosen that which He hath bound. The ignorance and mistake of this high point hath heaped up one huge half of all the misery that hath been since Adam. In the Gospel we shall read a supercilious crew of Masters, whose holiness, or rather whose evil eye, grieving that God should be so facile to man, was to set straiter limits to obedience than God had set, to enslave the dignity of Man, to put a garrison upon his neck ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... he answered loftily, cocking his long nose in the air with a supercilious sniff, "I don't ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... to think that it was quite right for the poor to have their teeth brushed by officials." This is undoubtedly the normal Socialistic outlook and the outlook most abhorrent to Chesterton. "The philanthropist," he once said, "is not a brother; he is a supercilious aunt." ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... and casseroles that always make French cookery appear so dainty and appetizing. He accompanied us, with charming amiability, through this most important department of the chateau, and never once, amid the evidences of luxurious living, did he even look supercilious or, as Lydia expressed it afterwards, "As if he were saying to himself, 'I wonder what these benighted Americans think of French cookery now!'" Not even when Miss Cassandra asked her favorite question in royal palaces, "How many in family?" was there a ghost of a smile upon his face, and ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... the polite but determined manner in which George Lorimer coolly elbows a passage among the heaving bare shoulders, backs, fat arms, and long trains that seriously obstruct his passage, but after some trouble he succeeds in his efforts to reach his fair hostess, who receives him with rather a supercilious uplifting ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... national thing that was bound up with England. 'Men began to feel that foreigners did not eat or drink like Christians,' which is to say that the Englishman began his contempt for the foreigner which has resulted in nearly all our wars, and has made the Englishman abroad a supercilious creature, and has made the English schoolboy put his tongue out at the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... only "on confession of error." Buxton and two or three of his stamp called or left their cards on Mr. Hayne because their colonel had so done; but precisely as the ceremony was performed, just so was it returned. Buxton was red with wrath over what he termed Hayne's conceited and supercilious manner when returning his call: "I called upon him like a gentleman, by thunder, just to let him understand I wanted to help him out of the mire, and told him if there was anything I could do for him that a gentleman could do, not to hesitate about letting me know; and when ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... and repassed, rigid, supercilious, staring at the young girls with that half-sneering, half-impudent, near-sighted gaze peculiar to the breed. Their insolent eyes, however, dropped before the clear, mild glance ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... dispositions, as well as of every degree of culture. To be gracious and courteous to all is his interest as well as his duty. With the ignorant he will often have to exercise a vast amount of patience, but he should never betray a supercilious air, as though looking down upon them from the height of his own superior intelligence. To be always amiable toward inferiors, superiors, and equals, is to conciliate the regard of all. Courtesy costs ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... entrance were: "It's all O. K., sirs. I have found my missing clew. James Zabel was not the only person who came up here from the Webb cottage last night." And turning to Knapp, who was losing some of his supercilious manner, he asked, with significant emphasis: "If, of the full amount stolen from Agatha Webb, you found twenty dollars in the possession of one man and nine hundred and eighty dollars in the possession of another, upon which of the ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... believe, is to go there to talk. I confess, however, that in most music, when very well done, the doing of it is to me the chiefly interesting part of the business. I'm always thinking how good it would be for the fat, supercilious people, who care so little for their half-crown's worth, to be set to try and do a half-crown's worth ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... and admit their prior rights to each other; hence the friendship did not advance to intimacy. But such as it was, it was very comforting; she no longer needed to sit alone in recess; she could link arms and walk the garden with complacency; and many were the supercilious glances she now threw at Maria Morell and that clique; for her new friends belonged socially to the best ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... of the rainbow. And all through the Union their glossy black faces and gleaming white teeth shed a kind of dusky radiance over the traveller's path. Who but can recall with gratitude the expansive geniality and reassuring smile of the white-coated negro waiter, as compared with the supercilious indifference, if not positive rudeness, of his pale colleague? And what will ever efface the mental kodak of George (not Sambo any more) shuffling rapidly into the dining-room, with his huge flat palm inverted high over his head and bearing ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... fright, Hugo decided; that's what she wanted to bring her to heel. And before very long he'd see that she got it. She shouldn't shelter herself for ever behind that supercilious beast, Ledgard. Hugo was quite ready to have been pleasant to Jan and to have met her more than half-way if she was reasonable, but since she had chosen to bring Ledgard into it, she should pay. After all, she was only a woman, and you can always ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... was as well as usual. I had read nothing of late that could have conjured up such a figure. As to preternatural manifestations of such a kind—I had but that very day, and but an hour or two ago, passed supercilious judgment on what I thought the credulity of ignorant rustics. And yet here I was, the victim to some such hallucination—unless it was possible that I had really seen the figure with my bodily eyes! My knees were shaking ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... servants and apprentices. There were students with their blue and white spotted cloaks, their kepis with the school badge, and their ungainly stride. There were modern young men in y[o]fuku (European dress), with panama hats, swagger canes and side-spring shoes, supercilious in attitude and proud of their unbelief. There were troops of variegated children, dragging at their elders' hands or kimonos, or getting lost among the legs of the multitude like little leaves in an eddy. There were excursion parties from the country, with their kimonos caught up to ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... his men besides the cook, and detailed Clay Zilligan to assist with the wagons. We took my remuda, the spades and axes, and started for the riffle. The commissaries had orders to follow up, and Forrest rode away with a supercilious air, as if the crossing of wagons was beneath the attention of a foreman of his standing. Several hours of hard work were spent with the implements at hand in cutting the wagon-way through the bank, after which my saddle horses were driven up and down; and when it was pronounced finished, ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... true of the Harlowes, Jack: they have been called The proud Harlowes: and I have ever found, that all young honour is supercilious and touchy. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... be frank. I hate you and detest you with all my heart," continued Flora. "I have always hated you, with your supercilious ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... freeholds to the value of L100 free of all debts, could vote for governor and other State officials. The laws were so arranged as effectually to disfranchise those who had no property. In his "Reminiscenses" Dr. John W. Francis tells of the prevalence for years in New York of a supercilious class which habitually sneered at the demand for political equality of the leather-breeched mechanic with his few ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... phenomenon, betokening still sadder imperfections in mankind's ways, than the Scandinavian method itself! To fall into mere unreasoning deliquium of love and admiration, was not good; but such unreasoning, nay irrational supercilious no-love at all is perhaps still worse!—It is a thing forever changing, this of Hero-worship: different in each age, difficult to do well in any age. Indeed, the heart of the whole business of the age, one may say, is ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... the AEnead."—Kirkham's Gram., p. 56. "Which, to a supercilious or inconsiderate Japaner, would seem very idle and impertinent."—Locke, on Ed., p. 225. "Will not a look of disdain cast upon you, throw you into a foment?"—Life of Th. Say, p. 146. "It may be of use to the scholar, to remark in this place, that though only the conjunction ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... different churchman from the bitter author of the Polite Conversations, is equally contemptuous toward the self-seeker in divine things. 'Your boasted peaceableness often proceeds from a superficial temper; and, not seldom, from a supercilious disdain of whatever has no marketable use or value, and from your utter indifference to true religion. Toleration is an herb of spontaneous growth in the soil of indifference. Much of our union of ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... [Entering, after a supercilious glance.] This is quite more of an affair, my dear, than I ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... to elapse after receiving old Hasluck's letter before presenting myself at Stamford Hill. It was late one afternoon in early summer. Hasluck had not returned from the City, Mrs. Hasluck was out visiting, Miss Hasluck was in the garden. I told the supercilious footman not to trouble, I would seek her there myself. I guessed where she would be; her favourite spot had always been a sunny corner, bright with flowers, surrounded by a thick yew hedge, cut, after the Dutch fashion, into quaint shapes of animals and birds. She was ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... of a darker hue than the lord of the wallow, and of much slimmer build,—altogether less formidable in appearance. But he looked very fit and fearless as, after a moment's supercilious survey of his rival's ooze-dripping form, he came mincing forward to the attack. The two, probably, had never seen each other before; but in rutting season all caribou ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... box her ears. That eye-glass was her especial aversion, for Trix was no more near-sighted than herself, but pretended to be because it was the fashion, and at times used the innocent glass as a weapon with which to put down any one who presumed to set themselves up. The supercilious glance which accompanied her ironically polite speech roused Polly, who answered with sudden color and the kindling of the eyes that always betrayed a perturbed spirit, "I don't think many of us would enjoy ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... have been a more unwelcome visitor than this cold-eyed, supercilious Chancellor, unless it were his master, Christian, the Danish Prince who had come to rule Norway with the iron hand, and to stamp out the fires of rebellion against the alien rule that were always smouldering, when not leaping into flame. Bergen itself had been the scene of the latest ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... top. Fate had created a tragical resemblance between these two lives, separated by more than five centuries. The chevalier in coat-of-mail had been killed in the battle of the Mansourah during the first crusade of St. Louis. The young man with the supercilious smile had mounted the scaffold during the Reign of Terror, holding between his lips a rose, his usual decoration for his coat. The history of the French nobility was embodied in these two men, born in blood, ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... a political discussion with Mr. Gifford at table that noon, talking in a rather supercilious tone, and purposely making several bad blunders, which Mr. Gifford corrected rather pointedly. Annie could not help observing that her lover's conceit and ignorance of the ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... among the coarse sensations of the ordinary human. He wanted to kick Mallinson, and to kick him hard. He saw with an anticipatory satisfaction the glasses flying off the supercilious gentleman's nose, and felt the jar at the end of his boot as it dashed into the coat-tails. The action would have been too noticeable, however, and he only said, 'What a very ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Sparks, and charming!" was his supercilious reply. "I rejoice to find that the fumier I have been forced to fling on my worn-out ancestral estate is fertilizing its barrenness. The village is probably the better for the change. But, as regards the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... misrepresent your author, the decency not to abuse him, the patience to read, and if possible to understand him! Point out his blemishes, correct his blunders, castigate his faults; it is your duty,—he himself will have reason to thank you. But do not approach him with arrogance or a supercilious coldness; do not, if your knowledge be less than his, seek to mask your ignorance with the deformity of conceit; do not treat him as a criminal or as a dunce, unless he happens really to be one. Above ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... of advancing steps lifted Frederick's face from hers. Muttering an oath, he threw Tess forcibly from him, for there in the path was Ebenezer Waldstricker, about whose sagging lips played a supercilious smile. ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... confounded. Nicholas was by this time nearer, though coming against the sun he had not yet perceived her. Influenced by her father's lecture, she felt angry with him for being there and causing this awkwardness. Her notice of him was therefore slight, supercilious perhaps, slurred over; and her vexation at his presence showed distinctly in her face as she sat down in her seat. Instead of catching his waiting eye, she positively turned ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... his hand began to stroke and caress his small, black moustache, and he viewed Bellew from his dusty boots up to the crown of his dusty hat, and down again, with supercilious eyes. ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... repented at the thought "that he would be called by the Achaeans parricide,"[479] that he might not seem to be rebuking Achilles, as one that had himself never suffered from excess of rage. For kindness of this sort has great influence, and people yield more to those who seem to be sympathetic and not supercilious. And since we ought not to expose an inflamed eye to a strong light, and a soul a prey to the passions cannot bear unmixed reproof and rebuke, one of the most useful remedies will be found to be a slight mixture of praise, as ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... supercilious indifference to mere 'theological subtleties.' To him Paul's preaching and the Jews' passionate denials of it seemed only a squabble about 'words and names.' Probably he had gathered his impression from Paul's eager accusers, who would charge him with giving the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... itself to the Porte, not only because of long years of misgovernment, but also on account of the supineness shown by its officials, who, in the presence of the most positive proofs to the contrary, treated the idea of a rising with supercilious disregard. Frequently whole villages came in to declare that they should be compelled to rise, unless they received protection and support. This was of course promised liberally, but the promises were never redeemed, ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... was watered by tears; nor could I see those stars on which I so much doated, and from which I had learned a wisdom so profound. The politics, too, were rendering our family unpleasant; the cote droit was becoming supercilious—it had always been illogical; while the cote gauche was just beginning to discover that it had made a revolution for other people. Then it was happiness itself to be with Adrienne, and when I felt the dear girl pressing me to her heart, by an act of volition of which ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... been deluding himself that he had done with piracy. The conviction that this French service was free of any taint of that was the only consideration that had induced him to accept it. Yet here was this haughty, supercilious gentleman, who dubbed himself General of the Armies of France, proposing a plundering, thieving raid which, when stripped of its mean, transparent mask of legitimate warfare, was revealed as ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... use a phrase which he himself would not have used, for he avoided the use of slang—"given himself away." Over his lantern-shaped face, across his thin, determined mouth, there had still lingered a trace of the supercilious smile with which he had been looking round him. And, as he had helped Mrs. Archdale into the compartment, as he indicated to her the comfortable seat he had reserved for himself, not even she—noted though she was for her powers of sympathy ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... different. He realized too that her teeth were perfect, and her complexion, notwithstanding its pallor, was faultless. She would have been strikingly good-looking but for her mouth, and that—was it a discontented or a supercilious curl? At any rate it disappeared ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and sometimes he was supercilious, in his speeches to the House. His influence was exceedingly limited, and he carried on a constant but useless struggle in ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... children: And the Stoics too, that conceive themselves next to the gods, yet show me one of them, nay the veriest bigot of the sect, and if he do not put off his beard, the badge of wisdom, though yet it be no more than what is common with him and goats; yet at least he must lay by his supercilious gravity, smooth his forehead, shake off his rigid principles, and for some time commit an act of folly and dotage. In fine, that wise man whoever he be, if he intends to have children, must have recourse to me. But tell me, I beseech you, what man is that would submit his neck to the noose of wedlock, ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... of course, had been any good. The sketch, to be perfect, would need to portray a tall, slim, blonde person with feminine features. But no crayon could convey an idea of the squeaky voice and the supercilious manner. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... his adventure with the supercilious incredulity of a staunch unbeliever invited to a spiritualist's seance, was conscious for a moment of an absolutely new sensation. A person of acute psychological instincts, he found himself analysing that sensation almost as soon as it ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... all at once, you find you have something precious that you only dimly suspected was to be yours, you almost wish it hadn't come so soon. But just at that moment Mrs. Benedict called to us, and came tramping back from the gate, and hooked her supercilious, patronizing arm in Mr. Copley's, and asked him into the sitting-room to talk over the 'lady-chapel' in her new memorial church. Then Aunt Celia told me they would excuse me, as I had had a wearisome day; and there was nothing for me to do but to go to bed, like a snubbed child, ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and willingly. We confess and also experience that, where the Holy Spirit does not, surpassing reason, shine into the heart, it is impossible to grasp, or to believe, and abide by, such article; moreover, there must remain in it [the heart] a Jewish, proud, and supercilious reason deriding and ridiculing such article, and thus setting up itself as judge and master of the Divine Being whom it has never seen nor is able to see and hence does not know what it is passing judgment on, nor whereof it thinks or speaks. For God dwells in a ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... seeing the society which he describes at that distance which, if it does not lend enchantment, at all events unifies the scattered impressions, and furnishes a convenient critical outpost. He does not permit himself, however, like so many foreigners in the French capital, to lapse into that supercilious cosmopolitanism which deprives a man of his own country without giving him any other in exchange. No; Jonas Lie is and remains a Norseman—a fact which he demonstrated (to the gratification of his countrymen) on a recent ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... was early for fashionable ladies to be out shopping, so the rather supercilious young woman greeted Patty with a cautious air of reserve. It was so different from the effusive manner usually shown to Nan and Patty when they really went shopping, that Patty was secretly much amused. But as she was also ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... away from him. He draws near her again; she disregards him. He gleefully chucks her under the chin, and, retreating a few steps, nods and beckons with fantastic grimaces, while the girl bestows a contemptuous and supercilious look upon his wrinkled visage. She turns away with a flounce, and the old gentleman trots after her with a toothless chuckle. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... protection shelter him from the treatment he deserves. I shall, on such an occasion, without scruple trample upon all those forms with which wealth and dignity intrench themselves, nor shall anything but age restrain my resentment; age which always brings one privilege, that of being insolent and supercilious without punishment. But with regard, sir, to those whom I have offended, I am of opinion, that if I had acted a borrowed part I should have avoided their censure; the heat that offended them was the ardor of conviction, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... wonderful leaps, from time to time, in manly knowledge. With what eager shrewdness they noted, discussed, reproduced, the manners and attire of their pilgrim guests, sporting what was to their liking therein in the streets of Chartres. The more cynical or supercilious pilgrim would sometimes present himself—a personage oftenest of high ecclesiastical station, like the eminent translator of Plutarch, Amyot, afterwards Bishop of Auxerre, who seemed to care little for shrine or relic, ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... performers of her own sex she is unquestionably the very first in the world. It is, indeed, only within a comparatively few years that the claims of women to superiority as violinists have been treated with anything better than sneers. And the supercilious and intolerant spirit which dictated such treatment had at least a much solider foundation than the narrow conservatism which refused to admit women into the lists with poets, novelists, sculptors, ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... calls him a fine man; he is indeede big enough, and like to become too big; with long slits of eyes that gaze freelie on all, as who shoulde say "Who dare let or hinder us?" His brow betokens sense and franknesse, his eyebrows are supercilious, and his cheeks puffy. A rolling, straddling gait, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... above all things Norman, and was now living in Normandy in peaceful old age. Perhaps her stormy and eventful life had made her feel weary of storms, for she rarely emerged from her retirement except in the character of a peacemaker. Certainly she had learnt wisdom by adversity. Her former supercilious sternness was gone, and a meek and quiet spirit, which earned the respect of all, had taken its place. She may have owed that change, and her quiet close of life, instrumentally, in some measure to the prayers of the good Queen Maud, that sweet and ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... picture-gallery, which presented to the eye a long series of men and women, each marked by some strong peculiar feature. There were avarice and prodigality, the pride of blood and the pride of money, morbid restlessness and morbid apathy, frivolous garrulity, supercilious silence, a Democritus to laugh at every thing, and a Heraclitus to lament over every thing. The work proceeded fast, and in twelve months was completed. It wanted something of the simplicity which had been among the most attractive ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... of blond Samson, whose corn-colored silken beard apparently had never yet known the touch of barber's razor or Delilah's shears. So that the cutting speech which quivered on her ready tongue died upon her lips, and she contented herself with receiving his stammering apology with supercilious eyelids and the gathered skirts of uncontamination. When she re-entered the schoolroom, her eyes fell upon the azaleas with a new sense of revelation; and then she laughed, and the little people all laughed, and they were all ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... that immediately followed, Walden stood erect in the pulpit, looking down upon the people. He saw Maryllia's face,— he saw all the eyes of her London friends fixed on him with a more or less critical and supercilious stare,—he saw his own flock' waiting for his first word with their usual air of respectful attention,—every small point and detail in his surroundings became suddenly magnified to his sight,—even the little rose in old Josey Letherbarrow's smock caught his eye ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... too supercilious and ready to sneer. It is only bad taste. It may have been very true devotion ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... succeeded by Simplicius of Emona, who had been a schoolmaster, but was now the assessor of Maximin. After receiving this appointment, he did not grow more proud or arrogant, but assumed a supercilious look, which gave a repulsive expression to his countenance. His language was studiously moderate, while he meditated the most rigorous proceedings against many persons. And first of all he put Rufina ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... no mistake. We got here middle day, yesterday—came over the hills from the railway in a regular old bone-shaker of a coach. My tourist get-up is quite the fig, and though I caught Mr. M—— eyeing me over a bit supercilious like once, he didn't recognize me if ever he did see me down at Thurwell Court, which I don't think he did. Well, directly we got here, off started Mr. M—— through the town, and after a bit I followed. Lord! it was hot and no mistake, but he didn't seem to notice it, though the perspiration ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I do enjoy this bounteous beauteous earth; And dote upon a jest "Within the limits of becoming mirth";— No solemn sanctimonious face I pull, Nor think I'm pious when I'm only bilious— Nor study in my sanctum supercilious To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull. I pray for grace—repent each sinful act— Peruse, but underneath the rose, my Bible; And love my neighbor far too well, in fact, To call and twit him with a godly tract That's turn'd by application to a libel. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... vexation, that, though she brought him a kingdom as her dowry, he treated her with such neglect that he had never yet favored her with a single letter.[**] Her fondness was but the more increased by this supercilious treatment; and when she found that her subjects had entertained the greatest aversion for the event to which she directed her fondest wishes, she made the whole English nation the object of her resentment. A squadron, under the command of Lord Effingham, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... girl, scarce to a curtsey bred, Would I much rather than Cornelia wed; If supercilious, haughty, proud, and vain, She brought her father's triumphs in her train. Away with all your Carthaginian state; Let vanquish'd Hannibal without-doors wait, Too burly and too big to pass my ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... deceives himself." Since all mortal men are nothing, vanity, altogether vanity, and less than vanity, he that would seem something, and seems so to himself, deludes himself. Hence is our insulting fierceness, hence our supercilious rigour. Every man apprehends some excellency in himself beyond another. Take away pride, and charity shall enter, and modesty shall be its companion. But now we mock ourselves, and deceive ourselves, by building the weight of our pretended zeal upon such a vain ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... work, eugenics that didn't work; Ku-Lis who envied the richer classes but were too lazy to reach out for the rewards freely offered for individual initiative; the intellectually active and physically lazy Ki-Lings who despised their lethargy; the Man-Din drones who regarded both classes with supercilious toleration; the Princes of the Blood, arrogant in their assumption of a heritage from a Heaven in which they did not believe; and finally the three castes of the army, air and industrial repair services, equally ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... spoke bitterly. His gorge was rising. It was not easy to suppress his vexation with his mother, and the indignation which he felt at the supercilious approaches of the agent whom she had employed. Besides, his mind, not less than his feelings, was rising in vigor in due degree with ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... that no one had sent her? She would encounter rough soldiers, and camp-followers of every nation, and officers of all grades of character; and could she bear herself so wisely and loftily in all trials as to awe the impertinent, and command the respect of the supercilious, so that she might be free to come and go at her will, and do what should seem good to her? Or, if she failed to maintain a character proof against even inuendoes, would she not break the bridge ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... at once that we are a bit supercilious in our attitude toward the sister Square far to our West, across the Alps of Broadway. Our Square was an established center of the social respectabilities when the foot of Fifth Avenue was still frequented ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and the President's enemies within his own party, headed by the redoubtable Randolph, were instantly alert to the opportunity which Jefferson's inexplicable conduct afforded them. "The mountain had labored and brought forth a mouse," quoted the supercilious; the executive dragnet had descended to envelop the monster which was ready to split the Union or at least to embroil its relations with a friendly power, and had brought up—a few peaceful agriculturists! Nor was this the worst ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... side of the ship we found two huge lighters, from which bales of goods were being hoisted aboard. Two camels and a dozen diminutive mules stood in the waist of one of these craft. The camels were as sniffy and supercilious and scornful as camels always are; and everybody promptly hated them with the hatred of the abysmally inferior spirit for something that scorns it, as is the usual attitude of the human mind towards camels. We waited for upwards of an ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... he had spoken slowly and impressively, with a touch of arrogance in his tone which aroused to his prejudice, the combativeness latent in my nature. However, at this juncture I merely bowed my head, and replied in accents almost as supercilious as his own:— ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... jingle of endings; it were more true to say that it was a jingle of mendings, for it certainly soothed him. He was making a goddess in his own image; poetry—Santa Cecilia! he was a poet, like his friend Dante, like that supercilious young tomb-walker Guido Cavalcanti. A poet he undoubtedly became; and if his feet were cold his heart ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... my readers into two classes, the indolent and the supercilious, and shall accordingly address them upon the present occasion. To the former I have nothing more to say, than to refer them back to the latter part of Chapter I., Part I. where, my dear ladies, you will find ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... olden time, and affects all the supercilious airs of a modern fine lady and an upstart. The object of the one writer is to restore us to truth and nature: the other chiefly thinks how he shall display his own power, or vent his spleen, or astonish the reader either by starting new subjects and trains of speculation, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... disappointing—not to themselves. Janet would always be Janet to them— the dear friend of their childhood, with more real worth in her little finger than there was in ten such fine ladies as Mrs Grove. But Rose, grew indignant beforehand, as she imagined the supercilious smiles and forced politeness of that lady, and perhaps of Fanny too, when all this worth should appear in the form of a little, plain old woman, with no claim to ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... not answered some six letters of mine. This, therefore, is my penultimate. I will write to you once more, but, after that—I swear by all the saints—I am silent and supercilious. I have met Curran [1] at Holland House—he beats every body;—his imagination is beyond human, and his humour (it is difficult to define what is wit) perfect. Then he has fifty faces, and twice as many voices, when he mimics—I never met his equal. Now, were I a woman, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... to their criticism? For myself, I am free to say that I have no patience with satirists. I never knew a just one. I never heard of a fair one. They are a mean, malicious, murdering tribe,—they are a supercilious, dogmatical, envious, suspicious company,—knocking down their fellow-creatures in the name of Virtue for their own gratification,—mere Mohawks, kept by family ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Pomona, with enormous earrings and splendid fazzoletto of crimson and orange dyes, pounced down upon her for some supposed infraction of good manners—creanza, as they vividly express it here. Only Luigi looked a trifle bored. But Luigi has been a soldier, and has now attained the supercilious superiority of young-manhood, which smokes its cigar of an evening in the piazza and knows the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... bolstering this supercilious view: "As for that legislature—how many bills were ever passed in our legislature over a governor's veto after we had got in our work? We are going to have a safe man for governor. That band's lungs won't last for ever. Colonel Dodd, are ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... once being present when the merits of a book were canvassed. One person declared it to be insufferably dull, when another, who had published some novel, observed, with rather a supercilious air, "You know not how difficult it is to write a ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... entered Lincoln's room a tall Southerner, a Colonel Somebody from Mississippi, whose eye's hard glitter spoke supercilious distrust and whose stiff bearing betokened suppressed hostility. It was beautiful, says Dr. Bateman, to see the cold flash of the Southerner's dark eye yield to a warmer glow, and the haughty constraint melt into frank good-nature, under the influence of Lincoln's ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... back, and was as conceited as ever, and as supercilious towards his old school-fellow Ellis, who still seemed always strangely cowed in his presence. In many respects Barber, unhappily, bade fair to rival Blackall. He was not so great a bully, but then he had not the power of being so, as he was not so strong, and not so high up in the school. ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... the careless observer as one of the concomitants of fashion. The reverse is true. She is an interloper in the circles of good society, and the old fable of the ass in the lion's skin fits her precisely. Many a duchess in England is such an interloper; her supercilious airs betray the falsity of her politeness, but she is obliged by the rules of the Court at which she has been educated to "behave like a lady;" she has to counterfeit good-breeding; she cannot, she dare not, behave as a woman who has suddenly become rich may sometimes, nay does, ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... legal opinion as to what it could or could not do. It demanded, legal or illegal, that Garrison and the Liberator be suppressed. To the Boston mayor the excitement over the editor and his paper seemed like much ado about nothing. The cause appeared to his supercilious mind altogether inadequate to the effect. And so he set to work to reduce the panic by exposing the vulgarity and insignificance of the object, which produced it. That he might give the Southern bugaboo its quietus, he directed one of his deputies to inquire into a publication, of which ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... his fin-like legs, he lumbered towards the river, looking askance at me, with an expression of countenance that seemed to say, "He can do me no harm; however, I may as well have a swim." I took aim at the throat of this supercilious brute, and, as soon as my hand steadied, the very pulsation of my finger pulled the trigger. Bang! went the gun! whizz! flew the bullet; and my excited ear could catch the thud with which it plunged into the scaly leather of his neck. His waddle became a plunge, ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... a digest of its contents," the General replied. "He smiled in a supercilious manner and said I had better ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... supercilious Nineteenth Century! Is it so very much the superior of all its predecessors, as it complacently ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... controversy turned upon the fundamental principles, of all religion, and virtue. It is not at all surprising, that this steadiness and constancy of the Lutherans, was branded by the opposite party, with the epithets, of morose obstinacy, supercilious arrogance, and such like odious denominations. The Lutherans, were not behind hand with their adversaries, in acrimony, of style; they recriminated with vehemence, and charged their accusers with instances of misconduct, different in kind, but equally condemnable. They ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... discovered, but would think it impossible and even ridiculous to enlarge it beyond the limits already traced by reason. They only believe in a progress that is chained to the inside of the enclosure. Clerambault knew only too well the supercilious smile with which the ideas of inventors are put aside by learned men from the official schools. There are certain forms of science which accord perfectly with docility. David's manner showed no irony; it expressed rather a stoical, baffled kind of melancholy. ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... they esteem each other better than themselves; whereas they who at all look to, or depend upon, their own righteousness for their clothing and justification before God, always look down with an air of supercilious contempt upon others who they think are not so righteous as themselves. Lord, hide self-righteous pride from my heart, and sink me into the depth of humility, that I may ever glory in Thee, in whom I am perfectly ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... know these Yukon eggs of ours—some pink, some green, some blue— A dollar per, assorted tints, assorted flavors too. The supercilious cheechako might designate them high, But one acquires a taste for them and likes them by-and-by. Well, Hard-Luck Henry took this egg and held it to the light, And there was more faint pencilling that sorely taxed his sight. At last he made it out, and then the legend ran ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... the political papers Gay's observations are moderate in tone. Defoe's Review (1704-13) and The Observator (1702-12), begun by John Tutchin, are noticed in rather supercilious fashion. The Examiner (1710-14) is damned with faint praise: though "all men, who speak without prejudice, allow it to be well written" and "under the eye of some great persons who sit at the helm of affairs," Gay's admiration is reserved for its two chief opponents, ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... more and more for his supercilious conduct and certainty of subduing me, I naturally turned again to my good host and hostess. But here there was very little help or support to be obtained at present. Major Hockin was laying the ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore |
