"Conceit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a fact capable of verification, it shows another human trait in animals that one would not expect to find there. Bears seem to show more human nature than most other animals. Bostock says that they evidently love to show off before an audience: "The conceit and good opinion of themselves, which some performing bears have, is absolutely ridiculous." A trainer once trained a young bear to climb a ladder and set free the American flag, and so proud did the bear ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... great self-conceit to hope one is better company than Maria! But come, before we fall under the dominion of the Queen of the West Wing, I have a secret for you.' Then, after a longer stammer than usual, 'How should you like ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... races which are breeding up, or accumulating vital capital,—a descending and an ascending series. Let me give an example of each; and that I may incidentally remove a common impression about this country as compared with the Old World, an impression which got tipsy with conceit and staggered into the attitude of a formal proposition in the work of Dr. Robert Knox, I will illustrate the downward movement from English experience, and the upward movement from a family history belonging to this ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... name so terrible, we shal find them to haue bin none other then against the barbarous Moores, the naked Indians, and the vnarmed Netherlanders, whose yeelding rather to the name then act of the Spaniards, hath put them into such a conceit of their mightines, as they haue considerately vndertaken the conquest of our monarchie, consisting of a people vnited and always held sufficiently warlike: against whom what successe their inuincible army had the last yeere, as our very children can witness, so I doubt not but ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... kindly, he had less to say on the richness of my fortune than on the faults of my manner and the rustic air of my attire. Yet he bade me go to London, since there a man, rubbing shoulders with all the world, learnt to appraise his own value, and lost the ignorant conceit of himself that a village greatness is apt to breed. Somewhat crestfallen, I thanked him for his kindness, and made bold ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... beginning, Mr. Asquith will control the foolish, and that common sense will prevail in the Cabinet when a treaty is the subject of converse. Still further, I will assume that, contrary to nearly all precedent, the collective sagacity of the Ministry has not been impaired, and its self-conceit perilously tickled, by the long exercise of absolute power in face of a Parliament of poltroons. And, lastly, I will abandon my old argument that the discussion of peace terms might shorten the war, without any risk of prolonging ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... I am out of conceit of it somehow," I said. "And it might remind Nora of the blue paper parcel. I think I shall give the cup ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... the mountain heights, and through Tuique luci suave olentis hospites." Who are the hospites? The wild beasts of the forests, we suppose. Now hospites may, of course, mean either "guests" or "hosts," and it is a pretty conceit of Victor's to think of the wolves and bears as the guests of the forest-god, as we have ventured to render the phrase in the translation given above. Or, are they Victor's hosts, whose characters have been so changed by Silvanus that Victor has had ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... knows the best and worst of us, and who loves us in spite of all our faults; who will speak the honest truth to us, while the world flatters us to our face, and laughs at us behind our back; who will give us counsel and reproof in the days of prosperity and self-conceit; but who, again, will comfort and encourage us in the day of difficulty and sorrow, when the world leaves us alone to fight our battle ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... is the ocean which surrounds the world, the black is the world itself, the pupil is Jerusalem, and the image in the pupil is the Temple. May it be built in our own days, and in the days of all Israel! Amen!'" The memory of this conceit is kept alive to this day among the Greek Christians, who still show the sacred stone in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. This notion is not confined to Jewry. Classic readers will at once call to mind the appellation Omphalos or navel applied to the temple at Delphi (Pindar, Pyth., ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... a very quaint conceit of him, that Mars and Mercury fell at variance whose servant he should be; and there is an epigrammatist that saith that Art and Nature had spent their excellences in his fashioning, and, fearing they could not end what they had begun, they bestowed him up for time, and Nature ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... do you think shame can have any effect in people so lost to truth, and so encased in ignorance and conceit?" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... jealousy of Salvatti's comrades tended to perpetuate and exaggerate this legend; and the tenor, worn out, poor, and a wreck virtually for all of his pose of grandeur, was able to make a living still from provincial publics, who charitably applauded him with the self-conceit of climbers ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... changing it, and Mr. Adams had every possible reason for affecting the manner of a courtier even if he did not feel the sentiment. Never did his son see him flatter or vilify, or show a sign of envy or jealousy; never a shade of vanity or self-conceit. Never a tone of arrogance! Never a gesture ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... me," said Miss Mullett, "and I guess I'm a good deal like marmalade myself—half sweet and half bitter." Miss Mullett laughed at the conceit. ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... "champion" of the first water, When we appeared on the ground I noticed that the Countess had a small ivory mallet. "This," I said to myself, "is a foregone conclusion; any one who plays with a fancy mallet, and that of ivory, is sure to be beaten." And in my conceit I thought I need not give myself much trouble about the game. Alas! I never appreciated the saying that "pride has a fall" until that day. At first I played with utter indifference, I was so sure ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... conceit, once he had disarmed her, Blue Serge transferred his interest exclusively ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... conceit he fell a-laughing, and remarked he had never had the happiness yet to see the chicken-yard at ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... true. The scholar may once in a way reflect glory on the school by success in an examination, but generally he is regarded as a self-regarding person, who is not likely to help to win the matches of the year. But the hero-worship is not undiscriminating; conceit, selfishness, surliness will go far to nullify the influence of physical strength and skill. Boys' admiration for physical prowess is natural and not unhealthy. The harm is done by the advertisement given to such prowess by foolish elders. ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... Conceit you me: as having clasped a rose Within my palm, the rose being ta'en away, My hand retains a little breath of sweet, So may man's trunk, his spirit slipped away, Hold still a faint perfume of his sweet guest. 'Tis so: for when discursive ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 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 ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... State is established, Mr. Warburton founds upon this supposition—'That people, considering themselves in a religious capacity, may contract with themselves, considered in a civil capacity.' The conceit is ingenious, but is not his own. Scrub, in the Beaux Stratagem, had found it out long ago: he considers himself as acting the different parts of all the servants in the family; and so Scrub, the coachman, ploughman, or justice's clerk, might contract with Scrub, the butler, for such ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... the Arabs, "Above all their qualities, personal conceit is remarkable; they show it in their strut, in their looks, and almost in every word. 'I am such a one, the son of such a one,' is a common expletive, especially in times of danger; and this spirit is not wholly to be condemned, as it certainly acts as an ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... no man out of a weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain, that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God's word, or in the book of God's works; divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavour an endless ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... easy to persuade himself that this was right. Hannah ought not to throw herself away on Bud Means. Men of some culture always play their conceit off against their consciences. To a man of literary habits it usually seems to be a great boon that he confers on a woman when he gives her his love. Reasoning thus, Ralph had fixed his resolution, and if the night had been shorter, or sleep possible, the ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... throaty voice, a big nose, a coarse mouth with a drooping everted lower lip, eyes peering amidst folds and wrinkles. He made his confession for his race. "We Jews," he said, "have gone through the system of this world, creating nothing, consolidating many things, destroying much. Our racial self-conceit has been monstrous. We seem to have used our ample coarse intellectuality for no other purpose than to develop and master and maintain the convention of property, to turn life into a sort of mercantile chess and spend our winnings grossly. . . . We have had no sense of service to mankind. Beauty ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... Turk Mahomet shall I be! No, I will not make myself drunk with the conceit of so much joy: The fortune's too great for mortal man; and I ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... Cumshaw. He repeated the verb. "Re-discovered" struck a distinctive note. One could not convey the same meaning with any form of the verb "to overtake;" Mr. Cumshaw had disappeared, not simply gone on ahead. He chuckled softly at his own quaint conceit, and at that his spirits ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... the glory of reputation arising from self-love, and thence in a high conceit of their own intelligence, enjoy a more sublime rationality than many others; the reason why, 269. Why the understanding of atheists, in spiritual light, appeared open ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... jealousy, love of power, desire to outshine neighbors, lust, sensuality, gross appetites, gourmandism, love of praise, personal conceit and egotism, selfishness in every form—all these are webs which the ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... fashionable affectation of some literary coxcombs might fine-draw over a brace of small octavos. As it stands, the story is gracefully, yet energetically told, and is entitled to the place it occupies. The author of Pelham (vide the newspapers) has a pleasant conceit in the shape of a whole-length of fashion, which, being the best and shortest in its line that we have met with, will serve to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 340, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... was there; Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, That for Achilles' image stood his spear Grasped in an armed hand; himself behind Was left unseen, save to the eye ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... at all, the fact of the divine spark in their composition. Ḳurratu'l 'Ayn certainly did realize her divinity. On one occasion she even reproved one of her companions for not at once discerning that she was the Ḳibla towards which he ought to pray. This is no poetical conceit; it is meant as seriously as the phrase, 'the Gate,' is meant when applied to Mirza 'Ali Muḥammad. We may compare it with another honorific title of this great woman—'The ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... places and by means calculated to have a powerful emotional impact on those to whom it was presented. 'There are limits to the exercise of these liberties [of speech and of the press]. The danger in these times from the coercive activities of those who in the delusion of racial or religious conceit would incite violence and breaches of the peace in order to deprive others of their equal right to the exercise of their liberties, is emphasized by events familiar to all. These and other transgressions of those limits the States appropriately may punish.' * * * It is not ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... crass, heavy, born with more of rudeness than of character, more of obstinacy than of firmness, of impetuosity than of tact, a charlatan in administration as well as in virtue, made to bring the one into disrepute and the other into disgust, in other respects shy from self-conceit, timid from pride, as unfamiliar with men, whom he had never known, as with public affairs, which he had always seen askew; his name was Turgot. He was one of those half-thinking brains which adopt all visions, all manias ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... fresh from the theatre of action. At great expense foreign correspondents had been sent to our shores, whose ignorance and confidence had led them into egregious blunders; for their travelling outlay merely, I would have guaranteed thrice the information, and my sanguine conceit half persuaded me that I could present it as acceptably. I did not wait to ponder upon this suggestion. The guns of the second action of Bull Run growled a farewell to me as I resigned my horse and equipments to a successor. With a ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... the English patriot that the "one jolly Englishman" of the old rhyme is not the easy vanquisher of the "two froggy Frenchmen and one Portugee" which tradition would have him believe. He is thus enabled to steer a middle course between arrant conceit and childish fright. History tells him the actual facts: history is to the patriot what "form" ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... silence at the table. This at least seemed to be a tenable theory. That man should have the temerity to take liberties with elementary principles was quite within reason, man being an animal of rare conceit, and that the result would bring about destruction was not at all ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... time she made a movement as if to leave. She looked earnest and troubled. I could vow she was about to burst into tears. Her face was very expressive. No one who shows such sudden changes can help being a person of rare sensibility. I am almost out of conceit of making her the heroine of my story, though, to be sure, I am not likely to interfere with her personal rights, so long as I do not know either ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... provincial 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
... up, perhaps, by the conceit which comes to a man through the possession of a real sheepskin diploma, granted by a university of good standing, did not think it necessary to defend his literary taste. He busied himself in pruning a stick he had cut in the ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... The conceit of fountains or sources of water being things that see (drakon)—that is, eyes—or bearing some resemblance to eyes, is common to many races. In Italy, for example, two springs in the inland sea near Taranto are called "Occhi"—eyes; Arabs speak of a watery fountain as an eye; the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... put an end to my summer's campaign. I was cured of my poetical enthusiasm for rebels, robbers, and highwaymen. I was put out of conceit of my subject, and what was worse, I was lightened of my purse, in which was almost every farthing I had in the world. So I abandoned Sir Richard Steele's cottage in despair, and crept into less celebrated, though no less poetical and ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... brooded, a fierce and evil joy awoke in him at the thought that now at last the expected hour had come when he would heap coals of fire on her head. He was still fool enough to think of her as having forsaken him, although he had never given her ground for believing, and she had never had conceit enough to imagine, that he cared the least for her person. If he could but let her have a glimmer of what she had lost in losing him! She knew what she had ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... so bored by his conceit and self-complacency that I cast my eyes about and smiled at several pleasant-looking persons, who returned the smile and nodded in a friendly fashion, till I could perceive Tuck's ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... of goods, all the stores are to be closed except those at R.'s and Folsom's. I may sell what I have on hand, but not take in anything more. Ignorance, stupidity, and conceit. ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... clover, or the grasshoppers in a patch of stubble, outnumber the men that have lived since Adam. And yet we assume the dignity of lords and masters of the globe! Is not this a flagrant delusion of self-conceit? Let a pack of hungry wolves surround you here in the forest, and who is master? Let a cloud of locusts descend upon a hundred square miles of this territory, and what means do you possess to arrest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... so the conversation went on as before till we parted at Dingwall,—the Establishment clergyman wet to the skin, the Free Church editor in no better condition; but both, mayhap, rather less out of conceit with the ride than if it had ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... piece of luck I've had.... By God, Hinde, this serves me right. Eleanor always said I was selfish, and I am. I'm terribly self-satisfied and thick-skinned. I had no qualification for this work ... nothing but my conceit ... and I've been let down. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... much question whether those that never thought at all of him have not this in a more confirmed degree than they that have learned to think he can do no harm. For if they were never freed from superstition, they never fell into it; and if they never laid aside a disturbing conceit of God, they never took one up. The like may be said as to hell and the future state. For though neither the Epicurean nor the brute can hope for any good thence; yet such as have no forethought of death at all cannot but be less amused and scared with ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... I had almost to restrain myself from rising from the pew where I was seated, ascending the pulpit stairs, and requesting the man who had nothing to say, to walk down, and allow me, who had something to say, to take his place. Was this conceit? Considering what I was listening to, it could not have been great conceit at least. But I did restrain myself, for I thought an encounter with the police would be unseemly, and my motives scarcely of weight in the court to which ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... depend on it too much. Norman lives, like all school-boys, a life of emulation, and has never met with anything but success. I do believe Dr. Hoxton and Mr. Wilmot are as proud of him as we are; and he has never shown any tendency to conceit, but I am afraid he has the love of being foremost, and pride in his superiority, caring for what he is, compared with others, rather than what ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Kua was a sun of the famous Chao She. From his boyhood, he had been wholly engrossed in the study of war and military matters, until at last he came to believe that there was no commander in the whole Empire who could stand against him. His father was much disquieted by this overweening conceit, and the flippancy with which he spoke of such a serious thing as war, and solemnly declared that if ever Kua was appointed general, he would bring ruin on the armies of Chao. This was the man who, in spite of earnest protests from his own mother and the veteran statesman Lin ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... the stair which we could hear from the nursery, had struck only three a few minutes before, and there was still a whole hour to tea. The boys were really tired of all their toys, and I didn't care to play with my dolls. The misfortune to Lady Florimel's cloak had put me out of conceit ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... bit ob it, massa. You's too cheeky to die soon. I's noticed, in my 'sperience, dat de young slabes as has got most self-conceit an' imprence ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... action. We speak often with amusement, sometimes with distaste and uneasiness, of men who "have no sense of humor," who take themselves too seriously, who are intense, self-absorbed, over-confident in matters of opinion, or else go plumed with conceit, proud of we cannot tell what, enjoying, appreciating, thinking of nothing so much as themselves. These are men who have not suffered that wholesome change. They have not come to themselves. If they be serious men, and real forces in the world, we may conclude that they ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... and conceit. His verses drip with fine love-honey; but it has been so clarified in meta-physics that much of its flavour and sweetness has escaped. Very often, too, the conceit embodied is preposterously poor. You have as it were a casket of finest gold elaborately wrought and embellished, and the gem within ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... she disinterested? Was not love for Thurnall, the wish to please him, mingling with all her earnestness? And again, was not self-love mingling with it? and mingling, too, with the disappointment, even indignation, which she felt at having failed? Ah—what hitherto hidden spots of self-conceit, vanity, pharisaic pride, that bitter trial laid bare, or seemed to lay, till she learned to thank her unseen Guide even ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... masters of the art. People who take for granted the conceits because of the "wildness" of Ariosto, and the good taste because of the "regularity" of Tasso, just assume the reverse of the fact. It is a rare thing to find a conceit in Ariosto; and, where it does exist, it is most likely defensible on some Shakspearian ground of subtle propriety. Open Tasso in almost any part, particularly the love-scenes, and it is marvellous if, before long, you do not see ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... up to their faces and unconsciously crying out 'I see a fool!' To understand great truths,—and great truths are seldom popular,—one must bring a willing mind. Yet how often it is that the very sick one wishes most to help are the ones who refuse, either from conceit or stupidity, to believe and be healed. Remember this: no one can get out of a book more than he brings to it. Readers of books seldom realise that by their written or spoken criticisms they are displaying themselves in all their weaknesses, all their vanities, all ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... argumentative part of the essay to pieces; but Bolingbroke supplies throughout the most characteristic element. The fragments cohere by external cement, not by an internal unity of thought; and Pope too often descends to the level of mere satire, or indulges in a quaint conceit or palpable sophistry. Yet it would be very unjust to ignore the high qualities which are to be found in this incongruous whole. The style is often admirable. When Pope is at his best every word tells. His precision and firmness of touch enables him to get the greatest possible meaning ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... where simple command and obedience would be far better. This 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 their rights ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Plague, Love-Deceptions, and Inundations. Against these antique Disasters I armed my soul; and I thought it as well to prepare myself against another inevitable ancient calamity called "Cornutation," or by other less learned names. How Philosophy taught that after all it was but a pain founded on conceit, a blow that hurt not; the reply of the Cynic philosopher to one who reproached him, "Is it my fault or hers?"; how Nevisanus advises the sufferer to ask himself if he have not offended; Jerome declares it impossible to prevent; how few or none are safe, and the inhabitants of some countries, ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... made of a material called "drugget." A few old prints, in glaring colors, were on the walls. There was a Sacred Heart and an odd-looking picture of the dead Christ resting in a tomb, with an altar above and candles all around it. It was a strange religious conceit. On another wall was a coffin plate, surrounded with waxed flowers and framed, with a little photograph of a young man in the center of the flowers. The chairs were plain enough, but covered with a coarse ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... had remained heart-whole; although several charming girls had been ready to share his lot and more than one pretty pirate had sought to make him her prize. But he had been blind to them all; for he was too free from conceit to believe that any woman would concern herself with him unasked. He had dined and danced with maid and young matron in London, ridden with them in the Row and Richmond Park, punted them down backwaters by Goring, Pangbourne and the Cleveden Woods, and flirted ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... perfectly what all that is. It's a reaction of Nature ... a warning to look out ... it's often simply the effects of building up; and we're beginning to think—ah! that won't interest you! Listen to me! I'm what they call a specialist—an investigator. I can tell you, without conceit, that I probably know all that is to be known on a certain subject. Well, I can tell you as ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... friend once remarked, a "God-made" gentleman, untainted with the slightest approach to any thing like affectation or coxcombry: indeed he ridiculed the latter with much comic effect: and the words "Dandy Jack," would put him out of conceit with any article of apparel that drew forth the remark. He would answer the taunt with a face of grave rebuke, saying, "Bad Mam, bold Mam; Jack dandy? no; Jack poor boy." He had not, indeed, arrived at so copious a vocabulary when ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... thought him conceited, self-opinionated, selfish, and untrustworthy. But later, reflecting that this was possibly the result of Captain Jim's over-praise, and finding none of these qualities as yet offensively opposed to our own selfishness and conceit, we were induced, like many others, to forget our first impressions. We could easily correct him if he attempted to impose upon US, as he evidently had upon Captain Jim. Believing, after the fashion of most humanity, that there was something about US particularly awe-inspiring and edifying to vice ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... verb, signifies to steady;—as a substantive, a comprehensive mind. A man is said to "lose his ballast" when his judgment fails him, or he becomes top-heavy from conceit. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... manners of their betters," nor a code of snobs, who divide their time between licking the boots of those above them and kicking at those below, but a system of rules of conduct based on respect of self coupled with respect of others. Meanwhile, to guard against conceit in his new knowledge, he may at odd ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... years. As one blends wine of very old stock with newer brands, so has France been blended and mellowed. A strange cosmic feeling one had, on the top of the great building in that town older than Rome itself, of the continuity of human life and the futility of human conceit. The provincial vanity of modern States looked pitiful in the clear air above that vast stony ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... have been looking back on my own boyish journal of that time. My mother made me keep a log, as I hope yours does. But it is strange to see how little of the action it tells. The truth is, I was nothing but a butterfly of a youngster. To save my conceit, the first lieutenant, Wallis, told me I was assigned to keep an eye on the after-battery, where were two fine old fellows as ever took the King's pay really commanding the crews and managing the guns. Much ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... they had been on the lookout for a King, might have gone farther and fared worse,—but the four Georges had somehow got them out of conceit with the word "King," and William, the Sailor, had not quite reconciled them to it;—then they were jealous of foreigners, and last, but not least, there were apprehensions that the larger title would necessitate a larger grant. But ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... amazement at hearing that Kraill was his guest, tried frantically to pull himself together. He was indignant with Marcella for asking Kraill to stay in a hut, but he realized that it was only another evidence of what he called the "Lashcairn conceit" and that, if Marcella had thought it desirable to ask the Governor-General to tea, she would have done so unhesitatingly. When he met Kraill he was very nervous and shaky, unable to think coherently because of the ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... to the canvas. Copyists are kept busy, repeating the composition for eager purchasers, and it has made its way all over the world. The circle of graceful angels who, with the boy St. John, join the mother in adoring the Christ-child, is one of the chief attractions of the picture. It is a pretty conceit that one of these angels showers rose leaves ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... easy to exaggerate the physical and mental evil effects of it. But what is beyond all question is that it produces bad psychic consequences, and does so leave men out of conceit with themselves that when they realize that they have become victims to the habit their mental sufferings are often pitifully acute. Indeed, it is because my pity and sympathy have been so drawn out to many ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... a little god," he would often mutter to himself. "I would give a good deal to have him for three months at Westminster. Wouldn't he get his conceit and ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... "There speaks the conceit of youth," said Dorothy, smiling. "Captain Kempt, U.S.N., retired. His youngest daughter is just two years ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... I understand," rejoined the other, with adorable conceit. "You aren't used to it yet, but one soon gets into it, you know! See how perfectly at my ease I ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the Pseudolus of Plautus, l. 457. "Quid agitur? Statur hic ad hunc modum?" "What is going on?" or "What are you about?" "About standing here in this fashion;" assuming an attitude. Colman observes that there is much the same kind of conceit in the "Merry Wives ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... the mind-shattering facts. Here was a man whose whole literary output was a few precious essays and a few scraggy poems, who had never schemed out a novel before, not even, as far as I am aware, a short story; who had never, in any way, tested his imaginative capacity, setting out, in insane self-conceit, to write, not merely a commercial work of fiction, but a novel which would outrival a universally proclaimed work of genius. And he had no imaginative capacity. His mind was essentially critical; and ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... laughed and joked, and drank his bottle, and swore when he was angry, much too familiarly for any one pretending to sublimity; and did his best to destroy the ceremonial with which his wife chose to surround him. And it required no great conceit on young Esmond's part to see that his own brains were better than his patron's, who, indeed, never assumed any airs of superiority over the lad, or over any dependant of his, save when he was displeased, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... most modest of writers; one in whose writings unaffected simplicity and freedom from literary conceit is manifest on every page. He appears in all the many sketches which constitute this volume to have written for the direct purpose of pleasing and teaching youthful readers or quiet and pious grown persons. He neither eyes the world through a lorgnette or a lorgnon, nor affects a knowledge of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the dream-like enjoyment of the moment was the presence on board the steamer of three rowdy Americans, who preferred to be "funny," and caricature the sublime splendour around them, rather than enjoy it with grateful admiration. Their foolish conceit prevented them keeping this so-called fun to themselves. Happily, it is not often one travels in such disagreeable company, though one too frequently meets with those whose sole object in coming to these beautiful spots is the ambitious one of being able to say on their return home that ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... With the utmost desire to avoid any offence and the most sincere alarm, he yet had not self-control enough to be prudent; the word had to come out, when a petulant witticism stung him, or when his self- conceit almost rendered crazy by the praise of so many noble lords gave vent to the well-cadenced periods of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... terror of this conceit, everything tended to confirm and strengthen it. His double crime, the circumstances under which it had been committed, the length of time that had elapsed, and its discovery in spite of all, made him, as it were, the visible object of the Almighty's wrath. In all the crime ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... far from violence; respecting but one, and that one in such kindness, honesty, truth, constancy, and honor, as were all the world offered to make a change, yet the boot were too small and therefore bootless. This is love, and far more than this, which I know a vulgar head, a base mind, an ordinary conceit, a common person will not nor cannot have. Thus do I commend that love wherewith in these poems I have honoured ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... afraid to go to Verona, lest it should at all put me out of conceit with Romeo and Juliet. But, I was no sooner come into the old market-place, than the misgiving vanished. It is so fanciful, quaint, and picturesque a place, formed by such an extraordinary and rich variety of fantastic buildings, that there could be nothing better at the core of even this ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... time on this evening, and his eye roved the room challenging admiration in a manner that was amusing rather than offensive. He was so overflowingly proud of having the prettiest girl in The Corner upon his arm and so conscious of being himself probably the finest-looking man that he escaped conceit, it might almost be said, by his ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... molecule, and they would burst. Actors begin where militia colonels, Fifth avenue rectors and Chautauqua orators leave off. The most modest of them (barring, perhaps, a few unearthly traitors to the craft) matches the conceit of the solitary pretty girl on a slow ship. In their lofty eminence of pomposity they are challenged only by Anglican bishops and grand opera tenors. I have spoken of the danger they run of bursting. In the case of tenors ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... are those—a very few, I hope—who are sunk below that state; who have lost their sense of right and wrong; who only care to fulfil the lusts of the flesh in pleasure, ease, and vanity. There are those in whom the voice of conscience is lead for a while, silenced by self-conceit; who say in their prosperity, like the foolish Laodiceans, 'I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing,' and know not that in fact and reality, and in the sight of God, they are 'wretched, and miserable, and ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... so that by his ready apprehension of things, he was able to do more in one hour than others could do in many days by hard study and close application; and yet he was ever humble, and never exalted with self-conceit, the common ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... Missouri, to the log-cabin in the woods where I was born, and used to say 'Now I lay me,' and 'Our Father' at my ma's knee, when I was a kid like him. I tell you, boys, there ain't nothing that will take the conceit out of a man here on the plains, like the company of a kid what has been ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... dealing,' and the end of true wisdom is to practise these. The wider horizon of modern science and speculation includes much in the notion of wisdom which has no bearing on conduct. But the intellectual progress (and conceit) of to-day will be none the worse for the reminder that a man may take in knowledge till he is ignorant, and that, however enriched with science and philosophy, if he does not practise righteousness, he ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... forecastle had acquired for Done was vastly increased by his rescue of Lucy Woodrow. Conduct that had previously been ascribed to mere conceit was now accounted for by most romantic imaginings, for it is a cardinal belief amongst men of their class that the true fighter is superior to all little weaknesses and small motives. When the girl crossed the moonlit deck to Done's side, the sailors drifted away out of earshot, and inquisitive ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... 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 pride of man, At the Sophist schools and the learned clan; For what are they all in their high conceit, When man in the bush with God ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... which children are to be metamorphosed into prodigies. And prodigies with a vengeance have I known thus produced; prodigies of self-conceit, shallowness, arrogance, and infidelity! Instead of storing the memory, during the period when the memory is the predominant faculty, with facts for the after exercise of the judgment; and instead of awakening by the noblest models the fond and ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... ever think you'd get her kisses—as Wils's gettin' right now?" queried the hunter. "Good Lord! the conceit of some men!... Why, you poor, weak-minded, cowardly pet of a blinded old man—you conceited ass—you selfish an' spoiled boy!... Collie never had any use for you. An' ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... one true, knowledge; and its first-fruit, as has been said, is humility. Simple nescience is not proud; consummated science is positively humble. For this knowledge it is not, which 'puffeth up;' but its opposite, the conceit of false knowledge,—the conceit, in truth, as the apostle notices, of an ignorance of the ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... to urge any arguments against the self-conceit of Amaranthe: that her beauty could be in any degree diminished was a supposition that she would not admit into her thoughts. She added more ornaments to the profusion that already glittered on her person, and doubted not that, with such aids, she should eclipse every belle who would appear at ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... It is somewhat like the Dargle, but more wild and romantic. It also has its rugged hills, its stream, and its waterfall—or its mountains, river, and cataract; as, being in a foreign country, I suppose we should be polite enough to call them, instead of letting ourselves be carried away by conceit in our Mississippis and Niagaras, and being "stuck up" on our ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... as Tutt put it, "a dangerous old cuss." O'Brien was even worse. He was a bull-necked, bullet-headed, pugnosed young ruffian with beery eyes, who had an insatiable ambition and a still greater conceit, but who had devised a blundering, innocent, helpless way of conducting himself before a jury that deceived them into believing that his inexperience required their help and his disinterestedness their loyal support. Both of them were apparently fair-minded, honest public servants; both in reality ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... deceitfull grounds, that haue specially mooued you to take a good and great conceit thereof, I shall content myselfe to examine here onely foure of the principals of them; two founded vpon the Theoricke of a deceiuable apparance of Reason, and two of them vpon the ...
— A Counter-Blaste to Tobacco • King James I.
... fat Friar John!— Monastick Coxcomb! amorous, and gummy; Fill'd with conceit up to his very brim!— He thought his guts and garbage doated on, By a fair Dame, whose Husband was to him ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... which I had somehow missed, and which I must find if I could, and preach and release it. That it was the release of this germ these people feared unconsciously. I say to you, at the risk of the accusation of conceit, that I believed myself to have a power in the pulpit if I ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... I am beholding, that I first entered into the conceit that my life wanted some redress and cure. And then, that I did not fall into the ambition of ordinary sophists, either to write tracts concerning the common theorems, or to exhort men unto virtue and the study of philosophy by public orations; as also that I never ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... had she been in the way towards loving him, such violence as this would have frightened her and scared her love away. Poor Peregrine! His intentions had been so good and honest! He was so true and hearty, and free from all conceit in the matter! It was a pity that he should have marred his cause by such ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... 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 bush with God ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... so thoroughly as conceit. One may be so full of self as to be empty. Voltaire said, "We must conceal self-love." But that can not be done. You know this to be true, for you have recognized overweening self-love in others. If ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... vain" are the inventions of animal magnetism, which would deceive, if possible, [15] the very elect. We will charitably hope, however, that some people employ the et cetera of ignorance and self- conceit unconsciously, in their witless ventilation of false statements and claims. Misguiding the public mind and taking its money in exchange for this abuse, has become [20] too common: we will hope it is the froth of error passing ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... againe, a staffe of the tree throwne at any beast, although it fall short by his defect that threw it, will flye to him, as he lyeth still, by the speciall property of the tree." He may well add—"This I here relate that you may understand the fond and vain conceit of those times, which I would to God we were not ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... doorway of the next room, was Carson himself. The great painter had undressed him and revealed him. What a comment to hang in one's own home! The abiding impression of the portrait was self-assurance; hasty criticism would have called it conceit. All the deeper qualities of humanity were rubbed out for the sake of this one great ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... sir, that the lonesome dark-eyed creature up there that some say is a witch—ever I should call a fine young woman such a name—is always up to some odd conceit or other; and so perhaps ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... answer all your questions, sir. Beat him we did, beyond a question, and that with a heavy loss to his army—and out of New York we have driven him, beyond a question—but—I will not increase Beulah's conceit by stating ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... your name is else, I know not, Nor by what wonder you do hit of mine,— 30 Less in your knowledge and your grace you show not Than our earth's wonder; more than earth divine. Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak; Lay open to my earthy-gross conceit, Smother'd in errors, feeble, shallow, weak, 35 The folded meaning of your words' deceit. Against my soul's pure truth why labour you To make it wander in an unknown field? Are you a god? would you create me new? Transform me, then, and to your power I'll yield. 40 But ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... theology than I should thirty-five years ago. Combined with this goes the fact that though I know the days of my stay on earth are greatly reduced, I seem to be less rather than more anxious about "the morrow." For though time has rounded off the corners of my conceit, experience of God's dealing with such an unworthy midget as myself has so strengthened the foundations on which faith stood, that Christ now means more to me as a living Presence than when I laid more emphasis on the ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... sowing thorns and nettles, that had grown all too quickly and rankly. Thousands had been spent on his education; and yet he was oppressed with a sense of his ignorance and helplessness. Rude contact with the world had thoroughly banished self-conceit, and he saw that his mind was undisciplined and his knowledge so superficial and fragmentary as to be almost useless. The editor of the paper whose columns he had hoped to illumine told him that he could ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... and you will find that to them the earth is the center of creation, that the infinite stars circle around it, and that man is the king of animals: a geocentric and anthropocentric illusion inspired by immeasurable conceit. But Copernicus and Galilei came and demonstrated that the earth does not stand still, but that it is a grain of cosmic matter hurled into blue infinity and rotating since time unknown around its central body, the sun, which originated from an immense primitive nebula. Galilei was ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... the same time he would draw in a great deal of air and then puff it out all at once. Then he would walk a few steps, turn, drag his wings on the ground to make them rustle, wheel, and run a few steps. Never had Peter seen such vanity, such conceit, such imposing, puffed-up pride. He watched until he grew tired, and then he stole away and hurried over to the Smiling Pool to tell Grandfather Frog all about it and ...
— Mother West Wind "Where" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... will apologize when we meet. I arrived here in good plight on Friday evening. Augustine came down about noon on Saturday. We have made some satisfactory progress in our business. Seeing the great men of other countries puts me in more conceit of ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... daughter, I hope you may not die such a natural death as Jane Seymour did, for whom, as you say, the king mourned two years. But after that period, something new, something altogether extraordinary happened to the king. He fell in love with a picture, and because, in his proud self-conceit, he was convinced that the fine picture which Holbein had made of him, was not at all flattered, but entirely true to nature, it did not occur to him that Holbein's likeness of the Princess Anne of Cleves might be somewhat flattered, and not altogether ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... when I survey the occurrences of my life, and call into account the finger of God, I can perceive nothing but an abyss and mass of mercies, either in general to mankind, or in particular to myself: and whether out of the prejudice of my affection, or an inverting and partial conceit of His mercies, I know not; but those which others term crosses, afflictions, judgments, misfortunes, to me, who inquire further into them than their visible effects, they both appear, and in event have ever proved, the secret and ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... 17. This conceit grew so strong in a little time upon my spirit, that had I but seen a priest (though never so sordid and debauched in his life), I should find my spirit fall under him, reverence him, and knit unto him; yea, I thought, for the love I did bear unto them (supposing them the ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... for in such matters he will be unprofitable to them, and do them no good. And no one will love him, if he does them no good; and he can only do them good by knowledge; and as he is still without knowledge, he can have as yet no conceit of knowledge. In this manner Socrates reads a lesson to Hippothales, the foolish lover of Lysis, respecting the style of conversation which he should address to ...
— Lysis • Plato
... self-sufficiency; and this is the very quality instilled by the whole system. Ask the veterans of the Admiralty, the War Office, the Board of Trade, and the Customs, and you will get but the same report, that for thorough incompetency and inordinate conceit there is nothing like the prize candidate of a Civil Service examination. Take my word for it, you could not find a worse pointer than the poodle which would pick you out all the letters of ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever |
