"Conceited" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bring disgrace upon my Lord. But I hope all that will not do, for the King loves him. Hence by water to the Wardrobe, and dined with my Lady, my Lady Wright being there too, whom I find to be a witty but very conceited woman and proud. And after dinner Mr. Moore and I to the Temple, and there he read my bill and likes it well enough, and so we came back again, he with me as far as the lower end of Cheapside, and there ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the greenhouses?" demanded Tempest presently. "No? Oh, you must. We're rather conceited over our show ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... What do you say?" I asked. He assumed a startlingly ferocious demeanour, and imitated to perfection the act of stabbing from behind. "Already like the body of one deported," he explained, with the insufferably conceited air of his kind after what they imagine a display of cleverness. Behind him I perceived Jim smiling silently at me, and with a raised hand checking the exclamation ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... a not uncommon expression. Now, I know that I am not a fool, but I also know that I am conceited. But, candidly, can it be helped if one happens to be young, well and strong, passably good-looking, with some money that one has inherited and more that one has earned—in all, enough to make life comfortable—and if upon this foundation rests also the pleasant superstructure ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... showed of what true, strong metal he was made, his parents' pride in him became greater than they could quite conceal. A certain amount of envy and ill-will was the natural result. Dick himself was not in the least conceited. None knew so well as he how hard it was to restrain a naturally hasty temper, to give up the games he loved for the work he did not, to labour as thoroughly at the subjects he disliked or took no interest in ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... these opinions would be very unhappy, if they restrained their natural feelings in order to make themselves the most conceited of men. If, at the bottom of their heart, they are troubled at not having more light, let them not disguise the fact; this avowal will not be shameful. The only shame is to have none. Nothing reveals ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... upon her," she said, "to let her see what a poor conceited body she was. She, that had been making muckle o' herself, as though the Lord couldna take care o' the bairns without ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... anna. You young fellows talk as though the man was doing the girl an honour in marrying her. You're all too conceited—nothing's ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... and lost Little Eva borne to her grave over which the mocking-bird now sings his liquid requiem. Has it not been sweet good fortune to love Maggie Tulliver, Margot of Savoy, Dora Spenlow (undeclared because she was an honest wife—even though of a most conceited and commonplace jackass, totally undeserving of her); Agnes Wicklow (a passion quickly cured when she took Dora's pitiful leavings), and poor ill-fated Marie Antoinette? You can name dozens if you have been brought ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... who stretches his legs does not walk (easily). (So), he who displays himself does not shine; he who asserts his own views is not distinguished; he who vaunts himself does not find his merit acknowledged; he who is self-conceited has no superiority allowed to him. Such conditions, viewed from the standpoint of the Tao, are like remnants of food, or a tumour on the body, which all dislike. Hence those who pursue (the course) of the Tao do ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... the Anglo-German diplomatic relations were in danger, an observer would have promptly decided that they were at that instant. That the conceited young German did not immediately expire was only due to the fact that dagger glances cannot ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... and spasmodic methods which Hume and most other professed moralists associate with ethics. Hume's own treatises on morals, it need hardly be said, are pure psychology. It would have seemed to him conceited, perhaps, to inquire what ought really to be done. He limited himself to asking what men tended to think ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the worst thing I have heard of Mrs. Ledwich yet! One's blood boils to think of those poor children being cast off because our fine young ladies are too grand to teach them! The clergyman leaving his work to a set of conceited women, and they turning their backs on ignorance, when it comes to their door! Voluntary subscribers, indeed! I've a great mind I'll ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... the book away. If Sir Thomas Browne is mentioned, he will say, "Yes, very fine!" with a feeling of pride that he has at any rate bought and inspected Sir Thomas Browne. Deep in his heart is a suspicion that people who get enthusiastic about Sir Thomas Browne are vain and conceited poseurs. After a year or so, when he has recovered from the discouragement caused by Sir Thomas Browne, he may, if he is young and hopeful, repeat the experiment with Congreve or Addison. Same sequel! And so ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... Tommy Fox was conceited, he was really a very bright youngster. And as he bounded along he thought of a pretty clever scheme. Yes, he thought of a fine trick to play on that dog. The idea came to him all at once. And as soon as the thought popped into his head, Tommy turned toward Swift River. He was at the bank ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... acknowledge, Mdlle. Adrienne," said Baron Tripeaud, with a self-conceited and sententious ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... old gentleman of the town. WOODALL, his son, under a false name; bred abroad, and now returned from travel. LIMBERHAM, a tame, foolish keeper, persuaded by what is last said to him, and changing next word. BRAINSICK, a husband, who, being well conceited of himself, despises his wife: vehement and eloquent, as he thinks; but indeed a talker of nonsense. GERVASE, WOODALL'S man: formal, and apt to give good counsel. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... mind where hangs a piece Of skilful painting, made for Priam's Troy; Before the which is drawn the power of Greece, For Helen's rape the city to destroy, Threat'ning cloud-kissing Ilion with annoy; Which the conceited painter drew so proud, As heaven (it seem'd) ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... don't mean that he had shortsighted suspicions, but that on the contrary imagination would never be needed to save him, since she would never put him in danger. He was in short a well-grown well-washed muscular young American, whose extreme salubrity might have made him pass for conceited. If he looked pleased with himself it was only because he was pleased with life—as well he might be, with the fortune that awaited the stroke of his twenty-first year—and his big healthy independent person was an inevitable part of that. I am bound to add that he was accommodating—for ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... myself as I really am. To this attitude, which, with sharper insight, they would consider haughty conceit, I owe my reputation as a modest and respectable man. Were I humble enough to treat them as my equals by being natural with them, they would then call me a conceited ass and ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... a refreshing change from the city. They are not very extensive, and seem mostly monopolized by gaily attired nursemaids, with great spreading silver head-dresses, which give them somewhat of a conceited air. They strut about as if they were nursing the little kings and queens of the future. Around these Gardens is the fashionable drive, which is thronged on Sundays, when the people assemble to criticise ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... days ago he had happened to see Miss Leach, who gave him Miss Frothingham's address, and he could not deny himself the pleasure of calling. Chatting thus, he made himself comfortable in a chair, and Alma sat over against him. The man was loud, conceited, vulgar; but, after all, he composed very sweet music, which promised to take the public ear; and he brought with him a waft from the happiness of old days; and how could one expect small proprieties of a bohemian, an artist? Alma ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... enough to understand, he soon learned that there could be nothing worse than to be proud, obstinate, and conceited, and he had really tried to cure himself of these defects, but by that time all his faults had become habits; and a bad habit is very hard to get rid of. Not that he was naturally of a bad disposition; he was truly sorry when he ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... defects we do find in his writings. When he wished to make his style exceptionally high and passionate he always ran some risk of bombast. And he was even more prone to the fault which in this speech seems to me the more marked, a use of metaphors which sound to our ears 'conceited' or grotesque. To me at any rate the metaphors in 'now is he total gules' and 'mincing with his sword her husband's limbs' are more disturbing than any of the bombast. But, as regards this second defect, there are many places in Shakespeare worse than the speech of Aeneas; and, as regards the first, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... gas, ferments, and transmutations; nor shall I enlarge upon the salt, sulphur, and oil, the acidum vagum, the mercury of metals, and the volatilised vitriol of other modern chemists, a pack of ignorant, conceited, knavish rascals, that puzzle your weak heads with such jargon, just as a Germanised m——r throws dust in your eyes, by lugging in and ringing the changes on the balance of power, the Protestant religion, and your allies on the continent; acting like the juggler, who picks your ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... thought to surpass all the senators of that day in understanding and in experience of affairs; for he had been tested in many provinces. [These conditions and the fact that he was a relative of Albinus had made him conceited.] ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... said that and shamed you. Sorry I'm such a conceited donkey as to hate being looked down on. You just keep me posted on what's what, little girl, and I'll try to behave myself. But it beats creation, to find such a place as this up here on the Rockies and to know one man's done ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... think he minds that as much as one might suppose, and when I began to cry he stopped at once and tried to comfort me, and said our lot was not a hard one by any means, when compared with what many had to endure; that it was a good thing to have to bestir himself; that he had been a lazy, conceited, selfish puppy long enough, and that if it were possible he meant to be a man. And then he spoke of you as his good angel, and said you were the truest, purest, and sweetest woman in all the world, and that neither ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... no two people more unlike than the sisters. Sedalia is really handsome, and she is thin. But she is vain, selfish, shallow, and conceited. Gale is not even pretty, but she is clean and she is honest. She does many little things that are not exactly polite, but she is good and true. They both went to the barn with me to milk. Gale ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... and as he took the things I had brought he kissed and fondled me like a little child, and said that, God helping him, he would hurry on to California and secure a home for his beloved family—and it seems conceited to mention it, but he called me his 'brave daughter' over and over again, until I was glad of the darkness to hide my burning cheeks. Then in the protecting darkness, with Milton to stand guard, we sat together and talked of ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... grated on the sand, the midshipman in command leaped ashore. He was a particularly small and pert midshipman, a smart conceited vigorous little fellow, who delighted to order his big men about in the voice of a giant; and it was quite interesting to observe how quietly and meekly those big men obeyed him, just as one sometimes sees a huge Newfoundland dog or mastiff obey the orders ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... confidences or secrets. When the owner dies, there is no knowing to what use they may be put. One regrets the publication of the private letters of great men and women, showing, as they so often do, the foolish, silly, conceited side of a character we have admired. Private letters are often disillusioning, or betray the presence of the skeleton of the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the same time? When the Caliph heard that he was angered and cried out at him in the midst of his rage, O dog of a Barmeky, what an impertinence on thy part about what concerns thee not, why meddle with what thou hast not lost. You've taken upon yourself to be annoying and conceited, you have passed beyond your place and it only remained for you to brave the Caliph. By my fathers and grandfathers, if thou dost not bring me someone who can tell me about the contents of this book from the first page to the last, I'll strike ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... expected to find an author one of a distinct species from themselves; that they imagined the aforesaid biped should neither eat, drink, sleep, nor talk like other folks;—a proud, useless, self-conceited, affected animal, that deserved nothing but kicks and buffets ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... has been the fashion with a certain class of critics to disparage Elihu as a self-conceited young man, and to deny the authenticity of his discourses. But thus the plan of the book is fatally broken, as must be evident from the account given of it above. It was not necessary that Elihu should be named in the prologue. It is enough that ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... forgot our dark-skinned keepers with the slanting, suspicious, unfriendly eyes, with tongues that spoke the one thing and meant the other. All the memories of those six months of deceit, of broken pledges, of unnecessary humiliations, of petty unpoliteness from a half-educated, half-bred, conceited, and arrogant people fell from us like a heavy knapsack. We were again at home. Again with our own people. Out of the happy confusion of that great occasion I recall two toasts. One was offered by John Fox. ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... working her own arms t' embrace it: That, and his shoulders, and his hands were seen Above the stream; and with a pure sea-green She did so quaintly shadow every limb, All might be seen beneath the waves to swim. In this conceited scarf she wrought beside A moon in change, and shooting stars did glide In number after her with bloody beams; Which figur'd her affects[72] in their extremes, Pursuing nature in her Cynthian body, 80 And did her thoughts running on change imply; For maids take more delight, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... anything of the sort. I am not a nuisance. A nuisance is a tall, thin, conceited person with flaming red hair, pale blue eyes, a freckled nose and a slanderous tongue. His name begins with ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... and there never was!" suddenly cried Patty. "Oh! Waity, Waity, we are so alone, you and I! We've only each other in all the world, and I'm not the least bit of help to you, as you are to me! I'm a silly, vain, conceited, ill-behaved thing, but I will be better, I will! You won't ever give me up, will you, Waity, even if I'm not like you? I ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... insolent, factious, deformed, conceited person; a vile pretender to poetry, preferred by the Duke of Grafton for ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... red hands? How much that seemed to me then splendid and out of reach has become worthless, while what I had then has gone out of my reach forever! Could I ever have believed then that I could come to such humiliation? How conceited and self-satisfied he will be when he gets my note! But I will show him.... How horrid that paint smells! Why is it they're always painting and building? Modes et robes," she read. A man bowed to her. It ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... from behind the rocks and bushes sent destruction into their camps with the deadly bullet; while their helpless foes could only reply with the comparatively harmless arrow and spear. Thus the war was in fact an annual raid of murderers. The conceited Muskigons returned to their wigwams in triumph, with bloody scalps hanging at their belts; while the Esquimaux pushed farther into their ice-bound fastnesses, and told their comrades, with lowering brows and heaving bosoms, of the sudden attack, ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... could talk my head off! 'You must not think I was provoked with you,'" she mimicked Lemuel's dignity of diction in mincing falsetto. "'I will come to see you very soon.' Miserable, worthless, conceited whipper-snapper!" ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... bring about a happier frame of mind. Yes: the wrong-headed and wrong-hearted religionist is probably the very worst type of man or woman on whom the sun looks down. And, oh! how sad to think of the fashion in which stupid, conceited, malicious blockheads set up their own worst passions as the fruits of the working of the Blessed Spirit, and caricature, to the lasting injury of many a young heart, the pure and kindly religion of the Blessed Redeemer! These are the folk who inflict systematic and ingenious torment ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... the fellows stick together and try to make things go on properly. Any "side" I may have had was certainly unconscious, but I haven't an idea whether that is the worst or the best kind. I know that I should have felt like having a fit if any one had told me that I was conceited, and apart from that I don't know anything about it, except, as I have said, that I was angry that these fellows did not seem to remember that I had been at Cliborough. I told myself that they had lost their sense of proportion, which was a phrase my father used about ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... delicate and close manipulation of glass, and hired a German glass-blower who was said to be the most expert man of his kind in the United States. He was the only one who could make clinical thermometers. He was the most extraordinarily conceited man I have ever come across. His conceit was so enormous, life was made a burden to him by all the boys around the laboratory. He once said that he was educated in a university where all the students belonged to families of the aristocracy; and the highest class in the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... before their time. "Does your mother know you're out?" was the provoking query addressed to young men of more than reasonable swagger, who smoked cigars in the streets, and wore false whiskers to look irresistible. We have seen many a conceited fellow who could not suffer a woman to pass him without staring her out of countenance, reduced at once into his natural insignificance by the mere utterance of this phrase. Apprentice lads and shopmen in their Sunday clothes ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... with religion. I bore it a grudge; and so, when I became thus early my own master, I set about paying off, after my own fashion, the old score I owed it. I was besides, like every other young infidel whom it has been my fate to meet, a conceited coxcomb. A smattering of literature, without any real knowledge, and a great assortment of all the cut-and-dry flippancies of the school I had embraced, constituted my intellectual stock in trade. I was, like most of my school of philosophy, very proud of being an unbeliever; and fancied myself, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... end, beneath my window, stood a group of men. Some were officers; one looked like General Pacheco, fat with a chuckling laugh; another seemed to be Captain Zeneta—the friend who stood by us in the chapel of Our Lady of the Shadows—who was saying his prayers, you remember. Most young men are too conceited to say their prayers nowadays. And there were two civilians, in riding-boots all dusty, who looked singularly like you and Uncle Ramon. It was an odd ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... as you call them at Bays's, are some of the first gentlemen in England, of whom you youngsters had best learn a little manners, and a little breeding, and a little modesty." And the major began to think that Pen was growing exceedingly pert and conceited, and that the world made a great deal ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... her head up, her eyes shining. "You can't make him much happier than he is," she said; "it may sound awfully conceited, but I think he's happy—because he's going ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... and darkness enough. But it is not so bad and so dark that a slip in diplomacy, a careless word, or an impolite gesture, can instantaneously, as if by magic, involve twenty million men in a struggle to the death. It is only clever, conceited men, proud of their neat little minds, who think that because they cannot fathom the causes of the war, it might easily have been prevented. I confess I find it difficult to conceive of the war in terms of simple right and wrong. We must respect the ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... and one of the Lords of Trade; all which positions were of course practically useful to him as a historian. He wrote a brief and interesting autobiography, which helps to reveal him as sincere and good-hearted, though cold and somewhat self-conceited, a rather formal man not of a large nature. He died ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... in great quantity, issued upon the sand, out of a wound received in his leg in the first encounter, whereby though he felt some pain, yet (for that he perceived divers of the company, having already gotten many good things, to be very ready to take all occasions, of winding themselves out of that conceited danger) would he not have it known to any, till this his fainting, against his will, bewrayed it: the blood having first filled the very prints which our footsteps made, to the great dismay of all our company, who thought it not credible that one ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... sometimes when to do so was to run much danger of giving offence. Beautiful women have very different ways of using the privilege their charm assures them; Cecily chose to make it a protection of her integrity. She was much criticized by acquaintances of her own sex. Some held her presumptuous, conceited, spoilt by adulation; some accused her of bad taste and blue-stockingism; some declared that she had no object but to win men's admiration and outshine women. Without a thought of such comments, she behaved as was natural to her. Where she felt her superiority, she made no pretence of ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... track," she broke in, and Pan imagined he saw a deeper red under her artificial color. "I despise Dick Hardman. He's stingy, conceited, selfish. He's low down, and he's sinking ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... A conceited packman called at a farm-house in the west of Scotland, in order to dispose of some of his wares. The goodwife was offended by his southern accent, and his high talk about York, London, and other big places. "An' whaur come ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... Hindus of the city, who speak English rather fluently, become amusingly conceited in consequence. One of these lads visiting the Mission-house said to me, "Your English pronunciation is not good." I sometimes purposely reply to these English-speaking youths in Marathi, because they rather affect not to know it. This same lad said that it ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... particular demeanor shall be agreeable to him or not. And you know well that a cringing, toadying manner, which would be thoroughly disgusting to a person of sense, may be extremely agreeable and delightful to a self-conceited idiot. Was there not an idiotic monarch who was greatly pleased, when his courtiers, in speaking to him, affected to veil their eyes with their hands, as unable to bear the insufferable effulgence of his countenance? And would not a monarch of sense have been ready to kick ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... revelation is generally the result of ignorance, conceited of its possessing superior knowledge. Observe how the author of Recherches Philosophiques sur les Americains, expresses himself on this very point. "Cette distance que Mr Antermony veut trouver si peu impotante, est a-peu-pres de huit cent lieus Gauleises au travers d'un ocean perilleux, et ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... one's vanity and self-esteem to be told by the woman whom you thought loved you, that she finds it "impossible" to marry you because you have lost your fortune or your once roseate prospects; and though Drake was the least conceited of men, he was smarting under the realization of ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... cork on the point of a sword. It is pleasant to see how much our Quaker is indebted for his themes to Cotton Mather, who belabored his un-Friends of former days with so much bad English and worse Latin. With all his faults, that conceited old pedant contrived to make one of the most entertaining books ever written on this side the water, and we wonder that no one should take the trouble to give us a tolerably correct edition of it. Absurdity is common enough, but ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... abject Pumblechook, who, being behind me, persisted all the way as a delicate attention in arranging my streaming hatband, and smoothing my cloak. My thoughts were further distracted by the excessive pride of Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, who were surpassingly conceited and vainglorious in being members of so ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... obeying him faithfully in all things." He repeats with approval the expression of Avicenna that "often the confidence of the patient in his physician does more for the cure of his disease than the physician with all his remedies." Obstinate and conceited patients prone to object to nearly everything that the surgeon wants to do, and who often seem to think that they surpass Galen and Hippocrates in science and wisdom, are likely to delay their cure very much, and they represent the cases with which ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... Mrs. Ess Kay answered for me quickly. "She is very sorry she commenced it, and has lost the small interest she felt in the beginning. I do hope that tramp, or beggar, or whatever he is, hasn't gotten it in his conceited head that Lady Betty Bulkeley has bothered herself about his insignificant affairs, or he'll be thrusting himself upon her notice in some way which will be very disagreeable for Me, as ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... two of the girls danced together. Then little Billy Frost came in, and after him, as fresh and sweet as her name, came Rose with the Monroe's only dentist, Bruce Tate. Dr. Tate was a rather heavy young man, flirtatious and conceited. ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... to seem conceited, but I see there's something about me that set would probably like. Mrs. Shiffney's showed me that. I have never called upon her. She has sent me several invitations. And to-day she called. She wants me to go with her on The ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... "Elizabeth is too, too detestably respectable for anything. I saw and felt her sugared patronage of Denas through all her soft phrases; she treats me in the same way sometimes. When women get a husband they are conceited enough, but when they get a husband and money also they are—the devil only knows ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... essential feebleness we are all the more sensible as contrasted with a nature so steady on its keel, and drawing so much water, as that of Horatio,—the foil at once, in different ways, to both him and Hamlet. It was natural, also, that the daughter of self-conceited old Polonius should have her softness stiffened with a fibre of obstinacy; for there are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks, and that which bends. Ophelia's is of the former kind; Hero is her counterpart, giving way before calamity, and rising again ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... there is anybody more objectionable than the orthodox Bibliolater it is the heterodox Philistine, who can discover in a literature which, in some respects, has no superior, nothing but a subject for scoffing and an occasion for the display of his conceited ignorance of the debt ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... some knowledge of one or two foreign languages; a knowledge, however, which is seldom sufficient to enable him either to speak or write them with propriety. In other respects, he commonly returns home more conceited, more unprincipled, more dissipated, and more incapable of my serious application, either to study or to business, than he could well have become in so short a time had he lived at home. By travelling so very young, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... then; but every effort to inculcate their sentiments was met with the objection, "Your religion is good for you, ours for us." "You will be rewarded for your good deeds in your way, we in our way." They found they had to deal with one of the proudest and most conceited races on earth. Their very religion, as we have before said, encourages this conceit, by leading them constantly to make "a merit" of their good actions, or what they suppose such; while it inculcates neither contrition nor penitence. The peculiar doctrines ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... finding out his power and in using it. He asked and obtained a horse for his own use, and later an elegant little carriage was ordered from the city, in which he used to drive around the neighborhood with the airs of a young prince. To others he might seem arrogant and conceited—to his mother he was only possessed of the proper spirit of a gentleman. In her eyes he was handsome, though in the eyes of no ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... to Julia Byron [1] by Trevannion at the Opera; she is pretty, but I do not admire her; there is too much Byron in her countenance, I hear she is clever, a very great defect in a woman, who becomes conceited in course; altogether I have not much inclination ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... the last act of chumship is the acting as best man at the friend's wedding. Such friendships will work great good so long as they are on the give and take principle, and that nothing is given or taken of the bad qualities which may be in each. A boy without a chum is very likely to grow either conceited or selfish, or both. A good-natured chum is a very useful check. He does not mind chaffing him out of any little absurdities, and rubbing against one another they manage to knock off many odd corners and polish up one another. Any chumship in evil is to be avoided. If a chum, however much ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... to put the old man out of his talk, of which he was very opinionated or conceited, I told him we were gentlemen as well as merchants, and that we had a mind to go and see the great city of Pekin, and the famous court of the monarch of China. "Why, then," says the old man, "you should go to Ningpo, where, by the river which runs into the sea there, you ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... things to me! I'm but a weak-minded simpleton, and I MIGHT think you meant them, and grow conceited! Hie thee away, fair maiden, and hie pretty swiftly, too. And call me not to breakfast foods until that the sun ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... as if his intellect was almost as much decayed as his body," wrote a contemporary. {35a} "Matters grew worse in his old age," says Harriet Martineau, "when his habits of intemperance kept him out of the sight of ladies, and he got round him a set of ignorant and conceited young men, who thought they could set the whole world right by their destructive propensities. One of his chief favourites was George Borrow." {35b} Borrow has given the following ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... to press him, Wang made that very remark about you. When he smiles, his face looks like a conceited death's head. It was his very last remark that you wouldn't want to. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... dare you?" he ordered in so sharp and military a voice that Hamlet, who had merely cast a most innocent glance at a disdainful and conceited white poodle, looked up at his master ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... grubs his way through a good estate, and not a little ready money. Then, after a long sojourn in the pupa or puppy state—longer far than that of any other maggot—he emerges a perfect butterfly, vain, empty, fluttering, and conceited, idling, flirting, flaunting, philandering, until the summer of his ton is past, when he dies, or is arrested, and expiates a life of puerile vanity in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Dan Boggs, plenty conceited, 'I'll gamble a hoss I'm a bigger eediot when I quits Missouri to roam the cow country than ever you-all can boast of bein' in your most ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... has degrees of intensity and perfection. Such words as sacrifice, mortification, self-denial have a meaning as they have always had. God gives more to some, less to others; He demands corresponding returns. These are things Horatio ignores. Yet they are real, real as his own empty and conceited wisdom. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... same. She may be one of these young conceited democrats. Do you know what I think? I think she is very much like you in character. There is a smouldering fire of scorn in you. You are darkly self-sufficient, but I can see your ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... me. I know well that childhood, like all states and times of ignorance, is so liable to conceit and egotism, that to foster religious self-importance is only too easy, and modesty and moderation are more slowly taught. But if youth is a time when one is specially apt to be self-conceited, surely, Mr. Dacre, it is also the first, the easiest, the purest, and the most zealous in which to learn what is so seldom ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... laugh of easy, indifferent tolerance for everything outside the profession of the law, "Oh, I never said I didn't like him; I only said he struck me as a crack-brained, self-willed, conceited—" ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... beautiful robe. "Oh, I will carry it now," said Hiawatha. "Oh no," replied the wolf, who at the moment exerted his magic power; "it is a robe of pearls!" And from this moment he omitted no occasion to display his superiority, both in the art of the hunter and the magician above his conceited companion. Coming to a place where the moose had lain down, they saw that the young wolves had made a fresh start after their prey. "Why," said the wolf, "this moose is poor. I know by the tracks, for I can always tell whether ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... well and Garcia, who was a conceited man, believed he had won the girl's love; and matters were going on in the most pleasant manner, when had received news of the capture of the gang of smugglers, and at once realized his peril, when he determined to fly with ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... slumber of the people, and continually call out to them: 'Keep your eyes open! Be sensible! Be wise!' we know the aim of those who profess to satisfy excessive educational requirements by means of an extraordinary increase in the number of educational institutions and the conceited tribe of teachers originated thereby. These very people, using these very means, are fighting against the natural hierarchy in the realm of the intellect, and destroying the roots of all those noble and sublime plastic forces which have their ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... black-pudding. Half dead upon the spot where he was phlebotomized, the wretched animal was left to reflect under the shade of a tulip-tree on the cruelty of man, on their barbarous appetites; cursing with all his heart the poverty of Morvinian curates, their conceited hospitality, of which he was the victim, and their ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... Bunch of Tiger Lilies in her Hand, the gayety of which contrasted strangelie enow with her sober Apparell; and I wondered why a peculiar Classe of Folks should deem they please God by wearing the dullest of Colours, when He hath arrayed the Flowers of the Field in the liveliest of Hues. Somehow, I conceited her to be Mistress Gulielma Springett—and so, indeed, she proved; for, on reaching Home after a lengthened Ramble, I saw the Tiger Lilies lying on the Table, and found she had spent a full Hour with Father, who ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... in a conceited tone, as if it were a mere occasion of merriment; and the lad quickly entered the house and secured the weapons, retreating with them some paces ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... Sahwah with a strange confusion, a vague stirring within her of something unfamiliar, something unknown. Outwardly there was nothing remarkable about him, nothing to distinguish him from the thousands of other lads in khaki that were to be seen everywhere one went, erect, trim, lovably conceited. Why, then, should the heart of Sahwah the Sunfish suddenly flutter at this casual meeting of the eyes with the man across the way, and why did she turn sharply around and ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... young woman styled the 'Widow.' Further, she had the quick eyes to see that Barbee blushed when an old cattle-man with a roguish eye cleared his throat and made aloud some remark about Mrs. Murray. Yes; Barbee the insolent, the swaggering, the worldly-wise and conceited Barbee, ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... fooling, Coke began in earnest. He was a man a little older than Raleigh, and of a conceited and violent nature, owing not a little of his exaggerated reputation to the dread that he inspired. He was never more rude and brutal than in his treatment of Sir Walter Raleigh upon this famous occasion, and even in a court packed with enemies, in which the proud poet and navigator might ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... a puffed-up conceited fool," said the king, impatiently; "and you can never convince me that he is a great genius. Great men are modest; they have an exalted aim ever before them, and are never satisfied with themselves; but men like this Gottsched place themselves upon ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Presumption, I'm responsible for none of your conceited notions; and if I were, it wasn't the fashion then to wear hoops,—and to be out of the fashion is to be a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... and appealed to His great loving heart with the cry, "Lord help me!" and he helped her. Let that cry go up to him today, and see how quickly the answer will come. I never knew a case where God did not answer right on the spot, where there was the spirit of meekness. If on the other hand we are conceited, and think we have a right to come, putting ourselves on an equality with God, we shall ...
— Sovereign Grace - Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects • Dwight Moody
... of the wider knowledge he had acquired from the perusal of so many books, his mind was alert, and he had not the skill to hide his contempt for his companions' stupidity. They complained that he was conceited; and, since he excelled only in matters which to them were unimportant, they asked satirically what he had to be conceited about. He was developing a sense of humour, and found that he had a knack of saying bitter things, which caught people on the raw; he said them because ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... miserable but conceited man yet further map out the nature of his own delusion respecting Prophecy. He applauds the wisdom of one who "accepts freely the belief of scholars, and yet does not despair of Hebrew Prophecy as a witness to the Kingdom of God:" (p. 70:) (that is, of one who, like Bunsen, altogether ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... I'll hurry. Then I grow big. Seventeen. My mother call me her little giantess, her handsome darling, her conceited fool, all at the same time. I ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... give him the knowledge of the Truth and aid him to dispread it: nor did I ever dispute with anyone at all but for the showing forth of the Truth, and I reck not whether Allah manifest it by my tongue or by His.' He said also (whom Allah accept!), 'If thou fear to grow conceited of thy lore, then bethink thee Whose grace thou seekest and for what good thou yearnest and what punishment thou dreadest.' It was told to Abu Hanifah that the Commander of the Faithful, Abu Ja'afar al-Mansur, had appointed him Kazi and ordered him a salary of ten thousand dirhams; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... well, too; you girls are such changeable creatures. I'd not have a scarlet coat dancing around after me if I were you, Betty;" and Peter endeavored to look sage and wise as he cocked his head on one side like a conceited sparrow. What reply Betty might have made to his pertness was uncertain, but at that moment both doors of the room opened and Clarissa entered by one as Kitty flew ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... perhaps,' he began, 'or perhaps you don't know, that I was left an orphan at an early age, and by the time I was seventeen I had no one in authority over me. I lived at my aunt's at Moscow, and did just as I liked. As a boy I was rather silly and conceited, and liked to brag and show off. After my entrance at the university I behaved like a regular schoolboy, and soon got into a scrape. I won't tell you about it; it's not worth while. But I told a lie about it, and rather a shameful lie. It all ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... fools' heads, which might have produced an idea or two in the year, if suffered to remain in quiet, get effectually addled by jolting to and fro in these flying chariots of yours; how many decent countrymen become conceited bumpkins after a cattle-show dinner in the capital, which they could not have attended save for your means; how many decent country parsons return critics and spouters, by way of importing the newest taste from Edinburgh? And how will ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... wasn't an open secret, nor that he himself would have wished it hid. Great artists are always vain. To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people. A conceited man is satisfied with the effect he produces on himself. Any great artist is far too perceptive and too exigent to be satisfied with that effect, and hence in vanity he seeks solace. Goethe, you may be ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... in the text, therefore our Lord begins again, and adds to that other parable, this parable which I have chosen for my text; by which he designeth two things: First, The conviction of the proud and self-conceited Pharisee: Secondly, The raising up and healing of the cast down and dejected Publican. And observe it, as by the first parable he chiefly designeth the relief of those that are under the hands of cruel tyrants, so by this he designeth the relief of those that ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... Baron into one of the private apartments of Her Majesty's women, communicating with that of the Queen, where Her Majesty could see the Baron without the exposure of passing any of the other attendants. The Baron was quite gray, and upwards of sixty years of age! But the self-conceited dotard soon caused the Queen to repent her misplaced confidence, and from his unwarrantable impudence on that occasion, when he found himself alone with the Queen, Her Majesty, though he was a constant member of the societies of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... his doings! always the same old story, and woman always to be treated either as a toy or as a beast of burden, or at any rate as an incubus. Why not sing of woman also as she is when she is unattached and free from the trammels and persecutions of this tiresome tyrant, this insufferably self-conceited bore and ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... conceited, and did not think for a moment that any Princess, no matter how beautiful, would refuse to become his wife. So he ordered his servants to make great preparations for her coming, and to refurnish the palace. He told ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... quite right. It's bad for a fellow in every way. First of all, it keeps him in an unnatural sort of dependence; then ten to one it makes him conceited, and prevents his character from really coming out well. And besides, the young chap generally gets paid out in kicks and abuse from the jealousy and contempt of the rest; and if his protector happens to leave, or anything of that kind, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... did not feel disposed to lay bare his secret feelings before this persuasive superintendent and an absurdly conceited village constable. Love, to him, was an ideal, a blend of mortal passion and immortal fire. But the flame kindled on that secret altar had scorched and seared his soul in a wholly unforeseen way. The discovery that Adelaide Melhuish was another ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... Pynsent was beginning; but Sydney, quickening his steps, heard no more. He was now in a rage, and disposed to vote Miss Pynsent the most unpleasant, conceited young person of his acquaintance. That anybody should doubt his "gentilhood" was an offence not to be lightly borne. He was glad to remember that he was leaving Culverley next day, and he determined that ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... are so beastly conceited, an'—an' you swaggered into the meetin' as if we were a lot of idiots," growled ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... man, "you needn't be so conceited about it. You are not the only person with an aged mother. I have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... Colambre entered the room, he saw his mother, Miss Nugent, and Mr. Soho, standing at a large table, which was covered with rolls of paper, patterns, and drawings of furniture: Mr. Soho was speaking in a conceited, dictatorial tone, asserting that there was no "colour in nature for that room equal to the belly-o'-the fawn;" which belly-o'-the fawn he so pronounced, that Lady Clonbrony understood it to be la belle uniforme, and, under this mistake, repeated and assented ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... of Goyaz. Devoted mothers and wives, to men who deserved no devotion at all—nearly all the men had concubines—gentle, humble, thoughtful, simple and hard-working, they did all the work in the house. They were a great contrast to the lazy, conceited, vain male portion of the population. Certainly, in a population of 10,000 people, I met two or three men who deserved respect, but ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Dreames passingly well; and the rather, bicause they sauour of that singular extraordinarie veine and inuention whiche I euer fancied moste, and in a manner admired onelye in Lucian, Petrarche, Aretine, Pasquill, and all the most delicate and fine conceited Grecians and Italians, (for the Romanes to speake of are but verye ciphars in this kinde,) whose chiefest endeuour and drifte was to haue nothing vulgare, but, in some respecte or other, and especially in ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... ground on every side. In lathing I was pleased to be able to send home each nail with a single blow of the hammer, and it was my ambition to transfer the plaster from the board to the wall neatly and rapidly. I remembered the story of a conceited fellow, who, in fine clothes, was wont to lounge about the village once, giving advice to workmen. Venturing one day to substitute deeds for words, he turned up his cuffs, seized a plasterer's board, and ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... democracy. It is interesting to study these young men, so different in temperament, yet thinking alike and acting together for a quarter of a century—Jay, gentle and modest; Hamilton, impetuous and imperious; Morris, self-confident and conceited; but on all essential matters of state, standing together like a tripod, firm and invincible. In his distrust of western influences, however, Morris was more conservative than Jay or Hamilton. He was broad and liberal ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... good for our Nebuchadnezzars, the kings of the world, and conceited, successful people generally, to measure themselves against the great powers of the universe, to humble their pride by contemplation of the fixed stars; but a too humble attitude toward the Infinite, a too constant pondering ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... time there. Mike had skipped these years. He was older than the average new boy, and his batting was undeniable. He knew quite well that he was regarded as a find by the cricket authorities; and the knowledge was not particularly good for him. It did not make him conceited, for his was not a nature at all addicted to conceit. The effect it had on him was to make him excessively pleased with life. And when Mike was pleased with life he always found a difficulty in obeying Authority and ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... I have indeed conceited that I might be banished for my profession, then I have thought of that scripture, "They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheep skins and goat skins; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan |
