"Presumptuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had known me but two hours; and, as he made the proposition very coolly, I thought it rather presumptuous, and told him so. But as it was quite impossible to convey a hint, and there was a slight impropriety in the thing, I did not resent the insult, but ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... ground the reproach upon cabinets and kings, no practical influence, no binding force? Are they merely themes of idle declamation, introduced to decorate the morality of a newspaper essay, or to furnish pretty topics of harangue from the windows of that state house? I trust it is neither too presumptuous nor too late to ask, Can you put the dearest interest of society at risk without guilt, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... and, without invitation, coolly sat himself down on the sofa beside the prince. The courtiers and wise men were indignant; and the sultan, who did not know the intruder, was at first inclined to follow their example. He turned to one of his officers, and ordered him to eject the presumptuous stranger from the room; but Alfarabi, without moving, dared them to lay hands upon him; and, turning himself calmly to the prince, remarked, that he did not know who was his guest, or he would treat him with honour, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... inscribed the events of their several reigns, their power, their pride, and their crimes. Soliman Raad, Soliman Daki, and Soliman Di Gian Ben Gian, who, after having chained up the Dives in the dark caverns of Kaf, became so presumptuous as to doubt of the Supreme Power,—all these maintained great state, though not to be compared with the eminence of Soliman Ben Daoud ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... augured for itself a general victory. That Venice finally submitted to Roman influence, while preserving the semblance of independence, detracts, indeed, from the importance of this Interdict-affair considered as an episode in the struggle for spiritual freedom. Moreover, we know now that the presumptuous pretensions of the Papacy at large were destined, before many years had passed, to be pared down, diminished and obliterated by the mere advance of intellectual enlightenment. Yet none of these considerations ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... possible that Butler might internally be of opinion, that the reflection on his ancestor's peculiar tenets might have been spared, or that he might be presumptuous enough even to think, that, at his years, and with his own lights, he might be able to hold his course without the pilotage of honest David. But he only replied, by expressing his regret, that anything should separate him from an ancient, tried, and ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Lord Francis Conyngham—'pon honour, he was delighted to meet him. It was good for sore eyes—who'd a-thought of his turning up there!" Splendidly inflated Martin was when he spoke of "his servants." This thing was entertaining until he grew presumptuous. If you are polite to some people they are familiar, and want to take an ell for every inch you have conceded. And then you have to tell them to keep their place. But Martin, with the instincts of his race, saw in time when it was coming to that. What a misery it must be for a coloured ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... by feelings which I never before experienced. Although your face is concealed by your mask, I know you are beautiful—the rich luxuriance of your raven hair, and the exquisite proportions of this fair hand, are proofs of the angelic loveliness of your countenance. Am I presumptuous and bold—does my language give you offence?—if so, I will tear myself from your side, though it will rend my heart with anguish to do so. You do not speak—you are ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... the very outset decline to accept unqualifiedly the poet's opinion in the matter, for he would not think it presumptuous to incorporate philosophy in poetry. "No man," said Coleridge, "was ever yet a great poet without being at the same time a great philosopher." This would seem to mean that a great poet is a great philosopher, and more too. We shall do better to begin with ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... It would be presumptuous for me to attempt to inform the reader what Harry dreamed about on that eventful night; but I can guess that it was about angels, about bright faces and sweet smiles, and that they were very pleasant dreams. ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... said Hallam, and Alice Deringham, who knew his capabilities, wondered when her father would effectually silence this presumptuous stranger. In the meanwhile he, however, showed no intention of ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... cannot, my Cousin, wonder enough, how you that are nighest us in bloud, and greatly benefitted by our liberality, as yourself knoweth, should be so presumptuous and wickedly disposed, as by one and the same fact to violate the Majesty of God and the authority belonging to me and my husband; for to me it is a wonder that you, who being with me did complain ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... quantities of small beer. In other words, he told his story of Sanchia, of Ingram, and of Mrs. Wilmot. He was so steered by questions from Senhouse that he came, towards the end, to see that if any one had driven his mistress into a life of bondage to Ingram it was himself and his presumptuous arm. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... do we reverence Calderon, and very highly value his translator; yet, if it be not presumptuous to say so, we venture to suggest that Mac-Carthy might find nearer home another work still worthier of his genius than these translations. Now that he has got the imperial ear by bringing his costly wares ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... chaunge reasonyng, I will that the demaunder be chaunged: bicause I would not be thought presumptuous, the which I have alwaies blamed in other: therfore, I resigne the Dictatorship, and give this aucthoritie to hym that will have it, of ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... very easy for me to have suppressed every part of the circumstance, and thus to have escaped the blame which seems to attach to me, instead of some share of praise for my good intentions. I hope that it will not be thought presumptuous in me to say that no blame ought to be attributed to me...The Admiralty do not seem to take much into consideration that I had no master appointed, who ought to be the pilot, or that having been constantly employed myself in foreign voyages I cannot consequently ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... well. I didn't want to leave you in a hole. Perhaps I was presumptuous to suppose I was of any importance ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... lightness which is upon her to-night; "Oh, foolish girl! Do you not know the Lady of Love? Do you not know her power, her miracles? Queen of high hearts, ruler of earth's destinies, life and death are subject to her. She weaves them out of pain and pleasure. She can change hate into love. Presumptuous, I took in hand the work of death. The Lady of Love wrested it from me. The death-devoted she took into her keeping, she seized the work in her own hands. To whatever purpose she will to turn it, however she will to end it, whatever the doom she appoint me, I am become her own. Let me then show ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... it seemed to Master Richard that he had sinned the sin of Presumption was the old matter of the tidings he had borne to the King. It was not that the tidings were false, for he knew them for true; but yet that he had been presumptuous in bearing them. It was as though a stander-by had overheard tidings given by a king to his servant, and had presumed to hear them himself, as it were Achimaas the son of Sadoc. [I supposed that this obscure reference is to 2 Kings xviii. 19.] And more than that, that he had presumed ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... management of children, like the mother's love for her offspring, seems to be born with the child, and to be a direct intelligence of Nature. It may thus, at first sight, appear as inconsistent and presumptuous to tell a woman how to rear her infant as to instruct her in the manner of loving it. Yet, though Nature is unquestionably the best nurse, Art makes so admirable a foster-mother, that no sensible woman, in her novitiate of parent, would ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... ceased to gain ground. John van Witt was accused of all the misfortunes of the state; the people demanded with loud outcries the restoration of the stadtholderate, but lately abolished by a law voted by the States under the presumptuous title of perpetual edict. Dordrecht, the native place of the Van Witts, gave the signal of insurrection. Cornelius van Witt, who was confined to his house by illness, yielded to the prayers of his wife and children, and signed the municipal act which destroyed ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... all too presumptuous, this humble Spray of Kentucky Pine! It serves as a Reverent Tribute to the One! As a Loving Commemoration to ...
— A Spray of Kentucky Pine • George Douglass Sherley
... setting a trap. I think I see a double snare; a snare to catch the Dauphin, to catch all who are his friends in Amboise, and a snare to catch the great King's minister himself. Perhaps it is foolish, I know it is presumptuous, but let me read the letter my own way; you can show me afterwards where I am wrong. It is clever, but it is the cleverness of the man who thinks only of his own interests, who makes no allowance for love, loyalty, or single-hearted duty, and judges others ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... is apt to mislead even painstaking students and to entail upon them repeated disappointments, it is necessary that those who know should speak out, even at the risk of being considered harsh or presumptuous. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... from his hungry jaws; and from his eyes there flashed a hideous glare, as though he would perforce overthrow the sovereignty of Jove. But the sleepless shaft of Jupiter came upon him, the descending thunderbolt breathing forth flame, which scared him out of his presumptuous bravadoes; for having been smitten to his very soul he was crumbled to a cinder, and thunder-blasted in his prowess. And now, a helpless and paralyzed form is he lying hard by a narrow frith, pressed ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... Where is he? Look around! Every nook and corner scan! He the all-presumptuous man, Whither vanished? search the ground! A wayfarer, I ween, A wayfarer, no countryman of ours, That old man must have been; Never had native dared to tempt the Powers, Or enter their demesne, The Maids in awe of whom each mortal cowers, ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... Italian Semele, and English thigh, a bouncing boie, Bacchus-like, almost all named: And being as the manner of this countrie is, after some strength gathered to bring it abroade; I was to entreate three witnesses to the entrie of it into Christendome, over-presumptuous (I grant) to entreate so high a preference, but your Honors so gracious (I hope) to be over-entreated. My hope springs out of three stems: your Honors naturall benignitie; your able employment of such servitours; and the towardly likeliehood of this Springall to do ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... of the French Revolution fell back upon the United States of America, who were regarded as the first disturbers of the ancient social system. The principal European monarchs combined, under the guidance of England, to arrest the presumptuous career of France and extirpate democracy by the sword. Nevertheless, the republican cause, however odious in Europe, was our national cause. The sympathies of a large portion of the American people could not be withdrawn from the French nation, which always claimed, even when ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... nephew's merits of head and heart, were all she was able to allow herself. And yet she was inwardly seething with a mass of sentiments, to which it would have been pleasant to give expression—anger with Rose for having been so blind and so presumptuous as to prefer some one else to Hugh; anger with Hugh for his persistent disregard of her advice and the duke's feelings; and a burning desire to know the precise why and wherefore of Langham's disappearance. She was too lofty to become Rose's aunt without ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... did not think it right to go further than the outsides of the cottages in their endeavours after improvement, their influence began to assert itself within also. They were so young themselves that they considered it would be an arrogant and presumptuous proceeding on their part to attempt anything that would look like dictation, or interference, and might materially injure their work in directions wherein it had been successful heretofore. They contented themselves ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... been haranguing some of the other guests, including BLUMENBERG, noisily pushes forward at this moment—to those at the table). He is presumptuous; ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... with-drew himself. But after many passages, by y^e mediation of y^e Gov^r and some other freinds hear, he was inclined to gentlnes (though he aprehended y^e abuse of his father deeply); which, when M^r. Weston saw, he grew more presumptuous, and gave such provocking & cutting speches, as made him rise up in great indignation & distemper, and vowed y^t he would either curb him, or send him home for England. At which M^r. Weston was something danted, and came privatly to y^e Gov^r hear, to know whether they ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... of somewhat greater merit than the half-penny ballads sold at the village feast; but his neighbours could not bring themselves to approve John's course of life, and they adopted various disagreeable modes of showing that they thought he was a mightily presumptuous fellow. His shy manners and his habit of talking to himself as he walked led some to set him down as a lunatic; others ridiculed his enthusiasm, or darkly whispered suspicions of unhallowed intercourse with evil spirits. This treatment, ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... doctor's next letter, enclosed, you will find mention made of Sir Charles's Literary Journal. I fancy, my dear, it must be a charming thing. I wish we could have before us every line he wrote while he was in Italy. Once the presumptuous Harriet had hopes, that she might have been entitled—But no more of these hopes—It can't be ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... in his bulk, and in the power of him. But Mr. Blood never flinched. It came to the Colonel, as he found himself steadily regarded by those light-blue eyes that looked so arrestingly odd in that tawny face—like pale sapphires set in copper—that this rogue had for some time now been growing presumptuous. It was a matter that he must presently correct. Meanwhile Mr. Blood was speaking ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... petty king of Togorma, and intimate friend of Cuthullin, general of the Irish tribes. He is a kind of Ulysses, who counsels and comforts Cuthullin in his distress, and is the very opposite of the rash, presumptuous, though ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... with a glance a little doubtful and amused, and said, "And pray, why not? if the inquiry be not too presumptuous." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... said Bonnet. "And think of it, Ben Greenway, that presumptuous, overbearing Blackbeard was killed, and his head brought away sticking up on the bow of a vessel. What a rare sight that must have been, Ben! Think of his long beard, all tied up with ribbons, stuck up on the ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... to do what I did, I no sooner saw the house emptied of master and servants than I stole softly back, and climbed the stairs to her room. Had no good followed this intrusion, which, I am quite ready to acknowledge, was a trifle presumptuous, I would have held my peace in regard to it; but as I did make a discovery there, which has, as I believe, an important bearing on this affair, I have forced myself to mention it. The lights in the house having been left burning, I had no difficulty in finding ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... disposition towards pride of rank, amounting to arrogance, which it was necessary, at all costs, to repress. Prince William, therefore, was constantly receiving setbacks, often of a most humiliating character, from his parents, and I am sorry to say that this practice of regarding him as a presumptuous youth whom it was necessary to check, extended to other European courts, so that poor William can not be said to have had an altogether enjoyable time; and in this connection it is just as well to state ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... gentlemen of the London Mission, whose acquaintance I had the satisfaction of making in Samoa, I will venture, at the risk of being considered presumptuous, to express my opinion, that in acquirements, general ability, and active energy, they would hold no undistinguished place among their Christian brethren at home. The impossibility of accumulating private ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... afraid it is presumptuous,' I answered, 'but as often as I think of what I am to do, that is the first thing that occurs to me. I suppose,' I added, laughing, 'that the favour with which my school-fellows at Mr Elder's used ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... be objected that people guard their marital infelicities too jealously and are too loath to discuss them to come willingly to such a place; that the idea involves a presumptuous interference in the private lives of individuals. But neurologists know that people in increasing numbers feel the need, under conditions of modern stress, for a safe outlet and a chance to discuss their ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... great consequence is it that man should be comprehended and recognized by man. The self-taught man therefore remains embarrassed, and does not free himself from the apprehension that he may expose some weak point to a professional, or he falls into the other extreme—he becomes presumptuous, steps forth as a reformer, and, if he accomplishes nothing, or earns only ridicule, he sets himself down as an unrecognized martyr by ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... "Ye are presumptuous knaves," said the tyrant, eyeing the strangers sternly; "is it thus that ye have been taught to approach the King? What is ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... pageant was so retrograde and false, its politics were still more inane. It is a monument of presumptuous infatuation that any one should feel so strongly as he did that order could only be restored on condition of coming to terms with religious use and prejudice, and then that he should dream that his Supreme Being—a mere didactic phrase, the deity of a poet's ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... very want of generosity. She felt then something childish in the whole undertaking that otherwise escaped her, she was convicted of an absurd self-importance, she discovered herself an ignorant woman availing herself of her husband's power and wealth to attempt presumptuous experiments. In these moods of disillusionment, her mind went adrift and was driven to and fro from discontent to discontent; she would find herself taking soundings and seeking an anchorage upon the strangest, most unfamiliar shoals. And in her ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... this Fair One of Oleron's, until Oleron himself knew her? Lovely radiant creations are not thrown off like How-d'ye-do's. The men to whom it is committed to father them must weep wretched tears, as Oleron did, must swell with vain presumptuous hopes, as Oleron did, must pursue, as Oleron pursued, the capricious, fair, mocking, slippery, eager Spirit that, ever eluding, ever sees to it that the chase does not slacken. Let Oleron but hunt this Huntress a little longer... he would have her sparkling and panting ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... housekeeper to be deciphered, by which means it came into my hands. I inquired what were the merits of Mr. Vice Crispin, was informed that he had made the suit of clothes for a figure of Lord Marr, that was burned after the rebellion. I hope now you don't hold me too presumptuous for pluming myself on the reduction of Martinico. However, I shall not aspire to a post, nor to marry my Lady Bute's Abigail. I only trust my services to you as a friend, and do not mean under your temperate ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... be thought idle or presumptuous to make a new attempt towards the naturalization among us of any measure based on the ancient hexameter. Even Mr Southey has not been in general successful in such efforts; yet no one can deny that here and there—as, for instance, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... brother's presumptuous demand that he should take him to her! That he should take him to her now! Did Apollonius already know of her state and want to take advantage of it? The question was superfluous; if they saw each other now they could not fail to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... Church;[274] and this was the title under which he was to be spoken of in all churches of the realm. A royal order had been issued, "that all manner of prayers, rubrics, canons of Mass books, and all other books in the churches wherein the Bishop of Rome was named, or his presumptuous and proud pomp and authority preferred, should utterly be abolished, eradicated, and rased out, and his name and memory should be never more, except to his contumely and reproach, remembered; but perpetually be ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... letter must be answered, and certainly not returned, should the answer be a refusal; unless, indeed, when, from a previous repulse, or some other particular and special circumstances, such an offer may be regarded by the lady or her relatives as presumptuous and intrusive. Under such circumstances, the letter may be placed by the lady in the hands of her parents or guardian, to be dealt with by them as ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... other than his sovereign, he was dumb with despair, and the last, the miserable hope which it imparts, and which maketh wretched, began to leave him. He now accused himself for having been made the sacrifice of a wild and presumptuous dream, and again he thought of the kindly smile and the look of sorrow which met together on her countenance, when, in a rash, impassioned moment, he fell on his knee before her, and made ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... malapert. precocious, assuming, would-be, bumptious. bluff; brazen, shameless, aweless, unblushlng[obs3], unabashed; brazen, boldfaced-, barefaced-, brazen-faced; dead to shame, lost to shame. impudent, audacious, presumptuous, free and easy, devil-may-care, rollicking; jaunty, janty[obs3]; roistering, blustering, hectoring, swaggering, vaporing; thrasonic, fire eating, "full of sound and fury " [Macbeth]. Adv. with a high hand; ex cathedra[Lat]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of Hals, and there is the placing, the setting forth of figures on the canvas, which was as instinctively his as it was Titian's. Hals and Velasquez possessed all those qualities, and something more. They would not have been satisfied with that angular, presumptuous, and obvious drawing, harsh in its exterior limits and hollow within—the head a sort of convulsive abridgment, the hand void, and the fingers too, if we seek their articulations. An omission must not be mistaken for a simplification, and for all his omissions Manet strives to make ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... what she had done. Maybe she had been unwomanly. It is a penalty impulsive people have to pay that later they must consider whether they have been bold and presumptuous. Her spirits began to droop when she should logically have ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... I was summoned to the tea-table of Gregory, my puissant master, to account, if I could, for my presumptuous absence at a time when every fag's presence was so imperatively required. On my appearance, my fellow-fag was astonished at the air of confidence with which I advanced towards the table, guilty of such a heinous omission. My master, for some seconds, regarded ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... thus reached the term of our arduous and fatiguing journey. We flatter ourselves that a truth has been gleaned from it, and this conviction is not, due to a presumptuous reliance on our powers, but on the conscientious honesty of our researches, combined with a great yet humble love of truth. Others, who are better endowed with genius and learning will judge of our success, and we shall willingly submit to their criticism and ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... virtue, to draw you away from following in the footsteps of Brutus, of Cassius, of the great Romans, of me, your teacher and master! That is all Paolo cares for, and it is enough—more than enough! And he shall pay me for his presumptuous interference, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... We are so presumptuous that we would wish to be known by all the world, even by people who shall come after, when we shall be no more; and we are so vain that the esteem of five or six neighbours delights and ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... and presumptuous in me to say anything at all in papa's absence' said Mrs. Edmonstone, smiling; 'but I am sure he will think in the same way, that things ought to remain as they are, and that it is our duty not to allow you to be, or to feel ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that ancient and famous England that once was governed by statesmen—by Burleighs and by Walsinghams; by Bolingbrokes and by Walpoles; by a Chatham and a Canning—will he go to it with this fantastic scheming of some presumptuous pedant? I won't believe it. I have that confidence in the common sense, I will say the common spirit of our countrymen, that I believe they will not long endure this huckstering tyranny of the Treasury Bench—these political pedlars ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... no reason for life. There must be stars that are old, as Dublin is old, and need vitality.... There must be stars that are young and cruel, as this city is young and cruel, and need sweet strength.... But I am very presumptuous, Shane, to try and fathom the Great Master's plan.... It is so colorless—oh, there is no word or symbol for it, Shane.... But there is a Great Master ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... crown for sale to the Emperor, and the Emperor, notwithstanding his brave words about a truceless war, seemed willing to pay the caitiff his price. Some gleams of success which shone upon the Gothic arms in Dalmatia towards the end of 535 filled the feeble soul of Theodahad with presumptuous hope, and he broke off with arrogant faithlessness the negotiations which he had begun. Still, with all the gallant men under him longing to be employed, he struck not one blow for his crown and country, but shut himself up in his ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... the skyscraper district, keeping watch and ward over those presumptuous, man-made cliffs around which commerce heaps its Fundy tides, you will find, unhandsomely housed on a side street, a hook and ladder company, known unofficially and intimately throughout the department ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... breasts too—presumptuous man! what, paint Heaven!—Apropos, madam, in the very next picture is Salmoneus, that was struck dead with lightning, for offering to imitate Jove's thunder; I hope you served the painter ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... from Mons the dislike of the King for Louvois augmented to such an extent, that this minister, who was so presumptuous, and who thought himself so necessary, began to tremble. The Marechale de Rochefort having gone with her daughter, Madame de Blansac, to dine with him at Meudon, he took them out for a ride in a little 'calache', which he himself ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... been to promote the well-being of my Profession; and if, in any degree, I have attained so desirable an object, I trust I may not be deemed presumptuous in cherishing the belief, that my arduous struggle has won for me the honourable reward ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... too kind to the lad, lassie, and he's got presumptuous. He must be taught his place. I mistrust we have all made more ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... those persons, whose intellectual derangement rendered them inadequate to the governance of themselves in society, or incapable of managing their affairs, entitled to its special protection. If your Lordship should feel surprized at this communication, or deem my conduct presumptuous, the thirst of information on an important subject is my only apology; and I have sought to allay it in the pure stream that issues from the fountain-head, rather than from subordinate channels or distant distributions. Although personally a stranger to your Lordship, nearly ...
— A Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor, on the Nature and Interpretation of Unsoundness of Mind, and Imbecility of Intellect • John Haslam
... presumptuous savage." After the fight which I have described, Inspector Dickens, studying the situation, regarded ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... fine gentlemen there looked at him with surprise and indignation. Who was this presumptuous new member who proposed to tell the older members what to do? Some of them may have known him and been familiar with that scene in Hanover Court-House. Others perhaps mentally deplored the indignity of sending common fellows like this to sit ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... musical taste that Mr. Bagnet actually takes his pipe from his lips to express his conviction that he is a singer. Mr. Bucket receives the harmonious impeachment so modestly, confessing how that he did once chaunt a little, for the expression of the feelings of his own bosom, and with no presumptuous idea of entertaining his friends, that he is asked to sing. Not to be behindhand in the sociality of the evening, he complies and gives them "Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms." This ballad, he informs Mrs. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... afresh. 'Ah,' said De Wimpffen, 'your positions are not so strong as you would have us believe them to be.' 'You do not know the topography of the country about Sedan,' was Von Moltke's true and crushing answer. 'Here is a bizarre detail which illustrates the presumptuous and inconsequent character of your people,' he went on, now thoroughly aroused. 'When the war began you supplied your officers with maps of Germany at a time when they could not study the geography of their own country ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... was presumptuous, to have asked a return of the earnest affection I have for you; but I had hoped that you would give the question some consideration; and may I not hope that you will think kindly of my proposal? Oh Miss Gordon, ever since the death of ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... The most presumptuous of all presumptions is this "presumption of innocence." It really doesn't exist, save in the mouths of judges and in the pages of the law books. Yet as much to-do is made about it as if it were a living legal principle. ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... evidently thought him a man who would spare no unnecessary probe to the feelings (see the close of his version of Ugolino). Spenser says not a word of him, though he copied Tasso, and eulogised Ariosto. Shakspeare would assuredly have put him into the list of those presumptuous lookers into eternity who "take upon themselves to know" (Cymbeline, act v. sc. 4). Milton, in his sonnet to Henry Lawes, calls him "that sad Florentine"—a lamenting epithet, by which we do not designate a man whom we desire to resemble. The historian of English poetry, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... love, as some say it does," thought he, "Amelie de Repentigny cannot be indifferent to a passion which governs every impulse of my being! But is there any especial merit in loving her whom all the world cannot help admiring equally with myself? I am presumptuous to think so!—and more presumptuous still to expect, after so many years of separation and forgetfulness, that her heart, so loving and so sympathetic, has not already bestowed its affection upon some one more fortunate ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the circumstances and the materials, it is probably destined to perish in the general holocaust which the traditions of Indian government seem fated to undergo since they have been placed at the mercy of public ignorance and the presumptuous vanity of political men. Already an outcry is raised for abolishing the councils as a superfluous and expensive clog on the wheels of government; while the clamor has long been urgent, and is daily obtaining more countenance in the highest ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... is mine!" cried Louise von Schwerin, the little maid of honor, who, without being remarked, had approached the two ladies, and seized the letter at this decisive moment. "The letter belongs to me; it is mine," repeated the presumptuous young girl, as she danced laughingly before the two pale and terrified ladies. "Who dares affirm that this letter, which has no address, is not intended ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... proposition is only equalled by the poverty of the reasoning by which it is supported. To assert that it is not in the power of God adequately to punish sin in this world, is to profess a knowledge of the resources of Omnipotence, and an acquaintance with the deserts of man, which it seems to us presumptuous to claim. On this point it is not necessary to enlarge. An a priori argument to prove that God cannot punish sin in this life as much as it deserves to be punished, can carry conviction to no mind ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... where mode prevails) 460 If in these hallow'd times, when, sober, sad, All gentlemen are melancholy mad; When 'tis not deem'd so great a crime by half To violate a vestal as to laugh, Rude mirth may hope, presumptuous, to engage An act of toleration for the stage; And courtiers will, like reasonable creatures, Suspend vain fashion, and unscrew their features; Old Falstaff, play'd by Love, shall please once more, And humour set the audience in a roar. 470 Actors I've seen, and of no vulgar name, Who, being from ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... 5. Presumptuous maid! with looks intent, Again she stretch'd, again she bent, Nor knew the gulf between: (Maligant Fate sat by and smiled,) The slippery verge her feet ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... doubtless looked to him weird and impossible, and not a little impudent. The argument that the proposed government could better serve the general interests of the public, or even the cause of the war, than a purely Liberal government, of which he would be the head, probably struck him as presumptuous. Three days before Sir Robert Borden made his announcement of an intention to introduce conscription, Sir Wilfrid, anticipating the announcement, wrote to Sir Allan Aylesworth his unalterable opposition to the policy. This being the case, there ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... sun, and all other stars where God placed him on the cherubims; he had a kingly office, and was always before God's seat, to the end he might be the more perfect in all his being; but when he began to be high-minded, proud, and so presumptuous, that he would usurp the seat of God's Majesty, then was he banished out from amongst the heavenly powers, separated from their abiding, into the manner of a fiery stone, that no water is able to quench, but continually burneth until the end ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... moment, gazing in disdain upon his pursuers. As one of the Sioux was foremost in his attempt to seize the Crouching Panther, the latter hurled his hatchet with terrible, unerring force, and buried it deep into the presumptuous savage's brain. At the same moment crying out "The spirits of a hundred Pawnee braves will accompany their great chief to the happy hunting-grounds of their fathers," he pressed close to his bosom the ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... I stumbled, fumbling desperately with my serviette, "that you came over without realizing what war conditions are. Strangers aren't wanted just now. Travel is dangerous for women. You may think me all kinds of a presumptuous idiot,—I shan't blame you,—but I am going to urge you most strongly to ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... risking his fame and his power in a frantic contest against the principles of human nature and the laws of the physical world, against the rage of the winter and the liberty of the sea. They did not exempt him from the influence of that most pernicious of superstitions, a presumptuous fatalism. They did not preserve hint from the inebriation of prosperity, or restrain him from indecent querulousness in adversity. On the other hand, the fanaticism of Cromwell never urged him on impracticable undertakings, or ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I exhort you the sorrow to augment of that presumptuous woman: I would fain see it. Strive so to do, that Gudrun may lament. Might I but see that in her lot she ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... presumptuous at this time to attempt to formulate a Tinguian style, I trust that what I have tabulated may prove valuable in summing up the total evidence, which will accumulate as other surveys are made; and if perchance, the findings here set down and the ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... should beware of wasting sins, Psal. li. 10. Sins against light and conscience, such as David called presumptuous sins, Psal. xix. 13. They should beware also of savouring any unknown corruption, or any thing of that kind, that may hinder the work ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... then he stood up like a pillar, or a fine kangaroo, and made trial of his weight against the chain. Feeling something give, or show propensity toward giving, he said to himself that here was one more triumph for him over the presumptuous intellect of man. The chain might be strong enough to hold a ship, and the great leathern collar to secure a bull; but the fastening of chain to collar was unsound, by reason of the rusting ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... thought what he was doing—it is but charity to suppose so; that he spoke only after his usual careless and somewhat presumptuous style of speaking about all women, but he must have been struck by the horrified expression ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... follows:) "of all these we may say fearlessly, as Paul says, 'though they be Angels from Heaven, let them be accursed' they have denied the word of God—together with these, another class of visionaries and impostors, less presumptuous, but equally foolish, may be noticed. We refer to those who either by pretended revelation, or by interpretation, have undertaken, from time to time within the last few centuries, to prophesy of ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... it was no to me they were listening. It wasna old Harry Lauder who interested them—it was what he had to tell them. It was a great thing to think that folk would tak' me seriously. I've been amusing people for these many years. It seemed presumptuous, at first, when I set out to talk to them of other ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... Fishes alone; and the Fish chapter in the history of the early organic world is a curious, and, as it seems to me, a very significant one. We shall find no perfect specimens; and he would be a daring, not to say a presumptuous thinker, who would venture to reconstruct a fish of the Silurian age from any remains that are left to us. But still we find enough to indicate clearly the style of those old fishes, and to show, by comparison with the living ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... to him when we do not feel it, and it is also highly improper to cherish such an attachment without daring to avow it. If the former must be characterized as hypocrisy, the latter cannot be exculpated from the charge of sinful timidity; if the one be presumptuous boldness, the other is ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... that succeeded Maximus whilest the time of the ciuill warres as yet endured, did trouble the Britains, vsing the same slacknesse and slouth that the other lieutenants had vsed before him, and permitted the like licence to the presumptuous souldiers: but yet was Volanus innocent as touching himselfe, and not hated for anie notable crime or vice: so that he ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (4 of 8) - The Fovrth Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed
... the good-natured monarch that such a name was certain to call down the hatred and jealousy of the fairies in a body on the child, but this was what happened. No sooner had they heard of this presumptuous name than they resolved to gain possession of her who bore it, and either to torment her cruelly, or at least to conceal her from the eyes ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... As he stopped, there was a storm of hand-clapping. Rozenoffski gave a masterly start of surprise, and turned his leonine head in dazed bewilderment. Was he not then alone? 'Gott im Himmel!' he murmured, and, furiously banging down the piano-lid, stalked from these presumptuous mortals who had jarred ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... observation. Democratic communities not only contain a large number of independent citizens, but they are constantly filled with men who, having entered but yesterday upon their independent condition, are intoxicated with their new power. They entertain a presumptuous confidence in their strength, and as they do not suppose that they can henceforward ever have occasion to claim the assistance of their fellow-creatures, they do not scruple to show that they care for ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... shortest cut, to that horrible and disgustful situation. Already there appears a poverty of conception, a coarseness and vulgarity, in all the proceedings of the Assembly and of all their instructors. Their liberty is not liberal. Their science is presumptuous ignorance. Their ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... lady, a while ago," he said softly in her ear, as they swung gently through the crowded room. "I thought it was a smile that said things. Was thy servant very presumptuous in thus reading his queen's glance? Confound you, ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... with the most fruitful results, and I believe that the studies and recently formed plans of the Department of Agriculture may be made to serve them very greatly in their work of framing appropriate and adequate legislation. It would be indiscreet and presumptuous in anyone to dogmatize upon so great and many-sided a question, but I feel confident that common counsel will produce the results we ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... "Thrones to resign for lakes of living flame, And triumph for despair. He, on whose call afflicting thunders wait, Has will'd it; and his will is fate! In vain the legions, emulous to save, Hung in the tempest o'er the troubled main; [r] Turn'd each presumptuous prow that broke the wave, And dash'd it on its shores again. All is fulfill'd! Behold, in close array, What mighty banners stream in the bright ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... attendant upon their domestic economy. It was a maxim, with Mrs. Armitage, never to indulge or favor one of her people in the smallest matter. She had never done so in her life, she said, that she had got any thanks for it. It always made them presumptuous and dissatisfied. The more you did for them, the more they expected, and soon came to demand as a right what had been at first granted as a favor. Mrs. Armitage was, in a word, one of those petty domestic tyrants, ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... both presumptuous and impossible, your ladyship! If one-half the world were always bent on knowing all the secrets of the other half, what a very uncomfortable world it ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... it seemed to him that he had never heard anything so absurd and presumptuous as the twaddle that would fix a stigma of shame or contempt on Finn blood, and the same spring he and the Finn girl Zilla were betrothed, and in ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... head. "No," he said. "It seems to me that argument has quite frequently accounted for a good deal of meanness. It is tolerably presumptuous for any ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... question. I respectfully invite the attention of those who wish to know the truth and to retain their reverence for a great historical character, to the following examination of the accusations and of the foundations on which they rest. It will not, I hope, be considered presumptuous if I say that—in making this examination—personal experience of life in the navy sufficiently extensive to embrace both the present day and the time before the introduction of the great modern changes in system and naval materiel will be of great help. Many things ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... transgress its End; Let it be seldom, and compell'd by need; 165 And have, at least, their precedent to plead. The Critic else proceeds without remorse, Seizes your fame, and puts his laws in force. I know there are, to whose presumptuous thoughts Those freer beauties, ev'n in them, seem faults. 170 Some figures monstrous and mis-shap'd appear, Consider'd singly, or beheld too near, Which, but proportion'd to their light, or place, Due ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... presumptuous of her to poor-child me, and I resolved to take advantage of the data I already possessed in order to ascertain just how many years she was my junior. She had told me she was twelve years old the time the Dixie collided with the river steamer in San Francisco Bay. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... till to-day. He had begun the adventure in the strength of the desire born of his visit to the scene of his father's work at Hankow to do a little good. True, it was an impulse of which he was more than half ashamed. Its mere formulation in words rendered it bumptious and presumptuous. Beyond the confession made to Rodney Temple on the night of his arrival no force could have induced him to avow it. Better any imputation of craft than the suspicion of wanting to confer benefits on his fellow-men. It was a satisfaction to him to be able to say, even in his ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... Peyton Randolph, nor Richard Bland, nor George Wythe, nor Edmund Pendleton, but by this new and very unabashed member for the county of Louisa,—this rustic and clownish youth of the terrible tongue,—this eloquent but presumptuous stripling, who was absolutely without training or experience in statesmanship, and was the merest novice even in the ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... so, on this, the mere effect of the drawn blind that it quite forced him, at first, into the sense, possibly just, of having affected her as flip pant, perhaps even as low. He had been looked at so, in blighted moments of presumptuous youth, by big cold public men, but never, so far as he could recall, by any private lady. More than anything yet it gave him the measure of his companion's subtlety, and thereby of Kate's possible career. "Don't be too ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... Charles the First, and do you be prepared to bring at least some of Myrrha translated,' he wrote; 'remember, remember Charles the First and Myrrha,' he insisted; and he quoted, for her benefit, the presumptuous aphorism of Godwin, in St. Leon, 'There is nothing which the human mind can conceive which it may not execute'. [Footnote: Letter from Padua, ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... English had many poetical writers, but no poet, and this at a time when Tennyson was already famous. The same spirit of exclusion, in a minor degree, will deny the existence of all poets except three, or perhaps four, in a generation. It would be presumptuous to hope to be one of the three; but I do not think it was presumptuous in me to hope for some readers for my verse. As this autobiography approached that early publication, I read the volume over again, with a fresh eye, after an interval of many years, exactly as if it had ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Perhaps the truant boy who simply bathes himself in the lake and then basks in the sunshine, dimly conscious of the exquisite loveliness around him, is wiser, because humbler, than is he who with presumptuous phrases tries to utter it. There are multitudes of moments when the atmosphere is so surcharged with luxury that every pore of the body becomes an ample gate for sensation to flow in, and one has simply to sit still and be filled. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... should be watched, from that time forth, by three priests in turn, night and day, to the end of the generations of men. And the Brahmins heard, and bowed before his will. The deity predicted certain disaster to the presumptuous mortal who laid hands on the sacred gem, and to all of his house and name who received it after him. And the Brahmins caused the prophecy to be written over the gates of the shrine in ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... but the metrical biographer is less discreetly vague, and breaks into a tirade against that race of serpents, plunderers, robbers, net weavers, and spiders—the fair sex. Still, he cannot refrain from giving us a graphic picture of the presumptuous she-rascal who fell in love with Hugh, and although most of his copyists excise his thirty-nine graphic lines of Zuleika's portrait, the amused reader is glad to find that all were not of so edifying a mind. Her lovely hair that vied with gold was partly veiled and partly strayed around her ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... disdain, and there was nothing he would not do to try and please her. He took her on board every succeeding ship, and remained for hours in the trade room while she spent the price of many tons of copra and pearl shell in filling a chest with purchases, saying, in her presumptuous way, "Give me twenty fathoms of this; give me forty fathoms of the other. This silk is good, lo! I will take a bolt." And Malamalama, who perhaps wanted an anchor for his boat, or a little, tiny, trifling pea-soupo of paint, had perforce to do without either, and paddle ashore ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... set it all before me. O, Marian, he said dreadful things; I did not think Walter could have been so cruel. O, such things! He made me look at the Marriage Service, and say how I could answer those things; and he talked about death and the Last Day. He said it would be a presumptuous sin, and a profaning of the holy ordinance for me to come to it, knowing and thinking and feeling as I do. O what things he said! and yet he ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... him—what could she call him? He signed himself "Philip." She knew that was his name. She thought it a musical name to utter, but to write it! No! some instinct she could not account for seemed to whisper that it was improper—presumptuous, to call him "Dear Philip." Had Burns's songs— the songs that unthinkingly he had put into her hand, and told her to read—songs that comprise the most beautiful love-poems in the world—had they helped to teach her some of the secrets of her own heart? And had timidity come ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and the statements of the Bible. The controversy that results is caused altogether by the rationalist thrusting himself into that place that belongs to the Holy Spirit alone. "He shall lead you into all the truth," said Christ, and it is presumptuous in the extreme to seek to do the Holy ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... man is steady, an humble man timid, and a vain one presumptuous; this is the judgment, which the observation of many characters, has led me to form. Jesus Christ was modest, Moses was humble, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... these? Would it be quite impossible that Britons should receive the light of His Word, even as they receive the light of His sunshine? I would fain cling to this hope; I trust that the hope is not presumptuous. And if even these savage islanders be not quite beyond reach of the mercy of the Great Father, will not that mercy embrace the Greeks, the brave, the noble, the gifted? But my thoughts wander upon dangerous ground. Can there be salvation for any that may ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... published in 1783, is superb. No matter how familiar it may be, it is simply impossible to avoid laughing anew at the smug little Harry, the sanctimonious tutor, or the naughty Tommy, as Mr. Sambourne has realised them. The "Anecdotes of the Crocodile" and "The Presumptuous Dentist" are no less good. The way he has turned a prosaic hat-rack into an instrument of torture would alone mark Mr. Sambourne as a comic draughtsman of the highest type. Nothing he has done in political cartoons seems so likely to live as these ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... half-wit, one of the sheep outfit, had readily taken the oath of allegiance; beyond that, however, there had been a hitch in the proceedings. The man causing this hitch—the long-haired figure at the bottom of the wagon—had been presumptuous enough to make a stand against the lords of the earth! The men of Heart's Desire, confident that the new foreman understood his business, asked few questions as they gathered about the wagon and gazed ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... aright, in a similar vein of the grizzled sage; but the unkind critique has been forgotten, and its author is fast following it into oblivion, while the shade of Carlyle looms ever larger, towering already above the Titans of his time, reaching even to the shoulder of Shakespeare! Gosse? Who is this presumptuous fellow who would take Carlyle in tutelage, foist himself upon the attention of the public by making a peep-show of the great essayist's faults? There is, or was, a pugilist named Gesse, or Goss; but ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... to you, Miss Fountain, that Mr. Helbeck's engagement troubled his Catholic friends. I chose to take it morbidly to heart—I ventured that—that most presumptuous attack upon him." He laughed, with an affected note that made her think him odious. "But you were soon avenged. You little know, Miss Fountain, what an influence your presence at Bannisdale had upon me. It—well! it was like a rebel army, perpetually there, to help—to ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... express the deep obligation under which he lies to the Rev. JOHN LAING, Librarian in the New College, Edinburgh, for the valuable assistance which he afforded to him in the translation of this work. Any observation on the work itself or its Author would be superfluous, if not presumptuous, considering the high position which Dr HENGSTENBERG holds as a Biblical Scholar. High, however, as this position is, the Translator feels confident that it will be raised by the present work, the Author's latest and first; and not only revering Dr HENGSTENBERG as a beloved Teacher, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... to send you this news I seem to have deferred too long the expression of my warm thanks for your kindness in sending me the Hebrew translations of Leasing and the collection of Hebrew poems, a kindness which I felt myself rather presumptuous in asking for, since your time must be well filled with more important demands. Yet I must further beg you, when you have an opportunity, to assure Herr Bacher that I was most gratefully touched by the sympathetic verses with which he enriched ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... manner. Some women are to be approached in one way and some in another, just as a siege is an affair of fascines and gabions in hard weather and of trenches in soft. But the man who can mix daring with timidity, who can be outrageous with an air of humility, and presumptuous with a tone of deference, that is the man whom mothers have to fear. For myself, I felt that I was the guardian of this lonely lady, and knowing what a dangerous man I had to deal with, I kept strict watch upon myself. Still, even a guardian has his privileges, and ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her arrival? How could he keep an espial on the house? His situation was wretchedly unlike that he had pictured to himself; instead of the romantic lover, carrying all before him by the energy of passion, he had to play a plotting, almost sneaking part, in constant fear of being taken for a presumptuous interloper. Lucky that Rosamund had spoken of him to her sister. Well, he must wait; though waiting was the worst torture for a ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... his astonishment had abated somewhat, Philip found that he could do so. "But this still doesn't make sense," he said a short while later. "Obviously you and the rest of the owners have purchased new houses. Would it be presumptuous of me to ask how you're going to pay for them when you're virtually giving your old ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... oppression. This took definite shape in 1308 when they rebelled openly against their Hapsburg overlords.[5] The Hapsburg duke of the moment was one of two rival claimants for the title of emperor, and was much too busy to attend personally to the chastisement of these presumptuous boors. The army which he sent to do the work for him was met by the Swiss at Morgarten, among their mountain passes, overwhelmed with rocks, and then put to flight by one fierce charge of the unarmored peasants. It took the Austrians seventy years to forget ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Spoiled by success, Frederick, after gaining the dearly purchased victory of Prague, attempted to reduce a city which he could not invest, and in which an army was concentrated. The Austrians advanced with 60,000 men to raise the siege; and the presumptuous king did not hesitate to rush upon them with less than half the number of Prussians; a total defeat, the first he had yet sustained, was the consequence. From this day it is allowed that the Prussian infantry had no longer any superiority over their ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... James observed: "Why, guests must know that it is not seemly to go to a king's wedding in torn and dirty clothes. All are freely invited, but he who comes unwashed and presumptuous will be cast out into the darkness. No one is ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... suffering and weariness, and becomes unendurable to itself through them, and thus wrongs its state of perfection. The odour of pride clings to it, and this it does not perceive. For, were it truly humble and not presumptuous, it would see well that the Sweet Primal Truth gives conditions, time and place, and consolation and tribulation, according as is needful to our perfection, and to fulfil in the soul the perfection to which it is chosen. ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... sayings: to my heart they breathe The kindly spirit of meekness, and allay What tumours rankle there. But who is he Of whom thou spak'st but now?"—"This," he replied, "Is Provenzano. He is here, because He reach'd, with grasp presumptuous, at the sway Of all Sienna. Thus he still hath gone, Thus goeth never-resting, since he died. Such is th' acquittance render'd back of him, Who, beyond measure, dar'd on earth." I then: "If soul that to the verge of life delays Repentance, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... not feel I have been bold," he said. "It was rude and presumptuous for me to say the things I did to you. Please try ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... from his success in gallantry. Richelieu was in truth the most eminent of that race of seducers by profession, who furnished Crebillon the younger and La Clos with models for their heroes. In his earlier days the royal house itself had not been secure from his presumptuous love. He was believed to have carried his conquests into the family of Orleans; and some suspected that he was not unconcerned in the mysterious remorse which embittered the last hours of the charming mother of Lewis the Fifteenth. But the Duke was now sixty years old. With ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... art deceiv'd; 't is not thy southern power, Of Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, nor of Kent, Which makes thee thus presumptuous and proud, Can set the duke up in ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... the deeper venom of the outraged New Englanders, who saw in Jefferson and his successors a race of half-Jacobins. During 1812 and 1813, accordingly, newspapers and ministerial speakers, when they referred to the contest, generally spoke of the necessity of {237} chastising an impudent and presumptuous antagonist. A friendly party such as had defended the colonists during the Revolution no longer existed, for the Whigs, however antagonistic to the Liverpool Ministry, were fully as firmly committed to maintaining British naval ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... months of hard work: I mean the second volume of "Sylvie and Bruno." I fully mean, if I have life and health till Xmas next, to bring it out then. When one is close on sixty years old, it seems presumptuous to count on years and years of work yet to ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... 11. And those who despise governments, presumptuous, self-conceited, tremble not to revile dignities, whereas the angels, who are greater in power and might, bring not a railing accusation against them before the Lord. He calls kings, princes and lords, and all civil magistracy, governments; and not the Pope and bishops, for ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... sinful it is to worship money and show, as my parents did; how much suffering it has caused me! and how equally unwise and presumptuous it was for a young man, stung by the pride of others, to make that the rule of his life, and go forth in his own strength to build up a fortune, so that he might demand me of my parents as an equal, and thus gratify his own pride! I see it ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... doubt whatever that Vespucci made a voyage in 1499-1500, along with Alonzo de Ojeda and the great pilot Juan de la Cosa, but whether this may be styled his first or his second must be left to the intelligence of the reader, for the historians are at odds themselves, and it might seem presumptuous in the biographer to assume to decide. This voyage was narrated by him in the following letter, written within a month of his return, to Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de Medici, of Florence. It is dated, "Seville, ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... you from me one half of the fortune of Claude de Buxieres. You will then be, by law, and in the eyes of all, one of the desirable matches of the canton, and you can demand the hand of Mademoiselle Vincart, without any fear of being thought presumptuous or mercenary." ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... was, moreover, reassuring. In these same days between the summoning of the Buckingham Palace Conference and the landing of the Nationalist guns, Continental events arising out of the stale Sarajevo affair reared their heads and looked towards Great Britain in a presumptuous and sinister way to which the British public was not accustomed, and which it resented. The British public had never taken any interest in international affairs and it did not wish to take any interest in international affairs. It certainly did not wish to be disturbed by ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... prefers the manual labor of the poor artisan to the fasting and prayer of the priest, of which we find an illustration in St. Anthony and the shoemaker of Alexandria.[31] Since these things are so, who shall be so bold and presumptuous as to commute a vow into some "better work"? But these things will have to be spoken of elsewhere, for here we have undertaken to speak of confession only as it concerns the Commandments of God, for the quieting and composing of consciences which ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... had finished this epistle it seemed to him entirely too cold; but the others, which he had written in a more sentimental vein, had appeared unduly presumptuous. He finally sealed it and gave it to Pete, with terrific threats of personal violence in case of anything preventing its prompt delivery. While Pete was galloping off to Lexington at breakneck speed, the Colonel was wondering what ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... successe in his warres against the Danes, and besides the calamitie that fell thereby to his people, manie other miseries oppressed this land in his daies, not so much through his lacke of courage and slouthfull negligence, as by reason of his presumptuous pride, whereby he alienated the hearts of [Sidenote: The pride of king Egelred alienated the harts of his people.] his people from him. His affections he could not rule, but was led by them without order of reason, for he did not onlie disherit diuerse of his ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... lustful, treacherous, or high-minded man, an admirer of the fair sex, and one easy to be persuaded to virtue or vice. He or she whose eyes are twinkling, and which move forward or backward, show the person to be luxurious, unfaithful and treacherous, presumptuous, and hard to believe anything that is spoken. If a person has any greenness mingled with the white of his eye, such is commonly silly, and often very false, vain and deceitful, unkind to his friends, a great concealer of his ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... an Affghan government—firm at least by its tenure, if circumstances forbade it to be strong by its action. But where was such a government to be found? Who, in the distracted state of Affghan society, was the man presumptuous enough to guarantee any general submission to his authority? And, if no man could say this for himself, could we say it for him? Was there any great Affghan philosopher in a cave, for whom Lord Auckland could become sponsor that he should fulfil all the purposes of British diplomacy? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... was quick to answer, with some heat. "I did not dream—I did not dare to dream—that it was my help you sought. My sympathy, I believed, was all that you invited, and so, lest I should seem presumptuous, it was all I offered. But if my help you need; if you seek a means to evade this alliance that you rightly describe as odious, such help as it lies in a man's power to render shall you ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... such as you, even if I had had a ten times better breakfast," said the old man, more calmly. "Give me what you have got for me to do. You are become a covetous rascal, but I'll put up with you. I will forgive your having denied yourself; I will forgive your having become a presumptuous ass—making a show with lamps that were meant for your betters; and I will not deprive you of my advice, provided, be it understood, I duly get my honorarium. And so we will make peace, my son. Now tell me what ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... nothing more than a simple misunderstanding of one of his night orders, such as any men might make. Poor fellows! over one-half of them are out of his power now; but I wouldn't wonder if the General would be presumptuous and malignant enough to respectfully refer their cases to the Chancery of Heaven, ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... Rochefoucauld," said the prince to him, "I was ignorant, until this day, that I was lacking in what is called martial prowess; but I shall at least have, on this occasion, the courage to despise the slanderous slights of these presumptuous youths. Do not talk to me of the submissions and regrets of your two sons, who are unworthy of you; let them live as far away from me as possible; they do not deserve to approach an honest man, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... that they alone were the people's pastors and guides, and that any one who would so much as touch a hair of their heads, who would deprive them of one iota of their power and authority, destroyed—yes, destroyed the people's respect for all that was sacred, and disturbed with a presumptuous hand the ancient, beautiful, and patriarchal relations between the flocks and ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... story of the past and "understanded of the people," while you are patiently strengthening and maturing your powers of art in safety, sheltered from yourself, and sheltered from the condemnation due to the too presumptuous assumption of apostleship. For it is one thing to stand forth and say, "I have a message to deliver to the world," and quite another to say, "There is such a message, and it has fallen to me to be its mouthpiece; woe is me, ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... says that "if we can see no natural origin for species, a miraculous one must be admitted."[52] Now, the grand alternative being Creation by Miracle or Creation by Law, that is, Creation by a Natural or by a Supernatural cause, we affirm that it is utterly presumptuous and unphilosophical to represent the one as less worthy of God, or more derogatory to His infinite perfections, than the other. Yet the author does not hesitate to say that the natural ought to be preferred to the miraculous method of accounting ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... high that their wings are scorched by the sun; so those who in the Holy Scriptures strive to unravel the deep and hidden secrets of the heavenly mysteries, beyond what is allowed, fall below, as if the wings of the presumptuous imaginations on which ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... one little star in motion, You cannot shape one single forest leaf, Nor fling a mountain up, nor sink an ocean, Presumptuous pigmy, large with unbelief. You cannot bring one dawn of regal splendour, Nor bid the day to shadowy twilight fall, Nor send the pale moon forth with radiance tender - And dare you doubt the One who has ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox |
