"Supercilious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... answer to this letter either. Concluding that the good gray poet was either too busy or too gosh-darned mean to bother with the thing, I myself adopted an attitude of supercilious unconcern and closed the correspondence with the following ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... earrings and splendid fazzoletto of crimson and orange dyes, pounced down upon her for some supposed infraction of good manners—creanza, as they vividly express it here. Only Luigi looked a trifle bored. But Luigi has been a soldier, and has now attained the supercilious superiority of young-manhood, which smokes its cigar of an evening in the piazza and knows the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... baby thought so. She was a little girl, very little, only one night old; and she regarded him through her almond eyes with a supercilious look, as who should say, "Now, if he was only a bottle, instead of a big, useless policeman, why, one might put up with him;" which reflection opened the flood-gates of grief and set the little Chinee squalling: "Yow! Yow! Yap!" until the Sergeant held his ears, and a policeman carried ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... John alone. He received me with the utmost politeness. I did not keep him a moment in suspense as to the purport of my visit. But I had no sooner made it known, than, with a supercilious smile, he said, 'And have you, Madam, been prevailed upon to revive that ridiculous old story?' Ridiculous, I told him, was a term which he would find no one else do him the favour to make use of, in speaking ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... This was bad enough, but its effect was intensified by the demeanour of the Lieutenant-Governor and several military officers who were in attendance upon him. It seemed to the deputation that those gentlemen regarded them with supercilious impertinence; as a something which viceroyalty must be content, for the nonce, to endure, but as being altogether beyond the pale of their sympathies or interests. Nothing could have been in worse taste ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... to be poor," said Fletcher, with a supercilious glance at our hero, who was kneeling before ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... who was very handsome and almost idiotic, and who could not have told you what the Taj was, whether Thebes was in Egypt or India, or what was the difference, if any, between the Golden Gate and the Golden Horn. Mrs. Trent was large, sultry, well-informed and supercilious; had the lustrous eyes of a Spaniard, and spoke in a warm contralto voice. Her figure was magnificent, and she prided herself on having a masculine intellect. Her enemies said that she had a more than ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... your article on Mr. Stuart Mill, for which I thank you. I read it with the greatest interest, and congratulate you on your vigorous refutation of that supercilious and hollow materialism. I am glad, too, to see that you have profited by M. Dumas's last discourse on M. de la Rive. You have done well to record these declarations of a permanent secretary of the Academy of Sciences. Unfortunately, M. Dumas's character ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... back into his suitcase and sat down on the side of his bed to smoke. His was not the nature to hold a grudge, and Tex seemed to be friendly. Still, his youthful dignity had been very much hurt, and by Tex as much as the other boys. He gave him a supercilious glance. ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... by the fire! Worse and worse. He had been fortified by the thought of the butler and footman. An hour under their supercilious eyes would mean the most impersonal kind of small talk. But they'd hardly stand round ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... perhaps call that of Burns a still uglier phenomenon, betokening still sadder imperfections in mankind's ways, than the Scandinavian method itself! To fall into mere unreasoning deliquium of love and admiration, was not good; but such unreasoning, nay irrational supercilious no-love at all is perhaps still worse!—It is a thing forever changing, this of Hero-worship: different in each age, difficult to do well in any age. Indeed, the heart of the whole business of the age, one may say, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... daring. The pupils of her eyes are pale sea-green, floating on their white balls under thin lashes and lazy eyelids. Her eyes have dark rings around them often; her nose, which describes one-quarter of a circle, is pinched about the nostrils; very shrewd and clever, but supercilious. She has an Austrian mouth; the upper lip has more character than the lower, which drops disdainfully. Her pale cheeks have no color unless some very keen emotion moves her. Her chin is rather fat; mine is ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... and his fiancee arrived at Rivermead Mansions in a taxi and told me that they had seen Moroni arrive at Stretton Street about half-past nine. He was admitted by a new and rather supercilious man-servant—for Horton did not now seem to be in the ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... to the door, and with a second yawn she repassed him, and returned to lie at the feet of the fat old gendarme. The absurd little drama of coquetry and worship went on until the old fellow arose with a friendly bon jour, to me, and a whistle to Lil, who followed him with a supercilious nose in the air. The despised Schwartz stood a while, and then set out after her at a ridiculous three-legged run, but before he had gone ten yards he stopped short, looked after the retreating fair in silence, ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... the olden time, and affects all the supercilious airs of a modern fine lady and an upstart. The object of the one writer is to restore us to truth and nature: the other chiefly thinks how he shall display his own power, or vent his spleen, or astonish the reader either by starting new subjects and trains of speculation, or by expressing ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... poverty in the tight-fitting lavender gloves, whose streaky lines bore witness to the imperfection of the cleaner's art. Elegant Parisians and the select of Brussels glanced at the military Englishman and his handsome daughter with some slight touch of supercilious surprise—one has no right to find shabbily-dressed young women in the golden temple—and it is scarcely necessary to state that it was from her own countrywomen the young person in alpaca received the most chilling glances. But those Parthian arrows shot from feminine ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... blessings which the Lord sent by his means to the place where he labored, it was obvious to all that the tone of Christians was raised as much by his holy walk as by his heavenly ministry. Yet during these pleasant days he had much reproach to bear. He was the object of supercilious contempt to formal cold-hearted ministers, and of bitter hatred to many of the ungodly. At this day there are both ministers and professing Christians of whom Jesus would say, "The world cannot hate you" (John 7:7), for the world cannot hate itself; but it was ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... supercilious slave! what right 20 Have you to tax your memory, which should be Quick, proud, and happy to retain the name Of him who saved your master, as a litany Whose daily repetition marks your duty.— Get hence; "You think" indeed! you, who stood ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... This supercilious attitude was not shared by the simple-minded diggers, who found Maidens, Beware! very much to their taste. But nothing else could have been expected, for it offered good measure of all the elements that ensure success every time they are employed. Thus, the hero is ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... new life and light into the very highest spirits, declared with much solemnity that he could already detect the smell of the salt sea air. They had their quarrels of course. It pleased a certain young lady to treat the south coast of England with much supercilious contempt. You would have imagined from her talk that there was something criminal in one's living even within twenty miles of the bleak downs, the shabby precipices, and the muddy sea which, according to her, were the only recognizable features ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... that foreigners did not eat or drink like Christians,' which is to say that the Englishman began his contempt for the foreigner which has resulted in nearly all our wars, and has made the Englishman abroad a supercilious creature, and has made the English schoolboy put his tongue out at ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... replaced his hand in his pocket. Broad-shouldered, sturdy, and well-built throughout, he walked with the stride of a man who is accustomed to cover long distances. Yet with him he had brought neither wallet nor gripsack, and somehow his supercilious, retrousse upper lip and thickly fringed eyes irritated me, and inclined me to be suspicious of, and even actively ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... supercilious bearing toward him with an impassiveness that was intended to mask his contemptuous resentment. But Genevieve saw and understood. She rose and quietly remarked: "You'll excuse us, Aunt Amice. I wish Mr. Blake to see the palm room. I fancy it will carry him ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... remarking with corner of eye the sumptuousness of her appearance, and the supercilious indifference of her demeanour, which made it seem totally improbable that she should ever, like Desdemona, seriously incline to treat me as an Othello, commenced to heave the sighs of a fire-stove, causing Miss JESSIMINA to accuse me of desiring ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... feeling which plainly transpires in some of his replies, despite the forms of official respect that he scrupulously observed. Even in much later days, when his distinguished reputation might have enabled him to sustain with indifference this supercilious rudeness, he winced under it with over-sensitiveness. "Do not, my dear lord," he wrote to Earl Spencer a year after the battle of the Nile, "let the Admiralty write harshly to me—my generous soul ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... sphere Shine with his fair example, and though small His influence, if that influence all be spent In soothing sorrow and in quenching strife, In aiding helpless indigence, in works From which at least a grateful few derive Some taste of comfort in a world of woe, Then let the supercilious great confess He serves his country; recompenses well The state beneath the shadow of whose vine He sits secure, and in the scale of life Holds no ignoble, though a slighted place. The man whose virtues are more felt ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... prepare yourself to be thoroughly laughed at since many will certainly sneer and jeer at you, and will say, 'He has come back to us as a philosopher all of a sudden,' and 'Where in the world did he get this superciliousness?' Now do not you be supercilious, but cling to the things which appear best to you in such a manner as though you were conscious of having been appointed by God to this position." Again in the little discourse On the Desire of Admiration, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... her master, the despot of Power-house Gully. She revealed her pride every time she fell in with acquaintances on the way to church. In reply to an oft-repeated question as to why Mr. Fry did not go to church with her any longer, she invariably gave the supercilious reply that nowadays when she requested her husband to go to church, he told her to go to hell instead—and that was the kind of a man she respected, she said, not one of your weak-kneed, henpecked cowards who go to church because ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... philosophers, professors, lawyers and scientists who came to the hermitage, a number arrived for their first visit with the expectation of meeting an orthodox religionist. A supercilious smile or a glance of amused tolerance occasionally betrayed that the newcomers anticipated nothing more than a few pious platitudes. Yet their reluctant departure would bring an expressed conviction that Sri Yukteswar had shown precise ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... about such things it made her rather sorry. But she bore up for Barty's sake, and the resigned, half-humorous courtesy with which she assented to these fables was really more humiliating to a sensitive, haughty soul than any mere supercilious disdain; not that she ever wished to humiliate, but she was easily bored, and thought that kind of conversation ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... bold or forward which causes women of the usual run to be sensitive about staring or being stared at. Sometimes—in cocottes, in stage women, in fashionable women—this expression is self-conscious, or supercilious. It was not so with Susan, for she had little self-consciousness and no snobbishness at all. It merely gave the charm of worldly experience and expertness to a beauty which, without it, might have ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... the Hub of the Universe, in a somewhat supercilious manner, not long ago informed one of our local friends that his own home was hundreds of miles to the southward. "'Deed, sir, how does you manage to live so far off?" with a scarcely perceptible twinkle of ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... but I can reach his crown, and that he shall be aware of before he knows ut. He sets me at naught in my own class, sir; he pooh-poohs my mathematical demonstrations, sir; he encourages my pupils in insubordination! And Mrs. Tootle! Bedad, if I don't invent some device for revenging myself on that supercilious woman. The very next time she presumes to address me disrespectfully at the dinner-table, sir, I'll rise in my might, sir,—see if I don't!—and I'll say to her, 'Mrs. Tootle, ma'am, you seem to forget that I'm a gentleman, and have a gentleman's ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... political association, he was intensely anti-Southern. His manners toward Southern men, so bitter are his feelings, are often cold and reserved; and nothing but his instinct and refinement as a gentleman, which he is in every respect, saved him from sometimes being supercilious; acute in intellect, cultured, trained to the highest expression of his powers, quick in his resentments and combative in temperament, we certainly expected no quarter from his hands. But beneath all this there ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... my father in his career. Oh, the vicissitudes of life—the changes—the sudden rise—the violent fall of men! Well may the player say, 'The spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.' They do, they do, what a spectacle for gods is man! The woman, sir this arrogant, this supercilious damsel, cradled in gold and satin, and bred in the glossy lap of luxury—died—rotted on a dunghill. Her father gained his nobleman—she, a paramour. She eloped with a marquis, who deserted her. She returned to her home, and found it shut against her. She who had feasted upon the choice ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... of too sound and healthy a nature, he had too much strength of character, to be made vain or supercilious by these attentions. He soon, however, accustomed himself to them as his right; and he was scarcely surprised when the king, after his promotion, sent him two splendid horses from his own stable, and a thousand thalers, [Footnote: ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... spent a whole month in yonder city. And what have I found? A city full of friends, enjoying every happiness in common. In vain have I tried to put a little of wickedness among them." Then the woman, with a supercilious air: "If I am to take thee for a specimen, I must have a very poor opinion of the whole tribe of demons. You seem mighty enough, but you haven't the strength of women. Stop here and keep an eye on the wash; but ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... clipped close and smooth in the style of the Empire; an exquisite, thin-featured man, high of nose and eyebrows, not large, but completely turned out as ample man and bright spirit. The slightest fragrance of scent was in his presence, and a shade of snuff on his upper lip appeared fine supercilious hairs. ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Conti in black velvet, by Velasquez, looked down, coldly supercilious, at the empty armchair under which the mouse was hiding. It could make no difference, great or small, to him, whether the Baroness Volterra ever sat there again to talk with an ambassador; he had sat where ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... later the sound of advancing steps lifted Frederick's face from hers. Muttering an oath, he threw Tess forcibly from him, for there in the path was Ebenezer Waldstricker, about whose sagging lips played a supercilious smile. ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... under their blue-coated, tight-waisted officers, trailed their Gardner in front, turning every now and then to spit up at the draggled banners which waved over the cragged ridge. Hussars and Lancers scouted in the scrub at each side, and within moved the clump of camels, with humorous eyes and supercilious lips, their comic faces a contrast to the blood-stained men who already lay huddled in the cacolets ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of a darker hue than the lord of the wallow, and of much slimmer build,—altogether less formidable in appearance. But he looked very fit and fearless as, after a moment's supercilious survey of his rival's ooze-dripping form, he came mincing forward to the attack. The two, probably, had never seen each other before; but in rutting season all caribou bulls ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... defeat that made his leadership ridiculous. His vanity was cut savagely; it was impossible for him to control himself to stay and witness the inevitable rout. He lounged down the wide aisle, his face masked in a supercilious smile, his glance contemptuously upon the jubilant barbs. They were thick about the doors, and as he passed among them he said, addressing no one in particular: "A revolt of the Helots." A barb raised a threatening fist; Pierson sneered, ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... another entry, dated December 31, 1816, relates to a different social sphere, and unconsciously reveals the great gulf which had already been fixed between the one and the other, together with the aristocrat's supercilious astonishment that "that class of society" is in some respects quite as desirable as ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... was a winning little fellow of eight years old. But Edward she disliked instinctively:—a tall, handsome boy of twelve, but completely spoiled by the supercilious curl of his lip and the ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... strong, accompanied with an imagination full of spirit, of great compass, and stored with refined ideas. He is a critick of the first rank; and, what is his peculiar ornament, he is delivered from the ostentation, malevolence, and supercilious temper, that so often blemish men of that character. His remarks result from the nature and reason of things, and are formed by a judgment free, and unbiassed by the authority of those who have ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... calumnies against our climate; for, though he agreed that we had fogs in London occasionally somewhat denser than in Paris, he had not fallen into the error,—which it is thought heresy to dispute,—that, at Brighton, Richmond, or Windsor, the blue sky is never seen. A very supercilious man who sat near him, annoyed at his praises of England, and his raptures at the Tunnel,—that great object of foreign admiration,—endeavoured to silence him by pronouncing that London had no monuments, and was not half as big as Paris; for, though he lived in Poitou, he had seen the capital. ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... who was "lowly-born," the carriage came to a standstill. The lackeys hastened to open the gate, and a lady, advanced in years, gross in form, with an irritable face well pitted with pock-marks, and wearing no other expression than supercilious pride and a haughty indifference, dismounted with some difficulty, leaning upon the shoulder of her page, and toiled up the steps which conducted to ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... supercilious scorn which impressed Harry, but which he did not wholly admire. Travers seemed to him to have the quiet deadliness of the cobra. There was something about him that repelled. The men released him. He straightened his long black coat, smoothed the full ruffles of his shirt and walked ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of our departure, in the twilight of the morning, I ascended the vehicle with three men and two women, my fellow travellers. It was easy to observe the affected elevation of mien with which every one entered, and the supercilious servility with which they paid their compliments to each other. When the first ceremony was despatched, we sat silent for a long time, all employed in collecting importance into our faces, and endeavouring to strike reverence and submission into ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... James's, that cannot be pardoned. Miss Fuziller, indeed, seemed to me formerly, when I used to meet her in company, to have an uncertainty of disposition that made her like two persons; now haughty, silent, and supercilious—and then gentle, composed, and interesting. She Is, however, very little liked, the worst being always what most spreads ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... a tea-room when there are only met in attendance," whispered Mr. Scobel, "they are so haughty. I would sooner ask Gladstone or Disraeli to pour me out a cup of tea than one of those supercilious creatures." ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... for certainly they who have them desire to receive honour through them. So to whom honour even is a small thing to him will all other things also be so; and this is why such men are thought to be supercilious. ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... her purse and ambled out of the room after a supercilious nod to Alora, who failed to return the salutation. Jason Jones stood in his place, still frowning, until Janet's high-heeled shoes had clattered down the two flights of stairs. Alora went to the window and looking down saw that a handsome automobile stood before the house, with a chauffeur and ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... some time before I found out what he meant by the term "superstitious," and that it was generally used by them for "supercilious." ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... when his Majesty was present, but seemed to lord it over all the rest, not by the force of argument, but an assumed superiority to which he had no right. This nettled lord Falkland, and made him exert his spirit to humble and oppose the supercilious churchman. This conduct of his lordship's, gave Mr. Hampden occasion to court him to his party, who was justly placed by the brilliance of his powers, at the head of the opposition; but after a longer study of the laws of the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... to work," said Dick, shortly, for somehow he did not take much of a fancy to the book-keeper, whose tone was rather supercilious. ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... sacrament six times every three months, if you give away your father's gold secretly to an idle fellow who'll eat your heart out when you've nothing else to give him? You'll find out some day what your Charles is worth, with his morocco boots and supercilious airs. He has got neither heart nor soul if he dared to carry off a young girl's treasure without ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... selfishness, their duplicity, their sin; and yet how confidently could He appeal to His bitterest opponents as to the simplicity and purity of His own character and life—"Which of you convinceth Me of sin?" The proud and supercilious Pharisees sought "to entangle Him in His talk;" they charged Him with blasphemy, with disregard for the Sabbath, with breaking the law, and they disputed His authority to act as He did; but their cunning could not ensnare, their threatening could not intimidate. ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... slender young woman in a brown traveling suit. She was rather pretty in a supercilious way, but she showed questionable taste in a display ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... Desire. Unwilling brides were not the most unhappy wives. Yes, even to that height had his hopes suddenly risen from the very dust in which they had lain quite dead a few hours ago. As the poor ex-captain and farmer she had held him afar off in supercilious scoorn; as the chief of the insurgents she had come to him in tears and entreaty, had laid her hand on his arm, had even given him her lips. With that scene in the guardhouse to look back on, what might he not ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... with a sort of domestic dictatorship, from his earliest years; the first notion he acquires in life is that he is born to command, and the first habit which he contracts is that of being obeyed without resistance. His education tends, then, to give him the character of a supercilious and a hasty man; irascible, violent, and ardent in his desires, impatient of obstacles, but easily discouraged if he cannot succeed upon his ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled, never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten. 'It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' Of all acts, is not, for a man, repentance the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin; that is death: the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact; is dead: it is 'pure' as dead dry sand is pure. David's life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... Sheridan. He was by nature a spendthrift: you saw it in the roll of his walk. Men who make money rarely saunter; men who save money rarely swagger. But saunter and swagger both united to stamp PRODIGAL on the Bond Street Lounger. And so familiar as he was with his own set, and so amusingly supercilious with the vulgar residue of mortals whose faces were strange to Bond Street! But he is gone. The world, though sadder for his loss, still strives to do its best without him; and our young men, nowadays, attend to model cottages, and incline to Tractarianism. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... floor, at the head of the grand staircase. As Gray descended the spacious marble steps, he saw that the hotel was indeed doing a big business, for already the lobby was thickly peopled and at the desk a group of new arrivals were plaintively arguing with a bored and supercilious room clerk. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... too was a Whig and a friend of the Protestant succession. He was an orator, a courtier, a wit, and a man of letters. He was at the head of ton in days when, in order to be at the head of ton, it was not sufficient to be dull and supercilious. It was evident that he submitted impatiently to the ascendency of Walpole. He murmured against the Excise Bill. His brothers voted against it in the House of Commons. The Minister acted with characteristic caution and characteristic energy; caution in the conduct ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... life that must be so delicious as that of a writer for newspapers, or a leading member of the opposition—to thunder forth accusations against men in power; to show up the worst side of everything that is produced; to pick holes in every coat; to be indignant, sarcastic, jocose, moral, or supercilious; to damn with faint praise, or crush with open calumny! What can be so easy as this when the critic has to be responsible for nothing? You condemn what I do, but put yourself in my position and do the reverse, and then see ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... to step into the office to inquire after my comrades. One of the whey-faced clerks said with the supercilious asperity ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... belonged to this same supercilious set, and had made many enemies by his sarcastic denunciations of things that were almost thought sacred in Marosfalva. It was therefore quite an understood thing that the moment a csardas was struck up, Eros Bela at once went ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... who is gone forth into the world, there is often on one side the conceit of youth and impatience of restraint, shown in uncalled for acts of self-assertion or in dogmatic speech; and on the other side a supercilious want of sympathy with the changed surroundings, the pursuits and the aspirations of the younger generation. It seems as if there were no bond left between the two. But a day of trial comes; parent or offspring is ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... pleased in her own way. He leaves the rest to Euripides. Real life is the grist to his mill. It is clear enough, however, that the times are against him. Every year more restrictions; Euripides with his priggishness; Socrates with his books and his moonshine, and his supercilious ways: never resenting his (Aristophanes') fun, nor seeming even to notice it[40], not condescending to take exception to any but the 'tragedians;' as if he, the author of the 'Birds,' was a mere comic poet!" Then follows ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... for fashionable ladies to be out shopping, so the rather supercilious young woman greeted Patty with a cautious air of reserve. It was so different from the effusive manner usually shown to Nan and Patty when they really went shopping, that Patty was secretly much amused. But as she was also secretly greatly embarrassed, ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... doors, one of which the old German threw open. They entered a large, plainly furnished, well-lit room, looking pretty much like a merchant's office, though the walls were mostly hung with maps and plans of foreign cities. Brand looked round with a supercilious air. All his pleasant and friendly manner had gone. He was evidently determined to make himself as desperately disagreeable as an Englishman can make himself when introduced to a foreigner whom he suspects. But even he would have had to confess ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... the universe) exists at all, and in whatever part of the world he is, he is all perception, all sight, all hearing, all soul, all reason, all self." The popular notions of the gods are then reviewed, in the most supercilious tone, and their absurdities pointed out. A polite bow is made to the worship of the Emperors and its motives, the rest is little but persiflage. Not even Providence, which was recognised by the Stoics, is acknowledged by Pliny. The conclusion ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... do, must be quickly done, must have immediate results. Our success in solving the political and social problems has spoiled us. When we hear of a man who has been prosperous for years, whom no misfortune has sobered and softened, we expect him to be narrow and supercilious; and in the same way, a prosperous people are exposed to the danger of becoming self-complacent and superficial. We exaggerate the importance of our own achievements and think that which we have accomplished is the best; whereas the wise hold what they ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... of all the hues of the rainbow. And all through the Union their glossy black faces and gleaming white teeth shed a kind of dusky radiance over the traveller's path. Who but can recall with gratitude the expansive geniality and reassuring smile of the white-coated negro waiter, as compared with the supercilious indifference, if not positive rudeness, of his pale colleague? And what will ever efface the mental kodak of George (not Sambo any more) shuffling rapidly into the dining-room, with his huge flat palm inverted high over his head and bearing a colossal ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Cornificius obtained from these ample support and made their way in safety to Agrippa. Caesar received them back with praises and gifts, although he had treated them after the victory of Agrippa in a very supercilious manner, thinking the latter had finished the war. Cornificius, indeed, prided himself so much upon his preservation of the soldiers, that in Rome, whenever he went out of his house to dine, he always returned home on the ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... ladyship thought she must in justice to her own understanding shew for her husband's, and the supercilious coldness with which she treated Miss Melvyn, made that young lady very glad that she was so seldom sent for to her father's house. But she wished to learn such accomplishments as whilst she lived in the country were out of her power, and therefore intimated to Lady Melvyn ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... said Captain Williams, a swaggering, supercilious man, for whom Sydney had no affection, and who was not one of Sydney's admirers. "To hear him talk one would imagine he was a high authority on every subject under the sun, but I suspect he has very little to go upon. Has he ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... The supercilious tone and grand manner nettled Fanny, and it wasn't "brooch day;" she stood up to her lofty cousin like a little game-cock. "I know this," said she, with heightened cheek, and flashing eyes and a voice of steel, "you will never get Mr. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... debts, could vote for governor and other State officials. The laws were so arranged as effectually to disfranchise those who had no property. In his "Reminiscenses" Dr. John W. Francis tells of the prevalence for years in New York of a supercilious class which habitually sneered at the demand for political equality of the leather-breeched mechanic with his few ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... preliminary to efficient action of any kind, and indeed the basis of all fruitful philosophy. But in criticism this instinct can only be satisfied intelligently and soundly by a consideration of everything appealing to consideration, and not at all by heated and wilful, or superior and supercilious, exclusions. Catholicity of appreciation is the secret of critical felicity. To follow the line of least resistance, not to take into account those elements of a problem, those characteristics of a subject, to which, superficially and at first thought, one is insensitive, is to ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... or the great intellects and the less, was similar to the relative positions of teacher and pupil. I recognized in this social condition the great media of their marvelous approach to perfection. This aristocracy was never arrogant, never supercilious, never aggressive. It was what the philosophers of our world are: tolerant, ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... necessity of coining new words or adapting old ones to express new things and new relations. It is many years since we read his "Remarks" (if that was the title) on Pickering's "Vocabulary," and in answer to the rather supercilious criticisms on himself in the "Anthology"; but the impression left on our mind by that pamphlet is one of great respect for the good sense, acuteness, and courage of its author. And of his Dictionary it may safely be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... sneers, the world was beginning to court him. A gloomy scowl sat on his stern lips as he mounted the steps of the mansion from which his meek and suffering mother had borne bundles of plain work, or delicate masses of embroidery, for the mother and daughter who passed her in the street with a supercilious stare. Beau-monde suddenly awoke to the recollection that, "after all, Mrs. Aubrey belonged to one of the wealthiest and first families in the state." At first Russell had proudly repelled all overtures, but gradually ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Bestrewed with flowers the precipice's brink; Serving their passions, naught to me was sacred; Measure and weight I changed as they inclined. As much as Joad's unpliant humour pained The softness of their supercilious ear, So much I pleased them with my dexterous art; Concealing from their eyes the bitter truth; Lending convenient colour to their rage; And, lavish, above all, of wretches' blood. At length, to Baal, whom she had introduced, By Athaliah was a temple reared. Jerusalem did weep to see herself Profaned: ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley
... limitations when brought into contact with more traveled and cosmopolitan men, endures less readily than any other to be reminded of his inferiority. Who shall estimate the effect upon the proud and self-contained Washington of intercourse with supercilious British officers during the Braddock expedition? In how many unrecorded instances did a similar experience produce a similar effect? No bitterness endures like that of the provincial despised because of his provincialism. He has no ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... the same supercilious deportment. The bell was immediately heard, and the stranger, making the best of his way into the hall, found the doors wide open, and an indiscriminate assemblage of supplicants, displaying to the best advantage a ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... built young man of about twenty-five, with black hair and eyes, a small, carefully trained moustache, and a dark olive skin. His physiognomy was not displeasing, but his expression had a harsh and supercilious tinge. In attire he erred towards the ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... Mallowe repeated, bowing with supercilious urbanity. "Do I understand that this is the private detective of whom I ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... necessary for her to handle any of your mathematical, astronomical, diabolical instruments; but, Sir Anthony, I would send her, at nine years old, to a boarding-school, in order to learn a little ingenuity and artifice. Then, sir, she should have a supercilious knowledge in accounts; and, as she grew up, I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries; above all, she would be taught orthodoxy. This, Sir Anthony, is what I would have a woman know; and I don't think ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... must not be supercilious," his host replied, with an amiable smile; "you will see things better through a glass of grog; and the state of the weather points to something dark. You have had a long journey, and the scenery is new. Rum shall it be, my friend? Your ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... when the merits of a book were canvassed. One person declared it to be insufferably dull, when another, who had published some novel, observed, with rather a supercilious air, "You know not how difficult it is to ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... a quiet way he was observant, and not without humour, which gave a pleasant flavour to his conversation. Moreover he was good-tempered, even to those who bored him, slow to take offence, easily conciliated, never supercilious, generous. ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... (from wives to water rights), had occasion for the services of a safe man, found it both reposeful and profitable to confide in Soames. That slight superciliousness of his, combined with an air of mousing amongst precedents, was in his favour too—a man would not be supercilious unless he knew! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and lady-like women I ever saw. I hear she is a refugee, but she does not look like the other refugees who have come to our camp. Her accent is slightly Southern, but her manner is Northern. She is self-respecting without being supercilious; quiet, without being dull. Her voice is low and sweet, yet at times there are tones of such passionate tenderness in it that you would think some great sorrow has darkened and overshadowed her life. Without being the least gloomy, her face at times ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... was to know that such assembling in a multitude on their part, and such contribution of their several dexterities towards a civilising end, did not deteriorate them as it was the fashion of the supercilious Mayflies of humanity to pretend, but engendered among them a self-respect, and yet a modest desire to be much wiser than they were (the first evinced in their well-balanced bearing and manner of speech when he stopped to ask a question; the second, in the announcements of their popular studies ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... good time." Iff put his back against the wall and lounged negligently, surveying the circle of unfriendly faces with his odd, supercilious eyes, half veiled by their hairless lids. "Since you've done me the honour to impute to me guilty knowledge of this—ah—crime, I don't mind admitting that I was a passenger on the Autocratic when Mrs. Burden Hamman lost her jewels; and it wasn't a coincidence, either. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... supercilious or sarcastic, Nina, but help me with your own good sense and wise advice. She has not come over in the best of humours. She has, or fancies she has, some difference to settle with papa. They seldom meet without a quarrel, and I fear this occasion is to be no ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... fury passed through Susan. She felt like striking the woman full in her vain, supercilious, patronizing face—striking her and saying: "You smug liar! What if you had to wear such clothes on that fat, overfed body of yours! You'd realize then how filthy ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips |
