"Conceit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have a rather poetical conceit in accounting for the movements of the celestial bodies. Their theory is that the sun rules the heavens. He is a big chief; the moon is his squaw, and the stars are his children. The sun devours his children whenever he is able to catch them. They are constantly afraid of him as he is passing through ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... it isn't. After all, every girl wants to get married, and without conceit my family, circumstances and, in the privacy of the pages of this journal I may add, my personal appearances, are such as would appeal to most ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... time earlier would have turned his brother's defeat into victory, drew back his thirteen thousand men in good order to guard Hungary. As Napoleon himself had been in a dangerous condition of over-confidence before Aspern, so now his soldiery were clearly in the same plight. Self-conceit had made them unreliable. Bernadotte's corps had displayed something very much like cowardice and mutiny at the last. The army still fought in the main like the perfect machine it was, but the individual men had lost their stern virtue. They believed that victory, plunder, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... you right," growled Hardock. "Take some of the gashly conceit out of you, my lad. Now, then, I'm ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... are affectation and conceit. His verses drip with fine love-honey; but it has been so clarified in meta-physics that much of its flavour and sweetness has escaped. Very often, too, the conceit embodied is preposterously poor. You have as it were a casket of finest gold elaborately ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... line, and her lashes made a thick, softening shadow. She saw they were becoming. She cupped her round chin in her hands and studied herself with a desire to be sure of the truth without prejudice or self conceit. The whole effect of her was glowing, and she felt the glow as others did. She put up a finger to touch the velvet petal texture of her skin, and she saw how prettily pointed and slim her hand was. Yes, ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... respectable girl," said the woman, in a maudlin voice. "What conceit—you have! You might have been so yesterday, but to-day—try it—tell the people that you spent a few hours in the Cannon Queen's house in Belleville and are still a respectable girl. Ha! ha! They will ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... been nothing looking toward the novel-writer. But now we learn that from the age of fifteen to twenty-six Anthony kept a journal, which, he says, "convicted me of folly, ignorance, indiscretion, idleness, and conceit, but habituated me to the rapid use of pen and ink, and taught me how to express myself with facility." In addition to this, and more to the purpose, he had formed an odd habit. Living, as he was forced to do, so much to himself, if not by himself, ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... that city life must differ greatly from that in the country, even more than he had conceded with all his a priori reasonings; and he decided to draw no hasty inferences, but to proceed in the Baconian method by calling at Number Three. He was rather out of conceit with his strategy of thirst, which had so fallen below the actual modes of effecting an entrance, and now resolved to march boldly up with the irresistible engine of straight-forward inquiry,—as straight-forward, at least, as the circumstances would permit. He ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... the satisfaction of a turkey-cock strutting round his yard, that no trace of the lowest level of what could be called popularity remained in England to the writers of France, and he felt himself "entitled to treat as an imbecile conceit the pretence" that a French school of thought survived in Great Britain. Such was the Podsnappery of the hour in its vigilance against ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... say it as a matter of conceit. I said it as a matter of regret. I have been wildly, madly adored. I am sorry I have. It has been an immense nuisance. I should like to be allowed a little time to ...
— Lady Windermere's Fan • Oscar Wilde
... now that she had pretended to know a great deal more than she really did. Pretension is very apt to get laughed at. She had always scorned Dotty's self-conceit; but hadn't she shown quite as much herself? Making her auntie suppose she understood cooking, and putting Mrs. Fixfax to all this trouble for nothing? How horrified auntie would be, and the housekeeper too, if they should ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... Mississippi scheme of John Law, which so dazzled and captivated the French people, inspired them with an idea that they could carry on the same game in England. The anticipated failure of his plans did not divert them from their intention. Wise in their own conceit, they imagined they could avoid his faults, carry on their schemes forever, and stretch the cord of credit to its extremest tension without causing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... upright, benevolent tempers have too many opportunities of remarking, with horror, to what desperate lengths this disposition is sometimes carried, and how often the great interests of society are sacrificed to the vanity, to the conceit, and to the obstinacy of individuals, who have credit enough to make their passions and their caprices interesting to mankind. Perhaps the question now before the public may, in its consequences, afford melancholy proofs of the effects of this despicable frailty, or rather detestable ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... he cried in his great voice, "now shall you sing the rest. You have put me out of conceit with my own singing. Why are you not at the feast, where I would be if I were not ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... but wit is in me and I have no small conceit of myself. Having heard many speeches from my father and elder men I am not ill-informed. Now that I have caught you I will administer to you the rebuke you richly deserve. You sprinkle altars from the same lustral-bowl, like relatives, at Olympia, Pylae, Delphi and many other places. Though ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... Perhaps he would say, "I am satisfied of the fact from my own disposition." He might as well give a child's reason at once, and say, "CAUSE!" Such persons have seldom heard a lecture, or read a syllable, and yet are always prating with a great show of wisdom, but rather, in fact, of blind conceit. Their silence would be of far more service to the cause of virtue than their opinions. In many cases, it will be found that such persons are not only ignorant, ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... ability to heal mentally. Conceit cannot avert the effects of deceit. Taking advantage of the present ignorance in relation to Christian Science Mind-healing, many are flooding our land with conflicting theories and practice. We should not spread abroad patchwork ideas that in some vital ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... excuse the womenfolk could find to hang upon the peg of jealousy which had been knocked into the wall of feminine conceit and bad intent, by the hammer of Leonie's beauty, and irritating indifference to both men and women, ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... be any sin, The parson himself had guilty been, She look'd that day so purely: And did the youth so oft the feat At night, as some did in conceit, It would have spoil'd ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... hope—who are sunk below that state; who have lost their sense of right and wrong; who only care to fulfil the lusts of the flesh in pleasure, ease, and vanity. There are those in whom the voice of conscience is lead for a while, silenced by self-conceit; who say in their prosperity, like the foolish Laodiceans, 'I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing,' and know not that in fact and reality, and in the sight of God, they are 'wretched, and miserable, and ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... towers and chimneys, houses, barracks, and palaces stretched at their feet. A thick, gray, cloud of vapor and smoke hovered over it, and veiled the horizon in dust and fog. "Farewell, Berlin, you city of arrogance and conceit!" cried the duke, joyfully. "I shake your dust from my feet, and strew the sand of your fields over every souvenir of you in memory," and suiting the action to his words, he tossed a handful of it ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... of the earth was represented. In this I did acknowledge Him. But all the glory of the city neither abides nor can make its owner any the happier. It cannot be laid hold upon. It is not solid; it is but in conceit. Oh learn me to be crucified to all this and the like, and make me wise unto salvation! Nov. 9—Dined at Billingsgate; saw the prison of King's Bench at Southwark, and the workers of glass, in all which ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... mankind very capable of anything generous; but the stateliness of the patricians in Edinburgh, and the servility of my plebeian brethren (who perhaps formerly eyed me askance) since I returned home, have nearly put me out of conceit altogether with my species.' ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... a daughter of the soil. Their servants understand Spanish, and clandestinely watch the conversation and the actions, and become acquainted with all the secrets, of their indiscreet masters, to whom the Filipinos remain an enigma which their conceit ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... I've had.... By God, Hinde, this serves me right. Eleanor always said I was selfish, and I am. I'm terribly self-satisfied and thick-skinned. I had no qualification for this work ... nothing but my conceit ... and I've been ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... after than before that transition. Isaac at all events, was consistent and unchanged throughout his life in the political principles he adopted among the apprentices and journeymen of New York over half a century ago. There was little room for vulgar self-conceit in a nature so frank and sincere as his. What he had to learn, as well as what he had to teach, always dwarfed merely personal considerations to their narrowest dimensions in his mind. Hence his impulsive ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... complaisance of others than to retain an unfaltering faith in it for ourselves. The most dogged reformer distrusts himself every little while, and says inwardly, like Luther, "Art thou alone wise?" So he is compelled to exaggerate, in the effort to hold his own. The community is bored by the conceit and egotism of the innovators; so it is by that of poets and artists, orators and statesmen; but if we knew how heavily ballasted all these poor fellows need to be, to keep an even keel amid so many conflicting tempests ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... The conceit of seeing a ghost amused Jan beyond everything. He sat down on a high press that was in the kitchen, and grinned at the boy. "What would the ghost do to ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... an amiable conceit of human nature, looking backward, to profess to see what it blindly ignored, looking forward; and go to any penitentiary in America, ask the convicts, and you will find that, according to the stories, there are no guilty men behind the bars; ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... And so—if you laugh, you kill me, Raphael—and so Miriam, the daughter of Jonathan—Miriam, of the house of David—Miriam, the descendant of Ruth and Rachab, of Rachel and Sara, became a Christian nun, and shut herself up to see visions, and dream dreams, and fattened her own mad self-conceit upon the impious fancy that she was the spouse of the Nazarene, Joshua Bar-Joseph, whom she called Jehovah Ishi—Silence! If you stop me a moment, it may be too late. I hear them calling me already; and I made them promise not to take me before I had ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... Atrociously unfair. He's not my sort of man, perhaps, but it will hurt him cruelly according to the peculiar laws of his being. He seems to me a crawling sort of lover with an immense self-conceit at the ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... unusually great means—their very wealth forbids faithful friendships. For not only is Fortune blind herself; but she generally makes those blind also who enjoy her favours. They are carried, so to speak, beyond themselves with self-conceit and self-will; nor can anything be more perfectly intolerable than a successful fool. You may often see it. Men who before had pleasant manners enough undergo a complete change on attaining power of office. They despise their old friends: devote ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... shifted on to him a Natural Curiosity, from England, in the Accountant line. He was perfectly correct. Mr. Silas Riley, Accountant, was a MOST curious animal—a long, gawky, rawboned Yorkshireman, full of the savage self-conceit that blossoms only in the best county in England. Arrogance was a mild word for the mental attitude of Mr. S. Riley. He had worked himself up, after seven years, to a Cashier's position in a Huddersfield Bank; and all his experience lay among the factories of the North. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... of flesh the pains of constitutional disease, and triumphing over physical confinement and affliction. His carriage was erect—there was a soldierly affectation, of which, indeed, the hero of Buena Vista gave evidence through his life, having the singular conceit that his genius was military and fitter for arms than for the council. He had a precise manner, and an austerity that was at first forbidding; but his voice was always clear and firm. Although not a scholar in the pedantic sense of the term, and making no pretensions ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... "little accurate attention to the appearances of nature!" Never did the weakest mind ever fall into grosser contradictions than does here one of the strongest, in vainly labouring to bolster up a silly assertion, which he has desperately ventured on from a most mistaken conceit that it was necessary to account for the kind of reception which his own poetry had met with from the present age. The truth is, that had Mr Wordsworth known, when he indited these luckless and helpless sentences, that his own poetry was, in the best sense of the word, a ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... will-of-the-wisp; but a will-of-the-wisp has been known to lead a man by accident to a better path than that which he had lost.' There is no use, therefore, in wasting our pity upon those who may happen to suffer by the first of the two delusions which I noticed, viz., the conceit that either Australia or California offers a lottery without blanks. Blanks too probably they will draw; but what matters it, when this disappointment cannot reach them until they find themselves amidst a wilderness of supplementary hopes? One prize has been lost, but twenty others have been laid ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... that I must be possessed by the very evils I hated, and that was the reason I was so violent about them. I had always supposed that I hated other people's cruelty because I was merciful, and their meanness because I was magnanimous, and their intolerance because I was generous, and their conceit because I was modest, and their selfishness because I was disinterested; but after listening to Brother Peck a while I came to the conclusion that I hated these things in others because I was cruel myself, ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... visitor—the enamoured goddess—is, of all female figures which I have ever seen upon canvass, one of the most affected, meagre, and uninteresting. Diana has been exchanged for an opera dancer. The waist is pinched in, the attitude is full of conceit, and there is a dark shadow about the neck, as if she had been trying some previous experiment with a rope! Endymion could never open his eyes to gaze upon a figure so utterly unworthy of the representation of an enamoured deity.[190] The ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... wealth of his family had, at an early age, inspired him with courage and self-conceit, so that in his blind, frivolous presumption, the only person, as he thought, who exceeded his own fascination was possibly the King, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... The Nazarene, or Christianity, Judaic, Pagan, and Mahometan (1718); and Pantheisticon (1720). The outcry raised by the orthodox party against the "poor gentleman" who had "to beg for half- crowns," and "ran into debt for his wigs, clothes, and lodging," together with his own vanity and conceit, changed him from being a somewhat free- thinking Christian into an infidel and atheist or Pantheist. He died in extreme poverty at ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... was going to marry, since it was exceedingly probable that the acquaintance would end in a transfer of her affections. He was altogether too good-looking, and, what is more, he had none of that consciousness and conceit about him which usually afflicts handsome men, and makes them deservedly ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... brand Till it is burnt out; Fire is kindled from fire; A man gets knowledge By talk with a man, But becomes wilful by self-conceit. Ha'vama'l. ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... the poems of minnesingers and troubadours have ceased to appeal to us, and remain merely for their charm of verse and of graceful conceit; the poetry written by the Italians of the thirteenth century for women, whose love was but an imaginative fervour, remains concentrated in the "Vita Nuova;" and will remain for all time the sovereign purifier to ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... ten years. The volumes remained in my possession unregarded—never looked at—till 1870, when I examined them, and, with many blushes, destroyed them. They convicted me of folly, ignorance, indiscretion, idleness, extravagance, and conceit. But they had habituated me to the rapid use of pen and ink, and taught me how to express myself ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... extinction in any case. If a man, thinking that his family is "tainted," displays so much foresighted patriotism, humility, and lifelong self-denial as to have no children, the presumption is that the loss to humanity by the discontinuance of such a type is greater than the gain. "Conceit in smallest bodies strongest works," and it does not follow that a sense of one's own excellence justifies one's utmost fecundity or the reverse. Mr. Vrooman, who, with Mrs. Vrooman, founded Ruskin Hall at Oxford, writes to much the same effect. He argues that people intelligent ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... if I were you I would put the matter shortly and simply, for it is the business of one describing a pilgrimage or any other matter not to puff himself up with vain conceit, nor to be always picking about for picturesque situations, but to set down plainly and shortly what he has seen and heard, describing the ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... the late Braham—these were the songs in which the roaring concertina and strident tenor of Gustus Junior exulted together. "Tell me when you're tired, ladies and gentlemen," said the minstrel solicitor. "There's no conceit about me. Will you have a little sentiment by way of variety? Shall I wind up with 'The Mistletoe Bough' and ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... by this post, the Title (with some remarks on a separate page), and the first three chapters. If you have patience to read all Chapter I., I honestly think you will have a fair notion of the interest of the whole book. It may be conceit, but I believe the subject will interest the public, and I am sure that the views are original. If you think otherwise, I must repeat my request that you will freely reject my work; and though I shall be a little disappointed, I shall be in ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... with far-sighted wisdom. Taine, the prophet, has more than ever something to tell us. He warned his countrymen against themselves, their humanity, and hence against their fears, anxieties, greed, ambitions, conceit and excessive imagination. His remarks and judgments exhort us to be responsible, modest and kind and to select wise and modest leaders. He warns us against young hungry men's natural desire to mass ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... argument is, that learning is apt to lead to conceit and pride, or to a presumed superiority of intellect, in consequence of which men raise themselves in their own estimation, and look down upon others as creatures of an inferior order of race. To this I may answer, that as prodigies are ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... he one fair morning, and all day His heart beat awfully against his side; And to his heart he inwardly did pray For power to speak; but still the ruddy tide Stifled his voice, and puls'd resolve away— Fever'd his high conceit of such a bride, Yet brought him to the meekness of a child: Alas! when passion is both ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... thy weak brain. But an hour agone enfranchised from Grub Street, thou must sing 'I'd be a butterfly.' Thou art vanity absolute, conceit beyond measure, and presumption out of all whooping. Yea, and but as a fool Pygmalion, not content with loving thine own handiwork, thou must needs fall in love with the goddess that breathed life into its stiff limbs; must yearn, not for Galatea, ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... my uncle was a bachelor, he did not choose to dine at a 'traiteur' (the name 'restaurateur' was not then introduced). He told my mother that Napoleon was very morose. 'I fear,' added he, 'that that young man has more self-conceit than is suitable to his condition. When he dined with me he began to declaim violently against the luxury of the young men of the military school. After a little he turned the conversation on Mania, and the present education of the young Maniotes, drawing a comparison between it and the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... they made the place blossom again; they conquered other tribes, and Manitou declared them his chosen ones, from whom alone he would accept sacrifice. But their chief became so ambitious that he wanted to supplant the Manitou in the worship of the people, and finally, in a lunacy of self-conceit, he challenged the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... "For fiddlesticks! For conceit and vanity and vainglory. Go away! My head is fit to split. Natalina, why haven't you given me my smelling salts? And why ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... should be their publisher, I should have to shut up shop; I should pass my time very agreeably no doubt, but the conversations would cost too much. I am not rich enough yet to listen to all the monologues of self-conceit. Nobody does, except in classical tragedies ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... of the road being flashed abroad as it fell. Then the two locomotives, one from the west and the other from the east, drew up to each other on the single line, coming into gentle collision, that they in their way, in the pleasing conceit of their drivers, might symbolise the fraternisation that went on. It does not spoil the story of the ceremony to state that the laurel tie, with its inscriptions and its magnificent mountings, was only formally ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... cake of delicious-looking soap on its sliding rack across the bath. He looked as a man in a fairy-story might look. It was as if an enchanted palace, with the princess just round the corner, had been offered him. Smiling at the conceit, he turned to the man. "I didn't notice the telephone," he said; "I suppose ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... conceit of schoolboys made them feel that we were of a nature either far above or far beneath their own; hence some simply hated our aristocratic reserve, others merely scorned our ineptitude. These feelings were equally shared by us without our knowing it; perhaps ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... to the sound of the big gun, and by Baden-Powell's refusal to take a serious view of the situation in the frequent communications that passed between them. It may be said that Cronje was "chaffed" away from Mafeking; the gibes put him out of conceit with himself, and instead of stimulating him into activity only made him more dull-spirited than he was by nature. He had none of the instinctive military genius which showed itself so notably in most of his colleagues, who, having turned their ploughshares into swords at a moment's ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... despair of soon putting him and la Peyrade at loggerheads. In the management of a newspaper there are lots of inevitable disagreements, and by always taking the side of the fool against the clever man, I can increase the conceit of one and wound the conceit of the other until life together becomes impossible. Besides, you spoke just now of political danger; now the manager of a newspaper, as you ought to know, when he has the intellect to be something ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... of his fresh round face, in his soft brown eyes, lovely pouting lips, and little white hands. Everything about him was suggestive of the happy light-heartedness of perfect health and youth—the carelessness, conceit, self-indulgence, and charm of youth. He used his eyes, and smiled and leaned his head as boys do who know that people look at them admiringly. He wore a loose white coat, made like a blouse, a blue kerchief wrapped his slender throat, and a battered ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... Rosalind Merton, sidling up to Maggie and casting some disdainful glances at poor Priscilla, "the conceit of some people! Of all forms of conceit, preserve me from ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... masterpieces of humor. In spontaneity, freshness, breadth of conception, and joyous vigor, it belongs to the spring-time of literature. It has entered into the popular mind as no other American book ever has, and it may be said to have created a social realm which, with all its whimsical conceit, has almost historical solidity. The Knickerbocker pantheon is almost as real as that of Olympus. The introductory chapters are of that elephantine facetiousness which pleased our great-grandfathers, but which is exceedingly tedious to modern taste; and the humor of the book occasionally has ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... to do—buckle down to study next fall. And if I show any conceit in the future, well, I want you and Ben Basswood, and Roger and Phil, and all the others, to knock it right out of me," went on the money-lender's son, earnestly. "My eyes are open and I'm going ahead, and I ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... Mr. Hartrick, "I don't at all like to call you over the coals; but I think it is a pity to speak against Molly so much as you do in her sister's presence. Linda is getting eaten up with conceit; she will be an intolerable woman by and by, so self-opinionated, and so pleased with herself. After all, poor Molly may have the best of it in the future; she is a fine ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... taken completely off his guard by her apparent acquiescence, and touched by her desire to accompany him, which he attributed, with the conceit of his kind, to ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... Say, but you are looking fine. You always were a handsome youngster but you're—you're improving, young man. I'm blessed if you don't look like a work of art done in bronze." He laughed with the pleasure of his own conceit and the other ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... do not find that a base liberalism believed in liberty. Neither did it believe in freedom of thought. It is the blossom of egotism; it has nothing to which it bows; it beholds no majesty to which it can look up. It is sublime self-conceit, and it has no hesitancy in telling the whole human race that at its grandest moments it has been wrong. This egotism dared to become active in Rome, and it asked the Christians, in the person of the Emperor, to worship him, and to strew incense about him. "I will ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... which Spout, the eloquent, dissected the philosophy of mirth in the same style and with the same effect that the boy in the story dissected his grandmamma's bellows to see how the wind was raised. I agree with Spout that wit and humor are glorious; that satire, pricking the balloons of conceit, vain glory, and hypocrisy, is invaluable; that a good laugh can come only from a warm heart; that the man in motley is often wiser than the judge in ermine or the priest in lawn. These qualities are goodly in literature. We all love the kindly humorist from ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... is right, Pothinus: you will come to the shore with much conceit washed out of you. (The ladies laugh. Cleopatra rises impatiently.) Begone, all of you. I will speak with Pothinus alone. Drive them out, Ftatateeta. (They run out laughing. Ftatateeta shuts the door on them.) What are YOU ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... conceit to keep his balaclava rolled up, so that his face was bare, on such occasions, being somewhat proud of the fact that he had not, as yet, been frost-bitten. Imagine our joy when he entered the hut one cold windy evening with two white ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... received by an old servant, Narkiz Semyonov, who had had notice of my coming. This old servant was not in the least like 'Savelitch' or 'Caleb'; my friend used to call him in joke 'Marquis.' There was something of conceit, even of affectation, about him; he looked down on us young men with a certain dignity, but cherished no particularly respectful sentiments for other landowners either; of his old master he spoke slightingly, while his own class he ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... critic is well enough, if you like to be overhauled and put out of conceit with yourself,—it may do you good; but I wouldn't go to 'the governor' with my verses, if I were you. For either he will think what you have written is something wonderful, almost as good as he could have written himself,—in fact, he always did believe in hereditary genius,—or he will pooh-pooh ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... disposal, and fix the morality of society. Their genuine stupidity lies hid beneath their specialism. They know their business, but are ignorant of everything which is outside it. So that to preserve their self-conceit they question everything, are crudely and crookedly critical. They appear to be sceptics and are in reality simpletons; they swamp their wits in interminable arguments. Almost all conveniently adopt social, literary, or political prejudices, to do away with the need of having opinions, just ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... was pleased" not only with the stillness of evening, but also with the song of the bird whose "amorous descant" alone interrupts it. Yet even that seemed to Warton, the best of Milton's early critics, a conceit unworthy of the poet. So difficult it is for "rational" criticism to see the distinction between an intellectual extravagance and a ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... are disgusted by the assertion that Kings, Princes, Lords, are Snobs, to say 'You are confessedly a Snob yourself. In professing to depict Snobs, it is only your own ugly mug which you are copying with a Narcissus-like conceit and fatuity.' But I shall pardon this explosion of ill-temper on the part of my constant reader, reflecting upon the misfortune of his birth and country. It is impossible for ANY Briton, perhaps, not to ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gin much fo'h yer old pack a' bones if mas'r what gwine to buy ye know'd ye like I. Ye' h'ant da property what bring long price wid Buckra," replies Dandy, who views Aunt Rachel rather suspiciously, seems inclined to relieve her conceit, and has taken very good care that his own dimensions are trimmed up to the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... to restore Felix's opinion of it, and an idea occurring to Philip, he said a capital plan would be to add an outrigger, and so balance it perfectly. But though usually quick to adopt ideas when they were good, in this case Felix was too much out of conceit with himself. He would listen to nothing. Still, he could not banish it from his mind, though now ashamed to return to it after so obstinately refusing all suggestions. He wandered aimlessly about in the woods, till one day he found ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... of the celestial bodies. The passage in the thirteenth essay is the more notable in itself, being likewise a protest against human self-sufficiency, though the bearing of the illustration is directly reversed. Here he derides man's conceit: "We entertain and carry all with us: whence it followeth that we deem our death to be some great matter, and which passeth not so easily, nor without a solemn consultation of the stars." Then follow references to Caesar's ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... spear, had been known to their ancestors; and that they, in their superstitious fancies, had imagined that by wearing his totem, it would save them from being wounded with the same kind of weapon used in killing him. Let us not laugh at such a singular conceit among uncivilized tribes, for it still prevails in Europe. On many of the French and German soldiers, killed during the last German war, were found talismans composed of strips of paper, parchment or cloth, on which were written ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... the tears that people shed for themselves are apt to be sincere; but I doubt whether we are to be saved by any amount of vicarious salt water, and, though the philosophers should weep us into another Noah's flood, yet commonly men have lumber enough of self-conceit to build a raft of, and can subsist a good while on that beautiful charity for their own weaknesses in which the nerves of conscience are embedded and cushioned, as in similar physical straits they can upon ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... those?" he inquired, handing the glasses, and blandly ignoring Miss Deane's petulance. Her brain was busy with other things while she twisted the binoculars to suit her vision. Rainbow Island—Iris—it was a nice conceit. But "menial" struck a discordant note. This man was no menial in appearance or speech. Why was ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... only, with ginger and Guinea pepper. I was likewise informed, that of Tolu lozenges, peppermint lozenges and ginger pearls, and several other sorts of lozenges, two kinds were kept; that the reduced articles, as they were called, were manufactured for those very clever persons in their own conceit, who are fond of haggling, and insist on buying better bargains than other people, shutting their eyes to the defects of an article, so that they can enjoy the delight of getting it cheap; and, secondly for those persons, ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... Captain Kirby is certainly unanimous. The shooting, with its necessary disorder, has got us out of our habits of snap, and today we have been put through a course of sprouts that has taken away any conceit that we might have had. This morning he gave us ten rounds of blank cartridges and took us out into our usual ground, the Peru road and the fields adjoining. First, in anticipation of tomorrow, by platoons we were given rapid-fire practice, sitting and firing ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... and this is an added reason why they hesitate to take chances. These propositions being true, they establish another one, viz: that most of the attempted frauds at the present time in this connection, are by the ignorant and those whose conceit does not permit them to believe that any one knows ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... will say: "At any rate, we might moderate somewhat the splendour of our ideal and the audacity of our self-conceit, so that there should be a less grotesque disparity between the aim and the achievement. Surely such moderation would be more in accord with common sense! Surely it would lessen the spiritual fatigue and ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... hour. Offers of pipes, clasp-knives, tobacco, etc., rained upon him from the very men who had cuffed and kicked him like a dog but a few days before; and even his refusal of these gifts, which would formerly have been set down to conceit and "uppishness," was now taken in perfectly good part. In fact, that one deed of promptitude and courage had raised him from the last to one of the first among the whole crew. So true is it that ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... came to the contemplation of things natural, they imagined that in every particular thing they even beheld as it were with their eyes, how the elements of number gave essence and being to the works of nature: a thing in reason impossible; which notwithstanding, through their mis-fashioned pre-conceit, appeared unto them no less certain, than if nature had written it in the very foreheads of all the ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... others the presence of a spirit which connected humanity with its Maker, and by unfolding the greatness of the spiritual capacities of men, he hoped to elevate them above the degradation of sensuality and sin. He was not a teacher of spiritual pride, conceit and self-worship, but of those vital principles of love and reverence which elevate man only by directing his aspirations ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... prefer that Robert's mission should fail through a delivery of his letters to the wrong man? Bigot certainly was not one with whom the English could deal easily, since so far as Robert could learn he was wrapped in the folds of a huge conceit. ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... Conceit and Affectation on one hand, and Peevishness and Perverseness of Temper on the other, will lay the best Genius under great Disadvantages, and raise such Dislike and Opposition, as will bear it down in ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... beyond your powers (I the same) as in the case of the boat. I think you over estimate yourself, which I never did. You thought you ought to have had an "A" in English, and were not prepared for your low mark in French and German. Do a little self-examination and nip the bud of conceit; get a fair estimate and make it too low rather than too high. I am sure I know my own weak points, see if you can't find yours. That saying of the ancients, "know thyself," is to be pondered daily. I always keep my expectations down, so that I am not disappointed ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... twofold worse the children of hell than they were before, and than their teachers were, Matth. xxiii. 15; that is, their doctrine begat such blindness, such vain confidence, and groundless boldness in their disciples, as to involve them in that conceit of conversion that was false, and ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... intended to reprove a vain, fantastical, conceited and preposterous Humour, which about that time prevailed very much in France. It had the desir'd good Effect, and conduced a great deal towards rooting out a Taste so unreasonable and ridiculous.—-As Pride, Conceit, Vanity, and Affectation, are Foibles so often found amongst the Fair Sex at present, I have attempted this Translation, in hopes of doing service to my pretty Country-Women.—And, certainly, it must have a double efficacy, under the Patronage of one ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... any more than it deceives us. His vanity is more deplorable; and the only palliation it admits is the fact that it is a defect which rarely goes with a bad heart. Had Cicero been less vain, he might have been more ambitious; as it was, his ridiculous self-conceit injured no one but himself. His wordiness is of all his faults the most seductive and the most conspicuous, and procured for him even in his lifetime the epithet of Asiatic. He himself was sensible that his periods were overloaded. As has been well said, he leaves nothing to the imagination. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... highest learning in full harmony with the noblest soul, grand by every charm of culture, useful and beautiful because useful; feminine purity and delicacy and refinement giving their luster and their power to the most absolute science—woman learned without infidelity and wise without conceit, the crowned queen of the world by right of that Knowledge which is Power and that Beauty which ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... understanding, be taken as the whole of the world-pervading Anglo-Saxon family. The Negroes of the West Indies number a good deal more than two million souls. Does this suggester of extravagances mean that the prejudices and vain conceit of the few dozens whom he champions should be made to override and overbear, in political arrangements, the serious and solid interests of so many [187] hundreds of thousands? That "the two races are not equal" is a statement which no sane ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... her bantlings. She is but a frosty parent if at bottom kindly, and, when she has a shadow of justification, proud. In the present instance she stands excused by the sore shock caused her conservatism by the conceit of a building of glass and iron four times as long as St. Paul's, high enough to accommodate comfortably one of her ancestral elms, and capacious enough to sustain a general invitation to all mankind ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... proud in his own conceit, and, mimicking one greater than he, flew down forthright and lighted on the back of a fat ram with a thick fleece, that was matted by his lying till it was like woolen felt. As soon as the Sparrow pounced upon the sheep's back he flopped his wings to fly ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... and absurdity. I will not defend this blasphemous speech; but often, as I have glided with humble stealth through the pomp of Princes Street, it has suggested itself to me, as an improvement on the present human figure, that a man, in proportion to his own conceit of his consequence in the world, could have pushed out the longitude of his common size, as a snail pushes out his horns, or as we draw out a perspective. This trifling alteration, not to mention the prodigious saving it would be in the tear and wear of the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the canvas. Copyists are kept busy, repeating the composition for eager purchasers, and it has made its way all over the world. The circle of graceful angels who, with the boy St. John, join the mother in adoring the Christ-child, is one of the chief attractions of the picture. It is a pretty conceit that one of these angels showers ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... hopelessly low, dull, and disreputable. You could not say what, but there was a taint about the house and its entourages. Who was the Begum, with her money, and without her h's, and where did she come from? What an extraordinary little piece of conceit the daughter was, with her Gallicised graces and daring affectations, not fit for well-bred English girls to associate with! What strange people were those they assembled round about them! Sir Francis Clavering was a gambler, living notoriously in the society of blacklegs and profligates. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... form of an intimate conversation, this time between a Brahman, Uddalaka Aruni, and his son Svetaketu who is twenty-four years of age and having just finished his studentship is very well satisfied with himself. His father remarks on his conceit and says "Have you ever asked your teachers for that instruction by which the unheard becomes heard, the unperceived perceived and the unknown known?" Svetaketu enquires what this instruction is and his father replies, "As by one lump of clay all that is made of clay is known, and the change[187] ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... but a pleasure deferred, then, Mr. Croyden," said Miss Erskine, impenetrable in her self conceit. "The next morning will do, quite as well—I shall come at ten o'clock—What a lovely evening this is, Mrs. Carrington!" preparing to patronize ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... capitalists, and declared that I was theoretically a Socialist. The President grunted, but when I added that he might, so far as I cared, act the Nero and cut off all the financial heads at one blow, he and his countrymen laughed at a conceit which evidently appealed to them. But his Honour relapsed again into a grunt when I inquired what he considered must be the upshot of the agitation. On pressing him, he replied that he was not a prophet. I tried to draw him on the loyalty of the Cape Dutch by ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... was quick, too, to see that that particular lump of potters' clay which was Herman Klein was ready for the wheel. Even while he was cursing the girl his cunning mind was already plotting, revenge for the Spencers, self-aggrandizement among his fellows for himself. His inordinate conceit, wounded by Anna's defection, found comfort in the early prospect of putting over a big thing. He carried the coal in, to find Herman gloomily clearing his untidy table. For a moment they worked in silence, Rudolph at the stove, Herman ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... is a woman," cried Antony as he went out, "I swear by the soul of my father that she shall be handed over to you, my valiant young man, and we'll see if your courage comes up to your conceit." ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... sentiment, of original fancy, or even of successful imitation. In prose, the least offensive of the Byzantine writers are absolved from censure by their naked and unpresuming simplicity: but the orators, most eloquent [112] in their own conceit, are the farthest removed from the models whom they affect to emulate. In every page our taste and reason are wounded by the choice of gigantic and obsolete words, a stiff and intricate phraseology, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... "Gail Hamilton," a cousin of Mrs. Blaine, resided with them and added greatly to the charm of the establishment. The world in general as well as his eulogists have done full justice to Mr. Blaine's amazing tact and charm of manner; but I may be pardoned the conceit if I offer my own tribute by referring to a graceful remark he made the first time I had the pleasure of meeting him. I heard someone say: "Here comes Mr. Blaine," and as I turned and he was formally presented to me I saw before me a distinguished looking middle-aged man of commanding presence, ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... repeated, at every pause, "You are a dupe; but I like you the better for it. And," added he, "you don't—blind buzzard! as your want of conceit makes you, for which I like you the better, too—you don't see the reason why he banished you from Castle Hermitage—you don't see that he is jealous of your rivalling that ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... then!" he cried exultingly. "Isn't it strange how the love of being right remains with us, when we think we have safely combated every other self-conceit. Well, Mr. Hatteras, I am very pleased to have made your acquaintance. Somehow I think we are destined to meet again—where I cannot say. At any rate, let us hope that that meeting will be as pleasant and ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... should carry weight, and that he should fight at a sad disadvantage. And the greater missionary tells us that he knew why that weight was appointed him to carry; and that he felt he needed it all to save him from a strong tendency to undue self-conceit. No one knows, now, what the burden was which he bore; but it was heavy and painful; it was "a thorn in the flesh." Three times he earnestly asked that it might be taken away; but the answer he got implied ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various |
