"Conceit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... managed it as cruelly as you could, and I have made you respect my sex, haven't I? (Arranging gloves and fan.) I only pray that she'll know you some day as I know you now. I wouldn't be you then, for I think even your conceit will be hurt. I hope she'll pay you back the humiliation you've brought on me. I hope—No. I don't! I can't give you up! I must have something to look forward to or I shall go crazy. When it's all over, come back to me, come back to me, and you'll ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Cavendish Dusautoy had entirely surpassed him both in self-assertion and in the grounds for it. His incipient dandyisms faded into insignificance beside the splendours of the heir of thousands; and he, who among all his faults had never numbered conceit or forwardness, had little chance beside such an implicit believer in ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hatreds and attachments; a modern simpleton who swallowed whole one of the old systems of philosophy, and took the indigestion it occasioned for the signs of a divine afflux or the voice of an inward monitor, might see his interest in a form of self-conceit which he called self-rewarding virtue; fanatics who believed in the coming Scourge and Renovation might see their own interest in a future palm-branch and white robe: but no man of clear intellect allowed his ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the silent operations that take place in other men's minds, but in my own, even under the greatest misfortunes a droll conceit will more rally my crushed spirits than all the moral ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... classification easy and definite, which was enshrined in the Aristotelian tradition, and protected by its supposed necessity for orthodox dogma, was suddenly swept away for ever out of the biological world. The difference between man and the lower animals, which to our human conceit appears enormous, was shown to be a gradual achievement, involving intermediate being who could not with certainty be placed either within or without the human family. The sun and the planets had already been shown by Laplace to be very probably derived ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... edge. One of these was a lively fresco portrait of Lieutenant-General Sherman, with the insignia of his rank, and the other was an even more striking effigy of General O'Neil, of the Armies of the Irish Republic, wearing a threatening aspect, and designed in a bold conceit of his presence there as conqueror of Canada in the year 1875. Mr. Arbuton was inclined to resent these intrusions upon the sublimity of nature, and he could not conceive, without disadvantage to them, how Miss Ellison and the colonel should accept them so cheerfully as part of the pleasure ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... village, and was as good as she was pretty. To say the truth, the time had been when Bessy had not felt unkindly towards the yellow-haired lad; but his conduct had long put a gulf between them, which only the conceit of a scamp would have attempted to pass. However, he flattered himself that he "knew what the lasses meant when they said no;" and on the strength of this knowledge he presumed far enough to elicit a rebuff so ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... then, if they don't knock the life they will knock the conceit and the superfluous flesh out of ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... perfectly normal, healthy boy. Fortunately there are no brilliant sayings to record; he did not lisp in periods. Genius was not written upon his brow, nor tied upon his sleeve. He had none of the pale fervor of precocity, or the shyness of premature conceit. He was absorbed in childish things, loved play, shirked his studies, dreamed of a life on the ocean wave, and regarded "Robinson Crusoe" and "Sinbad the Sailor" as the end of all literary things. The savagery of boyhood he lacked. ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... are a more subtle experiment in metre by the musician and poet, Campion, than even the following, Laura, which he himself sweetly commended as "voluble, and fit to express any amorous conceit." In Kind are her Answers the long syllables and the trochaic movement of the short lines meet the contrary movement of the rest, with an exquisite effect of flux and reflux. The "dancers" whose time they sang must have danced (with Perdita) like "a ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... despotically. Many difficulties were those. And if one would consider that others, who must be considered of equal or greater spirit, had abandoned them as unconquerable, he would understand their human prudence, or temerity, or their great conceit. But the robust vicar-provincial stumbled in nothing, his wonderful zeal facilitating everything. For that administration and conquest, he appointed Fray Miguel de Santa Maria the adelantado, giving him as associates father Fray Pedro de San Josef, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... dust-white road as the sunset shadows grew long. He knew the exact spot—the last bit of woodland—from where Martin, across level-lying fields, could obtain his first glimpse of the old farmhouse and porch. His moving-picture conceit next placed M'ri, dressed in white, with touches of blue, on the west porch. He had decided that in the Long Ago Days she had been wont to wear blue, which he imagined to be the Judge's favorite color. Then he caused the unimpressionable Judge to tie his horse to the hitching post ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... is Rothey, for though he comes from the land of Ham, he don't eat pork. But it pleases the sarcumsised Jew, and the unsarcumsised tag-rag and bobtail that are to be admitted, and who verily do believe (for their bump of conceit is largely developed) that they can improve the Colleges by ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... as these I mean to do When Peace once more resumes her sway; To walk barefooted through the dew And while the sunlit hours away, If haply I may find some gay Conceit to light a sombre mind, As gracious as a Summer day, As wayward as ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... shrewdness, a certain instinct, as to both men and affairs, which were often of more service to him than finer brains to other persons. But, like most accomplishments, these also brought their own conceit with them. Lord Grosville having, in his own opinion, done extremely well without much book education himself, had but little ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... personal fervour. He cared little for the manner of saying a thing, so long as the heart spoke out frankly and freely; he strove to discern the energy of the soul in all men; he could forgive everything except meanness, cowardice, egotism and conceit; there was no fault of a generous and impulsive nature ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... courted by the solitary invalid, or clergyman, or artist. They lurked helplessly about in the hotel parlours, looking on and not knowing how to put themselves forward. Perhaps they did not care a great deal to do so. They had not a conceit of themselves, but a sort of content in their own ways that one may notice in certain families. The very strength of their mutual affection was a barrier to worldly knowledge; they dressed for one another; they equipped their house for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... China, India and Persia, seem made to take the conceit from upstart nations like those of Europe and our own toddling America. Directly we scratch the surface and look for the beginning of applied arts, the lead takes us inevitably to the oldest civilisation. It would seem that in a study of fabrics which are made ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... talk to you though you will not understand! Once upon a time the world was ruled by men who were ruled by omens. Man was then not so wise in his own conceit. His own soul was nearer the soul of things. He was not a mere gob of bumptiousness covered with the shell of cocksureness. He was willing to be informed. He sought the omens of true nature—he allowed Fate ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... having met him once in society, that he was the concentration of conceit in appearance and manner. But since then they seem ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... wheeles, and rowling deuises, and vpholding supporters, so great large and innumerable a sort of stones should be brought thither, and of what matter theyr cement that ioyned and held them together, was made the heygth of the Obelisk and statelinesse of the Pyramides, exceeding the imagined conceit of Dimocrates proposed to Alexander the great, about a worke to be performed vpon the hill Athos. For the strangenes of the Egiptian building might giue place to this. The famous laborinths were far inferior, Lemnos is not to be rehearsed the Theaters of old time were in comparison ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... a proper reverence for your age and our common blood, I do not value your favour at a boddle's purchase. I was brought up to have a good conceit of myself; and if you were all the uncle, and all the family, I had in the world ten times over, I wouldn't buy your liking at ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... awake,—yet he waited longer than seemed prudent; for the horses of our audacious opponent had a disagreeable air of freshness and power. But his motive was loyal; his wish was that the Birmingham conceit should be full-blown before he froze it. When that seemed right, he unloosed, or, to speak by a stronger word, he sprang, his known resources: he slipped our royal horses like cheetahs, or hunting- leopards, after the affrighted game. How they could retain such ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... goods. Political excitement. Resentment in the Plague Refuge Camp; how it was overcome. The agency of the Church. An improved type of Hindu schoolboy; how they dress; their manners; their interest in religion. Moral teaching in schools. Conceit of ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... may as well show a smile to the world as a worried look, or a mean look, or one of the countless casts of countenance that are moulded by conceit and vanity. A smile is frequently misconstrued by the simple-hearted into the outward sign of inward kindness. Many think that it conciliates children and little dogs. But that which the ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... speaking, he laughed heartily, excited more perhaps by the delight of having got his friend safe at his side, under circumstances so trying, than by any conceit that happened to cross his fancy, and exhibiting this outbreaking of feeling in a manner that was a little remarkable, since his merriment was not accompanied by any noise. Although Chingachgook both understood and spoke English, he was unwilling ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... point where by making a slight detour among some pines he could cross farther down, a striking but wholly incongruous figure emerged from the trees. With shining top hat, fur-lined coat, gauntlets and cane, M. Lalonde, the Montreal detective, came forward with his professional conceit no whit impaired by juxtaposition with these glacial and solitary surroundings. He handed his card to the priest and bowed to ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... opinion, That a philosopher may be rich if he will. Thus your Lordship seeth how I comfort myself; to the increase whereof I would fain please myself to believe that to be true which my Lord Treasurer writeth; which is, that it is more than a philosopher morally can disgest. But without any such high conceit, I esteem it like the pulling out of an aching tooth, which, I remember, when I was a child, and had little philosophy, I was glad of when it was done. For your Lordship, I do think myself more beholding to you than to any man. And ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... only too gentle, and too soon ended. As for robbery, if I have robbed him of a little self-conceit, I will answer to God for that when my hour shall come! How is it your affair to drag that whimpering fool through Asia at your tail—you a German ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... as we rode back to his home," the young man wrote. "We knew the die had been cast. We had seen it fall carelessly out of the hand of Ignorance, obeying intellects swelled with hereditary passion and conceit. I now had something to say ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... the democratical conceit of them that say that the Parliament hath their governing power, as they are the people's representatives, and so have the members of the convocation, though those represented have no governing power themselves, it is so palpably ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a shadow of conceit. "They believe in me because they know that for their sakes I suffered a kind of martyrdom, going, as I did, amongst your people to serve in the lowest state, and all to help free ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... polemic stress upon the doctrine of future retribution as the vindication of present impunity. For though, indeed, to the right-minded that doctrine was true, and of sufficient solace, yet with the perverse the polemic mention of it might but provoke the shallow, though mischievous conceit, that such a doctrine was but tantamount to the one which should affirm that Providence was not now, but was going to be. In short, with all sorts of cavilers, it was best, both for them and everybody, that whoever had the true light should stick behind the secure ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... because I think that the French are right to fight on rather than submit to the dismemberment of their country; and because I prefer a Republic to a Monarchy where a King reigns by right divine. But when I read the bombastic articles in the newspapers—when I see the insane conceit and the utter ignorance of those with whom I am thrown—when I find them really believing that they are heroes because they are going, they say, to win battles, it is difficult to entertain any great sympathy for them. How utterly must poor old Badinguet, before whom they ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... spurs; I was commended by great men for my valour; I thought myself the goodliest man of war in all broad England. Then, first, I fell out of my favour with the great; and now I have been well thrashed, and clean lost my soldiers. There was a downfall for conceit! But, dear, I care not—dear, if ye still love me and will wed, I would have my knighthood done away, and mind it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... has 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
... ability of body, and was wont to call him his Gray-Steill. [12] Archibald, being banished into England, could not well comport with the humor of that nation, which he thought to be too proud, and that they had too high a conceit of themselves, joined with a contempt and despising of all others. Wherefore, being wearied of that life, and remembering the King's favor of old towards him, he determined to try the King's mercifulness and clemency. So he comes into ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... reflections of Hubert Marien. He had seen enough in his relations with women to have no doubt about Jacqueline's feelings, of which indeed he had watched the rise and progress from the time she had first begun to conceive a passion for him, with a mixture of amusement and conceit. The most cautious of men are not insensible to flattery, whatever form it may take. To be fallen in love with by a child was no doubt absurd—a thing to be laughed at—but Jacqueline seemed no longer a child, since for him she had uncovered ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... with the conceit of a vulgar and inflated man, who not only fancies himself in possession of a power that others dread, but who was so far blinded to his own qualities as to think his opinion of importance to those whom he felt, in the minutest fibre of his envious and malignant ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... of these invasions, which might deserve our notice, were it not justly to be suspected as the fanciful conceit of a recent sophist. We are told, that in the sack of Athens the Goths had collected all the libraries, and were on the point of setting fire to this funeral pile of Grecian learning, had not one of their chiefs, of more refined policy than his brethren, dissuaded them from the design; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... us, however, could not prevent an element of pity from tincturing our amusement. If his self-conceit was comical, by reason of its candour, it was surely pitiable, because of the poor, dwarfed starveling of a soul that it revealed. Here was a man, with life in his veins, and round about him the whole mystery and richness ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... teeth of my father's curse, as I may say; not to have kept it up, so, 'over there,' from that day to this, without a doubt or a pang; not, above all, to have liked it, to have loved it, so much, loved it, no doubt, with such an abysmal conceit of my own preference; some variation from that, I say, must have produced some different effect for my life and for my 'form.' I should have stuck here—if it had been possible; and I was too young, at twenty-three, to judge, pour deux sous, whether it were possible. If I had waited I ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... which both the Daciers resented any thing that was said against the ancient writers was carried to the extreme, and had, at times, something ludicrous in it. But Madame Dacier's enthusiasm was real, and unaccompanied by pedantry or conceit. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... but it was evident that, while Kalliope disowned conceit of station for herself, she could not always cross her mother's wishes. It was further elicited that if Lady Flight had taken up the matter there would have been no difficulty. Half a year ago the Flights had seemed to the young ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... consider. For me, would it not be the better part to show her that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be my first consideration? Certainly there is nothing in a man I despise more than conceit in affairs of this sort. When I hear one of my sex boasting of his 'conquests,' I turn from him in disgust. 'Conquest' implies effort; and to lay one's self out for victories over the other sex always reminds me of pigeon-shooting. On the other hand, we must make ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... characteristics of an immigrant, who has abandoned family traditions and is proudly confident that his bequest to posterity is to outshine what he has inherited. Charles was not exactly a stupid man, but he certainly was dazzled by his early surroundings into an overestimate of himself, into a conceit that was a tremendous stumbling-block in his path. He had not the kind of intelligence that would have enabled him to take at their worth the rhetorical phrases of adulation heaped upon him on festal occasions. Yet this same conceit, this very self-confidence, gave ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... references close the history. In A Woman is a Weathercock, III, iii, printed in 1612, but written earlier, one of the actors exclaims of an insufferable pun: "O Newington Conceit!" The fact that this sneer is the only reference to the Newington Playhouse found in contemporary literature is a commentary on the low esteem in which the building was held by the Elizabethans, and its relative unimportance for the history of ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... by this not to become wise in his own conceit. Pride in unsound theories is worse than ignorance. Humility becomes a Mason. Take some quiet, sober moment of life, and add together the two ideas of Pride and Man; behold him, creature of a span, stalking through infinite ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... day, the scales of self-conceit seemed to have gone. She had her childhood's heart again. Her bitter remorse, her afterthoughts of perplexity had been lulled in the long calm of the respite, and when roused again, even by this sudden sorrow, she woke to her ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... petting in England—let them be told (perhaps it may be said plainest by their best friends) that there are just as many proud exclusives among them as in any other stratum of society, and that they have at least a full share too of conceit, foppery, and affectation. ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... for that big bully, Banbury, is to be my opponent, and I'd do anything to take the conceit out of him and his crowd. Ritchie timed me, and said I had discounted the best record ever made by an ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... mutter something, but paid no heed, knowing that it was something about being careful with the gun, for I was not without my share of conceit and belief in my capacity of taking care of a gun. For my father had rather encouraged me to practise with his fowling-piece, as also with one of the heavy fire-locks we ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... attorney," said the admiral, as he put the letter in his pocket, "and almost enough to put one in conceit of lawyers." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... treated with contempt and derision. Moral philosophy is discarded, and the maxims of ancient wisdom are unworthy of their notice. In this manner, eloquence is dethroned; she is banished from her rightful dominions, and obliged to dwell in the cold regions of antithesis, forced conceit, and pointed sentences. The consequence is, that she, who was once the sovereign mistress of the sciences, and led them as handmaids in her train, is now deprived of her attendants, reduced, impoverished, and, stripped of her usual ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... fear, or affectation; and strove to forget the author's person, while his works fell under their consideration. They have treated simple dulness as the object of mirth or compassion, according to the nature of its appearance. Petulance and self-conceit they have corrected with more severe strictures; and though they have given no quarter to insolence, scurrility and sedition, they will venture to affirm, that no production of merit has been defrauded of its due share of applause. On the contrary, they have cherished with commendation, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... And after all, these worthy people do not suffer so greatly. If I did not take their money some other impostor would. Their huge conceit of intelligence would breed perhaps some viler swindle than my facetious rappings. That's the line our doubting bishops take, and why shouldn't I? For example, these people might give it to Public Charities, minister to the fattened secretary, the prodigal ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... nearly a year since I was at Tabatinga; I go to find my monuments in ruin! And if it is not objectionable to you, Mr. Garral, I would render myself again worthy of the reputation which I have acquired in these parts, the question of reis, and not that of conceit, ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... the conceit of youth," said Dorothy, smiling. "Captain Kempt, U.S.N., retired. His youngest daughter is just two ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... conceit out of a fellow," he mused, "to find what a lot of his old childish dread remains when he has grown up. Why, I felt then—Ugh! I'm ashamed to think of it all. Poor old Stratton! he doesn't know what he's about half his time. I believe he has got what ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... to live very long to do that. I have often thought, though, that if, when we looked into the mirror, we could see our natures as well as our reflected features, our conceit would ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... going West to reduce the aboriginal population; I hope we shall have no trouble with the red men. When we get among the people who have always lived there, such a title will make us ridiculous, for it smacks of conceit; ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... noticed that the Countess had a small ivory mallet. "This," I said to myself, "is a foregone conclusion; any one who plays with a fancy mallet, and that of ivory, is sure to be beaten." And in my conceit I thought I need not give myself much trouble about the game. Alas! I never appreciated the saying that "pride has a fall" until that day. At first I played with utter indifference, I was so sure of winning, ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... not at his fond conceit, Nor deem his fancy wrought in vain; To him the unreal sounds are sweet,— No discord mars the silent strain Scored on life's latest, starlit page— The ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sat motionless, petrified with solemn astonishment. Then the angel of death had really been there in that very room, and she had been "so wise in her own conceit," that she did not know it until he had departed with ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... pitied. I sobbed and sobbed as though some dam had broken inside of me. You see, Mag, I knew in that minute that I'd been afraid, deathly afraid of Fred Obermuller's face, when it's scornful and sarcastic, and of his voice, when it cuts the flesh of self-conceit off your very bones. And the contrast—well, it was ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... is plain that I deserve it?" bristled the professor. "Understand, Dixon, that I do not regret my modesty, even though it permits conceited fools like Corveille, who have infinitely less reason than I for conceit, to win awards that mean nothing save prizes for successful bragging. Bah! To grant an award for research along such obvious lines that I neglected to mention them, thinking that even a Morell judge would appreciate their obviousness! Research on ...
— The Point of View • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... their possibilities on club essays. I often wonder if they attacked the proposition of housekeeping with the intention of seeing how much fun there is in it, of how much pleasure could be got out of making a home, not merely keeping house, and of feeding their conceit with the fuel of a determination to keep house better than any woman of their acquaintance. The simple but fascinating problem of how to make each room a little prettier than it was last week, would keep even an ingenious woman busy ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... out of conceit with the world, and who was never quite happy when other people seemed for the moment to be preferred to herself, thought this burst of affection decidedly theatrical, but she did not know of any one to whom she could confine her opinions just then; indeed, ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of God. Watch I say over the devil touching doctrines, for he labours as much this way as any way, for he knows that if he can but get you to lay a rotten foundation, he is sure of you, live as godly in your conceit as you will, and therefore, it is worth your observation, in that 24th of Matthew when Christ is speaking of the signs of his coming, he breaks forth with a warning word to his disciples, to beware of false teachers (v 4). The very first words that he ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... nothing about such an origin. They are manifestly in great part the work of foreign artists. One well-known miniaturist, Antonio de Holanda, the father of the better-known Francesco, took part in the work, and having a good conceit of his own abilities (we shall probably hear of him again), reserved an entire volume to himself in order to give proof of them. The seven volumes which then were covered with crimson velvet and ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... Mountjoy had predicted that he would be sure to flirt with the minister's niece. At that moment Anderson himself came in, and some ceremony of introduction took place. Anderson was a fair-haired, good-looking young man, with that thorough look of self-satisfaction and conceit which attaches are much more wont to exhibit than to deserve. For the work of an attache at Brussels is not of a nature to bring forth the highest order of intellect; but the occupations are of a nature to make a young man feel that he is not like ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... original here contains a neat little conceit, which cannot be translated, but which is too good to be lost. The French for daughter-in-law is belle fille, literally "beautiful girl." To Fougas' address "Ma belle fille!" Mme. Langevin replies: "I am not beautiful, and I am not ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill. The wise man throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point. The wound cicatrizes and falls off from him like a dead skin and when they would ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... me. How could a child like you read the Bible? It is a book for bishops and archbishops, and the Immaculate Father himself. What an arrogance? What an insolence of self-conceit must possess so young a heart? Saints ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... conceit he fell a-laughing, and remarked he had never had the happiness yet to see ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... them, Scott, by vain conceit perchance, On public taste to foist thy stale romance; Though Murray with his Miller may combine, To yield thy Muse just HALF-A-CROWN A LINE? No! when the sons of song descend to trade, Their bays are sear, their former laurels ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... bored to death," he said, "with this man's ignorance and conceit. Don't pay the least attention to him, but there is one thing I want to take the first opportunity of pressing on you. Whatever is done or not done, however limited the funds may be, let us at least have a sanitary floor. You must have all these stones up, and put a foot or two of concrete ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... had reached the mature age of twenty-one, he was formally admitted to the House of Lords as a Peer of the realm. His titles and pedigree were so closely scanned on this occasion that he grew quite out of conceit with the noble company, and was seriously thinking of launching a dunciad in their direction. His good nature was especially ruffled by Lord Carlisle, his guardian, who refused to stand as his legal sponsor. The chief ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... and if, as is sometimes unfortunately the case, the question is put less with the genuine desire for knowledge than for the purpose of exhibiting the acumen of the questioner, the form is strongly tinged with the deep orange that indicates conceit. It was at a theosophical meeting that this special shape was encountered, and it accompanied a question which showed considerable thought and penetration. The answer at first given was not thoroughly satisfactory to the inquirer, ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... upon the deck. "And there," he indicated, with a backward toss of his well-shaped head, the corridor down which had passed the woman, "is his lady fair. I've even heard," he went on, "that she used to call him her 'fool,' quoting the poem. Pretty little conceit, eh?" His jaw, firm, square, set tight. Then, with a touch of deeper feeling. "She murdered that boy just as surely as if she had cut his throat; and the worst of it is that she can't be held legally guilty—morally, yes, guilty ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... to give out, as our newspapers say, a signed statement throwing a challenge to all Europe. I wish we'd get into a real war once so we could knock the conceit out of one of their so-called first-class powers. I'd like to lead a regiment right through the most sacred precincts of London; or take an early morning gallop through Berlin to wake up the Dutch. All this talk about hands across ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... unconsciously assumed possession of the street. It was a great and impressive sight; it was a delightful sight. They were so sure of themselves, the maids particularly; so interested in themselves, so happy, so eager, so convinced (without any conceit) that their importance transcended all other importances, so gently pitiful toward men and women of forty-five, and so positive that the main function of elders was to pay school-fees, that I was thrilled ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... me, and had discussed it very little with Marguerite, lest I might reveal an undue lack of wonder. But now as I thrilled once more beneath their holy light, the miracle of unnumbered far-flung flaming suns stifled again the vanity of human conceit and I stood with soul unbared and worshipful beneath the vista of incommensurate space wherein the birth and death of worlds marks the unending roll of time. And at my side a silent gazing woman stood, contrite and humble and the thrill and quiver of her ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... especially for the uses of man. Every animal, plant, and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught from century to century as something ever new and precious, and in the resulting darkness the enormous conceit ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... defines a condition of things in which an organism would never die—in which it would enjoy a perpetual and perfect Life. This to him is, of course, but a speculation. Life Eternal is a biological conceit. The conditions necessary to an Eternal Life do not exist in the natural world. So that the definition is altogether impartial and independent. A Perfect Life, to Science, is simply a thing which is theoretically possible—like a ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... it rather that Conceit rapacious is and strong, And bounty never yields so much but it seems to do her wrong? Or is it, that when human Souls a journey long have had, And are returned into themselves, they ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... unto this Fountaine about thirty yeares since, or more. For he also formerly had spent some time at the Spaw in Germany; so that he was very able to compare those with this of ours. Nay, hee had futhermore so good an opinion, and so high a conceit of this, that hee did not onely direct, and advise others to it, but himselfe also (for most part) would use it in ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... them—as if any man who has an appreciative soul would think of diffusing a compliment among a crowd of ten thousand people; but the vanity and presumption of some females are just disgusting. But for the secret consciousness that no one could have been intended but myself, their conceit would provoke me. As it is, let them have their conceity illusions. Others may think what they please, but I have an inner consciousness that is ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... and history, clever in reciting stories and poetry, but is a bold and skilful rider, a good archer and swordsman. There is scarcely anything that a young man should know, with which he is not familiar; and, with all this, he is free from conceit, good-tempered, gentle, and kind; in short, he seems to me almost perfect, and more fit to marry a princess than the daughter of such a man as I am. When I have seen my child happily married to him, I shall not trouble them with my society, but withdraw from the ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... me, may you, sir: and in my conceit, our whole nation should sustain the loss by it, if ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... China, this conduct aroused an insurrection of Chinese conceit against European conceit. The Chinese were guilty of the offence of calling the representatives of the proudest and most supercilious of all civilizations, "outside barbarians"; illustrating in this that too common conservative weakness of human nature, of holding fixedly to an ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... The Mogul, however, was very fond of music, and revelled in Robert Trulley's cornet, though virginals were not esteemed, "perhaps because the player was not sufficiently expert," and "it is thought Lawes died with conceit at the King's indifference." Nevertheless, on the whole, Jehangir behaved civilly to the company's envoy, whose success in obtaining an audience was quickly followed up by Aldworth in sending William Edwards, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... human ignorance, is not only the one highest, but the one true, knowledge; and its first-fruit, as has been said, is humility. Simple nescience is not proud; consummated science is positively humble. For this knowledge it is not, which 'puffeth up;' but its opposite, the conceit of false knowledge,—the conceit, in truth, as the apostle notices, of an ignorance of the very ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... was old? Ah woful Ere, Which tells me, Youth's no longer here! O Youth! for years so many and sweet 'Tis known, that Thou and I were one, I'll think it but a fond conceit— It cannot be, that Thou art gone! Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd:— And thou wert aye a masker bold! What strange disguise hast now put on, To make believe, that Thou art gone? I see these locks in silvery slips, This drooping gait, this altered size: But springtide blossoms on ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... tricks the herd Whose pulses first by murderous crime it stirred. Narcissus-like, the slayer bends to trace Within Sensation's flowing stream its face, And, self-enamoured, smiles a loathsome smile Of fatuous conceit and gloating guile; Laughs at the shadow of the lifted knife, And thinks of all things save its victim's life. The "Noisy Nymph," the Echo of our times, The gossip, with an eager ear for crimes, Lurks, half-admiring, all-recording there, Watching Narcissus with persistent stare, And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... sympathize with, and to guide intelligently the main tendencies of his age, rather than violently to oppose them; at the same time the courage to present unpleasant antidotes to its faults and to keep from fostering a people in its own conceit; and finally, amidst many discouragements, the retention of a high faith in spiritual progress and an unwavering belief that the ideal life is "the normal life as we shall one ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... stoical indifference to these personal attacks. He made no speeches, he rarely exhibited himself to the public, and he kept his own counsels. His adroit, mysterious movements recalled the methods but not the conceit of Aaron Burr. Although Abram S. Hewitt, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, managed the campaign with skill, Tilden relied largely upon his own shrewdness, displacing old leaders for new ones, and making it clear to ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... but most unfortunate husband, who honestly strove to do right, but whose extraordinary instincts were against him. Try it, Maria. I have thought the matter over carefully and well, and it is the only chance I see for you. It would have been a happy conceit on the part of Caruthers if he had started with his neck and broken that first; but since he has seen fit to choose a different policy and string himself out as long as possible, I do not think we ought ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the conceit. Barren, black, and desolate, the great moor gripped the imagination as no smiling landscape of field and forest could—does yet, where enough of it remains. Far as eye reaches the dun heather covers hill ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... tribe, for it has no locomotion, stability, or endurance, neither goes to pasture, gives milk, chews the cud, nor performs any other function of the horned beast, but is a mere creation of the brain, begotten by a freak of the fancy and nourished by a conceit of the imagination." ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... great many ways," Victoria agreed. "If he didn't have such an impenetrable conceit, he might go far, because he learns quickly, and has an industry that is simply appalling. But he hasn't quite the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... studies—"Soubrette," "Lover," "Witch," "Clown," "Villain," "Sweetheart"—besides two additions: a "Prologue" and "Epilogue." Here MacDowell is in one of his happiest moods. It was a fortunate and charming conceit which prompted the plan of the series, with its half-playful, half-ironic, yet lurkingly poetic suggestions; for in spite of the mood of bantering gaiety which placed the pieces in such mocking juxtaposition, there is, throughout, ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... like. Methinks there is equal need of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge. By long years of patient industry ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... inaptly, the evolution of the old ship of the line under full canvas into the modern man-of-war, sailless and grim, and the conceit is strengthened by the warlike build of the electric sweeper. It is easy to imagine the iron flanges that sweep the snow from the track to be rammers for a combat at close quarters, and the canvas hangers that shield the brushes, torpedo-nets for defence against ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... could have at such a time. Dale agreed that the boys were hard and careless; and he added that it was particularly shameful to bring up a boy's other faults when he was in disgrace for one. In the warmth of his zeal, he told how one boy had been laughing at Hugh's conceit about his themes, when he had shown to-day that he could not go half through his syntax; and how he had heard another say that all that did not signify half so much as his being mean about money. Between Hugh's eagerness to hear, and Dale's sympathy, ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... here," said the Trapper, speaking to himself, "it says here, 'Give to him that lacketh, and from him that hath not, withhold not thine hand.' It be a good sayin' fur sartin; and the world would be a good deal better off, as I conceit, ef the folks follered the sayin' a leetle more closely." And here the old man paused a moment, and, with his hand still resting on the page, and his forefinger still pointing at the sentence, seemed pondering ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... new. Mallet told him, that the newest piece was something called an Essay on Man, which he had inspected idly, and seeing the utter inability of the author, who had neither skill in writing nor knowledge of the subject, had tossed it away. Pope, to punish his self-conceit, told him ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... enlarged by the opening of the new houses, and the society of the beach was a little changed. In charge of the Catalina's house was an old Scotchman, Robert, who, like most of his countrymen, had some education, and, like many of them, was rather pragmatical, and had a ludicrously solemn conceit of himself. He employed his time in taking care of his pigs, chickens, turkeys, dogs, &c., and in smoking his long pipe. Everything was as neat as a pin in the house, and he was as regular in his hours as a chronometer, but, as he kept very ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... 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 ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... or of momentary inability to do what is wanted—are by nature or education impossible. His nature did not give him this endowment, and his education was of the very last sort to procure it for him. He himself, not out of pique or conceit, things utterly alien from his nature, still less out of laziness, but, I believe, as a genuine, and, what is more, a correct self-criticism, has left in his private writings repeated expressions of his belief that revision and ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... war. It tells the English patriot that the "one jolly Englishman" of the old rhyme is not the easy vanquisher of the "two froggy Frenchmen and one Portugee" which tradition would have him believe. He is thus enabled to steer a middle course between arrant conceit and childish fright. History tells him the actual facts: history is to the patriot what "form" is ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... also according to the propriety of our English tongue so far as Grammar and the verse will permit. A significant comment in the "Directions" runs: "As for the fear of making truants by these translations, a conceit which arose merely upon the abuse of other translations, never intended for this end, I hope that happy experience of this kind will in time drive it and all like to it utterly out of schools and out of the minds of all." Apparently the schoolmaster's ban upon the unauthorized ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... on the steps of the Bourse, or when he closed the pages of his ledger. Suspicion was to him very much what his printed bill-heads were,—a necessity of the sale itself. His countenance presented a sort of comical assurance and conceit mingled with good nature, which gave it originality and saved it from too close a resemblance to the insipid face of a Parisian bourgeois. Without this air of naive self-admiration and faith in his own person, he would have won too much respect; he drew nearer to his fellows by thus ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... detestable, though many people would consider it decidedly 'chic,' to use her favorite word. I suppose you will dress your wife like a Spartan matron of the time of Lycurgus," added Rose, much tickled by his new conceit. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... to handle the heavy guns of Hugo Grotius, and to untwist withal the tangled threads of Richard Baxter, in his encounters with John Goodwin he resembles his prototype in a leopard-hunt, where sheer strength is on the one side, and brisk ability on the other. And, to push our conceit no further, they say that this wary animal will never venture over a bridge till he has tried its strength, and is assured that it can bear him; and if we except the solitary break-down in the Waltonian controversy, our disputant was as cautious in choosing his ground as he was formidable ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... this quaint conceit, and then rode on quickly. In a few minutes he stopped and listened again, but heard no noise save the loud breathing of ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... Mr. Malone: 'Sir, he lived in London, and hung loose upon society.' The concluding paper of his Rambler is at once dignified and pathetick. I cannot, however, but wish that he had not ended it with an unnecessary Greek verse, translated also into an English couplet[666]. It is too much like the conceit of those dramatick poets, who used to conclude each act with a rhyme; and the expression in the first line of his couplet, 'Celestial powers', though proper in Pagan poetry, is ill suited to Christianity, with 'a conformity[667]' to which he consoles himself. How much better ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... maiden of the Lake. Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps Upon the hidden bases of the hills.' So might some old man speak in the aftertime To all the people, winning reverence. But now much honour and much fame were lost." So spake he, clouded with his own conceit, And hid Excalibur the second time, And so strode back slow to the wounded King. Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily: "What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?" And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "I heard ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... light. Nevertheless, I got a clear enough impression of his alert, well-poised little figure, and of a hatchety little face, and a pair of shrewd little eyes, which (I thought) held a fine little conceit of his whole little person. It was a type of fellow-countryman not altogether unknown about certain "American Bars" of Paris, and usually connected (more or less directly) with what is known to the people of ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... from 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
... men whom he had most loved and admired,—of men who had dared to be independent, patriotic, and philanthropical, through all the temptations of political life. Would he be too vain if he thought to rival a Hume or a Cobden? Conceit, he said to himself, will seek to justify itself. Who can rise but those who believe their wings strong enough for soaring? There might be shipwreck of course,—but he believed that he now saw his way. As to the difficulty of speaking in public,—that he had altogether overcome. Some further education ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... three subjects of the quarrel, and have not all those been amply secured to them? Had they not at that time a mental reservation for power and employments? And must these two articles be added henceforward in our national quarrels? It is grown a mighty conceit among some men to melt down the phrase of a Church Established by law into that of the Religion of the Magistrate; of which appellation it is easier to find the reason than the sense: If by the magistrate they mean the prince, the expression includes a falsehood; for when King James was ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... the colored citizens of Toronto I know little or nothing; no doubt, some are respectable enough in their way, and perform the inferior duties belonging to their station tolerably well. Here they are kept in order—in their proper place—but their 'proceedings' are evidence of their natural conceit, their vanity, and their ignorance; and in them the cloven foot appears, and evinces what they would do, if they could. I believe that in this city, as in some others of our Province, they are looked ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... you say such a thing to me!' she cried hotly. 'Do you flatter yourself that, because I came here to talk business, I have also some personal interest in you? Surely even your self-conceit doesn't ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... ask whether envy is painful. 'Yes.' And yet the envious man finds something pleasing in the misfortunes of others? 'True.' And ignorance is a misfortune? 'Certainly.' And one form of ignorance is self-conceit—a man may fancy himself richer, fairer, better, wiser than he is? 'Yes.' And he who thus deceives himself may be strong or weak? 'He may.' And if he is strong we fear him, and if he is weak we laugh at him, which is a pleasure, and ...
— Philebus • Plato
... abrupt termination of his address on such a plea, and at such a moment, might appear an ingenious and rhetorical artifice. In his argument, Mr. Roebuck charged the government, the officials at home, and those in command abroad, with incapacity, conceit, and indifference to the welfare of the soldiery. When at last the house divided, the motion was supported by 305 members, and opposed by only 148, leaving a majority of 157—one of the largest, on a great public question involving the fate of a government, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... old,—a visionary man, full of schemes, with crude opinions and unbounded self-conceit, but poor and unknown,—a true adventurer, with many agreeable qualities, irregular habits, and not very scrupulous morals. Favored by letters of introduction to ladies of distinction,—for he was a favorite ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... pleased to consider abuses, however countenanced by high authority—and will obtrude his literary eloquence into our solemn courts of law, he deserves—what does he not deserve?—to be addressed henceforth by a name suggestive at once of ignorance, presumption, and conceit, as ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... before Pharaoh and said, "Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, let my people go, that they may serve me. If you refuse I shall plague you and your people worse than ever, and so teach you that there is none like me in all the earth. Don't puff yourself up with conceit, for you were made what you are only in order that through you my power might be manifested. You had better cave in at once." But Pharaoh would not harken. He tacitly declared that the Lord God of the ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... his "Love of Fame," very adroitly improves on a witty conceit of Butler. It is curious to observe that while Butler had made a remote allusion of a window to a pillory, a conceit is grafted on this conceit, with even more ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Her conceit was fairly colossal. The reforms in legislation for Ireland were, in her estimation, owing to her novel of Florence Macarthy. She professed to have taught Taglioni the Irish jig: of her toilette, made largely by her own ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... good doting citizen, who, it is thought, might be of the common-council for his wealth; a fellow sincerely besotted on his own wife, and so wrapt with a conceit of her perfections, that he simply holds himself unworthy of her. And, in that hoodwinked humour, lives more like a suitor than a husband; standing in as true dread of her displeasure, as when he first made ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... what he knows, but not in what he does not know; for in such matters he will be unprofitable to them, and do them no good. And no one will love him, if he does them no good; and he can only do them good by knowledge; and as he is still without knowledge, he can have as yet no conceit of knowledge. In this manner Socrates reads a lesson to Hippothales, the foolish lover of Lysis, respecting the style of conversation which he ...
— Lysis • Plato
... down the burden of our wretched little makeshift individualities for ever at each lift towards the goal of evolution, which can only be a being that cannot be improved upon. After all, what man is capable of the insane self-conceit of believing that an eternity of himself would be tolerable even to himself? Those who try to believe it postulate that they shall be made perfect first. But if you make me perfect I shall no longer be myself, nor ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... vortices and length of arm, scotoma in the field of vision and exaggerated tendinous reflex action). Up to the age of thirty he led an irreproachable life; in fact, he was scrupulous to excess, and this, coupled with pronounced conceit and stinginess, was his only fault. He married a woman of common origin, who was not really depraved, but she was coarse and unfaithful, and, worst of all in his eyes, unscrupulous and wasteful. These defects, and her habits of lying and trickery embittered the poor man's existence. ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... and so susceptible — and so tender forsooth! — truly, she has got a languishing eye, and reads romances. — Then there's her brother, 'squire Jery, a pert jackanapes, full of college-petulance and self-conceit; proud as a German count, and as hot and hasty as a Welch mountaineer. As for that fantastical animal, my sister Tabby, you are no stranger to her qualifications — I vow to God, she is sometimes so intolerable, that I almost think she's the devil ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... I suspect, be welcomed by every one except the gagged writers; but as the idea of its being operative is too chimerical for us to entertain it, and as the purpose of these pages is to expound the principles of success and failure, not to make Quixotic onslaughts on the windmills of stupidity and conceit, I answer my young interrogator: "Take warning and do not write. Unless you believe in yourself, only noodles will believe in you, and they but tepidly. If your experience seems trivial to you, it must seem trivial ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... word 'Immortality!' with a scorn that almost shook the poet's conceit, and thereupon produced an ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... those who live a happier, freer life than any his instructor can hold out to them is a moot point. Only the future can resolve the question, and judge of what we do to-day — no doubt with good intentions, but with the ignorance born of our self-conceit. Much of the misery of the world has been brought about with good intentions; but of the Jesuits, at least, it can be said that what they did in Paraguay did not spread death and extinction to the tribes with whom they dealt.*2* So to the task of agriculture the Jesuits ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... FitzHoward. "This room, you know, is all very nice; but it is a bore coming into the City every day. And then one doesn't like to be rung for like a servant. Not that I mean to put you out of conceit with it." ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... her. Now Lady Scatcherd was no fit companion for Mary Thorne, and though Mary had often asked to be taken to Boxall Hill, certain considerations had hitherto induced the doctor to refuse the request; but there was that about Lady Scatcherd,—a kind of homely honesty of purpose, an absence of all conceit as to her own position, and a strength of womanly confidence in the doctor as her friend, which by degrees won upon his heart. When, therefore, both he and Mary felt that it would be better for her again to absent herself for a while from Greshamsbury, it was, after much deliberation, agreed ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... singular and complete adjustment of worker and implement which, with other peculiarities noted or to be noted, gives The Faerie Queene its unique unicity, if such a conceit may be pardoned. From some points of view it might be called a very artificial poem, yet no poem runs with such an entire absence of effort, with such an easy eloquence, with such an effect, as has been said already, of flowing water. With all his learning, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... his conceit and careless in his courage, thought not to inquire, or, if he gave the subject any consideration at all, dismissed it from his mind as of little moment, as to what was the subsequent state of Hornigold's ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... object in being kept back at the post, that he might pursue his wooing. Satisfied of the wealth and social standing of the lady, he felt no doubt whatever that if given a fair field he could win her, and win her he would. If unlimited conceit has not yet been mentioned or indicated as one of Mr. Gleason's prominent traits, the omission is indeed important. He felt that up to the time of Truscott's coming his progress had been satisfactory. Officers and ladies were already making ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... acquired for Done was vastly increased by his rescue of Lucy Woodrow. Conduct that had previously been ascribed to mere conceit was now accounted for by most romantic imaginings, for it is a cardinal belief amongst men of their class that the true fighter is superior to all little weaknesses and small motives. When the girl crossed the moonlit deck to Done's side, the sailors drifted away out of earshot, and inquisitive ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson |
