"Self-confident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lad had far fewer enemies than might have been expected. His manner had always been radiantly self-confident; but there was about him a conspicuous element of quick feeling, of warm humanity, which grew rather than diminished with his success. He was frank, too, and did not try to gloss over a mistake or a failure. Perhaps ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... singularly sparing of compliments. We do not remember that either friendship or fear ever induced him to bestow praise on any composition which he did not approve. On literary questions his caustic, disdainful, and self-confident spirit rebelled against that authority to which everything else in France bowed down. He had the spirit to tell Lewis the Fourteenth firmly and even rudely, that his Majesty knew Nothing about poetry, and admired verses ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sown there-that if boldly and truly wooed, she would in turn boldly and truly love. It seemed to me, that it was the first barrier only that must he carried by assault, and after that I felt sure that love like mine would soon possess the citadel of her heart. But I was foolish, self-confident, and perhaps have deserved defeat. It may be so, but Isabella Gonzales shall see that the humble captain of infantry, who would hardly be tolerated, so lowly and humble was he, will command, ere long, at least, some degree of respect by the position that his sword shall win for him. Ay, and ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... foolhardiness and obstinacy, he having, as it has been proved, acted in entire opposition to 'his owners.' On the pressing recommendation, however, of the owners, and at the representation that E. has been long in the service, and is, although too self-confident, a very respectable man, his certificate ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... motive that they grovelled, but simply because he had been favoured by the gifts of nature. Moreover, it was, as it were, an accepted idea among us that Zverkov was a specialist in regard to tact and the social graces. This last fact particularly infuriated me. I hated the abrupt self-confident tone of his voice, his admiration of his own witticisms, which were often frightfully stupid, though he was bold in his language; I hated his handsome, but stupid face (for which I would, however, ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... powers that were conferred upon King William by the Fundamental Law rendered his personality a factor of the utmost importance in the difficult task which lay before him. William's character was strong and self-confident, and he did not shrink from responsibility. His intentions were of the best; he was capable, industrious, a good financier, sparing himself no trouble in mastering the details of State business. But he had the defects of his qualities, being self-opinionated, stubborn and ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... last got into the house of Hubbles and Grease, and had risen to be their book-keeper. He had once been tried by them as a traveller, but in that line he had failed. He did not possess that rough, ready, self-confident tone of mind which is almost necessary for a man who is destined to move about quickly from one circle of persons to another. After a six months' trial he had given that up, but during the time, Mr. Moulder, the ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... at luncheon time, and contained, among much of apparently lesser interest, a diverting chronicle of Tom Verity's impressions and experiences during the first six weeks of his Indian sojourn. The young man's gaily self-confident humour had survived his transplantation. He wrote in high feather, quite unabashed by the novelty of his surroundings, yet not forgetting to pay ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... to the hour of four. The tides of trade were not yet loosed, and they found a quiet corner of the cafe. Kernan, well dressed, slightly swaggering, self-confident, seated himself opposite the little detective, with his pale, sandy mustache, squinting eyes ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... a delightful picture of youth and happiness, and radiant, unbroken health. Her slight figure was upright as a dart; her cheeks were smooth and fresh as a petal of a rose; her hair was thick and luxuriant, and she bore herself with the jaunty, self-confident gait of one whose lines have been cast in pleasant places, and who is well satisfied of her own ability to keep them pleasant ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... she had known. The very tone of his voice, which when he left had the uncertain cracked notes which indicate the unformed man, were now mellowed and settled. Mara regarded him shyly as he talked, blushed uneasily, and drew away from his arm around her, as if this handsome, self-confident young man were being too familiar. In fact, she made apology to go out into the other room to ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to fight the great arrogant bull for the leadership of the herd. He was tired of fighting the young bulls of his own age. He always won, and to an elephant constant winning is almost as dull as constant losing. He was a great deal like a youth of twenty in any breed of any land—light-hearted, self-confident, enjoying every minute of wakefulness between one midnight and another. He loved the jungle smells and the jungle sounds, and he could even tolerate the horrible laughter of the hyenas that sometimes tore to shreds the silence of the ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... live this life. There was an entire absence of the self-spirit, that is the self-assertive, the self-confident spirit. There was a remarkable confidence in action, but it was confidence in His Father's unfailing response to His requests or needs. This sense of utter dependence was natural to Him; as indeed it is natural to man unhurt by ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... is turned toward just such evil manifestations in connection with that man. If some one with psychic force thinks all you do is wrong, soon you begin to do things wrongly. A fearful uneasiness is bred. The faculties begin to fail. The formerly sure-footed stumbles. The formerly self-confident takes on ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... brightly, his wet clothes were quite dry again, he had money in his pocket once more, he was nearing home and friends and safety, and, most and best of all, he had had a substantial meal, hot and nourishing, and felt big, and strong, and careless, and self-confident. ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... Watchman'; lecturing on Shakespeare; contributing to 'The Morning Chronicle'; preaching in Unitarian pulpits; publishing his 'Juvenile Poems', etc. etc.; and throughout eccentric, impetuous, original—with contagious enthusiasm and overflowing genius—but erratic, self-confident, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... save obedience; and he consequently presented himself at the residence of Madame de Verneuil, whom he found as self-possessed and as self-confident as in the palmiest days of her prosperity. Instead of concessions she made conditions, and complained loudly and arrogantly of the proceedings of the sovereign; by whom she declared that she had been outraged in her honour, and from ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... only very difficult the day after. Your failures are often only the proofs that you have a glimpse at least of something below the surface of things. A discouraged pupil is never a source of anxiety to me. It is only the self-confident ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... we must radically disabuse our minds of the idea that thinking starts from certainty. Even the self-evident and self-confident 'intuitions' that impress the uncritical so much with their claim to infallibility are really the results of antecedent doubts and ponderings, and would never be enunciated unless there were thought to be a dispute about them. In real life thought starts from perplexities, from situations ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... species of visitor, a man of high political distinction, who came down to get a quiet Sunday to talk over an important article which I happened to be entrusted with. Meyrick's behaviour was unexceptionable: he was neither abrupt nor deferential; he was simply his unaffected, self-confident self. ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was calm and self-possessed; his antagonist impulsive and self-confident: the Englishman was the product of a volunteer army of professional soldiers; his antagonist was the product of a drafted army of ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... throwing off the effects of opium and recovering her normal self-confident personality, glanced at ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... sinewy brown hands, he bore token of wind and sun and activity in the open. His clothes were new, excellent in fit and material; but, though he did not wear them awkwardly, one gathered the impression that he was accustomed to easier, more informal garments. His manner was entirely self-confident, and betrayed neither awe nor embarrassment. Which gave York an ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... me he should have counsel, but will not heed. I have not seen him to-day. There is no one in his battalion, it seems, whom he really looks up to. He is headstrong and self-confident. Do you think he should—that he needs one?" And anxiously the brave eyes sought the strong, ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... not indignant. I have admitted that you may be right. Our detective will soon find out. He has the calm, self-confident, penetrating look of a man who could, if possible, ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... to conciliate Violante's affection, but rather to excite her repugnance, or at least her terror,—we must wait to discover why; so he stood apart, seemingly in a kind of self-confident indifference, while the girl read the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... temporary burden, and leave him the same man again. Do any of us? God forbid. It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it—if we could return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that Unknown towards which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... but encourage him to be self-confident; let him take responsibilities. He understands everything well enough; all he needs is to get a grip on himself." That is what Mr. Burton had told Margaret Ellison, and Margaret Ellison, being a girl, understood better than all the army surgeons ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... At any rate, his conduct after October fourth seems to uphold this view. He was a changed man, ardent, hopeful, and irrepressible, as he had ever been when lucky; but now, besides, daring, overbearing, and self-confident to a degree which those characteristic ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... thought he had left boyhood far behind. As a matter of fact he looked to be five years older than he was. His face was set in lines indicating resolution and daring, his drooping mustache hid the boyish curves of his lips, and he carried himself with a singular grace, self-confident, decisive, but not assertive. The swing of his shoulders had charm, and he walked well. The cowboy's painful hobble had not yet been fastened ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... glance pricked Audrey's conscience, making her feel like a thief. But her moods were capricious. At one moment she was a thief, a clumsy fraud, an ignorant ninny, and a suitable prey for the secret police; and at the next she was very clever, self-confident, equal to the situation, and enjoying the situation more than she had ever enjoyed anything, and determined to prolong the ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... angry; becoming aware of Augustin at last she tries to fling him off, to brush him aside like a tiresome insignificant fly. But "Mein lieber Augustin" holds his ground firmly, he is cheerful and self-confident, he is gleeful and impudent, and the "Marseillaise" seems suddenly to become terribly stupid. She can no longer conceal her anger and mortification; it is a wail of indignation, tears, and curses, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... War has flung the door wide open, and four million slaves stand ready to file through. It is merely a question of time, circumstance, and method. There is not a statesman so wise but this war has given him new light, nor an Abolitionist so self-confident but must own its promise better than his foresight. Henceforth, the first duty of an American legislator must be, by the use of all legitimate means, to weaken Slavery. Delenda est Servitudo. What the peace which the South ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... like himself, was massive and impressive; his bearing and manner inspired me with wistful admiration: what must life be to a man so self-confident, and so ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... the maintenance of the status quo in the Far East. Japan, willing under certain conditions to forget her grievances, had first sought alliance with Russia and had sent Prince Ito on a visit to St. Petersburg for that purpose. But Russia was too proud and self-confident to contemplate any such step, and so Japan turned to Britain, and obtained a readier hearing. Under the Alliance, both Britain and Japan disclaimed any aggressive tendencies in China or Korea, but the special interests of ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... go on, and did his Mentor honor. He was indeed intoxicated, but not with wine. The music, the excitement of the dance, the gay scene around, inspired him; he felt self-confident, nay, daring; and, one or two trifling solecisms excepted, behaved as if he had been surrounded by waxlights and obsequious domestics all the days of his life. He was a good deal remarked—made, indeed, quite a sensation; while dark hints of a ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... question with that unbounded assurance which almost always accompanies the greatest of human blunders. It is the self-confident man who compasses the finest wreck, Loyola, wounded in the defense of that strongest little city in Europe, Pampeluna—wounded, alas! and not killed—jumped to the conclusion that God had reared up Montserrat as a sign. For it was here that the Spanish soldier, who was to mould the history of half ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... remember with what earnestness the mother sought to awaken in the mind of the young man a sense of danger, going so far as to uncover a family secret and warn him of a taint in his blood. It will also be remembered how the proud, self-confident young man rejected, her warnings and entreaties, ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... furniture and painted humanity are all gotten up to deceive. Tell him that in a few years he will repent ever having seen such a place. And what is your reward? It is that you are laughed at and esteemed as one that interferes, and told to mind your own business. The young man is free and self-confident. Look in a few years for that same young man and you shall find him a terrible example of fulfilled prophecy. Diseased, worn, weak, and weary, he cries in the anguish of soul for his folly. "And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, and say, How have I hated instruction, ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... of like perversions in her only son, now on the verge of manhood,—that deeply responsible and dangerous period, when parental authority and control subside in a degree, and the individual, inexperienced yet self-confident, assumes the task ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... almost every remarkable vihara of the so-called Buddhist temples, and never met with one statue of Buddha which could not have been added in a later epoch than the construction of the temple; it does not matter whether it was a year or a thousand years later. Not being perfectly self-confident in this matter, we always took the opinion of Mr. Y——, who, as I said before, was an experienced architect; and he invariably came to the conclusion that the Brahmanical idols formed a harmonic and genuine part of the whole, pillars, decorations, and the general ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... gazing thoughtfully at the group. Yes, he was worried. And everyone was secretly worried. The situation was exceedingly delicate, fragile, breakable. Mr Bostock looked uneasily first at Adam Tellwright, tall, spick and span, self-confident, clever, shining, with his indubitable virtues mainly on the outside. If ever any man of thirty-two in all this world was eligible, Adam Tellwright was. Decidedly he had a reputation for preternaturally keen smartness in trade, but in trade that cannot be called a defect; ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... great enough in your thought—if the happiness of that hope of immortality be not sufficiently impressive to you—how can I make it seem different? The great misfortune of the learned and the wise is, that they will not regard the necessity. If they did—if they could be less self-confident—how much more readily would all these lights from God shine out to them, than to us who want the far sense so quickly to perceive and to trace them out in the thick darkness. But it is my prayer, Guy, that you kneel with ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... her from speaking] Wait; I insist upon speaking. You will never love, you say. You will live alone all your life. You're foolish and self-confident enough to think that you can do without ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... invited the whole company to share her tent. A singular type of woman, capable of most ladylike manners and having astonishingly sensible moments, but inexpressibly silly most of the time. She was really a powerful, self-confident, and shrewd woman, but preferred to seem young and helpless. Altogether the company was sufficiently curious. There was a young civil engineer from New York City, a land boomer from Skagway, an Irishman from Juneau, a representative ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... at me with a somewhat changed glance, and observed in a voice which was also changed, and with no smile: 'I don't know, Piotr Petrovitch, what you think of me now, but I dare say you remember what I used to be.... I was self-confident, light-hearted ... and not good; I wanted to live for my own pleasure. But I want to tell you this: when I was abandoned, and was like one lost, and was only waiting for God to take me, or to pluck up ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... spoke to him, but, ah! not in the old self-confident strain, but with a certain mournful submission ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... without a shepherd, rushing hither and thither seeking for a direction and a Weltanschauung, her amazing powers of industry and concentration and her rich and turbid life of feeling running to waste for lack of channelled guidance: Belgium, self-confident, industrious and rejuvenated: Italy, made one at last and measuring her strength to face the tasks of a new epoch in her history: and, behind, the great new surging world of the Slav, from the disciplined enthusiasm of Prague, under her philosopher-president, to the birth-agonies ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... France left the English colonies in America with little to disturb them, except the discontented red men beyond the Alleghany Mountains. The colonies grew larger; they did more business and they gathered more wealth. But as they prospered they became self-confident and with scarce an enemy at home they became involved in a quarrel with the motherland across the sea. England, they said, was taxing them unjustly and posting soldiers in their chief cities to carry out her will. They were by no means ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... to sit by while an extremely self-confident young Darian doctor—one of his names was Korvan—rather condescendingly demonstrated that the former blue pigmentation was a viral product quite unconnected with the plague, and that it had been wiped out by a very trivial epidemic ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... schools himself to keep this conviction out of his verse, it is likely to flower in self-confident poetry of the classic type, so characteristic of the Elizabethan age. This has such a long tradition behind it that it seems almost stereotyped, wherever it appears in our period, especially when it is promising immortality to a beloved one. We scarcely heed such ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... her as though she were an impudent servant. She revolved on Una, and with a self-confident kindliness in her voice, inquired, "What's your ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... affecting madness. We have learned also Hamlet's relation to Ophelia, the daughter of the selfish, prating, busy Polonius, who, with his son Laertes, is destined to work out the earthly fate of Hamlet. Of Laertes, as yet, we only know that he prates like his father, is self-confident, and was educated at Paris, whither he has returned. Of Ophelia we know nothing but that she is gentle, and that she is fond of Hamlet, whose attentions she has encouraged, but with whom, upon her father's severe remonstrance, ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... with only a few inches of slippery soil rendered soapy by the morning's rain, a slip of the original path having crumbled down the precipice below. The animals were wonderfully careful, and although a nervous person might have shuddered at some awkward points, both mule and ponies were thoroughly self-confident and safely carried us to the bottom. But the carts? These were making a circuit of some miles across country in the endeavour to ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... divine plan is seen as in that for the planting of the church. The heavenly Teacher passed by the great men of earth, the titled and wealthy, who were accustomed to receive praise and homage as leaders of the people. They were so proud and self-confident in their boasted superiority that they could not be moulded to sympathize with their fellow-men, and to become co-laborers with the humble Man of Nazareth. To the unlearned, toiling fishermen of Galilee was the call addressed, "Follow Me, and ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... institution had passed before the chief Essayists became members, and indeed I cannot recollect that the founders themselves ever imagined that it lay within their own power to reconstruct Society; none of them was really so sanguine or so self-confident as to anticipate so great a result from their efforts, and it will be remembered that the original phrase was altered by the insertion of the words "to help on" when the constitution was actually formulated. Society has not yet ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... society, and therefore you are exactly the man to live alone for the rest of your life. You've always worked hard, I will say that for you;—and therefore you're just the man to be contented with idleness. You've always been ambitious and self-confident, and therefore it will suit you to a T, to be nobody and to do nothing." Arthur sat silent, smoking his pipe with all his might, and his brother continued,—"Besides,—you ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... and Spanish, her sober book reading, and her little affectations of fine linen and careful speech, all seemed to crumple to nothing. She seemed again to be the furious, helpless, seventeen-year-old Harriet of the Watertown days, her armour ineffectual against that suave and self-confident presence. ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... delicate in Lady Hilda's features; they were well-modelled, but neither regular nor cold, nor with that peculiar stamp of artificial breeding which is so often found in the faces of English ladies. On the contrary, she looked like a perfectly self-confident handsome actress, too self-confident to be self-conscious, and accustomed to admiration wherever she turned. As Ernest jumped down from the dog-cart she advanced quickly to shake hands with him, and look him over critically from head to foot like ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... followed. Americans are so familiar with the European traveler who arrives and makes up his opinion over night in regard to men, morals, and manners in the Western world and have so often been the victim of this self-confident critic, that they ought not to repeat the same blunder in dealing with other peoples. [Footnote: The Outlook, July ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... other feeling, had never quite gotten over the rude shock it had received on Mrs. Shortridge's great night there. His first thought was to withdraw from the dangerous neighborhood. But he blushed at his own cowardice; and the moment after, having caught her eye, he, self-confident, made his way through the crowd, and greeted her politely as an old acquaintance. It was plain that she was a little nervous on his approach; her lips were compressed for a moment, and she drew more than one deep breath, while watching ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... wretch," said Mr. Brumley when at last she had departed. He was very uncomfortable. "She's just the quintessence of all one fears and dreads about these new developments, she's perfect—in that way—self-confident, arrogant, instinctively aggressive, with a tremendous class contempt. There's a multitude of such people about who hate the employed classes, who want to see them broken in and subjugated. I suppose ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... it to myself not to plead guilty," said Charlton, speaking still gently, for his old imperious and self-confident ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... by his adventure, and feeling much less self-confident, Sammy swam away, resolved to avoid all suspicious insects in the future. He had several other narrow escapes at this stage of his journey, but they are not ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... "Salmasius had killed him and Morus had been the dagger."[1] On the other hand, we have had recently the assurance of Dr. Crantzius that Spanheim had once told him that the only fault in Morus was that he was altier, or self-confident. That the stronger story is the truer one substantially, if not to its last detail, appears from the fact that an antipathy to Morus was hereditary in the Spanheim family, or at least in the eldest son, Ezekiel. As a scholar, an antiquarian, and a diplomatist, this Ezekiel ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... nothing soft or delicate in their aggressive beauty. Helen's hair was dark and her color high, her black eyes were bright, and her yellow dress showed a finely outlined form. Dick knew that she was proud, resolute, and self-confident. ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... is short. The hind legs appear to be longer, compared with the front legs, than is usual. The exposed incisor teeth, the short head and upturned nostrils, give these cattle the most ludicrous, self-confident air of defiance. The skull which I presented to the College of Surgeons has been thus described by Professor Owen (3/66. 'Descriptive Cat. of Ost. Collect. of College of Surgeons' 1853 page 624. Vasey in his 'Delineations of the Ox-tribe' has given a figure of ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... morning, unaccountably from the northward, instead of from the westward where Uganda lay,—avoiding the regular safari route and the belt of sleeping sickness villages, came a genial, sleek, shiny Baganda, arrayed in khaki coat, red fez, and bordered loin-cloth, gifted with tongues, and self-confident ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... three knights furiously pursued by another knight, who was very large. This knight overtook the three knights, one after another, and overthrew them, and bound them by the reins of their bridles. Sir Lionel, who was young and self-confident, thought that he would like to fight with this knight. So he mounted his horse very quietly without waking his uncle, and ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... vanity &c. n.; inflate, puff up, turn up, turn one's head. Adj. vain, vain as a peacock, proud as a peacock; conceited, overweening, pert, forward;, vainglorious, high-flown; ostentatious &c. 882; puffed up, inflated, flushed. self-satisfied, self-confident, self-sufficient, self-flattering, self-admiring, self-applauding, self-glorious, self-opinionated; entente &c. (wrongheaded) 481; wise in one's own conceit, pragmatical[obs3], overwise[obs3], pretentious, priggish; egotistic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... an especial favorite of my father. Its minor strains and its expressions of womanly doubts and fears were antipathetic to his sanguine, buoyant, self-confident nature. He was inclined to ridicule the conclusions of its last verse and to say that the man was a molly-coddle—or whatever the word of contempt was in those days. As an antidote he usually called for "O'er the hills in legions, boys," which exactly expressed ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... known in childhood, and who was in nowise related to them. She thought that he was very much improved in manner, and probably in character, by his mother's death. He was no longer sarcastic, or fastidious, or vain, or self-confident. She did not know how often all these styles of talk or of behaviour were put on to conceal shyness or consciousness, and to veil the ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... his own private quarrel. He would go alone and see the strength of the enemy; and after that, may be, he would raise the country on them: or—and half a dozen plans suggested themselves to his crafty brain as he sat brooding and scheming: then, as always, utterly self-confident. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... dead, in a London gutter! It seems strange, because he was here, befriended by monarchs, and very strong and handsome and self-confident, hardly two hours ago. Is that his blood ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... on the table," cried Troup. "It is where you belong; and you're the biggest man in New York, to-day." As Hamilton, although self-confident, was modest, Troup put down his bumper, seized the hero in his big arms and swung him to the middle of the table. Then the three, raising their glasses again, stood in a semi-circle. Hamilton threw back his head and raised his own glass. His hand trembled, and his lips moved for ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... that, but—Gardiner was right—she was too self-confident. She trusted a little to her power over the king; she imagined he would make an exception in her favor. And it was so dull to be obliged ever to be the losing and conquered party at this game; to permit the king ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... that my jests were out of place. Of course what you saw was real—there are no pretences here. Men and women do indeed suffer a kind of death—the second death—in these places, and have to begin again; but that is only for a certain sort of self-confident and sin-soaked person, whose will needs to be roughly broken. There are certain perverse sins of the spirit which need a spiritual death, as the sins of the body need a bodily death. Only thus can ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... instrument and accomplice, should he require one. Peschiera (as you may suppose by his audacious wager) is not one of those secret villains who would cut off their right hand if it could betray the knowledge of what was done by the left,—rather one of those self-confident vaunting knaves of high animal spirits, and conscience so obtuse that it clouds their intellect, who must have some one to whom they can boast of their abilities and confide their projects. And Peschiera has done all he can to render ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not answer. He muttered, "Not that I care," and fell silent, because the fatuous self-confident chatter of the Fyne girls could be heard at the very gate. But they were not going to bed yet. They passed on. He waited a little in silence and immobility, then stamped his foot and lost control of himself. He growled at her in a savage passion. She felt certain that he was threatening her and ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... where there was almost no culture. Of course there were a few homes and families of another order, where the women were refined and the men educated; but these were the exceptions. Society generally, with its bluff, loud, self-confident but ignorant planters, its numerous poor whites destitute of lands and of slaves, and its mass of slaves whose aim in life was to avoid work and escape the whip, was necessarily only one remove ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... the following day at twelve o'clock. Litvinov was at the station to meet them—a different Litvinov from the one who a few days before had been so self-confident, so spiritual, so calm and content. His whole appearance, his movements, the expression of his face, had been transformed. Some sensation, unknown before, had come, strong, sweet—and evil; the mysterious guest had made its way to the innermost shrine, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... and respected at the time, but destined to become involved in scandal. The most pressing need, both he and Nan had determined, was a house of their own; the hotel was at once uncomfortable and expensive. Accordingly a callow, chipper, self-confident, blond little clerk was assigned to show them about. He had arrived from the East only six months ago; but this was six months earlier than the Keiths, so he put on all the airs of an old-timer. In a two-seated calash, furnished by the ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... they hide in social intercourse is a touch of mystery—or at least a hope of mystery. The doctor, however, was not like other men; he was more similar to a precocious child and she comforted herself in his obvious talent for silence. If he had been alert, strong, self-confident, she might have hated him because he knew so much about her; but when she noted the pale, thoughtful face, the vast forehead outbalancing the other features, and the wistful, uncertain eyes, she felt nothing towards ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... cases, Nash, or rather his hero (for Nash does not himself make use of this language which he in no way admired, but only puts it into the mouth of his self-confident good-for-nothing as the finishing touch to his portrait), adopts Lyly's style entirely, alliteration and all: "The sparrow for his lecherie liveth but a yeere, he for his trecherie ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... certain diffidence and a distrust of his own gifts of expression. He was apt to overrate the mere verbal facility of others and to underestimate himself in the comparison—indeed, a certain humility was strongly marked in him, even as regards his art, though he was self-confident also. When he was unconstrained his great powers of observation, his shrewdness of judgment, his bubbling humor, and a picturesque vivacity of phrase not uncommon among artists made him one of the most entrancing ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... effervesced occasionally into excited squeals, and were instantly suppressed by a prefect. The Third and Fourth, which comprised the bulk of the girls from twelve to fifteen, occupied the middle of the hall, a lively, self-confident and rather obstreperous set, all at that awkward age which is anxious to claim privileges, but not particularly ready to submit to the authorized code. Every one of them was talking at the extreme pitch of her voice, and the noise ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... a fearful alteration in Bracebridge. His old keen self-confident look had vanished. He was haggard, life-weary, shame-stricken, almost abject. His limbs looked quite shrunk and powerless, as he rested his head on the table before him, and murmured incoherently from time ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... self-confident is a young man. See, then, how many things may work this way, that way, and if wise you are you will be quiet and wait for events. One thing, move not in your anger; it is like putting to sea in a tempest. Now I shall just say a word or two on ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... collision even in the strife with Elizabeth. But this trust in the unity of the nation and the Crown was now roughly shaken. The squires and merchants who thronged the benches at Westminster listened with coldness and suspicion to the self-confident assurances of the king. "I bring you," said James, "two gifts, one peace with foreign nations, the other union with Scotland"; and a project was laid before them for a union of the two kingdoms under the name of Great ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... mist of loving illusion which preserves all human relations, broke down between Daphne and her marriage. Her thoughts dwelt, in a vulgar detail, on the money she had settled upon Roger—on his tendencies to extravagance—his happy-go-lucky self-confident ways. He would have been a pauper but for her; but now that he had her money safe, without a word to her of his previous engagement, he and Mrs. Fairmile might do as they pleased. The heat and corrosion ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... but at last he was to see more in Europe as a gentleman of means. A wife had no place in his European scheme; a husband was the last thing Rachel wanted; but a long sea voyage, an uncongenial employ, and the persistent chivalry of a handsome, entertaining, self-confident man of the world, formed a combination as fatal to her inexperience as that of so much poverty, pride, and beauty proved to Alexander Minchin. They were married without ceremony on the very day that they arrived in England, where ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... you are a very self-confident lady-killer," said she; "for you make yourself expected. But I was determined to meet you. When a woman has once so far forgotten herself as to make the first advance, she has long ago left behind her all considerations ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... A self-confident nation, however, is slow to betake itself to sackcloth and ashes. On the whole it is clear, that though the last years of Edward III were a season of failure and disappointment,—though from the period of the First ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... outlaws. Rollo made these islands his rendezvous now; and he found collected there many other similar spirits, who had fled to these lonely retreats, some on account of political disturbances in which they had become involved, and some on account of their crimes. Rollo's impetuous, ardent, and self-confident character inspired them with new energy and zeal. They gathered around him as their leader. Finding his strength thus increasing, he formed a scheme of concentrating all the force that he could command, so as to organize a grand expedition ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... lofty peak that shot up from a range of mountains, and commenced travelling up its steep acclivities. But the flood followed him, roaring, and boiling, and heaving, in its onward rush. Day by day, night by night, it crept up, and up, higher and higher, until the self-confident leader, who scoffed at the supernatural warning, had but a mighty small place above the surge, whereon to shelter himself from the destruction that surrounded him. About that time the Ark, with Noah and his people, all safe and snug, came ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... of Borrow's letters must have been something of a revelation to the Bible Society's officers, who seem to have shown great tact and consideration in dealing with their self-confident correspondent There is something magnificent in the letters that Borrow wrote about this period; their directness and virility, their courage and determination suggest, not a man who up to the thirtieth year of his age has been a conspicuous ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... assumed omniscience. But if, on the other hand, thinking life in your sombre moments a nightmare of imbecility and in your more expansive moments a high adventure of immeasurable possibilities, you are straitened between cold despairs and immense hopes, you will readily forgive this irreverent, self-confident critic-journalist any crude things he may have said in his haste for sake of his flashes of perception, his happily descriptive phrases, his inspiring anticipations, his uncalculating candour, and above all his generous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... cultivate it because it makes for success, but that is an insincere habit; it's really self-hypnotism. It may help us to win in some particular enterprise, yes; but it's dangerous, like drug-taking. You must keep on increasing the dose, and blind-folding your reason. Men who do it are buoyant, self-confident, but some of their integrity ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... mystical, the sentimental, the self-confident, it was a welcome and uplifting exercise. To the timid and self-distrustful it was a terrible ordeal. To the intellectual it was a perpetual challenge to skepticism. Even Bunyan puts as his first and worst ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... stopped short instantly. It was evident that he recognised a foeman, worthy of his steel, approaching. Chand Moorut advanced with alacrity. The rogue eyed him with a sinister expression. There was no hesitation on either side. Both warriors were self-confident; nevertheless, they did not rush to the battle. Like equally-matched veterans they advanced with grim purpose and wary deliberation. With heads erect, and curled trunks, they met, more like wrestlers than swordsmen, each seeming to watch for a deadly grip. Suddenly ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... resumed his seat, and bent his head as though in profound thought. His friend, Lebedeff's nephew, who had risen to accompany him, also sat down again. He seemed much disappointed, though as self-confident as ever. Hippolyte looked dejected and sulky, as well as surprised. He had just been attacked by a violent fit of coughing, so that his handkerchief was stained with blood. The ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... country schoolmaster should sometimes be a little too self-confident is not surprising: for well nigh a lifetime he has imparted knowledge and given advice to his fellowmen. He sees that all the peasants are living by what he has taught, and that not one among them knows more than what ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... at play, unlucky in love." He thought of that adorable Jeanne whom he had held in his arms a few hours before, and who had so eagerly clung to him. He understood that she had never ceased to belong to him. The image of Cayrol, self-confident man, happy in his love, coming to his mind, ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... man was very self-confident and very convincing. His conclusions, in view of past suspicions, seemed natural enough, and Tom could not help envying and admiring ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... pointed peremptorily to the door, and Netta, all her jaunty, self-confident airs gone for once, with downcast eyes that did not dare to meet the scorn of her schoolfellows, and white lips that quivered with passion, slunk ignominiously from the room. The Principal waited a few minutes to allow her time to go downstairs, ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... spot where he was standing, and he looked at the handsome, yet sinister face—his thoughts at the same time reverting to Luisa Valverde, and the insult upon him in her presence—his nerves, not at all unsteady, now became firm as steel. Indeed, the self-confident, almost jaunty air, with which his adversary came upon the ground, so far from shaking them—the effect, no doubt, ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... her. Why the sudden lapse on the part of this extraordinary and self-confident young person into the terminology of the ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... very self in stone! With one long sigh of infinite release From pedantries past, present, or to come, I looked, and owned myself a happy Goth. Your blood is mine, ye architects of dream, Builders of aspiration incomplete, So more consummate, souls self-confident, Who felt your own thought worthy of record In monumental pomp! No Grecian drop Rebukes these veins that leap with kindred thrill, 270 After long ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... remarkable in Uncle Bat's appearance was included in his nose. It had always been a generous, weighty, self-confident nose, inviting to itself more observation than any of its brother features demanded. But in latter years it had spread itself out in soft, porous, red excrescences, to such an extent as to make ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... river, the moon rose later and later and the nights were often so dark that our drivers had great difficulty in following the line of evergreen trees that marked the road. Finally, about five hundred miles from Yakutsk, a particularly reckless or self-confident driver got off the road, went ahead at a venture instead of stopping to look for the evergreen trees, and just after midnight drove us into an air-hole, about a quarter of a mile from shore, where the water was thirty feet deep. Price and I were fast asleep, and were awakened ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... imitations of soldiers. Now, the Confederate has no ambition to imitate the regular soldier at all; he looks the genuine rebel; but in spite of his bare feet, his ragged clothes, his old rug, and tooth-brush stuck like a rose in his button-hole,[65] he has a sort of devil-may-care, reckless, self-confident look, which is ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... perhaps to this day is, worshipped by these rude mountaineers under the title of "Nikul Seyn." Spare in form, but of great stature, his whole appearance and mien stamped him as a "king of men." Calm and self-confident, full of resource and daring, no difficulties could daunt him; he was a born soldier, the idol of the men, the pride of the whole army. His indomitable spirit seemed at once to infuse fresh vigour into the force, and from the time of his arrival to the day of the assault Nicholson's ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... sometimes laughing groups. Always Sally glanced stealthily, and summed up those whom they saw; and had a tail glance for Toby. He appeared to ignore everything, and slouched along at her side, as he must have done when alone, with his head lowered. She could not make him out. In some ways he was so self-confident, in others so much as though he had never looked at a girl before. Did he know girls? Did he know what they were like? What a mystery—a delicious mystery! He wasn't soppy, yet he hardly looked at her. Funny ... funny! So she mused; continuing to give his talk quite ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... discouraging news of its comparative failure, when he "buckled to," achieved "Guy Mannering" in six weeks, and published it. Moliere tells us that he wrote "Les Facheux" in a fortnight; and a French critic adds that it reads indeed as if it had been written in, a fortnight. Perhaps a self-confident censor might venture a similar opinion about "Guy Mannering." It assuredly shows traces of haste; the plot wanders at its own will; and we may believe that the Author often—did not see his own way out of the wood. But there is little harm in that. "If I ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... resentment. After that experience, she had passed along the halls with the other outsiders, books in hand, her head held proudly high, and never turned even to glance in at the gleaming tables, the lighted candles, and the little groups of easily self-confident fraternity men and girls laughing and talking over their teacups, and revenging vicariously the rest of the ignored student-body by the calm young insolence with which they in their turn ignored their presumptive ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... humility and self-reliance, and between meekness and self-respect. The true man is both meek and self-reliant, humble and yet by no means incapable of self-assertion. The really strong man is the most thoroughly gentle of men, and the genuinely self-confident man is the one who is most truly humble in his regard for the ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... whose owners are desirous of accelerating the flow. The cartridge, in exploding, enlarges the hole, and often the output of the well is at once increased by several hundred per cent. The young fellow had the air of a self-confident rustic, with little experience in the world. Indeed, it seemed from his elated manner as if this might be his first trip from home, and the blowing of oil wells an incidental speculation. The Boy, quick at inventive nomenclature, ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... circumstances Lee, Longstreet, and Jackson entered Maryland at a point some fifty miles above Washington, with their army enthusiastic and self-confident because of recent victories. It seemed almost certain that another victory, and this on the soil of the North, would secure Confederate recognition in Europe. Reluctantly Lincoln restored McClellan to the command of the Union army ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... that then he loved display and ostentation and was proud, wilful and self-confident; nevertheless, there were times when for a moment he feared, but in spite of that timidity, he went on ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... is stated to be a dangerous sin, not only on account of its gravity, but also because it is a disposition to grave sins, in so far as it renders man presumptuous and too self-confident: and so it gradually disposes a man to lose his ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... comes to one that Henry and Beatrix would have made a complete pair if she had put some assurance in him and he had installed some principle into her, and Henry Esmond might have married his young kinswoman had he been more masterful and self-confident. Thackeray takes us to a larger and gayer scene than Scott's Edinburgh of narrow streets and gloomy jails and working people and old-world theology, but yet it may be after all Scott is stronger. No bit of history, for instance, in Esmond takes such a grip of the imagination as the story of ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... Hermione Beauregard Grandison," said Curtis. His tone was so calm and self-confident that even the prospective bride was deaf for a moment to the vital significance of the words. ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... anarchy, and against the mania for rewriting history, traditional philosophy then seemed helpless and afraid to defend itself: it is only now beginning to recover its intellectual courage. For the moment, speculative radicals saw light in a different quarter. German idealism was nothing if not self-confident; it was relatively new; it was encyclopaedic in its display of knowledge, which it could manipulate dialectically with dazzling, if not stable, results; it was Protestant in temper and autonomous in principle; and altogether it seemed a sovereign and providential means ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... writers as the most powerful Raja in India at the time of Alexander the Great's death. He was a sovereign of dignity and strength of character and had a high respect for his minister Chanakya, the Indian Macchiavelli, who was a crafty, clearheaded, self-confident, intriguing and hard politician, with the ultimate end of his ambition thoroughly well-determined and directing all his clearheadedness and intrigue to the accomplishment of that end. This minister, also called Vishnugupta, is ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... Nikitin, whom they are bringing in, or any of the spectators of this scene—that these inarticulate words of the young man, at once suppressed by the authorities, contain the truth, and that the loud, solemnly uttered sentences of the calm, self-confident official and the priest are a ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... He saw he had gone too far. He was going to answer, when the second leader, impatient of being hitherto kept in the background, stepped forward. This man did not look like a traitor, though he had an exceedingly self-confident and ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... expenses, so that he had cost nothing to his mistress, and had brought back a handsome present for her. I doubt if such a naval estimate was ever presented to an English House of Commons. Above all he had taught the self-confident Spaniard to be afraid of him, and he carried back his poor comrades in such a glow of triumph that they would have fought Satan and all his angels with Drake at ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... only have gazed helplessly at him, wondering why this strong, self-sufficient friend should pour out such unintelligible stuff over his own aching head. So he had learnt to be silent. Even now it was difficult to begin. He stammered and was shy and distrustful and eager, sometimes crudely self-confident, like a child who has played alone ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... recalled the absurd boasting that had made him feel Craig would never come to anything, he assumed it was a weakness of youth and inexperience which had, no doubt, been conquered. But, no; here was the same old, conceited Josh, as crudely and vulgarly self-confident as when he was twenty-five and just starting at the law in a country town. Yet Arkwright could not but admit there had been more than a grain of truth in Craig's former self-laudations, that there was ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... resolved on making one of those sudden movements so disconcerting to a self-confident enemy. It had been some time maturing, but could not be sooner put in execution on account of the wretched condition of Sullivan's (lately Lee's) troops, who had come off their long march, as Washington expresses it, in want ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... actually worth. Thus at first when the clerk was actually worth $5 he was given $50; later when he was worth $10 he was raised to $100. Being quite unaware of this carefully graduated scale of wages, made specially in his honor, Jimmy went to the Stafford office every day wearing the same jaunty self-confident air, convinced that his employer was underpaying him and that he was a ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... her. No, she had not changed so very much. Only something inside her seemed to have grown less tense, less self-confident. Also, she had not had Leonetta's advantages,—advantages that she herself had been chiefly instrumental in securing for her younger sister. More arts than that of wielding the French tongue are learned ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... The self-confident ease of these Rockshire men was even a trifle discouraging for a few of the school heroes themselves, who looked on nervously as their rivals coolly went up and inspected the wickets and criticised the pitch, and then proceeded, laughing among themselves, ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed |
