"Supercilious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... venomous and quizzing smile. The second condition of "comme il faut"-ness was long nails that were well kept and clean; the third, ability to bow, dance, and converse; the fourth—and a very important one—indifference to everything, and a constant air of refined, supercilious ennui. Moreover, there were certain general signs which, I considered, enabled me to tell, without actually speaking to a man, the class to which he belonged. Chief among these signs (the others being the fittings of his rooms, his gloves, his handwriting, his turn-out, and so forth) were his feet. ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... a little more civil to great men and a little more patronising to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr Butterwell that ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... attracted attention anywhere; together they were doubly striking-looking. Arnold, tall and slight, carrying his head high, fair of complexion as a peachy-cheeked girl, was a peculiarly distinguished-looking man. The delicate pince-nez he wore emphasized slightly the elusive air of supercilious courtliness he always conveyed. Now, as he spoke to Ruth, who, although a tall girl, was some inches shorter than he, he maintained a strict perpendicular from the crown of his head to his heels, only looking down with his eyes. Short women resented this trick of his, protesting that it made them ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... continuing to assure Burnes that he cared for no connection except with the English, and Burnes professed to his Government his fullest confidences in the sincerity of those declarations. But the tone of Lord Auckland's reply, addressed to the Dost, was so dictatorial and supercilious as to indicate the writer's intention that it should give offence. It had that effect, and Burnes' mission at once became hopeless. Yet, as a last resort, Dost Mahomed lowered his pride so far as to write to the Governor-General imploring him 'to remedy the grievances ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... the proud and supercilious Warburton long crouched and fawned. MALLET, at least, well knew all that passed between Warburton and Pope. In the "Familiar Epistle" he asserts that Warburton was introduced to Pope by his "nauseous flattery." A remarkable instance, besides the dedications we ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... glanced involuntarily at her, and I knew it was impossible. My eyes swept over the form beside me, as she sat cold, impassive; her attitude one of quiet ease, her whole mien the essence of calm self-possession. That excess of pride and dignity and supercilious arrogance that in Lucia replaced, at times, her seductive plasticity at others, had always exercised a violent attraction over me. And now, when this pride seemed joined with a positive hostility to myself, it failed to repel; ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... be very inconvenient to be poor," said Fletcher, with a supercilious glance at our hero, who was ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... charming!" was his supercilious reply. "I rejoice to find that the fumier I have been forced to fling on my worn-out ancestral estate is fertilizing its barrenness. The village is probably the better for the change. But, as regards the society, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... three months, if you give away your father's gold secretly to an idle fellow who'll eat your heart out when you've nothing else to give him? You'll find out some day what your Charles is worth, with his morocco boots and supercilious airs. He has got neither heart nor soul if he dared to carry off a young girl's treasure without ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... many happy days. I crept miserably into the stuffy glass cage, where, in the folding chair, I sat as far forward as my own shape and the car's allowed; Sir Samuel's fat knees in my back, Lady Turnour's sharp voice in my ears. And for scenery, I had Bertie's aggressive shoulders and supercilious gesticulations. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... if only my supercilious critics could be trusted to tell the whole truth, that Lily is not good-looking enough for them. But that, again, is all a question of taste. Beauty is relative and not absolute. My critics may themselves ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... great thing," said Mangan, who was really a very good-natured sort of person, despite his supercilious talk. "In fact, you might do her ladyship a ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... to what do I owe the honor of this visit?" he demanded with a supercilious air, bending a card between his thumb and finger on ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Gone was the sullen frown, the indifferent glance, the bitter smile, and in that sudden, amazing, wild, sweet transfiguration of brow, eyes, mouth, that met his astonished eyes, he felt his whole mean, supercilious world slip out from under his feet! And just as precipitously, just as inexplainably, as ten days before he had seen a Great Light that had knocked all consciousness out of him, he experienced now a second Great ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... it as little less than a betise to suggest that the companion article in The Family Herald could be anything but miserable commonplace, which no one with any reputation to lose in "literary circles" would venture to read. The same arrogance of ignorance is observable in the supercilious way in which many men speak of the articles appearing in other penny miscellanies of popular literature. They richly deserve the punishment which Mr. Runciman reminds us Sir Walter Scott inflicted upon some blatant snobs who were praising ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... and his mother. I could not help observing that his manners were considerably changed: my welcome seemed less kind and hearty than I could have anticipated from the warm-hearted peasant of five years ago, and there was a stern and almost supercilious elevation in his bearing, which at first pained and offended me. I had met with him as he was returning from the fields after the labours of the day; the dusk of twilight had fallen; and, though I had calculated on passing the evening with him at the farm-house of Mossgiel, so ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... warlike covering that invited as well as preserved from danger, interposed, saying, "It was shame to put hand on ane consecreat bishop." The encounter of these two priests by evening and morning, the supercilious refusal of the mail-clad bishop to interfere, and pretence of ignorance—and, as one may imagine, the watch over him from afar of his brother of Dunkeld with the full intention of peaceful yet effective reprisals, throw a light of grim ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... man's manner aroused in me instant resentment. I was the toiler in mud-stiffened overalls, he arrogant and supercilious in broadcloth and linen. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... leathern suits; horsemen in fur coats and caps and buffalo-hide boots with the hair outside, and camping blankets behind their huge Mexican saddles; Broadway dandies in light kid gloves; rich English sporting tourists, clean, comely, and supercilious looking; and hundreds of Indians on their small ponies, the men wearing buckskin suits sewn with beads, and red blankets, with faces painted vermilion and hair hanging lank and straight, and squaws much bundled up, riding astride with furs over ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... Joseph Scaliger, who was to pronounce him totally ignorant of Latinity, was at a comfortable distance in the next century. But when was the fatal coquetry inherent in superfluous authorship ever quite contented with the ready praise of friends? That critical supercilious Politian—a fellow-browser, who was far from amiable—must be made aware that the solid secretary showed, in his leisure hours, a pleasant fertility in verses, which indicated pretty clearly how much he might do in that way if he were not ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... rigid silence, and a haughty scornful demeanour; which was so much the more disagreeable because there was nothing in his behaviour I could actually take hold of to find fault with: although his whole conduct was insolent and supercilious to the highest degree. His mother was very much agitated at receiving him on his arrival; if he felt any such agitation he certainly did not show it. He made her a very low and formal bow when he kissed her hand; and, when I held out mine, put both his hands behind his back, stared me ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gave Cosmo a round punch on the shoulder next him that made him look from his work, and then began eying him up and down in the most supercilious manner. He was a small, withered, bowed man, with a thin wizened face, crowned by a much worn fur cap. His mouth had been so long drawn down at each corner as by weights of discontent, that it formed nearly a half-circle. His eyebrows were lifted as far ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... was a slender young woman in a brown traveling suit. She was rather pretty in a supercilious way, but she showed questionable taste in a ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... magnificent; but of it they were not conscious. They but answered an instinct: the eternal brotherhood of the frontier. Far away in his well-policed, steam-heated abode urban man listens to the tale of unselfishness, and, supercilious, smiles. We believe what we have ourselves felt, we humans. First of all to come was lean-faced Crosby, one cheek swelled round with a giant quid. Close at his heels followed Trapper Conway: grizzled, parchment-faced ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... time to time, in manly knowledge. With what eager shrewdness they noted, discussed, reproduced, the manners and attire of their pilgrim guests, sporting what was to their liking therein in the streets of Chartres. The more cynical or supercilious pilgrim would sometimes present himself—a personage oftenest of high ecclesiastical station, like the eminent translator of Plutarch, Amyot, afterwards Bishop of Auxerre, who seemed to care little for shrine or relic, but lingered ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... at him. Some day he intended to take a fall out of this supercilious young Spanish aristocrat, but just now he was not equal to the task. He mumbled ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... besides being possessed of a superabundance of supercilious impudence, also possessed a set of digging tools, the handles of which were made of polished oak and walnut, with bright brass ferrules. With these he proposed to dig his fortune in a leisurely way; meanwhile, finding the weather ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... thou after here?" "Ah," I replied, "I have spent a whole month in yonder city. And what have I found? A city full of friends, enjoying every happiness in common. In vain have I tried to put a little of wickedness among them." Then the woman, with a supercilious air: "If I am to take thee for a specimen, I must have a very poor opinion of the whole tribe of demons. You seem mighty enough, but you haven't the strength of women. Stop here and keep an eye on the wash; but mind, play ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... read them, lest I should lessen my mental superiority in the eyes of my sisters. Nay, I had taken up a work of the kind now and then, when I knew my sisters were observing me, looked into it for a moment, and then laid it down, with a slight supercilious smile. On the present occasion, out of mere listlessness, I took up the volume and turned over a few of the first pages. I thought I heard some one coming, and laid it down. I was mistaken; no one ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... his eyes off the preacher, but the preacher never saw him. The reason was that he dared not let his eyes wander in the direction of Mrs. Ramshorn; he was not yet so near perfection but that the sight of her supercilious, unbelieving face, was a reviving cordial to the old Adam, whom he was so anxious to poison with love and prayer. Church over, the rector walked in silence, between the two ladies, to the Manor House. He courted no greetings from the sheep of his neglected flock as he went, and returned those offered ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... operation of natural causes, and may therefore confess the effects of Religion and morality in promoting the well being of the community; may yet, according to their humour, with a smile of complacent pity, or a sneer of supercilious contempt, read of the service which real Christians may render to their country, by conciliating the favour and calling down the blessing of Providence. It may appear in their eyes an instance of the same superstitious weakness, as that which prompts the ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... turned his back to it, and without uttering a word, faced the stranger, who eyed him from head to foot with a cool, supercilious stare; then looked at the girl, as ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... peace, Japan proposed a union between herself and China for the purpose of restoring order in Korea and amending that country's administration. China refused. She even expressed supercilious surprise that Japan, while asserting Korea's independence, should suggest the idea of peremptorily reforming its administration. The Tokyo Cabinet now announced that the Japanese troops should not be withdrawn without "some understanding that would guarantee the future ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... outward details of a life, if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-battled, never-ending struggle of it be forgotten? 'It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' Of all acts, is not, for a man, repentance the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were the same supercilious consciousness of no sin; that is death; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact,—is dead; it is 'pure,' as dead dry ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... Stoics too, that conceive themselves next to the gods, yet show me one of them, nay the veriest bigot of the sect, and if he do not put off his beard, the badge of wisdom, though yet it be no more than what is common with him and goats; yet at least he must lay by his supercilious gravity, smooth his forehead, shake off his rigid principles, and for some time commit an act of folly and dotage. In fine, that wise man whoever he be, if he intends to have children, must have recourse to me. But tell me, I beseech you, what man is that ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... were fond of advertising each other, and he had soon told her about Mike,—so she was interested to hear the sonnet. Whatever other qualities poetry may lack, the presence of generous sincerity will always give it a certain value, to all but the merely supercilious; and this sonnet, boyish in its touches of grandiloquence, had yet a certain pathos of strong feeling ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... selfishness of man hiding behind a newspaper, with an air of unconsciousness designed to deceive, or brazening it out with an uneasy aspect of defending his rights. This is the spectacle, and not a supercilious assumption on the part of the shop-girl. Her courteous refusal to take a seat, or courteous acceptance of it, is more familiar than the ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... refined order. His head was held stiffly, and his whole bearing betrayed a desire to make the most of his defective stature. His shake of the hand was an abrupt downward jerk, like a pull at a bell-rope. In the smile with which he met Mr. Wyvern a supercilious frame of mind was not altogether concealed; he seemed anxious to have it understood that in him the clerical attire inspired nothing whatever of superstitious reverence. Reverence, in truth, ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... half-malicious way of sometimes suddenly shifting his seat, and on one important night, big with the fate of Peel's Administration, deliberately anchored down in the very centre of the disgusted Tories and at the very back of Sir Robert's bench, to the infinite annoyance of the somewhat supercilious party. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... surrounded by a band of fashionable admirers, among whom George de Croisenois was always to be found. Norbert disliked all these men, but he had a special antipathy to George de Croisenois, whom he regarded as a supercilious fool; but in this opinion he was entirely wrong, for the Marquis de Croisenois was looked upon as one of the most talented and witty men in Parisian society, and in this case the opinion of the world was a well-founded one. Many men envied him, but he had no enemies, and his honest ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... expectorating. If some millionaire would give them all a trip round the world we should have some rest—and if the plug came out of the boat midway it would be more restful still. And your vote-hunting politicians with their tail-twisting campaigns, and our editors of the supercilious weeklies with their inane tone of superiority, if they were all aboard how much clearer we should be! Once more adieu, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... artist, of course, had been any good. The sketch, to be perfect, would need to portray a tall, slim, blonde person with feminine features. But no crayon could convey an idea of the squeaky voice and the supercilious manner. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... nothing to thrill and fascinate these girls with the story of how he had been shot through the leg. It pleased him to see Helen's green eyes dilate, to see Bessy Bell shudder. Presently Lane turned to speak to the supercilious Swann. ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... a fright, Hugo decided; that's what she wanted to bring her to heel. And before very long he'd see that she got it. She shouldn't shelter herself for ever behind that supercilious beast, Ledgard. Hugo was quite ready to have been pleasant to Jan and to have met her more than half-way if she was reasonable, but since she had chosen to bring Ledgard into it, she should pay. After all, she was only a woman, and you can always frighten a woman if you go the right ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... began to stroke and caress his small, black moustache, and he viewed Bellew from his dusty boots up to the crown of his dusty hat, and down again, with supercilious eyes. ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... suffer the whims of the master, who blames you unjustly, Or who calls for this and for that, not knowing his own mind, And the mistress's violence, always so easily kindled, With the children's rough and supercilious bad manners,— This is indeed hard to bear, whilst still fulfilling your duties Promptly and actively, never becoming morose or ill-natured; Yet for such work you appear little fit, for already the father's Jokes have ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... at last believes he has really settled some moot point, and triumphantly publishes his final conclusions in a scientific journal. Ten to one, the very next number of that same journal contains a dozen supercilious letters from a dozen learned and high-salaried professors, each pointing out a dozen distinct and separate precautions which the painstaking observer neglected to take, and any one of which would be quite sufficient to vitiate the whole body of his observations. There might have ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... logic, it should be smuggled into belief by fraud and violence—that is, by the testimony of the bodily senses themselves. Taking a comprehensive view of the whole field, therefore, it seems to be divided between discreet and supercilious skepticism on one side, and, on the other, the clamorous jugglery of charlatanism. The case is not really so bad as that: nihilists are not discreet and even the Bishop of Rome is not necessarily a charlatan. Nevertheless, the outlook may fairly ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... frankfurters, and drank some coffee. He had eaten a plentiful breakfast before starting, but the keen air had created his appetite anew. Beside him at the counter sat a young workingman, also eating frankfurters and drinking coffee. Now and then he gave a sidelong and supercilious glance at James's fine clothes. James caught one of the glances, ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... never known. The Norman invaders of Ireland, in the twelfth century, were struck with the easy freedom of manner and speech of the people, so different from that of the lower orders in feudal countries. They soon even came to like it; and the supercilious followers of Strongbow readily adopted the dress, the habits, the language, and the good-humor of the Celts, in the midst of whom they found ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Augustan age, Horace, Tibullus, and Ovid, expressed a supercilious disdain for the Jewish customs of Sabbath-keeping, etc., which were spreading even in the politest circles. As the political conflict between the Romans and their stubborn subjects became more pronounced, the Roman impatience of their obstinacy increased. Seneca, writing after Palestine had ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... spurns the olden time, and affects all the supercilious airs of a modern fine lady and an upstart. The object of the one writer is to restore us to truth and nature: the other chiefly thinks how he shall display his own power, or vent his spleen, or astonish the reader either by starting ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... significance simply because he was not accustomed to see men as men. He had no real interest in man as man. He was not a lover of his kind. Hence, when the Son of Man came out of Nazareth, the Pharisee was too careless or too supercilious to regard Him with interest. The divine wonder passed him by; all he saw was a wandering fanatic with no place to lay His head. He could not pierce the disguise of circumstance, and bow in love and awe before the soul of Jesus because he was not accustomed ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... righteousness. They are little, low, and mean in their own eyes, and they esteem each other better than themselves; whereas they who at all look to, or depend upon, their own righteousness for their clothing and justification before God, always look down with an air of supercilious contempt upon others who they think are not so righteous as themselves. Lord, hide self-righteous pride from my heart, and sink me into the depth of humility, that I may ever glory in Thee, in whom I am perfectly ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... eye-glass was her especial aversion, for Trix was no more near-sighted than herself, but pretended to be because it was the fashion, and at times used the innocent glass as a weapon with which to put down any one who presumed to set themselves up. The supercilious glance which accompanied her ironically polite speech roused Polly, who answered with sudden color and the kindling of the eyes that always betrayed a perturbed spirit, "I don't think many of us would ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... was now living in Normandy in peaceful old age. Perhaps her stormy and eventful life had made her feel weary of storms, for she rarely emerged from her retirement except in the character of a peacemaker. Certainly she had learnt wisdom by adversity. Her former supercilious sternness was gone, and a meek and quiet spirit, which earned the respect of all, had taken its place. She may have owed that change, and her quiet close of life, instrumentally, in some measure to the prayers of the good Queen Maud, that ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... 'Men began to feel that foreigners did not eat or drink like Christians,' which is to say that the Englishman began his contempt for the foreigner which has resulted in nearly all our wars, and has made the Englishman abroad a supercilious creature, and has made the English schoolboy put his tongue ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... compactly built, fair man of less than forty, with thin reddish brown hair, brows slanting downward from the base of the nose, and a profile of that curious Teuton type reminiscent of a supercilious hound if one could imagine such an animal with milk-blue eyes and a yellow ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... purpose of chorusing Mr. Fairlegh's assertions, and assisting to browbeat those who may be so unfortunate as to differ from him. You must find such a friend invaluable, I should imagine," he added, turning towards me with a supercilious smile. "Umph! nameless individual, sir—nameless 446 individual, indeed! Do you know who you are talking to?" Then came the aside, "Of course he does ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... "I pray you look through the gardens, and tell his Excellency Doctor Franklin that the King waits." The Bishop ran off, with more than youthful agility, to seek the United States' Minister. "These Republicans," he added, confidentially, and with something of a supercilious look, "are ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the words, COVENANT, KIRK, KING, KINGDOMS. The person who was honoured with this charge was followed by the commander of the party, a thin, dark, rigid-looking man, about sixty years old. The spiritual pride, which in mine host of the Candlestick mantled in a sort of supercilious hypocrisy, was in this man's face elevated and yet darkened by genuine and undoubting fanaticism. It was impossible to behold him without imagination placing him in some strange crisis, where religious ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... was an intellectual aristocrat, fastidious and over-sensitive, with very fine perceptions, but endowed with rather too hearty a scorn of fools as well as of folly.... The shyness due to a sensitive nature, was mistaken, as is so often the case, for supercilious pride, and the unwillingness to wear his heart on his sleeve, for coldness and want of sympathy. Such men have to be content with scanty appreciation from the outside."[12] Fortunately, there were those, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... science, the joys of rivers and green lanes—all these things are a closed book to them. Their interests are narrowed down to the purely human: a case of partial atrophy. For the purely human needs a corrective; it is not sufficiently humbling, and that is exactly what makes them so supercilious. We must take a little account of the Cosmos nowadays—it helps to rectify our bearings. They have their history, no doubt. But save for that one gleam of Periclean sunshine the record, though long and varied, is sufficiently inglorious and does not ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... "And if I did the same," he questioned in a drawl that was unmistakably supercilious, "should I ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... Gentleman is the frigid product of a rigid mechanical drill, with the mien of a posture master, the skin-deep graciousness of a French Marechal, the calculating adventurer who cuts unpretentious worthies to toady to society magnates, who affects the supercilious air of a shallow dandy and cherishes the heart of a frog. True, he repeatedly insists on the obligation of truthfulness in all things, and of, honor in dealing with the world. His Gentleman may; nay, he must, sail ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... was different. He realized too that her teeth were perfect, and her complexion, notwithstanding its pallor, was faultless. She would have been strikingly good-looking but for her mouth, and that—was it a discontented or a supercilious curl? At any rate it disappeared ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... when Norah and Mildred came together with Charlie Thesiger, their cousin, who was engaged to Mildred. Charlie was then a lieutenant in the South Kent Hussars. He was a large young man, correct, handsome, rather supercilious and rather stupid. He seemed to fill the house in Edwardes Square ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... feeling which plainly transpires in some of his replies, despite the forms of official respect that he scrupulously observed. Even in much later days, when his distinguished reputation might have enabled him to sustain with indifference this supercilious rudeness, he winced under it with over-sensitiveness. "Do not, my dear lord," he wrote to Earl Spencer a year after the battle of the Nile, "let the Admiralty write harshly to me—my generous soul cannot bear it, being conscious it is entirely unmerited." This freedom of censure, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... reprehend,' to lay hold of one with the intention of forcibly pulling him back; 'to exonerate,' to discharge of a burden, ships being exonerated once; that 'to be examined' means to be weighed. They would be pleased to learn that a man is called 'supercilious,' because haughtiness with contempt of others expresses itself by the raising of the eyebrows or 'supercilium'; that 'subtle' (subtilis for subtexilis) is literally 'fine-spun'; that 'astonished' (attonitus) is properly thunderstruck; that 'sincere' ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... Hub of the Universe, in a somewhat supercilious manner, not long ago informed one of our local friends that his own home was hundreds of miles to the southward. "'Deed, sir, how does you manage to live so far off?" with a scarcely perceptible twinkle of ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... He received me with the utmost politeness. I did not keep him a moment in suspense as to the purport of my visit. But I had no sooner made it known, than, with a supercilious smile, he said, 'And have you, Madam, been prevailed upon to revive that ridiculous old story?' Ridiculous, I told him, was a term which he would find no one else do him the favour to make use of, in speaking of the horrible actions belonging to the old story he made so light of; 'actions' ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... and to purify themselves even as He is pure. The things they once hated, they now loved; and the things they once loved, they hated. The proud and self-assertive became meek and lowly of heart. The vain and supercilious became serious and unobtrusive. The profane became reverent, the drunken sober, and the profligate pure. The vain fashions of the world were laid aside. Christians sought not the "outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... a digest of its contents," the General replied. "He smiled in a supercilious manner and said I had better ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... apprentices. There were students with their blue and white spotted cloaks, their kepis with the school badge, and their ungainly stride. There were modern young men in y[o]fuku (European dress), with panama hats, swagger canes and side-spring shoes, supercilious in attitude and proud of their unbelief. There were troops of variegated children, dragging at their elders' hands or kimonos, or getting lost among the legs of the multitude like little leaves in an eddy. There were excursion parties from ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... strangeness of her form and color once worn off, treated her with great respect. Though she was so much smaller and lighter than they, her quickness on her feet and her extremely handy way of butting made her easily master of them all. Even the supercilious young cow who had been so disagreeable to her at first grew indifferently friendly, and all was peace ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... three remaining satellites. Prissie looked at her with longing and tripped awkwardly against her chair. Hammond walked past Maggie as if she did not exist to him. Maggie nodded affectionately to Priscilla and followed the back of Hammond's head and shoulders with a supercilious, ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... Streets Length after any Man in a gay Dress. You cant behold a covetous Spirit walk by a Goldsmiths Shop without casting a wistful Eye at the Heaps upon the Counter. Does not a haughty Person shew the Temper of his Soul in the supercilious Rowl of his Eye? and how frequently in the Height of Passion does that moving Picture in our Head start and stare, gather a Redness and quick Flashes of Lightning, and make all its Humours sparkle with Fire, as ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... fruitful philosophy. But in criticism this instinct can only be satisfied intelligently and soundly by a consideration of everything appealing to consideration, and not at all by heated and wilful, or superior and supercilious, exclusions. Catholicity of appreciation is the secret of critical felicity. To follow the line of least resistance, not to take into account those elements of a problem, those characteristics of a subject, to which, superficially and at first thought, one is insensitive, is to dispense ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... Languedoc and Munster, the duellist, the master of the roistering watch-beating Paunsfords. He is not visible as pictured to the vivid fancy of the author of Kenilworth, the youthful aspirant, graceful, eager, slender, dark, restless, and supercilious, with a sonnet or an epigram ever ready on his lips to ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Philip's delays as affected; and she could not conceal her vexation, that, though she brought him a kingdom as her dowry, he treated her with such neglect that he had never yet favored her with a single letter.[**] Her fondness was but the more increased by this supercilious treatment; and when she found that her subjects had entertained the greatest aversion for the event to which she directed her fondest wishes, she made the whole English nation the object of her resentment. A squadron, under ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... his Audience at Vienna; and has sped as ill as could have been expected. The Answer given was of supercilious brevity; evasive, in effect null, and as good as answering, That there is no answer. Two Accounts we have, as Friedrich successively had them, of this famed passage: FIRST, Klinggraf's own, which is clear, rapid, and stands by the essential; SECOND, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... Harry and his fiancee arrived at Rivermead Mansions in a taxi and told me that they had seen Moroni arrive at Stretton Street about half-past nine. He was admitted by a new and rather supercilious man-servant—for Horton did not now seem to be in ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... of vanity and weakness; to make them recognize the State as a multiplication of their own families, and patriotism as the broadening of their love of home; to make them see that that mother will be most respected whose son does not, when a downy beard is grown, suddenly tower above her in the supercilious enjoyment of an artificial superiority—a superiority which consists simply, as Figaro says, in his having taken the trouble to be born; to make them see, finally, that in the highest exercise of all the powers with which God has endowed her, woman can no more refuse the duties of citizenship, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... opened my eyes, so he cheerfully remarked, in a strong twang known by some supercilious English ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... contrary, they were pleased with the way lessons were done, exercises gone through, and work accomplished. The girls were so completely in league with each other, so full of delight over the new amusement which Kathleen had started in their midst, that they had no time to be supercilious or disagreeable to the paying girls, who were left in peace. They were usually a good deal tormented by the foundationers, who took their revenge by small spiteful ways—by taking the ink when they did not want it, by removing good pens and putting bad ones in their places, by ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... started. Evidently he was regarding his callers with more courtesy, for he had been a bit supercilious ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... in it as a 'demonstrable science,'" he continued, "and while there is much that, to me, seems absurdly inconsistent in what they teach, I am not so egotistical and obstinate as to utterly repudiate, with a supercilious wave of the hand, any method of healing that could do what I know was done for that suffering child last fall. And, my dear sister, I am sure I do not need to tell you that I would be willing to yield everything—go ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... thinking he was no fish for their net; the chairmen, instead of Please your honour, d—-d him; and the pumpers, who attentively marked his nod before, now denied him a glass of water. Many of the clergy, those disciples of humility, looked upon him with a supercilious brow; the ladies too, who had before strove who should be his partner at the balls, could not bear the sight of so shocking a creature: thus despised is poverty and rags, though sometimes the veil of real merit; and thus caressed and flattered is finery, though perhaps a covering for ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... might be but wanton cruelty on her ladyship's part; a gratifying of her spleen against the girl by setting her in the pillory of public sight to the end that she should experience the insult of supercilious glances and lips that smile with an ostentation of furtiveness; a desire to put down her pride and break the spirit which my lady accounted insolent ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... for its beauty nor its ugliness, but sufficiently distinguished by its expression of invincible assurance; his person, too, though neither striking for its grace nor its deformity, attracted notice from the insolence of his deportment. His manners, haughty and supercilious, marked the high opinion he cherished of his own importance; and his air and address, at once bold and negligent, announced his happy perfection in the character at which he aimed, that of an accomplished man of ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... court of Scotland. Shauchling, shuffling, slipshod. Shoo, to chase gently. Siller, money. Sinsyne, since then. Skailing, dispersing. Skelp, slap. Skirling, screaming. Skriegh-o'day, daybreak. Snash, abuse. Sneisty, supercilious. Sooth, to hum. Sough, sound, murmur. Spec, The Speculative Society, a debating Society connected with Edingburgh University. Speir, to ask. Speldering, sprawling. Splairge, to splash. Spunk, spirit, fire. Steik, to shut. Stockfish, hard, savourless. Suger-bool, suger-plum. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of a soft peal of laughter—a woman's laughter, which came from the arched entrance to the inn. I looked up quickly. A too familiar figure was standing there watching me,—Lady Delahaye, trim, elegant, a trifle supercilious. By her side stood ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fallen into a tropical afternoon doze if it had not been for Hamilton's voice raised in the dining room. He was finishing his tiffin there. The big double doors stood wide open permanently, and he could not have had any idea how near to the doorway our chairs were placed. He was heard in a loud, supercilious tone answering some statement ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... was a Whig and a friend of the Protestant succession. He was an orator, a courtier, a wit, and a man of letters. He was at the head of ton in days when, in order to be at the head of ton, it was not sufficient to be dull and supercilious. It was evident that he submitted impatiently to the ascendency of Walpole. He murmured against the Excise Bill. His brothers voted against it in the House of Commons. The Minister acted with characteristic caution and characteristic energy; ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of itself but some cheap object of use or ornament in common life; how good it was to know that such assembling in a multitude on their part, and such contribution of their several dexterities towards a civilising end, did not deteriorate them as it was the fashion of the supercilious Mayflies of humanity to pretend, but engendered among them a self-respect, and yet a modest desire to be much wiser than they were (the first evinced in their well-balanced bearing and manner of speech when he stopped to ask a question; the second, in the announcements of their ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... everything that's honourable; only, you see, the law mayn't happen to think so," says Mr. Draper, winking his eye. ("Hang the supercilious beast; I touch him there!) Your aunt says it's the most imprudent thing ever she heard of—to call it by no ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... asked him coldly a question or two and shrugged a supercilious shoulder; ranking officers of both army and navy who openly excoriated Colonel Boynton for bringing them to hear the wild tale of a half-demented man. It was this that drove Blake to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... both, however finespun they may seem to the uninstructed eye, have contributed in no small measure to the mental and moral health of the world. But while we would not make so great a mistake as to look with a supercilious smile either upon the conflict between Nominalism and Realism or on that between the Old and the New School theology, (notwithstanding we might find countenance in Dr. Pond of Bangor, who writes to Dr. Beecher, "In Maine we do not sympathize very deeply ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... la danse, to which he has adapted words that express all the characters of love. With all this he has not the least idea of cheerfulness in conversation; seldom speaks but on grave subjects, and not often on them; is a humourist, very supercilious, and wrapt up in admiration of his own country, as the only judge of his merit. His air and look are cold and forbidding; but ask him to sing, or praise his works, his eyes and smiles open and brighten up. In short, I can show him to you: the self-applauding poet in ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... not have told you what the Taj was, whether Thebes was in Egypt or India, or what was the difference, if any, between the Golden Gate and the Golden Horn. Mrs. Trent was large, sultry, well-informed and supercilious; had the lustrous eyes of a Spaniard, and spoke in a warm contralto voice. Her figure was magnificent, and she prided herself on having a masculine intellect. Her enemies said that she had a more than ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... once present when a loud-voiced person of quality, ignorant and supercilious, was inveighing against the want of taste commonly exhibited by artists when they chose their wives, saying they almost always selected inferior women. Procter, sitting next to me, put his hand on my shoulder, and, with ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... lineaments confest! I do enjoy this bounteous beauteous earth; And dote upon a jest "Within the limits of becoming mirth";— No solemn sanctimonious face I pull, Nor think I'm pious when I'm only bilious— Nor study in my sanctum supercilious To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull. I pray for grace—repent each sinful act— Peruse, but underneath the rose, my Bible; And love my neighbor far too well, in fact, To call and twit him with ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... wear it at all. No—no: the so-called literary world was well rid of Minerva and her yellow ribbon. The great poets would have been indifferent, the little poets jealous, the funny men furious, the philosophers satirical, the historians supercilious, and, finally, the jobs without end. Say, ingenuity and cleverness are to be rewarded by State tokens and prizes—and take for granted the Order of Minerva is established—who shall have it? A great philosopher? no doubt ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which being fairly admitted, he would have been ready enough to acknowledge that the other understood pike-fishing much better than himself. But it was quite too early in the discussion to make any such avowal, and the supercilious remark of the commodore's putting him on his mettle, he was ready to affirm that he had eaten 'sogdollagers' for breakfast, a month at a time, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... Tom sneered, with that supercilious air he always assumed toward those he considered his inferiors. Why, you and your grandmother can't take care of yourselves, or you couldn't if it wasn't for Uncle Arthur. Mother says so. You wouldn't have any house to live in if he hadn't ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... Frank's younger sister, was his good friend and sympathizer, and in all the family discussions had usually taken his part. His elder sister, Edith, was like her mother, rather arrogant and supercilious, and considered her brother as lacking in family pride, and liable to disgrace them by some unfortunate alliance. It was to Blanch he always turned when he needed sympathy and help, and to her at Bethlehem he appeared the day after he had left the "Gypsy." ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... master in a somewhat supercilious tone; but he was not a little puzzled to make out what sort of man ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... the very first in the world. It is, indeed, only within a comparatively few years that the claims of women to superiority as violinists have been treated with anything better than sneers. And the supercilious and intolerant spirit which dictated such treatment had at least a much solider foundation than the narrow conservatism which refused to admit women into the lists with poets, novelists, sculptors, and painters: for power and force are the primal ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... between two heart-beats.—Yet he looked, in his grey flannels, with his straw-hat and his eyeglass, with his lean face, his even colour, his slightly supercilious moustaches—he looked a very embodiment ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Virgin and St. Anne and Mona Lisa! What was he trying to express? Vasari found the "smile so pleasing that it was a thing more divine than human to behold"; Ruskin thought it archaic, Muentz "sad and disillusioned," Berenson supercilious, and Freud neurotic. Reymond calls it the smile of Prometheus, Faust, Oedipus and the Sphinx; Pater saw in it "the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the Middle Ages with its spiritual ambitions and imaginary loves, the return to the pagan world, the sins of the Borgias." Though ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... only just to say that Nancy was not absolutely destitute of self-control and politeness, because at this moment she had a really vicious desire to wash Julia's supercilious face and neat nose with the dishcloth, fresh from the frying pan. She knew that she could not grasp those irritating "high thoughts" and apply the grime of daily living to them concretely and actually, but Julia's face was within her ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to a society girls' finishing school? Might have known it, though. Uncle Phil was fond of the sort of education that doesn't educate. I'm glad you fellows found me. I'll go home and collect every red cent, just to keep it out of the hands of the supercilious bunch of ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... young man, his habitually supercilious mouth looking even more supercilious than usual as he now spoke, "I beg that you will consider what you are proposing. We are your guests, we others, and you ask us to defend your gates against your own people for you! Surely, surely, sir, your first duty should have been to have ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... chestnut hair, delicately arched brows, and dark blue eyes. Though only eight years of age, a most unchildlike self-possession distinguished them. The expression of their countenances was haughty, disdainful, and supercilious. Their beautiful features seemed quite unimpassioned, and they moved as if they expected everything to yield to them. The girl, whose long ringlets were braided with pearls, was ushered to a seat next to her father, and, like her brother, who was ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... court. Groseillers then relinquished all idea of restitution, and tried to interest merchants in another expedition to Hudson Bay by way of the sea.[2] He might have spared himself the trouble. His enthusiasm only aroused the quiet smile of supercilious indifference. His plans were regarded as chimerical. Finally a merchant of Rochelle half promised to send a boat to Isle Percee at the mouth of the St. Lawrence in 1664. Groseillers had already wasted six months. Eager for action, he hurried back to ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... his direction for a moment, raised his eyebrows, glanced away, then back, in the most supercilious manner, and went ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... popularly supposed to start every dog fight in Nome; but this time he can prove a clear alibi, for he slept at the foot of my bed all night." Thus exonerated, the Peril passed by the line of chained dogs, bumping into them in a perfectly unnecessary manner, and emitting supercilious growls that in themselves would have been sufficient grounds for instant death if Pete Bernard's huskies could have acted upon ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... on such an occasion, without scruple trample upon all those forms with which wealth and dignity intrench themselves, nor shall anything but age restrain my resentment; age which always brings one privilege, that of being insolent and supercilious without punishment. But with regard, sir, to those whom I have offended, I am of opinion, that if I had acted a borrowed part I should have avoided their censure; the heat that offended them was the ardor of conviction, and that zeal ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... supercilious consciousness that he is figuring in a novel, and that it will not do for him to thwart the eccentricities of mysterious fiction by any commonplace deference to the mere meteorological weaknesses of ordinary human nature, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... from mere curiosity, so as to be able to say that they had seen a sewing-machine. I was often struck with the shallow, unmeaning questions which these butterflies of fashion propounded to us. Some of them made the supercilious, but disreputable boast, that they had never taken a stitch in the whole course of their lives. But the great throng of inquirers consisted of women who had families dependent on their needles, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... saved us from the usual exactions. It is pleasant to give a present, but that pleasure the Banyai usually deny to strangers by making it a fine, and demanding it in such a supercilious way, that only a sorely cowed trader could bear it. They often refuse to touch what is offered—throw it down and leave it—sneer at the trader's slaves, and refuse a passage until the tribute is raised to the utmost extent ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... ill wind (of Set) that blows nobody good, and animals had a gorgeous time in those days. Very few weren't sacred for some reason or other. It was death and destruction to kill a cat. And I don't think that cats have forgotten to this day the importance they had in Egypt. It's made them the most supercilious of animals. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... in their opinion of England and its institutions. Mr. Slick evidently viewed them with prejudice. Whether this arose from the supercilious manner of English tourists in America, or from the ridicule they have thrown upon Republican society, in the books of travels they have published, after their return to Europe, I could not discover; but it soon became manifest ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... a denizen of earth; a sublunarian; and in respect of heaven, a mere provincial; he (Hivohitee) accounted himself full as good as seraphim from the capital; and that too at the Capricorn Solstice, or any other time of the year. Strongly bent was Hivohitee upon humbling their supercilious pretensions. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... that Lord Raa was soon very weary of this, and more than once, sitting by his side, I caught the cynical and rather supercilious responses to which, under the gloss of his gracious manners, Aunt ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... a supercilious voice, Mr. Godfrey was not there; he had left some time before; no, the speaker did not know where he was going, nor when ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... he prepared himself to act the part of the cold, abstracted, supercilious man of business, the part already too horribly familiar to him as young Mr. Rickman of Rickman's. He reflected how nearly he had wrecked his prospects in that character. He bade himself beware of woman and ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... of our departure, in the twilight of the morning, I ascended the vehicle with three men and two women, my fellow travellers. It was easy to observe the affected elevation of mien with which every one entered, and the supercilious servility with which they paid their compliments to each other. When the first ceremony was despatched, we sat silent for a long time, all employed in collecting importance into our faces, and endeavouring to strike reverence and submission ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... bare almost to the ear, so that for the rest of the duel he appears to be grinning at one half of the spectators, his other side, remaining serious; and sometimes a man's nose gets slit, which gives to him as he fights a singularly supercilious air. ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... to hear more. The supercilious merchant sprang from his desk, and obsequiously offered ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... answered the menial, with a supercilious look, "but she is at breakfast, and does not see poor people ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... readers into two classes, the indolent and the supercilious, and shall accordingly address them upon the present occasion. To the former I have nothing more to say, than to refer them back to the latter part of Chapter I., Part I. where, my dear ladies, you will find an accurate account of the character of two personages, who it seems ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... found attractions in him, the chief of which was his likeness to my father. So must my father have looked when he was this fellow's age. He returned my glance with a smile that did not improve his countenance, so contemptuously languid was it, so very supercilious. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... Saint-Herem was a man of thirty, at the most, with handsome features and a commanding, elegant figure. His physiognomy expressed both intelligence and wit, but often wore a mask of supercilious impertinence when addressing persons of the ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... faces, not so usual; for far away, in a purposely chosen obscurity, May saw Weston Marchmont and the Dean of St. Neot's. The Mildmays themselves could not be present, but these two had come over from Moors End and sat there now, the Dean beaming in anticipation of a treat, Marchmont with a rather supercilious smile and an air of weariness. May could not catch their eyes but she felt glad to have them there; it was always pleasant to her that her friends should see Quisante when he was at his best, and he was going to be at ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... a sailor, swaying along, a rope in his hand; following him, walked demurely three little girls in frocks and trousers, with their French governess; then came two eye-glassed young men, dandyfied and supercilious, who appeared to have more money than brains—and the jaundiced man went into a ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various |
