"Cocksure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He was so cocksure and so satisfied with the general flabbiness of the French that suddenly it occurred to Christophe that Kohn was a thousand times more of a foreigner in France than himself: and there was ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... for a moment at the idea, but the old cocksure manner came back again, and he pooh-poohed my valuation with ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... reason to be? To see you—you!—accepting an impertinence of this kind so quietly. For it IS an impertinence, Louise, that a man you hardly know should write to you in this cocksure way and ask you to marry him. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the job of tackling her," said Gorman. "He won't find it a bit pleasant. I daresay he doesn't know Madame Ypsilante. He wouldn't be so cocksure of himself if he did. She's the kind of woman who throws things about if she's the least irritated. If the Emperor suggests her selling those jewels there'll be a riot. But it's no business of mine. If that Emperor of ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... as Earth took form and grew round in the interminable reaches of space ahead of us, I got on well with Captain Crane. It started when she asked me if I were still so cocksure that woman had no place in the U. S. W. Upper Zone Patrol, and I was forced to answer that I was not. After that, one thing led ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... with herself rather than with Joan. "Nietzsche. I have been reading him. They are forming a Nietzsche Society to give lectures about him—propagate him over here. Eleanor's in it up to the neck. It seems to me awful. Every fibre in my being revolts against him. Yet they're all cocksure that he is the coming prophet. He must have convinced himself that he is serving God. If I were a fighter I should feel I was serving God trying to down Him. How do I know which of us is right? Torquemada—Calvin," she went on, without giving Joan the chance ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... necessity for good health, both physical and mental, before the eradication of stammering can take place, we must not overlook a few words about one particular type of derelict—the will-less or sometimes wilful individual who persists in indulging in dissipation of every kind, the individual who, with cocksure attitude and haughty sneer, laughs in the face of experience and insists that "it will not bother him." To such as these, no hope can be held out. Such tactics leave both body and mind in a condition that does not permit of up-building. There is little foundation for any effort and with the passing ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... Sometimes I'm swangfid if I'm sure, still, myself. But there's one thing you KIN be cocksure of—and that's a big doctor-bill unlest you ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... their fiery damnation; Church of England clergymen hold forth on brimstone—with now and then a dash of treacle—in the rural districts and small towns; it is not long since the Wesleyans turned out a minister who was not cocksure about everlasting torment; Mr. Spurgeon preaches hell (hot, without sugar) in mercy to perishing souls; and General Booth, who caters for the silliest and most ignorant Christians, works hell into ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... her in a familiar way. He was thirty, perhaps, in the prime of physical vigor, square-jawed, cocksure, a six-shooter slung at his hip. Though she was not giving way before him, her attitude, in its steadiness, reflected distress in a bowstrung tremulousness. Suddenly, at something he said which the easy traveller could not quite understand, ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... quite struck a-heap, Till all your tail is gone to sleep; A sort of stiffness in your nape, Holding your head well up to gape; While off go birds across the ridges, First small as flies, and then as midges, Cocksure, as they are living chicks, Death's Door is not ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Don't be too cocksure. We understand our business better than that, we don't go into it single-handed. You've collared me for a bit, but I'm not the only one in ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... bring all Africa under the German yoke. In vain should the wretched natives in after years escape by the hundreds northward in the hope of living under British government. The fools—the "easy people"—the "folk who gave without a price"—the "truth tellers"—the "men who wish to forget"—the unwise, cocksure, cleaner-living, unbelievably credulous, foolishly honest British officials would be all gone. The pikelhaube and the lash, blackmail and coercion would take the place of generosity. Africa would better be back under the Arabs again, for the Arabs had no system to speak of and were inefficient. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... that at me afore?" rejoined Jeames. "It wad hae gien me leeberty to tell ye—to the best o' my abeelity that is. Whan I'm no cocksure—an' its ower muckle a thing to be cocksure aboot—I wadna volunteer onything. I wadna say naething till I was adjured like an ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... is exactly the opposite type. She makes decisions with great promptness, never hesitates, is "cocksure" and aggressive. If M. is ambivalent, his sister B. M. is univalent. Choice is an easy matter to her, though she is not impulsive. She rapidly deliberates. She never has made any serious errors in judgment, but if she ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... athlete and a sportsman make his quarters something a little better than a Siwash would be contented with? Especially if he has prevailed on a woman to share his joys and sorrows. Some of these days Mr. Bland will wake up and find his wife has gone off with some enterprising chap who is less cocksure ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the act, and he was cocksure that no higher power existed to see, it; but for all that it worried him. Memories are not dead things but alive; they dwindle in disuse, but they harden and develop in all sorts of queer ways if they are being continually fretted. Curiously enough, though at the time ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the reviewer gives no new objections, and, being hostile, passes over every single argument in favour of the doctrine,...I fear from the tone of the review, that I have written in a conceited and cocksure style (The Reviewer speaks of the author's "evident self-satisfaction," and of his disposing of all difficulties "more or less confidently."), which shames me a little. There is another review of which I should like to know the author, viz., of H.C. Watson ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... he has done! And he is so cocksure of his ground that he didn't even glance at the papers to refresh his memory—I doubt if he has looked at them since ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... be too cocksure of that," he cautioned her. "Here is a mighty evasive bird. For, suppose we were elsewhere, then there would be here, and ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... were cheaper places," he chortled, "and the owner gave me the advantage of the broker's commission, too. Come out next spring and see what a bargain I found." In late May there came a wail for help from the cocksure buyer. A few days of unseasonably warm weather and a strong east wind had revealed the reason for the bargain. Back of a wooded area to the rear of his holding, was a combination hog farm and refuse dump. The owner ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... foreordained. If it was not "the opposition" it was the police. When Mulberry Street took a rest the publisher's "reader" began it, and the proof-reader. This last is an enemy of human kind anyhow. Not only that he makes you say things you never dreamed of, but his being so cocksure that he knows better every time, is a direct challenge to a fight. The "reader" is tarred with the same stick. He is the one who passes on the manuscript, and he has an ingrown hatred of opinion. If ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... Harry!" he cried. "If it wasn't for the men with me, I would try for sport. You are so cocksure about the lot you can do, Captain. You would aggravate ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... bury its dead" would be a better saying if the Past ever died. The persistence of the Past is one of those tragi-comic blessings which each new age denies, coming cocksure on to the stage to mouth its claim ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... turned round when I did, Dick,' he said at last, 'and saw you making the "danger-look-out-sharp" signal. I couldn't think what the dickens it was. I was so cocksure of catching the mare in half-a-mile farther that I couldn't help wondering what it was all about. Anyhow, I knew we agreed it was never to be worked for nothing, so thought the best thing I could do was to call in the mare, and see if I could find out anything then. When I got ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... knuckles into yer two eyes, an' sit for half-an-hour (or three-quarters, if it's tremendous deep) without movin'. If that don't do, and you ha'nt got time to try it over again, give in at once, an haul your colours down, but on no occasion wotiver nail them to the mast,—'xceptin' always, w'en you're cocksure that you're right, for then, of coorse, ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... you,' retorted Robert, with an equivocation altogether unworthy of his growing honesty. 'I was cocksure that cudna be a fiddle. There's the fiddle i' the hert o' 't! Losh! I min' noo. It maun be my grandfather's fiddle 'at I hae heard ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... was decidedly awkward. Yes, she was changing, growing fast. And Roger did not like it. Here she was spending money like water, absorbed in her pleasures, having no baby, apparently at loose ends with her husband, and through it all so cocksure of herself and her outrageous views about war, and smiling about them with such an air, and in her whole manner, such a tone of amused superiority. She talked about a world for the strong, bits of gabble from Nietzsche and that ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... too, is a scientist. It was in my undergraduate days that we met, and ere the half-hour struck we were quarrelling felicitously over Weismann and the neo-Darwinians. I was at Berkeley at the time, a cocksure junior; and she, far maturer as a freshman, was at Stanford, carrying more culture with her into her university than is given the average student ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London |
