"Conceit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the last point was more than eight hundred—good, better, best—best of all would be those 'deleecious antipode, w'ere he would so soon promener on his head twelve thousand mile away;' and at the conceit she would fall into ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... attempted in their pride to ascend to heaven by building the tower of Babel, and their scheme ended in the confusion and multiplication of tongues. The children of the Reformation endeavored in their conceit to lead men to heaven by the private interpretation of the Bible, and their efforts led to the confusion and the multiplication of religions. Let me give you one example out of a thousand. These words of the Gospel, ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... you're out of sight of the sea, and the natives are not very interesting. They only appear to be full of conceit about their town without the least reason for it. I should like to know if there is really any thing in Marseilles to warrant the faintest belief in ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... boy's juvenile conceit and self-assurance, Riddell rejoiced to find him grown enthusiastic about anything so harmless as cricket. Wyndham had been working hard the last week or so in a double sense—working hard not only at cricket, but in striving ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... other, our host had refused or had been unable to drive the birds. One result was that we had tramped and tramped and tramped, getting only rare shots, and doing but little execution. Another result was, that the place was simply littered with lost tempers, and we sat down to lunch very much out of conceit with ourselves, our guns, our cartridges, the keepers, the dogs, and everything else. The pleasant array of plates and glasses, and the savoury odours of the meats mitigated, but did not dispel the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various
... Now, she was a very poor hand at "making up," and did not understand "Shipwrecks" or "Desert Islands" in the least; but this would not have mattered if she had been willing to learn. Joined, however, to complete ignorance on those subjects, she had a large amount of conceit, and seemed to think she could do everything better than anyone else. For instance, if they were going to play "Shipwrecks"—"I'll be captain," she would exclaim at once. This had always been Ambrose's part, and he rather prided himself on his knowledge of nautical affairs, gathered from ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... therefore, blamed for much clumsiness that he could not prevent and for a good deal of sensitiveness that came quite simply from his eagerness to do what he was told and his inability to see his way to do it. He was not, at this time, easy with strangers and seemed to them both conceited and awkward. Conceit was far from him—he was, in fact, amazed at so feeble a creature as himself!—but awkward he was, and very often greedy, selfish, impetuous, untruthful and even cruel: he was nearly always dirty, and attributed this to the evil wishes of some malign fairy who flung mud upon him, ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... interposed. It was but the foolish conceit of some teasing neighbor, she said, and not worth further discussion. Keith's blood boiled in his veins at this calm dismissal of the subject, but he gave no sign. He saw her glance warily at himself from time ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... all the party in the Chateau d'Anzy were astir, little La Baudraye having arranged a day's sport for the Parisians—less for their pleasure than to gratify his own conceit. He was delighted to make them walk over the twelve hundred acres of waste land that he was intending to reclaim, an undertaking that would cost some hundred thousand francs, but which might yield an increase ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... me with arguments to show that in anything like a fair market he would have fetched twenty-five dollars, sure—a thing which was plainly nonsense, and full or the baldest conceit; I wasn't worth it myself. But it was tender ground for me to argue on. In fact, I had to simply shirk argument and do the diplomatic instead. I had to throw conscience aside, and brazenly concede that he ought to have brought twenty-five dollars; whereas I was quite well ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hath taken Waisford and destroyed it with the country for ten miles round about it, and killed all the women who could not run fast enough, and such of the men as did not run to him. And this he did upon the admirable conceit that the men, having no women of their own, would take pains that they should not be singular in the country, but full of lessons in butchery, would become butchers themselves. It seems that there was ground for the opinion. As for me, I should certainly ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... consider—and I agree with them—that the education of boys under the age of twelve years ought to be entrusted as much as possible to women. Let me ask—of what period of youth and manhood does not the same hold true? I pity the ignorance and conceit of the man who fancies that he has nothing left to learn from cultivated women. I should have thought that the very mission of woman was to be, in the highest sense, the educator of man from infancy to old age; that that was the work towards which all the God-given capacities of women pointed; ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... and they had stopped wonderingly to listen. They talked at first vaguely to this discreet audience of space and darkness, and then, growing bolder, spoke to each other and of themselves. Invested by the infinite gravity of nature, they had no fear of human ridicule to restrain their youthful conceit or the extravagance of their unimportant confessions. They talked of their tastes, of their habits, of their friends and acquaintances. They settled some points of doctrine, duty, and etiquette, with the sweet seriousness of youth and ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... advantage of him: unless indeed they too, in their Alexandrian predilections, had a sneaking regard for certain shapings of verse into altars and hatchets, such as have been charged upon Theocritus himself, and which might be supposed to warrant any other conceit on occasion.] ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... ere Dick felt conscious that his could be no monopoly of adoration. Free trade was at once declared by glances, whispers and inquiries from a succession of well-dressed young gentlemen, wise doubtless in their own conceit, yet not wanting in that worldly temerity which impels fools to rush in where angels fear to tread, and gives the former class of beings, in their dealings with that sex which is compounded of both, an immeasurable ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... took possession of the town of Mansoul, he brought thither, with himself, a great number of Diabolonians, men of his own conditions. Now among these there was one whose name was Mr. Self-Conceit, and a notable brisk man he was, as any that in those days did possess the town of Mansoul. Diabolus, then, perceiving this man to be active and bold, sent him upon many desperate designs, the which he managed better, and more to the pleasing of his lord, than most that came ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... with infinity to each of them, we have the complex idea of an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, infinitely wise and happy being. And though we are told that there are different species of angels; yet we know not how to frame distinct specific ideas of them: not out of any conceit that the existence of more species than one of spirits is impossible; but because having no more simple ideas (nor being able to frame more) applicable to such beings, but only those few taken from ourselves, and ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... the other, with a look of evident disgust, "your conceit is considerable. I had thought to be somewhat confidential with you in regard to this idea of mine, but you seem to swallow it so easy, and to look upon it as so natural a thing, that— that—Do you suppose you've nothin' to do but ask the girl ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... mother will pity the poor little soul," Grace declared. "I'm sure she belongs to enough charitable boards and committees so that she ought to be delighted that we bring a real 'case,' as she calls them, to her," and Grace laughed at her own conceit. ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... future in a fashion which made Maisie poke fun at me for a crowing cockerel. It was only natural that I should suffer a little from swelled head that night—I should not have been human otherwise. But Andrew Dunlop took the conceit out of me with a vengeance when Maisie and I told him the news, and I explained everything to him in his back-parlour. He was at times a man of many words, and at times a man of few words—and when he said ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... should beat the pick of England and France? Throw over the fallacious time-test, and there was nothing to show for it but a natural kind of patriotic feeling, which we all have, with a thoroughly provincial conceit, which some of us must plead ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... religious fanaticism; because they were merciless in their conquests and unintelligent in their administration of subjugated provinces; because they glutted their lusts of avarice and hatred on industrious folk of other creeds within their borders; because they cultivated barren pride and self-conceit in social life; because at the great epoch of Europe's reawakening they chose the wrong side and adhered to it with fatal obstinacy. This obstinacy was disastrous to their neighbors and ruinous to themselves. During the short period of three reigns (between 1598 and 1700) they ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... GROW, not only in size, but also in ability to perform their proper work, just as individuals do. We call a person conceited who thinks that he is perfect, especially if he boasts of it. But his conceit is itself an imperfection and a hindrance to growth. So the patriotic citizen is not one who is unable to see defects in his community, or who refuses to acknowledge them, but one who has high CIVIC ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... come to understand what we have a right to mean by space, it does not imply a boundless conceit on his part to hazard the statement that space is infinite. When he has said this, he has said very little. What shall we say to the statement that ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... to hear that the "Phebus" or systematised conceit, for which the period is famous, and which the beloved Marguerite herself did not a little favour, is abundant in them. From a large selection of M. Reynier's, I cull, as perhaps the most delightful of all these, if not also of all known to me ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Fine shifts to cover that you cannot hide! No, Phoebus; by your looks may be discride Some hid conceit that harbors in your thought Which hath therein some straunge impression wrought, That by the course thereof you seeme to mee An other man then ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... which it were better a boy should not know were said. Conceit is only too ready to take youth ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... been promulgated by an erratic God who even finds pleasure in blundering. It really is a most amusing spectacle to watch Strauss as a metaphysical architect, building castles in the air. But for whose benefit is this entertainment given? For the smug and noble "We," that they may not lose conceit with themselves: they may possibly have taken sudden fright, in the midst of the inflexible and pitiless wheel-works of the world-machine, and are tremulously imploring their leader to come to their aid. That is why Strauss pours forth the "soothing ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... with contempt and derision. Moral philosophy is discarded, and the maxims of ancient wisdom are unworthy of their notice. In this manner, eloquence is dethroned; she is banished from her rightful dominions, and obliged to dwell in the cold regions of antithesis, forced conceit, and pointed sentences. The consequence is, that she, who was once the sovereign mistress of the sciences, and led them as handmaids in her train, is now deprived of her attendants, reduced, impoverished, and, stripped of her usual honours (I might say ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... requisite from your zeal and friendship. Whenever it shall strike you that my pen begins to contract, as it were, the ossification of old age, whenever you see my genius in its climateric, do not fail to give me a hint. There is no trusting to one's self in such a case: pride and conceit were the original sin of man. The probe of criticism must be entrusted to an impartial stander-by, of fine talents and unshaken probity. Both those requisites center in you: you are my choice, and I give myself up ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... glad you two fellows beat him," announced Gif. "Maybe it will take a little of the conceit out of him." ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... book, entitled "Innocency with her Open Face." At the same time he addressed a letter to Lord Arlington, principal secretary of state. In the letter he maintained that he had "subverted no faith, obedience or good life," and he insisted on the natural right of liberty of conscience: "To conceit," he said, "that men must form their faith of things proper to another world by the prescriptions of mortal men, or else they can have no right to eat, drink, sleep, walk, trade, or be at liberty and live in this, to me seems both ridiculous and dangerous." ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... sympathy they have evolved for all suffering and sorrow, but at any rate it is a racial momentum which our ancestors for four thousand years have been forging and refining in the hottest fires;" and whether it be conceit or inspiration, he adds, "and think not that we, to-day, in the comfortable lassitude of American life, can destroy it." The spirit is greater than the man; the Jew may be lost or be assimilated, but the Jewish ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... Rosalind Merton, sidling up to Maggie and casting some disdainful glances at poor Priscilla, "the conceit of some people! Of all forms of conceit, preserve me from ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... which Washington, the white mule, and one Jared Dixon figured. It is evident that the editor of this paper did not have an exalted opinion of the great patriot, as he speaks of him as "a man who has the conceit of believing that there would not be any such country as America if there had not been a George Washington to prevent its annihilation." From this account it appears that Jared Dixon was a Welshman, who lived on a hundred-acre tract of land adjoining the Mount Vernon plantation. Washington ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... distrust and dislike toward Germany. So great is this antipathy that the Germans imagine there is a malignant conspiracy against them. An upstart nation, suddenly wealthy and powerful, Germany has developed an inordinate self-conceit and self-assertion. The German glories in being a realist. He thinks only of political power and colonial expansion. Might is the supreme test of right. He constantly emphasizes the indelible character of ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... thin, poker-like Quotient with the fierce white moustache to the enormous, puffy Multiplicand, Sara thought they were the most pompous lot she had ever seen. However, since they were officers and units, she could imagine that they might have some excuse; but what possible excuse could there be for conceit in the Fractions, every one of whom had something missing about him? Some of them, of course, lacked only an ear or a little finger; but numbers of them had only one leg or one arm, and many of them were much worse off! Why, at the farthest side of the Three-Times table Sara saw a Fraction ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... of love. The lady of his mystic passion dies early. He dreams of her still, not as a wonder of earth, but as a saint in paradise, and relieves his heart in an autobiography, a strange and perplexing work of fiction—quaint and subtle enough for a metaphysical conceit; but, on the other hand, with far too much of genuine and deep feeling. It is a first essay; he closes it abruptly as if dissatisfied with his work, but with the resolution of raising at a future day a worthy monument to the memory of her whom he has lost. It is the promise and purpose of a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... but with two ashamed hands. Not since his father's death had any one talked to him like this—never with so much tenderness and truth and with every word meant for his good. All his selfrighteousness, his silly conceit and vainglory stood out before him. What an ass he had been. What a coxcomb. ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... thought, and thought—"Science, to be sure," I thought, "is everywhere the same, and truth is the same"—so I was up and off, in God's name, to foreign parts, to the heathen.... What would you have? I was infatuated with youth and conceit; I didn't want, you know, to get fat before my time, though they say it's healthy. Though, indeed, if nature doesn't put the flesh on your bones, you won't see much fat ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... Scripture, at the knowledge that it is not itself that aggregate, that it does not form part of transmigratory existence, but is the True, the Real, the Self, whose nature is pure intelligence; then knowing itseif to be of the nature of unchangeable, eternal Cognition, it lifts itself above the vain conceit of being one with this body, and itself becomes the Self, whose nature is unchanging, eternal Cognition. As is declared in such scriptural passages as 'He who knows the highest Brahman becomes even Brahman' (Mu. Up. III, 2, 9). And this is the real nature of the individual ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... pride of Greece and Rome; And when I am stretched beneath the pines, Where the evening star so holy shines, I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, At the sophist schools and the learned clan; For what are they all, in their high conceit, When man in the bush with ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... social—distinctly before him, and then, as we say, clothed it in metrical and coloured language. Most argumentative, didactic, or satiric poems are partly of this kind; and in imaginative poems anything which is really a mere 'conceit' is mere decoration. We often deceive ourselves in this matter, for what we call decoration has often a new and genuinely poetic content of its own; but wherever there is mere decoration, we judge the ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... letters show more than one stroke of the pen. He is an Englishman, but learned to write in Germany. He was once a cook. He does not write Malcolm as if used to it, and that is an assumed name. Great nerve, assurance, self-reliance, and patience. Is fond of children. Has more conceit than his manners indicate, kind-hearted man and even generous in his way, but has no notion of truth or morals. Should say he had spent much of his time in Baden Baden and other like places. Is good at gambling, but burglary is his ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... eager vehemence. "They were the letters of a hot-tempered girl, blinded by pique and self-conceit, and carelessly indulging in a foolish spite which in her heart she ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... he agreed, "but we were both a bit scared yesterday, old chap, and the more I think of this dog business the less I like it. It was mere conceit on my part that made me say it was bound to be some natural phenomenon merely because I couldn't understand how the effect ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... granted. In a hundred little ways, he seemed to perceive that he was no longer held mentally at arm's length as a stranger to their caste. Of course, his own restored self-confidence could account for much of this, but he clung to the whimsical conceit that much was also due to the fact that he was the man ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... "If monkeys, why not donkeys? Certainly they do. All creatures have some means of communicating their thoughts to each other. Why man in his conceit should think otherwise I don't know, unless it be that the birds and beasts in their conceit probably think that they alone of all the creatures ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... will, however, talk to your father about it, and we will hear what he shall say. In the meantime, raise your spirits, and don't be so easily alarmed. You are naturally nervous and timid, and this is merely a poor, cowardly conceit that has got into your head; but your own good sense will soon show you the folly of yielding to a mere fancy. Amuse yourself on the spinet, and play some brisk music that will cheer your spirits; it ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... would go a step farther than either of these writers. Beyle is an ignorant braggart, not only in music, but in art generally, and such esprit as his art criticisms exhibit would be even more common than it unfortunately now is, if he were oftener equalled in conceit and arrogance. The pillorying of a humbug is so laudable an object that the reader will excuse the digression, which, moreover, may show what miserable instruments a poor biographer has sometimes to make use of. Another informant, unknown to fame, but apparently more trustworthy, furnishes us ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... spoken word should interpret what we do. It is fair enough to tell your sister-in-law what you think and ask her judgment upon it, if you can trust yourself not to rub your own judgment in too hard. If you are unmarried, and a teacher, you will have to concede to her preposterous marital conceit a humble and inquiring attitude, and console your flustered soul by setting it to the ingenious task of teaching by means of a graduated series of artful inquiries. Don't, oh don't! seek for an outspoken victory. Be ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... think'st thou, Scott! by vain conceit perchance, On public taste to foist thy stale romance. Though Murray with his Miller may combine To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line? No! when the sons of song descend to trade, Their bays are sear, their former ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... of a book once much admired, De 'l'Art Chretien. In a later work entitled Epilogue a l'Art Chretien, but actually a sort of autobiography, written in the naivest spirit of personal conceit and pious sentimentalism, M. Rio gives an exceedingly entertaining account of ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... bodies. Yet by an odd anomaly this ogre benefactor, this Brocklehurst, must have been a zealous and self-sacrificing enthusiast, with all his goodness spoiled by an imperious love of authority, an extravagant conceit. ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... only by accepting the conditions of the theater itself. Daudet and Zola had more of the needful understanding of their fellow creatures than Flaubert and Goncourt, more of the necessary sympathy; but they had all of them not a little of the conceit of the self-made man and they assumed the egotistic attitude of the cultivated aristocrat. It would have been well if they could have taken to heart what George Sand once wrote to Flaubert: "It seems to me that your ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... tried, and I'm almost sure (only please don't repeat this loud in the woods) that if you could only catch a fairy, and put it in the corner, and give it nothing but bread and water for a day or two, you'd find it quite an improved character; it would take down its conceit a little, ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... by other things, and even after Hanno, with proud conceit, repeated his momentous question, he waited ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... like 'both,'" with composed lightness. "If you had said that you felt yourself develop angelic qualities when you were near me, I should feel flattered, and swell with pride. But 'both' leaves me unsatisfied. It interferes with the happy little conceit that one is an all-pervading, beneficent power. One likes to contemplate a large picture of one's self—not plain, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of the greatest masters of the art. People who take for granted the conceits because of the "wildness" of Ariosto, and the good taste because of the "regularity" of Tasso, just assume the reverse of the fact. It is a rare thing to find a conceit in Ariosto; and, where it does exist, it is most likely defensible on some Shakspearian ground of subtle propriety. Open Tasso in almost any part, particularly the love-scenes, and it is marvellous if, before long, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... the following:—' . . . For, it was in vain that the middle ages strove to guard the buried spirit of progress. When the dawn of the Greek spirit arose, the sepulchre was empty, the grave clothes laid aside. Humanity had risen from the dead.' It was only Wilde who could contrive a literary conceit of that description; but readers will observe with different feelings, according to their temperament, that he never followed up the particular trend of thought developed in the essay. It is indeed more the work of the Berkeley Gold Medallist ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... men either imitate their teachers, too often second-rate drawing masters, enjoying at best a dull acquaintance with the Italian fifteenth and English eighteenth centuries, or, in revolt, set up for themselves as independent, hedgerow geniuses, ignorant, half-trained, and swollen by their prodigious conceit to such monsters as vastly astonish all those who can remember ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... rejoined the other, with adorable conceit. "You aren't used to it yet, but one soon gets into it, you know! See how perfectly at my ease I am after ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... first to do several businesses of the King's, then on board Captain Fisher's ship, which we hire to carry goods to Tangier. All the way going and coming I reading and discoursing over some papers of his which he, poor man, having some experience, but greater conceit of it than is fit, did at the King's first coming over make proposals of, ordering in a new manner the whole revenue of the kingdom, but, God knows, a most weak thing; however, one paper I keep wherein he do ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... kingdom, some smart public buildings (with S. P. Q. B. emblazoned on them, at which pompous inscription one cannot help laughing), and other rows of houses somewhat resembling a little Rue de Rivoli. Whether from my own natural greatness and magnanimity, or from that handsome share of national conceit that every Englishman possesses, my impressions of this city are certainly anything but respectful. It has an absurd kind of Lilliput look with it. There are soldiers, just as in Paris, better dressed, and doing a vast deal of drumming and bustle; and yet, somehow, ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... since both the oracles of Delphi and the Sibyl's prophecies were wholly delivered in verses; for that same exquisite observing of number and measure in the words, and that high-flying liberty of conceit proper to the poet, did seem to have some divine ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... discouraged at the halting progress of the First Reader Class in Natural Science, when, early in October, the Principal ushered into Room 18, Miss Eudora Langdon, Lecturer on Biology and Nature Study in a Western university, a shining light in the world of education, and an orator in her own conceit. ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... The conceit was well worthy of my late friend in one of his most fanciful moods. In other volumes the same substitution had been made, so that to one not versed in literature it would have seemed as though "Thomas Bragdon, Esquire," ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... here,'—striking on his bosom—'nothing there'—smiting the wall—'and nothing there'—stamping—'nothing but God's Grace! We walk upon it, we breathe it; we live and die by it; it makes the nails and axles of the universe; and a puppy in pyjamas prefers self-conceit!' The huge dark man stood over against Herrick by the line of the divers' helmets, and seemed to swell and glow; and the next moment the life had gone from him. 'I beg your pardon,' said he; 'I see ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... any other temper unbecoming a man who has engaged in the public service. If, on the contrary, I should undertake the election, and fail of success, I was full as anxious that it should be manifest to the whole world that the peace of the city had not been broken by my rashness, presumption, or fond conceit of my ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... laces. Ten to one but what she will marry that lame imp next door as soon as she is grown, and endow him with the whole of it—that 'little devil on two sticks,' and I must have my run before then, of course." She laughed merrily at the conceit. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Mrs. Charrington brusquely, "don't trouble yourself about him. I haven't lived fifty years for nothing. Oh! these men, these men! They take themselves too seriously, the dear creatures. But they are just like ourselves, with a little more conceit and considerably less wit. And they are not really worth all the trouble we take for them. I must get to know your medallist, my dear. That was a strong face and an honest face. I have heard John rave about him. John is my young son, first year in medicine. His judgment, ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... But true expression, like th' unchanging Sun, 315 Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon, It gilds all objects, but it alters none. Expression is the dress of thought, and still Appears more decent, as more suitable; A vile conceit in pompous words express'd, 320 Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd: For diff'rent styles with diff'rent subjects sort, As several garbs ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... not inaptly, the evolution of the old ship of the line under full canvas into the modern man-of-war, sailless and grim, and the conceit is strengthened by the warlike build of the electric sweeper. It is easy to imagine the iron flanges that sweep the snow from the track to be rammers for a combat at close quarters, and the canvas hangers that shield the brushes, torpedo-nets for defence against a hidden enemy. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... questions that at last he got the particulars from Hiram, which naturally he very much enjoyed. These particulars were recounted with modesty, without the slightest exhibition of egotism or conceit. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a servant to be had far or near,' she went on with agitated volubility; 'and as for another like myself, of course that's too much to be hoped for.' She did not say this out of conceit, but merely as representing the actual state ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... I being lesser in mine owne conceit for to obey you, then any of those which you haue vnder your command; and greater in desire to doe you greater seruices, doe appeare before your Lordship with so much confidence of receiuing fauour, as if in effect this my good ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... perfectly normal, healthy boy. Fortunately there are no brilliant sayings to record; he did not lisp in periods. Genius was not written upon his brow, nor tied upon his sleeve. He had none of the pale fervor of precocity, or the shyness of premature conceit. He was absorbed in childish things, loved play, shirked his studies, dreamed of a life on the ocean wave, and regarded "Robinson Crusoe" and "Sinbad the Sailor" as the end of all literary things. The savagery of boyhood he lacked. ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... exclaimed the Flower angrily. 'I am sure I am'—she hesitated a moment—'quite as lovely as a Rose, or any other garden beauty;' but she could not help hanging her head for very shame whilst uttering this piece of self-conceit. ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... for Dreda Saxon," grumbled Norah of the spectacles one day when she and Susan walked together in the "crocodile" along a dull country lane. "A regular black, cringing slave—and what thanks do you get for it, I'd like to know? None! Not one little scrap. She's such a bat of self-conceit that she doesn't even know that she is helped. If you did a hundredth part as much for other people they'd go off ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... very unlike, both in appearance and character. Fred, the elder of the two, was a large, muscular, ruddy-faced boy, not much in love with books. He was of an over-bearing disposition, and had a great deal of conceit. ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... self-complacency was not of that imperturbable sort which, however intolerable to others, has at least the merit of keeping its possessor content and tranquil. With him it partook more of the nature of egotism than of self-conceit, and it therefore made him always restless and continually dissatisfied. But no effort was too great for Madame Recamier's devotion. Her friends looked upon her sacrifices with feelings of mingled regret and admiration, but she herself was unconscious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... For conceit and vanity and vainglory. Go away! My head is fit to split. Natalina, why haven't you given me my smelling salts? And why will you ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... was then no more than twenty-five,—an age at which I see the young fellows now groping about them, with no notion what they are going to do with their lives. However; I suppose every generation has a conceit of itself which elevates it, in its own opinion, above that ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... Great Mother became confused with the pestle, so, "the Soma-plant, whose stalks are crushed by the priests to make the Soma-libation, becomes in the Vedas itself the Crusher or Smiter, by a very characteristic and frequent Oriental conceit in accordance with which the agent and the person or thing acted ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... out of his element, he was certainly not out of conceit with himself. He gave a cheery little nod to every face that was turned to him, and stood, his hands thrust through his belt, his legs wide apart, surveying the company ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... must make allowances for the natural pride and conceit of these men. We know that they are half-savages, while they, as armed fighting-men accustomed to their petty wars amongst themselves, most likely look down upon us as half-barbarian people, whom they hope some day ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... Canons went away without dinner, and were pelted by the men of the town, because they had not put any meat out of the windows like the Bishops; and when the Count came to hear of it, he said it was a pleasant conceit, and that the Bishops were right cunning men, and had ding'd the ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... from my reverie with a laugh at Thorndyke's quaint conceit and a glance at the grotesquely distorted reflection of my face in the ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... fanciful is the conceit. Barren, black, and desolate, the great moor gripped the imagination as no smiling landscape of field and forest could—does yet, where enough of it remains. Far as eye reaches the dun heather covers hill and plain with its sombre ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... Standard (April 7). The gentry present were few, the nobility none, the clergy one only, while 'the mob beneath the grand stand was Athenian in its levity, in its recklessness, in its gaping expectancy, in its self-love and self-conceit—in everything but its acuteness.' 'If, sir, the nobility, the gentry, the clergy are to be alarmed, overawed, or smothered by the expression of popular opinion such as this, and if no great statesman be raised up in our hour of need to undeceive this unhappy multitude, now eagerly ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... exists than the reputation for talent which this class acquire on a flimsy basis of superficial brilliance in conversation or a penchant for witty repartee. They are self-opinionated and egoistical, with a conceit and assurance out of all proportion to their abilities. Their mental perspective is distorted and they are conspicuous for their obstinacy. In conversation they are prolix and pretentious, and they often contract religious mania, in which their ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... of Tulip's childhood, each with its little conceit of treasure: one had a toy, and another a lamb, another a bird; and all of them hunted and caught the thing they loved, and kissed it and again let go. So it went on, over and over again, more sad than the sight of a quaker as ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... exposition of the weak sides of great men, inasmuch as it reads them a valuable lesson on their own infallibility, and tends to lower the molehills of conceit that are raised in the world as stumbling-blocks along every road of petty ambition. It would, however, be but a sorry toil for the most cynical critic to illustrate these vagaries otherwise than so many slips and trippings ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... of human institutions secondary to religious faith, thus completely putting the cart before the horse, has survived that distant revolution, and is already flourishing in more eastern climes. It is as near an approach to an idolatrous worship of self, as human conceit has recently tolerated. ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... get a preliminary idea of what the distortion of the signal would be, I sent a single dot, which should have been recorded upon my automatic paper by a mark about one-thirty-second of an inch long. Instead of that it was twenty-seven feet long! If I ever had any conceit, it vanished from my boots up. I worked on this cable more than two weeks, and the best I could do was two words per minute, which was only one-seventh of what the guaranteed speed of the cable should be when laid. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the whole of the world-pervading Anglo-Saxon family. The Negroes of the West Indies number a good deal more than two million souls. Does this suggester of extravagances mean that the prejudices and vain conceit of the few dozens whom he champions should be made to override and overbear, in political arrangements, the serious and solid interests of so many [187] hundreds of thousands? That "the two races are not equal" ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... healthy corrective to our overweening conceit to remind ourselves that, remarkable and valuable as it is, it is a mere infant in arms compared to the superb powers of replacement and repair possessed by our more remote ancestors. Most invertebrates and many ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... provinces with a mixture of respect, contempt, and apprehension. She was an incalculable force, with a predisposition towards novelty, and novelty, especially if founded on theory, is abhorrent to such as old Johnny Galvin the steward, or Peter Flood the gardener, or, stiffest in her own conceit of all, Mrs. Twomey ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... them sympathy with all others, as the high cultivation of one virtue is said to bring all the rest in its train. But this man talked the shibboleth of his craft over one's head to other members of his clique with a defiance of good manners arising more from conceit than from ignorance of the ways of society; and with a transparent intention of being overheard and admired which reminded me of the little self-conscious conceits of children before visitors. He ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Court of Henri III., pleased her till he was going to the army, when he begged for one favour before his departure, which was only to put her hand to the hilt of his sword, a compliment so insipid that her Majesty was out of conceit with him ever after. She approved the gallant manner of M. de Montmorency much more than she loved his person. The aversion she had to the pedantic behaviour of Cardinal de Richelieu, who in his amours was as ridiculous ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... mustache, then in vogue among the fashionables, and proffered his suggestions with the quiet assurance that comes from a thorough appreciation of the deference due the man who is "real quality" in the Southland, and yet without the faintest suggestion of superciliousness or conceit ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... a conceit which reminds one of the pretty epistle of Philostratus, in which the footsteps of the beloved are called [Greek: ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... "But, Mr. Frohman, this is my way of doing it," or "I feel it this way," and like manifestations of actors' conceit or argument would never be met with ridicule or contempt. Sometimes he would say, "Try it my way first," or "Do you like that?" or "Does this give you a better feeling?" He never said, "You must do thus and so." He was alert to every suggestion. As a result he got the very best ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... English, having been born in Martinique; and they talked much together in French, looking at me occasionally, as if I were the subject of their discourse. It is probable conscience was at the bottom of this conceit of mine; but the latter now became so strong, as to induce me to determine to look out for a vessel for myself, and be off again. With this view, I quitted a negro who had been sent with me to market, under the pretence ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... thou mine," and made his Eve thus reverently submissive to her Adam, he little thought of bright girls in the nineteenth century, well versed in science, philosophy, and the languages, sitting in the senior class of a college of the American republic, laughing his male conceit to scorn. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... bishops!' cried the judge; 'that's a merry conceit indeed. I know what you mean by bishops—rascals like yourself, Kidderminster bishops, factious, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... continued Dick, turning upon the uncomfortable Mr. Ellis, "your self-conceit so fills every part of your body that the only thing for you is to stand on your head. Go to the rear tentpole and stand on your head. You may brace your feet against the pole. But remain on your head until we make sure that all the conceit ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... for the other: simplicity may be improved, but pride and conceit never. Well, I don't discourage you; I think it will please Sir Everard, from what he said when I jested with him about it; only I hope that intolerable papa, with his brogue, and his snuff, and his Latin, and his insufferable ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... man would pursue Philosophy, his first task is to throw away conceit. For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he has a ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... will-of-the-wisp; but a will-of-the-wisp has been known to lead a man by accident to a better path than that which he had lost.' There is no use, therefore, in wasting our pity upon those who may happen to suffer by the first of the two delusions which I noticed, viz., the conceit that either Australia or California offers a lottery without blanks. Blanks too probably they will draw; but what matters it, when this disappointment cannot reach them until they find themselves amidst a wilderness of supplementary hopes? One prize has been lost, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... position that was an unfair one, and that she regretted it. Nothing franker or more generous could have been conceived, but somehow it roused within me the impulse to make her conscious of the weakness of her sex. My masculine conceit rose and demanded an opportunity of self-assertion. I went to her, and she seemed more attractive than ever. Her independence and self-reliance nettled me, and I was mean enough to yield to the desire to see if she could resist me. But I was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... to repress This strong conceit of cleverness, Said, "I will show you, if you please, A ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... that attorney," said the admiral, as he put the letter in his pocket, "and almost enough to put one in conceit of lawyers." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... not good enough to compensate for the mischief they did him. He spoke his own language with purity: he had some merit, but more conceit: and he made no use of the merit he had, but to make himself enemies." Voltaire adds, "Bussi was released at the end of eighteen months; but he was in disgrace all the rest of his life, in vain protesting a regard for Louis XIV." Bussi died 1693. Of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... dangerous extreme, and what we are the aptest to fall into. Simplicity passes for dulness when it is not accompanied with great elegance and propriety. On the contrary, there is something surprising in a blaze of wit and conceit. Ordinary readers are mightily struck with it, and falsely imagine it to be the most difficult, as well as most excellent way of writing. Seneca abounds with agreeable faults, says Quinctilian—abundat dulcibus vitiis; and for that reason is the more ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... largest kind. He had never heard such tremendous roaring growls as the disappointed grisly was now uttering. Between these he could also hear, at no great distance, the mournful howls of One-eye. The sagacious animal had not self-conceit enough to match his weight and size against a brute that could have whipped a lion in five minutes, but he could express his feelings concerning the state ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... swallowed a pin in a piece of bread, cried and lamented as though she had an intolerable pain in her throat, where she thought she felt it stick; but an ingenious fellow that was brought to her, seeing no outward tumor nor alteration, supposing it to be only a conceit taken at some crust of bread that had hurt her as it went down, caused her to vomit, and, unseen, threw a crooked pin into the basin, which the woman no sooner saw, but, believing she had cast it up, she presently found herself ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... how De Boursy, much reduced in bulk by a considerable leakage of conceit, came across the Dop Doctor? In a drink-saloon, in a music-hall, in a gaming-house or an opium-den, at any other of the places of recreation where, after consulting and visiting hours, that exemplary father and serious-minded ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... that the Guards Brigades were the finest brigades in the Army, that this particular brigade was the best of all the Guards, that his battalion was the best of the Brigade. Hitherto he had rather deprecated these remarks as savoring of pride and self-conceit, but now he began to believe that they must be true; and so believing, if he had but known it, he had taken another long step on the way to becoming the perfect soldier, who firmly believes his regiment the finest in ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... was to have been "a continued allegory or dark conceit," in twelve books, the hero of each book representing one of the twelve moral virtues. Only six books and the fragment of a seventh were written. By way of complimenting his patrons and securing contemporary interest, Spenser undertook ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... who could not be conquered in argument, and had been confronted by a smooth-faced lad of twenty, until now, he was still the glory of the Servi; and well might the friars watch in triumph, as one by one he gathered laurels for their order. A little human flush of triumph or of self-conceit would have added charm to his argument, but these notes were lacking; clearly, logically, unanswerably, he met each question, convincing without emotion and hastening from the gay court, of which these intellectual tourneys were the delight, to the welcome seclusion of the convent. If he ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... be free, From Prussian Kings' autocracy: The world shall see all the battles cease, With dawn of universal peace. Each German worker has to pay One-fourth of what he earns per day To keep two million marching feet And please a Kaiser's mad conceit. Oh God! we're punished bitterly For Kaiser Wilhelm's blasphemy; Three million of our sons are slain, Let sacrifice be ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... little while do even the gentlest persons "see red"—asceticism appeared to him as a blasphemy against the order of nature and of nature's God. His vow of perpetual chastity, made with so passionate an enthusiasm, for the moment appeared to him an act of absolutely monstrous vanity and self-conceit. In his stupid ignorance he had tried to be wiser than his Maker, preferring the ordinances of man, to the glad and merciful purposes of God. In so doing had he not, only too possibly, committed the unpardonable sin, the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... walks where duty leads, Kausalya, known for gracious deeds, Mother of Rama, loving spouse, Bound to her lord by well kept vows? And Lakshman's mother too, the dame Sumitra skilled in duty's claim, Who brave Satrughna also bare, Second in age,—her health declare. And she, in self-conceit most sage, With selfish heart most prone to rage, My mother, fares she well? has she Sent message or ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... tone of the company they keep, he thought it of essential consequence that on their entrance into the world they should see the best models. "No company or good company," was his maxim. By good he did not mean fine. Airs and conceit he despised, as much as he disliked vulgarity. Affectation was under awe before him from an instinctive perception of his powers of ridicule. He could not endure, in favour of any pretensions of birth, fortune, or fashion, the stupidity of a formal circle, or the inanity ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... write regularly for the Mercury, of course, I sha'n't have time. But sometimes I throw off a pearl (there is no self-conceit about that, I beg you to observe) which ought for the eternal welfare of my race to have a more extensive circulation than is afforded by a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... embodied in all creeds three human impulses: fear, conceit, and hatred; and religion has given an air of respectability to these passions. Religion is a malignant disease born of fear, a cancer which has been eating into the vitals of everything that is worth while in our civilization; ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... a large group. Dodge it as you will, the lecture is and will continue to be an unsatisfactory, even vicious, way of attempting to teach social science. No reputable university tries to teach economics or politics nowadays in huge lecture sections. Only an abnormal conceit or abysmal poverty will prevent sociology departments from doing likewise. Remember that education is always an exchange, never a ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... the only antidote, the truth! It was not his part to judge of consequences so long as a duty remained to be done! and what could be more a duty than to undeceive where he had deceived, especially where the deception was aggravating that worst of diseases, self-conceit, self-satisfaction, self-worship? It was doubtful whether she would read what he might write; but the fact that she did not trust him, that, notwithstanding his assurance, she would still be in fear of how he might depreciate her work in the eyes of the public, would, he ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... wanted to fling a decanter at my head! It was about this time that an omniscient publisher, after an interview with me, exclaimed (the circumstance is historical), "I don't like that young man; he talked to me as if he was God Almighty, or Lord Byron!" But in sober truth, I never had the sort of conceit with which men credited me; I merely lacked gullibility, and saw, at the first glance, the whole unmistakable humbug and insincerity of the Literary Life. I think still that, as a rule, the profession of letters narrows the sympathy and warps the intelligence. When I saw the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... show, and advance themselves that way than any other: as, namely, those three notorious discoursing heads, Bibiena, Machiavel, and Aretino did (to let Bembo and Ariosto pass) with the great admiration and wonderment of the whole country: being indeed reputed matchable in all points, both for conceit of wit and eloquent deciphering of matters, either with Aristophanes and Menander in Greek, or with Plautus and Terence in Latin, or with any other in any other tongue. But I will not stand greatly with you in your own matters. If ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... however, the glow of tender feeling in self-love. The projection of the self-interest to others has a passion, a melting in it that self-love never seems to possess, though it may be constant and ever-operating. Self-regard, self-admiration or conceit may be very high and deeply felt, but though more common than real admiration for others, it seldom reaches the awe and reverence that the ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... conceit as he ran—the same fearless laugh with which he sent Mrs. Ingham-Baker down the gangway to her death. He paused, saw Luke and Agatha standing together ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... the opportunity. One must have youth to enjoy Italy thoroughly. The desire to go becomes less and less as one grows older. Besides, it completes every man's education; it broadens his charity and smooths down the rough edges of his conceit. I'll put the proposition in a way you can't possibly get round. You've simply got to go. You will always have that thousand, so don't worry about that. You have twenty-five hundred on hand, you say. With that you can ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... the mass of British travellers lay themselves open to the charge of insularity, and an overweening estimate of themselves and their native customs, should spend a few weeks in a Paris boarding-house, somewhere in the Faubourg St. Honore—if he would have the full aroma of British conceit. The most surprising feature of the English quarter of the French capital is the eccentricity of the English visitors, as it strikes their own countrymen. I cannot find it in me to blame Gallican caricaturists. ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... why upon the road. "And all alone?" "You see I freeze," says Truth, "And yet of those who pass I but implore A simple shelter, but I frighten them. Alas! I see an aged woman gains But small consideration!" "Younger than I," Saith Fable, "are you? Yet I may aver, Without conceit, that everywhere I am received with joy. But Mistress Truth, Why did you brave the light in such scant robe? 'Twas most ill-judged. Come, let's arrange for both, Since the same end is aim for me as you; Get 'neath my cloak, and we'll together walk. Thus, for your sake, ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... it serve to cook a pot of mojadderah. In this extraordinary and outrageous manner, barbarously capricious, he would baptise the ideal in the fire of the real. And thus, glowing with health and confidence and conceit, he enters another Park from which he escapes in the end, sad and wan and bankrupt. Of a truth, many attractions and distractions are here; else he could not forget the peddling-box and the light-heeled, heavy-haunched women of Battery Park. Here are ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... indeed, which, in its highest Stages, is a kind of spiritual Madness, may have on some Minds a quite different Effect; and the Poor Soul, that is subject to this gloomy and tyrannical Principle, may conceit strange things; it may at one Time imagine itself under the Guilt of Adam's Sin, which it never committed; and fancy itself a Saint in Jesus Christ (and what not) at another: it is a mad Principle, fruitful of ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... ostriches have such tiny wings, and that one and all have this peculiar mark on their breasts. Never, from that time to this, has any ostrich been able to fly. But even this has not entirely subdued their pride and arrogance, and their insufferable conceit. ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... me the sinister effect of which the poets speak, who find in the contrasts of life the mockery of death. I looked upon the frivolous idea, if it was serious and not a simple antithesis made in pleasantry, as the conceit of a heart that has known no real experience. The gambler who leaves the table at break of day, his eyes burning and hands empty, may feel that he is at war with nature, like the torch at some hideous vigil; ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... think it will do very well on the whole. I am not perfectly sure that the laundress will be satisfied with the arrangement of the laundry, and I don't see exactly, Fred, what you are to do for a dressing-room, when we have more than one visitor. I am out of conceit with the tinting of the drawing-room ceiling, and—and several of the mantelpieces are hideous. But, on the other hand, the dining-room is perfectly lovely, there is no end of closet-room, and the kitchen is a gem. Oh, thank ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... to the tenant a certain mode of cultivation, and a certain succession of crops, during the whole continuance of the lease. This condition, which is generally the effect of the landlord's conceit of his own superior knowledge (a conceit in most cases very ill-founded), ought always to be considered as an additional rent, as a rent in service, instead of a rent in money. In order to discourage the practice, which is generally a foolish ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... she marries him. Thats been going on for two months now; and whats the result? Youve got yourself thoroughly disliked in the office; and youre getting yourself thoroughly disliked here, all through your bad manners and your conceit, and the damned ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... flows into the Peneus, passing by Pharsalus in its course. This alludes to the battle of Dyrrachium, where Pompey was successful for a moment, only to revive in his party that vain confidence and shallow conceit ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... devil and old serpent, who also converted Adam and Eve into enthusiasts, and led them from the outward Word of God to spiritualizing and self-conceit, and nevertheless he accomplished this through other outward words. Just as also our enthusiasts [at the present day] condemn the outward Word, and nevertheless they themselves are not silent, but they fill the world with their pratings and writings, as though, indeed, the ...
— The Smalcald Articles • Martin Luther
... mean time taken place, caused the desired effect; in so much, that, on the Thursday, there was a great congregation of the male portion of the people. At the which, old Mr Dravel—a genteel man he was, well read in matters of history, though somewhat over-portioned with a conceit of himself—got up on the table, in one of the table-seats forenent the poopit, and made a speech suitable to the occasion; in the which he set forth what manful things had been done of old by the Greeks and the Romans for their country, ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... been to hide away in the rear rather than rush to the front, unless, indeed, forced forward by duty, when I can be bold enough, if need be; and that one defect in me all know to be a dislike to any assumption of dignity—surely a feeling the opposite to self-conceit; whilst, if I am not true, simple, and sincere, I am worse than I hope I am, and all my friends are deceived in their kind ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... forgotten, however, that Mr. Johnson's course was marked by the inherent qualities of his mind. He had two signal defects, either of which would impair his fitness for Executive duty; united they rendered him incapable of efficient administration:—he was conceited and he was obstinate. Conceit without obstinacy may be overcome by the advice of judicious counselors; united with obstinacy it carries its possessor beyond the bounds of prudence, almost beyond the control of reason. Obstinacy united with good judgment ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... have nothing bad to say of 'this Petrea,' as one of the friends of the house still calls her, but no longer in anger. This Petrea has had all kind of botherations in the world: in the first place with her own nose, with which she could not get into conceit, and then with various other things, as well within her as without her, and for a long time it seemed as if her own world would never come forth out ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... particular thing they even beheld as it were with their eyes, how the elements of number gave essence and being to the works of nature: a thing in reason impossible; which notwithstanding, through their mis-fashioned pre-conceit, appeared unto them no less certain, than if nature had written it in the very foreheads of ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... "Don't flatter these conceit-drugged travesties on the male sex by caring about anything they say," she tells him. "You have so many things they never will have! Why, you're a big, clean, two-handed man and—" She breaks off and gives a giggle that I would have took Verdun for. "But there!" she ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... hyperbole to say that he was himself the most enormous force of his time, he was only half conscious of this, if indeed he did not always inwardly shrink from crediting his own power and strength, as so many strong men habitually do, in spite of noisy and perpetual self-assertion. Conceit and presumption have not been any more fatal to the world, than the waste which comes of great men failing in their hearts to recognise how great they are. Many a man whose affectations and assumptions are a proverb, has lost the magnificent virtue of simplicity, for no other ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... once remarked, a "God-made" gentleman, untainted with the slightest approach to any thing like affectation or coxcombry: indeed he ridiculed the latter with much comic effect: and the words "Dandy Jack," would put him out of conceit with any article of apparel that drew forth the remark. He would answer the taunt with a face of grave rebuke, saying, "Bad Mam, bold Mam; Jack dandy? no; Jack poor boy." He had not, indeed, arrived at so copious ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... it or think it? Not she. He knew her. And if his knowledge had brought much misery, it brought consolation too. Where Lucia was concerned he had never been sustained by any personal conceit; he had never walked vainly in the illusion of her love. At that supreme point his imagination had utterly broken down; he had never won from it a moment's respite from his intolerable lucidity. There ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... the rules of Parliamentary law which Dr. Kitchell tried to teach them. She was on her feet, moving to the front, talking as she went. "I really haven't the self-assertion to walk up to strange students and tell them the error of their ways. To me, that course of action savors too much of conceit of our own virtues. The best we can do is to be perfectly honorable about the examinations. Our mental attitude toward dishonorable proceedings ought to have its influence without our going about making ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird |
