"Conceited" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to love you, Lady Laura Standish; and I brought you up here to-day to ask you to share with me—my nothingness. And this I have done on soil that is to be all your own. Tell me that you regard me as a conceited fool,—as a ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... already mentioned some instances of clerks who were sometimes elated by the dignity of the office and full of conceit. Wesley enjoyed the experience of having a conceited clerk at Epworth, who not only was proud of his singing and other accomplishments, but also of his personal appearance. He delighted to wear Wesley's old clerical clothes and especially his wig, which was much too big ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... may have a good conceit of himself," Robin continued soothingly, "without being what the world calls conceited. Modesty consists not in taking a low estimate of one's own worth, but in refraining from the expectation that the world will take ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... trivial instruction of a few children in the higher life, the library must secure a room and pay for its care, a room which if it be obtained and used at all could be used for more profitable purposes; and the performer must study her art and must, if she is not a conceited duffer, prepare herself for her part for the day at a very considerable cost of time ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... replied the trapper, "I conceited as much. Yis, I knowed 'twould be a close shave ef ye got 'em, and I feared ye would run a resk that ye oughtn't to run, in yer love for ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... that is harsh of speech, he that is garrulous, he that is given to nursing anger, he that is boastful,—these six of wicked disposition, on obtaining wealth, cannot treat others with courtesy. He that regardeth sensual gratification as the end of life, he that is self-conceited, he that boasteth having made a gift, he that never spendeth, he that is weak in mind, he that is given to self-admiration, and he that hateth his own wife,—these seven are counted as wicked men of sinful habits. Righteousness, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... right, mother," put in my sister Jenny, with a merry laugh. "You'll make Tom conceited if you let him think we ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... of the world of vain phantoms, Chamilly! We are above the chatter of a wretched spot, a narrow life. Down there, nothing is not ridiculed that is not some phase of a provinciality. The dances in certain houses, the faces of some conceited club, long-spun names, business or gossip, or to drive a double carriage, are the gaslight boundaries of existence! Pah! it is a courtyard, bounded by four square walls, a path or two to walk in, and the eyes of busybodies to order our doings and sneer us out ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... may seem in democratic America Prussia's "Divine-right" theory, it is a fact that we, also, appeal to the god of battles just as Bismarck did. We open our Congress with prayers often couched in conceited belief that God is on our side; while our historians have repeatedly dwelt on the fact that America has a "manifest destiny," a phrase reiterated by editors the land over till it has sunk deep into the public ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... dine with Mrs. Procter, to meet Milnes, whose poetry you know I read to you here one evening, and you liked it, as I do, some of it, very much.... As for L——, I think one should be a great deal cleverer than he is to be so amazingly conceited, and of course, if one was, one wouldn't be; and if that sentence is not lovely, neither is "Beaver hats." ("Beaver hats is the best that is, for a shower don't hurt 'em, the least that are," quoth an old countrywoman ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... broke in. "I know what is expected of me, and, mark me, I shall do it. Captives ought not to be too conceited, mark that, too, an ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... (Jan. 1644-5) to the Battle of Kilsyth (Aug. 15. 1645); and the pervading complaint is that he had never been allowed to be real commander-in-chief, but had been thwarted and overridden by Argyle, Committees of Estates, and conceited individual nobles.] ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... weeklies. You know they publish superb artistic things. I think they are doing a wonderful work in educating the masses to a true appreciation of art. One of the wonderful parts of it was that Willie knew all about it and was not in the least conceited. Any other child would have been set up at being a model for a great artist, but Willie was not affected at all. He ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... It is so in all honest relations between these half-creatures we call men and women. In agreement, association, cooperation, lies strongest significant life for both. In separation, competition and antagonism lie arid, poor, mean lives, conceited ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... worry myself about a man's looks. I don't like good-looking men. They're too conceited ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... drinking in his words and smiling away, as conceited as a cock upon a wall, when, all in a breath, back went his right hand over his shoulder. Something sang like an arrow through the air: I felt a blow and then a sharp pang, and there I was pinned by the shoulder to the mast. In ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... read anything about German Colonial expansion. The subject may not appear to be attractive; but it is. The reason lies in the fact that one is always maliciously interested in the failures of pompous and conceited persons. In the same way, one is conscious of disappointment that the navy pother has not blossomed into a naked scandal. A naked scandal would be a bad thing, and yet one feels cheated because it has not occurred. At least I do. And I am rather ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... acquainted with young Mr. Roland, she had not learned to like him. His conceited ways and pompous manner seemed to her silly and artificial beside the frank comradeship of her ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... it does; and those who tremble succeed. In a long experience I never knew an instance to the contrary. It is the conceited fools, who feel safe, that ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... But Clara's predilections were not easily overcome, and that which had once taken root grew up and flourished. She fancied sailors were not well bred; that they thought too much of themselves or their ships; and, in short, that they were as rough and unpolished as they were conceited. ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... began to cry he stopped at once and tried to comfort me, and said our lot was not a hard one by any means, when compared with what many had to endure; that it was a good thing to have to bestir himself; that he had been a lazy, conceited, selfish puppy long enough, and that if it were possible he meant to be a man. And then he spoke of you as his good angel, and said you were the truest, purest, and sweetest woman in all the world, and that neither of us could ever repay you ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... them liberal-minded. But you come here like a Pharisee, and wish to rebuke your superiors for trifles; and the ordinances of men are more to you than God's command. Fie! Martin! Remember your own words: 'We should obey God rather than men!' You conceited slave of the letter, ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... all praise: they are unadorned, straightforward, and elegant, every ornament being stripped off as it were a garment. While he desired to give others the material out of which to create a history; he may perhaps have done a kindness to conceited writers who wish to trick them out with meretricious graces; [26] but he has deterred all men of sound taste from touching them. For in history a pure and brilliant conciseness of style is the highest attainable beauty." Condensed as ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... stupid, strutting representatives of littleness! The more insignificant the petty masters, the more conceited are the petty ambassadors. I have no time to see them to-day. We are at peace with the whole world, and our only diplomacy regards ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... who despise governments, presumptuous, self-conceited, tremble not to revile dignities, whereas the angels, who are greater in power and might, bring not a railing accusation against them before the Lord. He calls kings, princes and lords, and all civil magistracy, governments; and not ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... quite abashed by the words of the Wind, for she was conscious of feeling very conceited that morning, in consequence of having heard the gardener say something very flattering about her beauty; so she hung down her rich bell-flowers rather lower than ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... fellow up!" remonstrated Mr. Ramsay amiably. "It sounds awfully conceited to say so, of course, but I think I could have carried off the cup if I had liked. At least every one said she was hard hit. And she wasn't long in the tooth, or very ugly, or vulgar, or anything; but somehow I couldn't stand it. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... myself— worse than slaves. He dares to call me 'his little count!' His little count! Ah, I shall prove to this ship-builder's son one day that little Count Saurau is, after all, a greater man than our overbearing and conceited prime minister. But patience, patience! My day will come. And on that day I shall hurl little Thugut from ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... gent who assembles with his peers to hang a Mexican. As a first flash outen the box, he puts up a strong pray'r talk to get this crim'nal by the heavenly gate. Now, whatever do you reckon a saint who knows his business is goin' to say to that? Yere stands this conceited Laredo party recommendin' for admission on high a Mexican he's he'pin' to lynch as not good enough for Texas. If them powers above ain't allowin' that prayin' party's got his nerve with him, they ain't givin' the case the study which is ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... agreed on tackle or bait or ground or anything. I enlisted the interest of my brother R. C., and we decided, just to satisfy curiosity, to go out and catch some bonefish. The complacent, smug conceit of fishermen! I can see now how funny ours was. Fortunately it is now past tense. If I am ever conceited again I hope no one will ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... she's a nasty, stuck-up, conceited little ape, that Maura White, or whatever her ridiculous name is. They pretend her father was an officer, but he was really a bad cousin of old Mr. White's that ran away; and her mother is not a lady—-a great fat disgusting woman, half a nigger; and ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... never occur to you to calculate how many fools' heads, which might have produced an idea or two in the year, if suffered to remain in quiet, get effectually addled by jolting to and fro in these flying chariots of yours; how many decent countrymen become conceited bumpkins after a cattle-show dinner in the capital, which they could not have attended save for your means; how many decent country parsons return critics and spouters, by way of importing the newest ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... mean he's not shy? All young men are conceited. I think I should like you to bring him ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... this Parthian shot, yet feeling, even in her triumph, that the conceited fool seemed actually relieved at her departure! And for the first time she now thought that she had seen something in his face that she did not like! But her lazy independence reasserted itself soon, and ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... last house of Parkes, which had a tower; but Parkes had himself said that his architect was ruinous. You never knew where you were with those fellows; if they had a name they ran you into no end of expense and were conceited into the bargain. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... these were votive offerings, where public spirit had spoken in gratitude. More often they had been ordered at the cost of some one who had taken from a citizen what he could not repay. The private citizen might often hesitate about prosecuting a bore, or a nuisance, or a conceited company officer. But the Kategoroi made no bones about it. They called the citizen as a witness, and gave the criminal a reminder which posterity held in awe. Their point, as they always explained it to me, is, that the citizen's health and strength are essential to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... to have his learning attacked, nor could Jones bear some passage or other in the foregoing speech. And now, looking upon his companion with a contemptuous and disdainful air (a thing not usual with him), he cried, "Partridge, I see thou art a conceited old fool, and I wish thou art not likewise an old rogue. Indeed, if I was as well convinced of the latter as I am of the former, thou should'st travel no farther ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... standing behind the altar and heard that, so he cried in a very gruff voice, "Thou shalt not have him! Thou shalt not have him!" The maiden thought that the child Mary who stood by her mother Anne had called out that to her, and was angry, and cried, "Fiddle de dee, conceited thing, hold your tongue, and let ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... but conceited girl!" exclaimed the proud matron as she kissed Marguerite, and sallied forth to chaperone the Misses Lister ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... some of them with brains, I suppose,' Hilda answered, as one who makes a great concession. 'There's Herbert Alderney, who's member for somewhere or other—Church Stretton, I think—and makes speeches in the House; he's clever, they say, but such a conceited fellow to talk to. And there's Wilfrid Faunthorp, who writes poems, and gets them printed in the magazines, too, because he knows the editors. And there's Randolph Hastings, who goes in for painting, and has little red and blue daubs at the Grosvenor by special invitation of the director. ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... person, especially to a young woman, is good health; but unless she will take care of it herself, it is an almost hopeless task to attempt to take care of it for her. You may have heard the somewhat slangy expression sometimes made about stupid and conceited young men, that they "don't know enough to come in when it rains." It is, however, an almost just complaint of many a pretty and otherwise sensible young woman that she apparently doesn't know enough ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... devil for a self-conceited ass. One pleasure of this twist of intrigue is, to revenge me of that villain, who thought himself so essential, that, by Heaven! he forced himself on my privacy, and lectured me like a schoolboy. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... keep him out of the way. Ethel has been disposed of these ten years. Did not Anne tell you? How foolish of her! But all mothers like to have young men dying for their daughters. Your son is really the handsomest boy in London. Who is that conceited-looking young man in the window? Mr. Pen—what? has your son really been very wicked? I was told he was ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of a minor to make a contract. Idiocy or imbecility is weakness of mind, while insanity is disorder or abnormal action of mind. Folly and foolishness denote a want of mental and often of moral balance. Fatuity is sometimes used as equivalent to idiocy, but more frequently signifies conceited and excessive foolishness or folly. Stupidity is dulness and slowness of mental action which may range all the way from lack of normal readiness to absolute ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... 'that there was such a language as German, and in due time there was a young man who had actually been in Germany, and was translating "Nathan the Wise." When William Taylor became eminent as almost the only German scholar in England, old Norwich was very proud and grew, to say the truth, excessively conceited. She was (and she might be) proud of her Sayers, she boasted of her intellectual supper-parties, and finally called herself the "Athens ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... let not this name, purely fictitious, be conceited to mean the learned Olaus Wormius; much less (as it was unwarrantably foisted into the surreptitious editions) our own antiquary, Mr Thomas Hearne, who had no way aggrieved our poet, but, on the contrary, published ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... of play and harmless sports. We frequently see full-grown and able-bodied natives indulging in amusements which the men of the West lay aside with their pinafores, or when their curls are cut. If we, in the conceited pride of our superior civilization, look down upon this as childish, we must remember that the Oriental, from the pinnacle of his lofty, and to him immeasurably elevated, civilization, looks down upon our manly sports with contempt, thinking it a ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... into three classes, Druids, Bards, and Ouates. The Druids philosophized and theologized, the Bards harped and sang, and the Ouates divined and CONTEMPLATED THE NATURE OF THINGS. I thought I would tell you, as you might not know. I execrate the self-conceited way some people have of tossing off their erudite items and allusions in a careless, familiar style, as if it is such A B C to them that they don't for a moment think of any one's not understanding it. Worse ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... way!" she said scornfully, "Is it possible that you can be so conceited! A woman says she is dull and bored, and straightway the nearest man imagines his uncouth caresses will amuse her! TIENS TIENS! When will you understand that all women are not ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... itself in before our eyes as children are at a rapidly managed magic-lantern show, when the impatient exhibitor presents a View in Egypt to eyes which have hardly begun to take in Solomon's Temple. We like them far better than the majority of the more elaborate, infinitely conceited, narrow-minded, squeakingly-witty essays with which the country has been of late visited for its sins from the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his own, and that he has a right to do with it what he likes. Man knows nothing but what God teaches him. Self tells him that he has found out everything for himself, and can say what he thinks fit without fear of God or man. Therefore the proud, self-willed, self-conceited man must come to harm, like Malvolio in the famous play, merely because he is in the blackest night of ignorance. He has mistaken who he is, what he is, where he is. He is fancying himself, as many mad men do, the centre of the universe; while God is the centre of the ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... after year, a class of thinkers, of earnest, working, strong-minded men and women, searchers after truth and disciples of the highest good, instead of the crowd of half-fledged intellectual idlers who yearly emerge from our schools with the conceited idea that the course of study is finished, the paths of investigation fully explored, and that life is henceforth a holiday from study. Under such a giant impulse our society could not but advance with enormous strides in all that pertains to true civilization, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... parable reacheth not (so directly) the poor Publican in the text, therefore our Lord begins again, and adds to that other parable, this parable which I have chosen for my text; by which he designeth two things: First, The conviction of the proud and self-conceited Pharisee: Secondly, The raising up and healing of the cast down and dejected Publican. And observe it, as by the first parable he chiefly designeth the relief of those that are under the hands of cruel tyrants, so by this he designeth the relief of those that lie ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... overrated. Space would fail me, and patience you. But let me just for a brief moment call to your mind ROLAND PRETTYMAN. Upon my soul, I think ROLAND the most empty-headed fribble, the most affected coxcomb, and the most conceited noodle in the whole world. He was decently good-looking once, and he had a pretty knack ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... whose breath smells like human excrement; one whose wife is dear to him; one who speaks harshly; one who is always suspicious; one who is avaricious; one who is pitiless; one who is a thief; one who is self-conceited; one who has a liking for sorcery; one who does not care for respect or disrespect; one who can be gained over even by his enemies by means of money; and lastly, one who ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... family, and there never was!" suddenly cried Patty. "Oh! Waity, Waity, we are so alone, you and I! We've only each other in all the world, and I'm not the least bit of help to you, as you are to me! I'm a silly, vain, conceited, ill-behaved thing, but I will be better, I will! You won't ever give me up, will you, Waity, even if I'm not like you? I haven't ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... as many Fools as he can. In proportion as there are more Follies discovered, so there is more Laughter raised on this Day than on any other in the whole Year. A Neighbour of mine, who is a Haberdasher by Trade, and a very shallow conceited Fellow, makes his Boasts that for these ten Years successively he has not made less than an hundred April Fools. My Landlady had a falling out with him about a Fortnight ago, for sending every one of her Children upon some Sleeveless Errand, as ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... "if they could have seen the firemen scrubbing me, I expect they would have laughed like the policemen did." But it all tickled his vanity for Billy was as conceited a goat as you could ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... at least a mind free from irritation and impatience, to listen and to take into account what we have to say. They are not to be blamed for having difficulties in accepting what we put before them; on the contrary we must welcome their independent thought even if it seems aggressive and conceited; their positive assurance that they see to the end of things is characteristic of their age, but it is better that they should show themselves thus, than through want of thought or courage fall in with everything that is set before them, ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... and so I'm glad to say did Jack; but he came back to life and actually walked with us that day. Perhaps it sounds impudent and conceited to say this, but I don't mean it so, and if he knew how humble and happy we felt as we came under his spell, I do think he wouldn't have snubbed us. No, he would never have snubbed any one! He was much too human, and understanding. He wouldn't scornfully ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... perhaps, which so assures these clever lads of the vastness of their untried capabilities, that there are moments when they feel as if they could grasp heaven and earth in their wide consciousness; it is rather a want of experience and clearness of perception. Horace Graham was not particularly conceited, and yet, in common with many other men of his age, he had a conviction that, in some way or other, life had great exceptional prizes in store for him; and indeed he was so strong, and young, and honest-hearted, that he had been successful enough ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... other species of luxury, that of apparel began much to increase during this age; and the queen thought proper to restrain it by proclamation.[***] Her example was very little conformable to her edicts. As no woman was ever more conceited of her beauty, or more desirous of making impression on the hearts of beholders, no one ever went to a greater extravagance in apparel, or studied more the variety and richness of her dresses. She appeared almost every day in a different habit; and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... may here mention, lest the reader should not have perceived it, had a most inordinate opinion of his own abilities and acuteness. Like certain Yankees, he "conceited" it was necessary to rise before the sun to outwit him, and even then your chance was a poor one. He had been in hot water all his life, never out of difficulties and scrapes, once, as has been shown, kept from suicide by a mere accident, and was now reduced to the alternative ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... enough to accommodate fifty, my plate was set immediately opposite his. He was a young negro gentleman, with such a shining ebony skin that he was almost refreshing to eyes that had just left the dazzling whiteness of the outer world. He gave me the impression of being a rather conceited African, but this may have been because my dress compared so unfavourably with his. He was the son of a merchant at St. Louis in Senegal, and was just like a Frenchman in all but his colour. I asked him if he found the weather we were having sufficiently ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... sensitiveness on this head, causes shyness and blushing much more readily than does approbation; though the latter with some persons is highly efficient. The conceited are rarely shy; for they value themselves much too highly to expect depreciation. Why a proud man is often shy, as appears to be the case, is not so obvious, unless it be that, with all his self-reliance, he really thinks much about the ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... party heats, with measureless exaggerations, and the blindness that prefers some darling measure to justice and truth. Those who are urging with most ardor what are called the greatest benefit of mankind are narrow, self-pleasing, conceited men, and affect us as the insane do. They bite us, and we run mad also. I think the work of the reformer as innocent as other work that is done around him; but when I have seen it near!—I do not like it better. It is done in the same way; it is done profanely, not piously; by management, ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... off. "Did you see her blush, Moth, when I said that about the day not being so charming?" said the Butterfly. "That's what they like. Halloa! there goes that simpleton of a Humming-Bird. He thinks he's got the gayest coat in the Garden. What a conceited fellow!" ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... have been shrewd enough to devise some other way of securing the purpose of her visit. She had remained unmarried all the time of his absence, although she must have had suitors. Perhaps—well if this conjecture sounded a little conceited, be sure it was alternated with others self-depreciatory enough to balance it. But I have no space or need to describe the familiar process of architecture, by which with a perhaps for a keystone, possibilities for pillars, and ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... died, had bequeathed all her vast estates to her daughter Anne Maria was naturally haughty and vain, and; as her father was accustomed to come occasionally to her to get supplies of money, she was made vainer and more self-conceited still by his dependence upon her. Several matches had been proposed to her, and among them the Emperor of Germany had been named. He was a widower. His first wife, who had been Anne Maria's aunt, had just died. As the emperor was a potentate of great importance, ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... Brahmanas derive their sustenance. How then can the Brahmana be superior to the Kshatriyas? Well, I shall from today, bring under my subjection, your Brahmanas who are superior to all creatures but who have mendicancy for their occupation and who are so self-conceited! What the virgin Gayatri has said from the welkin is not true. Robed in skins, the Brahmanas move about in independence. I shall bring those independent wights under my subjection. Deity or man, there is none in the three worlds who can ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and Stomach. And the greatest of these three is Stomach. You've too much conceited Brain, too little Stomach, and thoroughly unhealthy Eyes. Get your Stomach straight and the rest follows. And all that's French for a liver pill. I'll take sole medical charge of you from this hour! for you're too interesting a ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... foolish and conceited, but I could not resist playing up to the role Dick suggested. She was to be Juliet. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... through a little nonsense; of which selections is this particularly true? It is interesting to stop for a moment and think just why certain stories make us laugh. One story is humorous because of its wild exaggeration; another because it makes us see how ridiculous it is to be a boaster or to be conceited or to jump at conclusions; and still another because it has an interesting little play upon words. What is the source of humor in "The Savage Boar"; "A Narrow Escape"; "How the Baron Saved Gibraltar"; "The Blind Men and the Elephant"; "Birthday Greetings"; ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... lot to mark A proud, conceited, talking spark, With eyes, that hardly served at most To guard their master 'gainst a post, Yet round the world the blade has been To see whatever could be seen, Returning from his finished tour, Grown ten times perter ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... a capital hit on the hypocritical apologies of conceited housekeepers is this bit from Mrs. Whicher ("Widow Bedott"): "A person that didn't know how wimmin always go on at such a place would a thought that Miss Gipson had tried to have everything the miserablest she possibly ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... good estate, and not a little ready money. Then, after a long sojourn in the pupa or puppy state—longer far than that of any other maggot—he emerges a perfect butterfly, vain, empty, fluttering, and conceited, idling, flirting, flaunting, philandering, until the summer of his ton is past, when he dies, or is arrested, and expiates a life of puerile vanity in Purgatory or the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... would have been my assurance, and my glory!—And what other trial needed her virtue! What other needed a purity so angelic, (blessed with such a command in her passions in the bloom of youth,) had I not been a villain—and a wanton, a conceited, a proud fool, as well ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... proud. Her eyes sparkle with disdain and scorn. She is too conceited to love. I should not like to see her making game of poor Benedick's love. I would rather see Benedick waste ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... better time by themselves. Sanford desired to inform Clyde of the intention of the party to leave in the English steamer, and to take him along with them; but his companions overruled him unanimously, for they were too glad to get rid of an impudent, overbearing, and conceited puppy, as he had proved himself to be. The coxswain had no better opinion of him than his friends; but as Clyde was a runaway, according to his own confession, it might smooth their own way, in returning to ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... houses where those who received him had not the faintest idea whether he had a wife or not, and cared as little, for it would have made no difference: they would not have invited her. Small, silly, conceited Tom, regarding himself as a somebody, was more than content to be asked to such people's houses. He thought he went as a lion, whereas it was merely as a jackal: so great is the love of some for wild beasts in general, that they even think something of jackals. He was aware ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... gave no answer. With feverish thirst and longing, he was drinking in the beauty of the Fairy Queen; and had not Simon Perkins been the dullest of observers, and the least conceited of painters, he must have felt intensely flattered by the ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... manner was that most famous man Andrew Marvell carried off from amongst the living before his time, to the great loss of the republic, and especially the republic of letters; through the ignorance of an old conceited doctor, who was in the habit on all occasions of raving excessively against Peruvian bark, as if it were a common plague. Howbeit, without any clear indication, in the interval after a third fit of regular tertian ague, and by way of preparation (so that all things might ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... hear the like?" Honor asked Jim, angrily, as she smoothed his wife's pillow. "She was always conceited about her age, settin' herself up as the equals of her elders, and here am I, her elder sister, as carried her in my arms when I was five and she was two, still hale and strong, and with no mind for underground for many a day. Nigh three times her age I was once, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... it had grated. He remembered her only half-veiled invitation, her challenge to him to see as much as he cared, and to make what he could of her. He was to blame for accepting, but he would have been a conceited ass if he had thought of the danger of a result like this. In the midst of his reflections an idea came to him about the portrait, and he observed, with irritation, after giving it a few touches, that the light was irretrievably gone for ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... to say; and to do, with his meddling young hands, whatever he should choose to do; and to go, with his wayward young feet, whithersoever his foolish young nose should choose to lead him; so that, by the time he had walked into his twelfth year, a worse spoilt boy, a vainer boy, a more self-conceited boy, a more self-willed boy than master Sprigg was not to be found in the land—ransack the Paradise from Big Bone Lick ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... titles—it's Connie!" said Nora stoutly. "It's because she's handsome and clever—and yet she isn't conceited; she's always interested in other people. And she's an orphan—and people were very fond of her mother. And she talks scrumptiously about Italy. And she's new—and there's a bit of romance in ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stream forth from my contemporary's brains; how are we still haunted! The speech of Faust concerning him is mis-translated by Shelley, who understood the humour of the piece, as well as the poetry, but not the particular humours of it. Nothing can be more expressive of a conceited, narrow-minded reviewer. 'Oh he!—he is absolutely everywhere,—What others dance, he must decide upon. If he can't chatter about every step, 'tis as good as not made at all. Nothing provokes him so much as when we go forward. If you'd turn round and round ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... she was not unloved, not forgotten. The will of others, not his own, kept her lover from her side. His weaknesses were of a nature that awakened her pity rather than contempt. If he had been a Hercules physically and a Bacon intellectually, but conceited, domineering, untruthful, and of the male flirt genus—from such weaknesses she would have shrunk with intense repugnance. Her friends thought her peculiarly gentle in disposition. They did not know—and she herself might rarely recognize the truth—that she ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... he enumerated target-companies, sewing-machines, patent baby-jumpers, nitro-glycerine, shoo-fly chewing-tobacco, wooden hams, stuffed ballot-boxes, and a hundred other things which we are prone to brag of as being purely Yankee and original. We are too conceited about ourselves, by a great deal, and it is good for us that even Chinese shoemakers should come here once in a while, to "take us ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various
... have expressed that sentence better," thought the conceited logician; but he did not say this aloud, and ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... 'Love hath forsaken the earth. Under the form of religion I aroused the fears and commanded the submission of mortals; and our imp now reigns on earth in the place of Love, under the form of Hymen.' Pluto smiled grimly, and smote his thigh in triumph. 'Well conceited, well executed, daughter of Night. Our empire shall not lack recruits, now that innocence is exchanged for superstition, and the true affection of congenial and confiding hearts is replaced by mock ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... at Oxford—not as one of my immediate set; but we were a sociable college, and I had seen a good deal of him, liking him for his physical energy combined with a certain simplicity and modesty, though, indeed, he had nothing to be conceited about; liked him, in fact, in the way that at that receptive period one likes many men whom one never keeps up with later. We had both gone down in the same year—three years ago now. I had gone to France and Germany for two years to learn the languages; he had failed for the Indian Civil, and then ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... of her own genius, and continual application. She was not only happy in a fine imagination, a great memory, an excellent understanding, and an exact judgment, but had all these crowned by virtue and piety: she was too learned to be vain, too wise to be conceited, too knowing and too clear-sighted ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... the fellow's attitude. I don't imagine there will be until the last moment. He is just a pig-headed, insufferably conceited Englishman, full of class ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... north, where he had heard there was plenty of water and grass, and form a station there. Dick was picked out as stockman; a young gentleman, a relative of Mr. Ronalds, went as head of the party, a very foolish, conceited young man, who knew very little of bush life, and would not be taught. There were eight splitters and fencers, besides Charley Anvils, the blacksmith, and two ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... succeeded one another with quite bewildering rapidity, and with little regard either to rank or good-looks. One special favourite of our Sultana was La Haye, a Court equerry, whom she made Chamberlain, and who is pictured by Saint-Simon as "tall, bony, with an awkward carriage and an ugly face; conceited, stupid, dull-witted, and only looking at all passable ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... moderately civil; and some of the ladies and gentlemen— especially the former—made themselves agreeable enough. But they could not get on at all with some of the men. Mars, the fellow in armour, was one of these. He was a horribly conceited snob, they agreed, and only wore his armour because it was a new suit, and he thought he looked ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... Tobacco; and he feigning that he hath an extraordinary delight in it; and on the other side, perswade his wife that he has a huge mind to eat a knuckle of Veal, some good broath, and new-laid Egs, or some such sort of pretty conceited diet. ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... precisely what I fear most," Mr. Allison said. "If he curried less the favor of the public, little or naught would come of it, and the reprimand would end the case. But you know Arnold is a conceited man; one who carries his head high. Better to deprive him of life itself than to apply vinegar and gall to his ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... Royal Navy when he wrote, in congratulating Captain Broke: "At this critical moment you could not have restored to the British naval service the preeminence it has always preserved, or contradicted in a more forcible manner the foul aspersions and calumnies of a conceited, boasting enemy than by the brilliant act you have performed. The relation of such an event restores the history of ancient times and will do more good to the service than it is ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... talk my head off! 'You must not think I was provoked with you,'" she mimicked Lemuel's dignity of diction in mincing falsetto. "'I will come to see you very soon.' Miserable, worthless, conceited whipper-snapper!" ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... and, if not superior, at least co-ordinate, authority, with 'Jesus! Master! have mercy on me,' or with 'Lord! save or I perish,' and you get the difference between the way in which a formalist, conceited of his knowledge, and a poor, perishing sinner, conscious of his ignorance and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... that distinguish the civilized man from the barbarian. Nor does the value of these things lie in personal satisfaction alone. There is a culture that is selfish and exclusive, that is self-centered and conceited. The intellectual snob is quite as repellant as any other. But this is true of the moral distortion of all good qualities. The culture that narrows the sympathies, instead of enlarging them, has surely missed the object that should ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... said. "I was foolish and conceited, my dream made me see how foolish. I had no right to ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... wants—it isn't as if I wanted for her a dwarf or a hunchback or a coureur or a drunkard. Vanderbank's a man whom any woman, don't you think? might be—whom more than one woman IS—glad of for herself: beau comme le jour, awfully conceited and awfully patronising, but clever and successful and yet liked, and without, so far as I know, any of the terrific appendages which in this country so often diminish the value of even the pleasantest people. He hasn't five horrible unmarried sisters for his wife ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... which she seems to possess of amusing herself by recalling and arranging the subjects of her former reading. We read together every morning, and I begin to like Italian much better than when we were teased by that conceited animal Cicipici. This is the way to spell his name, and not Chichipichi; you see I ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... avoid acknowledging a marvellous art in them? Whence proceeds the government of that universal machine which incessantly works for us without so much as our thinking upon it? To whom shall we ascribe the choice and gathering of so many deep and so well conceited springs, and of so many bodies, great and small, visible and invisible, which equally concur to serve us? The least atom of this machine that should happen to be out of order would unhinge all nature. For the springs and movements ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... ghosttrap than a residence for civilised beings? Or are you afraid that Guy Darrell will be fool and fop enough to think you are come to force on him your hand? Pooh, pooh! Such scruples would be in place if you were a portionless forward girl, or if he were a conceited young puppy, or even a suspicious old roue. But Guy Darrell—a man of his station, his character, his years! And you, cousin Caroline, what are you? Surely, lifted above all such pitiful crotchets by a rank amongst the loftiest gentlewomen of England; ample fortune, a beauty that in itself is rank ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... landed proprietors; so that really, in those days, no one could be described as purse proud, but only as empty-purse proud. And no less distinct than the honour which those curious Greek people pay to their conceited poor, is the disrespectful manner in which they speak of the rich; so that one cannot listen long either to them, or to the Roman writers who imitated them, without finding oneself entangled in all sorts of plausible absurdities; hard upon being convinced of the uselessness ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... Rogers, a merchant of Bristol, was not the least, nor least accounted of by himself and some others. He was a bold and active man, moderately learned, but immoderately conceited of his own parts and abilities, which made him forward to engage, as thinking none would dare to take up the gauntlet he should cast down. This high opinion of himself made him rather a troublesome ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... next door, Annora Goldhue: she had three daughters. No, none of them would do. Joan was idle, and Amy was conceited, and Frethesancia had a temper. Little Roese might have done, who lived with old Serena at the mill end; but old Serena could not spare her. At last, as Avice broke her thread for the fourth time, she pushed back the stool on which ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... couldn't be vain if you tried. None of the Bransfords were ever vain—or conceited. But they all have had good appetites," she told him, shaking a finger at him. "And if you don't eat heartily I shall believe your long absence from home has taken some of ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... proud of your former standing; but you had very little occasion to be, for you had inherited it. The deeds of others, not your own, had won it for you. If you had realized it, it gave you a great vantage, but that was all. If you had been content to have remained a conceited, commonplace man, versed only in the fashionable jargon and follies of the hour, and basing your claims on the wealth which you had shown neither the ability nor industry to win, you would never have had ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... that he was accustomed to sit at his table and share in his convivial enjoyments. He relates that once, while they were feasting together, there was a guest present, a physician, who was a very vain and conceited man, and so talkative that no one else had any opportunity to speak. All the pleasure of conversation was spoiled by his excessive garrulity. Philotas, however, at length puzzled him so completely with a question of logic,—of ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... deck as he spoke. Even Gorman does not like to stand self-convicted of being a selfish conceited swine. Ascher laid his hand on my arm as we ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... "I am not conceited enough to suppose that it could make any difference to other people's pleasure whether I am at a party or not," Isobel said. "I suppose you mean that as a compliment, Rajah, but I am not accustomed to compliments, ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... in London, and I remember a 'ryghte merrie' and conceited jest which was rife among the gallants of the day,—viz. a paper had been presented for the recall of Mrs. Siddons to the stage, (she having lately taken leave, to the loss of ages,—for nothing ever was, or can be, like her,) to which all men had been called to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... Antoine street, and at the tune of their arrival in this city Lillie was about the age of ten. The little girl was precocious and talented, and very pretty, and was also, as regards both these characteristics, admired and made much of. As the girl grew older she became a little vain and conceited, her principal aim being to gain the plaudits of the visitors at her father's house for her singing or other performances, which were many and various, the versatility of the girl being remarkable. By the time she was ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... what will be thought of myself. I blush to flatter them, or to be flattered by them, and should dread letters being published some time or other, in which they should relate our interviews, and we should appear like those puny conceited Witlings in Shenstone's and Hughes' Correspondence,(94) who give themselves airs from being in possession of the soil of Parnassus for the time being; as peers are proud, because they enjoy the estates of great men who went ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... was never conceited or puffed-up, as some good-looking and accomplished people are apt to be. On the contrary, she was always sweet-tempered and modest, and for this reason she was loved. People may admire good looks and a graceful deportment, and they may ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... me—afterwards, you know. I reckon I've got an average amount of sense and ability. I've been pretty successful for a man of twenty-eight, and it hasn't been all luck, not by a whole lot! Maybe most folks would say I was conceited, had a swelled head. It's only when it comes to—to asking you to marry me that I get kind of down on myself. I know I'm not good enough, Miss Walton, and I own up to it. The only comforting thought is that there aren't many men who are. I'm saying ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the affairs of Lee Sing were in no more prosperous a condition than before, nor had he found an opportunity to set aside any store of taels. Each day the unsupportable Pe-tsing became more and more obtrusive and self-conceited, even to the extent of throwing far into the air coins of insignificant value whenever he chanced to pass Lee in the street, at the same time urging him to leap after them and thereby secure at least one or two pieces ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... fatal curse Morris was free; no man of great ability was ever less conceited. You will not find in his work a trace of that tired pomposity which tells us that the great man is showing off, or of that empty pretentious singularity which betrays the vanity of the lonely British artist. Morris was never the self-conscious master calling on sun and moon to stand and ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... Mr. Underwood, 'I thought myself a prodigiously fine fellow—with my arms full of prizes at Harrow, and my Trinity scholarship—and could just, in the plenitude of my presumption, extend a little conceited patronage to that unlucky dunce, Tom Underwood, the lag of every form, and thankful for a high stool at old Kedge's. And now my children view a cold fowl as an unprecedented monster, while his might, I imagine, revel in ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... must try and dictate to him in public—on a matter of public action. She must have everything her own way. Opinionated, self-conceited creature! ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... felt subtly in that man's manner a derisive disapproval of everything that was not lower middle class, a profound respect for money, a mean sort of contempt for speculators that fail, and a conceited satisfaction with his own ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... pains-taker in the Dramatick strain, and as highly conceited of those pains he took; a high-flyer in wit, even against Ben Johnson himself, in his Comedy, call'd, The untrussing of the humorous Poet. Besides which he wrote also, The Honest Whore, in two Parts; Fortunatus; If this ben't a good Play the Devil's ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... anything that the ordinary person cared to see, or in the way in which it would appear to such person. But he was greatly pleased with his work; and one day, as he threw himself down on a bank at noon and got out his bread and cheese, he was so carried away, being by nature a conceited man, as to exclaim: ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... said, fondly, as she caressed him; "what a piece of vanity is this! A boy of seventeen thinking he knows himself by heart. Out upon you, Roy, for a conceited coxcomb! Why, we all know you better than you know yourself; and surely I ought to be the best judge of what ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... without reason, that the poet, in trying to exalt both parties, had very sufficiently snubbed both, and intimated that it was "hardly safe for country wits to attempt that euphuistic, antithetical, and delicately conceited vein, whose proper fountain was in Whitehall." However, on went Loyalty, very well pleased with himself, and next, amid much cheering, two great tinsel fish, a salmon and a trout, symbolical of the wealth of Torridge, waddled along, by means of two human legs and a staff apiece, which ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... disconcerted and overwhelmed him; and, in the bitterness of his heart, he cursed the duplicity which he had taught and encouraged, still more by example, than by precept. But Cunningham's duplicity had more and closer folds than his own. Cunningham, conceited of his diplomatic genius, and fearful of the cautious timidity of his father, did not trust that father with the knowledge of all he did, or half of what he intended; so that the commissioner, who had ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... bumptious and didactic, Henry had. And yet he remained simple, unaffected, and fundamentally kind. But he was very serious. His mother and aunt strained every nerve, in their idolatrous treatment of him, to turn him into a conceited and unbearable jackanapes—and their failure to do so was complete. They only made him more serious. His temper was, and always had ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... while we were at table, as before made no ceremony; she ate a great deal, and praised the dishes. My mother was obviously bored by her, and answered her with a sort of weary indifference; my father faintly frowned now and then. My mother did not like Zinaida either. 'A conceited minx,' she said next day. 'And fancy, what she has to be conceited about, avec ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... I am not so conceited as that! No," she continued ingenuously, "I feared that if I accepted him it would look, over here, as if the home supply of husbands were of inferior quality; and then we had such disagreeable discussions at the beginning, I simply could not bear to leave ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... apartments should be fitted up for her gala. As Lord Colambre entered the room, he saw his mother, Miss Nugent, and Mr. Soho, standing at a large table, which was covered with rolls of paper, patterns, and drawings of furniture: Mr. Soho was speaking in a conceited, dictatorial tone, asserting that there was no "colour in nature for that room equal to the belly-o'-the fawn;" which belly-o'-the fawn he so pronounced, that Lady Clonbrony understood it to be la belle uniforme, and, under this mistake, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... it, and to put a moral at the end of a ballad is like sticking a cork on the point of a sword. It is pleasant to see how much our Quaker is indebted for his themes to Cotton Mather, who belabored his un-Friends of former days with so much bad English and worse Latin. With all his faults, that conceited old pedant contrived to make one of the most entertaining books ever written on this side the water, and we wonder that no one should take the trouble to give us a tolerably correct edition of it. Absurdity ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... in Kordofan and Darfur, and march with his whole remaining force, which may have numbered 10,000 fighting men, to the Nile, and so to Omdurman. Mahmud, who was as daring and ambitious as he was conceited and incapable, received the summons with delight, and began ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... say, there are enough of," said the old one. "Black snails without a house—but they are so common, and so conceited. But we might give the ants a commission to look out for us; they run to and fro as if they had something to do, and they certainly know of a wife for our ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Billy assured her. "You see, she—well, I think she would have married me once. Yes, she cared for me once. And I quarreled with her—I, conceited young ass that I was, actually presumed to dictate to the dearest, sweetest, most lovable woman on earth, and tell her what she must do and what she mustn't. I!—good Lord, I, who wasn't worthy to sweep ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... her form, Extol her fruitfulness; at which a shower Falls for the memory of Germanicus, Which they blow over straight with windy praise, And puffing hopes of her aspiring sons; Who, with these hourly ticklings, grow so pleased, And wantonly conceited of themselves, As now, they stick not to believe they're such As these do give them out; and would be thought More than competitors, immediate heirs. Whilst to their thirst of rule, they win the rout (That's still the friend of novelty) with hope Of ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... much; you struck many men—and hard. You will have made enemies. The picaros of this dirty little town are as conceited as pigs. You must take care, or you will have ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... humility; for the more a man really knows, the less conceited he will be. The student at Trinity College who went up to his professor to take leave of him because he had "finished his education," was wisely rebuked by the professor's reply, "Indeed! I am only beginning mine." The superficial person who ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... anna. You young fellows talk as though the man was doing the girl an honor in marrying her. You're all too conceited—nothing's good enough ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... say that moving her was the least of two risks? And haven't I just warned you of what might have happened, if we had left your wife and her niece together in the same house? When I do a thing at my time of life, Mr. Gallilee—don't think me conceited—I know why ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... butter-ball. She's coming to go out on the same train with us; and she'll get the dinner to-night; and I sha'n't have the mortification of sitting down to a pickup meal with Amy Campbell, the first time she has visited us; she's conceited enough about her house-keeping as it is, I'm sure, and I wouldn't have her patronizing and pitying me for worlds. The cook will be here at half-past three precisely; I had to pretend the train started a ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... confidences or secrets. When the owner dies, there is no knowing to what use they may be put. One regrets the publication of the private letters of great men and women, showing, as they so often do, the foolish, silly, conceited side of a character we have admired. Private letters are often disillusioning, or betray the presence of the skeleton of the family, unhappiness ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... pleasing is an infallible means of pleasing. Characters pleased with themselves please others, for they are joyous and natural in mien, and are at liberty from thinking of themselves to pay successful attention to others. Still, the self-conceited and the bragging are never attractive, self being the topic on which all are fluent and none interesting. They who dwell on self in any way—the self-deniers, the self-improvers—are hateful to the heart of civilized man. The Chinese, who knew everything ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... when I was no more than a laddie, I first sang before an audience. A travelling concert company had come to Oddfellows' Hall, and to help to draw the crowd there was a song competition for amateurs, with a watch for a prize. I won the prize, and I was as conceited as you please, with all the other mill boys envying me, and seein', at last, some use in the way I was always singing. A bit later there was another contest, and I won that, too, with a six-bladed knife for a prize. But I did not keep the knife, for, for all my mither could do ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... politics; and whenever he recalled the absurd boasting that had made him feel Craig would never come to anything, he assumed it was a weakness of youth and inexperience which had, no doubt, been conquered. But, no; here was the same old, conceited Josh, as crudely and vulgarly self-confident as when he was twenty-five and just starting at the law in a country town. Yet Arkwright could not but admit there had been more than a grain of truth in Craig's former self-laudations, ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... not encouraging, and a less conceited man than Tom would have felt disheartened, but he was not. No girl would be insane enough to refuse Tom Tracy, of Tracy Park; and at last he made the plunge, and told her of his love for her and his desire to make her ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes |
