"Presumptuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him that he had never heard anything so absurd and presumptuous as the twaddle that would fix a stigma of shame or contempt on Finn blood, and the same spring he and the Finn girl Zilla were betrothed, and in the ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... was no sign of gratitude in Britt's countenance just then. His crazed rage was shifted to this presumptuous person who had interfered and was manhandling him; at that moment the liveliest emotion in Britt was the mordant jealousy that he had been trying to stifle. It awoke and raged, finding real excuse for the venting of its rancor on the man ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... faces looking out of the forest of long hair, moustache, and whisker—those two cold yet bold, trustless yet presumptuous visages— were the same faces, the very same that, projected in full gaslight from behind the pillars of a portico, had half frightened me to death on the night of my desolate arrival in Villette. These, I ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... considered those persons, whose intellectual derangement rendered them inadequate to the governance of themselves in society, or incapable of managing their affairs, entitled to its special protection. If your Lordship should feel surprized at this communication, or deem my conduct presumptuous, the thirst of information on an important subject is my only apology; and I have sought to allay it in the pure stream that issues from the fountain-head, rather than from subordinate channels or distant distributions. Although personally a stranger to your Lordship, ...
— A Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor, on the Nature and Interpretation of Unsoundness of Mind, and Imbecility of Intellect • John Haslam
... order that the Church of England may go forward as one whole, without the risk of sectional exasperation, it does seem to me an urgent necessity that—I do hope it is not a presumptuous suggestion—the Archbishops appoint a Council of Unity; to thrash out the whole subject, and decide on definite steps of action, both within ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... he says that "if we can see no natural origin for species, a miraculous one must be admitted."[52] Now, the grand alternative being Creation by Miracle or Creation by Law, that is, Creation by a Natural or by a Supernatural cause, we affirm that it is utterly presumptuous and unphilosophical to represent the one as less worthy of God, or more derogatory to His infinite perfections, than the other. Yet the author does not hesitate to say that the natural ought to be preferred to the miraculous method of accounting ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... In these same days between the summoning of the Buckingham Palace Conference and the landing of the Nationalist guns, Continental events arising out of the stale Sarajevo affair reared their heads and looked towards Great Britain in a presumptuous and sinister way to which the British public was not accustomed, and which it resented. The British public had never taken any interest in international affairs and it did not wish to take any interest in international affairs. It certainly ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... Tristan is your enemy and ours. The King, the great King, is not above setting a trap. I think I see a double snare; a snare to catch the Dauphin, to catch all who are his friends in Amboise, and a snare to catch the great King's minister himself. Perhaps it is foolish, I know it is presumptuous, but let me read the letter my own way; you can show me afterwards where I am wrong. It is clever, but it is the cleverness of the man who thinks only of his own interests, who makes no allowance for love, loyalty, ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Japhet, much do I crave thy forgiveness," replied Susannah. "But it is God alone who knoweth the secrets of our hearts. I was presumptuous, and you ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... seeing and hearing their wicked deeds;— [2:9]the Lord knows how to deliver the pious from trial, and to keep the wicked to the day of judgment to be punished, [2:10]but especially those who walk after the flesh, in corrupt desires, and despise government. Presumptuous, self-complacent, they fear not to revile glories, [2:11]where the angels who are greater in strength and power do not bring against them a reproachful judgment; [2:12]but these, like irrational animals, brutes made to be taken and destroyed, reviling things which they do not ...
— The New Testament • Various
... think you are the most presumptuous mortal in existence. How dared you do such a thing—so many ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... some to be presumptuous thus to identify the divine and the human; but to separate them makes both morality and religion impossible. It robs morality of its ideal, and makes God a mere name for the "unknown." Those who think that this identification degrades the divine, misapprehend the nature of spirit; and forget ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... served to enhance the happiness of that world, by holding forth, before the eyes of the redeemed, the sign and pledge of their future experience when they shall receive their bodies. For it is not presumptuous to suppose that the sight of Enoch and Elijah has been, and will be, till the last trumpet sounds, a source of joyful expectation to the inhabitants of heaven, leading them to anticipate the final day with intense interest, as the time when ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... an artistic whole, the most magnificent failure in our literature. It enshrines poetry which no other than our greatest could have written; it has depths to which many of far inferior power have not descended. Surely the poem must be judged by the balance of its success and failure? It is in no presumptuous spirit, but out of my profound admiration of this long-loved and often-read, this superb poem, that I, for one, wish it comprised but the Prologue, the Plea of Guido, "Caponsacchi," "Pompilia," "The Pope," and Guido's last Defence. I cannot help ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... should be comprehended and recognized by man. The self-taught man therefore remains embarrassed, and does not free himself from the apprehension that he may expose some weak point to a professional, or he falls into the other extreme—he becomes presumptuous, steps forth as a reformer, and, if he accomplishes nothing, or earns only ridicule, he sets himself down as an unrecognized martyr by an ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... mass of evidence before them, of the pernicious, cruel and delusive character of the American Colonization Society, I leave the patriot, the philanthropist and the christian to judge of the fitness of the following inflated and presumptuous assertions of its advocates:—'The plan is of heavenly origin, against which the gates of hell shall never prevail'—'a circle of philanthropy, every segment of which tells and testifies to the beneficence of the whole'—'addressing its claims alike to the patriot, and ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... music, learned and scientific institutions, inventions, public buildings, industry, agriculture, &c. &c. &c. being all jumbled together in my brain, I have thence drawn them, like tickets from a lottery; and it will not, I trust, be deemed presumptuous in me to indulge a hope that, in proportion to the blanks, there will be found no inadequate number ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... weren't. All the same, I suppose your grand relations would consider me a presumptuous boor for daring to lift my eyes to you. And yet, if I could make you love me, it wouldn't count for a blade of grass that your father was born in a castle and mine in a crofter's cabin.... Only—you know too—' ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... not of society but of an individual villain; that his attempt to right wrongs by committing new wrongs, to enforce the laws by lawlessness, and to correct violence by violence, was nothing but presumptuous and criminal folly,—when all this becomes clear to him, we have a tragic situation of the most pathetic character. This element of high tragic pathos was first given to a German drama by Schiller. It had not been given by Goethe and Lessing, nor ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... forgotten the strange possession I had as strangely acquired. There it now lay, the instrument of agencies over the mechanism of nature which no doctrine admitted by my philosophy could accept, side by side with the presumptuous work which had analyzed the springs by which Nature is moved, and decided the principles by which reason metes out, from the inch of its knowledge, the plan ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... approach her; I cannot even write,—it would seem too presumptuous. But tell her, as you find the opportunity, how I honour her. Do not let her remain under the impression that I am not capable of truly feeling what she has borne and ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... Princess Irene, and of the conversation she held with him in the bright inner court. And the creed of nine words! He felt for it, and found it safe. Then his thought flew to Lael. She had exonerated herself. Demedes was a liar—Demedes, the presumptuous knave! He was to have been at the fete, but had not dared go. There was a limit to his audacity; and in great thankfulness for the discovery, Sergius tossed an arm over the edge of the narrow cot, and struck the stool, his solitary item of furniture. He raised his head, and ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... forget the past, and to work onwards; bidding men's consciences be at rest; and commanding them not to fear the God whom they had offended, but to trust in Him—what would become of morality and religion? This presumptuous Absolver would make men careless about both. If the indispensable safeguards of penalty were removed, what remained to restrain ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... can afford to wear it without offending the prejudices of valuable patrons, friends or landlords. In Lincolnshire, farmers are expected to appear in pink. In Northamptonshire a yeoman farming his own 400 acres would be thought presumptuous if he followed the Lincolnshire example. Near London you may see the "pals" of fighting men and hell-keepers in pink and velvet. A scarlet coat should never be assumed until the rider's experience in the field ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... presumptuous as well as useless, after this display of the difficulties attending the question, to offer any new conjecture; and many of our renders may deem it a point of very minor importance, and already discussed at too ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... of the library, descended curtains of silk of various dyes, none of which I ever saw lifted while I was there; and I felt somehow that it would be presumptuous in me to venture to look within them. But the use of the other books seemed free; and day after day I came to the library, threw myself on one of the many sumptuous eastern carpets, which lay here and there on the floor, and read, and read, until weary; if that can be ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... go back and begin again," he said with an effort. "I know it—it must seem presumptuous for me to talk to you like this, but—but I would give a great deal to be ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... It is presumptuous to intrude into the fate and mystery of life in the case of any man, and more especially of a man so remarkable; but the consciousness of community of spirits, of knowing, and endeavoring after what is morally ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... three, regulate the molecular distribution of matter and preside over the symmetrical development of organic forms. This asks no faith, but only knowledge; it is science, not revelation. In view of such facts is it presumptuous to predict that experiment itself will prove the truth of Kepler's beautiful saying: "The universe is a harmonious whole, the soul of which is God; numbers, figures, the stars, all nature, indeed, are in unison ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... names continues to sway the public at large, and is apt to mislead even painstaking students and to entail upon them repeated disappointments, it is necessary that those who know should speak out, even at the risk of being considered harsh or presumptuous. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... friends of General Kellerman have presumed to claim for him the merit of originating the charge of cavalry. That general, whose share of glory is sufficiently brilliant to gratify his most sanguine wishes, can have no knowledge of so presumptuous a pretension. I the more readily acquit him from the circumstance that, as we were conversing one day respecting that battle, I called to his mind my having brought, to him the First Consul's orders, and he appeared not ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... more. Breathe I a magic atmosphere? The will to enjoy how strong I felt it,— And in a dream of love am now all melted! Are we the sport of every puff of air? And if she suddenly should enter now, How would she thy presumptuous folly humble! Big John-o'dreams! ah, how wouldst thou Sink at her ...
— Faust • Goethe
... bowing before Laura, after having greeted her mother, "I am presumptuous enough to trust ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... where Mychowski invariably went for his macaroni Daniel usually had a place at the table. The pianist was easy in his manners, and not finding his man presumptuous he made him a companion. They had both eaten in silence, Mychowski gluttonously. Looking at Daniel and drinking a glass of chianti, he said ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... decidedly southward. But here, as elsewhere, I found it impossible to make Secessionists understand or allow the wisdom, justice, or generosity of the non-interference policy hitherto pursued by our Government. This is not the time or place to discuss an important question of statecraft, nor am I presumptuous enough to assert that different and more decisive measures would have had all the good effect that their advocates insist upon; but however justifiable England's conduct may have been according to theories of international law, I fear the practical ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... with the English, the Laird of Langton, being unarmed, turned his coat inside out, to make his opponents believe he had on a coat of mail, and so rushed on to the fray. By 'Langton's coat of mail,' is meant a presumptuous but ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... visiting most of the remarkable objects here, but you must not expect from me a detail of what you will find in every description book. You wish to have my ideas on the subjects that most strike me individually, and those you shall have; but it would be very absurd and presumptuous in me to attempt to give a catalogue raisonne of buildings and pictures and statues, or to set up as a connoisseur when I know nothing either of sculpture, of architecture or painting; nor am I desirous of imitating the young Englishman, who, ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... not move in exactly the same set, and I did not wish to give him an opportunity to snub me. Now that he does speak so familiarly of his royal friends, I thought that he might consider me a bit presumptuous." ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... them the sign of God's mercy on the mere chance of that mercy being intended for them. When God had proved by converting them, that they were not reprobate and doomed to hell by His absolute and eternal will, then, and not till then, dare man baptise them into His name. She dared not palm a presumptuous fiction on herself, and call it "charity." So, though we had both been christened during my father's lifetime, she purposed to have us rebaptised, if ever that happened—which, in her sense of the word, never happened, I am ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... I address you, whom I know little or nothing of, and to whom such an advance may seem presumptuous and intrusive. It is because I was deeply impressed by the paper which I attributed to you,—that on Ocean, River, and Lake, which was read at one of our meetings. I say that I was deeply impressed, but I do not mean ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and presumptuous Saracen, miraculously converted. He was a nephew of Ferragus or Ferracute, and married ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... to the good-natured monarch that such a name was certain to call down the hatred and jealousy of the fairies in a body on the child, but this was what happened. No sooner had they heard of this presumptuous name than they resolved to gain possession of her who bore it, and either to torment her cruelly, or at least to conceal her from the ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... the deadly blow having been inflicted at least as long since. [This is not correct: the Quarterly critique, having appeared in September, 1818, preceded the death of Keats by two years and five months].... The fact is, the Quarterly, finding before it a work at once silly and presumptuous, full of the servile slang that Cockaigne dictates to its servitors, and the vulgar indecorums which that Grub Street Empire rejoiceth to applaud, told the truth of the volume, and recommended a change of manners[14] and of masters to the scribbler. Keats wrote on; but he ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... and leaving the carriage, H. and I, guided by a peasant girl, went through the woods to the highest point, where were the ruins of the ancient chateau. Far be it from me to describe what we saw. I feel that I have already been too presumptuous. We sat down, and each made a ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... whose nose, though it spoke him no Roman, Was mounted that day on a Horse that feared no man, No Wounds, for all o're his Trappings so sumptuous He had ty'd Squibs and Crackers; 'twas mighty presumptuous. ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... rather presumptuous in me," answered the doctor, "to think of denying anything to which you hold so firmly. More than that, in the light of what I have seen and heard here, my own views, so rashly expressed in the first days of our acquaintance, seem to me out of place. They were formed ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... number during the night. Those of them near the horizon, as the Professor pointed out, twinkled energetically, as if they had just risen, and, like Lewis, were sleepy, while those in the zenith shone with steady lustre, as if particularly wide awake to the doings of the presumptuous men who were climbing so much nearer than usual to their habitation in the sky. One star in particular gleamed with a sheen that was pre-eminently glorious—now it was ruby red, now metallic blue, anon emerald green. Of course, no sunlight would tinge the horizon for several hours, but the ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... I have heard the histories of presumptuous men who attempted to perform such miracles, and all these persons sooner or later ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... exclaimed. I remembered all my presumptuous speeches, and gave the countess credit for no little magnanimity. It pleased me to think that I was a miscreant who had not been punished nearly enough, and I saw nothing in her indulgence but the ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... something softer than the most profound respect in it, I cannot see why I may not without offence remember it, since beauty, like the sun, must sometimes lose its power to choose, and shine into equal warmth the peasant and the courtier." He quaintly adds, "However presumptuous or impertinent these thoughts may have appeared at my first entertaining them, why may I not hope that my having kept them decently a secret for full fifty years may be now a good round plea for their pardon?" The imperious spirit which could rule Churchill long dominated the feeble nature ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... made a vigorous gesture of repudiation. "Presumptuous perhaps—but not unreasonable. I know too much of what goes on there. Miss Moore, I beseech ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... been attributed to him, of which the second has been looked upon as spurious, and the first as genuine, by many learned writers. But even this latter seems to have been corrupted and interpolated by some ignorant and presumptuous author.... The learned are now unanimous in regarding the other writings which bear the name of Clemens (Clement) ... as spurious productions ascribed by some impostor to this venerable prelate, in order ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... the only soul alive I love—" There he stopped, but his eyes, fixed on Osra's face, ended the sentence for him. And she blushed, and looked away. Then, thinking the moment had come, he burst suddenly into a flood of protestations and self-reproach, cursing himself for a fool and a presumptuous madman, pitifully craving her pardon, and declaring that he did not deserve her kindness, and yet that he could not live without it, and that anyhow he would be dead soon and thus cease to trouble her. ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... another year! Oh! who shall see another year? Shall you, ye young? or you, ye fair? Ah! the presumptuous thought forbear! Beside this church-yard's peaceful bounds, Pause ye, and ponder o'er the mounds: Here beauty sleeps; that verdant length Of grave contains what once was strength; The child, the boy, the man are here— Ye may ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... Apartment, made one at the Hunting-match, and was very forward in the Rebellion. If there were no Injunctions to the contrary, yet this Practice must be confess'd to diminish the Pleasure of the Audience, and for that Reason presumptuous and unwarrantable: But since her Majesty's late Command has made it criminal,[2] you have Authority to take Notice ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... thy charms, thou fanciest will redeem Yon aweless Libertine from rooted vice. Misleading thought! has he not paid the price, His taste for virtue?—Ah, the sensual stream Has flow'd too long.—What charms can so entice, What frequent guilt so pall, as not to shame The rash belief, presumptuous and unwise, That crimes habitual will forsake the Frame?— [1]Thus, on the river's bank, in fabled lore, The Rustic stands; sees the stream swiftly go, And thinks he soon shall find the gulph below A channel dry, which he may safe pass o'er.— Vain hope!—it flows—and ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... It would be presumptuous and unbecoming in an officer not of the land service to express an opinion upon the difficulties of detail encountered in the various operations of this week's work. But the points selected for criticism in the expressions of Lord ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... he said. "Do you think I should have been as presumptuous as that? I should have just said, 'With Noel's love,' and you wouldn't have had the heart to fling ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Certainly not in mischief, for that would not be consistent with Divine goodness. Neither should we suppose that we are here for our own sakes simply. Such an idea would be presumptuous. For what purpose, then, was man endowed with all these facilities of mind and body, but to do good and glorify his Maker? True philosophy teaches that benevolence was not only the design of the Creator in all His ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... boy. As a minor, you had no claim to the possession of any article except your clothing. I judged it best that the violin should be sold at the auction, and it is presumptuous for you to set ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... one only pip. No doubt 'twas destined for some lofty soul Who in a deck-chair lolls, and marks the map And says, "Push here," while I and all my kind Scrabble and slaughter in the appointed slough. But I, presumptuous, wore it, till the gods Called for my laundry ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... Vices— Character of the Hypocrite Of the Busybody Of the Superstitious Of the Profane Of the Malcontent Of the Inconstant Of the Flatterer Of the Slothful Of the Covetous Of the Vainglorious Of the Presumptuous Of the Distrustful Of the Ambitious Of the Unthrift Of ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... are insolent and vain: Presumptuous man! the gods take care of Cato. Would Caesar show the greatness of his soul, Bid him employ his care for these my friends, And make good use of his ill-gotten pow'r, By sheltering ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... Glo. Presumptuous Priest, this place co[m]mands my patie[n]ce, Or thou should'st finde thou hast dis-honor'd me. Thinke not, although in Writing I preferr'd The manner of thy vile outragious Crymes, That therefore I haue ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... are therefore cried down as so many literary heresies, even by watchmen of the critical Zion, who seem to think that the age of Louis XIV. has left nothing for all succeeding time, to the end of the world, but a passive admiration of its perfections, without a presumptuous thought of making improvements of its own. For authority is avowed with so little disguise as the first principle of the French critics, that this expression of literary heresy ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... his warres against the Danes, and besides the calamitie that fell thereby to his people, manie other miseries oppressed this land in his daies, not so much through his lacke of courage and slouthfull negligence, as by reason of his presumptuous pride, whereby he alienated the hearts of [Sidenote: The pride of king Egelred alienated the harts of his people.] his people from him. His affections he could not rule, but was led by them without order of reason, for he did not onlie disherit ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... of battles and skirmishes which a Napoleonic officer must have endured—how they must have been the uninterrupted routine of his life from the first dark hair upon his lip to the first grey one upon his head, it is presumptuous to say what may or may not have been possible in such unparalleled careers. At any rate, be it fact or fiction—fact it is, in my opinion, with some artistic touching up of the high lights—there are few books which I could not spare from ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... may be illustrated, as I have mentioned before, by the perfectibility of a plant. The object of the enterprising florist is, as I conceive, to unite size, symmetry, and beauty of colour. It would surely be presumptuous in the most successful improver to affirm, that he possessed a carnation in which these qualities existed in the greatest possible state of perfection. However beautiful his flower may be, other care, other soil, or other suns, might ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... of course not a word to say, save to express my deep regret at losing the pleasure of their company. But another time, I trust. I—I feel presumptuous, but it is my earnest hope to be allowed to stand on the footing not only of a comrade in the cause, but of a neighbour; I live quite near. Forgive me if I seem a little precipitate. ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... woman I have ever met," Francis answered promptly, "and I consider your attitude towards her grossly presumptuous." ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which is wanting to the sacred cause of morality, is, that it should contribute in a very striking manner to great success in this world; he who feels all the dignity of this cause will sacrifice with pleasure every success, but it is still necessary to teach those presumptuous persons who imagine they discover depth of thinking in the vices of the soul, that if in immorality there is sometimes wit, in virtue there is genius. In obtaining the conviction of the good faith of the emperor Alexander, in his relations with Napoleon, I was at the same time persuaded that he would ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... whose opinions offend them? Does not modest science impress us with the difficulty of unraveling truth? What other passion than frenzied pride can render men so ferocious, so vindictive, so devoid of toleration and gentleness? What is more presumptuous than to arm nations and cause rivers of blood, in order to establish or ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... disgraceful and degrading reign of the Stuarts. The Divine Right of Kings was preached everywhere, while in Charles I's corrupt and servile Court the worst crimes on earth were practised. Charles had inherited from his father his presumptuous notions of prerogative and Divine Right, and was bent upon being an absolute and uncontrolled sovereign. He had married Henrietta, the daughter of the King of France, who, though possessed of great wit and beauty, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... "That is both presumptuous and impossible, your ladyship! If one-half the world were always bent on knowing all the secrets of the other half, what a very ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... honour, mistress, and my sister:' fearing he had said too much, he stopped and sighed at the word sister, and casting down his eyes, blushing with shame and anger, he continued. 'Oh give me leave to say a sister, madam, lest mistress had been too daring and presumptuous, and a title that would not justify my quarrel half so well, since it would take the honour from my just resentment, and blast it with the scandal of self-interest or jealous revenge.' 'What you say,' replied she, 'deserves abundance of acknowledgement; but if you ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... FRIEND,—That you may not denounce me as too presumptuous, I shall at once explain that I am writing this at Bob's urgent desire. He has at length got the position at the florist's, and tells me to tell you that he is now happy. I dropped in there last night; and when he gave me this message, I told him that I feared you would take it as an ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... greatly increased in Sunrise with the advent of the handsome young Harvard man, and his desired seclusion for profound research had not yet been fully realized. Types for study were plentiful, however, especially the type of the presumptuous young fellow who dared to admire Elinor Wream. By divine right she was the most popular girl in Sunrise, which pleased Professor Burgess up to a certain point. That point was Victor Burleigh. The silent antagonism between these two daily grew stronger; why, neither one could have told ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... in chorus; he dances, they imitate him. Often also the krakowiak represents, in a kind of little ballet, the simple course of a love-affair: one sees a couple of young people place themselves before the orchestra; the young man looks proud, presumptuous, preoccupied with his costume and beauty. Before long he becomes meditative, and seeks inspiration to improvise verses which the cries of his companions ask for, and which the time beaten by them provoke, as well as the manoeuvre of the young girl, who is impatient to dance. Arriving before the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... is difficulty in applying the distinction, and determining which function is high and which low, is evident. To fix the purposes of an object would often be presumptuous. With such perplexities I am not concerned. I merely wish to point out a perfectly legitimate and even important signification of the terms high and low, quite apart from their popular employment ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... regular treaty of alliance with an Affghan government—firm at least by its tenure, if circumstances forbade it to be strong by its action. But where was such a government to be found? Who, in the distracted state of Affghan society, was the man presumptuous enough to guarantee any general submission to his authority? And, if no man could say this for himself, could we say it for him? Was there any great Affghan philosopher in a cave, for whom Lord Auckland could ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... of children, like the mother's love for her offspring, seems to be born with the child, and to be a direct intelligence of Nature. It may thus, at first sight, appear as inconsistent and presumptuous to tell a woman how to rear her infant as to instruct her in the manner of loving it. Yet, though Nature is unquestionably the best nurse, Art makes so admirable a foster-mother, that no sensible woman, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... all proportion to those who have tickets. We hear from its enemies that the Church is doomed, and from its friends that it is in danger; there is a small but energetic party who are bent on reducing the Army, and even on doing away with it; nay, so wicked and presumptuous has human nature grown, that mutterings are heard and menaces uttered against the delay and exactions of the Law itself; whereas Literature has no foes, and is enlarging its boundaries in all directions. ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... as part of the stupendous and inexorable succession of phenomenal conditions, moving according to laws that may be formulated positively, but not interpreted morally, to new destinies that are eternally unfathomable? Why should this conception of a coherent order, free from the arbitrary and presumptuous stamp of certain final causes, be less favourable, either to the ethical or the aesthetic side of human nature, than the older conception of the regulation of the course of the great series by a multitude of intrinsically meaningless and purposeless volitions? The ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... her majesty's name, that though the majority of the lower house had shown themselves in their proceedings discreet and dutiful, yet a few of them had discovered a contrary character, and had justly merited the reproach of audacious, arrogant, and presumptuous: contrary to their duty, both as subjects and parliament men; nay, contrary to the express injunctions given them from the throne at the beginning of the session; injunctions which it might well become them to have better attended to; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... reached for his phone, then dropped his hands on his desk. "I'd like to ask you a question," he said. "Perhaps it's presumptuous, but I'm rather curious about the ... er, last workings of our government. Tell me, don't you really have room for our inmates? You haven't told us how many ships you've built. Or how big ...
— Criminal Negligence • Jesse Francis McComas
... "King Corporation," "King Monopoly," and all the other "Kings" of modern growth—swaying, like the reed in the wind, to the powers that be, whether of tyranny reared upon a thousand years of usurpation, military despotism of a day's growth, or presumptuous wealth accumulated by robbery, hypocrisy and insidious assassination. Instead of leading in the reformation of leviathan wrongs, the ministry waits for the rabble to applaud before it commends.[1] It was not in this manner that the great Christ set the world in motion, ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... against their Hapsburg overlords.[5] The Hapsburg duke of the moment was one of two rival claimants for the title of emperor, and was much too busy to attend personally to the chastisement of these presumptuous boors. The army which he sent to do the work for him was met by the Swiss at Morgarten, among their mountain passes, overwhelmed with rocks, and then put to flight by one fierce charge of the unarmored peasants. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... in synod assembled should summon all geologists and astronomers to come before them and show if there was anything in their scientific teachings, their heretical, astronomical, and geological doctrines, would any one have responded to the presumptuous demand? Would Airy, Lyell, Miller, Darwin, or the poorest country school master have taken any notice ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... treatise was thus occasioned:— 'It was one day, as I was Walking in Your Majesty's Palace at White-Hall (where I have sometimes the honour to refresh myself with the Sight of Your Illustrious Presence, which is the Joy of Your Peoples hearts) that a presumptuous Smoak issuing from one or two tunnels near Northumberland House, and not far from Scotland-yard did so invade the Court; that all the Rooms, Galleries, and Places about it were fill'd and infested with it; and that to such a degree, as ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... result of this overcharged existence. To this region, however misunderstood, or interpreted with presumptuous carelessness, belong the phenomena of magnetism, or mesmerism, as it is now often called, where the trance of the Ecstatica purports to be produced by the agency of one human being on another, instead of, as in her ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... and sinful it is to worship money and show, as my parents did; how much suffering it has caused me! and how equally unwise and presumptuous it was for a young man, stung by the pride of others, to make that the rule of his life, and go forth in his own strength to build up a fortune, so that he might demand me of my parents as an ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... mirth ring sweetly on my ears, like the notes of birds. And when I have heard a charming voice singing to the little ones, I have listened with delight. Would it be too presumptuous to beg the air songstress to repeat her song for ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... telescope. We know that this instrument has been perfected by the long continued efforts of the highest of human intellects; and we naturally infer that the eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this inference be presumptuous? Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man? If we must compare the eye to an optical instrument, we ought in imagination to take a thick layer of transparent tissue, with spaces filled with fluid, and with a nerve sensitive to light beneath, ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... abated somewhat, Philip found that he could do so. "But this still doesn't make sense," he said a short while later. "Obviously you and the rest of the owners have purchased new houses. Would it be presumptuous of me to ask how you're going to pay for them when you're virtually giving ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... I can also perceive in them the literary defects incidental to youth and impatience; they are dreams of what ought to be, or may be. The drama which I now present to you is a sad reality. I lay aside the presumptuous attitude of an instructor, and am content to paint, with such colours as my own heart furnishes, that which ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... dark, and all nature was put out of harmony; but at that of the Muses the heavens themselves, the stars, the sea, and the rivers stood motionless, and Helicon swelled up with delight, so that its summit reached the sky." The Muses then, having turned the presumptuous maidens into chattering magpies, first took the name of Pi-er'i-des, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... thoughtful of the population, remembering the days of Marius and Sylla, trembled at the impending danger. Pompey himself had no fear. He urged the Senate to resist to the utmost all of Csar's claims, saying if Csar should be so presumptuous as to attempt to march to Rome he could raise troops enough by stamping with his foot ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... presumptuous," said Genji; "but may I beg you to transmit this poetical effusion to your ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... desired my bookseller to send a copy to you, enclosed along with one to your friend, Miss Mackenzie. How far you will agree with my opinions regarding it I cannot say, but of one thing I am sure, that you will judge with candour and charity. I should have sent one to Mr. Alison had I not thought it presumptuous in me to send such a work to any clergyman, and, with only one exception (a Presbyterian clergyman), I have abstained from doing so. I was very much obliged to Mrs. Mackenzie, Lord M.'s lady, for the letter she was so good as to write me in her ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... thought himself able to act the part not of general only, but of admiral too. The worst disasters which Rome suffered in this war were due not to the storms and still less to the Carthaginians, but to the presumptuous ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... there was no reason—at least, he saw none—why he might not one day stand in Topham's place. Nay, he might even be a partner: why not? The present chief of the firm had, long ago, been errand-boy in such an establishment; and it really did not seem to him to be presumptuous to suppose that, some time hence, he might be a merchant too, as well ...
— Stephen Grattan's Faith - A Canadian Story • Margaret M. Robertson |
