"Conceit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... translate. The Danish word Portviin according to sound, may mean either port wine or the creaking of a door.] The brother, the only son of the house, with whom we shall become better acquainted, had written down this conceit; "but that was only to be rude toward her," said Miss Grethe. "Such good ideas as this I have every hour of ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... calmly reflected on the spirit displayed by the witnesses for the truth, he might have seen that they were partakers of a higher wisdom than his own; but the tenacity with which they adhered to their principles, only mortified his self-conceit, and roused his indignation. It is remarkable that this philosophic Emperor was the most systematic and heartless of all the persecutors who had ever yet oppressed the Church. When Nero lighted up his gardens with the flames which issued from the bodies of the dying Christians, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... too absurd," said Rosalind Merton, sidling up to Maggie and casting some disdainful glances at poor Priscilla, "the conceit of some people! Of all forms of conceit, preserve me ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... quarterstaff over Feeble-mind's shoulders—"Man, dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" "I shall like no laughing," said Feeble-mind; "I shall like no gay attire; I shall like no unprofitable questions." I think it took some self-conceit to refuse to sit at table beside Christiana because of her gay attire. And I hope Mercy did not give up dressing well, even after she was married, to please that weak-minded old churl. And as to unprofitable questions—we are all tempted to think that question unprofitable which our incapacity ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... also according to the propriety of our English tongue so far as Grammar and the verse will permit. A significant comment in the "Directions" runs: "As for the fear of making truants by these translations, a conceit which arose merely upon the abuse of other translations, never intended for this end, I hope that happy experience of this kind will in time drive it and all like to it utterly out of schools and out of the minds of all." Apparently ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... The man's self-conceit was unlimited; his sense of humour nil; and in less than a month he had been unanimously voted a "pukka[12] bounder" by that isolated community of Englishmen, who played as hard as they worked, and invariably "played the game"; a code of morals which had apparently been left ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... if you allow your adversary a respectable character, they will think, that though you differ from him, you may be in the wrong. Sir, treating your adversary with respect, is striking soft in a battle. And as to Hume,—a man who has so much conceit as to tell all mankind that they have been bubbled[72] for ages, and he is the wise man who sees better than they,—a man who has so little scrupulosity as to venture to oppose those principles which have been thought necessary to human happiness,—is he to be surprized ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... days we had a youth of talent in the family,—a sort of sophomorical boil, that the soap and sugar of indiscriminate adulation had drawn to a head of conceit. This youth bestowed a great deal of attention on a certain young woman of a classical turn of mind, who once had a longing to attend a fancy-ball as a sibyl. About the same time Sophomore missed the first volume of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... Slowly the loose life he was leading was lowering him to the level of the common herd. A few years ago he would not have thought of drinking with his own mill hands. To-night he was there, the most reckless of them all. Analyzed, it was for the most part conceit with him; the low conceit of the superior intellect which would mingle in infamy with the lowest to gain its ignorant homage. For Intellect must have homage if it has to ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... study on account of the noise made by the shells; and a large miscellaneous mass of poverty, starvation, recklessness, and ruin precipitated so suddenly upon the country that many were buried beneath it beyond hope of being extricated." This universal tragedy he attributes in part to the conceit of the Southern people. He himself became "convinced of his ability to whip at least five Yankees. The author does not know now and did not then, by what course of reasoning he arrived at this said conviction; in the best of the author's judgment he did not reason it out at ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... be merely a poetical conceit of mine, but it seems to me that the horses prance higher, and shake their bells more merrily on New Year's than any other day, as if they partook in our enjoyment of the occasion. May not the horse, by ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... way of looking at things, or, rather, into them," said Mr. Markland, forcing a smile. "There is a common saying about taking the conceit out of a man, and I must acknowledge that you can do this as effectually as any one ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... respectful homage to its various goings and comings as it ran hither and thither, he should be punished with loss of his limbs. Also Gunnar imposed on the nation a double tribute, one to be paid out of the autumn harvest, the other in the spring. Thus he burst the bubble conceit of the Norwegians, to make them feel clearly how their pride was gone, when they saw it forced to ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... But Will's conceit might be quite as effectual. He was under orders to communicate the matter to no one not already aware of it, and as above all things he desired to see the execution as the most memorable spectacle ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... see it like that. And Bogdanich was a brick: he told you you were saying what was not true. It's not pleasant, but what's to be done, my dear fellow? You landed yourself in it. And now, when one wants to smooth the thing over, some conceit prevents your apologizing, and you wish to make the whole affair public. You are offended at being put on duty a bit, but why not apologize to an old and honorable officer? Whatever Bogdanich may be, anyway he is an honorable and brave old colonel! You're quick at taking ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the poor little soul," Grace declared. "I'm sure she belongs to enough charitable boards and committees so that she ought to be delighted that we bring a real 'case,' as she calls them, to her," and Grace laughed at her own conceit. ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... carelessness or of momentary inability to do what is wanted—are by nature or education impossible. His nature did not give him this endowment, and his education was of the very last sort to procure it for him. He himself, not out of pique or conceit, things utterly alien from his nature, still less out of laziness, but, I believe, as a genuine, and, what is more, a correct self-criticism, has left in his private writings repeated expressions of his belief that revision ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... feet, moving to the front, talking as she went. "I really haven't the self-assertion to walk up to strange students and tell them the error of their ways. To me, that course of action savors too much of conceit of our own virtues. The best we can do is to be perfectly honorable about the examinations. Our mental attitude toward dishonorable proceedings ought to have its influence without our going about making ourselves odious ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... comes from home. It is biting to find that accident has given me a country which has not manliness and pride to maintain its own opinions, while it is overflowing with conceit. But never mind all this. See that you do not decamp before my departure and I'll promise not to ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... thus speaking all rejoiced; in some the love of virtue increased, in others carelessness was thrown aside, the self-conceit of others was stopped; and all were persuaded to despise the assaults of the Evil One, and marvelled at the grace given Anthony from the Lord for the discerning of spirits. So their cells were in the mountains, ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Dean Smedley, Of dulness, pride, conceit, a medley, Was equally allow'd to shine As poet, scholar, and divine; With godliness could well dispense, Would be a rake, but wanted sense; Would strictly after Truth inquire, Because he dreaded to come nigh her. For Liberty no champion bolder, He hated bailiffs at his ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... where he already had a footing. He had a footing everywhere, and got information about everything. He was of an uneasy and envious temper. He was well aware of his own considerable abilities, and nervously exaggerated them in his self-conceit. He knew he would play a prominent part of some sort, but Alyosha, who was attached to him, was distressed to see that his friend Rakitin was dishonorable, and quite unconscious of being so himself, considering, on the contrary, that ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... contradictory, but it was evident that, while Kalliope disowned conceit of station for herself, she could not always cross her mother's wishes. It was further elicited that if Lady Flight had taken up the matter there would have been no difficulty. Half a year ago the ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as English Marquery, or Mercury, and Tota bona; or, Allgood, the latter from a conceit of the rustics that it will cure all hurts; "wherefore the leaves are now a constant plaster among them for every green wound." It bears small flowers of sepals only, and is grown by cottagers as a pot herb. ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... court martyrdom to hold Upon his head a laurel of gold, Where for each rich conceit ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... this side, and be respectful. Of course it is only Pretend, you know," she added, with a quick consciousness of Frere's conceit. "Now then, the Queen goes down to the Seashore surrounded by her Nymphs! There is no occasion to laugh, Mr. Frere. Of course, Nymphs are very different from you, but then we can't ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... reputation. He returned in two years with a fashionable figure, a most recherche style of dress, moustachios of the most approved cut, and whiskers of faultless curl—a finished gentleman in his own conceit. With such attractions, the prestige which he derived from his reported travels and long residence abroad, and the savoir faire of one who had made the conventional arrangements of society his study, ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... his conceit of tacking a tragic head with a comic tail, in order to refresh the audience, it is such a piece of jargon, that I don't know what to ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... he offered no welcome to this ragged squad. The leader modestly offered him some advice about the military condition of the South, but the general in command was clothed in too dense an armor of conceit to be open to advice from any quarter, certainly not from the leader of such a Falstaffian company, and he was glad enough to get rid of him by sending him on a scouting expedition in advance of the army, to watch the enemy and report ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... odious; but neither the apprehension, nor the experience of the unpleasant impressions it produces, is sufficient reason for declining the consideration of the atrocities of which human nature is capable. Self-conceit, indeed, may be mortified at the unavoidable thought of identity of species, which it may seek many imaginary devices to conceal; and feverish sensibility may be wrought up to indignant discontent, at the power which placed it amid such profligacy. But the humble philosopher, on the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... India and Peru, mosaic work from Italy, and bronzes from France, were all heaped together pell-mell with the coarse deal boxes and dingy leather cases which served to pack them for traveling. The little man apologized, with a cheerful and simpering conceit, for his litter of curiosities, his dressing-gown, and his delicate health; and, waving his hand toward a chair, placed his attention, with pragmatical politeness, at the visitor's disposal. Magdalen looked at him with a momentary doubt whether Mrs. Lecount had not ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... rhymes? Why, anyway, fold back a sentence or idea to get it into a prescribed arbitrary form? Why should we call this verse-tinkering and verse-shaping art, when it is only artifice? Why should we call the man who makes one pretty conceit rhyme with another pretty conceit an artist, and deny the term to the man whose sentences pair ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... hand, the hand of a man, woman, or child. These hands, drying in the sun, could be seen at the posts along the river. They are no longer in evidence. Neither is the flower-bed of Lieutenant Dom, which was bordered with human skulls. A quaint conceit. ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... way; but, as Pliny informeth, when they intended to take up the root of this plant, they took the wind thereof, and with a sword describing three circles about it, they digged it up, looking toward the west. A conceit not only injurious unto truth and confutable by daily experience, but somewhat derogatory unto the providence of God; that is, not only to impose so destructive a quality on any plant, but to conceive a vegetable whose parts are so useful unto many, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... his own conceit and vainglory, the pride of his age and experience, and then he told of the lesson he had learned. "Why, people," he said, "I feels like a ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... was at once established; but he had the advantage of a quick imagination and a sanguine temperament; also the manly courage to look at Fortune with respectful recognition, as we all look at royalty,—even as though he had sometime been presented,—not with a snobbish conceit which would seem to defy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... at his conceit. "You are a merry peddler," he said, and took out of his pouch a few coins, from which he counted scrupulously the sum that the bookseller had asked, and gave it to him. Then he moved slowly away from the stall, reading in his new purchase until he came to the fountain that ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... anything at all about the matter; elsewise, it is certain that my wish to shield a silly mannikin from reproach, if only for our country's sake, would have made me find out some excuse to mend the bungling of his foolish self-conceit. ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... who was the comedian of the company, met with a grin of approval as he faced the ring of torches like an actor facing the footlights, posing before the crowd that had gathered, flashing his vulgar conceit in the public eye. And he praised God in a song and dance, fitting his words to the latest ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... Manuel, declare that such self-conceit is a fault, and our elders, they say, are ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... awkward, and she gives her estimate of him in an undertone. It will be bad for Chough if he is at all airish or scholastic, or individual in his opinions, for between a senior pastor's wife and his young assistant there is an hereditary distrust; conceit has no show at all ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... people, finery seems to mean good dressing, yet their clothes jar, cry out, even "scream out their unfitness and unwholesomeness, and betray their dishonesty, shame and sacrifice." Clothes show silliness, conceit, and selfishness more than any other thing, and often they shame a home, so a colored girl should study her individuality and her life position and dress accordingly. She should wear only becoming colors, and she might affect a certain color to her advantage. She should ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... a little. Either the brigands here are clever, or some man who is more clever has them in hand, and knows enough not to mix with them,—some man who can persuade them, or terrorize them, or shield them. Have you no conceit as to who in this city is fitted for a ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... conspicuous features in his character seems to have been a remarkable, and, as some think, a culpable degree of flexibility. That such a disposition is preferable to its opposite extreme, will be admitted by all who think that modesty, even in excess, is more nearly allied to wisdom than conceit and self-sufficiency. He who has attentively considered the political, or, indeed, the general concerns of life, may possibly go still further, and rank a willingness to be convinced, or in some cases even without conviction, to concede our own ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... talked to them of his charming acquaintances in the town, the beauties he had admired, did admire, or thought he was going to admire, until Celandine, who heard it all, was ready to cry with vexation. The Fairy too was quite shocked at his conceit, and hit upon a plan for curing him of it. She sent to him by an unknown messenger a portrait of Princess Celandine as she really was, with this inscription: 'All this beauty and sweetness, with a loving heart and a great kingdom, might have been yours but ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... years he created a sensation by declining to join the Hasty Pudding Club. This was looked upon as a piece of inordinate self- conceit; whereas, the true reason for it was that he had little money and preferred to spend it in going to the theatre. He said afterwards, in regard to this, that he was not sorry to have done it, for "the students placed too much ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... off occasionally. But, at any rate, there is quite enough to make her a great prize, and an object of admiration and attention to all the little men—not to the old hands, like White and Sumner; they are built up in their own conceit, and wouldn't marry Sam Weller's 'female marchioness,' unless she made love to them first, like one of Knowles's heroines. But the juveniles are crazy about her. Robinson went off more ostentatiously love-sick than a man of his size I ever saw; and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... recruit his finances at Baden-Baden terminated, as might be expected, in their further reduction, and at last he found his way to Paris. Unfortunately for him, his ruinous career in England had been so short, and his self-conceit, and great opinion of his own knowingness, had made him so utterly reject the advice and experience of the very few friends who cared a rush for his welfare, that he was still in the state of a six-day-old puppy, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... conceit," said Petit-Claud; "we made it a point of honor to get up a subscription, and we will have a tremendous affair for you. The masters and the headmaster will be there, and, at the present rate, we shall, no ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... that his life is worth the venture of a record in the form of an autobiography suggests a degree of self-conceit of which I am not guilty. From my own initiative this would never have been written, and the first suggestion that I should write it, coming from a man of such experience in books and judgment of men as the late ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... The conceit amused him, and he advanced further into the musty porch hoping to find a bell. But as he did so his ear caught the distant sound of shuffling feet. The shuffle of feet drew nearer and presently a beam of light shone out from under the door. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... horror I think of Germany and of my future enterprises in that country. God forgive me, but I discover nothing but mean and miserable things, conceit and a pretence of solid work without any real foundation; half-heartedness in everything. After all I prefer to see "Le Pardon de Ploermel" in Paris than under the shadow of the famous, glorious German oak tree. I must also confess to you that my treading once ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... sunshine of the morn A butterfly (but newly born) Sat proudly perking on a rose, With pert conceit his bosom glows; His wings (all glorious to behold) Bedropt with azure, jet, and gold, Wide he displays; the spangled dew Reflects his eyes and various hue. His now forgotten friend, a snail, Beneath his house, with slimy trail, Crawls ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... verses by fashionable people, which were put into her Vase at Batheaston villa[991], near Bath, in competition for honorary prizes, being mentioned, he held them very cheap: 'Bouts rimes (said he,) is a mere conceit, and an old conceit now, I wonder how people were persuaded to write in that manner for this lady[992].' I named a gentleman of his acquaintance who wrote for the Vase. JOHNSON. 'He was a blockhead for his pains.' BOSWELL. 'The Duchess of Northumberland ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... hesitation in such a fateful moment; but the great Capuchin friar neither paused nor hesitated. That strange confidence in his own mission, his belief that God had called him to the protection of Venice, perchance even a personal conceit in his own skill as a swordsman, sent him hurrying to the work. It was a draught of life to him to see men tremble at his word; the knowledge which treachery poured into his ear was a study finer than that of all the ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... and did the right thing; destined alas! never to pass from mind to speech, for if ever tongue essayed the telling it faltered some fatuous abortion as little like love's dream as Caliban resembled Ariel. Fresh from the brave world of day-dreams, still smiling happily from some whimsical conceit as well as with anticipation of Aileen's gladness at sight of me, I passed through the ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... noon, and the news of the completion of the road being flashed abroad as it fell. Then the two locomotives, one from the west and the other from the east, drew up to each other on the single line, coming into gentle collision, that they in their way, in the pleasing conceit of their drivers, might symbolise the fraternisation that went on. It does not spoil the story of the ceremony to state that the laurel tie, with its inscriptions and its magnificent mountings, was only ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... not impossible that this conceit occurred to Hawthorne before he had himself seen the Old Man of the Mountain, or the Profile, in the Franconia Notch which is generally associated in the minds of readers with ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... great,—never so great, perhaps, as now and here,—and these people assemble every week to converse upon them. What more rational thing could they do? If they came together to snivel and cant, and to support one another in a miserable conceit of being the elect of the human species, we might object. But no description can show how far from that, how opposite to that, is the tone, the spirit, the object, of the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Dodger, or whatever he calls himself, has been imposed upon by his fears, and that he has actually seen no Indians at all. The springing up of a bush from under his horse's feet, and the starting away of a dozen frighted rabbits, might easily explain his conceit of the long-legged Indian, and his five murderous accomplices; and as for the savages seen in ambush at the Ford, the shaking of the cane-brake by the breeze, or by some skulking bear, would as readily account for ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... its destined place on the shelf — where it stays. And this saith the scoffer, is all; but even he does not fail to remark with a certain awe that the owner goeth thereafter as one possessing a happy secret and radiating an inner glow. Moreover, he is insufferably conceited, and his conceit waxeth as his coat, now condemned to a fresh term of servitude, groweth shabbier. And shabby though his coat may be, yet will he never stoop to renew its pristine youth and gloss by the price of any book. No man ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... monotonous. Keep, then, your pity for those who require it. From the height of my philosophy I compassionate you. No one is so vain as a recluse; and your jests at my hermitship and hermitage cannot penetrate the folds of a self-conceit, which does not envy you in your suppers at D—— House, nor even in ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... out of the professional creases in his lower jaw. Saunders pulled down his mouth to express extra grief when a five-foot grave had been ordered. His seven-foot manifestations of respect for the deceased were a sight to see. He held the opinion that anybody that had no more 'conceit o' themsel'' [were so much left to themselves] than to be buried in a three-foot grave, did not deserve to be mourned at all. This crease, then, was one of Saunders's assets, and had therefore to be carefully attended to. Even love must ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... the hour brings it to me unsought; a quip, a quip! I shall preach on the Pool of Bethesda: "While I am coming, another steppeth down before me." The verse seems as if it were made on purpose for me; what a pity nobody else will understand it!' And he smiled quietly at the conceit, as he got the scented sheets of sermon-paper out of his little sandalwood davenport. For Arthur Berkeley was one of those curiously compounded natures which can hardly ever be perfectly serious, and which can enjoy a quaintness or a neat literary allusion even at a moment of the bitterest ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... think you over estimate yourself, which I never did. You thought you ought to have had an "A" in English, and were not prepared for your low mark in French and German. Do a little self-examination and nip the bud of conceit; get a fair estimate and make it too low rather than too high. I am sure I know my own weak points, see if you can't find yours. That saying of the ancients, "know thyself," is to be pondered daily. I ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... Conceit is usually seen during our first investigations after knowledge; but time and more accurate research teach us that not only is our comprehension limited, but knowledge itself is so imperfect, as not to warrant any vanity upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... apply our endeavours unto the examination of these old opinions, which though they have for a long time lien neglected by others, yet in them may you finde many truths well worthy your paines and observation. Tis a false conceit, for us to thinke, that amongst the ancient variety and search of opinions, the best hath still prevailed. Time (saith the learned Verulam) seemes to be of the nature of a river or streame, which carrieth downe to us that which is light, or blowne up, but sinketh that which is weighty ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins
... to be a poetical conceit. A Pict being painted, if he is slain in battle, and a vest is made of his skin, it is a painted vest won from ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... again the following evening, and a thought of high conceit flew suddenly into my mind: it was myself she came to see! But, watching her more closely, I saw that she was busy, doing something about a grave, so it was not me she had come for. I stole away up to the big ant-heap in the wood and watched the insects as long as I could see; afterwards, ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... into utterly useless parasites, and mentally they dislocate their brains and become mental eunuchs. And in precisely the same manner, according to the measure of their folly, do they acquire self-conceit, which deprives them forever of all possibility of return to a simple life of toil, to a simple, clear, and universally human train ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... observed that my last quarter was cut short in the middle; which untoward event arose from no arrogance or supercilious conceit on my part, as though I had perfected myself in the mysteries of pigeon-wing and balancez, but from the abrupt departure of the professor himself, who, true to the name indicative of his constitutional levity, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... hardness of life, its pathos and unequal chances, its conceit, self-forgetfulness, and patience, were presented on the battle-field ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Malpas became the absolute mistress of eight thousand pounds. Lemuel[1] had carefully foreseen this windfall, and wished to use the money in enterprises of the earthenware trade. Mrs. Malpas, pretty and vivacious, with a self-conceit hardened by the adulation of saloon-bars, very decidedly thought otherwise. Her motto was, 'What's yours is mine, but what's mine's my own.' The difference was accentuated. Long mutual resistances were followed by reconciliations, which grew more and more transitory, and ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... about the world, catching all the butterflies, rubbing the bloom off all the plums, tunneling mountains, bridging seas, smoothing the facets off ideas so that they may be swallowed harmlessly like pills. With true Anglo-Saxon conceit we had thought that our own Mr. Wells was the most universal of these universal geniuses. He has so diligently brought science, ethics, sex, marriage, sociology, God, and everything else—properly deodorized, of course—to the desk of the ordinary man, that he may ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... a strike; it would have suited his book well enough. So when the men came to ask for the five per cent. they are claiming, he told 'em he'd think about it, and give them his answer on the pay day; knowing all the while what his answer would be, of course, but thinking he'd strengthen their conceit of their own way. However, they were too deep for him, and heard something about the bad prospects of trade. So in they came on the Friday, and drew back their claim, and now he's obliged to go on working. ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... nothing much; only young men will be young men; and father was put out by his vanity and conceit. He actually got talking to ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... in which such words are said. I imagined that living in fashionable society in London, he did not like the somewhat scholastic title of Professor which, in London particularly, has always a by-taste of diluted omniscience and conceit. I accordingly addressed him in my next letter as "My dear Sir," and this, I am sorry to say, produced quite a coldness and stiffness, as my friend evidently imagined that I declined to be on more intimate terms with him, the fact being that through life I have always been one of his most devoted ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... can't, don't cry, little girl. There's nothing to cry about. I can stand it. All the trouble is, it does seem to me that I could take care of you better than any other fellow on earth, but maybe that's my conceit, and you'll find somebody else that will do better than I. Now don't cry." Francis pulled her hat off gently, and patted her head. His face was quite white, but he tried to smile. "Don't cry, dear," he said ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... find relief in the view of a periodical revolution, wherein all comes to an end from time to time and takes a fresh start. It would be wiser for us simply to resign the problem as too great. For the conception to which we have recourse is evidently a mere conceit of imagination, without scientific basis or ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... every art. The Italian princes were not, like their contemporaries in the North, dependent on the society of an aristocracy which held itself to be the only class worth consideration, and which infected the monarch with the same conceit. In Italy the prince was permitted and compelled to know and to use men of every grade in society; and the nobility, though by birth a caste, were forced in social intercourse to stand up on their personal qualifications alone. But this is a point which we shall ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... as the type of self-sufficient stupidity and conceit—a custom, perhaps, like some few other customs, more conventional than fair—then the purest jackass in Cloisterham is Mr. Thomas ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... added, "I cannot doubt that Miss Beaufort is the favored Semel; but, my dear, you over-acted your character? As confidant, a few tears were enough when your lady fainted." During these attacks, Euphemia reclined pompously on a sofa, and not deigning a reply, repelled them with much conceit and haughtiness. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... her share to the Christian thought and life of the world. We, of the proud West, are prone to think that our type of life is all-embracing and that our religious thought is all-satisfying. Nothing can be more fallacious or more injurious than such a conceit. The East is the full complement of the West. In life and thought we are only an hemisphere, and we need the East to fill up our full-orbed beauty. The mystic piety of India will correct our too practical, ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... sugar-value did Mr. Linden himself attribute his rise in the world, and gradual increase in rotundity, riches, and respectability. This constant success engendered, as it is too apt to do, inordinate egotism, conceit, self-esteem, vanity. There was scarcely a social, governmental, or economical problem which he did not believe himself capable of solving as easily as he could eat his dinner when hungry. "Common-sense business-habits"—his ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... articles has been nothing but half-truths, and a half-truth is worse than a lie. You know that it is to gratify your personal spite, and not to help the general public, that you have engaged in your frenzied writings. The public is wiser than you think, although your conceit has blinded you ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... immense dome. Tons upon tons—Pelion on Ossa—of literature meet the eye and stun the imagination. Every book was wrought out by eager labour of some hopeful mortal; joy, anguish, despair, mad ambition, placid assurance, wild conceit, proud courage once possessed the breasts of those myriad writers, according to their several dispositions. The piles rest in stately silence, and the reputations of ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... image, eidolon [Gr.], sentiment, reflection, observation, consideration; abstract idea; archetype, formative notion; guiding conception, organizing conception; image in the mind, regulative principle. view &c (opinion) 484; theory &c 514; conceit, fancy; phantasy &c (imagination) 515. point of view &c (aspect) 448; field ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... saying that he made sonnets to my Lord. Howbeit, my Lord was exceeding wroth, and I, to beguile him, did propose that we should leave our horses and cargoes of manuscript behind and cross on the ice afoot, which conceit pleased him mightily. In sooth it chanced well with what followed, for hardly were we on the river when we saw a great crowd coming from Westminster, before a caravan of strange animals and savages in masks, capering and capricolling, dragging ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... Howells is the kindliest of critics, but now and then some popular novelist's conceit will cause him to ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... building a railroad which passed through Geneva. Alac had been in the neighborhood for two months supervising operations. He was striking in appearance—a florid-faced' blonde, brusque in business, quite jovial socially, and cracking—full of the conceit of youth, wealth and station. So far, life had, in practically nothing, ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... is rescued from any tinge of conceit or egotism by its absolute simplicity and truth. The imitation referred to is of the moral "Tales" for popular reading of the lower classes, which my cabman had studied. The pity of it is, when so many of the contemporary writers of Russia owe their inspiration, their very existence, to Turgeneff ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... explain and apologize, and in his perky conceit really seemed to fancy that I might be hurt at his desertion. So when he asked if I would "bid him good-bye pleasantly, and remember to keep my promise," I had a small inspiration. I would bid him ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... self-conceit and confidence in his own ability to carry out the mission he had so bravely undertaken were rapidly oozing away, "I have a good map of the country, a good horse, plenty of money with which to hire guides, am well armed, and could make a good fight if necessary. I ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... Robin," said the Knight, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth, "thou hast a quaint conceit. As for the pair of eyes with which I regard thee, I would say that they are as favorable as may be, for I hear much good of thee and little ill. What is thy ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... learned one thing at the courting of her which is the gist of my word of wisdom to you, Colin. Keep it in mind till you need it. It's this: There's one thing a woman will put up with blandly in every man but the one man she has a notion of, and that's the absence of conceit about himself or her." In the field by the river, the harvesters sat at a mid-day meal, contentedly eating their bannock and cheese. They were young folks all, at the age when toil and plain living but give a zest to the errant pleasures of life, so they filled their hour of leisure ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... than ill-nature. His education had not been neglected, and he inherited an estate of five thousand a year. Miss Darnel, however, had penetration enough to discover and despise him, as a strange composition of rapacity and profusion, absurdity and good sense, bashfulness and impudence, self-conceit and diffidence, awkwardness and ostentation, insolence and good-nature, rashness and timidity. He was continually surrounded and preyed upon by certain vermin called Led Captains and Buffoons, who showed him in leading-strings ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... of taking the conceit out of him. He little thought of this when he made that random shot. "May I ask, my lad," I said, in the blandest voice, "what your trade ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the clean, unvarnished truth in dogged fashion, and had so impressed all by his simple story, in which he seemed only trying to tell facts, no matter how they bore upon himself, that even the prosecutor was out of conceit with his side ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... voluptuous, little person, is mated to a bull-necked He, pompous, broad and full of the conceit of the ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... subject so full of unprofitable but curious hints as to the work of unseen forces, that one does not weary easily of it. I am not speaking here of megalomaniacs who rest uneasy under the crown of their unbounded conceit—who really never rest in this world, and when out of it go on fretting and fuming on the straitened circumstances of their last habitation, where all men must lie in obscure equality. Neither am I thinking of those ambitious minds who, always looking forward to some aim of aggrandizement, can ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... force, with a predisposition towards novelty, and novelty, especially if founded on theory, is abhorrent to such as old Johnny Galvin the steward, or Peter Flood the gardener, or, stiffest in her own conceit of all, Mrs. Twomey ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... suggests the Teutonic superlative; "So bigger as never vas," and the "Xmas 1898" reads like the advertisement of a department store: "Gents pants for Xmas gifts." But we must admit that the stamp is a pretty conceit, in spite of these defects and of the ambition of the artist, which has spread the "thin red line" over territory that has not otherwise been acquired. In addition to the things to be learned from the pictorial part of stamps, there are other things which attract the attention of the thoughtful and ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... men were dead of the plague, and the ship cast ashore And with the great men in curing of their claps Expressly taking care that nobody might see this business done Having some experience, but greater conceit of it than is fit Helping to slip their calfes when there is occasion Her months upon her is gone to bed I had agreed with Jane Welsh, but she came not, which vexed me Lay long caressing my wife and talking Let her brew as she has baked New ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... For he was to all intents and purposes the originator and head man of the little campaign, till suddenly casting his eyes sidewise he caught sight of Mark looking at him in an amused way, which discharged all his conceit upon the instant, as he flushed up and changed back to the old Dummy ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... lunch, and, whether by accident or intention, made a better impression than he had ever made before. He was intelligent, easy, full of information and o rara avis! proved himself to be a man without conceit. He never complained of his ill-fortune in life, but his individuality thrust the fact into every mind, that this was a man destined for distinction who had missed it. He seemed to be riding through life for a fall, and rode with his chin up, gay ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... any one who doesn't toady to him," thought Captain Cartwright moodily. "I can see that I've got to make it my business to take the conceit and arrogance out ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... of our modern journals, those monuments of editorial self-conceit, that Catherine the Great died happily as she had lived. Everybody knows that she died suddenly on her close stool. By calling such a death happy, the journalist hints that it is the death he himself ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... his family had, at an early age, inspired him with courage and self-conceit, so that in his blind, frivolous presumption, the only person, as he thought, who exceeded his own fascination was possibly the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... little dingy thing in pearls and laces. Ten to one but what she will marry that lame imp next door as soon as she is grown, and endow him with the whole of it—that 'little devil on two sticks,' and I must have my run before then, of course." She laughed merrily at the conceit. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Director whom you prefer! What do you mean by it, what do you mean by it? Were others to regard things in the same way, the Service would find itself without a single individual. Reconsider your conduct—forego your pride and conceit, and make Lienitsin amends." ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the notion of an animal origin, and count themselves "children of God," love to prate of their "humble sense of servitude." In most of the sermons that have poured out from pulpit and altar against the doctrine of evolution human vanity and conceit have been a conspicuous element; and, although we have inherited this very characteristic weakness from the apes, we must admit that we have developed it to a higher degree, which is entirely repudiated by sound and normal intelligence. We are greatly amused at all the childish follies ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... every pause, "You are a dupe; but I like you the better for it. And," added he, "you don't—blind buzzard! as your want of conceit makes you, for which I like you the better, too—you don't see the reason why he banished you from Castle Hermitage—you don't see that he is jealous of your rivalling that ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... to regard that as glory when performed by a nation, which is condemned as a crime and a barbarism, when committed by an individual? In what vain conceit of wisdom and virtue do you find this degrading morality? Where is it declared that God, who is no respecter of persons, is a respecter of multitudes? Whence do you draw these partial laws of a powerful and impartial ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... very different;—but Mr. Vivian wouldn't think of such a thing. He understands the nature of things, and knows his own position. There is a conceit about ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... not good enough to compensate for the mischief they did him. He spoke his own language with purity: he had some merit, but more conceit: and he made no use of the merit he had, but to make himself enemies." Voltaire adds, "Bussi was released at the end of eighteen months; but he was in disgrace all the rest of his life, in vain protesting a regard for Louis XIV." Bussi ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... morning all the party in the Chateau d'Anzy were astir, little La Baudraye having arranged a day's sport for the Parisians—less for their pleasure than to gratify his own conceit. He was delighted to make them walk over the twelve hundred acres of waste land that he was intending to reclaim, an undertaking that would cost some hundred thousand francs, but which might yield an increase of thirty to sixty thousand francs a year in the ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... time he brought the letters, Anna received him with her usual kindness; but there was something in his manner that displeased her, whether it was self-assurance, or conceit, or a way he had of looking at her, she could not tell, nor did she waste many seconds trying to decide; but the next day when he came he was not admitted to her presence, nor the next after that, nor for some time to come. This surprised Herr Klutz, who was of Dellwig's opinion that ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... into youth in a dream of love. The lady of his mystic passion dies early. He dreams of her still, not as a wonder of earth, but as a saint in paradise, and relieves his heart in an autobiography, a strange and perplexing work of fiction—quaint and subtle enough for a metaphysical conceit; but, on the other hand, with far too much of genuine and deep feeling. It is a first essay; he closes it abruptly as if dissatisfied with his work, but with the resolution of raising at a future day a worthy monument to the memory of her whom he has lost. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... all the vanities of this world should not entreat a moment's breath from me; could the Devil work my belief to imagine I could never die, I would not outlive that very thought. I have so abject a conceit of this common way of existence, this retaining to the sun and elements, I cannot think this to be a man, or to live according to the dignity of humanity. In expectation of a better, I can with patience embrace this life, yet in my best meditations ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... harmony with the noblest soul, grand by every charm of culture, useful and beautiful because useful; feminine purity and delicacy and refinement giving their luster and their power to the most absolute science—woman learned without infidelity and wise without conceit, the crowned queen of the world by right of that Knowledge which is Power and that Beauty which ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... not like 'both,'" with composed lightness. "If you had said that you felt yourself develop angelic qualities when you were near me, I should feel flattered, and swell with pride. But 'both' leaves me unsatisfied. It interferes with the happy little conceit that one is an all-pervading, beneficent power. One likes to contemplate a large picture of one's self—not plain, but coloured—as ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... stranger to us. Obstinate, with his dogged determination and stubborn common-sense, and Pliable with his shallow impressionableness, are among our acquaintances. We have, before now, come across "the brisk lad Ignorance from the town of Conceit," and have made acquaintance with Mercy's would-be suitor, Mr. Brisk, "a man of some breeding and that pretended to religion, but who stuck very close to the world." The man Temporary who lived in a town two miles off from Honesty, and next door to Mr. Turnback; Formalist and Hypocrisy, ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... was going. "I can take her on East in the fall. As soon as she has a little knowledge of the world she'll not expect me to marry her. She can get something to do. I'll help her." And now he felt in conceit with himself again—felt that he was going to be a good, generous ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... still rode to grand dinners in the elevated trains, carrying her slippers in a bag. It was her patient industry, her cheerful acceptance of endless household drudgery which kept me clear of self-conceit. I began to suspect that I would never be able to furnish her with a better home than that which we already owned, and this suspicion sometimes robbed me ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... garde,—le meme comme Napoleon,—le petit Caporal." With a hearty laugh we bade "le petit Caporal" bon nuit, and returned to our hotel, asking ourselves what need there could be for the Philosopher's Stone, whilst there existed such a talisman as Conceit? ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... things holy that were therein contained, and especially, the priest and clerk most happy, and without doubt greatly blessed, because they were the servants, as I then thought,[49] of God, and were principal in the holy temple, to do his work therein. This conceit grew so strong in little time upon my spirit, that had I but seen a priest, though never so sordid and debauched in his life,[50] I should find my spirit fall under him, reverence him, and knit unto him; yea, I thought, for the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... often as it hears sweet music. The tale is not precise whether this river is neighbor to us or is a stream of the older world. "It dances at the noise of musick," so runs the legend, "for with musick it bubbles, dances and grows sandy." This tale may be the conceit of one of those older poets whose verses celebrate the morning and the freshness of the earth—Thomas Heywood could have written it or even the least of those poets who sat their evenings at the Mermaid—or the tale may arise more remotely from an old worship of the god Pan, who is said to have ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... scarcely of a noble metal. It is plain the writer has outgrown his old self, yet not made acquaintance with the new. This letter from a busy youth of three and twenty, breathes of seventeen: the sickening alternations of conceit and shame, the expense of hope IN VACUO, the lack of friends, the longing after love; the whole world of egoism under which youth ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and imperilling their Sunday bests; he was letting precious time slip. Then, too, by Farwell's advice, old Jerry was growing rigid along financial lines, and at last the States took definite shape in Jerry-Jo's mind, but he meant to have Priscilla before he heeded the lure. With all his brazen conceit and daring he intuitively knew that the girl had never thought of him as he thought of her, and he dared not awaken her by legitimate means. Quite in keeping with his unrestrained nature, he plotted, indirectly, to secure what otherwise ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... offered his forlorn hope, his one greenback, to procure the transportation of his goods across the river. But that five-dollar bill was so scorned and snubbed by the ascendent truckmen that the doctor found himself smiling at his conceit that the poor, despised thing, when returned to his purse, went sneakingly into the farthest and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... could a child like you read the Bible? It is a book for bishops and archbishops, and the Immaculate Father himself. What an arrogance? What an insolence of self-conceit must possess so young a heart? Saints ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... cannot be closed, And thou resistance need'st not try, Listen to the gloss that I On this sweet conceit composed: "The bless'ed rapture of forgetting Never doth my heart deserve; What my memory would preserve Is the memory I 'm regretting". When Nature from the void obscure Her varied world to life awakes, All things find use and so endure:— Thus she a poison never makes Without its ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... through his brain that something serious was intended by the Cowboy. He called entreatingly to be released, and made rapid and incoherent promises of important information, mingled with affected pleasantry at their conceit, which he would hardly admit to himself could mean anything so dreadful as it seemed. But as he heard the tread of the horses moving on their course, and in vain looked around for human aid, violent trembling seized his limbs, and his eyes began to ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... became confused with the pestle, so, "the Soma-plant, whose stalks are crushed by the priests to make the Soma-libation, becomes in the Vedas itself the Crusher or Smiter, by a very characteristic and frequent Oriental conceit in accordance with which the agent and the person or thing acted on ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... lofty and grand, A blessin' to others, a power in the land. All was gone, gifts an' graces, the greatest, the least, Were hidden beneath the broad mark o' the beast— Stamped on, I may say, frae the head to the feet, All lost of the man but his pride an' conceit; Varnished ower wi' the airs o' the shabby genteel, He was gingerly steppin' his way to the diel. But now he is gaun to greet me on the way Comin' forrid as ane that has something to say. Takin' off wi' a flourish the bit o' a hat, He booed wi' an air maist genteel ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... with the conscientious, loving student of the art. Some among the former, gifted with phenomenal voices or with rare powers for instrumental performance, having reached, perhaps, with a few easy strides, their high positions, and caring but little for music save as it ministers to their vanity, conceit, or cupidity,—these have missed that gradually unfolding culture of the mind and heart that belongs to the progress of one who conscientiously seeks to know music's manifold beauties, and who with real appreciation for the beautiful in art, loving music for ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... like scientific evidence out of people so uncultivated, whose language and modes of conception are so alien to our own. Individual travellers, moreover, have been the victims of their own credulity, stupidity, self-conceit, and prejudice. "But the best testimony of the truth of the reports as to the actual belief in the facts, is the undesigned coincidence of the evidence from all quarters. When the stories brought by travellers, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... all his own, and saying in a high, pragmatical voice, "How d'ye do, Miss Helstone?" dropped into a seat at Caroline's elbow, to her unmitigated annoyance, for she had a peculiar antipathy to Donne, on account of his stultified and immovable self-conceit and his incurable narrowness of mind. Malone, grinning most unmeaningly, inducted himself into the corresponding seat on the other side. She was thus blessed in a pair of supporters, neither of whom, she knew, would be of any mortal use, whether for keeping up the conversation, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... lay too much polemic stress upon the doctrine of future retribution as the vindication of present impunity. For though, indeed, to the right-minded that doctrine was true, and of sufficient solace, yet with the perverse the polemic mention of it might but provoke the shallow, though mischievous conceit, that such a doctrine was but tantamount to the one which should affirm that Providence was not now, but was going to be. In short, with all sorts of cavilers, it was best, both for them and everybody, that whoever had the true light should stick behind the secure Malakoff ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... death the case was woondrously altered with the ambassador: for whereas both, in his owne conceit, and in all mens opinion els, he was in great forwardnes to haue growen a great man with the Emperor, what for the loue he bare to her Maiesty, and the particular liking he had of himselfe, he now fell into the hands of his ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... religious exaltation has before now been made the ally of the unpurified passions, is parodied by him in a simpler and more useful device. By alleging a moral purpose he is enabled to gratify the prurience of his public and to raise them in their own muddy conceit at one and the same time. The plea serves well with those artless readers who have been accustomed to consider the moral of a story as something separable from imagination, expression, and style—a quality, it may be, inherent in the plot, ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... the terror of this conceit, everything tended to confirm and strengthen it. His double crime, the circumstances under which it had been committed, the length of time that had elapsed, and its discovery in spite of all, made him as it were the visible object of the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... whole harbour. It had not occurred to her that she ought to say, "Don't trouble to come with me. I shall do very well alone." She took it for granted not only that he would come, but that he would be glad to come; and there was no conceit in this tacit assumption. It was borne in upon her mind from his, as ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to cure whatever they regard as faults in the character of a member; for instance, idleness, disorderly habits, impoliteness, selfishness, a love of novel-reading, "selfish love," conceit, pride, stubbornness, a grumbling spirit—for every vice, petty or great, criticism is held to be a remedy. They have even a "criticism-cure," and hold that this is almost as effective ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... refrain to all the reflections of Hubert Marien. He had seen enough in his relations with women to have no doubt about Jacqueline's feelings, of which indeed he had watched the rise and progress from the time she had first begun to conceive a passion for him, with a mixture of amusement and conceit. The most cautious of men are not insensible to flattery, whatever form it may take. To be fallen in love with by a child was no doubt absurd—a thing to be laughed at—but Jacqueline seemed no longer ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... marvellous illusion of conquered love that had visited him for a moment in the agitated watches of the night which might have been his last on earth, he comprehended now its true nature. It had been merely a paroxysm of delirious conceit. Thus to this man sobered by the victorious issue of a duel, life appeared robbed of much of its charm simply because it was no ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... period of this most lively narrative I will not call a conceit: it is one of the grandest conceptions I ever met with. One feels the ashes of Wickliffe gliding away out of the reach of the Sumners, Commissaries, Officials, Proctors, Doctors, and all the puddering ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... discovered the means of making a new world out of the old. About this time, Dumont, the Benthamite, travelled with him from Paris to London. Dumont was irritated with "his incredible amour-propre and his presumptuous self-conceit." "He was mad with vanity." "The man was a caricature of the vainest of Frenchmen. He believed that his book on the 'Rights of Man' might supply the place of all the books that had ever been written. If it was in his power, he would destroy all the libraries ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... earlier student compositions; the reference to the practice of throwing hats into the fire is alone sufficient to suggest it. But it is as a writer of the lyric proper that Lyly is best known. No one but Herrick, perhaps, has given us more graceful love trifles woven about some classical conceit. Mr Palgrave has familiarized us with the best, Cupid and my Campaspe played, but there are others only less charming than this. The same theme is employed ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... may long enough get upon stilts, for be we upon them, yet must we go with our legs. And sit we upon the highest throne of the world, yet sit we upon our own tail. The best and most commendable lives, and best pleasing me are (in my conceit), those which with order are fitted, and with decorum are ranged, to the common mould and human model; but without wonder or extravagancy. Now hath old age need to be handled more tenderly. Let us recommend it unto that God who is the protector of health and ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... had acquired for Done was vastly increased by his rescue of Lucy Woodrow. Conduct that had previously been ascribed to mere conceit was now accounted for by most romantic imaginings, for it is a cardinal belief amongst men of their class that the true fighter is superior to all little weaknesses and small motives. When the girl crossed the moonlit deck to Done's side, the sailors drifted away out of earshot, and inquisitive ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... a pryer in at the chinks or lockhole, I am presently on the bones of him. If a friend comes, I make him sit down by me on a form or chest. The rest may walk, a God's name!" There has been seldom a better portrait of the pragmatic conceit and self-importance of a small ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... instinctive aversion, nature avenges herself by creating an unhealthy insane attraction. For this reason, the most earnest truth-seeking men fall into the worst delusions. They will not let their mind alone; they force it toward some ugly thing, which a crotchet of argument, a conceit of intellect recommends: and nature punishes their disregard of her warning by subjection to the ugly one, by belief in it. Just so, the most industrious critics get the most admiration. They think it unjust to rest in their instinctive natural horror; they overcome it, and angry ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... stuffs of every kind, and the maid has already fallen to work. How do you do, Mistress Primrose? Rose would better become such a blossoming maid without the Prim," and she laughed gayly, as if pleased with her conceit. "Come hither, child; do not be afraid. There, I'll lay my whip on the floor. It has a threatening look, I will admit, yet 'tis a harmless thing without the owner's hand. I am sent to measure thee, Mistress Rose, and to announce ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... said I, thoughtlessly, "any adventure that will cure you of conceit—you know that is my ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... and so put off as vaine fictions; yet seeing they deliuer nothing herein but that which was well knowne and vsuall in those times wherein they liued, they are not slightly, and vpon an imagined conceit, to be reiected: for they affirme no more then is manifest in the records of most approued Histories, whose essence is and must be [t]truth, [u]as straightnesse of a rule, or else deserue not that title. In which wee reade of [x]Martiana, [y]Locusta, ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... many galleries and churches devoted to his works; for Antwerp is Rubens's shrine. None of them impressed me, as compared with this. One of his Madonnas, however, I must not forget to describe, it was a conceit so just like him. Instead of the pale, downcast, or upturned faces, which form the general types of Madonna, he gives her to us, in one painting, as a gorgeous Oriental sultana, leaning over a balcony, with full, dark eye and jewelled turban, and rounded outlines, sustaining ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... evident sincerity of his purpose had given simplicity to his speech. He for once had been neither formal nor absurd, and the uniqueness of the fact, taken in conjunction with her share in it, seemed to have given him a claim on her consideration. He had cast aside the armour of self-conceit at which she could have thrown a dart without remorse, and the man seeming so defenceless, she had a desire to deal ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... foreign king, but did not inculcate fanatical and useless rebellion against overwhelming power. But such a reply, which would have satisfied a more commonplace mind, has in it nothing brilliant and striking. I cannot but think that Jesus shows a vain conceit in the cleverness of his answer: I do not think it so likely to have been a conscious evasion. But neither does his rebuke of the questioners at all commend itself to me. How can any man assume to be an authoritative teacher, and then claim that men shall not put ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... Wit, as "an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his tyger's heart wrapt in a player's hide supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you ... and is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a countrie." He is said to have written rapidly and with facility, rarely requiring to alter what he had set down. In addition to his generally received works, others have been attributed to him, some of which have been already mentioned: ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... the return of the Knight of the Mirrors, who would bring him word about his beloved one. He was anxious to know whether she was still enchanted. Then he thought of the great victory he had won over this bold knight, and it was perhaps only pardonable if it aroused some conceit in his breast. ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the Church may, after all, have succeeded in tying up the infinite with red-tape and sealing-wax—believes that God is a large, dark notary-public who has recorded her marriage in a book—she will do better to stay. Doubtless the conceit of it will console her—that the God who looks after the planets has an eye on her, to see that she makes but one guess about so uncertain a ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... attempt to utilise new scenes and conditions. But the whole class has special interest for us in one peculiarity which makes it perhaps unreadable to any but students, and that is its saturation with the Elizabethan conceit and word-play which is sometimes called Euphuism. Nor is this wonderful, considering that more than one of these "pamphlets" is directly connected with the matter and the personages of Euphues itself. To this famous book, therefore, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... fancifully marked coats of morocco, and washed and ironed within (for you collectors must have recourse to a woman's occupation) with so much care and nicety that even the eyes of our ancient Rebecca, with "spectacle on nose" to boot, could hardly detect the cunning' conceit of your binder! ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to me, have upheld me in my career, both against myself and against unjust attacks; against the calumny which has often persecuted me, against discouragement, and against the too eager hopefulness whose utterances are misinterpreted as those of overwhelming conceit? I had resolved to display stolid stoicism in the face of abuse and insults; but on two occasions base slanders have necessitated a reply. Though the advocates of forgiveness of injuries may regret that ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... of those?" he inquired, handing the glasses, and blandly ignoring Miss Deane's petulance. Her brain was busy with other things while she twisted the binoculars to suit her vision. Rainbow Island—Iris—it was a nice conceit. But "menial" struck a discordant note. This man was no menial in appearance or speech. Why was ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy |
