"Self-confident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... until they disappeared into the woods with a sinister, self-confident smile like a spider watching a fly take the path into his web; a smile that gave him an expression strangely like that of the image itself. Before he turned into the hut again he gave several orders. Three of the brown men melted into the ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... "Think!" he responded, with self-confident emphasis. "I'm not 'thinking.' I'm reading an open book. As I say, you're not contented—you're not happy; you don't try to pretend that you are. But all the same, though you hate it, you accept it. You think that ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... humility and self-reliance, and between meekness and self-respect. The true man is both meek and self-reliant, humble and yet by no means incapable of self-assertion. The really strong man is the most thoroughly gentle of men, and the genuinely self-confident man is the one who is most truly humble in his regard for the rights ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... himself to keep this conviction out of his verse, it is likely to flower in self-confident poetry of the classic type, so characteristic of the Elizabethan age. This has such a long tradition behind it that it seems almost stereotyped, wherever it appears in our period, especially when it is promising immortality to a beloved one. We scarcely heed such verses as ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... understanding, or lack of understanding. A short sharp hour's work before breakfast would count for a hundred times more than a feeble dawdling prolonged throughout the whole day. Abner rose betimes and did his hour's work; sweaty, panting, begrimed, hopeful, indignant, sincere, self-confident, he set his product full in the ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... who are too self-confident and obtrusive. These, if they discover some slight inconsistency in men, fiercely betray their indignation and behave with arrogance. A man may show a little inconsistency occasionally, but yet his affection may remain; then matters will in time become right again, and they will pass ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... resplendent young men who were constantly riding over or tooting over in big black motor-cars. They were young men who apparently had nothing to do but "go in" for things—riding, tennis, polo, golf. To all of them she was the self-confident charmer; just the kind of a girl to make a fool of you and tell ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... had been called in her maiden days, Isabel Raeburn, was remarkably like her daughter in so far as features and coloring were concerned, but she was exceedingly unlike her in character, for whereas Rose was vain and self-confident, and had a decided will of her own, her mother was diffident and exaggeratedly humble. She was a kind-hearted and a good woman, but she was in danger of harassing herself with the question, "What ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... a fearful alteration in Bracebridge. His old keen self-confident look had vanished. He was haggard, life-weary, shame-stricken, almost abject. His limbs looked quite shrunk and powerless, as he rested his head on the table before him, and murmured ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... 70,000 troops and was confronted by 80,000 Austrians and Russians drawn up on the Heights of Pratzen. His plan was to draw the weight of the Russian attack against his right—which was so disposed as to invite the headstrong and {10} self-confident Tsar "to administer a lesson in generalship to Napoleon"—and then to launch a superior attack against the Heights, which contained a village and a knoll, the key to the position; and finally to hurl his General Reserve ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... remarked with a self-confident smile. "You may give your torturers orders to kill me—orders that a fatal accident shall occur within the fortress—but I tell you frankly that my death will neither erase nor conceal your own offenses. There are others, away in England, who are aware of them, and who will, ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... wretch," said Mr. Brumley when at last she had departed. He was very uncomfortable. "She's just the quintessence of all one fears and dreads about these new developments, she's perfect—in that way—self-confident, arrogant, instinctively aggressive, with a tremendous class contempt. There's a multitude of such people about who hate the employed classes, who want to see them broken in and subjugated. I suppose that kind of thing is in humanity. Every boy's school has louts of that kind, who love to torment ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Nevertheless, Mr. Jack Hamlin, who had six months before placed his niece, Miss Sophonisba Brown, under its protecting care, felt a degree of uneasiness, even bordering on timidity, which was new to that usually self-confident man. Remembering how his first appearance had fluttered this dovecote and awakened a severe suspicion in the minds of the two principals, he had discarded his usual fashionable attire and elegantly fitting garments ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... this attack, as unimportant as it was, and even in the shouts of their assailants, that had disturbed the minds, and cast a visible shade of thoughtfulness over the countenances, of these hitherto self-confident and boastful invaders of the Green Mountains. For the next three or four miles, however, they moved on unmolested; when, coming to a hamlet of log-houses scattered along the highway on both sides of the stream, that, here again crossing the road, wound through a smooth ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... to vain confidence and unclean living, or else into pride, hardness of heart, self-willed and self-conceited quarrelling and slandering and lying for the sake of their own party in the Church. It is the self-confident ones who have reason to fear and tremble; for after pride comes a fall. They have reason to fear, lest while they are crying peace and safety, and thanking God that they are not as other men are, sudden destruction come on them; but you anxious, trembling souls, who are terrified at the ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... observe this,' said Steele, 'I say a much harder thing of this than of the comedy.' Addison's Drummer is a gentleman who, to forward his suit to a soldier's widow, masquerades as the drumbeating ghost of her husband in her country house, and terrifies a self-confident, free-thinking town exquisite, another suitor, who believes himself brought face to face with the spirit world, in which he professes that he can't believe. 'For my part, child, I have made myself easy in those points.' The character of a free-thinking exquisite is drawn from life without ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... defiantly arrogant, and the forgetful good man was criminally self-confident, when they each said, 'I shall not be moved.' We are only taking up the privileges that belong to us if, exercising faith in Him, we venture to say, 'Take what Thou wilt; leave me Thyself; I have enough.' And the man who says, 'Because God is at my right hand, I shall not be moved,' has the right ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... himself from the position of a working-man to be occupant of a shop at Charing Cross, which became the centre of important political movements. Between Place and Mill there was much affinity of character. Place, like Mill, was a man of rigid and vigorous intellect. Dogmatic, self-confident, and decidedly censorious, not attractive by any sweetness or grace of character, but thoroughly sincere and independent, he extorts rather than commands our respect by his hearty devotion to what he at least believed to be the cause ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... for some time past intended to be a keeper at the Zoological Gardens, but after his adventure with the wild beast in the thicket and this encounter with the self-confident Cass Dale he decided that he would not be a keeper but a parson. He ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... officers were a self-reliant lot, so the drill manuals were conned carefully and the men were exercised in a sound system that made the companies great self-confident fighting machines. Every officer was on his metal and worked hard to bring his men to perfection in spite of mud and rain and all sorts of difficulties worse than we ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... subject to presentiments, and his self-confident nature abhorred the prospect of trouble. He had arrived at his conclusion by a logical process, and there seemed no escape from it. As he had told Lucia, he knew the character of the chiseller better than the women of the household could know it, for he had been his constant companion ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... his character. Many men, certainly many young men, who had been so zealous as he had already shown himself for six years, would have prided themselves on what they had done, and though they began humbly, by this time would have become self-willed, self-confident, and hard-hearted. He had already been engaged in repressing and punishing God's enemies—this had a tendency to infect him with spiritual pride: and he had a work of destruction to do—this, too, might have made him cruel. Far from it: his peculiar praise ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... she continued with the pert, self-confident smile, "that you were my sister Nellie. I'm ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... Cynthia and herself, as any young man could well be, whom they had not known in childhood, and who was in nowise related to them. She thought that he was very much improved in manner, and probably in character, by his mother's death. He was no longer sarcastic, or fastidious, or vain, or self-confident. She did not know how often all these styles of talk or of behaviour were put on to conceal shyness or consciousness, and to veil ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... He saw he had gone too far. He was going to answer, when the second leader, impatient of being hitherto kept in the background, stepped forward. This man did not look like a traitor, though he had an exceedingly self-confident and conceited air. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Council Register contains no reference to a personal controversy between Ralegh and him. But Ralegh may well have privately expounded to the Queen and some Privy Councillors his views, which would then have been transmitted to Grey to answer. Naunton's mistake in confronting the Deputy and the self-confident Captain directly at the Council board does not seriously affect the value otherwise of his statement. Still, the account of Ralegh's admittance to the Queen's favour, with its particular circumstances, rests, it must be remembered, on Naunton's own not unimpeachable authority. Other authors ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... hard-working Scotch nobleman, who devoted himself to his work in India for eight years with such self-sacrifice that he returned home in 1856 already doomed to an early death. But he was masterful and self-confident to a degree; and against his imperious will the impulsive forces of Charles Napier and Henry Lawrence broke like waves on a granite coast. He was not blind to their exceptional gifts, but to him the wide knowledge, coolness, and judgement of John Lawrence made a greater appeal; and when, after ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... nothing. Langhorne's manner, self-confident to the point of bravado, had baffled me. I began to feel that even if he had lost the detectaphone record, his was the nature to carry out the bluff of still having it, in much the same manner that he would have played the market on a shoestring or made the most of an ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... giggling crew rather more au fait with the ways of the school, effervesced occasionally into excited squeals, and were instantly suppressed by a prefect. The Third and Fourth, which comprised the bulk of the girls from twelve to fifteen, occupied the middle of the hall, a lively, self-confident and rather obstreperous set, all at that awkward age which is anxious to claim privileges, but not particularly ready to submit to the authorized code. Every one of them was talking at the extreme pitch of ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... a somewhat pensive but wholly attractive and self-confident young opportunist in white flannels, he sauntered through the hotel gardens and out along the ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... "Self-confident, careless fellow!" said Seabrooke to himself as the other turned away in a series of somersaults down the slope on the edge of which they had been standing. "He is so sure of himself; and yet, I know, at the very first temptation he would forget all about his debt to his ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... be effort in order to enter by it. For everything in our old self-confident, self-centred nature is up in arms against the conditions of entrance. We are not saved by effort, but we shall not believe without effort. The main struggle of our whole lives should be to cultivate self-humbling trust in Jesus Christ, and to 'fight ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... it has been proved, acted in entire opposition to 'his owners.' On the pressing recommendation, however, of the owners, and at the representation that E. has been long in the service, and is, although too self-confident, a very respectable man, his certificate has been restored ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... justice demanded that he should admit that virtue at least in his enemy. "I have not known him lie, it is true. His kind is too arrogant, too self-confident to have recourse to untruth. But I have known ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... and bent his head as though in profound thought. His friend, Lebedeff's nephew, who had risen to accompany him, also sat down again. He seemed much disappointed, though as self-confident as ever. Hippolyte looked dejected and sulky, as well as surprised. He had just been attacked by a violent fit of coughing, so that his handkerchief was stained with blood. The ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... answer. He muttered, "Not that I care," and fell silent, because the fatuous self-confident chatter of the Fyne girls could be heard at the very gate. But they were not going to bed yet. They passed on. He waited a little in silence and immobility, then stamped his foot and lost control of himself. He growled at her in a savage passion. She felt certain that ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... roars; these are solicitors' clerks too, only better fed; or else they are real solicitors. And a few of the bears are perky young creatures—in barrister's robes, either for the first time, when they look very self-conscious, or for the second time, when they look very self-confident. All the bears are telling each other about their cases. They are saying, "We are a deceased wife's sister suing in forma pauperis," or "I am a discharged bankrupt, three times convicted of perjury, but I am claiming damages under the Diseases ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... a most interesting man, though more of a philosopher than a Christian. Like Zeno, he exalted the human will; like Aristotle, he subjected all truth to the test of logical formularies; like Abelard, he would believe nothing which he could not explain or comprehend. Self-confident, like Servetus, he disdained the Cross. The central principle of his teachings was man's ability to practise any virtue, independently of divine grace. He made perfection a thing easy to be attained. There was no need, in his eyes, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... wagon as though he really believed he could speedily overtake and recapture the stolen mules. Pike thought that the captain should stay with his children and let him go in pursuit or rather search, but every one who knew Gwynne knew how self-confident he was and how much higher he held his own opinion than that of anybody else. "It is his confounded bull-headedness that has got us into this scrape," thought poor Pike, for the twentieth time, but the soldier in him came to the fore ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... simple reason that no child wants friends. He wanted most of all the people of his own mind, people with whom he could really talk, people he could harangue and scold by the hour, servants, you see, to his fancy. Among these people he was always self-confident and bold. They might talk, to be sure, and even have opinions of their own, but always he talked last and best. He was like a writer busy among the figures of his brain, a kind of tiny blue-eyed king he was, ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... grandfather. 'It has been mentioned a great many times in our family. Garrett had been intended for the army, but he did not get through West Point, and at the time he was making love to my Aunt Amanda his only business was that of expecting an inheritance. But he was so brave and gay and self-confident, and was so handsome and dashing, that everybody said he would be sure to get along, no matter what line of life he undertook.' ('I wonder,' thought Miss Amanda, 'what he did do, after all. I hope I shall hear that.') ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... But then a thought seemed to strike him. He was thinking that I might be one of that class, for he asked me questions which showed me plainly enough what he was worrying about. He encouraged me to drink again, and said with a self-confident laugh, 'you're a cute one but you cannot fool me with any ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... himself must be abased, if possible without bodily violence. Now people talk of democracy as being coarse and turbulent: it is a self-evident error in mere history. Aristocracy is the thing that is always coarse and turbulent: for it means appealing to the self-confident people. Democracy means appealing to the different people. Democracy means getting those people to vote who would never have the cheek to govern: and (according to Christian ethics) the precise people who ought ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... "I like them to be gloriously self-confident. Young blood is heady stuff. And there'd be something wrong, if a body full of young blood didn't have a head ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... to disaster may be attributed to the stoppage of the motor, and the aviator becoming rattled so that he loses control of his machine. Modern ingenuity is fast developing motors that almost daily become more and more reliable, and experience is making aviators more and more self-confident in their ability to act wisely and promptly in cases of emergency. Besides this a satisfactory system of automatic control is in a fair way ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... implies official function, but that official function was prepared for by personal character; and in so far as the name refers to character, it means firmness. At that epoch Peter was rash, impulsive, headstrong, self-confident, vain, and therefore, necessarily changeable. Like the granite, all fluid and hot, and fluid because it was hot, he needed to cool in order to solidify into rock. And not until his self-confidence had been knocked out of him, and he had learned humility by falling; not until ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... manufactures. With a long foresight, he had ordered the funds received from the Prussian sales of the Belcher rifle to be deposited with a European banking house at interest, to be drawn against in his foreign purchases of material; yet he never drew against this deposit. Self-confident as he was, glutted with success as he was, he had in his heart a premonition that some time he might want that money just where it was placed. So there it lay, accumulating interest. It was an anchor to windward, that would hold him if ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... fifteen or twenty minutes, or perhaps a half-hour, a reply will come, reading, say, "Rush three hundred banker's death." This means that the correspondent must keep his story within three hundred words,—an injunction which he must observe strictly. Woe to the self-confident writer who sends five hundred words when three hundred have been ordered. He will receive a prompt reprimand for his first offense and probable discharge for the second. If, however, he has used his time wisely since sending the query and has written his story rightly, he will have ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... myself in connection with them, it is because their counsels, as summed up in a few lines, may prove useful to some young writers who may be less self-confident than most are when they make their debut in print. Bouilhet, whom I first came to know somewhat intimately about two years before I gained the friendship of Flaubert, by dint of telling me that a hundred lines—or less—if they are without a flaw and contain the very essence of the talent ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... under Instruction, Study, and Diligence; but, soon tiring of them, he rashly goes to the fight, trusting that his own strength, backed by the courage of Will and the half-hearted support of Diligence, will prove sufficient. Too self-confident, he is overthrown and his companions are put to flight. Will soon returns with Recreation, by whose skill Wit is restored to vigour and better resolution. Nevertheless, directly afterwards, he accepts the gentle ministrations of the ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... three external indications. I can not understand you, you cannot understand me, and neither of us can understand himself. A man may be a splendid doctor, and at the same time a very bad judge of human nature; you will admit that, unless you are too self-confident. ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... more because of Ruskin's espousal of the fervid band, his letters of defence in the London "Times," and his discussion in his booklet on "Pre-Raphaelitism." Heedless of the outcry, Ruskin pursued his own self-confident course, and by the year 1860 he had completed his "Modern Painters," and, in spite of objurgation and detraction, had won a great name for himself as a critic and expounder, while expanding himself over almost the whole world ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... the differences of tone and attitude of two different newspapers in treating some local subject you will see that readers always segregate themselves into types. Even on a larger scale, one can say that the people of the United States as a whole are optimistic and self-confident in temper, and in consequence careless as to many minor deficiencies and blemishes in our national polity. On a good many questions the South, which is still chiefly agricultural, has different interests and prepossessions from the North; and the West, being a new country, is inclined ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... people heard the voice as well. Only I had no blundering, self-confident eyes to ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... time of her recent illness she had been strong, self-confident, almost assured of success. At times she recognized dimly that something was wrong; but she shut her eyes to the unwelcome truth, and determined to succeed. But her sickness and fears at that time, and now a failure that seemed to ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... imagination for varying of incidents; never was one who expressed them in language in which the same words so constantly recur. This is the invariable characteristic of a great and powerful, but at the same time self-confident and careless mind. It is to be seen in the most remarkable manner in Bacon and Machiavel, and not a little of it may be traced both in the prose and poetical works of Scott. The reason is, that the strength of the mind is thrown into the thought ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... shocking flight of women and children from town after town is too awful to witness. Shame on the British Government to make our Colony the scene of this bloody struggle, and leave the handful of soldiers sent out all unsupported, unprepared—unprepared as usual—all smug and self-confident in the little overcrowded, over-comfortable island, and forgetful of the horrors to which unfortunate colonists ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... as they are considered, have a strong tendency to render us self-confident. When a man has been advanced in the world by means of his own industry and skill, when he began poor and ends rich, how apt will he be to pride himself, and confide, in his own contrivances and his own resources! Or when a man feels himself ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... dead, in a London gutter! It seems strange, because he was here, befriended by monarchs, and very strong and handsome and self-confident, hardly two hours ago. Is that his blood upon ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... Her seeking, pitiful eyes were on him perpetually, trying to make him out, to acquaint herself with this new personality, which spoke in these harsh staccato phrases—to reconcile it with the exciteable, sanguine, self-confident man whom she had deserted in ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Australia, but at last he was to see more in Europe as a gentleman of means. A wife had no place in his European scheme; a husband was the last thing Rachel wanted; but a long sea voyage, an uncongenial employ, and the persistent chivalry of a handsome, entertaining, self-confident man of the world, formed a combination as fatal to her inexperience as that of so much poverty, pride, and beauty proved to Alexander Minchin. They were married without ceremony on the very day that they arrived in England, where they had not an actual friend ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... Longstreet, and Jackson entered Maryland at a point some fifty miles above Washington, with their army enthusiastic and self-confident because of recent victories. It seemed almost certain that another victory, and this on the soil of the North, would secure Confederate recognition in Europe. Reluctantly Lincoln restored McClellan to the command of the ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... his death-bed that "Salmasius had killed him and Morus had been the dagger."[1] On the other hand, we have had recently the assurance of Dr. Crantzius that Spanheim had once told him that the only fault in Morus was that he was altier, or self-confident. That the stronger story is the truer one substantially, if not to its last detail, appears from the fact that an antipathy to Morus was hereditary in the Spanheim family, or at least in the eldest son, Ezekiel. As a scholar, an antiquarian, and a diplomatist, this Ezekiel Spanheim ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... to be five years older than he was. His face was set in lines indicating resolution and daring, his drooping mustache hid the boyish curves of his lips, and he carried himself with a singular grace, self-confident, decisive, but not assertive. The swing of his shoulders had charm, and he walked well. The cowboy's painful hobble had not yet been fastened ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... even in the strife with Elizabeth. But this trust in the unity of the nation and the Crown was now roughly shaken. The squires and merchants who thronged the benches at Westminster listened with coldness and suspicion to the self-confident assurances of the king. "I bring you," said James, "two gifts, one peace with foreign nations, the other union with Scotland"; and a project was laid before them for a union of the two kingdoms under the name of Great Britain. "By what laws," ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... did. People in those times were prepared for anything on the part of an Englishman, who was a far more self-assertive and self-confident creature than ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... that he was singularly sparing of compliments. We do not remember that either friendship or fear ever induced him to bestow praise on any composition which he did not approve. On literary questions, his caustic, disdainful, and self-confident spirit rebelled against that authority to which everything else in France bowed down. He had the spirit to tell Louis the Fourteenth firmly, and even rudely, that his Majesty knew nothing about poetry, and admired verses which were detestable. What was ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of importance for the interpretation of Fletcher's pastoralism is to be found in the quaintly self-confident preface which he prefixed to the printed edition. Throughout our inquiry we have observed two main types of pastoral, to one or other of which all work in this kind approaches; that, namely, in which the interest depends upon some allegorical or topical meaning ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... of fine linen and careful speech, all seemed to crumple to nothing. She seemed again to be the furious, helpless, seventeen-year-old Harriet of the Watertown days, her armour ineffectual against that suave and self-confident presence. ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... with, we must radically disabuse our minds of the idea that thinking starts from certainty. Even the self-evident and self-confident 'intuitions' that impress the uncritical so much with their claim to infallibility are really the results of antecedent doubts and ponderings, and would never be enunciated unless there were thought to be a dispute about them. In real life thought starts from perplexities, ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... the self-confident, it was a welcome and uplifting exercise. To the timid and self-distrustful it was a terrible ordeal. To the intellectual it was a perpetual challenge to skepticism. Even Bunyan puts as his first and worst temptation, "to question the being of God and the truth of his gospel." To the prosaic and ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... she assured him, and the stimulus of the champagne made her look—and feel—much more self-confident than she really was. "More than I've ever had before. So I'm not worried. When anyone has been through what I have they aren't so scared about ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... gathered in the market-place. One of the older men of the village was elected chairman and it was his duty to see that everybody had a chance to express his views. In case of war, a particularly energetic and self-confident villager was chosen commander-in-chief, but the same people who had voluntarily given this man the right to be their leader, claimed an equal right to deprive him of his job, once ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... unlike the others, he thought the Lord had put it there. This attitude, which has been characteristic of England, has been somewhat chastened among ourselves by the satire of men like Bernard Shaw; but in America it is still just as prevalent and self-confident as it was with us fifty years ago. There is much justification for such an attitude. Gladstonian England was more of a moral force than the England of the present day; and America is more of a moral force at this moment than any other Power (except Russia). But the development from ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... she was doomed to fail. She was too strong-hearted for any such fear. She did not think much of these things, but felt herself to be so far endowed as to be fit to be the wife of such a man as Frank Greystock. She was a proud, stout, self-confident, but still modest little woman, too fond of truth to tell lies of herself even to herself. She was possessed of a great power of sympathy, genial, very social, greatly given to the mirth of conversation,—though ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... jealousy took alarm, and the Chief-Justice was called before the Council. There a decree, based on Bacon's advice and probably drawn up by him, peremptorily overruled the legal doctrine maintained by the greatest and most self-confident judge whom the English courts had seen. The Chief-Justice had to acquiesce in this reading of the law; and then, as if such an affront were not enough, Coke was suspended from his office, and, further, enjoined to review and amend his published reports, where they ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... putting into the mouth of a character though but in fiction. But the holiest minds have sometimes not thought it reprehensible to counterfeit impiety in the person of another, to bring Vice upon the stage speaking her own dialect; and, themselves being armed with an unction of self-confident impunity, have not scrupled to handle and touch that familiarly which would be death to others. Milton, in the person of Satan, has started speculations hardier than any which the feeble armory of the atheist ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... dissipation; and, what was still more painful, an exhibition of like perversions in her only son, now on the verge of manhood,—that deeply responsible and dangerous period, when parental authority and control subside in a degree, and the individual, inexperienced yet self-confident, assumes the task ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... self-reliance and the sublime faith which they had in the destinies[29] of Rome, inclined them to carelessness about all but their nearest neighbours, and sustained for ages their illiterate propensities. Illiterate they were, because incurious; and incurious because too haughtily self-confident. The Greeks, on the other hand, amongst the other infirmities attached to their national levity, had curiosity in abundance. But it flowed in other channels. There was nothing to direct their curiosity upon the Romans. Generally ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... of Borrow's letters must have been something of a revelation to the Bible Society's officers, who seem to have shown great tact and consideration in dealing with their self-confident correspondent There is something magnificent in the letters that Borrow wrote about this period; their directness and virility, their courage and determination suggest, not a man who up to the thirtieth year of his age has been a conspicuous failure, as the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... very well knew that, but—Gardiner was right—she was too self-confident. She trusted a little to her power over the king; she imagined he would make an exception in her favor. And it was so dull to be obliged ever to be the losing and conquered party at this game; to permit the king always to appear ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... undergone did not sour his temper or make him severe or misanthropical. As a pastor he seems to have had tact, as well as good temper, in the management of his flock, if we may judge from the following anecdote:—Talking with an obstinate self-confident farmer, when the conversation happened to turn on the subject of the motion of the earth, the farmer would not be convinced that the earth moved at all. "Hoot, minister," the man roared out; "d'ye see the earth never gaes oot o' the pairt, and it maun ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... flickered,—flickered on something tall and white,—something white and shadowy, standing erect, and shrinking aside, behind the counter. My heart stood still; a sepulchral chill came over me. My old self, trembling, angry, foreboding, stepped suddenly within the niche whence the self-confident, full-grown, sensible woman had vanished utterly. For an instant, I felt like a ghost myself. It seemed natural that ghosts, if such there were, should spy me out, and appall my heart with their presence. For there, in that old, haunted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... wished to work incognito. I was taken on as a kind of go-between and, as I may say, figurehead, on the strength of being my father's son and a very self-confident young gentleman, and began to get my newspaper education in point of fact as a kind of fetch-and-carry for Major Heiss. He was a practical newspaper man who had started the Union at Nashville as well as the Union at Washington and the Crescent—maybe ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... fatuously content with the mean truckling and meaner domineering of his position of butler. On the other hand, the loyalty of an American to the American idea would tend to make him aggressive and self-confident. Our democratic prohibition of any but occasional social distinctions and our democratic dislike to any suggestion of authentic social inferiority have contributed as essentially to the fluid and elastic ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... distrust of his own gifts of expression. He was apt to overrate the mere verbal facility of others and to underestimate himself in the comparison—indeed, a certain humility was strongly marked in him, even as regards his art, though he was self-confident also. When he was unconstrained his great powers of observation, his shrewdness of judgment, his bubbling humor, and a picturesque vivacity of phrase not uncommon among artists made him one of the most ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... if we would have continuous victory (Gal. v. 16, 25). The life of the Spirit within us must be maintained by the study of the Word and prayer. One of the saddest things ever witnessed is the way in which some people who have entered by the Spirit's power into a life of victory become self-confident and fancy that the victory is in themselves, and that they can safely neglect the study of the Word and prayer. The depths to which such sometimes fall is appalling. Each of us needs to lay to heart the inspired words of the Apostle, "Wherefore, let him that ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... world believed her both stupid and disagreeable. And by contrast with the effusive amiabilities of her mother, she could appear nothing else. Mrs. Andrews indeed had a way of using her daughter as a foil to her own qualities, which must have paralysed the most self-confident, and Marion had never possessed any belief in herself ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... self-confident spirit was, that at this period, he made but little progress in composition, and was more ambitious to become a brilliant performer. Hence by the periodicals of that day, he is not allowed to possess the ability of composition; ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... cried Troup. "It is where you belong; and you're the biggest man in New York, to-day." As Hamilton, although self-confident, was modest, Troup put down his bumper, seized the hero in his big arms and swung him to the middle of the table. Then the three, raising their glasses again, stood in a semi-circle. Hamilton threw back his head and raised his own glass. His hand trembled, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... and with a great sorrow in his eyes, and an air of weariness, almost of defeat. Then look at the magnificent Mr. Handel in Hudson's portrait: fashionably dressed in a great periwig and gorgeous scarlet coat, victorious, energetic, self-possessed, self-confident, self-satisfied, jovial, and proud as Beelzebub (to use his own comparison)—too proud to ask for recognition were homage refused. This portrait helps us to understand the ascendency Handel gained over his ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... the discouraging news of its comparative failure, when he "buckled to," achieved "Guy Mannering" in six weeks, and published it. Moliere tells us that he wrote "Les Facheux" in a fortnight; and a French critic adds that it reads indeed as if it had been written in, a fortnight. Perhaps a self-confident censor might venture a similar opinion about "Guy Mannering." It assuredly shows traces of haste; the plot wanders at its own will; and we may believe that the Author often—did not see his own way out of the wood. But there is little harm in that. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... under no circumstances to be followed. Americans are so familiar with the European traveler who arrives and makes up his opinion over night in regard to men, morals, and manners in the Western world and have so often been the victim of this self-confident critic, that they ought not to repeat the same blunder in dealing with other peoples. [Footnote: The ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... fresh from the snow-covered mountains, the blazing sun and frosty air having acted on their unseasoned skins as boiling water does on the lobster by dyeing his dark coat scarlet. The man was evidently a denizen of the north, his accent harsh, skin white, of an angular and bony build, and self-confident and dogmatic in his opinions. The precision and quaintness of his language, as well as his eccentric remarks on common things, stimulated my mind. Our icy islanders thaw rapidly when they have drifted into warmer ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... time before the maid returned. When she did, the usually self-confident Babette seemed dazed. She did not ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... the leprosy to return and seize again upon the man who disobeyed him. He may have deserved it, but the Lord did not do it. He did not wrap the self-confident seeing men in the cloud of their old darkness because they wrapped themselves in the cloud of disobedience. He let them go. Of course they failed of their well-being by it; for to say a man might disobey and be none the worse, would be to say that no may be ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... and De Beaumont, and THE TIMES' Commissioner, did not explain the Snobbishness of Ireland as contrasted with our own. Ours is that of Richard's Norman Knights,—haughty, brutal stupid, and perfectly self-confident;—theirs, of the poor, wondering, kneeling, simple chieftains. They are on their knees still before English fashion—these simple, wild people; and indeed it is hard not to grin at ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spheres of life, had at last got into the house of Hubbles and Grease, and had risen to be their book-keeper. He had once been tried by them as a traveller, but in that line he had failed. He did not possess that rough, ready, self-confident tone of mind which is almost necessary for a man who is destined to move about quickly from one circle of persons to another. After a six months' trial he had given that up, but during the time, Mr. Moulder, the senior traveller of the house, had married his sister. ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... great arrogant bull for the leadership of the herd. He was tired of fighting the young bulls of his own age. He always won, and to an elephant constant winning is almost as dull as constant losing. He was a great deal like a youth of twenty in any breed of any land—light-hearted, self-confident, enjoying every minute of wakefulness between one midnight and another. He loved the jungle smells and the jungle sounds, and he could even tolerate the horrible laughter of the hyenas that sometimes tore to shreds the silence of the grassy ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... regarded him, was schooled into such calmness, that it may be said to have been dead and passed away. The pang which it left behind was one of humility and remorse. "O how wicked and proud I was about Arthur," she thought, "how self-confident and unforgiving! I never forgave from my heart this poor girl, who was fond of him, or him for encouraging her love; and I have been more guilty than she, poor, little artless creature! I, professing to love one ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... goose; but indeed, Aunt Zelie, you need not be afraid for us! I don't mean to be self-confident,—I know I shall often do wrong,—but it means a lot to a fellow when he has somebody like you to care ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... said, "Learn, O youths, how much the weapons of men excel those of women, and give way for my achievement. Though the daughter of Latona herself should protect him by her own arms, still, in spite of Diana, shall my right hand destroy him." Such words did he boastingly utter with self-confident lips; and lifting his double-edged axe with both hands, he stood erect upon tiptoe. The beast seized him {thus} bold, and, where there is the nearest way to death, directed his two tusks to the upper part of his groin. Ancaeus fell; and his bowels, twisted, rush forth, falling with plenteous ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... fell asleep. While Sir Lionel kept guard, he saw three knights furiously pursued by another knight, who was very large. This knight overtook the three knights, one after another, and overthrew them, and bound them by the reins of their bridles. Sir Lionel, who was young and self-confident, thought that he would like to fight with this knight. So he mounted his horse very quietly without waking his uncle, and rode ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... being apt to get us in a position of false dependence, it is calculated to make us self-confident—for we are calling upon a part of ourselves, not upon some outside intelligence. If those people who never feel satisfied unless they are getting "advice" from others would only cultivate the acquaintance ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... With firm self-confident tread the savages came on, a thousand in number, to crush by the weight of their onset, and to trample beneath their feet sixty trappers. It was an appalling sight even for brave men to look upon. They were all arrayed ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... confounded with caste. Hindu sects are of many kinds; some, if not militant, are at least exceedingly self-confident. Others are so gentle in stating their views that they might be called schools rather than sects, were the word not too intellectual. The notion that any creed or code can be quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, is less prevalent than in Europe ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... ways Pao-Ch'ai was so full of good tact, so considerate and accommodating, so unlike Tai-yue, who was supercilious, self-confident, and without any regard for the world below, that the natural consequence was that she soon completely won the hearts of the lower classes. Even the whole number of waiting-maids would also for the most part, play and joke with Pao-ch'ai. Hence it was that Tai-yue ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Japanese promptly protested, and their demand for their rights under the treaty of 1894 was supported by the Tokio Government. The international consequences of thus discriminating against the natives of so rising and self-confident a country as Japan, and one conscious of its military strength, were bound to be very different from the difficulties encountered in the case of China. The United States confronted a serious situation, but fortunately did not confront it alone. Australia and British Columbia, similarly threatened ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... connection with that man. If some one with psychic force thinks all you do is wrong, soon you begin to do things wrongly. A fearful uneasiness is bred. The faculties begin to fail. The formerly sure-footed stumbles. The formerly self-confident ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... during these sanguinary skirmishes that his wife first began to appear on horseback at his right hand. Rendered proud and self-confident by his successes, Ruiz no longer charged at the head of his partida, but presumptuously, like a general directing the movements of an army, he remained in the rear, well mounted and motionless on an eminence, sending out his orders. She was seen repeatedly at his side, and for a long time ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... of his own tediousness; but there was little luxury and no refinement where there was almost no culture. Of course there were a few homes and families of another order, where the women were refined and the men educated; but these were the exceptions. Society generally, with its bluff, loud, self-confident but ignorant planters, its numerous poor whites destitute of lands and of slaves, and its mass of slaves whose aim in life was to avoid work and escape the whip, was necessarily ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... wondering why this strong, self-sufficient friend should pour out such unintelligible stuff over his own aching head. So he had learnt to be silent. Even now it was difficult to begin. He stammered and was shy and distrustful and eager, sometimes crudely self-confident, like a child who has played alone ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... large, affectionate, liberal nature, more responsive to life, more lavish of self, more disinterested than any human being that had crossed my path. He had never desired to make disciples—he was not self-confident or self-regarding enough for that. But he had continued to draw us all with him into a vortex of life, where the stream ran swiftly, and where it seemed disgraceful to be either listless or unconcerned. ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... firm footing, and succumbed to or imitated any type, or set, with which I was brought in contact, esteeming it better than my own, of which I was too ashamed to stand by it and assert it. Any rough, rude, self-confident fellow, who spoke out what he thought and felt, cowed me, and I yielded to him, and even assented to him, not with that yielding which gives way for peace's sate, secretly thinking itself right, but with a surrender of the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... and to strip the five mountains of their forests and underbrush. It was not a task for a holiday, but a stern, difficult, and perplexing problem, and Van Antwerp was not quite the man to solve it. He was stubborn, self-confident, and indifferent by turns. He did not depend upon his lieutenants, but jealously guarded his own opinions from the least question or discussion, and at every step he antagonized the easy-going people among whom he had come to work. He had no patience with ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... and self-possessed; his antagonist impulsive and self-confident: the Englishman was the product of a volunteer army of professional soldiers; his antagonist was the product of a drafted army ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... seem to be quite the same self-confident bully of the day previous who responded, "Eh? You do, ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... should have counsel, but will not heed. I have not seen him to-day. There is no one in his battalion, it seems, whom he really looks up to. He is headstrong and self-confident. Do you think he should—that he needs one?" And anxiously the brave eyes sought the strong, ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... that all the noblemen were present. As he arrived somewhat late, he excused himself by saying that he was newly married, and that he could not leave his wife any sooner. Among the nobles was a proud, self-confident man named Abdala, who, when Almanzor had finished speaking, remarked that he (Abdala) did not mean to marry, as he could very easily seduce any woman, be she unmarried or a wife. Almanzor was angered by this remark. He said to Abdala, "I have my ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... could interpose, two men in riding cloaks of Confederate gray stepped into the room with a jaunty and self-confident air. ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... models of much that is admirable; but there is little promise for American literature in exotic imitation. To see ourselves prevailingly as others see us may be good for modesty, but does not lead to a self-confident native art. And it is a dangerous way for Americans to travel. We cannot afford such sophistication yet. The English wits experimented with cynicism in the court of Charles II, laughed at blundering Puritan morality, laughed at country manners, and were whiffed away because the ideals they laughed ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... melody of the "Marseillaise." The latter begins, as it were, to get angry; becoming aware of Augustin at last she tries to fling him off, to brush him aside like a tiresome insignificant fly. But "Mein lieber Augustin" holds his ground firmly, he is cheerful and self-confident, he is gleeful and impudent, and the "Marseillaise" seems suddenly to become terribly stupid. She can no longer conceal her anger and mortification; it is a wail of indignation, tears, and curses, with ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... knowledge of his commercial history, of his pecuniary standing—matters of which he had never before spoken to a mere acquaintance. A change was coming over him; the foundations of habit crumbled beneath his feet; he lost his look of complacence, his self-confident and superior tone. Bar-parlours and billiard-rooms saw him but rarely and flittingly. He seemed to have lost his pleasure in the streets of Islington, and spent all his spare time by the ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... arrived at by the learned critic, we would yet add to the considerations on which he relies another, viz. that it is most improbable that Louis XIV should ever have considered it necessary to take such rigorous measures against the Duc de Beaufort. Truculent and self-confident as he was, he never acted against the royal authority in such a manner as to oblige the king to strike him down in secret; and it is difficult to believe that Louis XIV, peaceably seated on his throne, with all the enemies of his minority under his feet, should have revenged ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in the open. His clothes were new, excellent in fit and material; but, though he did not wear them awkwardly, one gathered the impression that he was accustomed to easier, more informal garments. His manner was entirely self-confident, and betrayed neither awe nor embarrassment. Which gave York an unfavourable impression ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... a single institution had passed before the chief Essayists became members, and indeed I cannot recollect that the founders themselves ever imagined that it lay within their own power to reconstruct Society; none of them was really so sanguine or so self-confident as to anticipate so great a result from their efforts, and it will be remembered that the original phrase was altered by the insertion of the words "to help on" when the constitution was actually formulated. Society has not yet been reconstructed, but the Fabians have done something towards its ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... seminary, induced to abscond and get into trouble, and eventually dispatched to Siberia. There now! Yes, the Russian is what might be called a 'lightweighted' individual, an individual who, unless he holds himself down by the head, is soon carried off by the wind like a chicken's feather—for we are too self-confident and restless. Before now, I myself have been a gull, a man lacking balance: for never does youth realise its own insignificance, or know how ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... Arnold, is the judgment of this world. The Aristocracy and the Middle Class had come to an end of their reign. A "tide of secret dissatisfaction had mined the ground under the self-confident Liberalism of the last thirty years (1839-1869) and had prepared the way for its sudden collapse and supersession." So far, the young Liberals and Radicals of the day did not disagree. They liked this ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... by the usual reference. It had been a difficult day all round. The function was an important one, and the weather bad. There was, besides, an unusual shortage in his number of assistants. Two men had that very morning been laid up with sickness, and when this able-looking, self-confident Wellgood presented himself for immediate employment, he took him out of hand with the merest glance at what looked like a very satisfactory reference. Later, he had intended to look up this reference, which he had been careful to preserve by sticking ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... alternative save obedience; and he consequently presented himself at the residence of Madame de Verneuil, whom he found as self-possessed and as self-confident as in the palmiest days of her prosperity. Instead of concessions she made conditions, and complained loudly and arrogantly of the proceedings of the sovereign; by whom she declared that she had been outraged in her honour, and from whom she sought redress rather than ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... took his place; a man of ready invention, unscrupulous, witty, and brilliant. Self-confident and full of promises, he succeeded in imparting a gleam of sunshine, and pursued a plan directly the opposite to that adopted by Necker. He encouraged the extravagance of the court, derided the future, and ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... full of apprehension and at her wits' end what to do, looked with a sort of superstitions respect at the self-confident little creature who proposed to go down to the city and see ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... she was in part to blame for his course seemed such black ingratitude that his apologies and acknowledgments of wrong went for nothing. She quite overlooked the hope, expressed here and there, that he might lead a very different life in the future. His large and self-confident assurances made before had come to naught, and she had not the tact to see that he would make this ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... O'Hern, ma'am," she announced with a thick accent of County Clare and a self-confident, good-humored smile, "though mostly I'm called 'Stashie—and I'm just over from th' old country to my Aunt Bridgie that washed for you till the rheumatism got her, and when she told me about what you'd done for her and Patsy—how you'd sent off that ould divil where she couldn't ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... you are a very self-confident lady-killer," said she; "for you make yourself expected. But I was determined to meet you. When a woman has once so far forgotten herself as to make the first advance, she has long ago left behind her all ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... large, self-confident, reserved. Stener, buoyed up by the subtle reassurance of his remarks, recovered to a degree his equanimity. Mr. Mollenhauer, the great, powerful Mr. Mollenhauer was going to help him out of his scrape. He might not have to go to jail after all. He left after a few moments, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... exactly that you look too young, for I know governesses at girl's schools are young nowadays, and that they play games, and all that. But you don't look to me quite self-confident or self-opinionated enough. Eh! What do you think, Joan? Is Miss Carson your idea of a school ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... made a delightful picture of youth and happiness, and radiant, unbroken health. Her slight figure was upright as a dart; her cheeks were smooth and fresh as a petal of a rose; her hair was thick and luxuriant, and she bore herself with the jaunty, self-confident gait of one whose lines have been cast in pleasant places, and who is well satisfied of her own ability to keep them ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... reduced to passive waiting. But the taste of the salt and the smell of it brought back the picture of Desire as he had seen her first—strong, self-confident. He had thought these qualities ungirlish at the time; now he thanked God for the memory ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... would never come to anything, he assumed it was a weakness of youth and inexperience which had, no doubt, been conquered. But, no; here was the same old, conceited Josh, as crudely and vulgarly self-confident as when he was twenty-five and just starting at the law in a country town. Yet Arkwright could not but admit there had been more than a grain of truth in Craig's former self-laudations, that there was in victories won a certain excuse for his confidence about the future. ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... into operation. The president was now at his high-water mark of popularity—always a dangerous time for a public man. His vehement nature accepted his re-election as a proof that he was right in everything, and he grew more self-confident than ever. More imperiously than ever, he ordered about friends and opponents, and his friends repaid it by guiding his affairs, unconsciously to himself. Meantime he was encountering another enemy of greater power, because more silent, than Southern nullification, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... Italian poets present us with masterpieces of correct and studied diction, with carefully elaborated machinery, and with a style maintained at a uniform level of dignified correctness. The weakness of the English proceeds from inequality and extravagance; it is the weakness of self-confident vigour, intolerant of rule, rejoicing in its own exuberant resources. The weakness of the Italian is due to timidity and moderation; it is the weakness that springs not so much from a lack of native strength as from the over-anxious expenditure ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Versatile, restless, enterprising, and self-confident, the Greeks presented the most striking contrast to the habitual quietude and submissiveness of the Orientals; and, of all the Greeks, the Athenians exhibited these national characteristics in the strongest degree. This spirit of activity and daring, joined to a generous sympathy for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... Peter has often been pointed out as an interesting corroboration of the tradition that he was Mark's source; and perhaps the failure to record the praise, and the carefulness to tell the subsequent rebuke, reveal the humble-hearted 'elder' into whom the self-confident young Apostle had grown. Flesh delights to recall praise; faith and self-knowledge find more profit in remembering errors forgiven and rebukes deserved, and in their severity, most loving. How did these questions and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren |
