"Supercilious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the past; and I began to be inquisitive about the legends of the place. I knew there was a local tradition as to the origin of the name Gebel Silsilis—the Mountain of the Chain—passed over usually with supercilious contempt in guide-books; and I desired much to hear the details. Ismaeen at first did not seem to attach any importance to the subject, gave me but a cursory answer, and proceeded to relate how he had sold donkeys for sixty piastres ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... of domestic dictatorship, from his earliest years; the first notion he acquires in life is that he is born to command, and the first habit which he contracts is that of being obeyed without resistance. His education tends, then, to give him the character of a supercilious and a hasty man; irascible, violent, and ardent in his desires, impatient of obstacles, but easily discouraged if he cannot ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... vexation, that, though she brought him a kingdom as her dowry, he treated her with such neglect that he had never yet favored her with a single letter.[**] Her fondness was but the more increased by this supercilious treatment; and when she found that her subjects had entertained the greatest aversion for the event to which she directed her fondest wishes, she made the whole English nation the object of her resentment. A squadron, under the command of Lord Effingham, had been fitted out to convoy ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... called for by the learned public. All other readers were ignored. They formed a mob, for whom no provision was made. And that many difficulties should be left entirely unexplained for them, was superciliously assumed to be no fault at all. And yet any sensible man, let him be as supercilious as he may, must on consideration allow that amongst the crowd of unlearned or half-learned readers, who have had neither time nor opportunities for what is called 'erudition' or learned studies, there must always lurk a proportion of men that, by constitution ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... John alone. He received me with the utmost politeness. I did not keep him a moment in suspense as to the purport of my visit. But I had no sooner made it known, than, with a supercilious smile, he said, 'And have you, Madam, been prevailed upon to revive that ridiculous old story?' Ridiculous, I told him, was a term which he would find no one else do him the favour to make use of, in speaking of the horrible actions belonging ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... run away at the very sight of me?" he inquired, in a supercilious tone; to which remark Madame replied, that, "whenever the master of the house made his appearance, the family kept aloof out of respect." As she said this, she made so funny and so pretty a grimace, that De Guiche and ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... readers into two classes, the indolent and the supercilious, and shall accordingly address them upon the present occasion. To the former I have nothing more to say, than to refer them back to the latter part of Chapter I., Part I. where, my dear ladies, you will find an accurate account of the character of two personages, ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... blue, dim gold, and glossy calf-skin. The fire was exactly correct and traditional; a small, quiet, steady fire, reflected by polished fire-irons. The oak desk was dark and old and altogether perfect; the chairs were gently supercilious. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... was a man of thirty, at the most, with handsome features and a commanding, elegant figure. His physiognomy expressed both intelligence and wit, but often wore a mask of supercilious impertinence when addressing persons of the same stamp as ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... that energy so characteristic of a new swarm, but they have a peculiar look which to the experienced eye at once proclaims the fact that they are staying only upon sufferance. Their very attitude, hanging as they do with a sort of dogged or supercilious air, as though they hated even so much as to touch their detested abode, is equivalent to an open proclamation that they mean to be off. My numerous experiments in attempting from the moment of hiving, to make the bees work in ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... peaches and water-melons for sale. Him and his proffered wares the chief waves off with aristocratic hauteur, until he suddenly recollects that his humble countryman has a vote at the elections; then he stops, enters into a brief conversation, examines the kitful of fruit through his glasses with supercilious disdain, but eventually purchases a chunk of melon, and goes on his way ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... irreproachable evening dress of civilization. There is not a man in the group who is not quite at his ease in ball-room attire; most of them have held acquaintance time and again with the white tie and stiff "choker" of conventionality, but the average gallant of metropolitan circles would turn up his supercilious nostrils at the bare suggestion were he to see them now. The —th is in its element, however, for the order has come, and with the coming dawn it will be on the march for the Black Hills of Dakota, and the colonel has summoned the officers ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... belonged to this same supercilious set, and had made many enemies by his sarcastic denunciations of things that were almost thought sacred in Marosfalva. It was therefore quite an understood thing that the moment a csardas was struck up, Eros Bela at once went to seek ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... a supercilious voice, Mr. Godfrey was not there; he had left some time before; no, the speaker did not know where he was going, nor when he ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... class. He was painfully proud, prouder than any of the nobles. Before entering the service he had made up his mind to "rise." He wanted to become an officer, so that the villagers would have to stand at attention before him, when he returned home. Therefore he gave Zagrubsky a supercilious look of contempt, and unceremoniously closed the pouch when the Pole wanted to take some tobacco. I was sorry for the Pole, and offered him some of my own tobacco. He did not fail to take it, but at the same time I heard ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... fright, Hugo decided; that's what she wanted to bring her to heel. And before very long he'd see that she got it. She shouldn't shelter herself for ever behind that supercilious beast, Ledgard. Hugo was quite ready to have been pleasant to Jan and to have met her more than half-way if she was reasonable, but since she had chosen to bring Ledgard into it, she should pay. After all, she was only a woman, and you can always frighten a woman if you ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... but he supposed that the letter from the little girl told that she was unhappy in her new surroundings, perhaps being ill-treated by the supercilious Eastern relatives. The miner who was to remain helped the other to pack his belongings in a quaint old carpet sack, and together they undid a bundle which proved to contain a splendid new suit. Not only this, but now came a scene of eloquent appeal to the watcher ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... the world we should have some rest—and if the plug came out of the boat midway it would be more restful still. And your vote-hunting politicians with their tail-twisting campaigns, and our editors of the supercilious weeklies with their inane tone of superiority, if they were all aboard how much clearer we should be! Once more adieu, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... and I found attractions in him, the chief of which was his likeness to my father. So must my father have looked when he was this fellow's age. He returned my glance with a smile that did not improve his countenance, so contemptuously languid was it, so very supercilious. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... plainly indicated fear; they were then shut in a box in the rear of the train, in which I could see no sitting accommodation. The way in which these men were treated presented nothing new, for I had invariably noticed that coloured people in the south, whether bond or free, were spoken to with supercilious haughtiness, which I never ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... public acknowledgment of the favours I received from him, and bearing this testimony to his public and private merit. He was indeed the only officer belonging to the company from whom I received any civility, or with whom I had the least communication; for I found them, in general, a reserved and supercilious set of people. The governor, although the servant of a republic, takes upon himself more state, in some particulars, than any sovereign prince in Europe. Whenever he goes abroad, he is attended by a party of horse-guards, and two black men go before his coach in the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... dress fine and amuse themselves. But so far from being the idle fellows they would be thought, the majority are hardworking merchants and pains-taking attornies, who bet a little, play a little, dote upon a lord, and fancy that by being excessively supercilious in the rococo style of that poor heathen bankrupt Brummel, they are performing to perfection the character of men of fashion. This, the normal state of young Liverpool, at a certain period the butterfly becomes a grub, a money grub, and abandoning brilliant cravats, primrose gloves, and tight ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... darling!" said Meta, giving Rose a fresh hug and glancing in a supercilious but friendly ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... third-grade staff-officer learns is to speak respectfully of his superiors," said the A.P.M., as he hurled a cushion at Ponsonby, who caught it with a bow. Ponsonby is irrepressible and, in spite of his supercilious civilian airs, much is forgiven him. He turned to the D.A.A.G. and said, "Hooper, you've forgotten to say grace. For what we have not received"—he added, with a meaning glance at a Stilton cheese which the A.A.G.'s wife has sent out from ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... the result. Nothing could exceed the kindness of King Eyo. He bore himself as a Christian gentleman, listened courteously to the passionate and foolish speech of the Okoyong representatives, reminded the supercilious Calabar chiefs that the Gospel which had made them what they were had only just been taken to Okoyong, and in giving the verdict which went against them, he gently made it the finding of righteousness, according to the laws of God. When all ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... Reeve,—I have received your article on Mr. Stuart Mill, for which I thank you. I read it with the greatest interest, and congratulate you on your vigorous refutation of that supercilious and hollow materialism. I am glad, too, to see that you have profited by M. Dumas's last discourse on M. de la Rive. You have done well to record these declarations of a permanent secretary of the Academy of Sciences. ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... feminine influence and about men's immense respect for them! But any number of women have come to see that underneath that old mask of chivalry was a broad grin.—We are reminded of that every time the House of Commons talks about us.' She flung it at the three supercilious strangers. 'The dullest gentleman there can raise a laugh if he speaks of the "fair sex." Such jokes!—even when they are clean such poor little feeble efforts that even a member of Parliament couldn't laugh at them unless ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... handle any of your mathematical, astronomical, diabolical instruments.—But, Sir Anthony, I would send her, at nine years old, to a boarding-school, in order to learn a little ingenuity and artifice. Then, sir, she should have a supercilious knowledge in accounts;—and as she grew up, I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries;—but above all, Sir Anthony, she should be mistress of orthodoxy, that she might not mis-spell, and mis-pronounce words so shamefully ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... spurns the olden time, and affects all the supercilious airs of a modern fine lady and an upstart. The object of the one writer is to restore us to truth and nature: the other chiefly thinks how he shall display his own power, or vent his spleen, or astonish the reader either by starting new subjects and trains of speculation, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... any Man in a gay Dress. You cant behold a covetous Spirit walk by a Goldsmiths Shop without casting a wistful Eye at the Heaps upon the Counter. Does not a haughty Person shew the Temper of his Soul in the supercilious Rowl of his Eye? and how frequently in the Height of Passion does that moving Picture in our Head start and stare, gather a Redness and quick Flashes of Lightning, and make all its Humours sparkle with Fire, as Virgil ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Venice; and ten years later Hutten was charmed with his reception there. But with many, conscious of their own defects[40] and of the reality of Italian superiority, the charge of barbarism must have rankled. To Luther in 1518 Italian is synonymous with supercilious. ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... once present when a loud-voiced person of quality, ignorant and supercilious, was inveighing against the want of taste commonly exhibited by artists when they chose their wives, saying they almost always selected inferior women. Procter, sitting next to me, put his hand on my shoulder, and, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... wry face. He was not fond of Mrs. Wilders, whose manner, sometimes oily, sometimes supercilious, was too changeable to please him, and he felt that ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... towards foreigners, speaking from the long experience which I have had, I should certainly state that it was kind and attentive when brought into contact in travelling or from any other circumstances, provided that a person does not attempt to support a haughty or supercilious air. I do not consider that, generally speaking, the French are so hospitable as the English, not only as regards foreigners but even amongst themselves; it is not so much their habit. In many houses you may pass an hour or two of an evening, and there ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... which seems never-ending; For the active freeman works hard as well as the servant. But to suffer the whims of the master, who blames you unjustly, Or who calls for this and for that, not knowing his own mind, And the mistress's violence, always so easily kindled, With the children's rough and supercilious bad manners,— This is indeed hard to bear, whilst still fulfilling your duties Promptly and actively, never becoming morose or ill-natured; Yet for such work you appear little fit, for already the father's ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... how this supercilious treatment of so momentous a science, for momentous it must be, if there be a God, runs in a somewhat parallel case. The great philosopher of antiquity, when he would enumerate the causes of the things that take place in the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... Charles reformed the internal administration of his kingdom, and at length felt himself ready to begin again the conflict with England. Edward III. was old. The Black Prince was ill and gloomy, and his Aquitanian subjects disliked the supercilious ways of the English. Charles declared war (1369). The English landed at Calais. But the cities were defended by their strong walls; and the French army, under the Duke of Burgundy, in pursuance of the settled policy of the king, refused to meet the enemy in a pitched battle. The next year (1370) ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... they again encountered a downy-lipped youth in gray flannels accompanied by a fat gentleman with tortoise-shell eyes and a tallow smile; but the jaunty dimples of the fat man, the supercilious lift of the gray flannel's eyebrow—froze mid-way at sight of Meestress Leezie O'Finnigan, who bowed to Bat with the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... the Dean of St. Neot's. The Mildmays themselves could not be present, but these two had come over from Moors End and sat there now, the Dean beaming in anticipation of a treat, Marchmont with a rather supercilious smile and an air of weariness. May could not catch their eyes but she felt glad to have them there; it was always pleasant to her that her friends should see Quisante when he was at his best, and he was going to be at ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... teacher: when he came in mature life to apply himself to the rounded work, he had more of a disposition to teach, and less of that imaginative reach which is like belief; and now he is telling a story again for the sake of the story, but without the deeper meaning. Lynette is a supercilious damsel who asks redress of the knights of the Round Table: Gareth, a male Cinderella, starts from the kitchen to defend her, and after conquering her prejudices by his bravery, assumes his place as a disguised prince. It is a plain ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... away from him. He draws near her again; she disregards him. He gleefully chucks her under the chin, and, retreating a few steps, nods and beckons with fantastic grimaces, while the girl bestows a contemptuous and supercilious look upon his wrinkled visage. She turns away with a flounce, and the old gentleman trots after her with a toothless chuckle. The pantaloon to ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... a sailor, swaying along, a rope in his hand; following him, walked demurely three little girls in frocks and trousers, with their French governess; then came two eye-glassed young men, dandyfied and supercilious, who appeared to have more money than brains—and the jaundiced man went into ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... the political papers Gay's observations are moderate in tone. Defoe's Review (1704-13) and The Observator (1702-12), begun by John Tutchin, are noticed in rather supercilious fashion. The Examiner (1710-14) is damned with faint praise: though "all men, who speak without prejudice, allow it to be well written" and "under the eye of some great persons who sit at the helm of affairs," Gay's admiration is reserved ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... being choiceworthy, for certainly they who have them desire to receive honour through them. So to whom honour even is a small thing to him will all other things also be so; and this is why such men are thought to be supercilious. ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... word in the course of the dispute between Lavretsky and Panshin, but she had followed it attentively and was completely on Lavretsky's side. Politics interested her very little; but the supercilious tone of the worldly official (he had never delivered himself in that way before) repelled her; his contempt for Russia wounded her. It had never occurred to Lisa that she was a patriot; but her heart was with the Russian people; the Russian turn ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... earrings and splendid fazzoletto of crimson and orange dyes, pounced down upon her for some supposed infraction of good manners—creanza, as they vividly express it here. Only Luigi looked a trifle bored. But Luigi has been a soldier, and has now attained the supercilious superiority of young-manhood, which smokes its cigar of an evening in the piazza and knows the merits of the different cafes. The great business of the evening began when the eating was over, and the decanters filled with new wine of Mirano circulated freely. The four best ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... head. Uncle Ned was old, wizened, wrinkled as a raisin, but he eyed Anniky over with a supercilious gaze, and said with dignity: "Ef I wanted ter marry, I could git ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... ask them. One was Miss Clarke—you know her. She smiled in her usual supercilious manner, but in her case I believe it was only because Miss Clare looks so dowdy. But nobody knows any thing about her except what ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... to you directly. That's the whole story of her, madam.' Whatever were Manston's real feelings towards the lady who had received his explanation in these supercilious tones, they remained locked within him as ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... We supercilious civilized folk laugh at the odd dress {69} of the savage; but it was exactly adapted to the need. The otter hunter wore the fur in, because that was warmer; and the skin out, because cured in oil, that was waterproof; and the chimney-pot capote, because that tied tight ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... reason strong, accompanied with an imagination full of spirit, of great compass, and stored with refined ideas. He is a critick of the first rank; and, what is his peculiar ornament, he is delivered from the ostentation, malevolence, and supercilious temper, that so often blemish men of that character. His remarks result from the nature and reason of things, and are formed by a judgment free, and unbiassed by the authority of those who have lazily followed each other in the same beaten ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... be frank. I hate you and detest you with all my heart," continued Flora. "I have always hated you, with your supercilious airs, you, whose father...." ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... quick-tempered man, but I have my self-respect. I will not be sneered at by hens. All the abstract desire for Fame which had filled my mind five minutes before was concentrated now on the task of capturing this supercilious bird. ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... the room where I had been waiting for him, as I fancied he might have come on a wet, cold morning to meet an awkward-squad. He held the card I sent for his inspection in his hand, and referred to it, after he had looked me over with a supercilious glance. ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... period Lucas Lodge, where he could think with pleasure of his own importance, and, unshackled by business, occupy himself solely in being civil to all the world. For, though elated by his rank, it did not render him supercilious; on the contrary, he was all attention to everybody. By nature inoffensive, friendly, and obliging, his presentation at St. James's had ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... among the birds disgraced. Our author thus, of two-fold fame exactor, Is doubly scouted,—both as Bard, and Actor! Wanting in haste a Prologue, he applied To three poetic friends; was thrice denied. Each glared on him with supercilious glance, As on a Poor Relation met by chance; And one was heard, with more repulsive air, To mutter "Vagabond," "Rogue," "Strolling Player!" A poet once, he found—and look'd aghast— By turning actor, he had lost his caste. The verse patch'd up at length—with like ill fortune ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of his bed to smoke. His was not the nature to hold a grudge, and Tex seemed to be friendly. Still, his youthful dignity had been very much hurt, and by Tex as much as the other boys. He gave him a supercilious glance. ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... counter project;[b] but while the different articles remained under discussion, the period prefixed by the parliament expired, and the ambassadors departed. To whom the failure of the negotiation was owing became a subject of controversy. The Hollanders blamed the abrupt and supercilious carriage of St. John and his colleague; the ambassadors charged the States with having purposely created delay, that they might not commit themselves by a treaty with the commonwealth, before they had seen the issue of the contest between the king ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... Critick? You will find him in Quintilius Varus, of Cremona, who when any Author shew'd him his Composure, laid aside the Fastus common to our supercilious Readers; and when he happen'd on any Mistake, Corrige sodes Hoc aiebat ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... of wresting a living from the soil broadened and deepened until it assumed alluring proportions. Farming became a conundrum worthy of the best brain, and one at which the supercilious could ill afford to scoff. Martin found himself giving to it the full strength both of ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... concomitants of fashion. The reverse is true. She is an interloper in the circles of good society, and the old fable of the ass in the lion's skin fits her precisely. Many a duchess in England is such an interloper; her supercilious airs betray the falsity of her politeness, but she is obliged by the rules of the Court at which she has been educated to "behave like a lady;" she has to counterfeit good-breeding; she cannot, she dare not, behave as a woman who has suddenly become rich may ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... of clerks was an obvious one and here I discerned two remarkable divisions. There were the junior clerks of flash houses—young gentlemen with tight coats, bright boots, well-oiled hair, and supercilious lips. Setting aside a certain dapperness of carriage, which may be termed deskism for want of a better word, the manner of these persons seemed to me an exact fac-simile of what had been the perfection of bon ton about twelve or eighteen months ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... passed a vote to the effect that the Parliamentary representatives, who were members of that body, should withdraw from the British Parliament. It was proposed by Mr. Davis and received Mr. O'Connell's entire approval. Though at first sneered at, it had a stunning effect. The supercilious British Commons, who would have answered the just remonstrance of the Irish Repealers with a jeer, shrank from the consequences of legislating for the country in the absence of the men, whose efforts, if present, they ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... Vavasour!" and then she rushes up to Lady Jenkins, who is sitting on the sofa, and tells her the bracelet has been found, and I shut the door. But there's a great deal, you know, in the tone in which I announce her. I have to do it in an apparently supercilious but really admiring tone, to show that all the servants think Miss Vavasour had taken the bracelet, but that I am certain it isn't true. Frank Luscombe, it seems, used to say the words without any expression at all, just "Miss Vavasour!" like that, in ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... said Nina, scornfully. Harriet laughed maternally, but in spite of herself her idle dream of the afternoon returned for a second, and she wondered just how that faintly supercilious smile of Isabelle's would be affected if she had her own right, here in this family group, a Carter of the Carters, daughter of the house. And thinking this, her smoky blue eyes met Ward's, and perhaps there was something in them that ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... by the horde of visions mobbing her brain. Then the onrush of horror was checked abruptly as she saw the supercilious lad regarding her frenzy calmly. His ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... a good deal of talk about how many men you've handled in your day," said the Colonel, tucking a thumb under his suspender and leaning back with supercilious cock of his gray eyebrows. "It's bein' hinted round town here more or less that you're northin' but bluff. I don't realize, come to think it over, how I ever come to let you git such a holt ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... good manners and appearance. To her Mrs. Tudor uniformly spoke in a way that must have been felt as peculiarly disagreeable. The blandest smile; and the most winning expression of voice, would instantly change, when Lucy was addressed, to a cold, supercilious look, and an undertone of command. Several times I saw the blood mount to the girl's forehead, as a word or tone more marked and offensive than usual would be given so loudly as to be perceived by all. Once or twice, at such times, I could not resist a glance at Mrs. Sunderland, which was ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... presence of mind; and the wife of a peasant, when you enter her cottage, often greets you with a propriety of mien which favourably contrasts with your reception by some grand dame in some grand assembly, meeting her guests alternately with a caricature of courtesy or an exaggeradon of supercilious self-control. ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... that he was a "stuck up smart-Aleck," and sooner or later he'd get a piece of her mind that would "take him down a couple of pegs." Miss Miller, while in complete accord with Flora's views, was content to speak of him as "supercilious." ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... departure, in the twilight of the morning, I ascended the vehicle with three men and two women, my fellow travellers. It was easy to observe the affected elevation of mien with which every one entered, and the supercilious servility with which they paid their compliments to each other. When the first ceremony was despatched, we sat silent for a long time, all employed in collecting importance into our faces, and endeavouring to strike reverence and submission into ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... with a spluttering of the abused pen in her stiffened old fingers and a great twisting of her grim mouth as she formed the capitals. Then Billy Louise wrote her name with a fine, schoolgirl ease and a little curl on the end of the last d. Seabeck took the paper from the tips of Billy Louise's supercilious fingers, returned with it to the desk for a blotter, hunted an envelope, folded the note carefully, and laid it ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... much less popular and conciliating in his manner. His eloquence is heard to most advantage when he is contemptuous; and he is then certainly dignified, ardent, and emphatic; but it is apt, I should think, to impress those who hear him, for the first time, with an idea that he is a very supercilious personage, and this unfavourable impression is liable to be strengthened by the elegant aristocratic languor of ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... was neither Cantonese nor Pekingese. His long, rather supercilious face, his aquiline nose, the flare of his nostrils, the back-tilted head, the high, narrow brow, and the shock of blue-black hair identified the Chinese stranger, even if his abnormal, rangy height were not taken into consideration, as a hill man, perhaps ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... national thing that was bound up with England. 'Men began to feel that foreigners did not eat or drink like Christians,' which is to say that the Englishman began his contempt for the foreigner which has resulted in nearly all our wars, and has made the Englishman abroad a supercilious creature, and has made the English schoolboy put his tongue ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... different churchman from the bitter author of the Polite Conversations, is equally contemptuous toward the self-seeker in divine things. 'Your boasted peaceableness often proceeds from a superficial temper; and, not seldom, from a supercilious disdain of whatever has no marketable use or value, and from your utter indifference to true religion. Toleration is an herb of spontaneous growth in the soil of indifference. Much of our union of minds proceeds from want of knowledge and from want of affection ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... a considerable part of the controversy turned upon the fundamental principles, of all religion, and virtue. It is not at all surprising, that this steadiness and constancy of the Lutherans, was branded by the opposite party, with the epithets, of morose obstinacy, supercilious arrogance, and such like odious denominations. The Lutherans, were not behind hand with their adversaries, in acrimony, of style; they recriminated with vehemence, and charged their accusers with instances of misconduct, different in kind, but equally condemnable. ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... suggest that the companion article in The Family Herald could be anything but miserable commonplace, which no one with any reputation to lose in "literary circles" would venture to read. The same arrogance of ignorance is observable in the supercilious way in which many men speak of the articles appearing in other penny miscellanies of popular literature. They richly deserve the punishment which Mr. Runciman reminds us Sir Walter Scott inflicted upon some blatant snobs who were praising ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... was back, looking on in an extremely supercilious way, but all the while his eyes were bright with interest; and at last he spoke again in a ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... and not see or hear. You SENSED, to use a rustic expression, the presence of a class that was not palpably treasonable, but rather half cotton. But at Canada it comes out all wool. The hot South opens like a double rose, red and full. The English article is cooler and supercilious. I say nothing, for my role is to see; but Halicarnassus and the Anakim exchange views with the greatest nonchalance, in spite of pokes and scowls and ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... jingle of endings; it were more true to say that it was a jingle of mendings, for it certainly soothed him. He was making a goddess in his own image; poetry—Santa Cecilia! he was a poet, like his friend Dante, like that supercilious young tomb-walker Guido Cavalcanti. A poet he undoubtedly became; and if his feet were cold his ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... about his family, that I know all about it. Do you suppose that before selecting you as your cousin's husband I had not obtained every possible information about you? And what I have learned need not make you quite so supercilious to the police. Besides, as the vulgar saying is, the best of your nose is made of it. Your uncle belonged to the police, and, thanks to that, he became the confidant, I might almost say the friend, ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... believe in one. Mephistophelian scepticism, indeed, will satisfy the head's play-instincts much better than any rigorous idealism can. Some men (even at the student age) are so naturally cool-hearted that the moralistic hypothesis never has for them any pungent life, and in their supercilious presence the hot young moralist always feels strangely ill at ease. The appearance of knowingness is on their side, of naivete and gullibility on his. Yet, in the inarticulate heart of him, he clings to it that he is not a dupe, and that there is a realm in which (as Emerson ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... of horses, went out hunting with him, spent whole nights with him.... Now you would not know this same prince, who was once a rake and a scapegrace.... In what good odour he is now; how straight- laced, how supercilious! How devoted to the government—and, above all, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... commerce homeward bound. It may be weak, but I feel it all the same. I seem to divine the thoughts of the omnibus driver as he gazes down upon me from his exalted perch—he does not think my shirt is clean. His sixteen "outsides" bestow upon me a supercilious look that conveys to me that they opine I am merely cabbing it to the station en route for a "suburban hop." But I bear up under it all, and think of the magnificent banquet of which they, poor things, know nothing, and I am beginning to feel quite proud when a brute of a ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Van Arenberg joined the party, and, after saluting Jaqueline in a self-confident manner, stood listening with a supercilious air to ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... flung open. I sprang to my feet with a bow. The Duke of Buckingham stood before me, surveying my person (in truth, my state was very dishevelled) and my quarters with supercilious amusement. There was one chair, and I set it for him; he sat down, pulling off ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... resolve, I chuckled. The picture of a tllooll trying to ride a four-wheeled bicycle, pumping each of his eight three-jointed legs up and down in turn, while maintaining his usual supercilious and indifferent facial expression, was ...
— Show Business • William C. Boyd
... on in a very supercilious manner at Mr. Clapp in his shirt-sleeves, watering his rose-bushes. He took off his hat, however, with much condescension to Mr. Sedley, who asked news about his son-in-law, and about Jos's carriage, and whether his horses had been down to Brighton, and about that ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rushed into the war with the confidence of a schoolboy and who limped out like a man overtaken in his gymnastic exercise by a paralytic stroke. The war taught the South a very useful lesson, but did not sufficiently convince it that it was preeminently a supercilious, arrogant people, who did not and do not possess all the virtue, intelligence, and courage of the country; that its stock of these prime elements is woefully small considering the long years it had posed as America's ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... intelligent, and everything else desirable, and this consciousness actually produced, in a large majority, the pleasing illusion that she was really all these. But she was not. On the contrary, stripped of the gloss, she was censorious, supercilious, and selfish. Deprived of her dressmaker, she was gaunt and unsightly. Separated from her position, she would have been unbearable. Arabella had many offers, of course, but she was too fond of her power and too suspicious of an attempt on her purse to yield easily. She was enough of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... It is quite possible, and more than probable. But we also maintain that it is a great mistake to come down upon it with a sweeping denunciation, and, in Quaker fashion, avow it to be all vanity, and assert that it must be trodden out of thought and eye. Even the Quakers themselves, who affect such supercilious contempt for dress, are very particular about the cut of their headgear, about the shade of their greys and their drabs and their browns, and, in their scrupulous neatness, show that they think as much of a grease-spot ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... pocket. Broad-shouldered, sturdy, and well-built throughout, he walked with the stride of a man who is accustomed to cover long distances. Yet with him he had brought neither wallet nor gripsack, and somehow his supercilious, retrousse upper lip and thickly fringed eyes irritated me, and inclined me to be suspicious of, and even ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... its way into a back court, accompanied by the tyrant, the pedant and Scapin, who superintended the unloading of the various articles that would be needed—a strange medley, which the supercilious servants of the chateau, in their rich liveries, handled with a very lofty air of contempt and condescension, feeling it quite beneath their dignity to wait upon a band of strolling players. But they dared not rebel, for the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... he was sitting upright, shaking a mandatory fist at Patsy as she disappeared through the door. "Remember—no help from the quality! I hate them as much as you do, and I won't have them coming around with their inquisitive, patronizing, supercilious offers of assistance to a—beggar. I tell you I want to be left alone! If you bring any one back with you I'll burn the stable down about ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... new life and light into the very highest spirits, declared with much solemnity that he could already detect the smell of the salt sea air. They had their quarrels of course. It pleased a certain young lady to treat the south coast of England with much supercilious contempt. You would have imagined from her talk that there was something criminal in one's living even within twenty miles of the bleak downs, the shabby precipices, and the muddy sea which, according to her, were the only recognizable features of our southern shores. She would ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... remarking with corner of eye the sumptuousness of her appearance, and the supercilious indifference of her demeanour, which made it seem totally improbable that she should ever, like Desdemona, seriously incline to treat me as an Othello, commenced to heave the sighs of a fire-stove, causing Miss JESSIMINA to accuse me of desiring ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... less hair on head, neck, and legs, is also amusing, but in a different way. His expression is haughty and supercilious in the extreme. He usually looks as though his presence near one is due to circumstances over which he really had no control. Pride of race and excessive haughtiness lead him to carry his head so high and his neck so stiffly erect that he can be corralled, with others of his kind, by a single ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... as she turned from Lessways Street into the Oldcastle Road, on her way to the centre of the town, she experienced almost exactly the intense excitement of the reckless and supercilious child in quest of its dinner. The only difference was that the recent reconciliation had inspired her with a certain negligent compassion for her mother, with a curious tenderness that caused ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... retained as road-tester, getting his chauffeur's license. Two months later, when he was helping in the overhauling of a car in the repair-shop, he heard a full-bodied man with a smart English overcoat and a supercilious red face ask curtly of the shop foreman where he could get a "crack shuffer, right away, one that can give the traffic cops something ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... well. I'm on the right tack and no mistake. We got here middle day, yesterday—came over the hills from the railway in a regular old bone-shaker of a coach. My tourist get-up is quite the fig, and though I caught Mr. M—— eyeing me over a bit supercilious like once, he didn't recognize me if ever he did see me down at Thurwell Court, which I don't think he did. Well, directly we got here, off started Mr. M—— through the town, and after a bit I followed. ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in the day. Lady Cumnor was exactly in that state of convalescence when such talk as her lord's was extremely agreeable to her, but she had contemned the habit of listening to gossip so severely all her life, that she thought it due to consistency to listen first, and enter a supercilious protest afterwards. It had, however, come to be a family habit for all of them to gather together in Lady Cumnor's room on their return from their daily walks or drives or rides, and over the fire, sipping their tea at her early meal, to recount ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... use a phrase which he himself would not have used, for he avoided the use of slang—"given himself away." Over his lantern-shaped face, across his thin, determined mouth, there had still lingered a trace of the supercilious smile with which he had been looking round him. And, as he had helped Mrs. Archdale into the compartment, as he indicated to her the comfortable seat he had reserved for himself, not even she—noted though she was for her powers of sympathy and understanding—had divined the delicious ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... [Entering, after a supercilious glance.] This is quite more of an affair, my dear, than I was ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... view the quantity rather than the quality of his remarks, and the stipulated price he is to receive per line. Indeed the parallel would hold good in more respects than that of knowledge, for his language was unusually captious and supercilious, his tone authoritative, and his motive the desire to exhibit his own endowments, rather than the wish he affected to manifest of setting forth the excellences of others. His speeches were more frequently than ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... primly and consciously by his side; she was a very handsome girl with bold eyes and was somewhat overdressed. She wore a big flowery hat and a white lace veil and looked at Anne with a supercilious smile. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of thing very stupid, and so absolutely unnecessary. He had enjoyed listening to Miss Bubbles' cheerful, inconsequent chatter. It irritated him that she should have been dragged away from him—for so he put it to himself—by that unpleasant, supercilious woman, Blanche Farrow. It was a pity that a nice girl like Miss Bubbles had such an aunt. Only the other day he had heard a queer story about Miss Farrow. The story ran that she had once been caught in a gambling ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... of use or ornament in common life; how good it was to know that such assembling in a multitude on their part, and such contribution of their several dexterities towards a civilising end, did not deteriorate them as it was the fashion of the supercilious Mayflies of humanity to pretend, but engendered among them a self-respect, and yet a modest desire to be much wiser than they were (the first evinced in their well-balanced bearing and manner of speech when he stopped to ask a question; the second, in the announcements of their popular ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... from the Whitney to the Brockhurst nursery with a view to the promotion of general cheerfulness. Mr. Ludovic Quayle was a rather superfine, young gentleman, possessed of an excellent opinion of himself, and a modest opinion of other persons—his father included. But under his somewhat supercilious demeanour there was a vein of true romance. He loved Richard Calmady; and neither time, nor opposing interests, nor certain black chapters which had later to be read in the history of life, destroyed or even ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... it is no great thing," said Mangan, who was really a very good-natured sort of person, despite his supercilious talk. "In fact, you might do her ladyship a more substantial service ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... he drew himself up as he spoke, his lip was supercilious, and there was an intolerant light in his eye. At that moment he did not look a promising subject for the Liberal side of the House, avowedly as were his sympathies in that quarter. Weir, however, gave him an approving smile, and then ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... was Lord George ——, a young nobleman, near twenty-one, who was heir to a very considerable fortune. We mention his fortune first, because it was his first merit, even in his own opinion. Cold, silent, selfish, supercilious, and silly, there appeared nothing in him to engage the affections, or to strike the fancy of a fair lady; but Lady Augusta's fancy was not fixed upon his lordship's character or manners, and much that might have disgusted consequently escaped her observation. Her mother had ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... He sets me at naught in my own class, sir; he pooh-poohs my mathematical demonstrations, sir; he encourages my pupils in insubordination! And Mrs. Tootle! Bedad, if I don't invent some device for revenging myself on that supercilious woman. The very next time she presumes to address me disrespectfully at the dinner-table, sir, I'll rise in my might, sir,—see if I don't!—and I'll say to her, 'Mrs. Tootle, ma'am, you seem to forget that I'm a gentleman, and have a gentleman's susceptibilities. ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... the thing, one may perhaps call that of Burns a still uglier phenomenon, betokening still sadder imperfections in mankind's ways, than the Scandinavian method itself! To fall into mere unreasoning deliquium of love and admiration, was not good; but such unreasoning, nay irrational supercilious no-love at all is perhaps still worse!—It is a thing forever changing, this of Hero-worship: different in each age, difficult to do well in any age. Indeed, the heart of the whole business of the age, one may say, is to ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... remarkably regular, and though his face was somewhat small, there could be no doubt that he was extremely good looking, especially to a woman's eye, who would be more apt than a fellow man to condone something a little supercilious ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... put on his glasses, the better to observe the neat, supercilious figure. He laughed ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... without doubt, a very perfect person with his wide-set eyes and well-groomed head, his smooth moustache and the cleft on his chin. He didn't like him. He had decided that at a first glance. He was too supercilious and self-assured and had a way of looking clean through men's heads. He conveyed the impression of having bought the earth,—and Joan. A pity he was too old for a year or two of Yale. That would make him a bit ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... lineaments confest! I do enjoy this bounteous beauteous earth; And dote upon a jest "Within the limits of becoming mirth";— No solemn sanctimonious face I pull, Nor think I'm pious when I'm only bilious— Nor study in my sanctum supercilious To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull. I pray for grace—repent each sinful act— Peruse, but underneath the rose, my Bible; And love my neighbor far too well, in fact, To call and twit him with a godly tract That's turn'd by application to a libel. My heart ferments not with the bigot's ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... a complete silence and under the professor's supercilious smile, Tommy got up and went below. Had I tried to enter the cabin, the old ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... hand began to stroke and caress his small, black moustache, and he viewed Bellew from his dusty boots up to the crown of his dusty hat, and down again, with supercilious eyes. ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... now exist between us and our enterprising, intelligent American neighbours, have doubtless done much to produce this amalgamation of classes. The gentleman no longer looks down with supercilious self-importance on the wealthy merchant, nor does the latter refuse to the ingenious mechanic the respect due to him as a man. A more healthy state pervades Canadian society than existed here a few years ago, when party feeling ran high, and the professional ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... new family coach of which the Homes had talked for the last generation; and Lady Carnegie curtsied her supercilious adieus, and hoped her son and daughter would be better keepers at home for the future. And Nanny Swinton wore her new gown and cockernonie, and blessed her bairn and her bairn's bairn, through tears that were now no more than a sunny shower, the silver mist ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... readiness to accept any concession "which would shorten and smoothen the road to Home Rule." But it is significant that although Mr Dillon was in complete agreement with the Liberals "as to both policy and tactics," yet he devoted, with a rather supercilious levity, his speeches in Ireland to a demand for "Boer Home Rule as a minimum." This was the way in which the country was scandalously hoodwinked as to the real relations which existed between ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... is full of his vagaries here; says the most offensive things, but in such a high-bred, supercilious, if not gentlemanly way, that people cannot make up their minds about him, nor whether to cut him dead or acknowledge him for a genius and a humorist. Sir Robert Inglis says, publicly, that Mr. Randolph "on these boards" claimed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... protection shelter him from the treatment he deserves. I shall, on such an occasion, without scruple trample upon all those forms with which wealth and dignity intrench themselves, nor shall anything but age restrain my resentment; age which always brings one privilege, that of being insolent and supercilious without punishment. But with regard, sir, to those whom I have offended, I am of opinion, that if I had acted a borrowed part I should have avoided their censure; the heat that offended them was the ardor of conviction, and that zeal for ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... with a supercilious look, "but she is at breakfast, and does not see poor people ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... recognized him as the old man with the twisted leg who tendered the well-meant advice upon the night of his first arrival in the little town, and his face reddened as he remembered the supercilious disregard with which he had ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... Christian could desire to swinge behind him; and, man for man, I would willingly have perilled my promotion upon their walloping, with no offensive weapons but their stretchers, the Following, claymores and all, of any proud, disagreeable, would—be mighty mountaineer, that ever turned up his supercilious, whisky blossomed snout at Bailie Jarvie. On they came, square—shouldered, narrow—flanked, tall, strapping fellows, tumbling and rolling about the piazzas in knots of three and four, until, at the corner of ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the master of the roistering watch-beating Paunsfords. He is not visible as pictured to the vivid fancy of the author of Kenilworth, the youthful aspirant, graceful, eager, slender, dark, restless, and supercilious, with a sonnet or an epigram ever ready on his lips to delight ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... too far gone to stand another stitch. Peter was too small to do any responsible work, and he was getting too big to be paid in pennies and dimes. People didn't exactly know what to do with him. One can't be supercilious to a boy who is a Champneys born, but can one invite a boy who runs errands, is on very familiar footing with all the colored people in the county, and wears such clothes as Peter wore, to one's house, or to be one of the guests when a child of the family gives a birthday party? ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... Arnold, tall and slight, carrying his head high, fair of complexion as a peachy-cheeked girl, was a peculiarly distinguished-looking man. The delicate pince-nez he wore emphasized slightly the elusive air of supercilious courtliness he always conveyed. Now, as he spoke to Ruth, who, although a tall girl, was some inches shorter than he, he maintained a strict perpendicular from the crown of his head to his heels, only ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... respect to superiors, it was no wonder she treated her children and inferiors with supercilious contempt. Her eldest daughter (121) and she were long at variance, and never reconciled. When the young Duchess exposed herself by placing a monument and silly epitaph, of her own composition and bad spelling, to Congreve, in Westminster Abbey, her mother, quoting the words, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... the week ended—the enemy active, vigorous, supercilious; while we in Kimberley felt fretful, hungry, and sick at heart; but too thoroughly inured to hardship to shrink from or even to question the duty of fighting the ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... opinion so agreeable to the reverence due to the regal dignity, and countenanced by so great authorities, without a long and accurate discussion, would be a temerity justly liable to the severest censures. A. supercilious and arrogant determination of a controversy of such importance, would, doubtless, be treated by the impartial and candid with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... furbelows are blurred against the foliage, and the lilac-bushes loom through the air as though they were white clouds full of rain. One cannot see the ladies' faces very clearly. One guesses them, though, to be supercilious and smiling, all with the curved lips and the raised eyebrows of Experience. For, in their time, all these ladies, and all their lovers with them, have tried to catch this same Blue Bird, and have been full of hope that it would come fluttering down to them at last. Now they are ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... said, "this won't do! We might as well all have stayed at home as to come here just for a supercilious glance or two, while we huddle together. And yet—whom can I ask ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... from the doctor to the skipper, and from thence ran his eye over the crew gathered forward, while the midshipman altered the pitch of his hat, turned towards Rodd, whom for the last few moments he had been ignoring, and looked him up and down in a supercilious manner which made the blood mount to the boy's forehead, and set him staring down at the middy's bright shoes, from whence he slowly raised his eyes as far as the belt which supported the dirk, and from there higher up to his hat, where he fixed his eyes upon the officer's cockade and kept them ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... on that matter he could never be supercilious enough. How should we be other (he said) 105 than the poor devils you see, with those debasing habits we cherish? He was not to wallow in that mire, at least; he would wait, and love only at the proper time, and meanwhile put up with the Psiche-fanciulla. ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... all means, my dear one. I dare say I am inhuman, and supercilious, and contemptibly proud of my poor old ramshackle family; but I do honestly confess to you that I feel as if I belonged to a different species from the people who are working ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... officer of the army, who will sit for some time with a supercilious and impatient silence, full of anger and contempt for those who are talking; at length of a sudden demand audience; decide the matter in a short dogmatical way; then withdraw within himself again, and ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... sat on a white horse at some distance on the road that led to execution. Each of these men cried aloud continually, the name of the suspected criminal, of the witnesses, and his crime; and vehemently called upon any person who knew anything in his favor to come forward and testify. Have we, supercilious braggarts of this age of progress, attained the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... ladyship thought she must in justice to her own understanding shew for her husband's, and the supercilious coldness with which she treated Miss Melvyn, made that young lady very glad that she was so seldom sent for to her father's house. But she wished to learn such accomplishments as whilst she lived in the country were out of her power, and therefore intimated to Lady Melvyn ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... forth by the suit of a wealthy Dublin brewer, who had been attracted—by sheer force of contrast, no doubt—to the elder of the two swan-necked, stiff-backed Miss Townshend-Mahonys, with their long, thin noses, and the ingrained lines that ran from the curled nostrils to the corners of their supercilious mouths, describing a sneer so deep that at a distance it was possible to mistake it for a smile. "Beer, my dear, indeed and there are worse things in the world than beer!" he heard his mother declare in her biting way. "By all means ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... man; he is indeede big enough, and like to become too big; with long slits of eyes that gaze freelie on all, as who shoulde say "Who dare let or hinder us?" His brow betokens sense and franknesse, his eyebrows are supercilious, and his cheeks puffy. A rolling, straddling gait, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... morsel of parchment that was at length produced; but the instant the supercilious page read the name scrawled upon it his attitude changed from ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... was fastidious, and sometimes he was supercilious, in his speeches to the House. His influence was exceedingly limited, and he carried on a constant but useless struggle in the hope ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... wild and supercilious conversation with Jim, about the new strike on in two days and it ended in Jim's dismissing the President from the interview and slamming himself out of the door, only to open it again and stick his head in and say, "The trouble with you, ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... is careless and commonly pettish; a taunt is intentionally insulting and provoking; the sneer is supercilious; the taunt is defiant. The jeer and gibe are uttered; the gibe is bitter, and often sly or covert; the jeer is rude and open. A scoff may be in act or word, and is commonly directed against that which claims honor, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... unexplainable by the ordinary laws of nature. I was as well as usual. I had read nothing of late that could have conjured up such a figure. As to preternatural manifestations of such a kind—I had but that very day, and but an hour or two ago, passed supercilious judgment on what I thought the credulity of ignorant rustics. And yet here I was, the victim to some such hallucination—unless it was possible that I had really seen the figure with my bodily eyes! My knees were shaking under me as I managed to reach my room, my whole ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... show of agitation. His eye was calm; only his mouth showed any feeling or made any comment. It was a little supercilious and scornful. Sitting down by the table, he spread the letter out, and read it with great deliberation. It was the first time he had looked at it since he received it in Vienna and had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... too supercilious and ready to sneer. It is only bad taste. It may have been very true devotion which erected ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Payson, Sr., fagged from his long day at the office sought the "Frolics" or the "Folies," Payson, Jr., might be seen at a concert for the harpsichord and viola, or at an evening of Palestrina or the Earlier Gregorian Chants. Had he been less supercilious about it this story would never have been written—and doubtless no great loss at that. But it is the prerogative of youth to be arrogantly merciless in its judgment of the old. Its bright lexicon has no verdict "with mitigating circumstances." Youth is just when it is right; it is ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... inheritance, by training, by political association, he was intensely anti-Southern. His manners toward Southern men, so bitter are his feelings, are often cold and reserved; and nothing but his instinct and refinement as a gentleman, which he is in every respect, saved him from sometimes being supercilious; acute in intellect, cultured, trained to the highest expression of his powers, quick in his resentments and combative in temperament, we certainly expected no quarter from his hands. But beneath all this there ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... was bad enough, but its effect was intensified by the demeanour of the Lieutenant-Governor and several military officers who were in attendance upon him. It seemed to the deputation that those gentlemen regarded them with supercilious impertinence; as a something which viceroyalty must be content, for the nonce, to endure, but as being altogether beyond the pale of their sympathies or interests. Nothing could have been in worse taste than such conduct as this, though it is possible enough that more ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... grasp; she looked so young, so lovely, so full of radiant life, that she seemed like an older Anita. Then Mrs. Fortescue raised the After-Clap and put him in Beverley's arms. Accustomed to much adulation, the After-Clap was, in general, coolly supercilious to strangers, but he seemed much pleased with Beverley's appearance, and called him "Bruvver," as he had called Broussard, who had been long since ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... Californian about thirty-five or forty years of age, a man of a lofty, stern bearing, swarthy skin, glossy side whiskers, and bright supercilious eyes. He wore a light blue short jacket trimmed with scarlet and with silver buttons, a striped silk sash, breeches of crimson velvet met below by long embroidered deerskin boots. A black kerchief was bound crosswise on his head entirely concealing ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... remarks, for after helping the girls to their seats, he had gone to cast off the cable which Stumpy was hauling in. But Leopold did not like Charley Redmond, for the young gentleman was a person of ten times as much importance, in his own estimation, as his father. He was supercilious, and, unlike the rest of the party, looked down upon the boatman, and everybody else in ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... appreciation of the lustre which would reflect back upon himself from allowing his son to become a decidedly fashionable young man, he had encouraged him in extravagance, dissipation, and heartless worldliness; he had brought him up to be supercilious, expensive, unprincipled, and useless. But then, he was gentlemanlike, dignified, and sought after; and now, the father reflected, with satisfaction, that, if he could accomplish his well-conceived scheme, he would pay his son's debts ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... lived in the same stile, you would not have such a number of guests at your table, of consequence your hospitality would not shine so bright for the glory of the West Riding.' The young 'squire, tickled by this ironical observation, exclaimed, 'O che burla!' — his mother eyed me in silence with a supercilious air; and the father of the feast, taking a bumper of October, 'My service to you, cousin Bramble (said he), I have always heard there was something keen and biting in the air of the ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... digest of its contents," the General replied. "He smiled in a supercilious manner and said I had better do as ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... He too was a Whig and a friend of the Protestant succession. He was an orator, a courtier, a wit, and a man of letters. He was at the head of ton in days when, in order to be at the head of ton, it was not sufficient to be dull and supercilious. It was evident that he submitted impatiently to the ascendency of Walpole. He murmured against the Excise Bill. His brothers voted against it in the House of Commons. The Minister acted with characteristic caution and characteristic energy; caution in the conduct of public affairs; energy where ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hind an active coadjutor in me?" said Ramorny, in the same supercilious tone as before. "But know, the artisan fellow is too low in degree to be to me either the object of hatred or of fear. Yet he shall not escape. We hate not the reptile that has stung us, though we might shake it off the wound, and tread upon ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... correcting his idea that the English are a sad and gloomy people, I informed him of the use made of this parasite by young people in the country at Christmas-time. Instead, however, of being thereby impressed with our national liveliness, he looked with a sort of supercilious contempt upon a people who could require the intervention or sanction of anything external in such a matter, and turned the conversation ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... but when I look for details, particularly details that led up to the crisis—I cannot find them in any developing order at all. This halfbrother, Archie Garvell, was a new factor in the affair. I remember him clearly as a fair-haired, supercilious looking, weedily-lank boy, much taller than I, but I should imagine very little heavier, and that we hated each other by a sort of instinct from the beginning; and yet I cannot remember my first meeting with him ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... day I watched and fretted. The following evening Clayton told me, with rather a supercilious air, that a workman calling himself Joe Muggins wanted to speak to me. 'He did not know your name, ma'am, but he described the lady he wanted, so I knew it was you. He said you had asked him a question about a ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Burr?" he asked in a slightly supercilious voice. "The judge has told me about you. So you won't be a farmer, eh? And you won't stay in your class? Well, come in and we'll see what we can make ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow |
