"Conceited" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Though not conceited, Mrs Plornish felt that she had turned this Tuscan sentence with peculiar elegance. Mr Plornish could not conceal his exultation in her ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... hurried into speech.—"No, I haven't any quarrel with deserts and so on," she repeated. "They're uncommonly useful things for mankind to knock its head against—invincible, unnegotiable, splendidly competent to teach humanity its place. You see we've grown not a little conceited—so at least it seems to me—on our evolutionary journey up from the primordial cell. We're too much inclined to forget we've developed soul quite comparatively recently, and, therefore, that there is probably just as long a journey ahead of us—before we reach the ultimate of intellectual ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... they highly extolled my love-letter, they confessed to me that they had made a very merry use of it; viz., that it had been copied in a feigned hand, and, with a few pertinent allusions, had been sent to a conceited young man, who was now firmly persuaded that a lady to whom he had paid distant court was excessively enamored of him, and sought an opportunity for closer acquaintance. They at the same time told me in confidence, that he desired ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the future, by condensing life, with its motives and enjoyments, into the present moment. Captain Truck, therefore, was soon forgotten, and the literati, as that worthy seaman had termed the associates of Mrs. Legend, remained just as vapid, as conceited, as ignorant, as imitative, as dependent, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... Us Greeks!—us benighted heathens! Look at it and feel yourself what you are, a very small, conceited, ignorant young person, who fancies that your new religion gives you a right to despise every one else. Did Christians make all this? Did Christians build that Pharos there on the left horn—wonder of the ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... not a conceited man, and he was aware that it was the things which he had said to her which had set her mind to work, not any personal fascination. She was quaint and charming, and he was glad that she had come. He had been lonely since ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... in his words and smiling away, as conceited as a cock upon a wall, when, all in a breath, back went his right hand over his shoulder. Something sang like an arrow through the air; I felt a blow and then a sharp pang, and there I was pinned by the shoulder to the mast. In the horrid pain and surprise of the ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... themselves the airs of manhood before their time. "Does your mother know you're out?" was the provoking query addressed to young men of more than reasonable swagger, who smoked cigars in the streets, and wore false whiskers to look irresistible. We have seen many a conceited fellow who could not suffer a woman to pass him without staring her out of countenance, reduced at once into his natural insignificance by the mere utterance of this phrase. Apprentice lads and shopmen in their Sunday clothes held the words in abhorrence, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... for instance. Young Englishmen in particular. English young men are awful! Idle, rude, conceited, ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... England and France. Latterly he had been earning a scanty livelihood by doing chance jobs. There was this to distinguish him from the other dastardly assailants of the Queen: he was not a half-crazed, morbidly conceited boy, though he also had no conceivable motive for what he did. He appears to have taken his measures, in providing himself with pistol and powder, from a mere impulse of stolid brutality. His pistol contained no ball, so that he was tried under the Felon's Act, which had been provided for such ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... did not feel disposed to lay bare his secret feelings before this persuasive superintendent and an absurdly conceited village constable. Love, to him, was an ideal, a blend of mortal passion and immortal fire. But the flame kindled on that secret altar had scorched and seared his soul in a wholly unforeseen way. The discovery that Adelaide Melhuish was another man's wife had stunned him. It was not until ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... sentiments and puerile expressions so strangely mingled in the religious experience of otherwise apparently mature adults, which remind one of a male voice constantly modulating from manly tones into boyish falsetto. Some one has said of very early risers that they were apt to be conceited all the forenoon, and stupid and uninteresting all the afternoon and evening. So, too, precocious infant Christians are apt to be conceited and full of pious affectations all the forenoon of life, and thereafter commonplace enough ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... may not his statements, about the frigate-bird going to sleep upon the wing be a correct conjecture, or observation, instead of a "sailor's yarn,"—as sage and conceited, but often mistaken, professors of "physical science" would have us ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... necessity of imbuing into the staff of the League of Nations more Latin American blood, and in the desirability of making Spanish a third official language in the Assembly. He disliked the Secretariat as at present constituted, thinking it European, narrow, and conceited, and he could, when orating on topics less noble and more imminent than a world peace, make a very ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... against the man who declines to examine, or takes for granted what the priest tells him. Besides, although, as you know, I am not a convert myself, I do lose a little patience when I hear it preached as a gospel to every poor conceited creature who goes to your Sunday evening atheist lecture, that he is to believe nothing on one particular subject which his own precious intellect cannot verify, and the next morning he finds it to be his duty to swallow wholesale anything you please to put into his mouth. As to the tyranny, ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... by-word, by the way, for a conceited fellow. Therefore the Louisville Journal, speaking of a rival sheet, said: "Reader, if you will go into the Louisville Museum, you will see two stuffed monkeys reading the Courier. And if you will then go into the ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Zoe; "but," with another glance, arch and smiling, into Edward's eyes, "don't tell him, lest he should grow conceited and vain." ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... especially if they are of a personal nature, or if they contain confidences or secrets. When the owner dies, there is no knowing to what use they may be put. One regrets the publication of the private letters of great men and women, showing, as they so often do, the foolish, silly, conceited side of a character we have admired. Private letters are often disillusioning, or betray the presence of the skeleton of the family, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... by his own sagacity, Bonaparte knew of this, and in his intercourse with Clarke deftly let the fact be seen. He quickly gauged Clarke's powers, and the aim of his mission. "He is a spy," he remarked a little later to Miot, "whom the Directory have set upon me: he is a man of no talent—only conceited." The splendour of his achievements and the mingled grace and authority of his demeanour so imposed on the envoy that he speedily fell under the influence of the very man whom he was to watch, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... hadn't been for Grace I would have stayed a hateful, conceited snob all my days," returned Miriam soberly. "There isn't one of us who doesn't owe her a debt of gratitude that we can never hope to repay. If happiness is the certain reward of good works, then Grace Harlowe ought never to know ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... of virginity, and some virgins have undergone harsh censures through their ignorant conclusions; I therefore thought it highly necessary to clear up this point, that the towering imaginations of conceited ignorance might be brought down, and the fair sex (whose virtues are so illustriously bright that they excite our wonder and command our imitation), may be freed from the calumnies and detractions of ignorance and envy; and ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... upon the acquaintance, being perhaps aware of the honor it conferred upon him. He allowed himself to be abused, ignored, or petted, as it might suit the pleasure of her royal highness, with a patient, even-tempered good-nature which was admirable. When Lady Clare (perhaps for fear of making him conceited) took no notice of him, he showed neither resentment nor surprise, but walked off with a sheepish shake of his head. Thus he slowly learned the lesson to make no exhibition of feeling at the sight of his superior; ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... in our way, "razor broke," Aunty Boone declared, brimful of hilarity and love of adventure, and eager for the plains life, and the dangers of the old trail by which we were to conquer or be conquered. In the society of women we were timid and ill at ease. Aside from this we were self-conceited, for we knew more of the world and felt ourselves more important on that spring morning than we ever presumed to know or dared to feel in all the ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... same. She may be one of these young conceited democrats. Do you know what I think? I think she is very much like you in character. There is a smouldering fire of scorn in you. You are darkly self-sufficient, but I can ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... the head of his shipmates right up to the captain, plant the wooden kid down on the deck at his feet, and ask if that "was the sort of grub for men to do a hard day's work on; besides, it was beef or pork, not bones or fat pork we signed for." If the captain happened to be a conceited, combative person, he would at once reply that he fed them according to what he thought they were worth. Then there were heated altercations, which sometimes ended in blood being spilt, or some of the crew being put in irons and logged for having instigated rebellion on the high seas. "I'll ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... pride so harsh and hard, Fancy a peacock in a poultry-yard. Behold him in conceited circles sail, Strutting and dancing, and now planted stiff, In all his pomp of pageantry, as if He felt "the eyes of Europe" on his tail! As for the humble breed retained by man, He scorns the whole domestic clan— He bows, he bridles, He wheels, he sidles, As last, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... was conceited, and did not think for a moment that any Princess, no matter how beautiful, would refuse to become his wife. So he ordered his servants to make great preparations for her coming, and to refurnish the ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... rose a little before seven. Breakfast at 8 on tea and toast with some good veal cutlets. Read a Canada paper containing rather more Bristol news than the American papers, also a conceited account of the Falls. A very pleasant breeze. An intelligent gentleman from New York explained the reason for such excessive labour in this country, that a man was better rewarded, and after getting a few ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... Helmont, his simple, elementary water, his gas, ferments, and transmutations; nor shall I enlarge upon the salt, sulphur, and oil, the acidum vagum, the mercury of metals, and the volatilised vitriol of other modern chemists, a pack of ignorant, conceited, knavish rascals, that puzzle your weak heads with such jargon, just as a Germanised m——r throws dust in your eyes, by lugging in and ringing the changes on the balance of power, the Protestant religion, and your allies on the continent; acting like the juggler, who picks your pockets while he ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... much of those eagle-fellows," said Jip. "They're just conceited. They may have very good eyesight and all that; but when you ask them to find a man for you, they can't do it—and they have the cheek to come back and say that nobody else could do it. They're just conceited—like ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... was ordered to leave very reduced garrisons in Kordofan and Darfur, and march with his whole remaining force, which may have numbered 10,000 fighting men, to the Nile, and so to Omdurman. Mahmud, who was as daring and ambitious as he was conceited and incapable, received the summons with delight, and began ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... follow his own course without regarding outside criticism. "I never read anything about myself or my books," he writes in a letter to a friend; and the reason he used to give was that if the critics praised him he might become conceited, while, if they found fault, he would only feel hurt and angry. On October 25, 1888, he wrote in his Diary: "I see there is a leader in to-day's Standard on myself as a writer; but I do not mean to read it. It is not healthy ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... William Godwin, pedantic, self-conceited, and impecunious, has come down to us as a kind of central figure in a literary group which included such men as Coleridge, Shelley, and Lamb, of whom the somewhat formal English world at the beginning of this century was not worthy. By ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... have thought any the less of her had she been conscious of her physical loveliness, for beauty is such a glorious, powerful, intoxicating gift that had I been blessed with it I'm sure I would have admired myself all day, and the wonder to me regarding beautiful men and women is not that they are so conceited, but, on the contrary, that ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... won't have me?" she asked mockingly. "You're too clever for me," he rejoined with spirit. "I'm too conceited. I must marry a girl that'd kneel to me and think me as wise as Socrates. But he's back again, as you say, and, in my view, his wife ought ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... cast a glance at Paul which seemed to say, "Be silent;" but the conceited young man ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... town. It's merely——I'm a confirmed doubter of myself. (Probably I'm conceited about my lack of conceit!) Anyway, Gopher Prairie isn't particularly bad. It's like all villages in all countries. Most places that have lost the smell of earth but not yet acquired the smell of patchouli—or of factory-smoke—are just as suspicious and righteous. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... faults of Chum's but because, if you will believe it, of my own shortcomings. At least, I can suppose nothing else. For this man had been enthusiastic about him. He had revelled in the tale of Chum's wickedness; he had adored him for being so conceited. He had practically said ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... began to make a display of her fancied learning. She would look at a flower, and with great self- sufficiency talk of its botanical characteristics. She thought that the company were all wondering at the extent of her knowledge, when they were all laughing at her, as a self-conceited girl who had not sense enough to keep herself from appearing ridiculous. The gentlemen were winking at one another, and slyly laughing as she uttered one learned word after another, with an affected air of ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... the time. He said of the Ipswich innkeeper in 1771: "Landlord and Landlady are some of the grandest people alive. Landlady is the great granddaughter of Governor Endicott, and has all the notions of greatest family. As to Landlord, he is as happy, and as big, as proud, as conceited as any nobleman in England, always calm and ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... knew all Major Foljambe's tiger stories by heart, and had convicted him of glaring discrepancies in his description of the havoc he and his brother officers had made among the big game. Windus Carr was a conceited presuming cad, who was always boring them with impossible accounts of his conquests among the fair sex; and that poor Harker was an unmitigated fool, whose brains had run into his billiard-cue. This was the report which John Saltram gave ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... 'Richelieu,' and 'Macbeth.' On July 29th, 1865, I made my debut in London, at the Haymarket, as Ophelia to the Hamlet of Walter Montgomery. Poor Montgomery! He was what you would call a 'lady-killer'—very conceited, but, withal, very kind. He once wrote a letter to my father, and added a postscript, saying: 'Keep this letter. Should poverty fall upon you or yours, your great-grand-children may be able to sell it for a good sum of money!' I was only with ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Stubb argued well for his scheme, and turning to the Guernsey-man had a little chat with him, during which the stranger mate expressed his detestation of his Captain as a conceited ignoramus, who had brought them all into so unsavory and unprofitable a pickle. Sounding him carefully, Stubb further perceived that the Guernsey-man had not the slightest suspicion concerning the ambergris. He therefore held his peace on that head, but otherwise was quite frank and confidential ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... partick'ler," rejoined Captain Snaggs; "fur this 'll be the last dinner thet air conceited darkey, Sam, 'll cook fur ye, Flinders. He goes in the fo'c's'le to-morrow, an' this hyar lout of a stooard shall take ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... learned I was from Appleboro he asked me all about him. He said nobody else under the sky can 'do' insects so perfectly, and that nobody except the Lord and old Henri Fabre knew as much about certain of them as John Flint does. Folks thought the duke was taken up with me, of course, and I was no end conceited! I hadn't the ghost of an idea you and John Flint were such astonishingly learned folks, Padre! But of course if a duke thought so, I knew I'd better think so, too—and so I did and do! Think of a duke knowing about folks in little Appleboro! And he was ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... let it find its own feet, till very late, and till, as the scoffer might well say, its limbs are absolutely atrophied. I do not say that they are wrong. The man who has taught himself is apt to be a vain, conceited fellow who takes pleasure in thinking for himself, and has an absolute delight in despising the thoughts of others. It is, however, no less the fact, that it is among these self-taught men that we find those vigorous ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... was his particular enemy, and went purposely to Athens to accuse him, and to exasperate his enemies in the city against him. Addressing the people, he represented that Alcibiades had ruined their affairs and lost their ships by mere self-conceited neglect of his duties, committing the government of the army, in his absence, to men who gained his favor by drinking and scurrilous talking, whilst he wandered up and down at pleasure to raise money, giving himself up to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... you? Then pray who is to understand you? You surely don't pretend to be cleverer than the Cat and the woman—I won't say anything of myself. Don't be conceited, child, and thank your Maker for all the kindness you have received. Did you not get into a warm room, and have you not fallen into company from which you may learn something? But you are a chatterer, and it is not pleasant ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... talents, spirit, or generosity to make him superior to either. His chief delight appears to be in tormenting and ridiculing his sisters, who in return most cordially despise him. Miss Branghton, the eldest daughter, is by no means ugly; but looks proud, ill-tempered, and conceited. She hates the city, though without knowing why; for it is easy to discover she has lived nowhere else. Miss Polly Branghton is rather pretty, very foolish, very ignorant, very giddy, and, I ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... last letter you wrote, "I am afraid that you are on the way to become conceited." I am afraid myself I am, still I cannot resist telling you, this once, that my audience was very enthusiastic and Mr. Costa said —well, I won't tell you what he said; it might sound conceited. The last thing I sang was "Beware!" which was ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... is the difference between a French and an English dandy: the first is an impertinent, affected coxcomb, who makes love to every woman as a matter of course—it is his vocation. The second is a cold, contemptuous, conceited creature, intrenched in a double armour of selfishness, ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... this time reached Washington Street and had just passed Milk Street when he met George Randolph, who looked as consequential and conceited as ever. ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... beginning to be generally hated by all his subjects, being regarded by them all as a conceited and cruel tyrant. He was not only unscrupulously ambitious in respect to the dominions of his neighbors, but he was unjust and overbearing in his treatment of his own friends. Pyrrhus, on the other ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... doubtfully. Then she suddenly brightened. "There is one person who might help her. Elfreda is going to invite her to the sophomore reception. She doesn't wish to do it, I know, although she hasn't said so. Please don't think me conceited, but Elfreda would do anything for me. She fancies herself under obligation to me on account of what happened last year," Grace added in ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... seen sitting on the rocks or in the shade of the trees, dressing each other's hair or forming their pigtails, which are turned up and covered with fine wire. Indeed, they seemed to have little else to do, and were generally observed standing in conceited or ridiculous attitudes. The children are carried on the backs of the women, supported by straps, and the head of the infant is shaded by a reversed gourd from the heat of ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... everything may work out all right if you let me help you. I'm used to this cross-examination business, and I can coach you so they won't get a thing. I don't pretend to be in a class with you, sir; don't think I'm so conceited. I'm just specialized, that's all. I want to help, and I ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... time I shall publish of Mr. Ackworth's. Thence, having visited Mr. Falconer also, who lies still sick, but hopes to be better, I walked to Greenwich, Mr. Deane with me. Much good discourse, and I think him a very just man, only a little conceited, but yet very able in his way, and so he by water also with me also to towne. I home, and immediately dressing myself, by coach with my wife to my Lord Sandwich's, but they having dined we would not 'light but went to Mrs. Turner's, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... brand for the faith, you conceited whelp, you—they stopped their tortures because they saw you with me. Now, swell out, Rufus, and gloat over your importance! I tell you it was the devil, himself, snatched ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Saturday? If it has not, I shall be rather sorry—no, very sorry indeed—but not surprised and certainly not hurt. It will be a great disappointment; but I am glad to say that, among all my queasy, troublesome feelings, I have not a sensitive vanity. Not that I am not as conceited as you know me to be; only I go easy over the coals ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a more conceited man, or a more hateful one. There's something about him—oh, I don't know. But he isn't ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... sure there was a conceited young officer there; for as ill luck will have it, my uncle's old regiment is quartered at Avoncester, and I suppose they will all be coming after Fanny. It is well they are no nearer, and as this colonel ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mention it, if it were not supported by the most indubitable evidence, and if I had not, (as I have already observed,) determined to state all important and well ascertained facts, without seeking, by any concealments, to pander to the prejudices of conceited, and often, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... into the realm of wisdom must first divest himself of all intellectual pride. He must become as a little child. Prejudices, preconceived opinions and beliefs always stand in the way of true wisdom. Conceited opinions are always suicidal in their influences. They bar the door ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... river seemed entrancing, and I remained a fathom down, experiencing one continuous delight. Unfortunately I was under water longer than my breath would hold out, and came to the view of Radley and Doe, choking and spluttering and splashing. Anxious to retrieve my reputation, for I was detestably conceited about my art, I started off for a long, speedy swim, displaying my best racing stroke. Back again, at an even faster pace, I got entangled with Doe, who greeted me a little jealously with: "Gracious! Where did you learn to swim like that?" Radley's mouth was set, and he remained ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... great demand for chewing with quick-lime and so constitute a source of wealth. Commanding the mouth of the Vanigela River, the people of Kalo absorb the trade with the interior; and their material prosperity is said to have rendered them conceited and troublesome.[332] ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... contemporaries. She, the yearningly friendly, sympathetic, sensitive, praise-craving Sylvia, came to be known, half respected and half disliked, as proud and clever, and "high-brow," and offish, and conceited, and so "queer" that she cared nothing for the ordinary pleasures of ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... he was my nearest of kin. I just laughed at him and called out, 'Good-bye, Cousin!' Mr. Big Josh Bucknor almost claimed kin with me, too. Wouldn't it be funny, Mumsy, if all of them got to doing it? It would be kind of nice to have some kinfolks who knew they were kin. I know you think I am conceited, but somehow I believe the men would be more pleased about it than the women. Maybe the women are afraid I'd take to visiting them ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... liberal-minded. But you come here like a Pharisee, and wish to rebuke your superiors for trifles; and the ordinances of men are more to you than God's command. Fie! Martin! Remember your own words: 'We should obey God rather than men!' You conceited slave of the letter, ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... thought I was pretty, when I saw myself in the glass," said Robin, with unexcited interest. "It seemed to me that I LOOKED pretty. But, at the same time, I couldn't help knowing that everything is a matter of taste and that it might be because I was conceited." ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Varchi, 'St. Fior.,' lib. XV. 44, gives to this man the character of a presumptuous conceited simpleton. ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... my lot to mark A proud, conceited, talking spark, With eyes that hardly served at most To guard their master 'gainst a post; Yet round the world the blade has been, To see whatever could be seen. Returning from his finished tour, Grown ten times perter ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... have happened, you know. As you say, I'm not ugly. And I can be rather pleasant if I choose—so I believe. If he had only come to this land, to see what I was like, as Royal men did in the dear old fairy stories, and then had asked me to be his wife, why, I should have been conceited enough to think it was because he loved me, even more than because of other things. Then I should have been happy—yes, dear, I'll confess it to you now—almost happy enough to die of the great joy and triumph of it. But now I'm not happy. I will marry Leopold, or I'll ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... the dog; "they all think the same. They certainly are a conceited lot. Here comes ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... itself in before our eyes as children are at a rapidly managed magic-lantern show, when the impatient exhibitor presents a View in Egypt to eyes which have hardly begun to take in Solomon's Temple. We like them far better than the majority of the more elaborate, infinitely conceited, narrow-minded, squeakingly-witty essays with which the country has been of late visited for its sins from the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... these little foxes? I think one is pride, which makes you so conceited, because you live in a big house or have an automobile or fine clothes, that you will not speak to or play with other boys and girls who have not quite such fine things, although they may be just as ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... nor of actors who hold GARRICK to be absurdly overrated. Space would fail me, and patience you. But let me just for a brief moment call to your mind ROLAND PRETTYMAN. Upon my soul, I think ROLAND the most empty-headed fribble, the most affected coxcomb, and the most conceited noodle in the whole world. He was decently good-looking once, and he had a pretty ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... laughed at the idea that Eva would even listen to her. But Dora was clever and conceited and in the end she agreed that at least ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... judgment upon her," she said, "to let her see what a poor conceited body she was. She, that had been making muckle o' herself, as though the Lord couldna take care o' the bairns ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... guide, the shoemaker, in a somewhat conceited and dictatorial tone, as he skipped up by the speaker's side, and gently shouldered him down—"it ain't like the ancient times, as I've read off, when any poor man as had a petition could come promiscuously to the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... no change in the fellow's attitude. I don't imagine there will be until the last moment. He is just a pig-headed, insufferably conceited Englishman, full of class prejudices ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... them, I think I can explain them—by which I mean make you actively do them justice; and that's why you see me here. You had better know the worst at once. It's a question of an immediate rupture and an immediate return. I've been conceited enough to dream I can sugar that pill. I take at any rate the greatest interest in the question. I took it already before I left home, and I don't mind telling you that, altered as you are, I take it ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... Rajput chief who had to marry a daughter was often practically ruined; and the desire to avoid such obligations led to the general practice of female infanticide, formerly so prevalent in Rajputana. The importance of the bards increased their voracity; Mr. Nesfield describes them as "Rapacious and conceited mendicants, too proud to work but not too proud to beg." The Dholis [294] or minstrels were one of the seven great evils which the famous king Sidhraj expelled from Anhilwada Patan in Gujarat; the Dakans or witches were another. [295] Malcolm states that "They ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... soon went to look at the whist-playing, thinking that Lydgate was one of the most conceited, unpleasant fellows it had ever been ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... sly but savage vindictiveness, a purposeful malice that would stop at nothing. In the unguarded moment Sprudell's passion for revenge was stamped upon his face like a brand. Helen had thought of him contemptuously as a bounder, a conceited ignoramus—he was more than these things, he was ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... the misconceptions of character, hence the false impressions and reports of words or deeds, which are the rule, rather than the exception, in the world at large; hence the extravagances of undisciplined talent, and the narrowness of conceited ignorance; because, though it is no easy matter to view things correctly, nevertheless the busy mind will ever be viewing. We cannot do without a view, and we put up with an illusion, when we ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... real well. No seriousness, for they start in to drown a Chinaman in a dry creek, and they cut away as happy as if they'd succeeded. I sits up here on my porch, and I says, 'What is it but a dream? Fu Shan,' I says, 'this here life's a shadow!' Then that forsaken, conceited, blank heathen, he says one of his ancestors discovered the same three thousand years ago. But, he says, another ancestor, pretty near as distinguished, he discovered that, if you put enough curry on your rice, it gives things an ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... of my dislike for the Indian came from his ridiculous and hateful assumption of superiority over the negro. To my mind, and to all sensible minds I fancy, one simple, honest, devoted black was worth a score of these conceited, childish brutes. I was so fond of my boy Tulp, that, even as a little fellow, I deeply resented the slights and cuffs which he used to receive at the hands of the savages who lounged about in the sunshine in our vicinity. His father, mother, and brothers, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Mackinack into him, with all its rock-osities. He is not much disposed to the admirari without the nil—affects little enthusiasm about anything, and perhaps feels as little." He turned out here a perfect sea urchin, ugly, rough, ill-mannered, and conceited beyond all bounds. Solomon says, "answer not a fool according to his folly," so I paid him all attention, drove him over the island in my carriage, and rigged him out with my canoe-elege to ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... good-looking man for his age, if I do say it. But he has a prejudice against photographs of himself and won't even permit me to take a snapshot if he can prevent it. Says people who are always having their pictures taken are vain, conceited idiots, and so on. However, I catch him unawares occasionally, and this is a snap I took last summer. He and I were on a fishing trip up in the mountains. We're great pals, Dad and I—more than most fathers and sons, ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was a handsome, commanding old dame, who soon made her charge feel the social gulf between a county magnate and a clergyman's niece. She decidedly thought that Mistress Anne Jacobina held her head too high for her position, and was, moreover, conceited of an unfortunate ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spanking qualities, to warrant our backing him against a railroad for a rump and dozen; but, after all, there is nothing to grow frisky about, as Longinus does, who gets up the steam of a blue-stocking enthusiasm, and boils us a regular gallop of ranting, in which, like the conceited snipe[10] upon the Liverpool railroad, he thinks himself to run a match with Sampson; and, whilst affecting to admire Homer, is manifestly squinting at the reader to see how far he admires his own flourish of admiration; ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... "I know Halle," said he. "You call it the seat of the Muses. I know it only as the seat of pedantry. You will soon know and confess this. There is nothing more narrow- minded, jealous, arrogant, and conceited than a Halle professor. He sees no merit in any thing but himself and a few old dusty Greeks and Romans, and even these are only great because the professor of Halle has shown them the honor to explain and descant ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... had said to me "I know what you think, but I don't care a rap." What I really thought was that he was selfish beyond the limits: that was the substance of my little revelation. Youth is almost always selfish, just as it is almost always conceited, and, after all, when it's combined with health and good parts, good looks and good spirits, it has a right to be, and I easily forgive it if it be really youth. Still it's a question of degree, and what stuck out of Jasper Nettlepoint—if, ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... the slightest idea that it was the name of him who was sitting with us; he, however, thought that I was aware of his name. Belle! Belle! for a long time I doubted in the truth of Scripture, owing to certain conceited discourses which I had heard from certain conceited individuals, but now I begin to believe firmly; what wonderful texts there are in Scripture, Belle! "The ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... compared, and controlled; but such a possibility reverses the partisan and spasmodic methods which Hume and most other professed moralists associate with ethics. Hume's own treatises on morals, it need hardly be said, are pure psychology. It would have seemed to him conceited, perhaps, to inquire what ought really to be done. He limited himself to asking what men tended ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... shot; for nothing could have been less complimentary to the jealous and quick-tempered captain of the house than to be mistaken for his self-conceited and unstable inferior, with whom, he was in the habit of congratulating himself, he had little ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... did ever suspect I would prove a bad, but an unprofitable man: foreseeing in me rather a kind of idlenesse than a voluntary craftinesse. I am not so selfe-conceited but I perceive what hath followed. The complaints that are daily buzzed in mine eares are these; that I am idle, cold, and negligent in offices of friendship, and dutie to my parents and kinsfolkes; and touching ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... do feel some interest in me?" exclaimed the count. "Ah! mademoiselle, permit me to hope that you will not be insensible to my friendship—for that sentiment must content me, must it not?" he added with a conceited air. ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... in this matter, and would give my life to it if necessary. I never should have thought of anything so astute," he added, with some envy, "but perhaps if I had, no one else would be so peculiarly fitted as myself to work upon its manifold suggestions. I hope I do not strike you as conceited," he said, looking around anxiously, "but I feel that it is in me to render efficient service in ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... that there was less tenderness in his looks, that there was something harsh in his laughter, and a wild madness in his joy. He seemed at the same time to be sure of pleasing, and less ambitious to succeed therein. He had grown reckless, hardened and conceited. Strangely enough he no longer spoke ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... and the rest of the human race will have to be humbly reverent toward them or suffer for it. That can surely happen, and when it happens, the word Irreverence will be regarded as the most meaningless, and foolish, and self-conceited, and insolent, and impudent and dictatorial word in the language. And people will say, "Whose business is it, what gods I worship and what things hold sacred? Who has the right to dictate to my conscience, and where did he get ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Wiltshire, and was most warmly received at Kingscourt. Also pretty Mary Coventry, who was still staying in the house, was kind to this handsome, conceited boy; and he was rather smitten; but he kept a tight hold ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... the affairs of Lee Sing were in no more prosperous a condition than before, nor had he found an opportunity to set aside any store of taels. Each day the unsupportable Pe-tsing became more and more obtrusive and self-conceited, even to the extent of throwing far into the air coins of insignificant value whenever he chanced to pass Lee in the street, at the same time urging him to leap after them and thereby secure at least one or two pieces of ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... partner and charmer, Quimby resumed the game. But what with this cause of uneasiness, and a latent fear that Cyn's jesting remark about Celeste might be true, a fear he had privately been conscious of previously, although the least conceited of mortals, Quimby played so badly—and indeed would undoubtedly have answered "checkers," had he been asked suddenly what game he was playing, on account of his meditations on a checkered existence—that ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... desire for greater spiritual liberty animated others. Anne Hutchinson adopted substantially the doctrine of George Fox, that the spirit of God illuminates believers, independently of his written word; and she communicated her views to many others, who became, like her, arrogant and conceited, in spite of their many excellent qualities. Harry Vane, the governor, was among the number. But there was no reasoning with fanatics, who fancied themselves especially inspired; and, as they disturbed the peace of the colony, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Turandot, The mighty Emperor's daughter, unexcelled In the mind's keenness, and of beauty such That never master's pencil limned her (spite Of the innumerable pictures of her Which travel round the world), is so conceited, And hates all men with such a ruthless hate, The greatest princes woo her ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... visit, Lamb rose, went to a table in the centre of the room, and took up a book, out of which he read aloud. Soon shutting it, he turned to me, saying: 'Is not what I have been reading exceedingly good?' 'Very good,' I replied. Thereupon Lamb burst out laughing, and exclaimed: 'Did one ever know so conceited a man as Mr. Landor? He has actually praised his own ideas!' It was now my turn to laugh, as I had not the slightest remembrance of having written what Lamb ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... as we have it, was first printed in the folio of 1623. The play, however, was registered at the Stationers', January 18, 1602, as "an excellent and pleasant-conceited comedy of Sir John Falstaff and the Merry Wives of Windsor." In pursuance of this entry, an imperfect and probably fraudulent edition was published in the course of the same year, and was reprinted in 1619. In this quarto ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... dissatisfaction of a man like Charles Reade that an actress learns—that is, if she is not conceited. Conceit is an insuperable obstacle to all progress. On the other hand, it is of little use to take criticism in a slavish spirit and to act on it without understanding it. Charles Reade constantly wrote and said things to me which were not absolutely just criticism; but they directed my attention ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... at once; and two days afterwards my master, after having repaired the horse's trappings, appeared on his back in the Plaza de San Francisco, as proud and conceited as a bumpkin in his holiday clothes. Everybody complimented him on his bargain, declaring the horse was worth a hundred and fifty ducats as surely as an egg was worth a maravedi. But whilst he was caracolling ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... to take that place in the world which France now holds, will never challenge France; if she did, she would be too much in the wrong to find a second: Prussia knowing that she has to do with the vainest, the most conceited, the rashest antagonist that ever flourished a rapier in the face of a spadassin—Prussia will make ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gush. I met a poor, half-crazed, devil-driven poet-fellow in Paris some years ago who told me he had written a great poem; he had lured the crucified soul of a murderer into his verses. Confoundedly conceited about it, too, he was ... called it The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Bah! It would have taken him a lifetime to put a murderer's socks into a poem. He was a mountebank ... a posturer! And what is this winged thing men name the soul? And who did make the stars?' ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... fervour, abounded in reminiscences, rose at moments to enthusiasm. His companions were impressed; to Irene it was an unexpected revelation of character. She had imagined young Otway dry and rather conventional, perhaps conceited; she found him impassioned and an idealist, full of hero-worship, devoted to his father's name ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing |
