"Prig" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... modern point of view. We have a healthy distrust of ascetics, whose anxiety over their soul's condition we properly regard as a form of egotism; and we know how easily the unco' guid become prigs. Fogazzaro's hero is neither an egotist of the ordinary cloister variety, nor a prig. That our sympathy goes out to Jeanne and not to him shows that we instinctively resent the sacrifice of the deepest human cravings to sacerdotal prescriptions. The highest ideal of holiness which medievals could conceive ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... preceded him at Cambridge. No man ever went up from whom more was expected in every way. The dons awaited a sucking member for the University, the undergraduates were prepared to welcome a new Alcibiades. He was neither: neither a prig nor a profligate; but a quiet, gentlemanlike, yet spirited young man, gracious to all, but intimate only with his old friends, and giving always an impression in his general tone that his soul was not absorbed ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... while. I'd like to keep her sweet and unspoiled, if I can. And she shall not get silly notions into her head if I can help myself. Why, Thomas Chilton, do we want that child made an insufferable little prig?" ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... to the wives of his neighbors as that he should know French, or that he should have a sword at his side. In all this there is no passion, and scarcely anything that can be called preference. The hero intrigues just as he wears a wig; because, if he did not, he would be a queer fellow, a city prig, perhaps a Puritan. All the agreeable qualities are always given to the gallant. All the contempt and aversion are the portion of the unfortunate husband. Take Dryden for example; and compare Woodall with Brainsick, or Lorenzo with Gomez. Take Wycherley; and compare Horner with Pinchwife. Take Vanbrugh; ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not have lacked so many words that do duty as native-born or naturalized citizens in large sections of the United States, and among these words is the one that stands at the head of the present chapter. I know that some disdainful prig will assure me that it is but a corruption of the French "charivari," and so it is; but then "charivari" is a corruption of the low Latin "charivarium" and that is a corruption of something else, and, indeed, ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... comforts,"[136]—a maxim laid down By the bard, what d'ye call him, that wore the black gown; And faith I agree with th' old prig to a hair; For a big-bellied bottle's a heav'n ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... endeavouring to accomplish this task, nothing but the want of means shall make me desist.'[183] He had a right to make that boast, and his ardour in the cause was as unimpeachable as honourable. It explains why Cobbett has still a sympathetic side. He was a mass of rough human nature; no prig or bundle of abstract formulae, like Paine and his Radical successors. Logic with him is not in excess, but in defect. His doctrines are hopelessly inconsistent, except so far as they represent his stubborn prejudices. Any view will serve his purpose which can be made a weapon of offence ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... with its mirrors and its manifold ornaments, was the envy of the neighbours. So her trade flourished, and she lived a life of comfort, of plenty even, until the Civil War threw her out of work. When an unnatural conflict set the whole country at loggerheads, what occasion was there for the honest prig? And it is not surprising that, like all the gentlemen adventurers of the age, Moll remained most stubbornly loyal to the King's cause. She made the conduit in Fleet Street run with wine when Charles came to London in 1638; ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... that we live in a country in the making, can we? In a way, it's a world in the making. There's everything to do—and I want to be doing some of it, Lois," he declared, with a little outburst. "I can't help it. I know some people think I'm an enthusiast, and others put me down as a prig—but I can't ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... Grandison, turns out the most impossible prig in English literature. He is as insufferable as that later prig, Meredith's Sir Willoughby in "The Egotist," with the difference that the author does not know it, and that you do not believe in him for a moment; whereas ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... fellow with a touch of the prig in him. He was a Catholic with a Puritan temperament and a Gallic imagination. The idolatry of Toinette had, as a matter of fact, spoiled him a little; it was so much that he weakly questioned the reality of it, as if it were too good to be true. All the time he was in Ottawa and on the journey ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... vein of comedy; and she can rise to such true pathos as dignifies the fantastic figure of King Corny in Ormond, perhaps the best thing she ever did. But she had in her father a literary adviser, not of the negative but of the positive order, and there never was a more fully developed prig than Richard Edgeworth. His view of literature was purely utilitarian; to convey practical lessons was the business of all superior persons, more particularly of an Edgeworth. In Castle Rackrent his suggestions and comments are happily relegated to the position of notes; in the ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... now dead to grief Lies Grid the famous Wokag chief. Pause here and think you learned prig, This man was once an Indian big. Consider this, ye lowly one, This man was once a big in—jun. Now he lies here, you too must rot, As sure as pig shall ...
— Quaint Epitaphs • Various
... subjects: increase of drunkenness; Northumberland election, which has raised his spirits, whether Albert Grey be returned or not; Life of Prince Albert, whom he admires heartily, but who according to him (and John) did not understand the British Constitution. Called Stockmar a "mischievous old prig." Said "Liberty is never safe," that even in this country an unworthy sovereign might endanger her even now. John sent down to say he wished to see them. I took them to him for a few minutes—happily he was clear in his mind—and said to Mr. Gladstone, "I'm sorry ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... the Drakes at the village-inn, and, having found this vegetable repast too strong for his digestion, went home to his mother and wreaked his discomfort on edifying moral maxims. Or else he was a prig. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... prig of the first water, and there was no use arguing with him. I thought I had best meet him on his own ground, so I said, "Your clients, sir, are happy in having so resolute a guardian of their confidence. I am ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... horrid little prig in those days," said Evadne, smiling. "But, auntie, there can be no peace without plenty. And I think I would rather be a sensible realist than a foolish idealist. You mean that you think me too much of a utilitarian, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... praised by his superiors; and then unprofessionally he was distinguished from the average type of young lieutenant by a certain attractive maturity of bearing, without, however, impressing one as a prig. Priggishness was even less endurable to Falkenhein than ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... lawyers, to acquire applause, Try various arts to get a doubtful cause; Or, as a dancing master in a jigg, With various steps instructs the dancing prig; Or as a doctor writes you different bills; Or as a quack prescribes you different pills; Or as a fiddler plays more tunes than one; Or as a baker bakes more bread than brown; Or as a tumbler tumbles up and down; So does our author, rummaging his brain, By various methods ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... conversation, are more socially binding than any drinks. There will, indeed, be a temporary social hardship for many abstainers until the custom is generally broken up; one runs the risk of being thought by the heedless a prig and a Puritan. But that is a small price to pay for one's health and ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter "Little Prig"; Bun replied, "You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And a sphere, And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... are comforts"—a maxim laid down By the Bard, what d'ye call him, that wore the black gown; And faith I agree with th' old prig to a hair, For a big-belly'd bottle's ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... journeyman, who understands his duties and the tricks of his trade, will never be found capering in the hunting field. He will feel that his proper place is behind the counter; and while his master is away enjoying the pleasures of the chase, he can prig as much "pewter" from the till as will take both himself and his lass to Sadler's Wells theatre, or any other place she may choose ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... appearance of the True Spirit of Democracy in our midst. Such a one is the hero of Miss MAUD DIVER'S latest novel, Strange Roads (CONSTABLE); but it is only fair to say that Derek Blunt (ne Blount), second son of the Earl of Avonleigh, is no prig, but, on the contrary, a very pleasant fellow. For a protagonist he obtrudes himself only moderately in a rather discursive story which involves a number of other people who do nothing in particular over a good many chapters. We are halfway through before ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... outlandish, and I—I don't quite believe in it. That is to say, I believe in it right enough when I look at you or listen to McCunn, but as soon as my eyes are off you I begin to doubt again. I'm gettin' old and I've a stake in the country, and I daresay I'm gettin' a bit of a prig—anyway I don't want to make a jackass of myself. Besides, there's this foul weather and this beastly house ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... of this new Abjuration, Did banter the lawful King of this great Nation: Who call'd God's anointed a foolish old Prig, Was both a base and unmannerly Whigg: But since he is Dead No more shall be said, For he in Repentance has laid down his Head; So I wish each Lady, who in mournful Tone is, In Charity Grieve for the Death ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... the better part of what men know as wisdom. Some of us are wise in this way naturally and by genius; some of us never become so. But to have spent one's youth at college, in contact with the choice and rare and precious, and yet still to be a blind prig or vulgarian, unable to scent out human excellence or to divine it amid its accidents, to know it only when ticketed and labelled and forced on us by others, this indeed should be accounted the very calamity and shipwreck of ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... phase of it. She was sure that if she closed her eyes she should see Madame Bonanni vividly before her, and hear her talking to Logotheti, and smell the heavy air of the big room. She felt that she could not call Lushington a prig. ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... were at the cock again, which both began and ended the book. He stood and crowed so proudly and never slept. He was a regular prig, but when Sister was diligent he put a one-ore piece among the leaves. But the hens laid eggs, and it was evident that they were the same as the flowers; for when you were kind to them and treated them as if they belonged to the family, they were industrious in laying, but if you built ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... so entirely, that he had no ground for believing himself one of the elect. Had he succeeded in persuading himself that he was, there is no saying to what lengths of indifference about others the chosen prig might have ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... to be lectured and preached to besides. Good heavens! In his lofty manner, I suppose, that people talk of. Prig—odious, insufferable prig! So I have mistaken George, have I? My own husband! And insulted her—her! And she is actually downstairs, writing to me, in ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... piazza drinking mint juleps. Well, I don't really think I expected the planter, but I did hope for the house. Nothing of the kind. All I saw was a moderate-sized square house, with piazzas and a flat roof, all sadly in need of paint. Now, I'm like Betsey Prig; 'I don't believe there's no sich person.' It's a myth, like the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... vicious, the unwholesome; to give us for our companions, in our hours of leisure and relaxation, only the silly and the weak-minded woman, the fast and slangy girl, the intrigante and the "shady"—to borrow the language of the society she seeks—the hero of irresolution, the prig, the vulgar, and the vicious; to serve us only with the foibles of the fashionable, the low tone of the gay, the gilded riffraff of our social state; to drag us forever along the dizzy, half-fractured precipice of the seventh commandment; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... doing. Hard as the little man was to the world against which he had fought his way to his present position of distinction, to his niece he was soft-hearted as a mother. "There, there!" he exclaimed hastily. "We'll give the boy a chance. No mother, eh? And a confounded prig for a father! No wonder the boy goes all wrong!" Then with a sudden vehemence he cried, striking one hand into the other, "No, by—! that is, we will certainly give the lad the benefit of the doubt. Cheer up, lassie! You've no need to look ashamed," for his niece was wiping her eyes in manifest ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... the absence of any answer to my laconic dispatch to him at Bombay, was evidently intended as a reply to both communications. Those few words were in familiar French, the French of the day, which Covick often made use of to show he wasn't a prig. It had for some persons the opposite effect, but his message may fairly be paraphrased. "Have patience; I want to see, as it breaks on you, the face you'll make!" "Tellement envie de voir ta tete!"—that was what I had to sit ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... at his very strongest. He was an ideal Trustee. And what made this evident was the fact that he talked comparatively little about his trust, and never behaved in regard to it as a pedant or a prig. As long as the principle was firmly maintained, he bothered himself very little about matters ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... Reverend Ronald Macdonald, and the most disagreeable, condescending, ill-tempered prig ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... retreat before he is brought to the blush. However, I suppose he might as well be here as reading Emerson "evenings" in the back parlor, to those two very plain sisters—judging from their photographs. Practically it hurts no one not to be too much of a prig. Poor Theodore was weak, depressed, out of work. Mr. Sloane offers him a lodging and a salary in return for—after all, merely a little tact. All he has to do is to read to the old man, lay down the book a while, with his finger in ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... able to carry himself before Sir Hugh and his wife with quite as much ease as he could do in the rectory. Once or twice he had dined at the great house; but Lady Clavering had declared him to be a bore, and Sir Hugh had called him "that most offensive of all animals, a clerical prig." It had therefore been decided that he was not to be asked to the great house any more. It may be as well to state here, as elsewhere, that Mr. Clavering very rarely went to his nephew's table. On certain occasions he did do so, so that there might be no recognized quarrel between him and Sir Hugh; ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... the first pieces of pie were disposed of, Willie offered the girls a second. It was mince pie, very nice and tempting; and though Ada knew a second piece was not generally allowed, she thought a holiday might make a difference. Dolly was busy feeding Prig,—a brisk Scotch terrier, with large, bright eyes, stiff, rough hair, and a tail about two inches ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... by a cousin of Clarissa. Sir Charles Grandison, 1753, was Richardson's portrait of an ideal fine gentleman, whose stately doings fill eight volumes, but who seems to the modern reader a bore and a prig. All of these novels were written in the form of letters passing between the characters, a method which fitted Richardson's subjective cast of mind. He knew little of life, but he identified himself intensely with his principal character and produced a strong effect by minute, accumulated ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... will beat the slave-girl and torture her with grievous torture. 'Tis as though thou hast at present done nothing worthy of praise; so, if thou be indeed a sharper, return and save the girl from being beaten and questioned." Quoth he, ' Inshallah! I will save both girl and purse." Then the prig went back to the Shroff's house and found him punishing the girl because of the purse; so he knocked at the door and the man said, "Who is there?" Cried the thief, "I am the servant of thy neighbour in the Exchange;" whereupon he came out to him and said, "What is thy business?" ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... "disposed to cry out with delight" before a figure by Michael Angelo. I wonder whether he would feel disposed to cry out before a real Michael Angelo, if the critics had decided that it was not genuine, or before a reputed Michael Angelo which was really by someone else. But I suppose that a prig with more money than brains was much the same sixty or seventy years ago ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... character can be very clearly deduced from the many literary fragments he has left, and that is found to be the character of a pusillanimous and ill-bred usurer, wholly lacking in foresight, in generous enterprise, and chivalrous enthusiasm—in matters of the Faith a prig or a doubter, in matters of adventure a poltroon, in matters of Science an ignorant Parrot, and in Letters a wretchedly bad rhymester, with a vice for alliteration; a wilful liar (as, for instance, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... his father was ten thousand times nicer than ever he would be if be lived a hundred years, and I could not bear him if he talked in that wicked, disrespectful way, and Fly kissed me for it, mamma, and said her daddy was worth a hundred of such a prig as he was.' ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that the weather was clearing up. Even Mademoiselle Fifi seemed unable to keep still. He rose and sat down again. His harsh and clear eye was looking for something to break; suddenly, glaring at the lady with the mustache, the young prig drew his revolver: "You shall not witness it, you!" said he, and, without leaving his seat, he aimed. Two bullets fired in rapid succession put out the eyes of ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... was in either of these Sunday-schools, I did not see him. The Model Boy of my time—we never had but the one—was perfect: perfect in manners, perfect in dress, perfect in conduct, perfect in filial piety, perfect in exterior godliness; but at bottom he was a prig; and as for the contents of his skull, they could have changed place with the contents of a pie and nobody would have been the worse off for it but the pie. This fellow's reproachlessness was a standing reproach to every lad in the village. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... schoolmaster, with all the faults of the species abnormally developed. If I once open out on him, he will learn more truth about himself in ten minutes than he ever heard in his life before. What an unbearable prig he has grown to be." Thus ran Yates' thoughts as he swung in his hammock, looking up at the ceiling of ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... "She's a prig; I can see that, Aunt Clara. I can tell by the way she walks and moves around. She hasn't any go ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... and spectacles, would, if a stock of ideals were all alone by itself enough to render a life significant, be the most absolutely and deeply significant of men. Tolstoi would be completely blind in despising him for a prig, a pedant and a parody; and all our new insight into the divinity of muscular labor would be altogether ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... not excusing myself, Miss Mayhew. I once very justly appeared to you like a prig, and now I fear I shall seem a spy; but after our visit to that old garden together, and your frankness to me, I feel under bonds to tell the whole truth. You said we were fated to misunderstand each ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... been good friends after a fashion. He was a bit of a snob but not much of a prig. She had the feeling about him that if he could be weaned away from the family he might stand for something fine in the way of character. But he was an adept at straddling fences, so that he was never fully on one side or the other, no matter which ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... anecdote of the cherry-tree, and other tales of a similar nature. He wrote with Dr. Beattie's life of his son before him as a model, and the result is that Washington comes out in his pages a faultless prig. Whether Weems intended it or not, that is the result which he produced, and that is the Washington who was developed from the wide sale of his book. When this idea took definite and permanent shape it caused ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... "Now, my feller prig, honor's what I expect from you, and, to remind you of it, Levin, I'm a-goin' to pint this barking-iron at your mummer, so that if you patter a cackle, a blue plum will ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter 'Little prig;' Bun replied, 'You are doubtless very big, But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together To make up a year, And a sphere. And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large as you, You are not so small as I, And not half so spry: I'll not ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... not see either. He had accepted Harris' hospitality, had eaten freely of the good things Harris had provided, and the boys would vote him a prig if he left them for his bed as soon as the feast was finished. It would seem that he was afraid of being discovered absent from his room—as if he did not dare to share the danger ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... Edith, with spirit. "Who knows if it wasn't the only really happy thing in her life? The snobs and prigs all scold her and preach sermons at her—they did it in her lifetime: they do it now——" "Oh come, I'm neither a snob nor a prig," put in Celia, looking up in her turn, and tempering with a smile the energy of her tone—"I don't blame her for her Bothwell; I don't criticize her. I never was even able to mind about her killing Darnley. You see I take an extremely liberal view. One might almost call it ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... like Mr. Perry very well myself," said Rosemary, laughing a little—but at Mr. Perry, not at Adam, as Faith clearly understood. "I never did like him. I went to school with him—he was a Glen boy, you know—and he was a most detestable little prig even then. Oh, how we girls used to hate holding his fat, clammy hands in the ring-around games. But we must remember, dear, that he didn't know that Adam had been a pet of yours. He thought he WAS just a common rooster. We must be just, even when ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... right to expect of the American boy is that he shall turn out to be a good American man. Now, the chances are strong that he won't be much of a man unless he is a good deal of a boy. He must not be a coward or a weakling, a bully, a shirk, or a prig. He must work hard and play hard. He must be clean-minded and clean-lived, and able to hold his own under all circumstances and against all comers. It is only on these conditions that he will grow into the kind of American man of whom America can ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... say, he was not a prig, or a snob, but a gentleman. And if he remembered that he "came over in the Mayflower," it was because he felt that that circumstance bound him to higher enterprises, to better work, than other men's. And he believed in his heart, as he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... now drinks water, who before drank beer; What's now the cause? we know the case is clear; Look in Prig's purse, the chev'ril there tells you Prig money wants, either to ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... he had married a wife like you, a girl with a level head and a stiff upper lip, a girl with not sufficient sentiment to make her a fool, nor enough brains to be a prig, but just clever enough to supply her husband's deficiencies, he would have been my heir, and this place and all my money would ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... light side, thank Heaven, even to war; but Mr. THURSTON had a great chance of doing serious good and he has only half used it. I am certain (though he may call me a prig for saying it) that if he had set himself to serve his country's cause through the great influence which the theatre commands, he could have done better work than this; and he ought ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... neglect Maudie; don't alarm yourself! She's the best specimen of the genus prig that I've ever come across in the course of my life. She ought to have a Form all to herself, instead of being plumped into the Fifth. I see dangerous possibilities in Maudie. Do you realize what she did this morning? Learnt the whole of that wretched ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... the hum of little fig-bees in my ears, and wished that my life were his life. After a while we had jumped to our feet and I had shouldered my knapsack with its books and pencils and silly pads of paper and trudged off up an unshaded road, and had thought with a sort of bitter merriment of that prig Christian and his ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... result of climbing the staircase, partly the result of that audacious impulse that had led her—a modest virgin—to seek a gentleman in this personal fashion. Modesty in a young girl has a comfortable satisfying charm, recognized easily by all humanity; but he must be a sorry knave or a worse prig who is not deliciously thrilled when Modesty puts her charming little foot just over the ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... be a reaction,' said Mr. Underwood; 'but the crack voice of a country choir is not often in that condition, as I know too well. I was the veriest young prig myself under those circumstances!' ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... preparing myself for a governess, that I should make a point of honor of such things, little pragmatical prig that you are; nor are you, that I know of. You will always have plenty of money. 'Rich as a Jew' is a proverb, you ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... them has any effective choice in the matter: their children must either go to the schools that are, or to no school at all. And as the duke thinks with reason that his son will be a lout or a milksop or a prig if he does not go to school, and the coster knows that his son will become an illiterate hooligan if he is left to the streets, there is no real alternative for either of them. Child life must be socially organized: no parent, rich or poor, ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... not driven to evil courses by the perusal of that monstrous Autobiography, he must have been a man almost as astounding as his father. Now Franklin could only have written his "immortal classic" from one of three motives: (1) Sheer conceit. He was a prig, but he was not conceited. (2) A desire that others should profit by his mistakes. He never made any mistakes. Now and again he emphasizes some trifling error, but that is "only his fun." (3) A desire that others ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... day grow honest, if I don't make up for last night's paltry prig. Come, let's have one roasted, missus—I prefers roast goose. Honest hanimal! only fit to be plucked and eaten. I say, missus, I stumbled on a cove this morning, that I thinks will prove a bleeding cull,—honest hanimal, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... a man," Julia interrupted, "and I would not undertake to say a man would not do anything—on occasions—or a woman either, for the matter of that. There is a beast in most men, and an archangel in lots, and a snob, and a prig, and a dormant hero, and an embryo poet. There are great possibilities in men; you have to watch and see which is coming out top and back that, and then half the time you are wrong. Of course, at father's ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... Jay quite disproves the oft-found myth that a dash of Mephisto in a young man is a valuable adjunct. John Jay was neither precocious nor bad. It is further a refreshing fact to find that he was no prig, simply a good, healthy youngster who took to his books kindly and gained ground—made head upon ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... century. Whenever you think you have a chance of finding him in good authentic State papers, he gives you the slip; and if his existence were not vouched for by Horace Walpole, I should incline to deem of him as Betsy Prig thought of Mrs. Harris. ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... that follow all you youngsters. Listen, boy. Brenton is a mixture of genius, and prig, and ignorant young hermit; or, rather, he has the elements all inside him, ready to be mixed. You'll have ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... point of view, a better filled life than James Tapster. How he had scorned the gambler, the spendthrift, the adulterer—in a word, all those whose actions bring about their own inevitable punishment! He had always been self-respecting and conscientious—not a prig, mind you, but inclined rather to the serious than to the flippant side of life; and, so inclining, he had found contentment ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... is not bad. Nevertheless,—thinking as the world around us does about hunting,—a clergyman in my position would be wrong to hunt often. But a man who can feel horror at such a thing as this is a prig in religion. If, as is more likely, a man affects horror, he is a hypocrite. I believe that most clergymen will agree with me in that; but there is no clergyman in the diocese of whose agreement I feel ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... of adventure by sea is regarded by every true-hearted boy as the very best story of all. The yarn—that's the thing! If the sea is a northern sea, full of ice and swept by big gales, if the adventures are real, if the hero is not a prig, if the tale concerns itself with heroic deeds and moves like a full-rigged ship with all sail spread to a rousing breeze, the boy will say "Bully!" and read the story again. "The Adventures of Billy Topsail" is a book to be chummy with. It is crowded with adventure, every page of it, from the time ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... kindness. No one can be offended in him for long, and his cheerful conversation and beautiful, upright life are a living witness to his religious faith, known and read of all men. Angry, sneering, and selfish folk come to regard him with an affection akin to holy awe. But he is not in the least a prig or a stuffed curiosity. He is essentially a reasonable, kind-hearted man, who goes about doing good. Every one confides in him, all go to him for advice and solace. He is a multitudinous blessing, with masculine virility and shrewd ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... returned the whittler, brushing the litter from his lap. "Now I've no doubt that prig of a doctor, who they say is shining up to Alice, will be disappointed when he finds just how much she's worth. Let me see. What is his name? Lives up there," and with his jackknife Mr. ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... childhood, a supplement to school education, interpreting to the young reader the world of nature, literature, and art in terms he can understand, and omitting only what does not make for true manhood and womanhood. No prig, but a jolly companion, the joy of healthy boys and girls and a blessing to the lonely child or little invalid. Try it ...
— Wholesale Price List of Newspapers and Periodicals • D. D. Cottrell's Subscription Agency
... wish to be thought a prig or one who made a pretence of great industry, and, although Miss Morgan's voice was without expression, he believed that irony lay hidden ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... with the world but with the silly writers of goody-goody stories, who have so emasculated and effeminated the boy who works hard and holds his head high that it is now well-nigh impossible to hear of such an one in real life without instantly setting him down as an intolerable prig. These writers have committed the greatest crime against their creations that authors can commit—they have made them non-human. If the stories about George Washington had narrated how on one occasion he laughed uproariously, or how he once ate too many mince-pies, he might ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... hearing of his case, I was touched with some compassion, and the more so, when, upon observing him nearer, I found he was a prig. I bade him produce his cane in court, which he had left at the door. He did so, and I finding it to be very curiously clouded with a transparent amber head, and a blue riband to hang upon his wrist, I immediately ordered my clerk Lillie to lay it up, and deliver out to him ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... your mouth, you young prig!" interrupted Grundy, and the entrance of Mr. Greyling put a ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... is not a fair question to ask any man, for an affirmative makes a prig of him and a negative a mere politician. I will therefore generalize freely and tell you that a man who believes himself to be a statesman considers the nation first, as a matter of course. Howard, for instance, ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... indifferent to all things in heaven above or in the earth beneath, I could have pitied them greatly for the obligation they were under to trail after those rough lads everywhere and at all times; even as it was, I felt disposed to scout myself as a privileged prig when I turned to ascend to my chamber, sure to find there, if not enjoyment, at least liberty; but this evening (as had often happened before) I was ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... shining like a star, and though sand-blind by nature, and bigoted by Education, one of the truly great men of England, and "her men are of men the chief," alike in the dominions of the understanding, the reason, the passions, and the imagination. No prig shall ever persuade me that Rasselas is not a noble performance—in design and execution. Never were the expenses of a mother's funeral more gloriously defrayed by son, than the funeral of Samuel ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... loves others, for it depends on them for its existence; it sanctions and encourages to all delights that are not unkind in themselves; if it lived to a thousand, it would not make excision of a single humorous passage; and while the self-improver dwindles toward the prig, and, if he be not of an excellent constitution, may even grow deformed into an Obermann, the very name and appearance of a happy man breathe of good-nature, and help the ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out, and some of the young women and most of the young men, who had dimly known of him as a sort of celebrity, and suspected him of being a prig, were reconciled, and accepted him for a nice fellow, and became of his opinion as to the details of the amusement ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... "Programmes," I. My wit's too wide To a wire-puller's "platform" to be tied. I know what's right, I mean to see it done, And for the rest good-tempered chaff and fun Are my pet "principles"—till fools grow rash From toleration, then they feel the lash. I am a sage, and not a prig or pump, Therefore I never canvas, spout or stump, I'm Liberal—as the sunlight—of all Good, Which to Conserve I strive—that's understood, But Tory nincompoop, or rowdy Rad, The thrall of bigotry, the fool of fad I hate alike. There's the straight tip, my bloaters! Now run ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... believe it is more easy to unmake than to make a gentleman; I have known many gentlemanly youths go to college, and return anything but what they went. Young Mr. Platitude did not go to college a gentleman, but neither did he return one; he went to college an ass, and returned a prig; to his original folly was superadded a vast quantity of conceit. He told his father that he had adopted high principles, and was determined to discountenance everything low and mean; advised him to eschew trade, and to purchase him a living. The ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... father an amiable man of fifty-two, who had already lost an only son, and for his mother a woman of thirty-eight, whose first and only child he was, little Jon had done well and wisely. What had saved him from becoming a cross between a lap dog and a little prig, had been his father's adoration of his mother, for even little Jon could see that she was not merely just his mother, and that he played second fiddle to her in his father's heart: What he played in his mother's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... orange-flowers, who was revolving in the window, and displaying her smile to passers-by, between two argand lamps; but in reality, he was taking an observation of the shop, in order to discover whether he could not "prig" from the shop-front a cake of soap, which he would then proceed to sell for a sou to a "hair-dresser" in the suburbs. He had often managed to breakfast off of such a roll. He called his species of work, for which he possessed special ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... always faultlessly prepared, and his power of taking in what he was taught wonderfully great, though, fortunately for himself, his extreme good humour and merry nature made it impossible for his companions to dislike him or set him down as a prig. ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... one's virtue upon one's audience; it gives us a pleasing sense of superior delicacy and humor. But it is none the less mean and ridiculous. Instead of condemnation, the world needs to bestir itself to remove the stupid and cruel creatures that make evil conduct necessary; for can anyone, not a prig, say that the small part of the human race that does well does so because it is naturally better than the large ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... fluttering time. Mr. WILBERFORCE'S name is unknown to me, and I judge him more experienced in the mysteries of the Stock Exchange than in the art of fiction; but I like his constructive ability and I like his courage. He does not hesitate to make his champion a prig, which is exactly what a youth so idolised by his family would be likely to become. But, though a prig by training, Jack was not by nature a bore, and his relations (especially his father and sister) are delightful people. Altogether I find this a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... you here and there... When Shakespeare's played you hold a chair, And some defunct, moth-eaten star Enchants the mental prig you are... A radical comes down and shocks The atheistic orthodox? You're representing Common Sense, Mouth open, in the audience. And, sometimes, even chapel lures That conscious tolerance of yours, That broad and beaming view of truth ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... obviously thought me a tiresome prig. He had no romantic illusions about the business; he had not been a Feldscher during twenty years for nothing and knew that a wound was a wound; when a man ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... plague these pounces, When I prig your pigs or pullen; Your culvers take Or mateless make Your chanticleer and sullen; When I want provant with Humphrey I sup, And when benighted, To repose in Paul's, With waking ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... in her bowels. There was his wonderful, desirable life-rapidity, the rare quality of an utterly desirable man: and there was at the same time this ridiculous, mean effacement into a Salvator Mundi and a Sunday-school teacher, a prig ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... uncomfortable. Beyond a certain point one cannot pretend denseness, and he was in an agony of dread lest his father would see what Therese was up to. She had begun kissing him good-night, and now more and more warmth crept into the embrace until he found himself trying to avoid it. He was no prig, and Therese was attractive, yet the distaste he felt for the situation neutralised her power to lure him. Moreover, she showed him a side which convinced him of what he had hitherto suspected—that Therese had all the instincts of a ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... Gamp was, four-and-twenty years ago, a fair representation of the hired attendant on the poor in sickness. The hospitals of London were, in many respects, noble Institutions; in others, very defective. I think it not the least among the instances of their mismanagement, that Mrs Betsey Prig was a fair specimen of a Hospital Nurse; and that the Hospitals, with their means and funds, should have left it to private humanity and enterprise, to enter on an attempt to improve that class of persons—since, greatly improved through the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Cecil as subtle, and pleased him. It put their visitor in the position of a prig. Somewhat mollified, he sat ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... could command money at will. I signed, and signed, till at last I was with all due civility informed that my signature was no longer worth a farthing; and when I came to inquire into the cause of this phenomenon, I could nowise understand what my Lord Delacour's lawyer said to me: he was a prig, and I had not patience either to listen to him or to look at him. I sent for an old uncle of mine, who used to manage all my money matters before I was married: I put the uncle and the lawyer into a room, together with their parchments, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... pestered distinguished authors for presentation copies of their books, in order to furnish the shelves of the library, I am driven to the painful conclusion that I must have been a terrible person in the days of my youth, and something of a prig to boot. Apropos of the begging for books as free gifts from authors, I had one or two amusing experiences. Among those whom I importuned in this impertinent way were Charles Kingsley, and the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Longley. ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... the aphorism reminds us of the beautiful goodness that floats over his face, a light from Paradise. But why from Paradise? Paradise is an ugly ecclesiastical invention, and angels are an ugly Hebrew invention. It is unpardonable to think of angels in Auteuil; an angel is a prig compared to the dear doctor, and an angel has wings. Well, so had this admirable chicken, a bird that was grown for the use of the table, produced like a vegetable. A dear bird that was never allowed to run about and weary itself as our helpless English ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... say he hardly ever saw her now that she was with Monsieur Didier, of the Credit Bourguignon. The financier had sent the artists to the right-about; he was a conceited, narrow-minded fellow, a dull, tiresome prig. ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... other, must have lit in those purple depths the torches whose clear flames had leapt out to him. She loved him. She, the beautiful, the wonderful, had not tried to conceal her love for him. She had shown him all—had shown all, poor darling! only to be snubbed by a prig, driven away by a boor, fled from by a fool. To the nethermost corner of his soul, he cursed himself for what he had done, and for all he had left undone. He would go to her on his knees. He would implore her to impose on him insufferable ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... You put up with things. You think perhaps they might have been worse. In every way that's your philosophy. And it's killing, killing to all life! I would rather far you said out, 'Adelaide's husband is a prig ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... type only the sentimentalist can declare. But they kept to the life of daylight. They are England's hope. Clumsily they carry forward the torch of the sun, until such time as the nation sees fit to take it up. Half clodhopper, half board-school prig, they can still throw back to a nobler ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... must take success, like disaster, quietly.' He said it gently, as when he played with the children. It was mostly put on, of course, this false grandiloquence of the prig. His eyes already twinkled more ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... boy, not a bit of a prig. But he's not what you can call a success; and I fancy the Marlows won't want to exhibit him. Still, I shall have him to dinner and get some nice girls ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... matronly as well, exported to New Zealand on account, with other goods and chattels, of that moral corporation, the New Zealand trading and emigration company, which so liberally salaries him with L.600 per annum for the use of his "principle?" Again, who so fitted as the renowned Rowland Hill, the very prig pragmatic of pretension, for the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer, or First Lord of the Treasury if you will? A man who could contrive a scheme for annihilating some two millions of post-office revenue at one stroke, must ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... of such paws?" she railed at her. "They don't ply a needle, and they don't touch any thread! All you're good for is to prig things to stuff that mouth of yours with! The skin of your phiz is shallow and those paws of yours are light! But with the shame you bring upon yourself before the world, isn't it right that I should prick you, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... I'm beginning to like you a little. I perfectly loathed you at first. I thought you the most odious, self-satisfied, boresome elderly prig I ever met. ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... government in his behalf, stating how much he had suffered in the cause of the ministry. Swift immediately carried his letter to Lord Bolingbroke, then Secretary of State, who railed much at Sacheverell, calling him a busy intermeddling fellow; a prig and an incendiary, who had set the kingdom in a flame which could not be extinguished, and therefore deserved censure instead of reward. Although Swift had not a much better opinion of the Doctor than Lord Bolingbroke, he replied, "True, my Lord; ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... just a big sister to you, of course. Ever so superior, I guess, and a good bit of a prig. And all this time over there in France with nothing but my letters and that silly picture of me in the khaki frame, I suppose you have been thinking of me, well,—as a sort of nice angel. I'm not either, really. I ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... up to the sad admission upon our part that Payson, Jr., was a prig. And in the very middle of his son's priggishness Payson, Sr., up and died, and Tutt and Mr. Tutt were called ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... relief held out to me. To sit in the company of that condescending prig, to bore him and to be bored by him, was a doleful grievance I did not wish to inflict upon myself, and I eagerly answered that the day had been a long and hard one, and that I would be ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... what he meant to do when they saw him draw first a D and then an O on the frame. But when they saw a C and a T follow, they thought what a conceited little prig Willie was! ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... Anna, shortly. "And Lena's growing up a perfect young prig. I'll have to change governesses. Heaven knows what I'll draw next time! The last one had charm, but no learning, and mighty little intelligence. This one has no manner at all, and is of encyclopaedic information. A ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... to myself. "It's worse than ever: here's a little prig worrying about his soul. I shouldn't advise you to trouble about that, either," I ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... merriment among the city wags, each of whom cracked a joke at his expense. Now it was not that those waggish spirits said of his placard things exceedingly annoying to his sensitive feelings, but that every prig made him the butt of his borrowed wit. One quizzed him with want of gallantry,—another told him what the ladies said of his oss,—a third pitied him, but hoped he might get back his property; and then, Tom Span, the dandy lawyer, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... grocer, in the shop. A conceited young prig, not yet out of the quarrelsome age. He makes boy-love to Priscilla Tomboy and Miss La Blond; but says he will "tell papa" if they ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... calm down," predicted Selina. "She hates to be crossed. Personally, I don't admire her. She poses too much. She's either a prig or a hypocrite. A little of both, I guess. When Marian raged about my asking her to act as judge she said she knew for a fact that Dorothy's father had lost all his money and that Dorothy was hanging on to Jane Allen and this French girl, I never can remember ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... that you are: so much depressed that a few more words would bring tears to your eyes—indeed, they are there now, shining and swimming; and a bead has slipped from the lash and fallen on to the flag. If I had time, and was not in mortal dread of some prating prig of a servant passing, I would know what all this means. Well, to-night I excuse you; but understand that so long as my visitors stay, I expect you to appear in the drawing-room every evening; it is my wish; don't neglect it. Now go, and send Sophie ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... Both men felt uncomfortable. Led by some sudden, ungovernable impulse, they had both gone further than their slight acquaintance justified. Olva was convinced that he had made a fool of himself, that he had talked like a prig. Lawrence was groping hopelessly amongst a forest of dark thought for some little sensible thing that he might say. He found nothing and so relapsed, with false, uncomfortable ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... the quilted petticoat would never have been missed, but for the officious scrutiny of the eyes, and the provoking prating of the tongues, of a sophisticated few who marvelled greatly at the pliancy and the "perfect set" of Miss Wimple's Alboni,—"and that demure little prig, too! who'd have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... which it is still congenial, and where it will be preserved. But it has been challenged and (what is perhaps more insidious) it has been discovered. No one need be browbeaten any longer into accepting it. No one need be afraid, for instance, that his fate is sealed because some young prig may call him a dualist; the pint would call the quart a dualist, if you tried to pour the quart into him. We need not be afraid of being less profound, for being direct and sincere. The intellectual world may be traversed in many directions; the whole ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... shrewdly. More than once she had felt that Terry was on the verge of becoming a complacent prig. So she countered with ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... been any intimacy between these two men. Reardon regarded his wife's brother as rather snobbish and disagreeably selfish; John Yule looked upon the novelist as a prig, and now of late as a shuffling, untrustworthy fellow. It appeared to John that his brother-in-law was assuming a manner wholly unjustifiable, and he had a difficulty in behaving to him with courtesy. Reardon, on the other hand, felt injured by the turn his visitor's ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... recognition. He knew a great deal about art, and all four enjoyed the morning immensely. It was fine to go round recognising old favourites and finding new beauties, especially while so many people fumbled helplessly with Baedeker. Nor was he a bit of a prig, Miss Winchelsea said, and indeed she detested prigs. He had a distinct undertone of humour, and was funny, for example, without being vulgar, at the expense of the quaint work of Beato Angelico. He had a grave seriousness beneath it all, and was quick to seize the moral lessons of the pictures. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... protested anxiously to the other side, which in turn raged against it and its cold plausibilities. The side which was all passion and romance and high chivalry lashed its enemy with contempt, and evil epithets of which the hardest to bear was "prig." For no man can endure being thought a prig, even ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... self-satisfied prig," retorted Burns. "Hullo! Somebody's coming. Tell me what to do, Martha. Do I run to meet them and rush them up to Ellen, or do I display a studied indifference? I never 'received' at a reception ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... prig! They should bottle him in spirits of wine as a specimen. It's the only thing he'll ever be fit for," remarked Mr. Page, who rarely said so ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... the rocks and the mountains speak. Emerson has given us one where the Mountain and the Squirrel had a quarrel. The Mountain called the Squirrel "Little Prig." And then continues a clash of personalities more possible to illustrate than at first appears. Here we come to the second stage of the fairy-tale where the creature seems so unmanageable in his physical ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... is poking fun at me," he thought; "and he and his father and that prig deserve—but what is ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... fellow students. It is true that, as a schoolboy, a certain pompousness in the style of his letters home suggested to the more clear- sighted among his relatives the possibility that young Thomas might grow up into a prig; but, after all, what else could be expected from a child who, at the age of three, had been presented by his father, as a reward for proficiency in his studies, with the twenty-four volumes of Smollett's History ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... herself forward in this objectionable way, Lilith might have escaped singing altogether. Lilith also resented her having shown that she could do it—and this feeling was generally shared. It evidenced a want of good-fellowship, and made you very glad the little prig had afterwards come to grief: if you had abilities that others had not you concealed them, instead of parading them ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... overlaid with myths and traditions, and so distorted by misleading criticisms, that ... he has been wellnigh lost. We have the religious and statuesque myth, we have the Weems myth (which turns Washington into a faultless prig), and the ludicrous myth of the writer of paragraphs. We have the stately hero of Sparks, and Everett, and Marshall, and Irving, with all his great deeds as general and President duly recorded and set ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... Annie, there are two proverbs which are the bane of my life. I wonder dad has not had them both illuminated and framed and hung up in my nursery. One of them is: 'Little girls should be seen and not heard.' What a detestable old prig the person must have been who invented that proverb! I ask you, Annie, what would life be without little girls and their chatter? The other proverb is nearly as objectionable. This is it: 'Make a ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... the letter sent yesterday passes you on the way, I add a line to say that if ever I said a mean thing about Loring when we were in the corps, I take it back. I thought him a prig when we wore the gray. He rather 'held us under' anyhow, being a class ahead, you know, but the way he has panned out here and wiped up Wyoming with the only men I ever knew that tried to wrong you is simply wonderful. He's nabbed three of the Birdsall gang and is away now after ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... of life which make the difference," he said, hesitating, because to say even so much made him feel a prig. "Stella just drifted from unhappiness ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... began Ruth abruptly, "you aren't going to be such a goose as to back out of joining the skating club just because—well, because Mary Brewster's such a prig? She isn't the whole membership, not by a good deal, and the rest of us count on your coming. Why, you'll be a tremendous acquisition. And the first meet is to-morrow. ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann |
