"Self-importance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lacked nothing, and while other boys obeyed their parents' commands, the shepherds, who well knew that the flocks they tended belonged to him, called him their young master, and first in jest, then in earnest, paid him all the honor due a ruler, which prematurely increased his self-importance and made ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... coloured and felt awkward at the contemptuous reference to his father, he sniggered and went on talking, as if nothing untoward had been said. He was one of the band impossible to snub, not because they are endowed with superior moral courage, but because their easy self-importance is so great that an insult rarely pierces it enough to divert them from their purpose. They walk through life wrapped comfortably round in the wool of their own conceit. Gourlay, though a dull man—perhaps because he was a dull man—suspected insult in a moment. But it rarely entered Wilson's ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... grasp her meaning, but the tone sounded contemptuous, and that sorted little with his self-importance. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Cambridge editor admirably amends, [Greek: eis mellonta sosei chronon], i.e. "it will be a long time before it preserves them," a hit at the self-importance of the ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... was far most to be pitied, although the situation was the direct result of his own arrogance and self-importance; but arrogance and self-importance were as essential ingredients of his character as was humour of Aunt Barbara's. They were very awkward and tiresome qualities, but this particular Lord Ashbridge would have no existence without them. ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... the splendid schemes of Ralph Dewey and Company went on prospering, while he grew daily in self-importance, and in offensive superciliousness toward men from whom he had nothing to expect. In my own case I had little to complain of, as my contact with him was generally professional, and under circumstances that caused a natural deference to my skill ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... useful Church servant to other functions, the decent performance of which was utterly beyond the range of an illiterate man. Many of our readers may be acquainted with the witty satire in which, with a perpetual side glance at the fussy self-importance visible in Bishop Burnet's History, Pope writes 'the Memoirs of P.P., Clerk of this Parish.' With what delightful complacency this diligent representative of his class speaks of taking rank among 'men right ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... hours before he breathed his last he rallied for a while, and recognized Ariel at his bedside. He feebly pronounced her name, and looked at her, and asked for me. They thought of sending for me, but it was too late. Before the messenger could be dispatched, he said, with a touch of his old self-importance, "Silence, all of you! my brains are weary; I am going to sleep." He closed his eyes in slumber, and never awoke again. So for this man too the end came mercifully, without grief or pain! So that strange and many-sided life—with its guilt ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... even comfort. He is very friendly, and apparently simple, entirely without a trace of hauteur. If one met him without knowing who he was, one would not guess that he is possessed of great power or even that he is in any way eminent. I have never met a personage so destitute of self-importance. He looks at his visitors very closely, and screws up one eye, which seems to increase alarmingly the penetrating power of the other. He laughs a great deal; at first his laugh seems merely friendly and jolly, but gradually I came to feel it rather grim. He is dictatorial, calm, incapable of fear, ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... water from his washpan directly in her path, although she was some distance away. Probably by this time he had learned his fate and took this means of testifying his resentment. The color rose in her pale face. She was not a proud woman, had no large amount of that self-importance which is the almost inevitable result of possessing wealth. But one of the penalties of property is that it cultivates whatever egotism and sensitiveness to its prerogative its owner is capable of. That one of the common laborers employed upon her estate should thus openly flout ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... squadron. The prisoner had acquired a new status. Here was a human being within two weeks of the solution of the greatest of all mysteries. He was worth looking at. The condemned man saw the interest shown in him, and, upheld by the feeling of self-importance inherent in the negro character, and always brought to the surface by applause or other manifestation of unusual attention, bore ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... move in it as boldly as any man, and perhaps a little better than most men, and if the time came when I must at last be caught beneath a belt-line car my removal from these mad activities would at least be dignified by a notice in the papers. The shrinkage to my self-importance added fire to my ambition. More carefully but resolutely I threaded my way up Cortlandt Street, and at every step my sense of my unimportance increased. Even my hotel seemed to be a hotel of no importance. Mr. Pound had stayed there in 1876, and his account of its magnitude ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... modesty. As he truly said—speaking with an easy assurance, and airily fingering his gold watch-chain as he spoke—in marrying him Roschen would make an excellent match. In rather marked contrast with this justifiable yet not wholly pleasing assumption of self-importance, was the modest tone in which Ludwig urged his suit; yet was Andreas not unfavorably impressed by the fact that he dwelt less upon his deserts than upon his desire to be deserving; and that in connection ...
— An Idyl Of The East Side - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... in every limb, as far as is consistent with the fear of discomposing his dress. The insolence of power in one of the bailiffs, and the unfeeling heart, which can jest with misery, in the other, are strongly marked. The self-importance, too, of the honest Cambrian is not ill portrayed; who is chiefly introduced to settle the chronology of the story.—In pose of grace, we have nothing striking. Hogarth might have introduced a degree of it in the female figure: at least he might ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... speaking, too long: descriptions in musical language sometimes distract the reader from the progress of the story. But this arose from her own joy in writing: much as she valued proportion, she liked expressing her mind better, not out of conceit or self-importance, but as the birds, whom she loved so ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... had such a proverb. They were as remarkable, it seems, in those days as they are now for their national self-importance and vanity. ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... Swiftmouth College should have the distinction of calling me one of her sons, and accordingly I was in due time sent for preparation to a neighboring academy. Years of study and hard fare in country boarding-houses told upon my self-importance as the descendant of a great Englishman, notwithstanding all my letters from the honored three came freighted with counsel to "respect myself and keep up the dignity of the family." Growing-up man forgets good counsel. The Arcadia of respectability is apt to give place ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... rapidly away, and every day added to my self-importance, and brought with it fresh opportunities of enlarging the circle of my friends, and of acquiring a competent knowledge of the conventional rules of society. Though naturally fond of company, I hated dissipation, and those low vices which many young men designate as pleasure, in the pursuit of ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... and success in business, can be attained only by persevering industry. None who thinks himself above his vocation can succeed in it, for we can not give our attention to what our self-importance despises. None can be eminent in his vocation who devotes his mental energy to a pursuit foreign to it, for, in such a case, success in what we love is failure in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... moved doubtfully in his chair, the fear—which Tavannes had shrewdly instilled into his mind—that he might be disowned if he carried out his instructions, struggling with his avarice and his self-importance. He was rather crafty than bold; and such things had been, he knew. Little by little, and while he sat gloomily debating, the notion of dealing with one or two and holding the body of the Huguenots to ransom—a notion which, in spite of everything, was to bear good fruit for Angers—began ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... scoundrel," said Noel Vanstone, recovering his self-importance, and raising himself ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... the whole city, and in fact the whole country was talking. It was known that he had "turned State's"; but just what he knew and what he had told was a mighty secret, and Peter "held his mouth" and looked portentous, and enjoyed thrills of self-importance. ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... to blame in different degrees. The first danger came from the Volunteers, who, flushed with self-importance, from the belief that it was the imposing show of their strength which had enabled the Parliament to extort Lord Rockingham's concession from the English Houses, now claimed to be masters of the Parliament itself. With the termination of the American war, and ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... was pushed open, without a sound, and Alicia, in all the bursting charm of her youthfulness and the delicious naivete of her self-importance, stood in the doorway. She made no gesture; she just looked at Edwin with a peculiar ominous and excited glance, and Edwin rose quickly and left the room. Auntie Hamps ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the vision of some grim-faced spinster-subscriber in a desolate country town starting out at last for the first time in her life, with real, cheery self-importance, rain or shine, to join the laughing, jostling, deliriously human Saturday night crowd at the village post-office—herself the only person whose expected letter never failed to come! From Squirrel or Pirate or Hopping Hottentot—what ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... them, and long for nothing better. I feel with every blade of grass, as if it had a history; and make a child of every bud as though it knew and loved me. And being so, they seem to tell me of my own delusions, how I am no more than they, except in self-importance. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... him like the stuff of thought unshaped, and every breath he drew seemed like God breathing afresh into his nostrils the breath of life. Who knows what the thing we call air is? We know about it, but it we do not know. The sun shone as if smiling at the self-importance of the sulky darkness he had driven away, and the world seemed content with a heavenly content. So fresh was Donal's sense that he felt as if his sleep within and the wind without had been washing him all the night. So peaceful, so blissful was his heart that it longed to share its ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... Mr. Galbraith returned to Glashruach, but did not remain long. His schemes were promising well, and his self-importance was screwed yet a little higher in consequence. But he was kinder than usual to Ginevra. Before he went he said to her that, as Mr. Machar had sunk into a condition requiring his daughter's constant attention, he would ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... twinkling of an eye, was on my way to Stonehouse, where my vanity received another tribute, by a raw recruit of marine raising his hand to his head, as he passed by me. I took it as it was meant, raised my hat off my head, and shuffled by with much self-importance. One consideration, I own, mortified me—this was that the natives did not appear to admire me half so much as I admired myself. It never occurred to me then, that middies were as plentiful at Plymouth Dock, as black boys ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the First Communion. Intoxication with the music of chants and organ, drowned in the scent of incense and flowers, hung about with scapularies, rosaries, consecrated medals, and holy images, he, like his companions, assumed a certain air of self-importance and wore a smug, sanctified look. He was cold and unbending towards his aunt, who spoke with far too much unconcern about the "great day." Though she had long been in the habit of taking her nephew to Mass every Sunday, she was not "pious." ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... Hilda, with a slight feeling of that pardonable self-importance which is natural to those who instruct others older than themselves, ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... Rector shook his head. He had not thought of that aspect of the subject. He was indeed so free from vanity or self-importance, that his only feeling in regard to the sudden appearance of the perpetual curate was respect and surprise. He would not be convinced otherwise even now. "He can do his ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... was beginning to feel something of what it meant to hold office and there was creeping into his manner the quiet self-importance which is the first sign of ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... so changed as scarcely to be recognizable. He was no longer the happy man of the world, with smiling face, firm look, the pride of which betrayed plainly his self-importance and prosperity. In a few hours he had grown twenty years older. He was broken, overwhelmed; his thoughts wandered in a sea of bitterness. He could only ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... doree of the Circolo, to whom Signor Leandro recounted his great tidings with all the self-importance to which the exclusive possession of news of such interest so well entitled him, it is impossible to do justice to the enthusiasm which the news ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... pavement as he did this, and a man ascended, bearing in his hand a torch. This figure unlocked and held open the grating as for the passage of another, who presently appeared, in the form of a young man of small stature and uncommon self-importance, dressed in an obsolete and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... to illustrate the self-importance of the betheral tribe. The Rev. Dr. Hugh Blair was one Sunday absent from his pulpit, and next morning meeting his beadle in the street he inquired how matters went in the High Church on Sabbath. "'Deed, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... father always called them, had their tea with the nurses and were given few toys and never allowed to accept presents. No fuss was made over the little accidents inevitable to childhood and in every way life was kept devoid of state formality, or anything that would breed a sense of childish self-importance. When the Prince and Princess were away from home, as they frequently had to be, letters were daily exchanged with the head nurse. The result of this general system and of the later plan of making ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... the Way-lee-way, a considerable tributary of Snake River. Here they met the guide returning from his secret errand. Another private conference was held between him and the old managing chief, who now seemed more inflated than ever with mystery and self-importance. Numerous fresh trails, and various other signs, persuaded Captain Bonneville that there must be a considerable village of Nez Perces in the neighborhood; but as his worthy companion, the old chief, said nothing on the subject, and as it appeared to be in ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... a very pompous man, and the document he had just discovered on the priest added to his sense of self-importance. When, therefore, a large, carefully folded paper was produced from the neighbourhood of Valeria's lovely bosom, his eyes sparkled with anticipation. "Ho, ho!" he exclaimed, as he clutched it eagerly, "the plot is thickening!" and ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... not admire this Butterfly, Young reader; I will tell you why. At first, goodnature seems a cause, Why she should merit your applause; But 'twas conceit that filled her breast: Her self-importance made a jest Of what might otherwise have claimed Your praise,—but now she must be blamed. Should any case occur, when you May have some friendly act to do; Give all your feeble aid—as such, But estimate it ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... Our self-importance as Arctic heroes of the first water received a sad downfall when we were first asked by a kind friend, what the deuce we came home for? We had a good many becauses ready, but he overturned them altogether; so we had resort to ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... moon-shaped face, emphasized by its smooth-shaven mobile mouth, below which his almost white chin beard hung pendent, expressed a curious interplay of emotional sanctity, urbane shrewdness, and solemn self-importance. ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... children, as soon as they can utter a word, that they are free and have equal rights with the mightiest potentates of the universe."[1125] Petion's account of the journey in the king's carriage, on the return from Varennes, must be read to see how far self-importance of a pedant and the self-conceit of a lout can be carried.[1126] In their memoirs and even down to their epitaphs, Barbaroux, Buzot, Petion, Roland, and Madame Roland[1127] give themselves certificates of virtue and, if we could take their word for it, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... dissatisfaction. He was glad Helen had seen her duty and given him over to Madeline, but he felt a trifle piqued to think she had done it with such apparent willingness. If she had wept or scolded it would have been unpleasant but much more gratifying to his self-importance. ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Chalier, he had, on his arrival in Paris, obtained admission into the "Society of Families." His ways were known, and the police kept a watch on him. He was one of those who fought in the outbreak of May, 1839, and since then he had remained in the shade; but, his self-importance increasing more and more, he became a fanatical follower of Alibaud, mixing up his own grievances against society with those of the people against monarchy, and waking up every morning in the hope of a revolution which in a fortnight or a month would turn the world upside down. At last, disgusted ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... to walk up and down the verandah, putting his foot down firmly. His loose linen suit was smart enough: his complexion had been improved by the sun. The consciousness that his business affairs were promising well did not lessen his sense of self-importance. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... and brushed her up and gave her an excellent supper; and putting her into a first-class compartment labelled "Reserved," sent her back to Waterloo, and thence in a cab to Gough Square, where she arrived about midnight, suffering from a sense of self-importance, traces of which to ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... long, cannot be altogether omitted here. Neither individuals nor nations can perform their part well, until they understand and feel its importance, and comprehend and justly appreciate all the duties belonging to it. It is not to inflate national vanity, nor to swell a light and empty feeling of self-importance, but it is that we may judge justly of our situation, and of our own duties, that I earnestly urge upon you this consideration of our position and our character among the nations of the earth. It cannot be denied, but by those who would dispute against ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... then his attention fixed itself on his enemy-in-chief. There was no mistaking him. He was a big, lumpy fellow, fifteen years of age, with an untidy mouth, the spots of a premature adolescence and an air of heavy self-importance. When he spoke, the rest ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... have thought of disturbing than he would of strumming on the gorgeous grand piano inlaid with silver that ornamented his drawing-room. A change had passed over him. His swelling rotundity, suggestive generally of a bladder inflated to its extremest limits by excess of self-importance, appeared to be shrinking. I put the idea aside as mere fancy at the time, but it was fact; he became a mere bag of bones before he died. He was wearing an old pair of carpet slippers and smoking ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... secured; the expectant, but hope deferred; the bitterness depicted in waiting delegations on a mission of opposition bent; the gleam of gladness on success; homage to the influential—all these figure, strut or bemoan in the ratio of a self-importance or a dejected mien. There is no more humorous reading, or more typical, than the ups and downs of office-seekers. Sometimes it is that of William the "Innocent," and often that of William the "Croker." The trials of "an unsuccessful," ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... assumed a quality of mere bickering and she could even doubt whether Mrs. Pembrose wasn't justified in her attitude and wiser by her very want of generosity. She felt then something childish in the whole undertaking that otherwise escaped her, she was convicted of an absurd self-importance, she discovered herself an ignorant woman availing herself of her husband's power and wealth to attempt presumptuous experiments. In these moods of disillusionment, her mind went adrift and was driven to and fro from ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... not always even approach with it the mark of their ambition. But I would willingly, were it possible, obviate uncandid criticism, because to answer it is lost labor, and to receive it in silence has the appearance of stately reserve, and self-importance. ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Mrs. Sharp's earliest thoughts, the next morning, were given to Caterina whom she had not been able to visit the evening before, and whom, from a nearly equal mixture of affection and self-importance, she did not at all like resigning to Mrs. Bellamy's care. At half-past eight o'clock she went up to Tina's room, bent on benevolent dictation as to doses and diet and lying in bed. But on opening the door she found the bed smooth and empty. Evidently ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... him squarely in the eye. In Roger's own eyes there was the glint of his old humorous twinkle, and I knew that the young man's bustling self-importance ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... reader to understand why it is that a man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by. The Alps and the glaciers together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only remain within the influence of their sublime presence long enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Needham Farm from stagnating into anything like comfort. The two combatants, however, must have taken a certain joy in them, since they recurred with so much regularity. Hannah had won, of course, as the grim self-importance of her bearing amply showed. Louie had been forced to patch the house-linen as usual, mainly by the temporary confiscation of her Sunday hat, the one piece of decent clothing she possessed, and to which she clung with a feverish attachment—generally, indeed, sleeping with it ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... after many readings, because he will not put a single tone of success into the flow of natural utterance, to draw our attention to the triumph of the author, and jar with the all-important reality of his production! Wherever an author obtrudes his own self-importance, an unreality is the consequence, of a nature similar to that which we feel in the old moral plays, when historical and allegorical personages, such as Julius Caesar and Charity, for instance, are introduced ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... his old, balanced, easy life, with its little friendships and duties. How fantastic and unreal his aunt's theories seemed to him, reveries contrived just to gild the gaps of a broken life, a dramatisation of emptiness and self-importance. At every moment the face and figure of Maud came before him in a hundred sweet, spontaneous movements—the look of her eyes, the slow thrill of her voice. He needed her with all his soul—every fibre of his being cried out for her. And then the thought of being thus pitifully overcome, ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... shall live in my own room downstairs, where I can have the intimacy of the garden. But I shall appreciate it all the more from now and again losing the sense of intimacy for a while, and surveying it without the sense of one's own self-importance. ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... a more steely hue than his brother's, striking fire readily and showing all manner of flinty lights, who had a downright talent for mimicry, and a small share of juvenile self-importance, came in for regard of a more ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... conscious of an undercurrent of suspicion in the constable's manner. He was wroth with the man, but recognized that he had to deal with narrow-minded self-importance, so contrived ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... to sketch his own share in the expected conversation, a pleasant feeling of self-importance crept in, soothing to the wounds of the preceding week. Secretly Marsham knew that he had never yet made the mark in politics that he had hoped to make, that his abilities entitled him to make. The more he thought of it the more he realized that the coming half-hour might be of great significance ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... animals, including man, is selfishness. In man it reaches its highest form and becomes vanity, pride, and a ridiculous sense of self-importance. But man alone is conscious of its existence, character, and purpose; he alone encourages its rational development and suppresses the most evil of its abuses. The animal which would fight or kill from jealousy is moved by a selfish motive only. ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... incidents as it is well possible for the life of an individual to be— "The eventful life which I am about to record, from the hour in which I rose into existence on this planet, etc." Yet when, notwithstanding this warning example of self-importance before me, I review my own life, I cannot refrain from applying the same epithet to it, and with more than ordinary emphasis—and no private feeling, that affected myself only, should prevent me from publishing the same, (for write it I assuredly shall, should life and leisure be ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... let them pass, being in that mood of self-importance, by reason of my love and the service rendered by it, that I could have seen the whole posse led to the whipping-block with a relish, when suddenly from their tipsy throats came a shout of such import that my heart stood still. "Down with ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... should incline to suspect that she was the daughter of a poor parson, with the usual large family in inverse proportion to his means. That she unexpectedly made a good match with a very wealthy manufacturer who had raised himself; and that she was puffed up accordingly with a sense of self-importance." ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... success. Genius has no participation in his studies: his knowledge of Greek and Latin is grammatical and pedantic; he reads Livy, Tacitus, Sallust, Caesar, Xenophon, Thucydides, in their original language; boasts of his learning with a haughty mien and scornful look of self-importance, and thinks this school-boy exercise of memory, this mechanism of the mind, is to determine the line between genius and stupidity; and has never taken into consideration that the mere linguist, destitute of native powers, with his absurd parade of scholastic knowledge, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... are to be abolished, and we flung forth into chaos, a hurlyburly of jostling and splintering stars, whenever Robert Toombs or Robert Rhett, or any other Bob of the secession kite, may give a flirt of self-importance. The first and greatest benefit of government is that it keeps the peace, that it insures every man his right, and not only that, but the permanence of it. In order to this, its first requisite is stability; and this once firmly settled, the greater the ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... "O Ben Starr, you have won!" she had said, and had the thrill in her voice, the tremor of her bosom under its fall of lace, meant that her heart was touched? Modest or humble I had never been. The will to fight—the exaggerated self-importance, the overweening pride of the strong man who has made his way by buffeting obstacles, were all mine; and yet, walking there that morning in the high wind between the rolling broomsedge and the blood-red sumach, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... n't all, your honour," replied Joe, his face brightening and his self-importance evidently restored. "We are a forehanded lot, and we've got twenty half-barrels of powder ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... metronymic. It must not be supposed that this change occurred very suddenly. It may have taken many centuries to bring it about, but as the man learned his part in procreation and his power in society, he delighted in his self-importance to lord it over the woman and her children. The marriage relation ceased to be free and reciprocal. The wife no longer had a choice in marriage. Bought or captured, she was no longer wooed for a companion, but was valued according to her economic worth. As population pressed, ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... could at least do no harm, and she could give some advice. Perhaps she mingled it with too many excuses and lamentations at being forced to stay at home; at least, Theodora thought her fanciful, rejoicing in the self-importance of imaginary ill-health. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the least solicitude on my behalf, or the slightest sense that we were incurring danger in her service. She had not scrupled constantly to prefer her whims to the common advantage, and even safety; while her sense of self-importance had come to be so great, that she seemed to hold herself exempt from the duty of thanking any human creature. I could not deny that she was beautiful—indeed, I often thought, when watching her, of the day when I had seen her ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... of the cellar," vowed His Lordship; and I drank my peppermint with as much gusto and self-importance as any ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... professors there was the military instructor and drillmaster, Colonel Bull, a fat little man with a great deal of self-importance, who looked after the physical side of the boys' instruction, while the professors attended to the ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... assistance to the Infantry is frequently shown. After his training in England "NIGHT HAWK" was attached as an observer to a night-flying squadron in France, and he tells us of his adventures with no sense of self-importance but with an honest appreciation of their value to the general scheme of operations. He has also a keen eye for the humours of life, and can make his jest with most admirable brevity. "Doubtless," he says in a foreword, "the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... distinctions. He, after the fashion of all the false prophets who have deluded themselves and others, drew new faith in his own lie from the credulity of his disciples. His countenance, his voice, his gestures, indicated boundless self-importance. When he appeared in public he looked,—such is the language of one who probably had often seen him,—like Atlas conscious that a world was on his shoulders. But the airs which he gave himself only heightened ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... awful mystery, which feeling has been generated in him by the deep and awful respect for navigation that the layman has seen displayed by navigators. I have known frank, ingenuous, and modest young men, open as the day, to learn navigation and at once betray secretiveness, reserve, and self-importance as if they had achieved some tremendous intellectual attainment. The average navigator impresses the layman as a priest of some holy rite. With bated breath, the amateur yachtsman navigator invites one in to look at his ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... success of his hastily-formed scheme for the chastisement of their presumption. The household had looked for a merry time on the occasion of the wedding, but had not expected such a full cup of delight as had been pressed out for them betwixt the self-importance of the overweening yokels and the inventive faculties of Tom Fool. All the evening, one standing in any open spot of the castle might have heard, now on the one, now on the other side, renewed bursts of merriment ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... the sovereignty, it seems, is not to be hereditary. One view of their Fete of the 14th,[1] I suppose, is to draw money to Paris; and the consequence will be, that the deputies will return to the provinces drunk with independence and self-importance, and will commit fifty times more excesses, massacres, and devastations, than last year. George Selwyn says, that Monsieur, the King's brother, is the only man of rank from whom ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... that very real sense of proportion which was at the root of all his humour. 'Why doesn't God explain these things to a gentleman like me?' There, a profound habitual reverence of mind suddenly encounters with a ludicrous perception of his own momentary self-importance. The two electric opposites meet, and emit that ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... deformed in character. But thou, O Pritha, art born in a royal race, and thy beauty also is extraordinary. And then, O girl, thou art endued with every accomplishment. Do thou, therefore, O damsel, renouncing pride and haughtiness and a sense of self-importance, wait upon and worship the boon-giving Brahmana, and thereby attain, O Pritha, to an auspicious state! By acting thus, O auspicious and sinless girl, thou wilt surely attain to auspiciousness! But if on the contrary, thou stirest up the anger of this best of the twice-born ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... perennially appealing conception of things. It corresponds to primitive and inveterate tendencies in humanity and gratifies, under the guise of humility, our hungering for self-importance. The mediaeval thinker, however freely he might exercise his powers of logical analysis in rationalizing the Christian Epic, never permitted himself to question its general anthropocentric and mystical view of the world. The philosophic mystic assumes the ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... priest, and give him the right of dealing ex officio, not as a mere man among men. And the consciousness of such apparent superfluities, whether they be the expression of wealth or of hierarchy, of fashion or of caste, gives to their possessor that additional self-importance which is quite as much wanted by the ungainly or diffident moral man as the additional warmth of his more obviously needed raiment is by the poor, chilly, bodily human being. I will not enlarge upon the practical uses which recent ethnology has discovered ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... question that most of it is an expression of real feeling. All through the voyage these good people have been in great force, relating numberless yarns of their past experiences, more or less truthful in detail. But now their self-importance is overwhelming and superior to all considerations. Every headland, bay, or island that we pass is expatiated upon, and its especial story told, in which, I note, the narrator generally seems to have been the most prominent figure himself. No one is allowed to remain below, even for meals, scarcely ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... in number. An elderly woman, uncommonly stout, with a double chin and small, proud eyes and an air of extreme haughtiness and self-importance. An elderly man, her husband, very tall and uncommonly thin, so that his coat hangs loosely on his body; a short goatee, long, smooth hair, as if wet, reaching to his shoulders; eye-glasses; has a frightened; yet pedantic ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... only looked prettier than usual with her flushed cheeks; and so many things had been put into her nonsensical little head during the last two days, especially by her aunt's denunciations, that her sense of self-importance was very much heightened in consequence. She looked at the Miss Wentworths with a throb of mingled pride and alarm, wondering whether perhaps she might know more of them some day, if Mr Wentworth was really fond of her, as people ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... violence; and violence does not naturally produce the peaceful virtues. It produces courage, indeed, but physical rather than moral,—least of all, that spiritual courage which makes martyrs and saints. It makes boon companions, not friends. It gives exaggerated ideas of self-importance. It exalts the outward and material, not the spiritual and the real. The very tread of a military veteran is stately, proud, and conscious,—like that of a procession of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... let him look at the guinea-pigs being fed, and thus have pleased him. There was no harm in what he wanted to do. You should watch against a hectoring spirit, and mind the difference between a sacrifice of truth and principle, and one only of self-importance or of mere feeling. If a boy wants you to do wrong, then be firm as a rock and ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... at me and my Londoner's clothes, as, with no small feeling of self-importance, I pushed my way to the foot of the stone. The man who stood on it seemed to have been speaking some time. His words, like all I heard that day, were utterly devoid of anything like eloquence or imagination—a dull string of somewhat incoherent complaints, which derived their force ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... about him loose, fashionable and spick and span; his linen was irreproachable, his watch-chain was massive. In manner he was slow and, as it were, nonchalant, and at the same time studiously free and easy; he made efforts to conceal his self-importance, but it was apparent at every instant. All his acquaintances found him tedious, but said he was clever at ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... companies of people get sufficiently rich not to have to work they grow to like whatever will appeal to their vanity and self-importance. There is a halo round a title, and you can leave it to your children. A ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... maybe need it a' yet; the Vale are not beaten the noo; the Queen's man tak' anither goal before that occurs," and so they did. "Oh! a' say," remarked a born East-Ender, for whom we are perfectly certain the Clyde and Thistle, according to his self-importance at any rate, had played their best on Barrowfield and Beechwood, "look at that; it's no' fair to gie the Vale a free kick for that; it's the auld way; gie't ta the yin that mak's the maist noise." "Yes," said another, who looked every inch a dyer from the celebrated football county of Dumbarton, ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... thought me ill. I combined this in my mind with a speech of my nurse's that I had overheard, and which gave me the horrors at the time—"He's got the look! It's his poor ma over again!"—and I felt a sort of melancholy self-importance not uncommon with children who ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the greatest gravity, and evidently with an overwhelming sense of self-importance, to put the required questions, whilst we anxiously ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... love. I confess it shocks all my notions of propriety to see the sinner, even when he professes to be the most humble and penitent, thrust himself up ostentatiously, as if filled only with his own self-love and self-importance." ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... squatting humbly in the secret compartment: a fat little canvas bag, considerably soiled from much handling, such as is used by banks for coin, a sturdy, matter-of-fact, every-day sort of canvas bag, with nothing about it of hauteur, no air of self-importance or ostentation, to betray the fact that it was the ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... first, buen Cura," he said sturdily. And throwing back his shoulders he strutted about the room with the air of a plutocrat. With his bare feet, his soiled, flapping attire, and his swelling sense of self-importance he cut a ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... itself up to kiss him, while the white lips tried to speak his pardon. Sometimes Wilford was very sorry and full of remorse, knowing how Katy was suffering for his sin; and then, when he remembered her long refusal to pardon him, notwithstanding that he sued for it so earnestly, his self-importance was touched, and he felt she had no right to be so obstinate. He did not deserve it. He was a very kind, indulgent husband, who had raised her from the humblest position to the very highest, and she ought not to feel so indignant because he had kept from her an act which, after all, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... and Dennis with it—both in self-importance and in popularity. He went about the State making speeches, threatening the "shoddy aristocrats who want an emperor and a standing army ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... prefer to remain, as it were, incognito; and, pried; into as the seclusion of the new-comers is by all the curious, this reticence soon causes misconstructions and scandals. The petty gossip, the solemnities of self-importance, and the Phariseeism of a country neighborhood are very well portrayed, and, we fear, without any especial exaggeration. The story is told with unflagging spirit, and shows quick perceptions and a lively feeling for situations. Carol Lester's friendship for Oliver Floyd ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... of a stern and awesome dignitary of the Church, who immediately began to lecture the Abbot for his unseemly conduct the previous day, ordering him to undergo such penance as eventually, robbing him of half his size and all his self-importance, led to his resignation. ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... example."[20] While Montreal had a better water supply, it remained practically in darkness during the winter nights, through the lapsing in 1836 of its earlier municipal organization.[21] Strangers were said to find the provincial self-importance of its inhabitants irritating. At the other extreme of the province, Mrs. Jameson found fault with the citizens of Toronto for their social conventionalism. "I did not expect to find here," she wrote, ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... any head but his own. I cannot say that I perceived any unfavourable effect which they left on his mind. He retained the same simplicity which had struck me so forcibly when first I saw him in the country, nor did he seem to feel any additional self-importance from the number and rank of his new acquaintance. He walked with me in spring, early in the morning, to the Braid Hills, when he charmed me still more by his private conversation than he had ever done in company. He was ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... by ourselves, and uncontrouled by the world, this haughty self-importance acquired by time a strength, and by mutual encouragement a firmness, which Miss Beverley alone could possibly, I believe, have shaken! What, therefore, was my secret alarm, when first I was conscious of the force of her attractions, and found my mind wholly ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the King is guilty, recommends that they may instantly proceed to his trial. But, after all this tremendous eloquence, perhaps Mr. Paine had no malice in his heart: he may only be solicitous to preserve his reputation from decay, and to indulge his self-importance by assisting at the trial of a Monarch whom he may not wish to suffer.—I think, therefore, I am not wrong in asserting, that Vanity is ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... in all the self-importance of one who prided himself on the practical, "I do not see that Miss Clare has proposed any remedy for the state of things concerning the evil of which we are all agreed. What is to be done? What can I do ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... to guarantee five pounds a-piece against possible loss on the festival; and they bravely and blindly did so. The conductor of the largest Hanbridge choir, being appointed to conduct the preliminary rehearsals of the Festival Chorus, had an acute attack of self-importance, which, by the way, almost ended fatally a ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... He was reduced to the condition of an insect creeping on a "tas de boue," which Voltaire so vividly illustrated in Micromegas. But man is resourceful; [words in Greek]. Displaced, along with his home, from the centre of things, he discovers a new means of restoring his self-importance; he interprets his humiliation as a deliverance. Finding himself in an insignificant island floating in the immensity of space, he decides that he is at last master of his own destinies; he can fling away the old equipment ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... and he thought that Ackroyd would be the safest of confidants. In fact, though he spoke to Mrs. Butterfield as if he had conceived some deep plan of rascality, the man was not capable of anything above petty mischief. He liked to pose in secret as a sort of transpontine schemer; that flattered his self-importance; but his ambition did not seriously go beyond making trouble in a legitimate way. He did indeed believe that something scandalous was going on, and it would be all the better fun to have Ackroyd join him with malicious pleasure ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... John Walden, keenly alive to every touch of feeling, was more conscious of the change than many another man would have been who was not endowed with so quick and responsive a nature. He noted the quaint self-importance of Mrs. Tapple with a kindly amusement, not altogether unmixed with pain,—he watched regretfully the attempts made by the young girls of his little parish to trick themselves out with cheap finery imported from the town of ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... any social importance lived there. Even the physicians had their residences and offices in a more aristocratic locality. Upon the Main Street proper, that which formed the centre of the village, there were only shops and a schoolhouse and one or two mean public buildings. For a village of the self-importance of Fairbridge, the public buildings were very few and very mean. There was no city hall worthy of the name of this little city which held its head so high. The City Hall, so designated by ornate gilt letters upon ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of luxurious habits, or spreading opinions which I do not believe. And I may be the more emboldened in my refusal, when I consider how mixed, or how selfish, are often the motives of those who solicit me, and that the love of notoriety, or the gratification of a feeling of self-importance, or a fussy restlessness, or the craving for preferment is frequently quite as powerful an incentive of their activity as a desire to promote the objects explicitly avowed. There is, moreover, an important consideration, connected with this ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... natural enough for a poet to be vain," said the stranger. "The little worlds which he raises, the inspiration which he claims, may easily be productive of self-importance; though that inspiration is fabulous, it brings on egotism, which is always ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... procession seen in its passage through narrow streets. The spectator feels it to be fool's play, when he can distinguish the tedious commonplace of each man's visage, with the perspiration and weary self-importance on it, and the very cut of his pantaloons, and the stiffness or laxity of his shirt-collar, and the dust on the back of his black coat. In order to become majestic, it should be viewed from some vantage point, as it rolls ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... any bubble of self-importance pricked in this way. She was humbly thankful to have been able to save the little girl from the snake, and that the horrid creature had not harmed ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... said. "Certainly he does his best, but this is not his place." Nikitin wore the same preoccupied air as the others.—"Whatever you do," he said, "don't let Andrey know that I spoke to you." Andrey Vassilievitch, on his side with much nervousness and self-importance, told me that he thought that Nikitin was suffering from overwork and needed a complete rest. "You know, Ivan Andreievitch, he is really not at all well; I sleep in the same room. He talks in his sleep, fancies that he sees things ... very odd—although this hot weather ... I myself for the ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... enormous sense of self-importance at medical school, where they proudly endured the high pressure weeding out of any free spirit unwilling to grind away into the night for seven or more years. Anyone incapable of absorbing and regurgitating huge amounts of rote information; anyone with ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... Indians, Curly came to my tepee when we were camped on the Little Big Horn. The whole company were greatly agitated because an Indian possessed with the spirit of self-importance had gone to Washington to make war against other Indians in the tribe who were industrious and loyal home builders. They all made speeches around the campfire, asking my interposition at Washington. In his argument Curly said: "Which man would ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... Peter and the ostler as witnesses. There was a rush among some of the crowd who were nighest the scene to follow the prisoner into the room; and, sooth to say, the great Mountmeadow was much too enamoured of his own self-importance to be by any means a patron of close courts and private hearings; but then, though he loved his power to be witnessed, he was equally desirous that his person should be reverenced. It was his boast that he could keep a court of quarter sessions as quiet as a church; and now, when the crowd ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... all of these personal characteristics have nothing to do with Edison's position in the world of affairs. They show him to be a plain, easy-going, placid American, with no sense of self-importance, and ready at all times to have his mind turned into a lighter channel. In private life they show him to be a good citizen, a good family man, absolutely moral, temperate in all things, and of great charitableness to ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... abbess was full of self-importance, and much occupied with her position. After Agnes's taunts when they were both at St. Cyr—oh, long ago now!—it was delightful to be able to send her own carriage for her, and play at the old home games in the garden. But by-and-by the novelty ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... of administering laws he has vetoed, on the principle that they do not mean what he vetoed them for meaning, his delight in little tricks of low cunning,—in short, all the immoral and unreasonable acts of his administration have their central source in a passionate sense of self-importance, inflaming a mind of extremely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... its neighbourhood, it supports enough municipal and other dignitaries to set up an Imperial Court. Never was such wisdom—never such pompous solemnity. The Burgomeister of Bergsdorf was a great elephant of a man. He went abroad radiating self-importance. He perspired wisdom on the coldest day. The other officials imitated the Burgomeister in so far as their corporeal condition allowed. The cure only was excepted. He was a thin, spare man with an ascetic face and a great ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... lie in Sir Winterton's dogged honour and tender sensitiveness on the one hand, and on the other in that conscience of little Japhet's, stronger now in its alliance with hurt pride and outraged self-importance! And nobody could say that Quisante himself had had any part in it; he had spoken to nobody except Foster, and he had told Foster most plainly that he would have nothing to do with such a matter. There he lay, making his case, the case he could tell to all ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... to a remote antiquity. I question whether there are many Bible readers who have ever laboured through the list. Yet these family trees, as we may call them, were very precious to the Jews. They thought as much of long descent as my lord Noodle does now. It swelled them immeasurably in self-importance if they could trace their lineage back in unbroken line to one of the twelve patriarchs, or to one of those who came out of Egypt. And the historian ministers to this prejudice or vanity by diligently recording the whole ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... was not sure I liked his agreeable voice: it had a self-importance out of keeping with the humdrum nature of his story, as though a breeze engaged in shaking out a table-cloth should have fancied itself inflating a banner. But this criticism may have been a mere mark of my own fastidiousness, for the man seemed a simple fellow, satisfied with his middling fortunes, ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... has ever heard it, can forget the sounds of the various notes with which these little people intonated their 'Aleph, Zubbin ah, Zair a, Paiche oh,' as they moved backwards and forwards in their recitations? Who can forget the self-importance of the schoolmaster, who was generally a grey-bearded, dry, old man, who had no other means of proving his superiority to the scholars than by making more noise than ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... kept an intellectual person from dwelling too sorely upon the sense of ineffectiveness; as an addiction not more serious in its effects upon character than the practice of playing golf, a thing in which a leisurely person might immerse himself, and cultivate a decent sense of self-importance. But Amroth showed me that the danger of it lay in the tendency to consider the intellect to be the basis of all life and progress. "The intellectual man," he said, "is inclined to confuse his own acute perception of the movement of thought with the originating impulse of that movement. But of ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... try. Astyages consented. Cyrus then took the goblet of wine, and went out. In a moment he came in again, stepping grandly, as he entered, in mimicry of the Sacian, and with a countenance of assumed gravity and self-importance, which imitated so well the air and manner of the cup-bearer as greatly to amuse the whole company assembled. Cyrus advanced thus toward the king and presented him with the cup, imitating, with the grace and dexterity natural to childhood, all the ceremonies which he had seen the cup-bearer ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... at Melford my head was full of painting and self-importance; and for the first week or so, Mrs. Rushworth, my subject, occupied the centre of my stage. She was a placid lady of sixty, whose hair, once golden, had turned a flossy white, and whose apple cheeks, though still retaining ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Above all, he was glad to escape from the clear-sighted, critical eyes of Madame de Nailles. On the other hand, to be sent off to the girls' corner, after being insulted by being told he had not grown, hurt his sense of self-importance. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... example, Mr. Delville never opens his lips without some allusion to his own birth and station ; or Mr. Briggs, without some allusion to the hoarding of money; or Mr. Hobson, without betraying the self-indulgence and self-importance of a purseproud upstart; or Mr. Simkins, without uttering some sneaking remark for the purpose of currying favour with his customers; or Mr. Meadows, without expressing apathy and weariness of life; ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... will applaud him, a man may console himself for downright misfortune or for the pittance he gets from the two sources of human happiness already discussed: and conversely, it is astonishing how infallibly a man will be annoyed, and in some cases deeply pained, by any wrong done to his feeling of self-importance, whatever be the nature, degree, or circumstances of the injury, or by ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Blake dropped one of his rings up-stairs," says Rosanna; "and I have been into the library to give it to him." The girl's face was all in a flush as she made me that answer; and she walked away with a toss of her head and a look of self-importance which I was quite at a loss to account for. The proceedings in the house had doubtless upset all the women-servants more or less; but none of them had gone clean out of their natural characters, as Rosanna, to all appearance, had ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... patronize not unfrequently presents an object for the patronage superior to the would-be patron; for the temptation is one to which slight persons chiefly are exposed; it affords an outlet for the vague activity of self-importance. Few have learned that one is of no value except to God and other men. Miss Palmer worshipped herself, and therefore would fain be worshipped—so dreamed of a friendship de haut en ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... paramount interest. The eccentricities and even the obliquities of great minds merit the scrutiny of the metaphysician and the moralist, and they derive a peculiar interest from the state of society in which they are exhibited. Had Cardan and Cornelius Agrippa lived in modern times, their vanity and self-importance would have been checked by the forms of society, and even if their harmless pretensions had been displayed, they would have disappeared in the blaze of their genius and knowledge. But nursed in ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... of such a masculine virtue—that women cannot put their private feelings in their pocket and act in subordination to the good of the whole—that they cannot sink their self-importance and their petty jealousies—that they cannot suppress themselves for a cause. Schools like ours have done a great deal for the mental education of women. I think they will do something more valuable still if they show that through their ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... gossip is often turned into solemn verdicts. Young women are seldom seen there; when they come it is to seek approbation of their conduct,—a consecration of their self-importance. This supremacy granted to one house is apt to wound the sensibilities of other natives of the region, who console themselves by adding up the cost it involves, and by which they profit. If it so happens that there is no fortune large enough to keep open house in this way, the big-wigs ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... dear friends, the shape of this unwillingness is changed but the fact of it remains. There are two or three features of what I take to be the plain Gospel of Jesus Christ which grate very much against all self-importance and self-complacency, and operate very largely, though not always consciously, upon very many amongst us. I just run them over, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... guess whence these unkindly feelings originated, but they felt that they had not deserved them, yet the consciousness of their own insignificance sadly militated against every idea of self-love or self-importance, and taught them a plain and useful moral lesson. Although they made the most charitable allowances for the Eboe people, they were, notwithstanding, obliged to consider them the most inhospitable tribe, as well as the most covetous and uncivil, that they were ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish |
