"Supercilious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has suffered at the hands both of its admirers and its enemies. Injudicious praise, no less than supercilious contempt, has reacted unfavorably on the fame of our poets. Again and again has some minor versifier been hailed as the "American Keats" or the "American Burns." Really excellent poets, though distinctly poets of second rank, have been elevated amid the blare of critical trumpets to the company ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... toward her, and she immediately moved toward her seat, saying, "I want to put on my burnous." No sooner had she reached it, than Mr. Lush was there, and had the burnous in his hand: to annoy this supercilious young lady, he would incur the offense of forestalling Grandcourt; and, holding up the garment close to Gwendolen, he said, "Pray, permit me?" But she, wheeling away from him as if he had been a muddy hound, glided on to the ottoman, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... of them, from my post of observation behind the kitchen door, and he did appear so ridiculous with his gold eye-glasses, looking as solemn as an owl, and glancing around with that expression of supercilious curiosity, as though he expected to find us all wild Indians, ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... This supercilious attitude was not shared by the simple-minded diggers, who found Maidens, Beware! very much to their taste. But nothing else could have been expected, for it offered good measure of all the elements that ensure success every time they are employed. Thus, the hero is wrongfully charged ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... into two classes, the indolent and the supercilious, and shall accordingly address them upon the present occasion. To the former I have nothing more to say, than to refer them back to the latter part of Chapter I., Part I. where, my dear ladies, you will find an ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... that autumn's here, And the leaves curl up in sheer Disgust, And the cold rains fringe the pine, You really must Stop that supercilious whine—- Or you'll be shot, by some ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... company he preserved the most rigid silence, and a haughty scornful demeanour; which was so much the more disagreeable because there was nothing in his behaviour I could actually take hold of to find fault with: although his whole conduct was insolent and supercilious to the highest degree. His mother was very much agitated at receiving him on his arrival; if he felt any such agitation he certainly did not show it. He made her a very low and formal bow when he kissed her hand; and, when I held out mine, put both his hands behind ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Chester) tries to staunch the wound in his breast with his handkerchief; has his snuffbox on the earth beside him, and looks at Mr. Haredale (who stands with his sword in his hand, looking down on him) with most supercilious hatred, but polite to the last. Mr. Haredale is more ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... declared with much solemnity that he could already detect the smell of the salt sea air. They had their quarrels of course. It pleased a certain young lady to treat the south coast of England with much supercilious contempt. You would have imagined from her talk that there was something criminal in one's living even within twenty miles of the bleak downs, the shabby precipices, and the muddy sea which, according to her, were the only recognizable ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... refined, supercilious face of another boy towered near—Lionel Arnold, a born litterateur, and an artist—he looked more confident than most. It seemed to the girl he felt sure of being taken; sure that his name and position and, more than ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... a peculiarly provoking way. He was amused and gratified to find that he had the power to annoy his oblivious, supercilious hostess, if he could not impress her; though he would have preferred to ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... not one to be daunted. He had set a certain task before himself, and could not easily be turned aside. He thought bitterly of the ingratitude with which he had been treated. He brought before his mind the "stony British stare," the supercilious smile, and the impertinent and insulting expression of Hawbury's face as he sat on his saddle, with his chin up, stroking his whiskers, and surveyed him for the first time. All these things combined to stimulate the hate ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... was bad enough, but its effect was intensified by the demeanour of the Lieutenant-Governor and several military officers who were in attendance upon him. It seemed to the deputation that those gentlemen regarded them with supercilious impertinence; as a something which viceroyalty must be content, for the nonce, to endure, but as being altogether beyond the pale of their sympathies or interests. Nothing could have been in worse taste than such conduct as this, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... letter through calmly, without a tremor in her voice. There was a supercilious curl of contempt on her lips as she finished. She gave vent to neither grief nor rage, for she was made of sterner stuff than those of her sex who faint and give way under stress of disappointment. A change had come over her whole being, one of ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... would not have kenneled. Men and women were there who cursed and fought for the scanty, worm-eaten food that was thrown them. Some wore gyves: they were heavy upon the wrists and ankles of the man of his vision. He saw a face looking down upon this man, a handsome supercilious face, with insolent amusement in the languid eyes and in the curves of the lips. The hatches were battened down upon the cargo of misery, and the ship with its brutal captain and its handful of gold-laced, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... would introduce me to a friend who had. I accordingly followed him, "at the point of the stick," until we reached another mud hovel, where we found the lady of the house sitting in her porch working, and a supercilious-looking gentleman reclining at ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... departure, in the twilight of the morning, I ascended the vehicle with three men and two women, my fellow travellers. It was easy to observe the affected elevation of mien with which every one entered, and the supercilious servility with which they paid their compliments to each other. When the first ceremony was despatched, we sat silent for a long time, all employed in collecting importance into our faces, and endeavouring to strike reverence and submission ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... meantime had made its way into a back court, accompanied by the tyrant, the pedant and Scapin, who superintended the unloading of the various articles that would be needed—a strange medley, which the supercilious servants of the chateau, in their rich liveries, handled with a very lofty air of contempt and condescension, feeling it quite beneath their dignity to wait upon a band of strolling players. But they dared not rebel, for the marquis had ordered it, and he was a severe master, as well ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... died out like the chiming of a great bell receding into immeasurable distance. The supercilious tones of the professor had yielded to the sweetness and the light of the Greater Mind whose instrument he had momentarily become. It was charged at the last with a golden resonance that seemed to echo down vast spaceless corridors beyond the furthermost outposts ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... weakness; to make them recognize the State as a multiplication of their own families, and patriotism as the broadening of their love of home; to make them see that that mother will be most respected whose son does not, when a downy beard is grown, suddenly tower above her in the supercilious enjoyment of an artificial superiority—a superiority which consists simply, as Figaro says, in his having taken the trouble to be born; to make them see, finally, that in the highest exercise of all the powers with which God has endowed her, woman can no ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... often-battled, never-ending struggle of it be forgotten? 'It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' Of all acts, is not, for a man, repentance the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were the same supercilious consciousness of no sin; that is death; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact,—is dead; it is 'pure,' as ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... Herschel that he roof his stellar universe and give us back Plato's solid firmament of glassy spheres? Would they command Darwin from the grave and bid him blot out his geological time, give us back a paltry few thousand years? Oh, the supercilious doubters! They ever strive to clip the upward daring wings of ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... fright, Hugo decided; that's what she wanted to bring her to heel. And before very long he'd see that she got it. She shouldn't shelter herself for ever behind that supercilious beast, Ledgard. Hugo was quite ready to have been pleasant to Jan and to have met her more than half-way if she was reasonable, but since she had chosen to bring Ledgard into it, she should pay. After all, she was ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... your article on Mr. Stuart Mill, for which I thank you. I read it with the greatest interest, and congratulate you on your vigorous refutation of that supercilious and hollow materialism. I am glad, too, to see that you have profited by M. Dumas's last discourse on M. de la Rive. You have done well to record these declarations of a permanent secretary of the Academy of Sciences. Unfortunately, M. Dumas's character has not the ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... whose position is problematical. Richard's pose of insolent indifference would have been beautiful in a gentleman who counted his fortune by millions; in a dollarless beggar who lived off alms it was detestable. Wherefore, the town, so far as Richard encountered it, left our silent, supercilious one to himself, which neglect dove-tailed with his humor and was the precise lonely thing he sought. This gave still further edge to the public's disregard; no one likes you to accept with grace what is ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... he was a "stuck up smart-Aleck," and sooner or later he'd get a piece of her mind that would "take him down a couple of pegs." Miss Miller, while in complete accord with Flora's views, was content to speak of him as "supercilious." ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... town and its princely environs, particularly on the Moncaliere side. Our principal amusement was derived from Zuchelli's masterly performance at the Opera Buffa. The plot of the piece turned partly on the discomfitures and discontents of a supercilious English dandy, which part this singer performed with an immoveable countenance, which kept us in a roar of laughter, his grave rich toned bass voice giving a double effect to the solemn absurdity of the character. For the sake of avoiding open offence to our countrymen, the hero was ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... heart was hot with rage, and the first impulse was to vent it upon this nearest of the supercilious Melroses. This was all Alice had wanted then, in sending that little overture of friendship: to tell the little nobody that she was nothing to the great family, after all, to prevent her from ever boasting even an illicit relationship! It was for a formal snub, a definite ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... Mr. Hamlin. He read the letter, and found the inclosure contained a twenty-dollar gold-piece. A half-supercilious smile passed over his face at this revelation of the inadequate emoluments of literature and the trifling inducements to crime. Indeed, I fear the affair began to take a less serious moral complexion ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... Horizon with a touching, naive attention; she wiped his face with a handkerchief, waved upon him with a fan, adjusted his cravat every minute. And his face at these times became laughably supercilious and stupidly self-conceited. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... and they say her husband ain't so rich, and she's horrid to her servants—don't give them cake. I don't care if I lost her head to do! I'm like that, as you know, particular when I'm particular, but—well—just supercilious and negligee when it don't count! Good gracious! [Laughing.] Oh, here's a letter for you I brought up for Lizzie. It's from the Phillypeenys and has a special delivery on. [GEORGIANA takes letter and opens it and reads it.] That's how it come at this hour. Some folks do have ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... can prove a clear alibi, for he slept at the foot of my bed all night." Thus exonerated, the Peril passed by the line of chained dogs, bumping into them in a perfectly unnecessary manner, and emitting supercilious growls that in themselves would have been sufficient grounds for instant death if Pete Bernard's huskies could have acted ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... French camp, he assumed the character of a man of family, who being disgusted at some supercilious treatment he had met with in the German service, and at the same time ambitious of carrying arms under the banners of France, took the opportunity of retreating by stealth from his friends, accompanied only by one with whom he could intrust his intention. In ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Brooks was quite sure then that she was different. He realized too that her teeth were perfect, and her complexion, notwithstanding its pallor, was faultless. She would have been strikingly good-looking but for her mouth, and that—was it a discontented or a supercilious curl? At any rate it disappeared when ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... vote to the effect that the Parliamentary representatives, who were members of that body, should withdraw from the British Parliament. It was proposed by Mr. Davis and received Mr. O'Connell's entire approval. Though at first sneered at, it had a stunning effect. The supercilious British Commons, who would have answered the just remonstrance of the Irish Repealers with a jeer, shrank from the consequences of legislating for the country in the absence of the men, whose efforts, if present, they would not hesitate to scoff at. The disturbing influence of the resolution ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... unfrequently under the title of a lady, wear the heart of an underbred snob. Having no natural dignity, they think to supply its place with arrogance. They mistake noisy bounce for self-possession, and supercilious rudeness as the sign of superiority. They encourage themselves in sleepy stupidity under the impression that they are acquiring aristocratic "repose." They would appear to have studied "attitude" from the pages of the London Journal, coquetry ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... chuckled, and urged Jason on, in the hope of irritating Dirck; but Dirck smoked through it all, with an indifference that proved how much he really despised the critic. I was the only one who resented this supercilious ignorance; but even I was often more disposed to laugh than ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... expressed something very like contempt. At this period, she had no patience with self-satisfied mediocrity. She afterwards learned patience and unlearned contempt; but at the time of which I write, she seemed, and was to the multitude, a haughty and supercilious person,—while to those whom she loved, she was all the more ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... insults made him furious; the stormy browbeating of the woman he loved set him a-tingle with the strongest desire he had ever known—a desire to fling himself upon this sneering wretch and vindicate his manhood by battle. His hands crawled in their restraint, in their lust to batter upon that supercilious face. But he dare not. He knew that an outbreak on his part would mean the death of their ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... manners, for they were even then more English than French. Though going through all due form, he always seemed to respect himself too much to let any one be supercilious with him; and however she might begin at a vast distance, she always ended by talking to him just as if he were, as she called it, our equal. As if he were not infinitely the superior of the hundreds of trumpery little apes of nobles who strutted about the galleries of the Louvre, ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an active coadjutor in me?" said Ramorny, in the same supercilious tone as before. "But know, the artisan fellow is too low in degree to be to me either the object of hatred or of fear. Yet he shall not escape. We hate not the reptile that has stung us, though we might shake it off the wound, and tread upon it. I know the ruffian of old as a stout man at ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... anybody get ahead of me. I had all the assurance of a man double my years and an easy way of making acquaintances that was destined to stand me in good stead, but I do not wish to be understood as admitting that my manners were offensive or that I was in any degree supercilious. I was simply a good fellow who had always enjoyed the comradeship of other good fellows, and as a result felt reasonably sure that the rest of the world would treat him kindly. Moreover, I could dissemble without difficulty and, if occasion arose, could give the impression of ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... the wing quills had been taken out, and its gestures on being liberated were most absurd, and although originating from fright, were much allied to pride, its head reclining on its neck, the latter curved, and the feet lifted high into a stately walk, while the crest was disposed in a most supercilious manner. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... characters, they must be painted in fainter colors—they should be suggested rather than presented in detail. It might be well to give a definite gesture to the Elephant—say, a characteristic movement with his trunk—a scowl to the Tiger, a supercilious and enigmatic smile to the Camel (suggested by Kipling's wonderful creation). But if a gesture were given to each of the animals, the effect would become monotonous, and the minor characters would crowd the foreground of the picture, impeding ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... reprehensible conduct must be carried on so secretly as to elude the college authorities. Those disposed to do evil represent only a very small proportion of the great body of students, but these give occasion for some supercilious and conceited correspondent of the public press severely to criticise the college government, and to give gross caricatures and exaggerated statements of the mischief done by this small percentage of students, and then include the entire academic ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... the affectation of a supercilious indifference, he smiled haughtily, and gave a look of ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... but his heart was true, and his arm was strong. Compared with Mr. Belcher, with all his wealth, he was nobility personified. Compared with the sordid men around her, with whom he would be an object of supercilious contempt, he seemed like a demigod. His eccentricities, his generosities, his originalities of thought and fancy, were a feast to her. There was more of him than she could find in any of her acquaintances—more that was fresh, piquant, stimulating, and vitally appetizing. ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... that was over, I did much better. My new mistress happily proved to be all she seemed to be, when, with her husband, she met me at{111} the door, with a most beaming, benignant countenance. She was, naturally, of an excellent disposition, kind, gentle and cheerful. The supercilious contempt for the rights and feelings of the slave, and the petulance and bad humor which generally characterize slaveholding ladies, were all quite absent from kind "Miss" Sophia's manner and bearing toward me. She had, in truth, never been a slaveholder, but had—a thing ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... of the cord with which they had been tied and managed to put up a very fair imitation of being bound good and hard. When the young man entered the tent he stood over them for a moment with a supercilious ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... morsel of parchment that was at length produced; but the instant the supercilious page read the name scrawled upon it his attitude changed from ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... of wresting a living from the soil broadened and deepened until it assumed alluring proportions. Farming became a conundrum worthy of the best brain, and one at which the supercilious could ill afford to scoff. Martin found himself giving to it the full strength both of his ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... quickly, and his face began to flush, and grew the deeper in tint as he noticed a supercilious, mocking smile playing upon the visitor's lips. "Serge is a very true, honest fellow, and thought he ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... the image of the swarthy, supercilious, be-diamonded woman who sat that memorable night in the minister's box, claiming as husband the listless handsome man at her side; and as she pictured the dismay which would follow the sudden rending of the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... verses to their criticism? For myself, I am free to say that I have no patience with satirists. I never knew a just one. I never heard of a fair one. They are a mean, malicious, murdering tribe,—they are a supercilious, dogmatical, envious, suspicious company,—knocking down their fellow-creatures in the name of Virtue for their own gratification,—mere Mohawks, kept by family influence out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... its place, whether it be the robe d' interieur which she is to wear at breakfast, her robe de ville for calling, or her robe de soiree. True it is that serious musicians are apt to wear a somewhat supercilious expression at mention of her music and to pronounce it clever rather than deep, yet it is equally true that it takes its place among the best salon pieces of the day and gains value if only from the fact that this bright French woman ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... debts, could vote for governor and other State officials. The laws were so arranged as effectually to disfranchise those who had no property. In his "Reminiscenses" Dr. John W. Francis tells of the prevalence for years in New York of a supercilious class which habitually sneered at the demand for political equality of the leather-breeched mechanic with his few shillings ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... J. Preston Peters from a supercilious scooper-up of random scarabs to what might be called a genuine scarab fan. It does not matter what a man collects; if Nature has given him the collector's mind he will become a fanatic on the subject of whatever ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the proud intellectual character of the systems encountered respectively by the ancient and by the modern Church, there are remarkable parallels. The supercilious pride of Brahminism, or the lofty scorn of Mohammedanism, is quite equal to that self-sufficient Greek philosophy in whose eyes the Gospel was the merest foolishness. And the immovable self-righteousness of the ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... the married lady who Petrarch, the poet, wasted his sonnets upon, and was treated in fact as we were told by the "oldest inhabitant" of Avignon, with supercilious contempt. ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... the chief waves off with aristocratic hauteur, until he suddenly recollects that his humble countryman has a vote at the elections; then he stops, enters into a brief conversation, examines the kitful of fruit through his glasses with supercilious disdain, but eventually purchases a chunk of melon, and goes on his way ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... a leading member of the opposition—to thunder forth accusations against men in power; to show up the worst side of everything that is produced; to pick holes in every coat; to be indignant, sarcastic, jocose, moral, or supercilious; to damn with faint praise, or crush with open calumny! What can be so easy as this when the critic has to be responsible for nothing? You condemn what I do, but put yourself in my position and do the reverse, and then see if I ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... not to abuse him, the patience to read, and if possible to understand him! Point out his blemishes, correct his blunders, castigate his faults; it is your duty,—he himself will have reason to thank you. But do not approach him with arrogance or a supercilious coldness; do not, if your knowledge be less than his, seek to mask your ignorance with the deformity of conceit; do not treat him as a criminal or as a dunce, unless he happens really to be one. Above all, do not, by dint of judging, vitiate your faculty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... low, and mean in their own eyes, and they esteem each other better than themselves; whereas they who at all look to, or depend upon, their own righteousness for their clothing and justification before God, always look down with an air of supercilious contempt upon others who they think are not so righteous as themselves. Lord, hide self-righteous pride from my heart, and sink me into the depth of humility, that I may ever glory in Thee, in whom I am perfectly righteous!—(Mason). See also ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... The supercilious tone and grand manner nettled Fanny, and it wasn't "brooch day;" she stood up to her lofty cousin like a little game-cock. "I know this," said she, with heightened cheek, and flashing eyes and a voice of steel, "you will never get Mr. Edward Severne ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... have found it practically impossible to get into touch with the farmers of the neighborhood without becoming more or less of a farmer myself, and learning by actual experience what the life is like. One man was so openly supercilious when he found out that I did not know how to milk, that Mrs. Burke, who is nothing if not practical, ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... dishonour.—Have not some generals, from England, treated us like servants, nay, more like slaves than like Britons?—Have we not been under the most ignominious contribution, the most abject submission, the most supercilious insults of some custom-house officers? Have we not been trifled with, browbeaten, and trampled on, by former governors, in a manner which no King of England since James the Second has dared to indulge towards his subjects? Have we not raised up one family, placed in them ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... had fogs in London occasionally somewhat denser than in Paris, he had not fallen into the error,—which it is thought heresy to dispute,—that, at Brighton, Richmond, or Windsor, the blue sky is never seen. A very supercilious man who sat near him, annoyed at his praises of England, and his raptures at the Tunnel,—that great object of foreign admiration,—endeavoured to silence him by pronouncing that London had no monuments, and was not half as big as Paris; for, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... Cura, nevertheless, on finding that his supercilious scepticism had not proved so infectious among us as he expected and that we were rather vexed than vacillating, offered to procure us guides in the course of a day or two, who were familiar with many parts of the sierra, and who, for good pay, he doubted not, would flatter our expectations ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... from Lessways Street into the Oldcastle Road, on her way to the centre of the town, she experienced almost exactly the intense excitement of the reckless and supercilious child in quest of its dinner. The only difference was that the recent reconciliation had inspired her with a certain negligent compassion for her mother, with a curious tenderness that caused her to ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... door, and with a second yawn she repassed him, and returned to lie at the feet of the fat old gendarme. The absurd little drama of coquetry and worship went on until the old fellow arose with a friendly bon jour, to me, and a whistle to Lil, who followed him with a supercilious nose in the air. The despised Schwartz stood a while, and then set out after her at a ridiculous three-legged run, but before he had gone ten yards he stopped short, looked after the retreating fair in silence, and then walked off ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... as dead, then? In the soul of Queen Sophie and those she can influence, it lives flame-bright; but with all others it has fallen into a very dim state. Friedrich Wilhelm is still privately willing, perhaps in a degree wishful; but the delays, the supercilious neglects have much disgusted him; and he, in the mean while, entertains those new speculations. George II., never a lover of the Prussian Majesty's nor loved by him, has been very high and distant ever since his Accession; offensive ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... preface is that of one who wished to have it supposed, that he was writing concerning a subject rather beneath his notice, and only felt himself called forth to do so by the dogmatism of those who laid down confident rules or laws in matters so trifling. This affectation of supercilious censure appears deeply to have provoked Dryden, and prompted the acrimony of the following Defence, which he prefixed to a second edition of the Indian Emperor published in 1668, probably shortly after the offence had been given. The angry friends were ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... leaves the rest to Euripides. Real life is the grist to his mill. It is clear enough, however, that the times are against him. Every year more restrictions; Euripides with his priggishness; Socrates with his books and his moonshine, and his supercilious ways: never resenting his (Aristophanes') fun, nor seeming even to notice it[40], not condescending to take exception to any but the 'tragedians;' as if he, the author of the 'Birds,' was a mere comic poet!" Then follows ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... It was a wonder none of the boats were struck as they left the ship. They, however, at length succeeded in getting on board the Anaconda. Commander Allport, who was standing on deck, received Adair with a supercilious air. He had been many years a lieutenant, and his temper had been considerably soured before he had got his promotion; indeed, some of those whom he had known as midshipmen were now admirals, and he seemed to take especial pleasure in acting in a dictatorial manner towards ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... beard apparently had never yet known the touch of barber's razor or Delilah's shears. So that the cutting speech which quivered on her ready tongue died upon her lips, and she contented herself with receiving his stammering apology with supercilious eyelids and the gathered skirts of uncontamination. When she re-entered the schoolroom, her eyes fell upon the azaleas with a new sense of revelation; and then she laughed, and the little people all laughed, and they were all unconsciously ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... to get up some mild excitement with the bishop, but the bishop had been too plain spoken and sincere for her. The Primeros had been odious; the Hepworths stupid; the Longestaffes,—she had endeavoured to make up a little friendship with Lady Pomona,— insufferably supercilious. She had declared to Henrietta 'that ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... well. I am glad, too, that my children live in a climate favorable to labor, and are not born to be waited upon. But I am ashamed of those who erect these things into an invidious comparison, and with a supercilious, reproachful spirit. God, who made us of one blood, has fixed the bounds of our habitations. I love these Southerners as I never loved new acquaintances before. But I prefer a state of society free from slavery: yet this makes me love those to whom ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... different woman. She was an American, of course, but probably against her will. Her name was Osbourne and she was from San Francisco. She spoke good French and was an artist. One of the Stevensons sneezed; the other took a lofty and supercilious attitude of indifference. It was tacitly admitted that the woman should be allowed to remain, her presence being a reminder to Siron of remissness, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... a reverent attitude during prayer. The theme, too, was one that gave little room for skepticism. It was the story of Zaccheus, and story-telling was Moore's strong point. The thing was well done. Vivid portraitures of the outcast, shrewd, converted publican and the supercilious, self-complacent, critical Pharisee were drawn with a few deft touches. A single sentence transferred them to the Foothills and arrayed them in cowboy garb. Bill was none too sure of himself, but Hi, with delightful winks, was indicating Bruce as the Pharisee, to the ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... of these remarks, for after helping the girls to their seats, he had gone to cast off the cable which Stumpy was hauling in. But Leopold did not like Charley Redmond, for the young gentleman was a person of ten times as much importance, in his own estimation, as his father. He was supercilious, and, unlike the rest of the party, looked down upon the boatman, and everybody else ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... saw the move, glanced at the butt of the automatic where it protruded from its holster, and smiled. Then he turned and raising his great bow, fitted an arrow and drew the shaft far back. His warriors, supercilious smiles upon their faces, stood silently watching him. His bow was the longest and the heaviest among them all. A mighty man indeed must he be to bend it; yet Al-tan drew the shaft back until the stone point touched his left forefinger, and he did it with consummate ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Scotland would have been ashamed to offer to Charles the Second. They left their native land in search of freedom, and found it in a desert. Divided as they are into a thousand forms of policy and religion, there is one point in which they all agree: they equally detest the pageantry of a king and the supercilious hypocrisy ...
— English Satires • Various
... companions had broken with all the previous conceptions of decorum, but they had used their newly found liberty to enslave themselves still further with the idea of man-conquest. Officers—callow, heroic, squint-eyed, supercilious, superb, of any and every Allied country—officers were the quarry, and they the hunters. To love or not to love? Their talks, their thoughts, their lives concerned little else. They fought for the attentions of men like starving sparrows ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... exclaimed Eben to himself, with a quiet madness of vituperation—entirely unconscious of any taint of falsity or injustice. "He makes no effort beyond the easy things of self-indulgence, yet because he has a supercilious charm, he parades through life seizing its prizes! Women love him—men praise him—and every step is ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... between me and them—a sizar was not a proper associate for the favourites of fortune! But there was one young man, a year younger myself, of high birth, and the heir to considerable wealth, who did not regard me with the same supercilious insolence as the rest; his very rank, perhaps, made him indifferent to the little conventional formalities which influence persons who cannot play at football with this round world; he was the wildest youngster in the university—lamp-breaker—tandem-driver—mob-fighter—a very devil in short—clever, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and camp-followers of every nation, and officers of all grades of character; and could she bear herself so wisely and loftily in all trials as to awe the impertinent, and command the respect of the supercilious, so that she might be free to come and go at her will, and do what should seem good to her? Or, if she failed to maintain a character proof against even inuendoes, would she not break the bridge over which any successor would have to pass? These ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... muslin frock, open at the throat, and held together by a brooch with a great green stone. She wore no hat, and her wonderful hair seemed to have caught the sunlight in its meshes. Her eyebrows were a little raised; her expression was a little supercilious, faintly inquisitive. Already she had looked past Arnold. Her eyes were fixed upon the girl ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Lady Jenkins, who is sitting on the sofa, and tells her the bracelet has been found, and I shut the door. But there's a great deal, you know, in the tone in which I announce her. I have to do it in an apparently supercilious but really admiring tone, to show that all the servants think Miss Vavasour had taken the bracelet, but that I am certain it isn't true. Frank Luscombe, it seems, used to say the words without any expression ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... great Ranunculus to loose the binding chain of concupiscence, heaving the multitudinous aquacity upon the heads of this wicked and sententious generation, whelming these diametrical scoffers in a supercilious Constantinople!" ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... the old supercilious contempt for the "Yankee" and all his ways. "God's Englishman" no more loves an American citizen now than in 1846 when he seriously contemplated an invasion of the United States, and the raising of the negro-slave population against his ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... preliminary to efficient action of any kind, and indeed the basis of all fruitful philosophy. But in criticism this instinct can only be satisfied intelligently and soundly by a consideration of everything appealing to consideration, and not at all by heated and wilful, or superior and supercilious, exclusions. Catholicity of appreciation is the secret of critical felicity. To follow the line of least resistance, not to take into account those elements of a problem, those characteristics of a subject, to which, superficially and ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... manifested an uneasiness at every such rencontre;—and that it could not endure forever, another gentleman, without so much reason, congratulated himself,—Mr. Frederic Heath, the confidential clerk of Day, Knight, and Company,—a rather supercilious specimen, quite faultlessly got up, who had accompanied her from New York at her father's request, and who already betrayed every symptom of the suitor. Meanwhile, Mrs. McLean's little women clamorously demanded and obtained a share of her attention,—although ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... in the center aisle and half shut her eyes, as if looking for something or somebody, but when she distinguished Gervaise she went toward her with a haughty, insolent air and supercilious smile and finally established herself only a short distance ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... the rainbow. And all through the Union their glossy black faces and gleaming white teeth shed a kind of dusky radiance over the traveller's path. Who but can recall with gratitude the expansive geniality and reassuring smile of the white-coated negro waiter, as compared with the supercilious indifference, if not positive rudeness, of his pale colleague? And what will ever efface the mental kodak of George (not Sambo any more) shuffling rapidly into the dining-room, with his huge flat palm inverted high over his head and bearing a colossal tray heaped up with good things ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... anti-Southern. His manners toward Southern men, so bitter are his feelings, are often cold and reserved; and nothing but his instinct and refinement as a gentleman, which he is in every respect, saved him from sometimes being supercilious; acute in intellect, cultured, trained to the highest expression of his powers, quick in his resentments and combative in temperament, we certainly expected no quarter from his hands. But beneath all this there were genuine truth and manhood in Hoar that lifted him above the sordid ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Brooke displays itself. Toward every one with whom she comes in contact, it steals out unobtrusively and silently, as the dew from heaven on the tender grass, to each and all according to the kind and nearness of that relation. Even for her "pulpy" uncle she has no supercilious contempt—no sense of isolation or separation; not even the consciousness of toleration toward him. Toward Celia, with her delicious commonplace of rather superficial yet naive worldly wisdom, her ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... direction for a moment, raised his eyebrows, glanced away, then back, in the most supercilious manner, ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... quite understand it myself. He couldn't hold a candle to—er—well, several other fellows I could name, myself not included, Miss Kavanagh, so that supercilious smile is thrown away. He may be good to look at, there is certainly plenty of him on which to feast the eye, but ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... expressions caught from the party discussions of the day. It is amusing to hear this young Federalist of 1800 speak of Napoleon Bonaparte as "the gasconading pilgrim of Egypt," and the government of France as the "supercilious, five-headed Directory," and the President of the United States as "the firm, the wise, the inflexible Adams, who with steady hand draws the disguising veil from the intrigues of foreign enemies and the plots of domestic foes." It ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... news that Pen would not return home to dinner. Arthur's eyes defied her. She tried to console herself, and drive off her fears. The boy had never told her an untruth. Pen conducted himself during breakfast in a very haughty and supercilious manner; and, taking leave of the elder and younger lady, was presently heard riding out of the stablecourt. He went gently at first, but galloped like a madman as soon as he thought that he was out ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray |
