"Prig" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he would be if be lived a hundred years, and I could not bear him if he talked in that wicked, disrespectful way, and Fly kissed me for it, mamma, and said her daddy was worth a hundred of such a prig as ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Edith, with spirit. "Who knows if it wasn't the only really happy thing in her life? The snobs and prigs all scold her and preach sermons at her—they did it in her lifetime: they do it now——" "Oh come, I'm neither a snob nor a prig," put in Celia, looking up in her turn, and tempering with a smile the energy of her tone—"I don't blame her for her Bothwell; I don't criticize her. I never was even able to mind about her killing Darnley. You see I take an extremely liberal view. One might almost call it broad. But ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... beautiful, more worth the effort of a lifetime than ever before. Here was a woman of mind and heart, one not bounded by narrow sectionalism, but seeing the good wherever it might be. He felt that he had behaved like a prig and a fool. Why should he be influenced by the idle words of some idle man in the street? He was not Lucia Catherwood's guardian; if there were any question of guardianship, she was much better fitted to ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... I hardly know; but this I know. Ever since my prig of a brother has come home from Oxford with his affected smile and flattering ways, Ruth has had no ears or eyes for ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... a nice boy, not a bit of a prig. But he's not what you can call a success; and I fancy the Marlows won't want to exhibit him. Still, I shall have him to dinner and get some nice girls to ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... such paws?" she railed at her. "They don't ply a needle, and they don't touch any thread! All you're good for is to prig things to stuff that mouth of yours with! The skin of your phiz is shallow and those paws of yours are light! But with the shame you bring upon yourself before the world, isn't it right that I should prick you, and make mincemeat ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... to be more correct, they enjoy the make-believe with quite as great a zest. Hence, perhaps, in praising conscious art for children's literature, one is unwittingly pleasing older tastes; indeed, it is not inconceivable that the "prig" which lurks in most of us may be nurtured by too refined diet. Whether a child brought up wholly on the aesthetic toy-book would realise the greatness of Rembrandt's etchings or other masterpieces of realistic art more easily ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... Graham—prig; What was thy delighted musing? Now accepting, now refusing, Till on the Admiralty pitch'd, Still would that thought his speech prolong; To gain the place for which he long had itch'd, He call'd on Bobby still through all the song; But ever as his sweetest theme he chose, A sovereign's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... until her flight to Grogoff. That shocked him terribly. He confessed as much to me. She had always been so happy and easy about life. Nothing was serious to her. I remember once telling her she ought to take the war more deeply. I was a bit of a prig about it, I suppose. At any rate she thought me one.... And then to go off to ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... surrounded by most of the gentlemen, all apparently well entertained by her conversation. "And I wanted to talk over old times with him so badly. His poor wife was my greatest friend. Mira Montanaro, daughter of the great banker, you know. It's not possible that that miserable little prig is my poor Mira's girl. The heiress of all the Montanaros in a black-lace gown worth twopence! When I think of her mother's beauty and her toilets! Does she ever wear the sapphires? Has anyone ever seen her in them? Eleven large stones in a lovely antique setting, and the great Valdez ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... and a prig. I bet you he won't find her out; she's the jolliest little humbugger there is going. She'd cheat a fellow out of the sight of his ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... embezzlement; fraud &c 545; larceny, petty larceny, grand larceny, shoplifting. thievishness, rapacity, kleptomania, Alsatia^, den of Cacus, den of thieves. blackmail, extortion, shakedown, Black Hand [U.S.]. [person who commits theft] thief &c 792. V. steal, thieve, rob, mug, purloin, pilfer, filch, prig, bag, nim^, crib, cabbage, palm; abstract; appropriate, plagiarize. convey away, carry off, abduct, kidnap, crimp; make off with, walk off with, run off with; run away with; spirit away, seize &c (lay violent ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... them at the time, but they did not tell it to others in an impressive way, and the girls, who had not seen Prissie, but had only heard the tale, spoke of her to one another as an "insufferable little prig." ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... long ears and watched with pained disapproval the gambols of his elder. Himself incorruptible, he was no doubt well pleased at heart that Banjo's misconduct should throw up in high relief his own immaculate conduct. Lollypop was in fact a bit of a prig. Had he been a boy he would have been head of his school, a Scholar of Balliol, and President of ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... just we two in the car, but I dared not take the child at her word. I thought she was too ill to remember Mrs. Grundy's silly old existence, and I couldn't take advantage of her forgetfulness. At the same time it seemed the act of a prig grafted on to a bounder to put the idea into her head, and make her ashamed of having said the wrong thing. You see what a nuisance my conscience is! I petted it so much when it was young, now it won't stop ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... More than once she had felt that Terry was on the verge of becoming a complacent prig. So she countered ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... comforts,"[136]—a maxim laid down By the bard, what d'ye call him, that wore the black gown; And faith I agree with th' old prig to a hair; For a big-bellied ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Archdeacon, and a very good thing too! Might he long remain so! Lastly there was Foster, the Diocesan Missioner. Let it be said at once that the Archdeacon hated Foster. Foster had been a thorn in the Archdeacon's side ever since his arrival in Polchester—a thin, shambly-kneed, untidy, pale-faced prig, that was what Foster was! The Archdeacon hated everything about him—his grey hair, his large protruding ears, the pimple on the end of his nose, the baggy knees to his trousers, his thick heavy hands that never seemed to ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... Sara had been good friends after a fashion. He was a bit of a snob but not much of a prig. She had the feeling about him that if he could be weaned away from the family he might stand for something fine in the way of character. But he was an adept at straddling fences, so that he was never fully on one side or the other, no matter ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... have escaped singing altogether. Lilith also resented her having shown that she could do it—and this feeling was generally shared. It evidenced a want of good-fellowship, and made you very glad the little prig had afterwards come to grief: if you had abilities that others had not you concealed them, instead of parading ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... man—you're a sublime fellow; but you're a prig, a conceited noodle with it all, Joe! You need not to think that because you've picked up a little knowledge of practical mathematics, and because you have found some scantling of the elements of chemistry at the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Review, Oct., 1906). She considers that thirteen is quite early enough to begin teaching children the lessons of the Gospels, for a child who acted in accordance with the Gospels would be "aggravating," and would generally be regarded as "an insufferable prig." Moreover, she points out, it is dangerous to teach young children the Christian virtues of charity, humility, and self-denial. It is far better that they should first be taught the virtues of justice ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... most interesting little book on John Stuart Mill, the youth at nine was appointed to supervise the education of the rest of the family, "a position more pleasing to his vanity than helpful to his manners." That he was a beautiful prig at this time goes ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... an egotist and the very incarnation of selfishness, was a prig of the first water. He had been reared altogether in convention. Home life and Eton and Christchurch had taught him many things, wise as well as foolish; but had tended to fix his conviction that affairs of the heart should proceed on adamantine lines of conventional ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... a prig of the first water, and there was no use arguing with him. I thought I had best meet him on his own ground, so I said, "Your clients, sir, are happy in having so resolute a guardian of their confidence. I am myself ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... was at his very strongest. He was an ideal Trustee. And what made this evident was the fact that he talked comparatively little about his trust, and never behaved in regard to it as a pedant or a prig. As long as the principle was firmly maintained, he bothered himself very little about ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... that Nat had just been playing at marbles for "havings" with Cole, Fowle, and both the Drakes at the village-inn, and, having found this vegetable repast too strong for his digestion, went home to his mother and wreaked his discomfort on edifying moral maxims. Or else he was a prig. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... said, "we have thought wrong things of one another. I thought you a prig, moral to your finger-tips with the morality of the law and the small places. Perhaps I was tempted for that reason to give you a wrong impression of myself. But you must understand this. Though I have ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for their recognition. He knew a great deal about art, and all four enjoyed the morning immensely. It was fine to go round recognising old favourites and finding new beauties, especially while so many people fumbled helplessly with Baedeker. Nor was he a bit of a prig, Miss Winchelsea said, and indeed she detested prigs. He had a distinct undertone of humour, and was funny, for example, without being vulgar, at the expense of the quaint work of Beato Angelico. He had a grave seriousness beneath it all, and was quick ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... grease and the sheep's tails to boot! How hath fate given this man his quietus at my hand!" Then he looked at the body and seeing it was that of a Gobbo, said, "Was it not enough for thee to be a hunchback,[FN501] but thou must likewise be a thief and prig flesh and fat! O thou Veiler,[FN502] deign to veil me with Thy curtain of concealment!" So he took him up on his shoulders and, going forth with him from his house about the latter end of the night, carried ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... in one of the Albion's boats, rocking up and down in that soothing swell which freshens the harbour's mouth, Weston made me tell him all about the lion and the silver chain, and he called me a prig for saying so often that I did not believe in it now. I remember he said, "In this sleepy, damp, delightful Dartmouth, who but a prig could deny the truth ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Crookshanks, Heaviside, Sidebottom, Longbottom, Ramsbottom, Winterbottom; or a long name, as Blanchenhagen, or Blanchenhausen; or a short name, as Crib, Crisp, Crips, Tag, Trot, Tub, Phips, Padge, Papps, or Prig, or Wig, or Pip, or Trip; Trip had been something, but Ho—-. (Walks about in great agitation—recovering his calmness ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... of its real spirit and significance. But in any other sense, to say that Art is greater than Life from which it emerges, and into which it must remerge, can but suspend the artist over Life, with his feet in the air and his head in the clouds—Prig masquerading as Demi-god. "Nature is no great Mother who has borne us. She is our creation. It is in our brain that she quickens to life." Such is the highest hyperbole of the aesthetic creed. But what is ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... prig, Prendick, a silly ass! You're always fearing and fancying. We're on the edge of things. I'm bound to cut my throat to-morrow. I'm going to have a damned Bank Holiday to-night." He turned and went out into the moonlight. "M'ling!" he ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... he must be made to see clearly that he must make his choice between the evil doing and you—that he cannot be chums with both. Chums should have strict honour between themselves, and always be ready to stand up for one another. A good chum prevents one becoming a prig, and there is nothing short of actual vice which is so hateful in a boy as priggishness. There is as much difference between a prig and a right- minded boy as between chalk and cheese. A right-minded boy goes on his way trying to do right and live honestly ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... Cripps, mimicking the boy's tones. "When I calls up at the school I'll let them all know what a nice young prig he is, coming down and drinking at my public-house and then turning round on me. Never fear! I'll let them know, my beauties! I'll have a talk with your Doctor and open his eyes for ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... have learnt a good deal, I think. A thoroughly good preparatory school is, I dare say, very difficult to find. I would make a great point, I think, to send a boy to a good one; not to cram him or make a prig of him, but simply to give him the advantage which will make his whole career in life different from what it will be if his opening days pass by unimproved. Cool of me, Jem, to write all this; but I think ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him as a solemn prig—'Old Steady' he was named at college. I confess I have no special leaning to these very ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... at issue. I consider a knowledge of the passing events of the day, and a recollection of the facts which have occurred during the last twenty years, to be more valuable than all the ancient records in existence. Who talks of Caesar or Xenophon nowadays, except some Cambridge or Oxford prig? and of what value is that knowledge in society? The escape of a modern pickpocket will afford more matter of conversation than the famous retreat of the ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... the better part of what men know as wisdom. Some of us are wise in this way naturally and by genius; some of us never become so. But to have spent one's youth at college, in contact with the choice and rare and precious, and yet still to be a blind prig or vulgarian, unable to scent out human excellence or to divine it amid its accidents, to know it only when ticketed and labeled and forced on us by others, this indeed should be accounted the very calamity and shipwreck ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... to avoid vulgar terms he too frequently dignifies trifles, and clothes common thoughts in a splendid dress that would be rich enough for the noblest ideas. In short we are too often reminded of that great man, Mr. Prig, the auctioneer, whose manner was so inimitably fine that he had as much to say on a ribbon as on a Raphael." It seems as if Gibbon had taken the stilted tone of the old French tragedy for his model, rather than the crisp and nervous prose ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... personages that pass through the hands of the publishers can be said to present a true picture of their subject. Either the writer holds up the object of his literary effort as a person so blameless as to suggest the idea that he is an impossible prig, or else every piece of malevolent gossip is construed into a positive fact, his shortcomings magnified until they lose all touch of resemblance, while every word and action capable of misrepresentation is construed in the manner most ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... at the cock again, which both began and ended the book. He stood and crowed so proudly and never slept. He was a regular prig, but when Sister was diligent he put a one-ore piece among the leaves. But the hens laid eggs, and it was evident that they were the same as the flowers; for when you were kind to them and treated them as if they belonged to the family, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... partly the result of that audacious impulse that had led her—a modest virgin—to seek a gentleman in this personal fashion. Modesty in a young girl has a comfortable satisfying charm, recognized easily by all humanity; but he must be a sorry knave or a worse prig who is not deliciously thrilled when Modesty puts her charming little foot just over the ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... not bad. Nevertheless,—thinking as the world around us does about hunting,—a clergyman in my position would be wrong to hunt often. But a man who can feel horror at such a thing as this is a prig in religion. If, as is more likely, a man affects horror, he is a hypocrite. I believe that most clergymen will agree with me in that; but there is no clergyman in the diocese of whose agreement I feel more certain than ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... a moral prig," Haythorne blurted out, with apparently undue warmth. "He was a little scholastic shrimp without a drop of ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... who in this instance excited no small amount of merriment among the city wags, each of whom cracked a joke at his expense. Now it was not that those waggish spirits said of his placard things exceedingly annoying to his sensitive feelings, but that every prig made him the butt of his borrowed wit. One quizzed him with want of gallantry,—another told him what the ladies said of his oss,—a third pitied him, but hoped he might get back his property; and then, Tom Span, the dandy lawyer, laconically told him that to love ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... common with these gentlemen, but he forced his nature to be agreeable to them, in consequence of a very excellent piece of worldly advice given to him by Audley Egerton. "Never let the dandies call you a prig," said the statesman. "Many a clever fellow fails through life, because the silly fellows, whom half a word well spoken could make his claqueurs, turn him into ridicule. Whatever you are, avoid the fault of most reading men: in a word, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... past has set up as the incarnation of all that is best in wit and virtue—is a scholar and a gentleman. He is, moreover, on his own showing, a perfect combination of humour, wisdom, and honour; and yet, in spite of it all, not a bit of a prig. It is true that when he donned the dress-coat, and "Punch" and "Toby" put on airs as "Mr. Punch" and "Toby, M.P.," he became milder at the expense of some of his political influence. Yet what he lost in power he gained ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... acquire applause, Try various arts to get a doubtful cause; Or, as a dancing master in a jigg, With various steps instructs the dancing prig; Or as a doctor writes you different bills; Or as a quack prescribes you different pills; Or as a fiddler plays more tunes than one; Or as a baker bakes more bread than brown; Or as a tumbler tumbles up ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... world but with the silly writers of goody-goody stories, who have so emasculated and effeminated the boy who works hard and holds his head high that it is now well-nigh impossible to hear of such an one in real life without instantly setting him down as an intolerable prig. These writers have committed the greatest crime against their creations that authors can commit—they have made them non-human. If the stories about George Washington had narrated how on one occasion he laughed uproariously, ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... nice as you can. Say pretty things to her—that pleases her more than anything: and make yourself useful, if you get the chance. She's not half a bad little woman; and if you help me, Linda, I shall get in with her yet in spite of her conceited prig of a husband." ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... have done; but he was driven to assert himself. "Nonsense, Rose, you know better," he said, in a voice of displeasure; but she pouted forth, "I don't know it. You believe every one against me, and you won't take my part against that nasty little spiteful prig!" ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... speak out like a man?" Forsythe demanded with a burst of rage, striking the table with his fist. "What do you mean by your damned impudence? So you dare to question my conduct to Lois Howe, do you?—you confounded prig!" ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... some writers instruct us first to catch our hero. As, however, Mr. Carlyle is the only person on record who has ever performed this feat, it will be best for the rest of mankind to be content with the nearest approach to a hero available, namely a prig. These animals are very plentiful, and easy to catch, as they delight in being run after. There are however many different kinds, not all equally fit for the present purpose, and amongst which it is very necessary ...
— Every Man His Own Poet - Or, The Inspired Singer's Recipe Book • Newdigate Prizeman
... Mr. Leonard Tavernake," she exclaimed, "if you were not so crudely, so adorably, so miraculously truthful, what a prig, prig, prig, you would be! The cutlets at last, thank goodness! Your cross-examination is over. I pronounce ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... prig! They should bottle him in spirits of wine as a specimen. It's the only thing he'll ever be fit for," remarked Mr. Page, who rarely said so ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... is, that too many people take a fancy to it, and the competition is in consequence excessive. Every ignoramus of a fellow who finds that he hasn't brains in sufficient quantity to make his way as a walking advertiser, or an eye-sore prig, or a salt-and-batter man, thinks, of course, that he'll answer very well as a dabbler of mud. But there never was entertained a more erroneous idea than that it requires no brains to mud-dabble. Especially, there is nothing to be made in this way without method. I did only a retail ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... done;—Sir Charles is a fool; Mr. Ernsley is a prig; and Mr. Farnley has a broad kind of humour, and a talent for mimicry, but he is coarse and unrefined, which, by the way, is, perhaps, the reason that his daughter thinks it necessary to be so painfully the reverse. Mr. Brandon, your aunt's brother-in-law, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... drinks water, who before drank beer; What's now the cause? we know the case is clear; Look in Prig's purse, the chev'ril there tells you Prig money wants, either to buy ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... been able to frequent, he had gained the character of a boy rather insusceptible of ordinary teaching; and his letters (they are rare throughout his life) show him to us as something very like a juvenile prig. According to his own account, he "thought for at least eight years" without being able to pen a line, or at least a page; and the worst accusation that can truly be brought against him is that, by his own confession, he left off reading ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... boy, was the cleverest pupil in the school, his tasks always faultlessly prepared, and his power of taking in what he was taught wonderfully great, though, fortunately for himself, his extreme good humour and merry nature made it impossible for his companions to dislike him or set him down as a prig. ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... Acton, laughing to himself, "when I set the very niggers a-struggling for the greater glory of Biffen's—or is it Acton's? Then, there's that exhibition, which we must try to get for this double-superlative house. Raven must beat that Sixth prig Hodgson, the very bright particular star of Corker's. Would two hours' classics, on alternate nights, meet his case? He shall have 'em, bless him! He shall know what crops Horace grew on his little farm, and all the other rot which gains Perry Exhibitions. Hodgson ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... prig," she pleaded. "I'm talking as if I knew all about it. I don't really. I grope in the dark; and now and then—at least so it seems to me—I catch a glint of light. We are powerless in ourselves. It is only God working through us that enables us to be of any ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... all his wonderful achievements this youth would be top-heavy and a most insufferable prig. The fact was, he was a fine, rollicking, healthy young man much given to pranks, and withal generous ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... triumph into Corfu," answered Paddy, taking a turn with a dignified air on the deck. "I should like, to see what that prig Spry will ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... would pitilessly suppress proclivities to gawster. I would ask power from Parliament to whip, when mild persuasion failed, the precocious prig, "neither man nor boy," who struts about on Sundays, scoffing at religion, and polluting the air with bad tobacco and worse talk; and I would authorise the police to supervise, and to send home at their discretion, those small giggling girls who, having lost the shame ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... right to expect of the American boy is that he shall turn out to be a good American man. Now the chances are strong that he won't be much of a man unless he is a good deal of a boy. He must not be a coward or a weakling, a bully, a shirk, or a prig. He must work hard and play hard. He must be clean-minded and clean lived, and able to hold his own against all comers. It is only on these conditions that he will grow into the kind of American man of whom ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... side, thank Heaven, even to war; but Mr. THURSTON had a great chance of doing serious good and he has only half used it. I am certain (though he may call me a prig for saying it) that if he had set himself to serve his country's cause through the great influence which the theatre commands, he could have done better work than this; and he ought to have ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... splendidly, there was a cent. per cent. profit; she was to come with him and buy the necklace at once. May loved necklaces and liked him for being so eager to give her one. And she did not wish to appear in the light of a prig (that had probably been his impression of her) again so soon. But had he not the evening before, as they talked over their prospects, told her that he owed Dick Benyon a thousand pounds or more, and was in arrears ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... my relations with Sylvester Berkley had been of a frigid and formal description. I had met him two or three times with his hearty old relation, and had borne away the distinct impression that he was a prig. While the uncle would breakfast in his tub, like Diogenes, off simple bones and cutlets, Sylvester ate some sort of a mash made of bruised oats: while the nephew made an untenable pretension to family honors, the elder talked familiarly of the porcelain ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... the sentimentalist can declare. But they kept to the life of daylight. They are England's hope. Clumsily they carry forward the torch of the sun, until such time as the nation sees fit to take it up. Half clodhopper, half board-school prig, they can still throw back to a nobler ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... not nearly so certain that they make adult failures. It would be interesting to learn just what proportion of solitary children there is on the roll of those who have become great in our world. One thinks of John Ruskin, a particularly fine specimen of the highly focussed single son. Prig perhaps he was, but this world has a certain need of such prigs. A correspondent (a schoolmistress of experience) who has collected statistics in her own neighbourhood, is strongly of opinion not only that solitary children ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... your mouth, you young prig!" interrupted Grundy, and the entrance of Mr. Greyling put a ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... for the Abolition of Ancestors, Miss Ranken. We have to make up all lost ground, and we can't help it. I'm sorry almost that I take it all so seriously. I feel so very much like a middle-aged prig. Perhaps, Miss Dearsley, we may grow more cheerful when your uncle and I (and you) are fairly at work and clear of brooding. At present I seem to exude ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... an ace of being a prig. It's only the freckles on your little unpowdered nose, and the yellow lights in your eyes, and the way your hair curls up at the ends that save you. Remember, please, that three-and-twenty with a perfect complexion has no call to reprove her ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... spectacles, would, if a stock of ideals were all alone by itself enough to render a life significant, be the most absolutely and deeply significant of men. Tolstoi would be completely blind in despising him for a prig, a pedant and a parody; and all our new insight into the divinity of muscular labor would be altogether off the track ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... be lectured and preached to besides. Good heavens! In his lofty manner, I suppose, that people talk of. Prig—odious, insufferable prig! So I have mistaken George, have I? My own husband! And insulted her—her! And she is actually downstairs, writing to me, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... champaign? Whether they tread the vale of prose, or climb, And whet their appetites on cliffs of rhyme; The college sloven, or embroider'd spark; The purple prelate, or the parish clerk; The quiet quidnunc, or demanding prig; The plaintiff tory, or defendant whig; Rich, poor, male, female, young, old, gay, or sad; Whether extremely witty, or quite mad; Profoundly dull, or shallowly polite; Men that read well, or men that only write; Whether peers, porters, tailors, tune the reeds, And measuring ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... publishers felt obliged to intimate that unless I put an end to their misery they would. Accordingly, I promptly gave Garth his quietus. The truth is, I was tired of him myself. With all his qualities and virtues, he could not help being a prig. He found some friends, however, and still shows signs of vitality. I wrote no other novel for nearly two years, but contributed some sketches of English life to Appletons' Journal, and produced a couple of novelettes,—"Mrs. Gainsborough's Diamonds" and "Archibald Malmaison,"— ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... and the tricks of his trade, will never be found capering in the hunting field. He will feel that his proper place is behind the counter; and while his master is away enjoying the pleasures of the chase, he can prig as much "pewter" from the till as will take both himself and his lass to Sadler's Wells theatre, or any other place she may ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... not only his best work, but so much the best, that there was none second to it. "That was what I intended," he said, "but I have failed. Nobody reads it. After all, what does it matter?" he went on after awhile. "If they like anything, one ought to be satisfied. After all, Esmond was a prig." Then he laughed and changed the subject, not caring to dwell on thoughts painful to him. The elbow-grease of thinking was always distasteful to him, and had no doubt been so when he conceived and ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... manner in which I pestered distinguished authors for presentation copies of their books, in order to furnish the shelves of the library, I am driven to the painful conclusion that I must have been a terrible person in the days of my youth, and something of a prig to boot. Apropos of the begging for books as free gifts from authors, I had one or two amusing experiences. Among those whom I importuned in this impertinent way were Charles Kingsley, and the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Longley. ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... happiness: but happiness is not won by seeking for it. Make up your minds on this point, that there are certain things only to be got by not aiming directly at them. Aim, for example, at being influential, and you become a prig; aim at walking and posing gracefully, and you become an affected and ludicrous object; aim even at breathing ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... fables where the rocks and the mountains speak. Emerson has given us one where the Mountain and the Squirrel had a quarrel. The Mountain called the Squirrel "Little Prig." And then continues a clash of personalities more possible to illustrate than at first appears. Here we come to the second stage of the fairy-tale where the creature seems so unmanageable in his physical aspect that some actor must be substituted who ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... the Absolute and the Unconditioned, or bore her by talking about Aristotle's Politics, or the revolutions in Corcyra. For you know, my dear Le Breton, if you HAVE a fault, it is that you're such a consummate and irrepressible prig; ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... That Got Found," a brief sketch indeed, but abundantly suggestive. Poor Fido—the "dog that got to be utterly sick of conventionality," and came to such bitter grief in his search for "life poignant and intense!" He might read a lesson to many a two-legged prig, were the bipedal nincompoop capable of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... censors greet the crowd of new-comers, it is instructive to note the contempt into which some of our old gods have fallen. The Superior Person we have always with us. He is, in his essence, a Prig; but when, as occasionally happens, his heart and intelligence ripen, he loses the characteristics which once made him a superior person. Whilst he holds his native status his special art is not to admire anything which common people find admirable. ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... he went on; 'I 'ave to live two lives. 'Arf my time I'm a stuck-up prig, as orter ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... than angered Hugh; they had completely upset his mental equilibrium: his every ideal of college swayed and wabbled. He wasn't a prig, but he had come to Sanford with very definite ideas about the place, and those ideas were already groggy from the ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... boys were all in school. "There is not one prig in the whole lot," said the headmaster sadly. "I wish there was, but only those boys come here who are notoriously too good to become current coin in the world unless they are hardened with an alloy of vice. I should ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... a lad of seven, nine, or eleven years of age should write such solemn little effusions amid the surroundings and influences of the present day, he would probably be set down justly enough as either an offensive young prig or a prematurely developed hypocrite. But the precocious Adams had only a little of the prig and nothing of the hypocrite in his nature. Being the outcome of many generations of simple, devout, intelligent Puritan ancestors, living ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... the whittler, brushing the litter from his lap. "Now I've no doubt that prig of a doctor, who they say is shining up to Alice, will be disappointed when he finds just how much she's worth. Let me see. What is his name? Lives up there," and with his jackknife Mr. Liston pointed ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... of clamorous party strife, And all the hot activities of life; But most the Politician He mocks—for 'meanness.' How the prig would gasp If shown the slime-trail of that wriggling asp ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... age of 21 I was perfectly satisfied with my own society, something of a prig, fond of books and reading, etc. I was and ever have been absolutely insensible to the influence of the other sex. I am not a woman hater, and take intellectual pleasure in the society of certain ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... is a man," Julia interrupted, "and I would not undertake to say a man would not do anything—on occasions—or a woman either, for the matter of that. There is a beast in most men, and an archangel in lots, and a snob, and a prig, and a dormant hero, and an embryo poet. There are great possibilities in men; you have to watch and see which is coming out top and back that, and then half the time you are wrong. Of course, at father's age, possibilities are getting over; one or two things ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... enjoying the peaceful silence of the camp. "That man is an exaggerated schoolmaster, with all the faults of the species abnormally developed. If I once open out on him, he will learn more truth about himself in ten minutes than he ever heard in his life before. What an unbearable prig he has grown to be." Thus ran Yates' thoughts as he swung in his hammock, looking up at ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... just a big sister to you, of course. Ever so superior, I guess, and a good bit of a prig. And all this time over there in France with nothing but my letters and that silly picture of me in the khaki frame, I suppose you have been thinking of me, well,—as a sort of nice angel. I'm not either, really. I don't want to ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... things to me, and that what I want is a friend who won't be afraid to say disagreeable ones when I need them? Sometimes I have fancied you might be that friend—I don't know why, except that you are neither a prig nor a bounder, and that I shouldn't have to pretend with you or be on my guard against you." Her voice had dropped to a note of seriousness, and she sat gazing up at him with the ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... rather never have him caught at all," said Carroway, to his wife, when his year of precaption had expired, "than for any of those fellows to nab him; especially that prig last sent down." ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... hear it's a waluable dog—now is it feasible as I should go for to prig a dog wot ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... not have lacked so many words that do duty as native-born or naturalized citizens in large sections of the United States, and among these words is the one that stands at the head of the present chapter. I know that some disdainful prig will assure me that it is but a corruption of the French "charivari," and so it is; but then "charivari" is a corruption of the low Latin "charivarium" and that is a corruption of something else, and, indeed, almost every word ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... me a prig." Just then a remarkably handsome carriage drove up to the private door of the hotel. From it alighted a very elegant woman, who in a few moments was ushered into the drawing-room by the head waiter, and on his designating Mrs. Morland's family, she advanced ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... nearly two o'clock and I had had quite enough of L'Abbaye. I had not enjoyed myself—had not expected to, so far as that went. I hope I am not a prig, and, whatever I am or am not, priggishness had no part in my feelings then. Under ordinary circumstances I should not have enjoyed myself in a place like that. Mine is not the temperament—I shouldn't know how. I must have appeared the most solemn ass in creation, and if I had ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to them both. In them they went back to the early world. They did not make the hard and self-conscious imaginative effort of the prig to hurl themselves into an historic past. They just let the land and its memories take them. As, sitting on the warm ground among the wild myrtle bushes, they looked across the emerald green unruffled waters to Salamis, that ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... prosperous merchant, as the prancing horses drew him away. "After all," he thought bitterly, "she might be happier with that rich prig than she could be with me." He stepped into the hall, and spoke to the servant. The man had his message ready. Miss Regina would see Mr. Goldenheart, if he would be so good as to ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... withers wrung. The hero, or villain, Edgar, is a perfectly impossible person, and represents no kind of political, social, or economical thinker. A man would give all other bliss and all his worldly wealth for this, to waste his whole strength in one kick upon this perfect prig. He employs the arguments of evolution and so forth to justify the seduction of a little girl of fifteen, and later, by way of making amends, proposes to commit incest by marrying her sister. There ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... "Ah! a prig I dare say—like some of his uncles before him," said Mr. Boyce, irritably. "But he was ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The exclamation "Holy Moses!" may be in itself quite harmless, and innocuous to friendship, if it is pronounced in the right, friendly tone. Unfortunately Mr. Alpha used it with a sarcastic inflection, implying that he regarded Mr. Omega as a prig, a fussy old person, a miser, a spoilsport, and, indeed, something less than ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... East"—he said. His boast was, first, that he was an Oxford Man of rare and shining parts, which may or may not have been true—I did not know enough to check his statements—and, secondly, that he "had his hand on the pulse of native life"—which was a fact. As an Oxford man, he struck me as a prig: he was always throwing his education about. As a Mahommedan faquir—as McIntosh Jellaludin—he was all that I wanted for my own ends. He smoked several pounds of my tobacco, and taught me several ounces of things ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... boy, he's never done anything since. She holds me—although I see through her—possibly because I'm weak or indifferent, possibly because I have a silly idea I can make a bad situation better by hanging around. She is rapidly turning Kendrick into a sullen little prig, because he believes implicitly all the grievances against the world and the individual she pours out to him. You see, I have no illusions concerning my family. Only Carroll has held to her freedom of soul, ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... emigrants were brought into contact were anything but flattering, and they served to widen the temporary breach between Dickens and his many admirers in the United States. The English scenes of 'Chuzzlewit' are very powerfully drawn. Tom and Ruth Pinch, Pecksniff, Sarah Gamp, and Betsey Prig are among the leading characters ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... cupboards. It has all the fuss of preparation for childbirth—the accumulations of wrappings, the obstetric furniture, the nods and winks of the midwife and the gossips, authentic ancestors of Mrs Sarah Gamp and Mrs Elizabeth Prig—why, the haste to fetch the midwife at the crisis might almost be the foundation upon which Dickens built the visit of Seth Pecksniff, Esq., ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... conceited prig! Did you hear his sermon on the world and its temptations? I wonder if he thought temptation had come up to him in the person of us professionals out on a picnic. I think ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... a spicy idea to me," drawled another. "They do our fellows out of a grave, so we prig one of theirs ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... different from all the men she had previously met. She often wondered if anything could disturb him or hurry him. Had he ever climbed trees and torn his clothes, or thrashed an adversary? Had he any weaknesses, or vivid joys, or passionate longings? Yet he did not seem a prig. His manner, though dignified, was easy and natural; his eyes, though steady and penetrating, were kindly; his bearing had the repose of strength. It was too awful to contemplate what his estimate of herself would be if he knew; but then he ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... is poking fun at me," he thought; "and he and his father and that prig deserve—but what ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... down at her, his hands in his pockets. His face was twisted in a humorous disgust. Mary laughed gently. "It is possible to—to keep the rules without being a prig, you know, though I ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony |
