"Self-conceit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... necessarily appear to be great, exalted and inspiring ideas because they are his own, while everything that opposes them must seem obscure, common folk, enemies of their own weal, evil-minded, and hateful. Such a man, in order to justify this self-conceit to himself as a divine vocation, and entirely absorbed in this thought, must stake everything upon it, nor can he rest until he has trampled under foot all that will not think as highly of him as he does himself, or until his own belief in his divine mission is reflected from the whole contemporary ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... were rather better than those of her acquaintances. She read everything she could on the subject, but, with her usual self-conceit, refused to ask any questions of those who might have enlightened her, and in fact, set herself up as ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... desolation of our cities! Is it not time that these men were transplanted at least into the nineteenth century, and, if they cannot be suddenly Americanized, made to understand something of the country which was too good for them, even though at the cost of a rude shock to their childish self-conceit? Is that a properly reconstructed Union in the Southern half of which no Northern man's life is safe except at the sacrifice of his conscience, his freedom of speech, of everything but his love of money? ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... has already had the start of you, and has so sharpened her feelings, and filled her little soul with so much vanity and self-conceit, and made her piety so carnal, that you have nothing else to do than give one audible tap at the gate of her heart, in order to be admitted. Let us now see to what lengths such delusions will lead a ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... their inmost souls a chord that has never been touched, and in their work an indefinable quality will be lacking, a something in the stroke of the brush, a mysterious element that we call poetry. The swaggerers, so puffed up by self-conceit that they are confident over-soon of their success, can never be taken for men of talent save by fools. From this point of view, if youthful modesty is the measure of youthful genius, the stranger on the staircase might be allowed to have something in him; for he seemed to ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... premature censure, ascribe the undertaking to vanity, or unworthiness, and if it should fail, be ready to aggravate the disappointment of the projectors with the galling imputation of temerity, impudence, or overweening self-conceit. The sympathy which mankind in general think it handsome to feel for unassuming merit, stumbling in its way through life by incautiously venturing upon ground untrodden before, will be gladly withheld from persons who are supposed wilfully ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... mistook for an Alguazil, in a plethora, but upon nearer approach found to be your worshipful self, posting to the opera, clad in a great-coat of the newest cut, all fringe and frippery, the offspring of a German tailor. You and your cloak were so enveloped in frogs and self-conceit, that I could compare you to nothing but king Pharaoh, inoculated with a plague greater than any in Egypt, an Italian singer. After desiring me in a surly tone, to call tomorrow morning, your worship mounted your vehicle, and scampered away to the region of recitative. O, cried ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... but in yielding to other medical systems what belongs to them, I earnestly claim for the Water-Cure, what belongs to it, frankly accusing for the little progress the hydriatic system has made in this country, the spirit of charlatanism and speculation on one side, and ignorance, self-conceit, self-interest and laziness on the other. According to my experience, and the result obtained by other hydriatic practitioners, eruptive fevers decidedly belong to Hydro-therapeutics, or the Water-Cure. If the result obtained by men like Currie, Bateman, Gregory, ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde
... discovered the means of making a new world out of the old. About this time, Dumont, the Benthamite, travelled with him from Paris to London. Dumont was irritated with "his incredible amour-propre and his presumptuous self-conceit." "He was mad with vanity." "The man was a caricature of the vainest of Frenchmen. He believed that his book on the 'Rights of Man' might supply the place of all the books that had ever been written. If it was in his power, he would destroy all the libraries ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... She had been guilty of an absurdity in supposing that because the man had been in earnest, therefore she had been justified in keeping him in suspense, for his own sake. She had been guilty of an absurdity, and also of great self-conceit. She could do nothing now but wait till she should hear from him,—and then answer him steadily. After what had passed she could not go to him and declare that it was all over. He was coming to-night, and she was nearly sure that he would not say a word to her on the ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... his family had, at an early age, inspired him with courage and self-conceit, so that in his blind, frivolous presumption, the only person, as he thought, who exceeded his own fascination was possibly the King, but ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... might have been more fortunate. Gates was quite too vain-glorious to listen and Marion quite too moderate to obtrude his opinions; and yet Marion was a man of equal prudence and adroitness. He could insinuate advice, so that it would appear to self-conceit the very creature of its own conceptions. Had Marion remained, could Gates have listened, we are very sure there would have been no such final, fatal disaster as suddenly stopped the misdirected progress of the Continental army. There ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... yourself the hero of your own story, or to speak much of your own performances, denotes deep-seated self-conceit, and may be very distasteful to others, who ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... man's hands than with those of God; their occupations, too, which are simple, and requiring less of ingenuity and skill than those which engage the attention of the other portion of their fellow-creatures, are less favourable to the engendering of self-conceit and sufficiency so utterly at variance with that lowliness of spirit which constitutes the best foundation of piety. The sneerers and scoffers at religion do not spring from amongst the simple children of nature, but are the excrescences of overwrought refinement, and though their ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Thurnall, the wish to please him, mingling with all her earnestness? And again, was not self-love mingling with it? and mingling, too, with the disappointment, even indignation, which she felt at having failed? Ah—what hitherto hidden spots of self-conceit, vanity, pharisaic pride, that bitter trial laid bare, or seemed to lay, till she learned to thank her ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... the British are not in manner a winning people. Their self-conceit is the principal reason. They have solid and excellent qualities, but their self-complacency is exorbitant and unparalleled. The majority are not content with esteeming Marlborough and Wellington the greatest Generals and Nelson the first Admiral the world ever saw, but claim alike supremacy for ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... gentle, and too soon ended. As for robbery, if I have robbed him of a little self-conceit, I will answer to God for that when my hour shall come! How is it your affair to drag that whimpering fool through Asia at your tail—you a ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... complacent, pathetic self-conceit said poor Mr. Austin. And he was utterly unprepared for ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... looking at him from her window. He could not doubt that all this intimacy was approved by Mr. Balfour. Was she playing a deep game? Could she play it for anybody but himself—the man who had taken her heart by storm? Her actions, however, even when interpreted by his self-conceit, gave him uneasiness. She had grown to be very kind and considerate toward Mrs. Belcher. Had this friendship moved her to crush the passion for her husband? Ah! if she could only know how true he was to her in his untruthfulness!—how faithful he was to her in his perjury!—how he had ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... to externals, as personal appearance, the minutia of behavior, politeness of speech? How may perfect politeness be combined with perfect sincerity? Ways of inculcating integrity. How to teach self-reliance, without fostering self-conceit. How to encourage prudence and economy, and at the same time discourage parsimony. How to combine firmness with kindness. Implicit obedience a good basis to work on. How to enter into a child's life, and make it a happy one. How not to become ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... understanding Number of fools so much exceeds the wise Opinions we have are taken on authority and trust Others adore all of their own side Pitiful ways and expedients to the jugglers of the law Prepare ourselves against the preparations of death Profession of knowledge and their immeasurable self-conceit Quiet repose and a profound sleep without dreams Reasons often anticipate the effect Refusin to justify, excuse, or explain myself Remotest witness knows more about it than those who were nearest Restoring ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... the evils most liable to attend on any sort of early proficiency, and which often fatally blights its promise, my father most anxiously guarded against. This was self-conceit. He kept me, with extreme vigilance, out of the way of hearing myself praised, or of being led to make self-flattering comparisons between myself and others. From his own intercourse with me I could derive none but a very humble opinion of myself; and the standard of ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... He is intelligent, unaffected, and agreeable. He is not all simper and softness. He can talk with one without being lost in his own self-conceit, fancying you deep in admiration of his own charming self. Yes, I ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... of humiliation. For there is not a taint of self-conceit, not even of self-satisfaction, in him. He only sees his own weakness, and want of life, of spirit, of manfulness, of power. His soul cleaveth to the dust. He is tempted, of course, again and again, to give way; to become ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... included among these "unknowns" then,' exclaimed the Flower angrily. 'I am sure I am'—she hesitated a moment—'quite as lovely as a Rose, or any other garden beauty;' but she could not help hanging her head for very shame whilst uttering this piece of self-conceit. ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... Chateaubriand's self-complacency was not of that imperturbable sort which, however intolerable to others, has at least the merit of keeping its possessor content and tranquil. With him it partook more of the nature of egotism than of self-conceit, and it therefore made him always restless and continually dissatisfied. But no effort was too great for Madame Recamier's devotion. Her friends looked upon her sacrifices with feelings of mingled regret and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the boys, where, as might be expected after a little more rude sport, he fell into a sleep so profound and long, that every thought of Reuben was banished from his mind. And now, to return to the poor baby, the victim of mismanagement, or of his brother's self-conceit. Sobbing and roaring he was carried or dragged up stairs, undressed, and put to bed, where the extreme violence of his grief proved its own relief, for he fell asleep with the tear in his eye, and long long after the ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood
... Where this commandment is dishonored, schisms and factions will necessarily arise to corrupt pure doctrine and faith, and the devil will sow his seed, which afterwards can be eradicated only with difficulty. When once self-conceit rules, and one, pretending more learning, wisdom, goodness and holiness than his fellows, begins to despise others and to draw men to himself, away from the unity of mind which makes us one in Christ, and when he desires the first praise and commendation for his own doctrine ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... in Hilda, with eager vehemence. "They were the letters of a hot-tempered girl, blinded by pique and self-conceit, and carelessly indulging in a foolish spite which in her heart she did not ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... the different churches know full well which side of their bread is buttered. A priest is a divinity among his people—a man around whom his parishioners throw a glamour of sanctity, and one who can do no wrong; albeit, his chief and growing characteristics are tyranny, arrogancy, self-conceit, deception, bigotry and superstition! Tyrannical do I call them? Most assuredly! Suppose, for example, the Methodist, or Presbyterian church had the power to decide whether you, or I, or any other man, should be a Methodist ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... amidst folds and wrinkles. He made his confession for his race. "We Jews," he said, "have gone through the system of this world, creating nothing, consolidating many things, destroying much. Our racial self-conceit has been monstrous. We seem to have used our ample coarse intellectuality for no other purpose than to develop and master and maintain the convention of property, to turn life into a sort of mercantile chess and ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... facts as sin and death. The result is greater sternness in modern thought. The conviction is spreading that to encourage a man to believe that though his sins be as scarlet he can be made whiter than snow by an easy exercise of self-conceit, is to encourage him to be a rascal. It did not work so badly when you could also conscientiously assure him that if he let himself be caught napping in the matter of faith by death, a red-hot hell ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... instances of murder originating in mad self-conceit; and of the murderer's part in the repulsive drama, in which the law appears at such great disadvantage to itself and to society, being acted almost to the last with a self-complacency that would be horribly ludicrous if it were not ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... cannot walk abreast on the same road; they are always passing each other, and being outstripped in their turn. What does it matter, since we are all in the same column? We should get rid of our silly self-conceit. The pole of the world's energy is constantly changing, often in the same country. In France it has passed from Roman Provence to the Loire of the Valois; now it is at Paris, but it will not stay there always. The entire creation swings in alternate rhythm from ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... I want you to come home as quick as you can. The fact is I cannot live without you, and if we were not so prodigious poor I would come for you at once. There is no woman like you in this wide world. Who else has so much talent with so little self-conceit; so much reputation with so little affectation; so much literature with so little nonsense; so much enterprise with so little extravagance; so much tongue with so little scold; so much sweetness with so little softness; so much of so many things ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... uneasy in the midst of good company, precisely because she wished to appear thoroughly at home. If I prattled away with some of my trilling nonsense, she would stare at me, and in her anxiety not to be thought stupid, she would laugh out of season. Her oddity, her awkwardness, and her self-conceit gave me the desire to know her better, and I began to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... believe, as we have more than one beside, from the French press. I trust that we shall neither accept it, nor the temper which inspires it. It may be convenient for those who flatter their nation, and especially the military part of it, into a ruinous self-conceit, to frame some such syllogism as this: "Courage is heroism: every Frenchman is naturally courageous: therefore every Frenchman is a hero." But we, who have been trained at once in a sounder school of morals, and in a greater respect for facts, and for language ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... for the Mercury, of course, I sha'n't have time. But sometimes I throw off a pearl (there is no self-conceit about that, I beg you to observe) which ought for the eternal welfare of my race to have a more extensive circulation than is afforded by ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Oh, the incredible self-conceit of human nature! Here was this ruffian proclaiming the limitations of Valmont, who half an hour before had shaken his hand within the innermost circle of his order! Yet my heart warmed towards the wretch who had remembered me ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... Seed semo. Seedling kreskajxo. Seek sercxi. Seem sxajni. Seeming sxajna, versxajna. Seemly deca. Seer profeto. Seethe boli. Seize ekkapti. Seldom malofte. Select elekti. Selection elektaro. Self, or selves mem. Self-conceit tromemfido. Self-denial memforgeso. Self-esteem memestimo. Self-evident klarega. Self-reproach memriprocxo. Self-taught memlerninta. Self-willed obstina. Selfish egoista. Selfishness egoismo. Sell vendi. Selvage sxtofrando. Semaphore semaforo, signalilo. Semblance ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... now supplied the place of all which she had lost pleased him, but he forbade himself to expect that this condition of affairs could be lasting. Nothing save exaggerated self-conceit would induce the hope. But he must have undervalued his own power of attraction—or Barine's love—for with each passing week the cheerful serenity of her disposition gained fresh steadfastness and charm. He, too, had the same experience; ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not by theories and speculations. In this they proved themselves statesmen, and their work survives; and the republic, laugh as sciolists may, is, for the present and future, the model republic—as much so as was Rome in her day; and it is not simply national pride nor American self-conceit that pronounces its establishment the beginning of a new and more advanced order of civilization; such is ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... were selected by God for this purpose, they were told over and over again that they were not chosen for anything in themselves, and that they had no reason to plume themselves on the fact that they were chosen. And when they degenerated into self-conceit on the ground of their having been so highly privileged, they were finally cast out of the land of promise. Nor is this all. In the system under which they were placed by Moses, they were taught to look with kindliness ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... beautiful, wealthy, and high-born young lady would choose me, of all men, for her husband, without any secret motive or hidden reason to prompt her. I ought to have known my own worthlessness better, and not yielded to a flattering self-conceit. You see, I acknowledge my fault fully, and I own that I have deserved my punishment. I have no accusation against you. You were desperate; you had to save your reputation, and you did not stop to consider what it might cost me so long as it served your purpose. Of course, the pride ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... a common vice of self-conceit, but there is also a common vice of excessive self-depreciation. "My Lord can do nothing with me!" Yes, my Lord knows thee and needs thee! And by the power of His grace ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... and analytical mind, the various psychical phenomena evinced by the lower animals are not regarded as being either wonderful or extraordinary. Man is a conceited, arrogant individual, and his place in nature has done much toward fostering and enlarging this self-conceit and arrogance. Even in the time of Moses this self-glorification was en evidence. The genesis of the world, as related by this famous historiographer, geographer, naturalist, theologian, and lawgiver, plainly shows this. At the present time, science declares, emphatically, ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... through the forests of Guiana, still, a gentleman given to natural history may do wonders for it in his own apartments on his native soil; and had Audubon, Swainson, Jameson, &c., not attacked me in all the pride of pompous self-conceit, I should have been the last man in the world to expose ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... a drawer of his desk and lifted out the big bow of purple ribbon which Lettie lost on the day Marjie and I went out to the haunted cabin. "In your stupid self-conceit you refused to grant a measure of good common sense and powers of observation to those about you. I have seen your kind before; but not ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... revolts, and occasional irruptions and retaliations upon the frontier, they have all been free from war and its havoc ever since the year 1700. In our year of grace 64, although the throne is occupied by a vicious emperor suffering from megalomania and enormous self-conceit, the empire is in full ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... exceedingly good to have at least one unpretentious and undictatorial human being in Hell. Nobody as a rule drops in on us save inordinately proud and conscientious ghosts, whose self-conceit is intolerable, and whose demands ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... such a natural death as Jane Seymour did, for whom, as you say, the king mourned two years. But after that period, something new, something altogether extraordinary happened to the king. He fell in love with a picture, and because, in his proud self-conceit, he was convinced that the fine picture which Holbein had made of him, was not at all flattered, but entirely true to nature, it did not occur to him that Holbein's likeness of the Princess Anne of Cleves might be somewhat flattered, and not ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... green herb for the service of men, that He may bring food out of the earth, and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make him a cheerful countenance, and bread to strengthen man's heart. Whilst the unbeliever, blinded by his self-conceit, is worshipping his own little stock of knowledge, and neglecting God, let us be singing our Te Deum—"We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee to be ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... excellent company, pleasant companions, good-natured, easy-going, and urbane. Their self-conceit is inordinate, and remains undiminished in spite of repeated failures in the most important affairs of life. They see themselves fall immeasurably behind those who are admittedly their inferiors in cleverness, yet they are not only cheery ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... rather than a speculative, philosopher. "The end of man," he wrote, "is an action, not a thought." He has not been able to persuade the time that it is going wrong, but his criticisms have been wholesomely corrective of its self-conceit. In a democratic age he has insisted upon the undemocratic virtues of obedience, silence, and reverence. Ehrfurcht—reverence—the text of his address to the students of Edinburgh University, in 1866, is the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... to a Kentuckian on the subject of woman's right to qualify under the law, you have to batter down his self-conceit that he is just and generous and chivalric toward woman, and that she can not possibly need other protection than he gives her with his own right arm—while he forgets that it is from man alone woman needs protection, and often does she ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... oppose a clique of young nobles, full of arrogance and self-conceit, but scions of the greatest families. They hoped to recover the ancient ascendency of their houses. The chief of these were the Dukes of Beaufort, Epernon, and Guise. They made use, as their tool, of Madame Chevreuse, the confidential friend of the queen regent. And she demanded of the minister ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... comment on what is so odious; but neither the apprehension, nor the experience of the unpleasant impressions it produces, is sufficient reason for declining the consideration of the atrocities of which human nature is capable. Self-conceit, indeed, may be mortified at the unavoidable thought of identity of species, which it may seek many imaginary devices to conceal; and feverish sensibility may be wrought up to indignant discontent, at the power which placed it amid such profligacy. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... had their portraits taken with their own knowledge and consent. Considering themselves as poor and helpless creatures, and little better than dust and ashes, they had but a mean idea of their own images. They were of opinion also, that pride and self-conceit would be likely to arise to men from the view, and ostentatious parade, of their own persons. They considered also, that it became them, as the founders of the society, to bear their testimony against the vain and superfluous ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... sure that she had known well enough all day the effect that she had had upon him, and that it had amused her. His cheek reddened at the thought. He wondered why on earth he should care to pursue an attempt at acquaintance with one whose manner with him was frequently so disturbing to his self-conceit. Well, at least he must forget her now, and redeem himself with an ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... torture of a slow genius and a weak capacity, he dived into without any pain or trouble, so that by his ready apprehension of things, he was able to do more in one hour than others could do in many days by hard study and close application; and yet he was ever humble, and never exalted with self-conceit, the common ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... one calculated to minister to our national self-conceit, but it is none the worse on that account. Of those who minister to our vanity we have enough and to spare, with results not altogether desirable. In the long controversy between the Boers and the missionaries ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... a good figure, and is very well inclined; but, she's deficient in spirit, and so susceptible — and so tender forsooth! — truly, she has got a languishing eye, and reads romances. — Then there's her brother, 'squire Jery, a pert jackanapes, full of college-petulance and self-conceit; proud as a German count, and as hot and hasty as a Welch mountaineer. As for that fantastical animal, my sister Tabby, you are no stranger to her qualifications — I vow to God, she is sometimes so intolerable, that I almost think she's the devil incarnate come ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... of late that I've begun to wonder," said Sir Hugh. "Stupid ass of course, not to have seen the jewel I held in my hand. But you've only showed me the nun, you darling. I knew you cared, but I never knew how much.—I ought to have had more self-conceit, oughtn't I?" ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... said, "I cannot thank you as I should like, nor indeed you either, Mr. Harker. I am deeply grateful to you all for what you have done for me. Truly a man should take heed of his self-conceit, lest he ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... Mark Twain's reply to the reporter asking for advice as to what to cable his paper, which had printed the statement that Mark Twain was dead "Say that the statement is greatly exaggerated." He has admirably taken off humanity's enduring self-conceit in the statement that there isn't a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the Equator if it had had its rights. There is something peculiarly American in his warning to young girls not to marry—that is, not to excess! His remarks on compliments have a delightful ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... that I entirely agree with your view as to the reason why we are put here," observed Heath, without a trace of obvious sarcasm. Nevertheless, the mere words stung Charmian's almost childish self-conceit. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... they made the place blossom again; they conquered other tribes, and Manitou declared them his chosen ones, from whom alone he would accept sacrifice. But their chief became so ambitious that he wanted to supplant the Manitou in the worship of the people, and finally, in a lunacy of self-conceit, he challenged the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... he saw it, was mainly a business of diplomacy, a business of keeping the people around one in good temper, the soldiers in good order, the generals and their staffs in good appetite, the other Red Cross organisations in good self-conceit, and himself in good health. All these things he did most admirably and he had, moreover, a heart that felt as deeply for Russia as any heart in the world; but see the matter psychologically or even dramatically he would not. He had his own "nerves" ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... as they travel his road, and his lagging is pretty sure to be atoned for by earnest endeavor in the end. With these are to be classed numerous other varieties: those who are "Hunkerish" on account of some strange spiritual obtuseness, or from misanthropy, or perverseness, or self-conceit, or a cold and sluggish temperament, or from weak, human sympathies governed by strong political prejudice,—together with those countless larvae and tadpoles, the small-fry of sons and nephews, of individuality yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... My self-conceit in regard to my knowledge of human nature every now and then receives a blow. So soon as I have arrived at a positive conviction that I understand any human being thoroughly, and feel that I can safely predict what that person will or will ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... all they see in the minds of others, that which concerns them most is the reflection of themselves, the photographs of their own characters. The most obvious consequence of the self-knowledge thus forced upon them is to render them alike incapable of self-conceit or self-depreciation. Every one must needs always think of himself as he is, being no more able to do otherwise than is a man in a hall of mirrors to cherish delusions as ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... seemed to be filled with great thoughts which would make him famous. Over and over again he said to himself: "The rain pours and the people down below chuckle as they move about each under his little umbrella of self-conceit. They look up to the mountain, saying, 'The fool! Why looks he so high? He is lost in the mists up there, and he might be safe and dry with us.' But the mountain has over him the arch of the universe, and sleeps calmly in the sun of truth. Little recks he of the clouds ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... be self-conceit in me, Princess, to complain of your silence. Your letters have always been for me a favor, a charm. I am not meaning to say that I have the slightest right to them. Nevertheless, as you do not reply to me any more, I hope you will ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... now that she had pretended to know a great deal more than she really did. Pretension is very apt to get laughed at. She had always scorned Dotty's self-conceit; but hadn't she shown quite as much herself? Making her auntie suppose she understood cooking, and putting Mrs. Fixfax to all this trouble for nothing? How horrified auntie would be, and the housekeeper too, if they should dream that this little family was starving, with a cook-book lying ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... distance that lay between the lofty boss-pilotical altitude and my lowly one, yet perceptible to me; perceptible, and translatable into a compliment—compliment coming down from about the snow-line and not well thawed in the transit, and not likely to set anything afire, not even a cub-pilot's self-conceit; still a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic. Not the sincerity that calls itself sincere; that is ... oftenest self-conceit mainly. The great man's sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... called a great man. As for his mistress, she considered herself insulted by being addressed by a man who had lost her lock of hair. When the chest was exhausted, Popanilla was seized with a profound melancholy. Nothing depresses a man's spirits more completely than a self-conviction of self-conceit; and Popanilla, who had been accustomed to consider himself and his companions as the most elegant portion of the visible creation, now discovered, with dismay, that he and his fellow-islanders were nothing more than a horde ...
— English Satires • Various
... or any other infirmity of the organs. But though the embroidery of his conversation was different, the groundwork was the same, and the high-flown and ornate compliments with which the gallant knight of the sixteenth century inter-larded his conversation, were as much the offspring of egotism and self-conceit, as the jargon of the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... poor men and in the lower things that success increases self-conceit. In every high work and in men worthy of it, success is always ...
— Heart's-ease • Phillips Brooks
... rescued him from the evil spirit for the last time. The pair were in doleful plight. When their minds failed they had fallen in a miserable manner under the influence of a man named Teedon, a schoolmaster crazed with self-conceit, at whom Cowper in his saner mood had laughed, but whom he now treated as a spiritual oracle, and a sort of medium of communication with the spirit-world, writing down the nonsense which the charlatan talked. Mrs. ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... odious young cub!" he said to himself, as he wended his way back to the hotel at ten o'clock. "I never met such a combination of pride and self-conceit." ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... blasphemy against the order of nature and of nature's God. His vow of perpetual chastity, made with so passionate an enthusiasm, for the moment appeared to him an act of absolutely monstrous vanity and self-conceit. In his stupid ignorance he had tried to be wiser than his Maker, preferring the ordinances of man, to the glad and merciful purposes of God. In so doing had he not, only too possibly, committed the unpardonable sin, the sin against ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... said he, "estimates his own stature by comparing it with those about him, and the most fatal mistake he can make is to underestimate his size. Self-conceit is ugly, but it never injured any one. Modesty would have ruined Napoleon himself. The measure of a man, like the length of a cloth-yard, depends upon the standard. Go away from here, Dic. Find your true standard. Measure yourself and return, if you wish. This place is as good as ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... statements as to the size of loads which I could lay. The others probably saw that I needed discipline. I must have been dull, or I should have been on my guard for set-backs from Halse, Addison, or the mischievous Doanes. When a boy's head begins to grow large and his self-conceit to sprout, he is sometimes singularly ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... grown streaky as his balloon; and with colours not so very dissimilar. I had stabbed upon his vital self-conceit, and the man was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pieces bearing the general character which we have described, the French are certainly better fitted than any other people,—their native gaiety and sprightliness of disposition,—the polish which their manners so readily acquire,—their irrepressible confidence and self-conceit,—their love of shewing off, and attracting attention, give really a stage effect to many of their serious actions, and to almost all their trifling conversation and amusements. Hence, a stranger is particularly struck with the uniform excellence of the comic ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... for the formation of Libraries in the second volume of his Memoirs of Libraries (p. 629), where he writes, "No task is more likely to strip a man of self-conceit than that of having to frame, and to carry out in detail a plan for the formation of a large Library. When he has once got beyond those departments of knowledge in which his own pursuits and tastes have ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... contrast—but debauchery, a debauchery both secret and alarming, for they have all means at their disposal, and fix the morality of society. Their genuine stupidity lies hid beneath their specialism. They know their business, but are ignorant of everything which is outside it. So that to preserve their self-conceit they question everything, are crudely and crookedly critical. They appear to be sceptics and are in reality simpletons; they swamp their wits in interminable arguments. Almost all conveniently adopt social, literary, or political prejudices, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... When most extravagant in his applause, As if exalting him they raised themselves. Thus by degrees, self-cheated of their sound And sober judgment that he is but man, They demi-deify and fume him so That in due season he forgets it too. Inflated and astrut with self-conceit He gulps the windy diet, and ere long, Adopting their mistake, profoundly thinks The world was made in vain if not for him. Thenceforth they are his cattle: drudges, born To bear his burdens, drawing in his gears, And sweating in his service. ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... period of the connubial career—Mrs. Malpas's father died, and Mrs. Malpas became the absolute mistress of eight thousand pounds. Lemuel[1] had carefully foreseen this windfall, and wished to use the money in enterprises of the earthenware trade. Mrs. Malpas, pretty and vivacious, with a self-conceit hardened by the adulation of saloon-bars, very decidedly thought otherwise. Her motto was, 'What's yours is mine, but what's mine's my own.' The difference was accentuated. Long mutual resistances were followed by reconciliations, which grew ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... father gravely, "I can tell you the name of this thing that's been informin' you how great a man you can get to be. It ain't nothin' under God's heaven but self-conceit." ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... 'thine.'" But down through the centuries of Christendom, after our catching it so near its source in magical Ireland, comes this other music: this listening, not for the voices of passion, and indecision, and the self-conceit which is the greatest fool's play of all, within our personal selves,—but for the meditations of the Omnipresent as they are communicated through the gleam on water, through the breath and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... which case their satisfaction is called happiness) constitute self-regard (solipsismus). This is either the self-love that consists in an excessive fondness for oneself (philautia), or satisfaction with oneself (arrogantia). The former is called particularly selfishness; the latter self-conceit. Pure practical reason only checks selfishness, looking on it as natural and active in us even prior to the moral law, so far as to limit it to the condition of agreement with this law, and then it is called rational self-love. ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... or scorn of bystanders. It is impossible to reflect for a moment on such a crisis, without dropping a tear for the self-created infirmities of man: but there are considerations at which he shudders, and which he would rather varnish over with the sophistry of his refinement, and the fallacies of self-conceit. ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... Chatterton, my young friend, I'm going to say some words to you that ye'll no like. Ye're very vain o' yoursel'—but maybe at your time o' life it's not a very great fault to have a decent bump o' self-conceit; you're the best-hearted, most honourable-minded, pleasantest lad I know any where, and very like some nephews of my own in the Company's service: ye'll be a baronet when your father dies, and as rich as a Jew. But oh, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... porcelain,' and who, being asked when he came back from the Jardin des Plantes whether he had seen Lacepede, innocently replied: 'No; but I saw La giraffe!'—Carnot, 'Papa Victory,' of whom Lareveillere says that 'nobody could endure his vanity and self-conceit;' and, lastly, Lareveillere himself, whom Carnot in his Memoirs, published at London in 1799, compares to a 'viper,' and says, 'after he has made a speech he coils himself up again'—these were hardly the men to give their nights and days ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... "My self-conceit has been so often reproved by you, that I will not apologise for a quality which I almost flattered myself I no longer possessed; but you will excuse, I am sure, one who, in zealous haste to prove himself amended, has, I fear, almost shown ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... writings which must have been rushed off most rapidly, and amidst the fires of scorching distress, Goldsmith maintained his grace of style, and did not forget the reverence due to writing and the honour of literature. Without any trace or taint of self-consciousness or self-conceit, he held the pen a sacred trust. As a critic Goldsmith had a high ideal, and more than this. And, what is finer, an entirely new conception. No poet could read his criticism of Gray and not feel ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... page had a good share of self-conceit, however, and so was not greatly confused by the King's jest. He determined that he would avoid the mistake which his comrade had made. So he commenced reading the petition slowly and with great formality, emphasizing every word, and prolonging the articulation of every syllable. But his ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... destitute of spiritual wisdom and humility in their hearts; and therefore they conceive that they are wiser than the church, and more able to manage and order church affairs than their rulers. Their pride and self-conceit make them slight and contemn their teachers, and rise up in a rebellious contention with, and opposition unto them; as the prophet complains, Hos. iv. 4, This people are they that strive with the priests. Take heed then of strife and contention, and follow peace one with another, ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... you be troubled. I know what I want, generally, speaking, and in this particular instance I want you. I might get a man of more experience, but I should probably get a man of more prejudice and self-conceit along with him, and a man with a following of the literary hangers-on that are sure to get round an editor sooner or later. I want to start fair, and I've found out in the syndicate business all the men that are worth having. But they ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... It was on the girl's account that he suffered. He suffered, as a matter of course. He wanted Fanny badly, but he realized himself something of a cad. He discounted his own suffering; perhaps, as he told himself with sudden suspicion of self-conceit, he overestimated hers. Still, he was sure that the girl would suffer more than he wished. He blamed himself immeasurably. He tried to construct air castles which would not fall, even before the impact of his own thoughts, in which he could marry this girl and live with her happily ever ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... feeling not of half so much importance as he had on starting from the Breckenridge farm. His adventure with Crow Wing had mightily taken down his self-conceit. Like most of the settlers he had very little confidence in the Indian character; so, although Crow Wing had rendered the defenders of the Grants a signal service that very day, Enoch was not at all sure that the red youth was not ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... track of their pride and self-conceit, and counted how many times it fell, and fell hard, too, durin' the World's Fair, it would have been a lesson to 'em on the vanity of earthly things, and a ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... and a few scraggy poems, who had never schemed out a novel before, not even, as far as I am aware, a short story; who had never, in any way, tested his imaginative capacity, setting out, in insane self-conceit, to write, not merely a commercial work of fiction, but a novel which would outrival a universally proclaimed work of genius. And he had no imaginative capacity. His mind was essentially critical; and the critical mind is not creative. He was a clever man. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... in B.C. 149, wrote a guide to domestic medicine for the use of Roman fathers of the Republic, but he was a quack and full of self-conceit. He hated the physicians practising in Rome, who were mostly Greeks, and thought that their knowledge was much inferior to his own. Plutarch relates that Cato knew of the answer given to the King of Persia by Hippocrates, when sent for professionally, "I will never make use of my art in favour of ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... irreparably hurt. The idea of being afraid of any crossing in the lot, in the DAY-TIME, was a thing too preposterous for contemplation. Well, one matchless summer's day I was bowling down the bend above island 66, brimful of self-conceit and carrying my nose as high as a giraffe's, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... congregation got suddenly rich, and, with wealth, self-conceit and pride entered his heart. He considered it necessary, to preserve his respectability, to separate himself from the humble society he hitherto frequented, and cease to be a member of the Congregation of the Madonna, composed ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... could not hear, had faded, but a subtlety of mind, a clarity, a sort of pondering, intellectual self-consciousness (that had no kinship with that other form of self-consciousness that is only inverted self-conceit) had taken the place of those voices that she had once refused to deny to ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... salute the Clarences in their box. Eveline saw in him the beauty of success, and as he leaned towards the ladies, wiping his neck with his handkerchief and receiving their congratulations with an air of modesty though not without a tinge of self-conceit, the young girl glanced towards Madame Pensee and saw her, palpitating and breathless, drinking in the hero's applause with her head thrown backwards. It seemed as if she were on the point of fainting. Eveline immediately smiled ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... cannot reply in the affirmative, then examine your heart thoroughly, and you will find there, stifling the good that GOD has implanted, these three tyrants that have obtained dominion over, you: (1.) Pride; (2.) Ambition; (3.) Self-conceit. ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... pride despised the finest bread of wheat, And richer food I daily sought to find; Refined gold was boil'd up with my meat, Such self-conceit my senses all did blind. For which the cruel fates transformed me, From human substance to ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... century; but there is nothing in it which is special to that time: no scenery, no vivid pictures of street life, no distinct atmosphere of the period. It might just as well be of the eighteenth or nineteenth century. The character of Chiappino may be found in any provincial town. This compound of envy, self-conceit, superficial cleverness and real silliness is one of our universal plagues, and not uncommon among the demagogues of any country. And he contrasts him with Ogniben, the Pope's legate, another type, well ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Heavens, all seductions begin in the same way. We men are for the most part very infatuated with ourselves. I, my dearest child, can make that confession without any shame, for I have long since passed the age of self-conceit, although we still come across some old rascals who want to gobble up chickens, and forget that they have lost their teeth. Men are very foolish, young men particularly, and willingly imagine that all the ladies are dying of love for their little persons. A ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... come upon the parish from the days of the augurs down to our own—would be disenchanted at once in a neighborhood familiar with Del Rio, Wierus, Bodin, Scot, Glanvil, Webster, Casaubon, and the Mathers. Good books are the enemies of delusion, the most effectual extinguishers of self-conceit. Impersonal, dispassionate, self-possessed, they reason without temper, and remain forever of the same mind without obstinacy. The man who has the freedom of a great library lengthens his own life without the weariness of living; he may include all past generations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... and a plate of brass, which altogether set Hector's utmost force at defiance. Alas! I am not a Hector, and the worthy doctor's foes are as securely armed as Ajax was. Ignorance, superstition, bigotry, stupidity, malevolence, self-conceit, envy—all strongly bound in a massy frame of brazen impudence; to such a shield humour is the peck of a sparrow and satire the pop-gun of a schoolboy. Creation-disgracing scelerats such as they, God only can mend, and the devil only can punish.' The doctor yielded, Cunningham tells us, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... authors who have a mind that I should be their publisher, I should have to shut up shop; I should pass my time very agreeably no doubt, but the conversations would cost too much. I am not rich enough yet to listen to all the monologues of self-conceit. Nobody does, except in classical tragedies ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... Pharisee, but when after the most strictest sect of thy religion thou livest also a Pharisee; yea, and now in the temple, in thy prayer there, thou shewest thyself to be full of ignorance, pride, self-conceit, and horrible arrogancy, and desire of vain glory, &c., which are none of them the seat or fruits of righteousness, but the seat of the devil, and the fruit of his dwelling, even at this time in ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... last words produced a momentary silence. Charlie thoughtfully studied the carpet; Archie, who had been absently poking the fire, looked over at Mac as if he thanked him again, and Steve, forgetting his self-conceit, began to wonder if it was not possible to improve himself a little for Kitty's sake. Only a minute, for young men do not give much time to thoughts of this kind, even when love stirs up the noblest impulses within them. To act rather than to talk is more natural to ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... wish I knew her better. I have been to one dance and one or two dinners lately, but to tell you the truth, dear H——, the old people naturally treat me after my years, as a young person, and the young people (perhaps from my self-conceit) seem to me stupid and uninteresting, and so, you see, I do not like society. Cecilia Siddons is out of town at present, and I have not seen her for some time. You may have heard that the theatre has gained a lawsuit against Sinclair, the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... came to see me, and I told him what I was thinking. He got me to pay a visit to Redcross, and made a new opening for me. I may say without self-conceit that I was always considered to have a good taste in dress. I know it was a question which had never failed to interest me, to which I could not help giving a great deal of attention—making a study of it, as it were. Tom insisted that I could be of the greatest ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... may be true, too much must not be attributed to self-conceit, for Marivaux was rather timid and suspicious of himself at heart than self-conceited, and this very lack of confidence, this desire to please and to be thought well of, which caused him, at times, to emphasize before his friends his ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... words delicious, I a beast To take them as I did? but something jarr'd; Whether he spoke too largely; that there seem'd A touch of something false, some self-conceit, Or over-smoothness: howsoe'er it was, He scarcely hit my humour, and ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... I know intimately," said the archdeacon, "Arabin is, in my opinion, the most free from any taint of self-conceit. His fault ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... come." Had slavery fortified itself in a college, we would load our cannons with cold facts, and wing our arrows with arguments. But we happen to live in the world,—the world made up of thought and impulse, of self-conceit and self-interest, of weak men and wicked. To conquer, we must reach all. Our object is not to make every man a Christian or a philosopher, but to induce every one to aid in the abolition of slavery. We expect to accomplish our object long before the nation is ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... competitors of Themistocles: they have yielded the first place without dispute; and have been arrogantly content to be esteemed as second to your lordship, and even that also with a longo, sed proximi intervallo. If there have been, or are, any who go farther in their self-conceit, they must be very singular in their opinion; they must be like the officer in a play who was called captain, lieutenant, and company. The world will easily conclude whether such unattended generals can ever be capable of making a ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... agreeable girl whose great failing was her self-conceit. She was sure she could do everything anybody could do. As she did not look down on other people's efforts, she was amusing rather than annoying. She was always ready to write a poem, or sing a song, or paint a picture, and as she was a society girl and lived in a grand house, ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... the mind from petty, narrow, and bigotted prejudices: Lord Byron is the greatest pamperer of those prejudices, by seeming to think there is nothing else worth encouraging but the seeds or the full luxuriant growth of dogmatism and self-conceit. In reading the Scotch Novels, we never think about the author, except from a feeling of curiosity respecting our unknown benefactor: in reading Lord Byron's works, he himself is never absent from our minds. The colouring of Lord ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... one Susan, after his favorite sister. All this, to a lad like Denis, already remarkable for his vanity, was very trying; or rather, it absolutely turned his brain, and made him probably as finished a specimen of pride, self-conceit, and domineering arrogance, mingled with a kind of lurking humorous contempt for his cringing relations, as could be displayed in the person of some shallow but knavish prime minister, surrounded by his selfish sycophants, whom ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... For in self-conceit babbles the fool,[294] X.14a. The silly man multiplieth his words; 15. The fussiness of the fool jadeth him. Who knows ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon |
