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More "Self-confident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... self-confident spirit was, that at this period, he made but little progress in composition, and was more ambitious to become a brilliant performer. Hence by the periodicals of that day, he is not allowed to possess the ability of composition; harshness ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... pricked Audrey's conscience, making her feel like a thief. But her moods were capricious. At one moment she was a thief, a clumsy fraud, an ignorant ninny, and a suitable prey for the secret police; and at the next she was very clever, self-confident, equal to the situation, and enjoying the situation more than she had ever enjoyed anything, and determined to ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... Confederate has no ambition to imitate the regular soldier at all; he looks the genuine rebel; but in spite of his bare feet, his ragged clothes, his old rug, and tooth-brush stuck like a rose in his button-hole,[65] he has a sort of devil-may-care, reckless, self-confident look, which ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... tell me what it all means?" asked Jo, turning and facing his employer again, with a bold, self-confident manner that must have astonished the farmer not a little. "I just come up from town as fast as I could hurry, because, you see, I knew I was bringin' the greatest of news to maw here. I did see a sorter light in the sky when I was leavin' town, ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... door wide open, and four million slaves stand ready to file through. It is merely a question of time, circumstance, and method. There is not a statesman so wise but this war has given him new light, nor an Abolitionist so self-confident but must own its promise better than his foresight. Henceforth, the first duty of an American legislator must be, by the use of all legitimate means, to weaken Slavery. Delenda est Servitudo. What the peace which the South has broken was not doing, the war which she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... half a million, to pay his expenses, so that he had cost nothing to his mistress, and had brought back a handsome present for her. I doubt if such a naval estimate was ever presented to an English House of Commons. Above all he had taught the self-confident Spaniard to be afraid of him, and he carried back his poor comrades in such a glow of triumph that they would have fought Satan and all his angels with ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... diction, with carefully elaborated machinery, and with a style maintained at a uniform level of dignified correctness. The weakness of the English proceeds from inequality and extravagance; it is the weakness of self-confident vigour, intolerant of rule, rejoicing in its own exuberant resources. The weakness of the Italian is due to timidity and moderation; it is the weakness that springs not so much from a lack of native strength ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... until they disappeared into the woods with a sinister, self-confident smile like a spider watching a fly take the path into his web; a smile that gave him an expression strangely like that of the image itself. Before he turned into the hut again he gave several orders. Three of the brown men melted into ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... present at Lady Ferriby's, for instance, a number of ministers, some cabinet, others dissenting. Here, a man leaning against the wall wore a blue ribbon across his shirt front. There, another, looking bigger and more self-confident, had no shirt front at all. His was the cheap distinction ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... tells, and doubtless his bird often brought with its music visions of the country into the heat and dust of Leicester Square—soothing away much of his impatience. Men who have to fight the up-hill battle of life, must have energy and determination; and Hogarth was too out-spoken and self-confident not to have made many enemies. In after years his success (limited though it was, in a pecuniary point of view, for he died without leaving enough to support his widow respectably), produced its ordinary results—envy and enmity: and insults were heaped upon ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... had always had everything and who would always need to have everything, would know how to choose between two such men. As for Robin Morrell, Euphrosyne had been greatly taken with him. He blew into her arid parlour the long-awaited whiff from the golden fields of "society." He was big, loud, self-confident, tremendously and immediately at home (in a condescending way, though this she hardly grasped),—a man to open up his own path and trample through the world, Preciosa by his side, and Preciosa's mother not ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... Boileau than that he was singularly sparing of compliments. We do not remember that either friendship or fear ever induced him to bestow praise on any composition which he did not approve. On literary questions, his caustic, disdainful, and self-confident spirit rebelled against that authority to which everything else in France bowed down. He had the spirit to tell Louis the Fourteenth firmly, and even rudely, that his Majesty knew nothing about poetry, and admired verses which were detestable. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bad liquor tastes of honey How easy it is to give wounds, and how hard it is to heal Kisra called wine the soap of sorrow No one so self-confident and insolent as just such an idiot The mother of foresight ...
— Quotations From Georg Ebers • David Widger
... as she sat there looking at it. She had always had her way with the father—why should she doubt her power over the son? Supremely maternal as she was, the sheltering instinct had extended even to the man she loved. He had been outwardly strong and self-confident, assured, self-reliant, even severe with others, but behind the bold exterior, as always to the eyes of the beloved woman, had been a little, shrinking, helpless child, craving the comfort of a woman's hand—the sanctuary of ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... on to his fate, said, "Learn, O youths, how much the weapons of men excel those of women, and give way for my achievement. Though the daughter of Latona herself should protect him by her own arms, still, in spite of Diana, shall my right hand destroy him." Such words did he boastingly utter with self-confident lips; and lifting his double-edged axe with both hands, he stood erect upon tiptoe. The beast seized him {thus} bold, and, where there is the nearest way to death, directed his two tusks to the upper part ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... over her victory and very deeply moved by the look she had seen on Jim's face, Belle realized the full meaning of her success and took a woman's pride in the fact that this great, powerful, self-confident, gifted man should in two short encounters completely change about and defer to her judgment. There was a moment's silence in which she sought to get her voice under ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and there were both virtues and faults capable of shrinking or expanding. The faults will not, I hope, be a reason for the withdrawal of your interest in him. Among our valued friends is there not some one or other who is a little too self-confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protuberant there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations? ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... without a shepherd, rushing hither and thither seeking for a direction and a Weltanschauung, her amazing powers of industry and concentration and her rich and turbid life of feeling running to waste for lack of channelled guidance: Belgium, self-confident, industrious and rejuvenated: Italy, made one at last and measuring her strength to face the tasks of a new epoch in her history: and, behind, the great new surging world of the Slav, from the disciplined ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... towards the legitimate sons of the man who had saved them from Midian. "Jotham's fable'' of the trees who desired a king may be foreign to the context; it is a piece of popular lore, and cannot be pressed too far: the nobler trees have no wish to rule over others, only the bramble is self-confident. The "fable'' appears to be antagonistic to ideas of monarchy. The origin of the conflicts which subsequently arose is not clear. Gaal, a new-comer, took the opportunity at the time of the vintage, when there was a festival in tho temple, to head a revolt and seized Shechem. Abimelech, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the photograph towards her. No, she had not changed so very much. Only something inside her seemed to have grown less tense, less self-confident. Also, she had not had Leonetta's advantages,—advantages that she herself had been chiefly instrumental in securing for her younger sister. More arts than that of wielding the French tongue are learned in ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... that you look too young, for I know governesses at girl's schools are young nowadays, and that they play games, and all that. But you don't look to me quite self-confident or self-opinionated enough. Eh! What do you think, Joan? Is Miss Carson your idea ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... then that Washington resolved on making one of those sudden movements so disconcerting to a self-confident enemy. It had been some time maturing, but could not be sooner put in execution on account of the wretched condition of Sullivan's (lately Lee's) troops, who had come off their long march, as Washington expresses it, in want ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... II., a giggling crew rather more au fait with the ways of the school, effervesced occasionally into excited squeals, and were instantly suppressed by a prefect. The Third and Fourth, which comprised the bulk of the girls from twelve to fifteen, occupied the middle of the hall, a lively, self-confident and rather obstreperous set, all at that awkward age which is anxious to claim privileges, but not particularly ready to submit to the authorized code. Every one of them was talking at the extreme ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... not an especial favorite of my father. Its minor strains and its expressions of womanly doubts and fears were antipathetic to his sanguine, buoyant, self-confident nature. He was inclined to ridicule the conclusions of its last verse and to say that the man was a molly-coddle—or whatever the word of contempt was in those days. As an antidote he usually called for "O'er the hills ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... was in Marbran's hands. They stood or fell together. Parrish knew this. But he was a born gambler and insanely self-confident. He took a chance with Marbran. ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... herself, as by fire, from the corruptions of the despotic and soul-degrading Church of Rome, he arrived at Boston in February, 1630, about half a year after the landing of the Massachusetts Colony of Governor Winthrop. He was an eloquent preacher, stiff and self-confident in his opinions; ingenious, powerful, and commanding, in impressing them upon others; inflexible in his adherence to them; and, by an inconsistency peculiar to religious enthusiasts, combining the most amiable and affectionate sympathies of the heart ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... again, and raised them to his lips and kissed them. It astonished him to feel them so cold, and see her again so excited and pale. Was she really afraid of the villain she had escaped from? The dear, foolish woman! The man in his self-confident strength loved her the more for the vague terrors he felt himself so well able ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... anticipation, but not a particle of fear. The officers in command, Captain Smith and Lieutenant Morris, were two of the most gallant men in a service where gallantry has always been too common to need special comment. The crews were composed of veterans, well trained, self-confident, and proud beyond measure of the flag whose honor they upheld. The guns were run out, and the men stood at quarters, while the officers eagerly conned the approaching ironclad. The Congress was the first to open fire; and, as her volleys flew, the men on the Cumberland were astounded to see the ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... along the halls with the other outsiders, books in hand, her head held proudly high, and never turned even to glance in at the gleaming tables, the lighted candles, and the little groups of easily self-confident fraternity men and girls laughing and talking over their teacups, and revenging vicariously the rest of the ignored student-body by the calm young insolence with which they in their turn ignored their presumptive hostesses, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... measuring our minds by an outside standard they enable us to set side by side two phases of our own life—the ego of 1892, perhaps, and that of 1914. How boyish that other ego was; how it jumped to conclusions; how ignorant it was and how self-confident! And yet, how fresh it was; how quickly responsive to new impressions; how unspoiled; how aspiring! If you want to know the changes that have transformed the mind that was into the very different one that now is, read ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... rose. Self-confident and noisily loquacious, as most men of his class are in simple conversation, he was plainly intimidated at speaking before such a crowd. He did not know where to look nor what to do with his hands, and he shuffled uneasily on his feet, while streams of nervous ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... had come over to Bursley in search of his betrothed. At Holl's shop they had told him that she was with Mrs. Povey. Constance glanced at him, impressed by his jolly air of success. He seemed exactly like his breezy and self-confident advertisements in the Signal. He was absolutely pleased with himself. He triumphed over his limp—that ever-present reminder of a tragedy. Who would dream, to look at his blond, laughing, scintillating face, astonishingly young for his years, that he had once passed through such ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... imagination for varying of incidents; never was one who expressed them in language in which the same words so constantly recur. This is the invariable characteristic of a great and powerful, but at the same time self-confident and careless mind. It is to be seen in the most remarkable manner in Bacon and Machiavel, and not a little of it may be traced both in the prose and poetical works of Scott. The reason is, that the strength of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... become flustered and excited merely because someone else does not agree with you. Remember that Homer said, "The tongue speaks wisely when the soul is wise," and surely the soul can be wise only when one is entirely calm, self-confident and at peace ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... was only jesting, and I see that my jests were out of place. Of course what you saw was real—there are no pretences here. Men and women do indeed suffer a kind of death—the second death—in these places, and have to begin again; but that is only for a certain sort of self-confident and sin-soaked person, whose will needs to be roughly broken. There are certain perverse sins of the spirit which need a spiritual death, as the sins of the body need a bodily death. Only thus can ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... this who saunters across the playground, talking in loud, self-confident tones with two or three fellows round him, his hands in his pockets, his air haughty and nonchalant, and his cap a little on one side? He is still pleasant looking, his face still shows the capabilities for good and great things, but we are obliged ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... picture-galleries, and is more ignorant about Art than a French shoeblack. Art, Nature pass, and there is no dot of admiration in his stupid eyes: nothing moves him, except when a very great man comes his way, and then the rigid, proud, self-confident, inflexible British Snob can be as humble as a flunkey and ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Why the sudden lapse on the part of this extraordinary and self-confident young person into the terminology of the ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... he had thought of her only casually, as merely a young girl; he was not now consciously in love with her—her young woman-hood had burst upon him too suddenly for such a consciousness—but a warm tingling went through him as he gazed at her imperious, self-confident youth. Part of his mind was thinking much the same thought that Hunt had considered a few hours earlier: here were the makings of ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... its saddle and picketed it to a dwarfed ash. Its frozen carcass was found with the saddle near by, two months later. He now evidently recognized some landmark, and realized that he had passed the road, and was far to the north of the round-up wagons; but he was a resolute, self-confident man, and he determined to strike out for a line camp, which he knew lay about due east of him, two or three miles out on the prairie, on one of the head branches of Knife River. Night must have fallen by this time, and he missed the ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... Elizabeth. But this trust in the unity of the nation and the Crown was now roughly shaken. The squires and merchants who thronged the benches at Westminster listened with coldness and suspicion to the self-confident assurances of the king. "I bring you," said James, "two gifts, one peace with foreign nations, the other union with Scotland"; and a project was laid before them for a union of the two kingdoms under the name of Great Britain. "By what laws," ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... save obedience; and he consequently presented himself at the residence of Madame de Verneuil, whom he found as self-possessed and as self-confident as in the palmiest days of her prosperity. Instead of concessions she made conditions, and complained loudly and arrogantly of the proceedings of the sovereign; by whom she declared that she had been outraged in ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... not indignant. I have admitted that you may be right. Our detective will soon find out. He has the calm, self-confident, penetrating look of a man who could, if possible, screw ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... Peter was by no means a 'Peter' then. The name no doubt mainly implies official function, but that official function was prepared for by personal character; and in so far as the name refers to character, it means firmness. At that epoch Peter was rash, impulsive, headstrong, self-confident, vain, and therefore, necessarily changeable. Like the granite, all fluid and hot, and fluid because it was hot, he needed to cool in order to solidify into rock. And not until his self-confidence had been knocked out of him, and he had learned humility by falling; not until he had been ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... the rude shock it had received on Mrs. Shortridge's great night there. His first thought was to withdraw from the dangerous neighborhood. But he blushed at his own cowardice; and the moment after, having caught her eye, he, self-confident, made his way through the crowd, and greeted her politely as an old acquaintance. It was plain that she was a little nervous on his approach; her lips were compressed for a moment, and she drew more than one deep breath, while watching him closely, and carefully ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... to the hardness and vulgarity of middle-class liberalism, the strong light it turned on the hideous and grotesque illusions of middle-class Protestantism,—who will estimate how much all these contributed to swell the tide of secret dissatisfaction which has mined the ground under self-confident liberalism of the last thirty years, and has prepared the way for its sudden collapse and supersession? It is in this manner that the sentiment of Oxford for beauty and sweetness conquers, and in this manner long may it continue ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... self-sufficiency and blind pride, which easily betrays men into the most fatal errors. On the contrary, pride is a spirit of revolt and independence: he who is possessed with this devil is fond of his own conceits, self-confident, and obstinate. However strong the daylight of evidence may be in itself, such a one will endeavor to shut up all the avenues of light, though some beams force themselves into his soul to disturb his repose, and strike deep the sting of ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... of her recent illness she had been strong, self-confident, almost assured of success. At times she recognized dimly that something was wrong; but she shut her eyes to the unwelcome truth, and determined to succeed. But her sickness and fears at that time, and now a failure that seemed to destroy the ambition of ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... illustration; they surrounded them with personal exegesis or drowned them in transcendental commentaries; in short, they claimed to discover their own ideas in them. It is always difficult and sometimes impossible to distinguish the dogmas from the self-confident interpretations which are usually as incorrect ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... horses, with their little darlings of jockeys. If there is one thing I like better than another, it is a thoroughbred horse. What a gentleman he looks amongst the rest of his kind! How he walks down the Course, as if he knew his own value—self-confident, but not vain—and goes swinging along in his breathing-gallop as easily and as smoothly as if I was riding him myself, and he was proud of his burthen! When Colonist won the Cup, I felt again as if I could have cried. It was a near race, and closely ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... are also women, who are too self-confident and obtrusive. These, if they discover some slight inconsistency in men, fiercely betray their indignation and behave with arrogance. A man may show a little inconsistency occasionally, but yet his affection may ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... R, for foolhardiness and obstinacy, he having, as it has been proved, acted in entire opposition to 'his owners.' On the pressing recommendation, however, of the owners, and at the representation that E. has been long in the service, and is, although too self-confident, a very respectable man, his certificate has been restored ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... critic, we would yet add to the considerations on which he relies another, viz. that it is most improbable that Louis XIV should ever have considered it necessary to take such rigorous measures against the Duc de Beaufort. Truculent and self-confident as he was, he never acted against the royal authority in such a manner as to oblige the king to strike him down in secret; and it is difficult to believe that Louis XIV, peaceably seated on his throne, with all the enemies of his minority under ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... amorous possibilities, Chavernay came daintily across the bridge, very young, very self-confident, very impudent, very much enjoying himself. As he neared the Inn he looked about him nonchalantly, and, seeing that no one was in sight, he stooped and caught up a pebble from the roadway and flung it dexterously enough ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... while an extremely self-confident young Darian doctor—one of his names was Korvan—rather condescendingly demonstrated that the former blue pigmentation was a viral product quite unconnected with the plague, and that it had been wiped out by a very trivial epidemic of such ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... replied. And she rose from her chair. She turned and faced him with the light of the hall-lamp full upon her. She was smiling and self-confident. ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... Without question Justin's business methods were the acme of up-to-date effectiveness. An outbreak of war could hardly have stirred the town to more seething excitement than the advent of this well-dressed young man with his self-confident air and full pocketbook. Clematis was apple-mad. The Apple of Eden Investment Company and its optimistic promises eclipsed in interest the combined fascinations of politics and scandal. The groups in those local lounging-places, which in rural communities ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... together among the black rocks, and prayed as some of them had never prayed before. It was very well to discuss prayer and treat it lightly and philosophically upon the deck of the Korosko. It was easy to feel strong and self-confident in the comfortable deck-chair, with the slippered Arab handing round the coffee and liqueurs. But they had been swept out of that placid stream of existence, and dashed against the horrible, jagged facts of life. ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... his place; a man of ready invention, unscrupulous, witty, and brilliant. Self-confident and full of promises, he succeeded in imparting a gleam of sunshine, and pursued a plan directly the opposite to that adopted by Necker. He encouraged the extravagance of the court, derided the future, and warded off pressing debts by contracting new ones. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... such calmness, that it may be said to have been dead and passed away. The pang which it left behind was one of humility and remorse. "Oh, how wicked and proud I was about Arthur," she thought, "how self-confident and unforgiving! I never forgave from my heart this poor girl, who was fond of him, or him for encouraging her love; and I have been more guilty than she, poor, little, artless creature! I, professing ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... utter hopelessness of longer struggling against the unseen, and in that hour she became a fatalist. Better drift from day to day without purpose, than living, behold one's dreams and ambitions come to naught. She was like a strong, self-confident swimmer who had been caught by the tide and was being swept irresistibly out to sea. Blurred though her vision was, she seemed to see things clearer than she had ever seen them before, and she somehow felt ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... remedy. But that is Kingsley all over. He was a mass of over-excited nerves and ill-ordered ideas, much more poet than philosopher, more sympathetic than lucid, full of passionate indignation, recklessly self-confident, cynically disdainful of consistency, patience, good sense. He had the Rousseau temperament, with its furious eloquence, its blind sympathies and antipathies, its splendid sophistries. Yeast was plainly the Christian reverse of the Carlyle image and superscription, as read in Sartor and Past ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... the persuasive casuistry peculiar to the minds of the Southern Secession leaders. It is naturally followed by a touch of that self-confident bluster, also at that time peculiar ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... very well knew that, but—Gardiner was right—she was too self-confident. She trusted a little to her power over the king; she imagined he would make an exception in her favor. And it was so dull to be obliged ever to be the losing and conquered party at this game; to permit the king always to appear as the triumphant victor, and to bestow on his game praise which ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... profound admiration of himself. They were mutually happy in each other's society, and were glad to meet and loth to part. They conversed upon literary projects, upon political reforms, upon speculations in philosophy and science. M. Roland was naturally self-confident, opinionated, and domineering. Jane regarded him with so much reverence that she received his opinions for law. Thus he was flattered and she ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... now, did not show beautiful symmetry, but they bore the stamp of a strong, energetic mind. The majestic dignity which he knew how to bestow upon it, made his figure, though it did not exceed middle height, appear taller; and the self-confident smile which rested on his full lips, as he was sure of a speedy triumph, well beseemed a general whose sword and brain had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... will seek to make her his instrument and accomplice, should he require one. Peschiera (as you may suppose by his audacious wager) is not one of those secret villains who would cut off their right hand if it could betray the knowledge of what was done by the left,—rather one of those self-confident vaunting knaves of high animal spirits, and conscience so obtuse that it clouds their intellect, who must have some one to whom they can boast of their abilities and confide their projects. And Peschiera has done all he can to render this poor woman so wholly dependent on him as to be his slave ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... something tall and white,—something white and shadowy, standing erect, and shrinking aside, behind the counter. My heart stood still; a sepulchral chill came over me. My old self, trembling, angry, foreboding, stepped suddenly within the niche whence the self-confident, full-grown, sensible woman had vanished utterly. For an instant, I felt like a ghost myself. It seemed natural that ghosts, if such there were, should spy me out, and appall my heart with their presence. For ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... firm footing, and succumbed to or imitated any type, or set, with which I was brought in contact, esteeming it better than my own, of which I was too ashamed to stand by it and assert it. Any rough, rude, self-confident fellow, who spoke out what he thought and felt, cowed me, and I yielded to him, and even assented to him, not with that yielding which gives way for peace's sate, secretly thinking itself right, but with a surrender of the convictions to his mode of thinking, as being better ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... thoughtful, for she knew not what to do without her mother. Paul, with that self-confident conceit which comes of love, smiled to himself at her sadness, thinking how soon the pleasures of marriage and the excitements of Paris would drive it away. Madame Evangelista saw this confidence with much satisfaction. She had already ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... unhappily proportioned and inauspiciously mixed with other turns and casts of mind, as to end in work with little grace or harmony or fine tracery about it, but only overweening purpose and vehement will. And it is overweeningness and self-confident will that are the chief notes of Macaulay's style. It has no benignity. Energy is doubtless a delightful quality, but then Macaulay's energy is perhaps energy without momentum, and he impresses us more by a strong volubility than by volume. It is the energy ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... five mountains of their forests and underbrush. It was not a task for a holiday, but a stern, difficult, and perplexing problem, and Van Antwerp was not quite the man to solve it. He was stubborn, self-confident, and indifferent by turns. He did not depend upon his lieutenants, but jealously guarded his own opinions from the least question or discussion, and at every step he antagonized the easy-going people among whom he had come to work. He had no patience with their habits of procrastination, ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... in childhood, and who was in nowise related to them. She thought that he was very much improved in manner, and probably in character, by his mother's death. He was no longer sarcastic, or fastidious, or vain, or self-confident. She did not know how often all these styles of talk or of behaviour were put on to conceal shyness or consciousness, and to veil the real self ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... America with little to disturb them, except the discontented red men beyond the Alleghany Mountains. The colonies grew larger; they did more business and they gathered more wealth. But as they prospered they became self-confident and with scarce an enemy at home they became involved in a quarrel with the motherland across the sea. England, they said, was taxing them unjustly and posting soldiers in their chief cities to ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... a somewhat pensive but wholly attractive and self-confident young opportunist in white flannels, he sauntered through the hotel gardens and ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... these are solicitors' clerks too, only better fed; or else they are real solicitors. And a few of the bears are perky young creatures—in barrister's robes, either for the first time, when they look very self-conscious, or for the second time, when they look very self-confident. All the bears are telling each other about their cases. They are saying, "We are a deceased wife's sister suing in forma pauperis," or "I am a discharged bankrupt, three times convicted of perjury, but I am claiming damages ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... in love." He thought of that adorable Jeanne whom he had held in his arms a few hours before, and who had so eagerly clung to him. He understood that she had never ceased to belong to him. The image of Cayrol, self-confident man, happy in his love, coming to his mind, caused Serge ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... makes for success, but that is an insincere habit; it's really self-hypnotism. It may help us to win in some particular enterprise, yes; but it's dangerous, like drug-taking. You must keep on increasing the dose, and blind-folding your reason. Men who do it are buoyant, self-confident, but some of their ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... schools himself to keep this conviction out of his verse, it is likely to flower in self-confident poetry of the classic type, so characteristic of the Elizabethan age. This has such a long tradition behind it that it seems almost stereotyped, wherever it appears in our period, especially when it is promising immortality to a beloved one. We scarcely heed such ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... but everyone of them could honestly call himself an accomplished knave, never stopping at anything that stood in the way of a "job." The present head of the band was Lieutenant Kovroff, who was a thorough-paced rascal, in the full sense of the word. Daring, brave, self-confident, he also possessed a handsome presence, good manners, and the worldly finish known as education. Before the members of the Golden Band, and especially before Kovroff, the small rascals stood in fear and trembling. He had his secret ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... the bank, he found that the activity of the clerks and typewriters did not jar on him as it had been doing of late. He paused at Saunders's desk and made a cheerful and oddly self-confident inquiry as to the disposition of a certain customer's account, surprising his partner by his ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... of means. A wife had no place in his European scheme; a husband was the last thing Rachel wanted; but a long sea voyage, an uncongenial employ, and the persistent chivalry of a handsome, entertaining, self-confident man of the world, formed a combination as fatal to her inexperience as that of so much poverty, pride, and beauty proved to Alexander Minchin. They were married without ceremony on the very day that they arrived in England, ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... upon important questions of government; and the intrepid reviewer rightly sought a more fitting subject for his magician's gifts in the dramatists of the Restoration. Newman said of it, 'Gladstone's book is not open to the objections I feared; it is doctrinaire, and (I think) somewhat self-confident; ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... umbrella, of all possible accoutrements the least likely to be useful in an open boat. But though she carried an umbrella, Miss Clarence did not look like a fool. She might know nothing about boats and the way to travel in them, but she had a bright, intelligent face and a self-confident decision of manner. She was by profession a journalist, and had conceived the idea of visiting Ireland and writing articles about that unfortunate country. Being an intelligent journalist she knew that articles about the state of Ireland are overdone and very tiresome. Nobody, ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... laugh to reassure his subordinate, whom he knew to be an anxious, careful man, on his promotion. Captain Dixon was always self-confident. That glass of champagne from the Senator's hospitable bottle made him feel doubly capable to-night to take his ship out into the open Atlantic, and then to bed with that easy heart which a skipper only knows on ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... she looked at me with a somewhat changed glance, and observed in a voice which was also changed, and with no smile: 'I don't know, Piotr Petrovitch, what you think of me now, but I dare say you remember what I used to be.... I was self-confident, light-hearted ... and not good; I wanted to live for my own pleasure. But I want to tell you this: when I was abandoned, and was like one lost, and was only waiting for God to take me, or to pluck up spirit to make an end of myself,—once more, just as in Voronezh, I met with Paramon Semyonitch—and ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... midst of disaster and ruin, is still beaming with self-confidence; he seems to have thought that self-confidence wrought like magic, or like faith, and could of itself remove mountains. If difficulties occurred, his resource was to be still more self-confident. He was well aware of the hostility his ordonnances would create; he was well aware that the army must be their veritable support: yet observe with what a sublime air of nonchalance he prepares himself for the subjection of a people. "How many men," asked M. d'Haussez, as the ministers sat ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... letters must have been something of a revelation to the Bible Society's officers, who seem to have shown great tact and consideration in dealing with their self-confident correspondent There is something magnificent in the letters that Borrow wrote about this period; their directness and virility, their courage and determination suggest, not a man who up to the thirtieth year of his age has been a conspicuous failure, as the world ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... or by two or three external indications. I can not understand you, you cannot understand me, and neither of us can understand himself. A man may be a splendid doctor, and at the same time a very bad judge of human nature; you will admit that, unless you are too self-confident. ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... Loyola solved the question with that unbounded assurance which almost always accompanies the greatest of human blunders. It is the self-confident man who compasses the finest wreck, Loyola, wounded in the defense of that strongest little city in Europe, Pampeluna—wounded, alas! and not killed—jumped to the conclusion that God had reared up ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... himself which were greater, his debts or his assets. Desperate gambling on the Stock Exchange, wild speculation and the excitability which he could not get over even in advancing years, had by degrees led to the decline of his fortune and the proud, fearless, self-confident millionaire had become a banker of middling rank, trembling at every rise and fall in his investments. "Cursed bet!" muttered the old man, clutching his head in despair "Why didn't the man die? He is only forty now. He will take my last ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... new administration that he is about to create: the place offered to me is above my merits, nor suited to what I have yet done, though, perhaps, it be suited to what I may yet do. I make that qualification, for you know," added Ernest, with a proud smile, "that I am sanguine and self-confident." ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... factitious emotion drove him once or twice to Hillbridge, whence, after scenes of evasive tenderness, he returned dissatisfied with himself and her. As he made room for himself in New York and peopled the space he had cleared with the sympathies at the disposal of agreeable and self-confident young men, it seemed to him natural to infer that Mrs. Aubyn had refurnished in the same manner the void he was not unwilling his departure should have left. But in the dissolution of sentimental partnerships it is seldom that both associates are ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... Felicite. She has been very kind to me, but she has been stupid and over-self-confident, and I cannot consider her. I must consider him. She will suffer and I am indeed sorry, poor soul, but he—he shall be happy. So good-bye, Pam. Remember your own father and mother, and understand. We go to Paris by the eleven o'clock train to-morrow, and thence—to Arcadia, as your people ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... more appeared on the scene! The rogue stopped short instantly. It was evident that he recognised a foeman, worthy of his steel, approaching. Chand Moorut advanced with alacrity. The rogue eyed him with a sinister expression. There was no hesitation on either side. Both warriors were self-confident; nevertheless, they did not rush to the battle. Like equally-matched veterans they advanced with grim purpose and wary deliberation. With heads erect, and curled trunks, they met, more like wrestlers than swordsmen, each seeming to watch for a deadly grip. Suddenly ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... he was tall as any Viking, as broad in the shoulder. He was smooth-faced, and his fresh skin and well-developed figure bespoke the man in good physical condition through active exercise, yet well content with the world's apportionment. His limbs were long, his hands bony and strong. His air, of self-confident assurance, seemed that of a man well used to having his own way. His forehead was high and somewhat rugged. Indeed, all his features were in large mold, like the man himself, as though he had come from a day ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... their heads low, on a short neck; and their hinder legs are rather longer compared with the front legs than is usual. Their bare teeth, their short heads, and upturned nostrils give them the most ludicrous self-confident air of defiance imaginable. ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... short sharp hour's work before breakfast would count for a hundred times more than a feeble dawdling prolonged throughout the whole day. Abner rose betimes and did his hour's work; sweaty, panting, begrimed, hopeful, indignant, sincere, self-confident, he set his product ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... exceptions, they did everything in their power to disseminate hatred and to envenom it. To a considerable extent, this war was their war. Thousands of brains were poisoned by their murderous ideologies. Overweeningly self-confident, proud, implacable, they sacrificed millions of young lives to the triumph of the phantoms of their ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... the dome of the forehead seemed to rest on the rim of the spectacles; the flat cheeks, of a greasy, unhealthy complexion, were merely smudged by the miserable poverty of a thin dark whisker. The lamentable inferiority of the whole physique was made ludicrous by the supremely self-confident bearing of the individual. His speech was curt, and he had a particularly impressive manner of ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... present," she assured him, and the stimulus of the champagne made her look—and feel—much more self-confident than she really was. "More than I've ever had before. So I'm not worried. When anyone has been through what I have they aren't so scared ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... fixed allowance from home; for credentials she was furnished with an introduction or two to literary men from her friends in the country who had some appreciation, more or less vague, of her intellectual powers. Though courageous and determined, she was far from self-confident; she asked herself if she might not be mistaking a mere fancy for a faculty, and her first step was to seek the opinion of some experienced authority as ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... excellently acted, 'when I observe this,' said Steele, 'I say a much harder thing of this than of the comedy.' Addison's Drummer is a gentleman who, to forward his suit to a soldier's widow, masquerades as the drumbeating ghost of her husband in her country house, and terrifies a self-confident, free-thinking town exquisite, another suitor, who believes himself brought face to face with the spirit world, in which he professes that he can't believe. 'For my part, child, I have made myself easy in those points.' ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... next to impossible to-morrow, and only very difficult the day after. Your failures are often only the proofs that you have a glimpse at least of something below the surface of things. A discouraged pupil is never a source of anxiety to me. It is only the self-confident ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... had money in his pocket once more, he was nearing home and friends and safety, and, most and best of all, he had had a substantial meal, hot and nourishing, and felt big, and strong, and careless, and self-confident. ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... then, there is not much to be hoped from the critics. Over-sensitive writers are too rare, and the productive impulse of the others is too self-confident for prudence to smother. Obviously, they care no more for the critics than Tom and Sal a century ago cared for Malthus. They disregard them. The most savage criticism only confirms their belief in the beauty and necessity of their progeny, just as a mother ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... gotten up to deceive. Tell him that in a few years he will repent ever having seen such a place. And what is your reward? It is that you are laughed at and esteemed as one that interferes, and told to mind your own business. The young man is free and self-confident. Look in a few years for that same young man and you shall find him a terrible example of fulfilled prophecy. Diseased, worn, weak, and weary, he cries in the anguish of soul for his folly. "And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, and say, How have ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... liked him:—the Basque captains, economical in words, rude and sparing in affectionate discourse; the Asturian and Galician captains, self-confident and spendthrift in strange contrast to their sobriety and avaricious character when ashore; the Andalusian captains, reflecting in their witty talk white Cadiz and its luminous wines; the Valencian captains who talk of politics on the bridge, imagining that ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Bozzle away from his own home, out on business, with his coat buttoned over his breast, and his best hat in his hand, was aware that he commanded respect,—and he could carry himself accordingly. He knew himself to be somebody, and could be easy, self-confident, confidential, severe, authoritative, or even arrogant, as the circumstances of the moment might demand. But he had been found with his coat off, and a baby in his arms, and he could not recover himself. "I do not suppose that anybody ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... remember with what earnestness the mother sought to awaken in the mind of the young man a sense of danger, going so far as to uncover a family secret and warn him of a taint in his blood. It will also be remembered how the proud, self-confident young man rejected, her warnings and entreaties, and how ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... a few minutes to the hour of four. The tides of trade were not yet loosed, and they found a quiet corner of the cafe. Kernan, well dressed, slightly swaggering, self-confident, seated himself opposite the little detective, with his pale, sandy mustache, squinting eyes ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... bi-weekly packet from Deadham—addressed in Mary Fisher's careful copy-book hand—arrived at luncheon time, and contained, among much of apparently lesser interest, a diverting chronicle of Tom Verity's impressions and experiences during the first six weeks of his Indian sojourn. The young man's gaily self-confident humour had survived his transplantation. He wrote in high feather, quite unabashed by the novelty of his surroundings, yet not forgetting to pay honour where honour ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... knowing her man, made no attempt to recall him. She had a very special regard for her rector, of a complex sort that is not quite easy to define. There was veneration in it, the veneration that was inculcated in her youth for the clergy; there was the compassion that many capable and self-confident women bestow upon any man to whom Providence has denied a feminine protector; there was a regretful pity for his shortcomings—(but half-acknowledged, even to herself)—as a Minister of the Word, counterbalanced by respect for ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... "Marseillaise." The latter begins, as it were, to get angry; becoming aware of Augustin at last she tries to fling him off, to brush him aside like a tiresome insignificant fly. But "Mein lieber Augustin" holds his ground firmly, he is cheerful and self-confident, he is gleeful and impudent, and the "Marseillaise" seems suddenly to become terribly stupid. She can no longer conceal her anger and mortification; it is a wail of indignation, tears, and curses, with ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... endorsed the saying, "no man is great unless he is also superbly dressed." As Jacob stuttered, one of his correspondents thought his name was J. J. J. J. J. Jacob, and terribly offended the testy General by writing it so. A brave and self-confident, but rancorous old man, Jacob by his senseless regulations brought the Indian army to the verge of ruin. This peccadillo was passed over, but a more serious offence, his inability to play whist, was remembered against him by his brother officers ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... might sound very conceited and self-confident to any one who should read it, but I do not write to be read by other eyes than my own: my journal is the reflex of my thoughts and feelings; so I may be frank with myself. And why should I not be proud of my independence, as well as any ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... long, searching, anxious look at herself in the narrow panel mirror which she had fixed on to one of the cupboard doors. That there is no truer critic of herself, and of her appearance, than a very pretty woman, is generally true even of the vainest and most self-confident of her sex. ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... last scene in Candida where the wife, stung into final speech, declared her purpose of remaining with the strong man because he is the weak man. The wife is asked to decide between two men, one a strenuous self-confident popular preacher, her husband, the other a wild and weak young poet, logically futile and physically timid, her lover; and she chooses the former because he has more weakness and more need of her. Even among the plain and ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... in other spheres of life, had at last got into the house of Hubbles and Grease, and had risen to be their book-keeper. He had once been tried by them as a traveller, but in that line he had failed. He did not possess that rough, ready, self-confident tone of mind which is almost necessary for a man who is destined to move about quickly from one circle of persons to another. After a six months' trial he had given that up, but during the time, Mr. Moulder, the senior ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... not be able to tell him that. But cruel, wicked people often are silly. This poor old woman screamed out some nonsense in her agony which Fritz took to be the answer he required. He smiled, therefore, in a self-confident fashion as he bowed low before the princess and awaited her question. She asked it in a clear bell-like voice, which somehow caused Hans's heart, when he heard it, to beat a good ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... cases, Nash, or rather his hero (for Nash does not himself make use of this language which he in no way admired, but only puts it into the mouth of his self-confident good-for-nothing as the finishing touch to his portrait), adopts Lyly's style entirely, alliteration and all: "The sparrow for his lecherie liveth but a yeere, he for his trecherie was turned ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... the movement was loudly mocked and decried, and perhaps all the more because of Ruskin's espousal of the fervid band, his letters of defence in the London "Times," and his discussion in his booklet on "Pre-Raphaelitism." Heedless of the outcry, Ruskin pursued his own self-confident course, and by the year 1860 he had completed his "Modern Painters," and, in spite of objurgation and detraction, had won a great name for himself as a critic and expounder, while expanding himself over almost ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... Magdalen he had been taught luxurious living, the delight of gratifying expensive tastes; he had been brought up and enervated so to speak in Capua. His vanity had been full-fed with cloistered triumphs; he was at once pleasure-loving, vainly self-confident and weak; he had been encouraged for years to give way to his emotions and to pamper his sensations, and as the Cap-and-Bells of Folly to cherish a fantastic code of honour even in mortal combat, while despising the religion which might have ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... there was no superlative finish about their work, there was soundness of quality, which they knew would be recognized as so much to their credit. Old gossip bears me out. Conceive the nimble and self-confident temper of those two cottage women—not in this village, I admit, but in the next one to it, and the thing was quite possible here—who always planned to do their washing on the same day, for the pleasure ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... far from being apt to get us in a position of false dependence, it is calculated to make us self-confident—for we are calling upon a part of ourselves, not upon some outside intelligence. If those people who never feel satisfied unless they are getting "advice" from others would only cultivate the acquaintance of this little "home adviser" within ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... meanest kind of conceit—that of imagining that the woman who gives him a friendly word or smile is disposed to throw herself into his arms—would no doubt have surmised her secret before; but although Van Berg was intensely proud, as we have seen, and had been rendered self-complacent and self-confident by the circumstances of his lot, he had none of this contemptible vanity. The discovery of Ida's love caused him far greater surprise than when he recognized his own, and it was a source of deep satisfaction ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... would have continuous victory (Gal. v. 16, 25). The life of the Spirit within us must be maintained by the study of the Word and prayer. One of the saddest things ever witnessed is the way in which some people who have entered by the Spirit's power into a life of victory become self-confident and fancy that the victory is in themselves, and that they can safely neglect the study of the Word and prayer. The depths to which such sometimes fall is appalling. Each of us needs to lay to heart the inspired words of the Apostle, "Wherefore, let him that thinketh he standeth take heed ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... He was self-confident and slightly insolent; the hands with which he lighted a fresh cigarette no longer trembled, and the glance he threw at ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... said Mr. Brumley when at last she had departed. He was very uncomfortable. "She's just the quintessence of all one fears and dreads about these new developments, she's perfect—in that way—self-confident, arrogant, instinctively aggressive, with a tremendous class contempt. There's a multitude of such people about who hate the employed classes, who want to see them broken in and subjugated. I suppose that kind of thing is in humanity. Every boy's school ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... stared at her as though she were an impudent servant. She revolved on Una, and with a self-confident kindliness in her voice, inquired, "What's your ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... two now. Mr. Tristram had planted himself exactly in front of Rachel's windows, with his back to the house. "She will keep me waiting, but she will come out in time," he said to himself, nervous and self-confident by turns, resting his head rather gracefully on his hand. His knowledge of womankind supported him like a life-belt, but it has been said that life-belts occasionally support their wearers upsidedown. Theories have been known to exhibit the same spiteful tendency towards those who place their ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... bourgeois, was admirable and, better still, well within the resources of Lanyard's emaciated purse. Nor did he fret with consciousness that, when the bill had been paid and the essential tips bestowed, there would remain in his pocket hardly more than cab fare. Supremely self-confident, he harboured no doubts of a smiling future—now that the dark pages in his record had been turned and sealed by a resolution he ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... Instruction, Study, and Diligence; but, soon tiring of them, he rashly goes to the fight, trusting that his own strength, backed by the courage of Will and the half-hearted support of Diligence, will prove sufficient. Too self-confident, he is overthrown and his companions are put to flight. Will soon returns with Recreation, by whose skill Wit is restored to vigour and better resolution. Nevertheless, directly afterwards, he accepts the gentle ministrations of the false ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... Instead, as his antagonist advanced towards the spot where he was standing, and he looked at the handsome, yet sinister face—his thoughts at the same time reverting to Luisa Valverde, and the insult upon him in her presence—his nerves, not at all unsteady, now became firm as steel. Indeed, the self-confident, almost jaunty air, with which his adversary came upon the ground, so far from shaking them—the effect, no doubt, intended—but braced them ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... are not thus self-confident and boastful when they are attacked. In severe conflicts and anxieties they labor that the devil may not deprive them of the sword. I know that I am learned and have seen something of what the devil can do; but I must bear him witness, from my daily experience, that he can overcome me ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... "Salmasius had killed him and Morus had been the dagger."[1] On the other hand, we have had recently the assurance of Dr. Crantzius that Spanheim had once told him that the only fault in Morus was that he was altier, or self-confident. That the stronger story is the truer one substantially, if not to its last detail, appears from the fact that an antipathy to Morus was hereditary in the Spanheim family, or at least in the eldest son, Ezekiel. As a scholar, an antiquarian, and ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... and severely censure the commander, J. R, for foolhardiness and obstinacy, he having, as it has been proved, acted in entire opposition to 'his owners.' On the pressing recommendation, however, of the owners, and at the representation that E. has been long in the service, and is, although too self-confident, a very respectable man, his certificate ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... nothing of any other feeling, had never quite gotten over the rude shock it had received on Mrs. Shortridge's great night there. His first thought was to withdraw from the dangerous neighborhood. But he blushed at his own cowardice; and the moment after, having caught her eye, he, self-confident, made his way through the crowd, and greeted her politely as an old acquaintance. It was plain that she was a little nervous on his approach; her lips were compressed for a moment, and she drew more than one deep breath, while watching him closely, and carefully modeling her manner by his. Yet no ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... at by the learned critic, we would yet add to the considerations on which he relies another, viz. that it is most improbable that Louis XIV should ever have considered it necessary to take such rigorous measures against the Duc de Beaufort. Truculent and self-confident as he was, he never acted against the royal authority in such a manner as to oblige the king to strike him down in secret; and it is difficult to believe that Louis XIV, peaceably seated on his throne, with all the enemies of his minority ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and with a great sorrow in his eyes, and an air of weariness, almost of defeat. Then look at the magnificent Mr. Handel in Hudson's portrait: fashionably dressed in a great periwig and gorgeous scarlet coat, victorious, energetic, self-possessed, self-confident, self-satisfied, jovial, and proud as Beelzebub (to use his own comparison)—too proud to ask for recognition were homage refused. This portrait helps us to understand the ascendency Handel gained over ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... really remarkable in Uncle Bat's appearance was included in his nose. It had always been a generous, weighty, self-confident nose, inviting to itself more observation than any of its brother features demanded. But in latter years it had spread itself out in soft, porous, red excrescences, to such an extent as to make it really deserving of considerable attention. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Phoenicians in the Persian Gulf, show an enterprise and versatility which we observe in few Orientals. His selection of Tarsus for the site of a great city indicates a keen appreciation of the merits of a locality, if he was proud, haughty, and self-confident, beyond all former Assyrian kings, it would seem to have been because he felt that he had resources within himself—that he possessed a firm will, a bold heart, and a fertile invention. Most men would have laid aside the sword and given themselves wholly to peaceful ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... children from town after town is too awful to witness. Shame on the British Government to make our Colony the scene of this bloody struggle, and leave the handful of soldiers sent out all unsupported, unprepared—unprepared as usual—all smug and self-confident in the little overcrowded, over-comfortable island, and forgetful of the horrors to which unfortunate colonists are ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... supplies of food which might prove useful in case of scurvy. In due time the ship rounded Cape Horn, favored by the finest weather ever known in those latitudes by the oldest hand on board. The mate—one Mr. Duncalf—a boozing, wheezing, self-confident old sea-dog, with a flaming face and a vast vocabulary of oaths, swore that he didn't like it. "The foul weather's coming, my lads," said Mr. Duncalf. "Mark my words, there'll be wind enough to take the curl out of the Captain's whiskers before ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... hypnotized child is blinded to the presence of any beauty or nobility in life. No country can ever hope to rise beyond a vulgar mediocrity where there is not unbounded confidence in what its humanity can do. The self-confident American will make a great civilization yet, because he believes with all his heart and soul in the future of his country and in the powers of the American people. What Whitman called their "barbaric ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... you if you knew of his whereabouts. Do you—or not?" The self-confident, athletic youth did not stand in physical awe ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... close to the black rocks on one side that a good leaper could almost have sprung on shore. The officers turned their eyes now and anon from the rocks, which threatened destruction to their beautiful ship, to the pilot, but his calm, self-confident look assured them that there was no danger, and soon she was rising and falling to the undulations of the open sea, while Whalsey and the other outlying islands blended rapidly into one, and soon could not be distinguished from ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... the midst of disaster and ruin, is still beaming with self-confidence; he seems to have thought that self-confidence wrought like magic, or like faith, and could of itself remove mountains. If difficulties occurred, his resource was to be still more self-confident. He was well aware of the hostility his ordonnances would create; he was well aware that the army must be their veritable support: yet observe with what a sublime air of nonchalance he prepares himself for the subjection of a people. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... raised him above his class (his father and grandfathers before him for more than a hundred years had been sextons to the church of St. Mary Redcliffe) he is described as a dissipated, 'rather brutal fellow'. Lastly, he appears to have been 'very proud', self-confident, ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... history, traditional philosophy then seemed helpless and afraid to defend itself: it is only now beginning to recover its intellectual courage. For the moment, speculative radicals saw light in a different quarter. German idealism was nothing if not self-confident; it was relatively new; it was encyclopaedic in its display of knowledge, which it could manipulate dialectically with dazzling, if not stable, results; it was Protestant in temper and autonomous in principle; and altogether ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... my very character, says many a doubting, broken hearted sinner. Well, thank God, says many a self-confident, whole-hearted Pharisee, it is far from being mine. We can only say this, he that knows most of his own superlatively deceitful and desperately wicked heart, suspects himself most, and exercises ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was calm and self-possessed; his antagonist impulsive and self-confident: the Englishman was the product of a volunteer army of professional soldiers; his antagonist was the product of a drafted ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... will repent ever having seen such a place. And what is your reward? It is that you are laughed at and esteemed as one that interferes, and told to mind your own business. The young man is free and self-confident. Look in a few years for that same young man and you shall find him a terrible example of fulfilled prophecy. Diseased, worn, weak, and weary, he cries in the anguish of soul for his folly. "And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, and say, How have I hated ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... ethical account of it as one of the developments of our day, and for some discussion of the effect it is producing, and likely to produce, on the education of the people. Has the time come, or is it near at hand, when we can point to a person who is alert, superficial, ready and shallow, self-confident and half-informed, and say, "There is a product of the American newspaper"? The newspaper is not a willful creation, nor an isolated phenomenon, but the legitimate outcome of our age, as much as our system of popular education. And I trust that some competent observer will make, perhaps for this ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of knowledge with which he had furnished himself on his journey into their blackness. This intense modesty always remained a leading characteristic of his, which endeared him to many, although it was not one that helped him forward in life. It is the bold, self-confident man, who knows how to make the most of his small gifts, who travels fastest and farthest ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... events had deepened the contrast between the two brothers; and Frank smiled with affectionate pride as he looked up in Amyas's face, and saw that he was no longer merely the rollicking handy sailor-lad, but the self-confident and stately warrior, showing in ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... to make explanations, and correct misapprehensions, and delicately suggest such biological experiments as would prove to the doctors of Weald that there was no longer a plague on Dara, whatever had been the case three generations before. He had to sit by while an extremely self-confident young Darian doctor named Korvan rather condescendingly demonstrated that the former blue pigmentation was a viral product quite unconnected with the plague, and that it had been wiped out by a very trivial epidemic of—such and such. Calhoun regarded that young man with ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... myself not to plead guilty," said Charlton, speaking still gently, for his old imperious and self-confident manner had ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... independent. But though they had withdrawn, one to the bows, the other to the stern, they were still traveling in the vessel which was carrying the army of the working-classes and the whole of society. Free and self-confident, Christophe watched with tingling interest the coalition of the proletarians: he needed every now and then to plunge into the vat of the people: it relaxed him: he always issued from it fresher and jollier. He ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... before; for there was something in the manner of this attack, as unimportant as it was, and even in the shouts of their assailants, that had disturbed the minds, and cast a visible shade of thoughtfulness over the countenances, of these hitherto self-confident and boastful invaders of the Green Mountains. For the next three or four miles, however, they moved on unmolested; when, coming to a hamlet of log-houses scattered along the highway on both sides of the stream, that, here again crossing the road, wound through a smooth ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... Ellis, the accepted lover of Blanche Birtwell, and will remember with what earnestness the mother sought to awaken in the mind of the young man a sense of danger, going so far as to uncover a family secret and warn him of a taint in his blood. It will also be remembered how the proud, self-confident young man rejected, her warnings and entreaties, and how ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... was like one of the overcrowded tapestries of the Middle Ages. At the top was the Noxon palace, majestic, serene, self-confident in the correctness of its architecture and not afraid even of the ocean ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... bring it to an end. At present they are content with the enjoyments of the streets and picture palaces. I have, on many different occasions, spoken to these workers: one case I may quote as typical of many. She was young, about twenty, I should think, and incredibly self-confident. Before the war she had been a tailor's needle hand earning 16s. a week; for the last two years she was inspecting fuses at a wage of 45s. a week. What was she now going to do? Neither she nor any of the other women ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... democracy. It is interesting to study these young men, so different in temperament, yet thinking alike and acting together for a quarter of a century—Jay, gentle and modest; Hamilton, impetuous and imperious; Morris, self-confident and conceited; but on all essential matters of state, standing together like a tripod, firm and invincible. In his distrust of western influences, however, Morris was more conservative than Jay or Hamilton. He was broad and liberal ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... illusion which preserves all human relations, broke down between Daphne and her marriage. Her thoughts dwelt, in a vulgar detail, on the money she had settled upon Roger—on his tendencies to extravagance—his happy-go-lucky self-confident ways. He would have been a pauper but for her; but now that he had her money safe, without a word to her of his previous engagement, he and Mrs. Fairmile might do as they pleased. The heat and corrosion ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... inflate, puff up, turn up, turn one's head. Adj. vain, vain as a peacock, proud as a peacock; conceited, overweening, pert, forward;, vainglorious, high-flown; ostentatious &c. 882; puffed up, inflated, flushed. self-satisfied, self-confident, self-sufficient, self-flattering, self-admiring, self-applauding, self-glorious, self-opinionated; entente &c. (wrongheaded) 481; wise in one's own conceit, pragmatical[obs3], overwise[obs3], pretentious, priggish; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... rim of the spectacles; the flat cheeks, of a greasy, unhealthy complexion, were merely smudged by the miserable poverty of a thin dark whisker. The lamentable inferiority of the whole physique was made ludicrous by the supremely self-confident bearing of the individual. His speech was curt, and he had a particularly impressive manner ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... work before breakfast would count for a hundred times more than a feeble dawdling prolonged throughout the whole day. Abner rose betimes and did his hour's work; sweaty, panting, begrimed, hopeful, indignant, sincere, self-confident, he set his product full ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... was confronted by 80,000 Austrians and Russians drawn up on the Heights of Pratzen. His plan was to draw the weight of the Russian attack against his right—which was so disposed as to invite the headstrong and {10} self-confident Tsar "to administer a lesson in generalship to Napoleon"—and then to launch a superior attack against the Heights, which contained a village and a knoll, the key to the position; and finally to ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... you tell me of Mr. Lewes seems to me highly characteristic. How sanguine, versatile, and self-confident must that man be who can with ease exchange the quiet sphere of the author for the bustling one of the actor! I heartily wish him success; and, in happier times, there are few things I should have relished more than an opportunity of seeing ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... him the haunts of the grouse, or go with him again on a poaching expedition. Stephen was more humble and vigilant than he had been before falling into temptation. He set a close watch upon himself, lest he should be betrayed into a self-confident spirit again; and Tim's loud praises sounded less pleasantly in his ears, so that one evening he told him, with much shame, into what sin he had been led by his desire to avenge Snip's murder. Unfortunately, this disclosure so much heightened Tim's ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... with one statue of Buddha which could not have been added in a later epoch than the construction of the temple; it does not matter whether it was a year or a thousand years later. Not being perfectly self-confident in this matter, we always took the opinion of Mr. Y——, who, as I said before, was an experienced architect; and he invariably came to the conclusion that the Brahmanical idols formed a harmonic and genuine part of the whole, pillars, decorations, ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... chose to live this life. There was an entire absence of the self-spirit, that is the self-assertive, the self-confident spirit. There was a remarkable confidence in action, but it was confidence in His Father's unfailing response to His requests or needs. This sense of utter dependence was natural to Him; as indeed ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... whom they saw; and had a tail glance for Toby. He appeared to ignore everything, and slouched along at her side, as he must have done when alone, with his head lowered. She could not make him out. In some ways he was so self-confident, in others so much as though he had never looked at a girl before. Did he know girls? Did he know what they were like? What a mystery—a delicious mystery! He wasn't soppy, yet he hardly looked at her. Funny ... funny! So she mused; ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... for. The house was pretty; Farnam was indulgent and showed his wife a deference that Agatha liked. He owned a large orchard and had sufficient capital to cultivate it properly. George Strange was marked by a complacent, self-confident manner that his urbanity somewhat toned down. He dealt in artificial fertilizers and farming implements, and it was said that he never lost a customer and seldom made a ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... an insincere habit; it's really self-hypnotism. It may help us to win in some particular enterprise, yes; but it's dangerous, like drug-taking. You must keep on increasing the dose, and blind-folding your reason. Men who do it are buoyant, self-confident, but some ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... worth $5 he was given $50; later when he was worth $10 he was raised to $100. Being quite unaware of this carefully graduated scale of wages, made specially in his honor, Jimmy went to the Stafford office every day wearing the same jaunty self-confident air, convinced that his employer was underpaying him and that he was a very ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... dress of the Eton Eleven; there was just a suggestion of pale blue in the sash round the waist. But the whole impression was Greek in its manly freedom and beauty; above all in its sacrifice of all useless detail to one broad and simple effect. Youth, eager, strong, self-confident, with its innocent parted lips, and its steadfast eyes looking out over the future—the drawing stood there as the quintessence, the embodiment, of a whole generation. So might the young Odysseus have looked when he left his mother on his first journey ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the narrow panel mirror which she had fixed on to one of the cupboard doors. That there is no truer critic of herself, and of her appearance, than a very pretty woman, is generally true even of the vainest and most self-confident of her sex. ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... Curtis and Hermione Beauregard Grandison," said Curtis. His tone was so calm and self-confident that even the prospective bride was deaf for a moment to the vital significance of the ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... received his apotheosis at their hands, and years afterwards was, and perhaps to this day is, worshipped by these rude mountaineers under the title of "Nikul Seyn." Spare in form, but of great stature, his whole appearance and mien stamped him as a "king of men." Calm and self-confident, full of resource and daring, no difficulties could daunt him; he was a born soldier, the idol of the men, the pride of the whole army. His indomitable spirit seemed at once to infuse fresh vigour into the force, and from the time of his arrival ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... on, and did his Mentor honor. He was indeed intoxicated, but not with wine. The music, the excitement of the dance, the gay scene around, inspired him; he felt self-confident, nay, daring; and, one or two trifling solecisms excepted, behaved as if he had been surrounded by waxlights and obsequious domestics all the days of his life. He was a good deal remarked—made, indeed, quite a sensation; while dark hints of a mystery attached to him spread from corner to corner ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... to impulsive and self-confident men that a moment's crisis may render scarcely intelligible a mode of thought or course of action which till then one had deemed perfectly rational. Sidney, hopeless in spite of the pretences he made, stood aghast ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... answer. The soreness of her heart had not taken the form of a definite revenge as yet. Her love for Paul was still love, but it was perilously near to hatred. She had not reached the point of wishing definitely that he should suffer, but the sight of Etta—beautiful, self-confident, carelessly possessive in respect to Paul—had brought her ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... confounded with caste. Hindu sects are of many kinds; some, if not militant, are at least exceedingly self-confident. Others are so gentle in stating their views that they might be called schools rather than sects, were the word not too intellectual. The notion that any creed or code can be quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, is less prevalent ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... quarrel. He would go alone and see the strength of the enemy; and after that, may be, he would raise the country on them: or—and half a dozen plans suggested themselves to his crafty brain as he sat brooding and scheming: then, as always, utterly self-confident. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... is the judgment of this world. The Aristocracy and the Middle Class had come to an end of their reign. A "tide of secret dissatisfaction had mined the ground under the self-confident Liberalism of the last thirty years (1839-1869) and had prepared the way for its sudden collapse and supersession." So far, the young Liberals and Radicals of the day did not disagree. They liked this doctrine, and had preached it; but from this point they and their new Teacher parted ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... women, who are too self-confident and obtrusive. These, if they discover some slight inconsistency in men, fiercely betray their indignation and behave with arrogance. A man may show a little inconsistency occasionally, but yet his affection may remain; then matters will in time become right again, and they ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... Theodore eagerly, "it is not! I do not doubt His goodness—His compassion even for the wretched creatures whom He formed out of dust. But I—thoughtless in my youth; self-confident in prosperity; ungrateful and rebellious under affliction; how can such a wretch as I have been, believe in the love of God to me! God is good and just, but do not talk to me of His Love to man, as if it were possible ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... tediousness; but there was little luxury and no refinement where there was almost no culture. Of course there were a few homes and families of another order, where the women were refined and the men educated; but these were the exceptions. Society generally, with its bluff, loud, self-confident but ignorant planters, its numerous poor whites destitute of lands and of slaves, and its mass of slaves whose aim in life was to avoid work and escape the whip, was necessarily only one ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... that, I think, is the best way she can learn of it. To tell her first that her child is sick, and so forth, I do not consider a good plan, for anxiety has a worse effect than the truth. God will graciously bring us out of this trouble. He holds us with a short rein lest we should become self-confident, but He will not let us fall. Good-by, my best-of-all; pray ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... rejected, and this factitious emotion drove him once or twice to Hillbridge, whence, after scenes of evasive tenderness, he returned dissatisfied with himself and her. As he made room for himself in New York and peopled the space he had cleared with the sympathies at the disposal of agreeable and self-confident young men, it seemed to him natural to infer that Mrs. Aubyn had refurnished in the same manner the void he was not unwilling his departure should have left. But in the dissolution of sentimental partnerships ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... Service man was very self-confident and very convincing. His conclusions, in view of past suspicions, seemed natural enough, and Tom could not help envying and admiring him ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... Mr. Thomas the Island Princess was like a strange vessel. Both Kipping and Davie Paine had been promoted from the starboard watch, leaving us shorthanded; so a queer, self-confident fellow named Blodgett was transferred from the chief mate's watch to ours. But even so there were fewer hands and more work, and the spirit of the crew seemed to have changed. Whereas earlier in the voyage most of the men had gone smartly about their duties, always glad to lend a hand ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... she continued with the pert, self-confident smile, "that you were my sister Nellie. I'm ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... had been intended for the army, but he did not get through West Point, and at the time he was making love to my Aunt Amanda his only business was that of expecting an inheritance. But he was so brave and gay and self-confident, and was so handsome and dashing, that everybody said he would be sure to get along, no matter what line of life he undertook.' ('I wonder,' thought Miss Amanda, 'what he did do, after all. I hope I shall hear that.') 'Her other lover,' said the old gentleman, 'was Randolph Castine, a ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... unhappiness in her heart, and a self-contemptuous feeling, which she tried to get the better of by calling it ennui. But in time a kind of hardness, at once flexible and impenetrable, began to encase her, rendering her course more easy, less liable to embarrassment, more self-confident ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... found that the activity of the clerks and typewriters did not jar on him as it had been doing of late. He paused at Saunders's desk and made a cheerful and oddly self-confident inquiry as to the disposition of a certain customer's account, surprising his ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... pointed out as an interesting corroboration of the tradition that he was Mark's source; and perhaps the failure to record the praise, and the carefulness to tell the subsequent rebuke, reveal the humble-hearted 'elder' into whom the self-confident young Apostle had grown. Flesh delights to recall praise; faith and self-knowledge find more profit in remembering errors forgiven and rebukes deserved, and in their severity, most loving. How did these questions and their answers serve as introduction ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... no circumstances to be followed. Americans are so familiar with the European traveler who arrives and makes up his opinion over night in regard to men, morals, and manners in the Western world and have so often been the victim of this self-confident critic, that they ought not to repeat the same blunder in dealing with other peoples. [Footnote: The Outlook, July ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... Brissot, ambitious and self-confident, his {132} head turned at the prospect of a conflagration, saw in a European war a field large enough in which to develop his untried statesmanship. The pretexts for war lay ready to hand. There was not only the tense situation arising between ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... my little lady?" asked Dick, in his easy, self-confident way; "I see only three hooks ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... headstrong and self-confident, it was in part due to a faith in my inheritance. The delicate and refined lips of my mother, upon which prayers were followed by lies and lies by prayers, taught me an almost indescribable belief in my own strength. ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... credentials she was furnished with an introduction or two to literary men from her friends in the country who had some appreciation, more or less vague, of her intellectual powers. Though courageous and determined, she was far from self-confident; she asked herself if she might not be mistaking a mere fancy for a faculty, and her first step was to seek the opinion of some experienced authority as ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... subject of inquiry. For the first time it was no longer disguised from sight by the incidental interest of its side issues. The assertors of the supremacy of reason were at first arrogantly, or even insolently, self-confident, as those who were secure of carrying all before them. Gradually, the wiser of them began to feel that their ambition must be largely moderated, and that they must be content with far more negative results than they had at first imagined. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... was nothing soft or delicate in their aggressive beauty. Helen's hair was dark and her color high, her black eyes were bright, and her yellow dress showed a finely outlined form. Dick knew that she was proud, resolute, and self-confident. ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... surprised her. Why the sudden lapse on the part of this extraordinary and self-confident young person into the ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... especial favorite of my father. Its minor strains and its expressions of womanly doubts and fears were antipathetic to his sanguine, buoyant, self-confident nature. He was inclined to ridicule the conclusions of its last verse and to say that the man was a molly-coddle—or whatever the word of contempt was in those days. As an antidote he usually called for "O'er the hills in legions, boys," which exactly ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... neighbours. And I wonder De Tocqueville and De Beaumont, and THE TIMES' Commissioner, did not explain the Snobbishness of Ireland as contrasted with our own. Ours is that of Richard's Norman Knights,—haughty, brutal stupid, and perfectly self-confident;—theirs, of the poor, wondering, kneeling, simple chieftains. They are on their knees still before English fashion—these simple, wild people; and indeed it is hard not to grin at some of ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that Trofast comported himself with a certain dignity at home in the house. But in the street also it was evident that he felt self-confident, and that he was proud of being a dog in a town where ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... have done; but Divine Love knows better. What we have written, we have written on the page of life; and neither our own tears, nor the tears of those who love us better than we love ourselves, can blot it out. For the first time in her easy, self-confident career, Elisabeth Farringdon was brought face to face with this merciless truth; and she trembled before it. It was just because Christopher was so ready to forgive her, that she found it impossible to ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... undeceived the proud and self-confident enemies of Frederick. The pope still called him the Marquis of Brandenburg, and the German emperor declared that, notwithstanding the adverse circumstances threatening him on every side, the King of Prussia was still a brave and undaunted adversary. His enemies, alter having for a long time ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... was very stupid by nature, but, besides this, he had had the misfortune of finishing school with a gold medal and of receiving a reward for his essay on "Servitude" when studying Roman Law at the University, and was therefore self-confident and self-satisfied in the highest degree (his success with the ladies also conducing to this) and his stupidity ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... gifts of expression. He was apt to overrate the mere verbal facility of others and to underestimate himself in the comparison—indeed, a certain humility was strongly marked in him, even as regards his art, though he was self-confident also. When he was unconstrained his great powers of observation, his shrewdness of judgment, his bubbling humor, and a picturesque vivacity of phrase not uncommon among artists made him one of ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... Washington resolved on making one of those sudden movements so disconcerting to a self-confident enemy. It had been some time maturing, but could not be sooner put in execution on account of the wretched condition of Sullivan's (lately Lee's) troops, who had come off their long march, as Washington expresses ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... brazen walls with which prejudice has encompassed womanhood. She was young, fair, and flattered, and fascinating above any comparison I can think of. Of course, she was aware of her capabilities—for ignorance in such cases is not possible, and naturally self-confident, she grew impatient for praise and power. Her affections, unfortunately, were warm and enduring; but she sacrificed them, to promote her desire for distinction, and unable, though so superior, to escape the heart-thraldom, which is the destiny of her sex, she died at last, more ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... resumed his seat, and bent his head as though in profound thought. His friend, Lebedeff's nephew, who had risen to accompany him, also sat down again. He seemed much disappointed, though as self-confident as ever. Hippolyte looked dejected and sulky, as well as surprised. He had just been attacked by a violent fit of coughing, so that his handkerchief was stained with blood. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... for one so self-confident as the young Irishman—a pause like that of a man grown suddenly doubtful, timid, distrustful. His hand was actually on the latch when, to Thor's surprise, he wheeled away, returning to his "team" with head bent and stride slackened thoughtfully. By the time he ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... strong-minded woman. There was nothing particularly delicate in Lady Hilda's features; they were well-modelled, but neither regular nor cold, nor with that peculiar stamp of artificial breeding which is so often found in the faces of English ladies. On the contrary, she looked like a perfectly self-confident handsome actress, too self-confident to be self-conscious, and accustomed to admiration wherever she turned. As Ernest jumped down from the dog-cart she advanced quickly to shake hands with him, and look him over critically from head to foot ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... a single peg, or two pegs, as the case may be; the review which is suddenly to make an author, and the review which is to crush him. An exuberant Jones has been known before now to declare aloud that he would crush a man, and a self-confident Jones has been known to declare that he has accomplished the deed. Of all reviews, the crushing review is the most popular, as being the most readable. When the rumour goes abroad that some notable man has been actually crushed,—been positively driven over by an entire Juggernaut's ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... and thoughtful, for she knew not what to do without her mother. Paul, with that self-confident conceit which comes of love, smiled to himself at her sadness, thinking how soon the pleasures of marriage and the excitements of Paris would drive it away. Madame Evangelista saw this confidence with much satisfaction. She had already taken two great steps. Her daughter possessed ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... tone of the circle in which she moved, although such displays never failed to make an impression upon her, by virtue of that spirit of imitation, akin to timidity, which is developed in the most self-confident persons, by contact with an unfamiliar environment, even though it be inferior to their own. She began to ask herself whether these gesticulations might not, perhaps, be a necessary concomitant of the piece of music that was being played, a piece which, it might be, was in a ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... is plain and straight, and loves right. He weighs words and scans looks; he takes pains to come down to men. And he shall be eminent in the state and eminent in his house. The famous man wears a mask of love, but his deeds belie it. Self-confident and free from doubts, fame will be his in the state and fame be his in ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... was highly to their credit. Here also was the Hornet's Nest, where the natives offered battle to my gallant friend, Major O'Halloran, whose instructions forbade his striking the first blow. I can fancy that his warm blood was up at seeing himself defied by the self-confident natives; but they were too wise to commence an attack, and the parties, therefore, separated without coming to blows. Here, or near this spot also, the old white-headed native, who used to attend the overland parties, was shot by Miller, a discharged soldier, I am sorry to say, of my own regiment. ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... is stated to be a dangerous sin, not only on account of its gravity, but also because it is a disposition to grave sins, in so far as it renders man presumptuous and too self-confident: and so it gradually disposes a man to lose ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... was very silly of him, as the old woman might be a witch ten times over, and yet not be able to tell him that. But cruel, wicked people often are silly. This poor old woman screamed out some nonsense in her agony which Fritz took to be the answer he required. He smiled, therefore, in a self-confident fashion as he bowed low before the princess and awaited her question. She asked it in a clear bell-like voice, which somehow caused Hans's heart, when he heard it, to beat a ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... walked homewards. All softness had vanished at once from his face; a self-confident, almost hard expression came into it. Even his walk was changed; his steps were longer and he trod more heavily. He had walked about two miles, carelessly swinging his cane, when all at once he began to smile again: he saw by the roadside a young, rather ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... answer. He muttered, "Not that I care," and fell silent, because the fatuous self-confident chatter of the Fyne girls could be heard at the very gate. But they were not going to bed yet. They passed on. He waited a little in silence and immobility, then stamped his foot and lost control of himself. He growled at her in a savage passion. She felt ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... of his troops in ambuscade at the foot of the mountains, and others on the declivities above, and then in some way or other to entice Flaminius and his army through the defile. Flaminius was, like Sempronius, ardent, self-confident, and vain. He despised the power of Hannibal, and thought that his success hitherto had been owing to the inefficiency or indecision of his predecessors. For his part, his only anxiety was to encounter him, for he was sure of an easy victory. He advanced, therefore, ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... was purging herself, as by fire, from the corruptions of the despotic and soul-degrading Church of Rome, he arrived at Boston in February, 1630, about half a year after the landing of the Massachusetts Colony of Governor Winthrop. He was an eloquent preacher, stiff and self-confident in his opinions; ingenious, powerful, and commanding, in impressing them upon others; inflexible in his adherence to them; and, by an inconsistency peculiar to religious enthusiasts, combining the most amiable and affectionate sympathies ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... towards her. No, she had not changed so very much. Only something inside her seemed to have grown less tense, less self-confident. Also, she had not had Leonetta's advantages,—advantages that she herself had been chiefly instrumental in securing for her younger sister. More arts than that of wielding the French tongue are learned ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... childhood, and who was in nowise related to them. She thought that he was very much improved in manner, and probably in character, by his mother's death. He was no longer sarcastic, or fastidious, or vain, or self-confident. She did not know how often all these styles of talk or of behaviour were put on to conceal shyness or consciousness, and to veil ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... constantly riding over or tooting over in big black motor-cars. They were young men who apparently had nothing to do but "go in" for things—riding, tennis, polo, golf. To all of them she was the self-confident charmer; just the kind of a girl to make a fool of you and tell ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... were greater, his debts or his assets. Desperate gambling on the Stock Exchange, wild speculation and the excitability which he could not get over even in advancing years, had by degrees led to the decline of his fortune and the proud, fearless, self-confident millionaire had become a banker of middling rank, trembling at every rise and fall in his investments. "Cursed bet!" muttered the old man, clutching his head in despair "Why didn't the man die? He is only forty now. He will take my last ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... somewhat rare species of visitor, a man of high political distinction, who came down to get a quiet Sunday to talk over an important article which I happened to be entrusted with. Meyrick's behaviour was unexceptionable: he was neither abrupt nor deferential; he was simply his unaffected, self-confident self. ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... mortification when the self-possessed young man walked in with his kit-bag, and put his cap on the sewing machine. He was little and self-confident, with a curious neatness about him that still suggested the Charity Institution. His face was brown, he had a small moustache, he was vigorous enough in ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... nothing. Langhorne's manner, self-confident to the point of bravado, had baffled me. I began to feel that even if he had lost the detectaphone record, his was the nature to carry out the bluff of still having it, in much the same manner that he would have played the market on a shoestring or made the most of ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... shocked and grieved at the part which I then and there permitted myself to undertake. The scene has lost the colours which gave it a false and superficial lustre, and I gaze on the melancholy reality chidden, and, let me say, instructed by the sight. I can now better appreciate and understand the self-confident tone which pronounced upon my state in the eye of heaven—the canting expressions of brotherly love—the irreverent familiarity with which Scripture was quoted, garbled, and tortured to justify dissent, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... on God, and let Him carry them. He cannot unless we do. One sometimes sees a petulant and self-confident little child staggering along with some heavy burden by the parent's side, but pushing away the hand that is put out to help it to carry its load. And that is what too many of us do when God says to us, 'Here, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... anxious hearts hundreds of the youth of Manitoba and the other western provinces scanned these lists. It was a veritable Day of Judgment, a day of glad surprises for the faithful in duty and the humble in heart, a day of Nemesis for the vainly self-confident slackers who had grounded their hopes upon eleventh hour cramming and lucky shots in exam papers. There were triumphs which won universal approval, ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... his eyes. His forehead showed symptoms of deep thought, and partially redeemed the somewhat mean effect of his other features. The sharp nose, the thin lips, the cold grey eyes, the sallow sunken cheeks, were those of a precise, passionless, self-confident man, little likely to be led into any excess of love or hatred, but little likely also to be shaken in his resolve either for good or evil. His face probably was a true index to his character. Robespierre ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... exhibition of like perversions in her only son, now on the verge of manhood,—that deeply responsible and dangerous period, when parental authority and control subside in a degree, and the individual, inexperienced yet self-confident, assumes the ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... the loss the country had suffered, and the infamous crime by which it had been accomplished. Yet not a ripple of excitement could be seen anywhere in the army. The profound calm which pervades the atmosphere surrounding a great, disciplined, self-confident army is one of the most sublime exhibitions ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... lecturing on Shakespeare; contributing to 'The Morning Chronicle'; preaching in Unitarian pulpits; publishing his 'Juvenile Poems', etc. etc.; and throughout eccentric, impetuous, original—with contagious enthusiasm and overflowing genius—but erratic, self-confident, and unstable.—Ed.] ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... seminary, induced to abscond and get into trouble, and eventually dispatched to Siberia. There now! Yes, the Russian is what might be called a 'lightweighted' individual, an individual who, unless he holds himself down by the head, is soon carried off by the wind like a chicken's feather—for we are too self-confident and restless. Before now, I myself have been a gull, a man lacking balance: for never does youth realise its own insignificance, or know ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... effervesced occasionally into excited squeals, and were instantly suppressed by a prefect. The Third and Fourth, which comprised the bulk of the girls from twelve to fifteen, occupied the middle of the hall, a lively, self-confident and rather obstreperous set, all at that awkward age which is anxious to claim privileges, but not particularly ready to submit to the authorized code. Every one of them was talking at the extreme pitch of her voice, and the noise was ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... The self-confident ease of these Rockshire men was even a trifle discouraging for a few of the school heroes themselves, who looked on nervously as their rivals coolly went up and inspected the wickets and criticised the pitch, ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... and the rest of the nose was straight. His complexion, excepting the freckles and charcoal, was chiefly sunburn, down to the neckband of his blue checked shirt. He was a tough, wiry-looking boy, and there was a kind of smiling, self-confident expression in his blue-gray eyes and around his ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... defiantly arrogant, and the forgetful good man was criminally self-confident, when they each said, 'I shall not be moved.' We are only taking up the privileges that belong to us if, exercising faith in Him, we venture to say, 'Take what Thou wilt; leave me Thyself; I have enough.' And the man who says, 'Because ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... deal scared by his adventure, and feeling much less self-confident, Sammy swam away, resolved to avoid all suspicious insects in the future. He had several other narrow escapes at this stage of his journey, but they are not ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... his manufactures. With a long foresight, he had ordered the funds received from the Prussian sales of the Belcher rifle to be deposited with a European banking house at interest, to be drawn against in his foreign purchases of material; yet he never drew against this deposit. Self-confident as he was, glutted with success as he was, he had in his heart a premonition that some time he might want that money just where it was placed. So there it lay, accumulating interest. It was an anchor to windward, that would hold him if ever his bark should drift ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... Ann Veronica went toward the house. She thought her niece very hard and very self-possessed and self-confident. She ought to be softened and tender and confidential at this phase of her life. She seemed to have no idea whatever of the emotional states that were becoming to her age and position. Miss Stanley walked round the garden ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... East. Japan, willing under certain conditions to forget her grievances, had first sought alliance with Russia and had sent Prince Ito on a visit to St. Petersburg for that purpose. But Russia was too proud and self-confident to contemplate any such step, and so Japan turned to Britain, and obtained a readier hearing. Under the Alliance, both Britain and Japan disclaimed any aggressive tendencies in China or Korea, but the special interests of ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... with self-confident emphasis. "I'm not 'thinking.' I'm reading an open book. As I say, you're not contented—you're not happy; you don't try to pretend that you are. But all the same, though you hate it, you accept it. You think that you really must obey your notice-boards. Now what I tell you you ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... in fiction. But the holiest minds have sometimes not thought it reprehensible to counterfeit impiety in the person of another, to bring Vice upon the stage speaking her own dialect; and, themselves being armed with an unction of self-confident impunity, have not scrupled to handle and touch that familiarly which would be death to others. Milton, in the person of Satan, has started speculations hardier than any which the feeble armory of the atheist ever ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... table," cried Troup. "It is where you belong; and you're the biggest man in New York, to-day." As Hamilton, although self-confident, was modest, Troup put down his bumper, seized the hero in his big arms and swung him to the middle of the table. Then the three, raising their glasses again, stood in a semi-circle. Hamilton threw back his head and raised ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... evident that he recognised a foeman, worthy of his steel, approaching. Chand Moorut advanced with alacrity. The rogue eyed him with a sinister expression. There was no hesitation on either side. Both warriors were self-confident; nevertheless, they did not rush to the battle. Like equally-matched veterans they advanced with grim purpose and wary deliberation. With heads erect, and curled trunks, they met, more like wrestlers than swordsmen, each seeming to watch for a deadly grip. Suddenly they locked ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... much experience, "Bluff, my boy, is what carries a man through the world. Act as if you're sure you are and can and you'll generally make the other fellow think so." I sat down at a desk and filled out the application in my most self-confident flourish. ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... A self-confident nation, however, is slow to betake itself to sackcloth and ashes. On the whole it is clear, that though the last years of Edward III were a season of failure and disappointment,—though from the period ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... do their best; they promised they would report what they saw and be very discreet, both feeling the comedy of Mrs. Thornburgh as the advocate of discretion; and then they departed to their early dinner, leaving the vicars wife decidedly less self-confident than they found her. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... will a young parson deduce false conclusions from misunderstood texts, and then threaten us with all the penalties of Hades if we neglect to comply with the injunctions he has given us! Yes, my too self-confident juvenile friend, I do believe in those mysteries which are so common in your mouth; I do believe in the unadulterated word which you hold there in your hand; but you must pardon me if, in some things, I doubt your interpretation. The Bible ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... that all the noblemen were present. As he arrived somewhat late, he excused himself by saying that he was newly married, and that he could not leave his wife any sooner. Among the nobles was a proud, self-confident man named Abdala, who, when Almanzor had finished speaking, remarked that he (Abdala) did not mean to marry, as he could very easily seduce any woman, be she unmarried or a wife. Almanzor was angered ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... in politics; and whenever he recalled the absurd boasting that had made him feel Craig would never come to anything, he assumed it was a weakness of youth and inexperience which had, no doubt, been conquered. But, no; here was the same old, conceited Josh, as crudely and vulgarly self-confident as when he was twenty-five and just starting at the law in a country town. Yet Arkwright could not but admit there had been more than a grain of truth in Craig's former self-laudations, that there was in ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... even possible to have these virtues so unhappily proportioned and inauspiciously mixed with other turns and casts of mind, as to end in work with little grace or harmony or fine tracery about it, but only overweening purpose and vehement will. And it is overweeningness and self-confident will that are the chief notes of Macaulay's style. It has no benignity. Energy is doubtless a delightful quality, but then Macaulay's energy is perhaps energy without momentum, and he impresses us more by a strong volubility ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... moments Crawley came in, smiling and self-confident, with plenty of nerve, an abundance of wit, and a most ingenuous manner. He met the chairman's questions with ready assurance and corroborated the story told by Carroll. He would frankly acknowledge that he had heard about ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... very long time before the maid returned. When she did, the usually self-confident Babette seemed dazed. She did not speak until ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... bulls of his own age. He always won, and to an elephant constant winning is almost as dull as constant losing. He was a great deal like a youth of twenty in any breed of any land—light-hearted, self-confident, enjoying every minute of wakefulness between one midnight and another. He loved the jungle smells and the jungle sounds, and he could even tolerate the horrible laughter of the hyenas that sometimes tore to shreds the silence of the grassy ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... than we do? He remaineth ever Self-confident and boastful as before. Nothing will ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... freight railroad, to erect the dumping-pier, and to strip the five mountains of their forests and underbrush. It was not a task for a holiday, but a stern, difficult, and perplexing problem, and Van Antwerp was not quite the man to solve it. He was stubborn, self-confident, and indifferent by turns. He did not depend upon his lieutenants, but jealously guarded his own opinions from the least question or discussion, and at every step he antagonized the easy-going people among whom he had come ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
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