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More "Supercilious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indeed the basis of all fruitful philosophy. But in criticism this instinct can only be satisfied intelligently and soundly by a consideration of everything appealing to consideration, and not at all by heated and wilful, or superior and supercilious, exclusions. Catholicity of appreciation is the secret of critical felicity. To follow the line of least resistance, not to take into account those elements of a problem, those characteristics of a subject, to which, ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... declared in the hearing of supercilious Greek philosophers, that the Jesus, whom he proclaimed to them, was 'the Man whom God had ordained to judge the world in righteousness,' and that 'He had given assurance thereof unto all men, in that He raised Him ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... too delighted with the prospect of a speedy meeting with Uncle Jim to resent his former associate's supercilious haste, or even to wonder why Uncle Jim had not informed him that he had returned. It was not the first time that he had felt how wide was the gulf between himself and these others, and the thought drew him closer to his old partner, as well as his old idea, as it was ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... an active coadjutor in me?" said Ramorny, in the same supercilious tone as before. "But know, the artisan fellow is too low in degree to be to me either the object of hatred or of fear. Yet he shall not escape. We hate not the reptile that has stung us, though we might shake it ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... again to the lists. The Sheriff's daughter had already been crowned, and sat now in supercilious state in the Sheriff's own seat. Geoffrey had gone, ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... with a sneeze. Nevertheless, there was an impassable barrier between me and them—a sizar was not a proper associate for the favourites of fortune! But there was one young man, a year younger myself, of high birth, and the heir to considerable wealth, who did not regard me with the same supercilious insolence as the rest; his very rank, perhaps, made him indifferent to the little conventional formalities which influence persons who cannot play at football with this round world; he was the wildest youngster in the university—lamp-breaker—tandem-driver—mob- ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the office sought the "Frolics" or the "Folies," Payson, Jr., might be seen at a concert for the harpsichord and viola, or at an evening of Palestrina or the Earlier Gregorian Chants. Had he been less supercilious about it this story would never have been written—and doubtless no great loss at that. But it is the prerogative of youth to be arrogantly merciless in its judgment of the old. Its bright lexicon has no verdict "with mitigating circumstances." Youth is just when it is right; it ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... not be supercilious," his host replied, with an amiable smile; "you will see things better through a glass of grog; and the state of the weather points to something dark. You have had a long journey, and the scenery is new. Rum ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... to judge or disparage the pupils from West Point, but I am disgusted with the supercilious and ridiculous behavior of the clique here, ready to form praetorians or anything else, and poisoning around them the public opinion. Western generals are West Point pupils, but I do not hear them make so much ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... so in this life, I think. While we are coldly discussing a man's career, sneering at his mistakes, blaming his rashness, and labelling his opinions—'he is Evangelical and narrow', or 'Latitudinarian and Pantheistic' or 'Anglican and supercilious'—that man, in his solitude, is perhaps shedding hot tears because his sacrifice is a hard one, because strength and patience are failing him to speak the difficult word, and do the ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... supercilious, but Mr. Moss's intention of shaking hands obliged her to assert her dignity by a ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... into the shop where she obtains materials for her adornment, and with a supercilious air purchases her ribbons and laces of a sulky girl, who revenges herself for not being able to wear the costly gauds by treating as rudely as she dares the customer who can; and as they look upon each other, the one with scorn, and ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... some mild excitement with the bishop, but the bishop had been too plain spoken and sincere for her. The Primeros had been odious; the Hepworths stupid; the Longestaffes,—she had endeavoured to make up a little friendship with Lady Pomona,— insufferably supercilious. She had declared to Henrietta 'that ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... but the second resistance of the besieged was much less successful than the first. St. Ruth, the French general, treated the Irish officers and soldiers under his command with supercilious contempt. He admitted none of their officers into his councils. He was as ignorant of the army which he commanded as of the country which he occupied. Nor was he a great general. He had been principally ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... withdrew from the participation of their injustice, pride, and arrogance. While they attended to protecting themselves, and to following their own affairs, they did numberless good offices to the ships of foreign nations; they had universal good will and commanded admiration. But, when they became supercilious, and a terror to others, their pride was soon humbled, never again to rise. [end ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... began to feel that foreigners did not eat or drink like Christians,' which is to say that the Englishman began his contempt for the foreigner which has resulted in nearly all our wars, and has made the Englishman abroad a supercilious creature, and has made the English schoolboy put his tongue out at ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... camels he snorted in anger, though the monkey was excited and thrilled. You see, elephants are the aristocrats of animals, while camels are snobs. You can easily tell a snob, he holds his head in a very supercilious way, always looking down on everyone, and don't you think if you put a monocle on a camel's eye he would look like any snob that walks down the avenue? Nevertheless, I made my elephant join the camels. That is to say, ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... such brilliant men as Helvetius, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Condillac, and Rousseau. Perhaps the writings of these men had more to do with the precipitation of the revolution than the arbitrary assumptions of royalty, the wretchedness of the people, the supercilious abuses of the nobility, and the corruption ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... minutes ago a man, dressed in loose shooting clothes, and with a gun under his arm. He came to a standstill by the side of the boy, and stood there watching him for several moments, with a certain faintly amused curiosity shining out of his somewhat supercilious gray eyes. The newcomer was obviously a person of breeding and culture—the sort of person who assumes without question the title of "Gentleman." The boy wore ready-made clothes and hobnailed boots. They remained within a few feet of one another ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... feeling of aversion swept over Merry. He saw the person was a supercilious Frenchman, critical, sneering, insolent, a man intolerant with everything not of ...
— Frank Merriwell's Nobility - The Tragedy of the Ocean Tramp • Burt L. Standish (AKA Gilbert Patten)
... humble, if that humble sphere Shine with his fair example, and though small His influence, if that influence all be spent In soothing sorrow and in quenching strife, In aiding helpless indigence, in works From which at least a grateful few derive Some taste of comfort in a world of woe, Then let the supercilious great confess He serves his country; recompenses well The state beneath the shadow of whose vine He sits secure, and in the scale of life Holds no ignoble, though a slighted place. The man whose virtues are more felt than seen, Must drop, indeed, the hope of public ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... "one of them, from my post of observation behind the kitchen door, and he did appear so ridiculous with his gold eye-glasses, looking as solemn as an owl, and glancing around with that expression of supercilious curiosity, as though he expected to find us all wild Indians, or something ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... made the food of the scene: and, howsoever I cannot escape from some, the imputation of sharpness, but that they will say, I have taken a pride, or lust, to be bitter, and not my youngest infant but hath come into the world with all his teeth; I would ask of these supercilious politics, what nation, society, or general order or state, I have provoked? What public person? Whether I have not in all these preserved their dignity, as mine own person, safe? My works are read, allowed, (I speak of those that are intirely mine,) look into them, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... manifested by the custom, previously referred to, which obliges mourning women to crop off all their hair, while of a man's locks, which "are of much greater importance," only one or two can be spared. (Catlin, l.c., I., 95, 119, 121; II., 123.) An amusing illustration of the Mandan's supercilious contempt for women, also by ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... kept about his family, that I know all about it. Do you suppose that before selecting you as your cousin's husband I had not obtained every possible information about you? And what I have learned need not make you quite so supercilious to the police. Besides, as the vulgar saying is, the best of your nose is made of it. Your uncle belonged to the police, and, thanks to that, he became the confidant, I might almost say the friend, of Louis XVIII., who took the greatest pleasure in his ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... am concerned, my dear Marcus, I am perfectly indifferent," replied Judith, assuming the supercilious expression with which women invariably try to ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... sea-bathing! It rouses the apathetic. It upsets the supercilious and pragmatical. It is balsamic for mental wounds. It is a tonic for those who need strength, and an anodyne for those who require soothing, and a febrifuge for those who want their blood cooled; a filling up for minds pumped dry, ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... arid land. I never see the supercilious curl of a camel's lip or meet the bland contempt of his eye but I imagine him saying, 'Ah, Feringhi, were it not for your white skin I might whisper strange secrets into your ear, but you are an unbelieving dog, so perforce I remain dumb.' Hence, Miss Fenshawe, inclination pulls one ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... creature as sensitively attuned as he judged her to be could journey for the first time unmoved through the valley which to him summed up the word Egypt. He allowed her to ride a few paces ahead, just behind the Sheikh. The camel's arrogant head, with its supercilious gaze, towered above them. To Margaret, Michael Amory and herself were still an offence in the valley. The camel, with the high-seated, turbaned Sheikh, seemed a part of the whole. The animal, with its prehistoric loneliness of expression, the Sheikh, with his ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... previous year, and a statement of accounts. The latter, having been audited by Miss Poppleton and found correct, was passed without demur, and the head girl then went on to announce the list of candidates for the various offices. She rattled off the whole in a rather supercilious, casual manner, and she finished with the usual formula: "If any member of the Society has an objection to raise or a suggestion to make, kindly put it before the meeting now, that it may be discussed before the ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... trade is carried on, the people are dishonest and uncivil, and when they found that the English did not come to buy slaves, they immediately put on a supercilious air, and sometimes refused to sell them food. At one of these places a party of thieves stole into the camp and carried off most of their goods, no one awaking, though their rifles and revolvers were all ready. The cloth, having been used for pillows, escaped, but nearly all their clothing ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... half-charred sticks, which he laid cross-wise upon the ground. The Dervishes came clustering over to see the new converts admitted into the fold. They stood round in the dim light, tall and fantastic, with the high necks and supercilious heads of the camels ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the gift was a startling thing in a world which, as far as cultivated heathenism was concerned, might rightly be called aristocratic, and by the side of a religion of privilege into which Judaism had degenerated. The supercilious sarcasm in the lips of Pharisees, 'This people which knoweth not the law are cursed,' but too truly expresses the gulf between the Rabbis and the 'folk of the earth' as the masses were commonly and contemptuously designated by the former. Into the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... be replaced when they're too far gone to stand another stitch. Peter was too small to do any responsible work, and he was getting too big to be paid in pennies and dimes. People didn't exactly know what to do with him. One can't be supercilious to a boy who is a Champneys born, but can one invite a boy who runs errands, is on very familiar footing with all the colored people in the county, and wears such clothes as Peter wore, to one's house, or to be one of the guests ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... was very tall. And Sargent, in his portrait of her, had caught with admirable art the indefinable, yet partly supercilious and scornful smile with which she looked down upon the world about her. She possessed the rare gift of combining conventionality with personal distinction in her dress. Her hair was almost Titian red in colour, and her face (on the authority of Mr. Reginald Farwell) ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "I was supercilious," said he. "And worse than that there is not. However, as I have apologized, and you have accepted my apology, we need waste no more time about that. You wished to persuade ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... two Jesuits returned, and putting on a very grave supercilious air, the superior asked him, what resolution he had taken? To which Mr. Lithgow replied, that he was already resolved, unless he could show substantial reasons to make him alter his opinion. The superior, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... month ago such a thing would have been too wild a flight of fancy for the most ambitious dream. In the very room in which he had been thrust aside at parties, forgotten in corners, left behind when the others went in to supper, he was now sitting the centre of interest, with his former supercilious hosts hanging on his words. When he had done, had all too soon come to the end of his delightful task, he looked round at them triumphantly; and his triumph was immediately dashed out of him by Dellwig, who said with his harshest laugh, "Put aside all your hopes, young man—Miss ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... popularly supposed to start every dog fight in Nome; but this time he can prove a clear alibi, for he slept at the foot of my bed all night." Thus exonerated, the Peril passed by the line of chained dogs, bumping into them in a perfectly unnecessary manner, and emitting supercilious growls that in themselves would have been sufficient grounds for instant death if Pete Bernard's huskies could have acted ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... homeward bound. It may be weak, but I feel it all the same. I seem to divine the thoughts of the omnibus driver as he gazes down upon me from his exalted perch—he does not think my shirt is clean. His sixteen "outsides" bestow upon me a supercilious look that conveys to me that they opine I am merely cabbing it to the station en route for a "suburban hop." But I bear up under it all, and think of the magnificent banquet of which they, poor things, know nothing, and I am beginning to feel quite proud when a brute ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... excellent observations extorted praise from the supercilious Warburton himself. In the Preface to his Shakespeare, published two years after the appearance of Johnson's anonymous pamphlet, he thus alludes to it: "As to all those things which have been published under the titles of Essays, Remarks, Observations, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... from one window, and waved a kiss to Susan, who was surreptitiously glancing from another, whereupon both being detected, drew back hastily. Overwhelmed by the appearance of a guest of such manifest distinction, the landlord bowed obsequiously as the other entered the tavern with a supercilious nod. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... habit of ascending to a superlunary home, was the loss of an exact sense of how she was behaving below. At the Berkshire mansion, she wore a supercilious air, almost as icy as she accused the place of being. Emma knew she must have seen in the library a row of her literary ventures, exquisitely bound; but there was no allusion to the books. Mary Paynham's portrait ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... leaning back she was thinking how pleasant it was to be in New York, how different from what she had expected, when a bow from Mark made her look up in time to see that they were meeting a carriage, in which sat Wilford, and with two gayly-dressed ladies, both of whom gave her a supercilious stare as they passed by, while the younger of the two half turned her head, as if for a more ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... corner of eye the sumptuousness of her appearance, and the supercilious indifference of her demeanour, which made it seem totally improbable that she should ever, like Desdemona, seriously incline to treat me as an Othello, commenced to heave the sighs of a fire-stove, causing Miss JESSIMINA to accuse me of ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... experience which I have had, I should certainly state that it was kind and attentive when brought into contact in travelling or from any other circumstances, provided that a person does not attempt to support a haughty or supercilious air. I do not consider that, generally speaking, the French are so hospitable as the English, not only as regards foreigners but even amongst themselves; it is not so much their habit. In many houses you may pass an hour or two of an evening, and there will never be ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... Absolute is the very "pine-apple of perfection," and that to think of her daughter's marrying a penniless man, gives her the "hydrostatics." She does not wish her to be a "progeny of learning," but she should have a "supercilious knowledge" of accounts, and be acquainted with the "contagious countries." There is a satire, which will come home to most of us in Malaprop, notwithstanding her ignorance and stupidity, giving her opinion authoritatively on education. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... branches of learning; nor will it be necessary for her to handle any of your mathematical, astronomical, diabolical instruments; but, Sir Anthony, I would send her, at nine years old, to a boarding-school, in order to learn a little ingenuity and artifice. Then, sir, she should have a supercilious knowledge in accounts; and, as she grew up, I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries; above all, she would be taught orthodoxy. This, Sir Anthony, is what I would ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... a moment in the center aisle and half shut her eyes, as if looking for something or somebody, but when she distinguished Gervaise she went toward her with a haughty, insolent air and supercilious smile and finally established herself only a short distance ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... of the jealous fur company were all-powerful at court. Groseillers then relinquished all idea of restitution, and tried to interest merchants in another expedition to Hudson Bay by way of the sea.[2] He might have spared himself the trouble. His enthusiasm only aroused the quiet smile of supercilious indifference. His plans were regarded as chimerical. Finally a merchant of Rochelle half promised to send a boat to Isle Percee at the mouth of the St. Lawrence in 1664. Groseillers had already wasted six months. Eager for action, he hurried ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... dignified displeasure, with which Emily regarded Madame Cheron, while she spoke, would have touched almost any other heart; she made no other reply, but introduced Valancourt, who could scarcely stifle the resentment he felt, and whose bow Madame Cheron returned with a slight curtsy, and a look of supercilious examination. After a few moments he took leave of Emily, in a manner, that hastily expressed his pain both at his own departure, and at leaving her to ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... obscurity, May saw Weston Marchmont and the Dean of St. Neot's. The Mildmays themselves could not be present, but these two had come over from Moors End and sat there now, the Dean beaming in anticipation of a treat, Marchmont with a rather supercilious smile and an air of weariness. May could not catch their eyes but she felt glad to have them there; it was always pleasant to her that her friends should see Quisante when he was at his best, and he was going to ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... he sang the second and remaining verses with spirit, the choruses swelling louder and louder, and when he finished there was much hand- clapping. So at last he had a gleam of success, and Lionel Gould, who had been growing a little supercilious, returned partially to ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... Under the leadership of Shad Wells the strategic points were not covered, and, had he wished, he could have found his way, by using the cover of shadow and shrubbery, to the portico without being observed. He pointed this out to Wells who, from a supercilious attitude, ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... train drew up at a small station. Opposite the door of Mike's compartment was standing a boy of about Mike's size, though evidently some years older. He had a sharp face, with rather a prominent nose; and a pair of pince-nez gave him a supercilious look. He wore a bowler hat, and carried ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... cheerfulness to be seen, but in its place there is plenty of cunning, slyness, and deceit, if there is any truth in physiognomy. The men look like women and the women like children, except that their features are so hard and forbidding. The better classes wear a supercilious expression of features that makes the toes of one's boots tingle; and yet in all the shops there is a cringing assiduity to get all the silver and pennies from the outside barbarians that is possible. In the streets there was a most unmistakable surliness exhibited ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... Empire; an exquisite, thin-featured man, high of nose and eyebrows, not large, but completely turned out as ample man and bright spirit. The slightest fragrance of scent was in his presence, and a shade of snuff on his upper lip appeared fine supercilious hairs. ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... her as she entered, a tall man, tough and muscular, with black hair that was tinged with grey, and a long stubborn jaw that gave him an indomitable look. His lips were thin and very firm, with a sardonic twist that imparted a faintly supercilious expression. His eyes were dark, deep-set, and shrewd. He was a magistrate of some repute in the district, a position which he had attained by sheer unswerving hard work in the police force, in which for years he had been known as "Bloodhound Hill." A man of rigid ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... one imagine three human beings as astonished as we were to find ourselves gathered together? The husband looked at me with a supercilious air, and I paid him back ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... armed men, and tell them that no one had sent her? She would encounter rough soldiers, and camp-followers of every nation, and officers of all grades of character; and could she bear herself so wisely and loftily in all trials as to awe the impertinent, and command the respect of the supercilious, so that she might be free to come and go at her will, and do what should seem good to her? Or, if she failed to maintain a character proof against even inuendoes, would she not break the bridge over which any successor would have to pass? These questions she pondered, and ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... says a writer in "Macmillan's Magazine,"[A] "in the 'mellow evening' of a life that had been so stormy, Mr. Leigh Hunt himself told the story of his struggles, his victories, and his defeats, with so singularly graceful a frankness, that the most supercilious of critics could not but acknowledge that here was an autobiographer whom it was possible to like. Here is Carlyle's estimate of Leigh ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... have been willing, with childlike confidence, to submit your own verses to their criticism? For myself, I am free to say that I have no patience with satirists. I never knew a just one. I never heard of a fair one. They are a mean, malicious, murdering tribe,—they are a supercilious, dogmatical, envious, suspicious company,—knocking down their fellow-creatures in the name of Virtue for their own gratification,—mere Mohawks, kept by family influence out of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... sacraments to persons in extremity, who refused to subscribe to the bull Unigenitus, all of them declared they acted according to the direction of the archbishop of Paris. Application being made to this haughty prelate, he treated the deputies of the parliament with the most supercilious contempt, and even seemed to brave the power and authority of that body. They, on the other hand, proceeded to take cognizance of the recusant clergy, until their sovereign ordered them to desist. Then they presented ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... to ask them. One was Miss Clarke—you know her. She smiled in her usual supercilious manner, but in her case I believe it was only because Miss Clare looks so dowdy. But nobody knows any thing about her except what ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... Rattar. He was of medium height, slender, and dark-haired. His features were remarkably regular, and though his face was somewhat small, there could be no doubt that he was extremely good looking, especially to a woman's eye, who would be more apt than a fellow man to condone something a little supercilious in his smile. ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... people of all tempers and dispositions, as well as of every degree of culture. To be gracious and courteous to all is his interest as well as his duty. With the ignorant he will often have to exercise a vast amount of patience, but he should never betray a supercilious air, as though looking down upon them from the height of his own superior intelligence. To be always amiable toward inferiors, superiors, and equals, is to conciliate the regard of all. Courtesy costs so little, and makes so large a return in proportion to the investment, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... sporting snobs who endeavour to enhance their own consequence or indulge their cynical humour by talking with the utmost contempt of any variation from the kind of hunting-dress in use, in their own particular district. The best commentary on the supercilious tailoring criticism of these gents is to be found in the fact that within a century every variety of hunting clothes has been in and out of fashion, and that the dress in fashion with the Quorn hunt in its most palmy ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... might reflect sometimes the feeling of unfriendliness which he was aware of in the supercilious Rudi. The latter exhibited a negligent attitude of indifference toward Gard, though it was cloaked under casualness. There was a sinister air about the young engineer, and she would be bound to follow submissively anyone breathing ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... prefer it, and said so hastily. She seemed to have a morbid dread of a rupture between Doris Fielding and her fiance, a feeling with which Caryl quite obviously had no sympathy. There was nothing very remarkable about the man save this somewhat supercilious demeanour which had caused Vera to marvel many times at ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... didn't like her at all. She was very hateful and supercilious. I thought at the time that the letter was a queer kind of joke, but I'd never been to college so I wasn't in a position to criticize it. Anyway, it wasn't my business, so I typed it and signed it as she requested. That's ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... had not yet made the impression that he desired. He wanted, without actually saying so, to let this somewhat supercilious lady know that if the possession of money was a reason for social position,—and he knew of no other reason for the Buskirks' position,—Mrs. Cliff would be aft, talking to the Captain while the Buskirks would be walking about by ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... length those of a whole people. The creator of this new taste appears to have received far less notice than he merited. The name of Shenstone does not appear in the Essay on Gardening by Lord Orford: even the supercilious Gray only bestowed a ludicrous image on these pastoral scenes, which, however, his friend Mason has celebrated; and the genius of Johnson, incapacitated by nature to touch on objects of rural fancy, after ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... convalescence when such talk as her lord's was extremely agreeable to her, but she had contemned the habit of listening to gossip so severely all her life, that she thought it due to consistency to listen first, and enter a supercilious protest afterwards. It had, however, come to be a family habit for all of them to gather together in Lady Cumnor's room on their return from their daily walks or drives or rides, and over the fire, sipping their tea at her early meal, to recount the morsels of local ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... eyes to meet Hendricks' for the first time during their meeting—"that scoundrel said to me yesterday morning before leaving, 'If I hadn't the misfortune of being your son-in-law, you wouldn't have the honour of owing me this money.' Then he sneered at me—you know the supercilious way he has, the damn miserable hound-pup way he has of grinning at you,—and says, 'I regarded it as a loan, even though you seemed to regard it as a bargain.' And he whirled and left me." The colonel's voice broke as he added: "In God's name, Bob, tell me—did I sell ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... to see the speaker; but she was hidden by her escort, in whose supercilious profile he recognized one of the officers in charge of ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... philanthropy is impolite, that heroism is ungenteel, that truth, honor, freedom, humanity, strongly asserted, are marks of a vulgar mind; and many a person, daring enough to defend his opinions anywhere else, by speech or by the sword, quails in the parlor before some supercilious coxcomb, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... it BEFORE," said the young girl, with a slight supercilious toss of the head, and yet a certain abstraction of manner as she went to the window and closed it. "Anybody could see it! I know you always wanted me to stay here with Mrs. Peyton, and be coddled and monitored and catechised and shut up away from any one, until YOU had been coddled and ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... the old supercilious contempt for the "Yankee" and all his ways. "God's Englishman" no more loves an American citizen now than in 1846 when he seriously contemplated an invasion of the United States, and the raising of the negro-slave population ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... him—if the artist, of course, had been any good. The sketch, to be perfect, would need to portray a tall, slim, blonde person with feminine features. But no crayon could convey an idea of the squeaky voice and the supercilious manner. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... midshipman—who had formerly belonged to my ship, and had trembled at my frown, ranged up alongside of me, and with a supercilious air, observed— ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... out like the chiming of a great bell receding into immeasurable distance. The supercilious tones of the professor had yielded to the sweetness and the light of the Greater Mind whose instrument he had momentarily become. It was charged at the last with a golden resonance that seemed to echo down vast spaceless corridors beyond the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... death of his father, he had removed, with his brother Gilbert and his mother. I could not help observing that his manners were considerably changed: my welcome seemed less kind and hearty than I could have anticipated from the warm-hearted peasant of five years ago, and there was a stern and almost supercilious elevation in his bearing, which at first pained and offended me. I had met with him as he was returning from the fields after the labours of the day; the dusk of twilight had fallen; and, though I had calculated ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... contempt on two such men—on the maitre d'hotel for his entire absence of all sensitiveness, and on the chef de cuisine for his unpolished excess of it was only natural. Yet it must not be supposed that with either of them he indulged that air of supercilious patronage with which he was accustomed to treat all not absolutely above him in the social scale; it would have been simply thrown away upon the one, the other would have kicked him for it, even if he had to get upon a chair to do so. Still Monsieur Jasmin managed to maintain some kind ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... its way into a back court, accompanied by the tyrant, the pedant and Scapin, who superintended the unloading of the various articles that would be needed—a strange medley, which the supercilious servants of the chateau, in their rich liveries, handled with a very lofty air of contempt and condescension, feeling it quite beneath their dignity to wait upon a band of strolling players. But they dared not rebel, for the marquis had ordered it, and he was a severe ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... age of every man his own priest and his own lawyer. At a pinch we can very well be every man his own poet. If the whole supercilious crew of modern men of letters, artists, and critics were wiped off the earth to-morrow, the world would be hardly conscious of the loss. Nay, if even the entire artistic accumulation of the past were to be suddenly swallowed up, it would be little worse off. For the ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... gave a supercilious glance in the direction of the boy, and then turned away. The boy, who had no idea of courting observation, stowed himself away behind the windlass; and, taking a letter from his pocket, perused it ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... enter into the mixed feelings with which they regard the mother country. As with a son who is gone forth into the world, there is often on one side the conceit of youth and impatience of restraint, shown in uncalled for acts of self-assertion or in dogmatic speech; and on the other side a supercilious want of sympathy with the changed surroundings, the pursuits and the aspirations of the younger generation. It seems as if there were no bond left between the two. But a day of trial comes; parent or offspring is threatened by a stranger; and then it is seen that the ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... answered some six letters of mine. This, therefore, is my penultimate. I will write to you once more, but, after that—I swear by all the saints—I am silent and supercilious. I have met Curran at Holland House—he beats every body;—his imagination is beyond human, and his humour (it is difficult to define what is wit) perfect. Then he has fifty faces, and twice as many voices, when he mimics—I never met his equal. Now, were I a woman, and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... expression and attractiveness of manner are two or three Christians of the better class. Naturally fine-featured and of dignified presence, the touch of the Christian faith seems to have transformed the supercilious impassiveness of their class into a serenity full of charm. It is a pity that it is not more often so, but the zeal of the West mars as well as mends, and in imparting Western beliefs and Western learning carelessly and needlessly destroys Eastern ideals of conduct ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... there must exist some valves for the passions of society," pompously remarked Boris Sobashnikov, a tall, somewhat supercilious and affected young man, upon whom the short, white summer uniform jacket, which scarcely covered his fat posteriors, the modish trousers, of a military cut, the PINCE-NEZ on a broad, black ribbon, and a cap after a Prussian model, all bestowed ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... him in this house when the master was away. He respected aunty (who had the spinster's foolish aversion for dogs and the incomprehensible affection for cats!) and for this reason never molested her supercilious Angora cat. Could he be blamed if he sought (and found) elsewhere affection and confidence? Why, these morning rides were as good as a bone. She talked to him, told him her secrets (secrets he swore on a dog's bible never to reveal!) and desires, and fed him chicken, and cuddled him. ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... Hugo decided; that's what she wanted to bring her to heel. And before very long he'd see that she got it. She shouldn't shelter herself for ever behind that supercilious beast, Ledgard. Hugo was quite ready to have been pleasant to Jan and to have met her more than half-way if she was reasonable, but since she had chosen to bring Ledgard into it, she should pay. After all, she was only a woman, and you can always frighten a ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... surprised her more that he should dare rebuff the advances of Miss Lambourne. Madame knew very well the power of her beauty over men. If she gave one half an inch she expected that he should be instantly mad to get an ell of her. But here was Mr. Boyce, though she gave him a good many inches, as supercilious about her as if he were a woman. It was incredible that the creature had no warm blood in him. Indeed, she had proof—she could still make herself feel the ache of his grasp in the wood—that he was on occasion as fierce as any woman need want a man. Why, then, monsieur must be defying her out ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... smiling face had once been a pretty one, but the tide of youth was fast receding, leaving uncovered a bleak and barren shore, whose chief salients were a disdainful nose and a mouth which looked as if it might be able to say bitter things. The eyes, however, were still handsome, if supercilious, and her manners velvety. No doubt there were claws beneath the velvet, but they were not for April . . . only for the girl who was using April's name! They had not talked for five minutes before she realized that in this woman Diana had an ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... corn-colored silken beard apparently had never yet known the touch of barber's razor or Delilah's shears. So that the cutting speech which quivered on her ready tongue died upon her lips, and she contented herself with receiving his stammering apology with supercilious eyelids and the gathered skirts of uncontamination. When she re-entered the schoolroom, her eyes fell upon the azaleas with a new sense of revelation; and then she laughed, and the little people all laughed, and they were all ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... tents under the walls of Beausejour. Winslow and Scott, with the New England troops, lay not far off. There was little intercourse between the two camps. The British officers bore themselves towards those of the provincials with a supercilious coldness common enough on their part throughout the war. July had passed in what Winslow calls "an indolent manner," with prayers every day in the Puritan camp, when, early in August, Monckton sent for him, and made an ominous declaration. "The said Monckton was so free as ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... insignificant national events but still adequate to arouse orgiastic emotions as genuine as those of antiquity, though they are lacking in beauty and religious consecration. It is easy indeed for the narrowly austere person to view such manifestations with a supercilious smile, but in the eyes of the moralist and the philosopher these orgiastic festivals exert a salutary and preservative function. In every age of dull and monotonous routine—and all civilization involves such routine—many natural ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of our departure, in the twilight of the morning, I ascended the vehicle with three men and two women, my fellow travellers. It was easy to observe the affected elevation of mien with which every one entered, and the supercilious servility with which they paid their compliments to each other. When the first ceremony was despatched, we sat silent for a long time, all employed in collecting importance into our faces, and endeavouring to strike reverence ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... the affectation of a supercilious indifference, he smiled haughtily, and gave a look of dramatic ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... the room, and were going downstairs, before Mr. Noah Hawker recovered from his surprise on learning that his gift was gold instead of a silver sixpence. It chanced that he was reduced to his last coppers, and so the half sovereign was a boon indeed. He nudged the elbow of a supercilious looking young gentleman in ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... all make Fortunes from the orders that would be given to them for fresh Tombs. Not a mealy-mouthed Burgess now, whose great-grandfather sold stocking hose to my Lord Duke of Northumberland, but sets himself up for a Percy; not a supercilious Cit, whose Uncle married a cast-off waiting-woman from Arundel Castle, but vaunts himself on his alliance with the noble house of Howard; not a starveling Scrivener, whose ancestor, as the playwright has it, got his Skull cracked by John of Gaunt for ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... solemnly talked about such things it made her rather sorry. But she bore up for Barty's sake, and the resigned, half-humorous courtesy with which she assented to these fables was really more humiliating to a sensitive, haughty soul than any mere supercilious disdain; not that she ever wished to humiliate, but she was easily bored, and thought that kind of conversation ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... was a "stuck up smart-Aleck," and sooner or later he'd get a piece of her mind that would "take him down a couple of pegs." Miss Miller, while in complete accord with Flora's views, was content to speak of him as "supercilious." ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... written by the church of Smyrna in an excellent circular letter to the churches of Pontus, immediately after his martyrdom: a piece abridged by Eusebius, b. 4, c. 14, highly esteemed by the ancients. Joseph Scaliger, a supercilious critic, says that nothing in the whole course of church history so strongly affected him, as the perusal of these acts, and those relating to the martyrs of Lyons: that he never read them but they gave him extraordinary ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... at the Stanwoods'? I had Nettie send you a card. I had promised you to a dozen delightful women, "our choicest lot," who were all agog to see my supercilious and dainty sir.... Why will you always play with things? Perhaps you will say because I am not worth serious moments. You play with everything, I believe, and that is banal. ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... he had spoken slowly and impressively, with a touch of arrogance in his tone which aroused to his prejudice, the combativeness latent in my nature. However, at this juncture I merely bowed my head, and replied in accents almost as supercilious as his own:— ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... soft-headed husband, for listening to what she terms such "low-lived politics." What makes the good woman the more violent, is the perfect coolness with which the radical listens to her attacks, drawing his face up into a provoking supercilious smile; and when she has talked herself out of breath, quietly asking her for ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... with a supercilious expression, dressed in the uniform of a student, was leading ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... swaying along, a rope in his hand; following him, walked demurely three little girls in frocks and trousers, with their French governess; then came two eye-glassed young men, dandyfied and supercilious, who appeared to have more money than brains—and the jaundiced man went into a gaping fit ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... spirits, declared with much solemnity that he could already detect the smell of the salt sea air. They had their quarrels of course. It pleased a certain young lady to treat the south coast of England with much supercilious contempt. You would have imagined from her talk that there was something criminal in one's living even within twenty miles of the bleak downs, the shabby precipices, and the muddy sea which, according to her, were the only recognizable features of our southern shores. She would not admit indeed ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... discovered, but would think it impossible and even ridiculous to enlarge it beyond the limits already traced by reason. They only believe in a progress that is chained to the inside of the enclosure. Clerambault knew only too well the supercilious smile with which the ideas of inventors are put aside by learned men from the official schools. There are certain forms of science which accord perfectly with docility. David's manner showed no irony; it expressed rather a stoical, ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... his bow and goes downstairs, where the supercilious Mercury does not consider himself called upon to leave his Olympus by the hall-fire to let the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... thought, from the supercilious air with which Mrs. Topham Sawyer was eying the plate and other arrangements, that she was remarking the difference of the ciphers on the forks and spoons—which had, in fact, been borrowed from every ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... view of the general movement was supercilious in the extreme. In his eyes all it amounted to was that he was forgotten and of no use. At last his name was mentioned, at first in periodicals published abroad as that of an exiled martyr, and immediately afterwards in Petersburg as that of a former star in a celebrated ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... sent by his means to the place where he labored, it was obvious to all that the tone of Christians was raised as much by his holy walk as by his heavenly ministry. Yet during these pleasant days he had much reproach to bear. He was the object of supercilious contempt to formal cold-hearted ministers, and of bitter hatred to many of the ungodly. At this day there are both ministers and professing Christians of whom Jesus would say, "The world cannot hate you" (John 7:7), for the world cannot hate itself; but it was ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... on our corral fence for several days; some of the neighbors came to see it and agreed that it was the biggest rattler ever killed in those parts. This was enough for Antonia. She liked me better from that time on, and she never took a supercilious air with me again. I had killed a big snake—I ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... not unfrequently under the title of a lady, wear the heart of an underbred snob. Having no natural dignity, they think to supply its place with arrogance. They mistake noisy bounce for self-possession, and supercilious rudeness as the sign of superiority. They encourage themselves in sleepy stupidity under the impression that they are acquiring aristocratic "repose." They would appear to have studied "attitude" from the pages of the London Journal, coquetry from barmaids—the commoner class of barmaids, ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... gave little room for skepticism. It was the story of Zaccheus, and story-telling was Moore's strong point. The thing was well done. Vivid portraitures of the outcast, shrewd, converted publican and the supercilious, self-complacent, critical Pharisee were drawn with a few deft touches. A single sentence transferred them to the Foothills and arrayed them in cowboy garb. Bill was none too sure of himself, but Hi, with delightful winks, was indicating Bruce as ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... jacket had been extricated from the hair of the lady in front, she perched herself on the arm of her own chair; when she had applauded herself backward into Pixie's arms, she leant against the supercilious-looking gentleman in the next seat, and tickled his cheeks with her fluffy hair. Then the first wonder wore away, and she found ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... entrance were: "It's all O. K., sirs. I have found my missing clew. James Zabel was not the only person who came up here from the Webb cottage last night." And turning to Knapp, who was losing some of his supercilious manner, he asked, with significant emphasis: "If, of the full amount stolen from Agatha Webb, you found twenty dollars in the possession of one man and nine hundred and eighty dollars in the possession of another, upon which of the two would you fix as the probable ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... in America, in the smaller way his modesty permitted, what the Chevalier Bayard was in France, and Sir Philip Sidney in England. This has been received more than once (such is the malice of conscious inferiority) with derisive smiles or supercilious sneers; and not only by certain of his own countrymen, but even in my presence, when my friendship for Winwood, though I had been his rival in love and his enemy in war, was not less known than was my quickness to take offence and avenge it. I dealt ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... even affection, but, as she always avowed, for artistic purposes. That she had cherished, ever since her marriage, the plan of adopting her husband's profession, she had never concealed from him. He usually laughed, in his gay, supercilious way, when she spoke of this purpose, or lightly patted her grand head and declared her to be a wilful, unpractical enthusiast,—too much a child of Nature to attempt an art of any kind,—born to live and be poetry, not to declaim it,—to inspire genius, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... such circumstances, are we to consider it as dead, then? In the soul of Queen Sophie and those she can influence, it lives flame-bright; but with all others it has fallen into a very dim state. Friedrich Wilhelm is still privately willing, perhaps in a degree wishful; but the delays, the supercilious neglects have much disgusted him; and he, in the mean while, entertains those new speculations. George II., never a lover of the Prussian Majesty's nor loved by him, has been very high and distant ever since his Accession; offensive rather than otherwise. He also is understood ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... dost wound and vex me with thy questions. Hath he not been gone these five months, and never a word, good or bad, hath been rendered to me? Nay, did he not, ere he went, so deport himself with most cold and supercilious arrogance, and even ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... club, and was, without doubt, a very perfect person with his wide-set eyes and well-groomed head, his smooth moustache and the cleft on his chin. He didn't like him. He had decided that at a first glance. He was too supercilious and self-assured and had a way of looking clean through men's heads. He conveyed the impression of having bought the earth,—and Joan. A pity he was too old for a year or two of Yale. That would make him a bit more ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... too, when Norah and Mildred came together with Charlie Thesiger, their cousin, who was engaged to Mildred. Charlie was then a lieutenant in the South Kent Hussars. He was a large young man, correct, handsome, rather supercilious and rather stupid. He seemed to fill the house in Edwardes Square when he ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... small per cent. of the students use intoxicating drinks or tobacco. All reprehensible conduct must be carried on so secretly as to elude the college authorities. Those disposed to do evil represent only a very small proportion of the great body of students, but these give occasion for some supercilious and conceited correspondent of the public press severely to criticise the college government, and to give gross caricatures and exaggerated statements of the mischief done by this small percentage of students, and then include the entire academic body in the same general censure. ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... servants and apprentices. There were students with their blue and white spotted cloaks, their kepis with the school badge, and their ungainly stride. There were modern young men in y[o]fuku (European dress), with panama hats, swagger canes and side-spring shoes, supercilious in attitude and proud of their unbelief. There were troops of variegated children, dragging at their elders' hands or kimonos, or getting lost among the legs of the multitude like little leaves in an eddy. There were ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... not answered some six letters of mine. This, therefore, is my penultimate. I will write to you once more, but, after that—I swear by all the saints—I am silent and supercilious. I have met Curran [1] at Holland House—he beats every body;—his imagination is beyond human, and his humour (it is difficult to define what is wit) perfect. Then he has fifty faces, and twice as many voices, when he mimics—I never met his equal. Now, were I a woman, and eke a virgin, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... embarrassment, while Mrs. Honeychurch changed her frock for dinner; and every now and then she said a word, and made things no better. There was no concealing the fact, Cecil had meant to be supercilious, and he had succeeded. And Lucy—she knew not why—wished that the trouble could have ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... the ropes to clear the anchor. Tristan is in a reverie, scarcely conscious of what is going on around him; the love-motive once in the oboe shows how his thoughts are occupied. He starts at the word Isolde, but collects himself, and tries to conceal his evident distress under a manner of supercilious indifference. Brangaene becomes more urgent; he pleads his inability to come now because he cannot leave the helm. Then Brangaene delivers Isolde's message in the same peremptory words in ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... over to her party cardinal Beaufort, the Regent's uncle, a supercilious proud churchman. They fell upon a very odd scheme to shake the power of Gloucester, and as it is very singular, and absolutely fact, we shall ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... had called it often enough a jingle of endings; it were more true to say that it was a jingle of mendings, for it certainly soothed him. He was making a goddess in his own image; poetry—Santa Cecilia! he was a poet, like his friend Dante, like that supercilious young tomb-walker Guido Cavalcanti. A poet he undoubtedly became; and if his feet were cold his heart was ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... and of her fruitless attempts to see her brother and come to his assistance. Once in Sedan chance had brought her face to face with Cousin Gunther, the man who was captain in the Prussian Guards. He had passed her with his haughty, supercilious air, pretending not to recognize her. She, also, with a sensation of loathing, as if she were in the presence of one of her husband's murderers, had hurried on with quickened steps; then, with a sudden ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... of the civilized Indian—the one an insignificant speck, the other a man—he will not be disposed to disagree with me in the opinion that "from bees, and wasps, and ants, and birds, from all that low animal life on which he looks with supercilious contempt, man is destined one day to learn what ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... the portico, George seized the quaint brass knocker of the front door, and gave it a brisk rap. After some delay a very fat negress opened the door, and eyed the strangers rather suspiciously. Their tramp over the country had not improved their appearance, and her supercilious, inquisitive look was not strange, ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... they stood gazing at the pale, supercilious-looking creatures, who returned their gaze through monocles, lorgnettes, ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... followed the youth with a constant critical wonder. In any other circumstances she would not have thought him worth an instant's attention. She had all the supercilious impatience of the pretty girl accustomed to choose her company. But this odd fact of kinship held and harassed her. She wanted to understand ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... any sort are apt to generate, not only a wholesome esprit de corps, but a hostile contempt for outsiders, and Christianity has too often been misrepresented by its professors, who have looked down upon those that are without with supercilious and unchristian self-complacency. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... knee before her; and she, bending herself towards him, let her lips touch his forehead. He threw his arms round her, and held her for one moment bent towards him. A supercilious, scornful expression, unobserved by her, played upon ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... himself great airs," said Captain Williams, a swaggering, supercilious man, for whom Sydney had no affection, and who was not one of Sydney's admirers. "To hear him talk one would imagine he was a high authority on every subject under the sun, but I suspect he has very little to go upon. Has he ever held a ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... nineteen, short and slight of build, with the merriest eyes I've ever seen. I didn't in the least mind the grin he bestowed upon me—and preserved with staunch fidelity throughout the whole interview,—but I resented the supercilious, lordly scorn ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... for them?" asks Mrs. Bethune, always with her supercilious smile, and in a tone that is almost a whisper, yet quite loud enough for Rylton, who is ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... have immediate results. Our success in solving the political and social problems has spoiled us. When we hear of a man who has been prosperous for years, whom no misfortune has sobered and softened, we expect him to be narrow and supercilious; and in the same way, a prosperous people are exposed to the danger of becoming self-complacent and superficial. We exaggerate the importance of our own achievements and think that which we have accomplished is the best; whereas the wise hold what they have ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... parents. He was a tall dark man with a pointed moustache, and of from forty to forty-five years of age. His features were regular and handsome; but in his thin straight eyebrows, the curl of his lips, and a certain supercilious drooping of the eyelids, Ronald read the evil passions which rendered him so dangerous and ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... her," announced Wayne decisively; "she is probably exotic and self-conscious and supercilious, and not at all a comfortable person to have about. It's bad enough for her father to have been a great artist—without her mother needs ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... their tents under the walls of Beausejour. Winslow and Scott, with the New England troops, lay not far off. There was little intercourse between the two camps. The British officers bore themselves towards those of the provincials with a supercilious coldness common enough on their part throughout the war. July had passed in what Winslow calls "an indolent manner," with prayers every day in the Puritan camp, when, early in August, Monckton sent for him, and made an ominous declaration. "The said Monckton was so free as to acquaint me that ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... overbearing, supercilious, cavalier, overweening, disdainful, imperious, lordly, magisterial, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... her vexation, that, though she brought him a kingdom as her dowry, he treated her with such neglect that he had never yet favored her with a single letter.[**] Her fondness was but the more increased by this supercilious treatment; and when she found that her subjects had entertained the greatest aversion for the event to which she directed her fondest wishes, she made the whole English nation the object of her resentment. A squadron, under the command of Lord Effingham, had been fitted out to convoy Philip ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... Meanwhile I hasten to re-make acquaintance with my mother-country over files of the "Times," "Post," "Chronicle," and "Herald." Nothing comes amiss to me but articles on Australia; from those I turn aside with the true pshaw supercilious of your practical man. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a good deal of talk about how many men you've handled in your day," said the Colonel, tucking a thumb under his suspender and leaning back with supercilious cock of his gray eyebrows. "It's bein' hinted round town here more or less that you're northin' but bluff. I don't realize, come to think it over, how I ever come to let you git such a holt in ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... the carriage, he was not jarred. But when Wallis and Arthur carried the light pallet on which he lay swiftly up a plank walk laid to the door of a private car—why then it began to occur to Allan Harrington that something was happening. And—which rather surprised himself—he did not lift a supercilious eyebrow and say in a soft, apathetic voice, "Very we-ell!" Instead, he turned his head towards the devoted Wallis, who had helped two conductors swing the cot from the ceiling, and was now waiting for the storm to break. And what he said to ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... were fine ladies of superficial minds, who came from mere curiosity, so as to be able to say that they had seen a sewing-machine. I was often struck with the shallow, unmeaning questions which these butterflies of fashion propounded to us. Some of them made the supercilious, but disreputable boast, that they had never taken a stitch in the whole course of their lives. But the great throng of inquirers consisted of women who had families dependent on their needles, and of young girls like myself, obliged also to depend upon the labor of their fingers. All such were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... company he preserved the most rigid silence, and a haughty scornful demeanour; which was so much the more disagreeable because there was nothing in his behaviour I could actually take hold of to find fault with: although his whole conduct was insolent and supercilious to the highest degree. His mother was very much agitated at receiving him on his arrival; if he felt any such agitation he certainly did not show it. He made her a very low and formal bow when he kissed her hand; and, when I ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... through Susan. She felt like striking the woman full in her vain, supercilious, patronizing face—striking her and saying: "You smug liar! What if you had to wear such clothes on that fat, overfed body of yours! You'd realize then ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... was a small, pale man, with a very limited share of understanding, supercilious in manner, elaborate in dress, not ill-natured au fond, and with much of the English gentleman in his disposition,—that is, he was honourable in his ideas and actions, whenever his natural dulness ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... listening to what she terms such "low-lived politics." What makes the good woman the more violent, is the perfect coolness with which the radical listens to her attacks, drawing his face up into a provoking supercilious smile; and when she has talked herself out of breath, quietly asking her for a taste of ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... digest of its contents," the General replied. "He smiled in a supercilious manner and said I had better do ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... days. Very few weren't sacred for some reason or other. It was death and destruction to kill a cat. And I don't think that cats have forgotten to this day the importance they had in Egypt. It's made them the most supercilious ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... which she supplies. She thaws a little, listens to us, and even asks questions in a supercilious way: "Why do you ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... general way, and in the particular case never scientifically applied at all; so long as the most obvious external causes of difference of character are habitually disregarded—left unnoticed by the observer, and looked down upon with a kind of supercilious contempt by the prevalent schools both of natural history and of mental philosophy: who, whether they look for the source of what mainly distinguishes human beings from one another, in the world of matter or in that of spirit, ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... that's honourable; only, you see, the law mayn't happen to think so," says Mr. Draper, winking his eye. ("Hang the supercilious beast; I touch him there!) Your aunt says it's the most imprudent thing ever she heard of—to call ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... goodly couple. They certainly were handsome, but had a supercilious air that chilled admiration and disposed the spectator to be critical. They were ultrafashionable in dress, and, though no one could deny the richness of their decorations, yet their appropriateness might be questioned amidst the simplicity of a country ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... be very inconvenient to be poor," said Fletcher, with a supercilious glance at our hero, who was kneeling ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... new methods he is quite immune. He settled things to his complete satisfaction years ago, and what was good enough for his father, in school methods, is quite good enough for him. His self-satisfaction would approach sublimity, were it not so extremely ludicrous. He has a supercilious sneer for innovations. How he can bring himself to make concessions to modernity to the extent of riding in an automobile is one of ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... capacity with banknotes and gold. Chilean ladies and Chilean gentlemen, dazzling Brazilian ladies and pompous Brazilian gentlemen, smug Argentinians, lordly Castilians, garrulous Portuguese, lofty English gentlemen and supercilious English ladies, friendly and irrepressible Americans,—all of them swinging their sea-legs with new-found abandon—clattered solidly around the wind-swept circuit. New faces appeared in the procession, new voices were raised with energy, ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... neither Cantonese nor Pekingese. His long, rather supercilious face, his aquiline nose, the flare of his nostrils, the back-tilted head, the high, narrow brow, and the shock of blue-black hair identified the Chinese stranger, even if his abnormal, rangy height were not taken into consideration, ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... Her supercilious levity was beginning to irritate me a little, when a servant entered and handed her a letter, saying that some one was waiting for ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... and "pride." She uses them ad nauseam, and thereby proves that she did not possess the genuine qualities. No doubt, her conceptions of the words differed from those generally accepted: by "pride" (orgueil), for instance, she seems to have meant a kind of womanly self-respect debased by a supercilious haughtiness and self-idolatry. But, as I have said already, she was a victim to self-deception. So much is certain, the world, with an approach to unanimity rarely attained, not only does not credit her ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... letters, usually unable to conceive loftier services to mankind or more attractive aims to persons of capacity than the composition of books, has treated these pretensions of Voltaire with a supercilious kind of censure, which teaches us nothing about Voltaire, while it implies a particularly shallow idea alike of the position of the mere literary life in the scale of things, and of the conditions under which the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... that this seeming tenderness for her reputation might be but wanton cruelty on her ladyship's part; a gratifying of her spleen against the girl by setting her in the pillory of public sight to the end that she should experience the insult of supercilious glances and lips that smile with an ostentation of furtiveness; a desire to put down her pride and break the spirit which my lady accounted ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... Hsueeh went at school under the name of P'an. His style was Wen Ch'i. His natural habits were extravagant; his language haughty and supercilious. He had, of course, also been to school, but all he knew was a limited number of characters, and those not well. The whole day long, his sole delight was in cock-fighting and horse-racing, rambling over hills and doing ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Christian discipline and by the greater gentleness of modern manners. It has recognised the rights of the dumb majority; it has revolted against cruelty and preventable suffering and has bent itself on diffusing well-being—the well-being that people want, and not the so-called virtues which a supercilious aristocracy may find it convenient to prescribe for them. It has based ethics on the foundation on which actual morality rests; on nature, on the necessities of social life, on the human instincts of ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Ireland, in the twelfth century, were struck with the easy freedom of manner and speech of the people, so different from that of the lower orders in feudal countries. They soon even came to like it; and the supercilious followers of Strongbow readily adopted the dress, the habits, the language, and the good-humor of the Celts, in the midst of whom they found ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... know these Yukon eggs of ours—some pink, some green, some blue— A dollar per, assorted tints, assorted flavors too. The supercilious cheechako might designate them high, But one acquires a taste for them and likes them by-and-by. Well, Hard-Luck Henry took this egg and held it to the light, And there was more faint pencilling that sorely taxed his sight. At last he made it out, and then the legend ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... learnt in the day. Lady Cumnor was exactly in that state of convalescence when such talk as her lord's was extremely agreeable to her, but she had contemned the habit of listening to gossip so severely all her life, that she thought it due to consistency to listen first, and enter a supercilious protest afterwards. It had, however, come to be a family habit for all of them to gather together in Lady Cumnor's room on their return from their daily walks or drives or rides, and over the fire, sipping their tea at her early meal, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... adequate to arouse orgiastic emotions as genuine as those of antiquity, though they are lacking in beauty and religious consecration. It is easy indeed for the narrowly austere person to view such manifestations with a supercilious smile, but in the eyes of the moralist and the philosopher these orgiastic festivals exert a salutary and preservative function. In every age of dull and monotonous routine—and all civilization involves ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the private pleasures of a man of genius may become at length those of a whole people. The creator of this new taste appears to have received far less notice than he merited. The name of Shenstone does not appear in the Essay on Gardening, by Lord Orford; even the supercilious Gray only bestowed a ludicrous image on these pastoral scenes, which, however, his friend Mason has celebrated; and the genius of Johnson, incapacitated by nature to touch on objects of rural fancy, after describing some of the offices of the landscape designer, adds, that 'he will not inquire ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... three human beings as astonished as we were to find ourselves gathered together? The husband looked at me with a supercilious air, and I paid him back with a look ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... be allowed to make the suggestion," Cecil said, regarding his brother with supercilious distaste, "don't you think it would be just as well to change your clothes before our ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... photographed exactly one over the other, the result would be the general expression of that city's face. New York would be discontented and eager; London would be stolidly glum and healthy, with a little surliness; Berlin would be supercilious, overbearing; Rome would be gravely resentful; and so on; but Paris would be gay, incredulous, frivolous, pretty and impudent. The reality may be gone, or may have changed, but the look is in her face still when the light of a May ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... their meeting—"that scoundrel said to me yesterday morning before leaving, 'If I hadn't the misfortune of being your son-in-law, you wouldn't have the honour of owing me this money.' Then he sneered at me—you know the supercilious way he has, the damn miserable hound-pup way he has of grinning at you,—and says, 'I regarded it as a loan, even though you seemed to regard it as a bargain.' And he whirled and left me." The colonel's voice broke as he added: "In God's name, Bob, tell me—did I ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... was rather supercilious in his manner, and this was resented by some of the cowboys, who thought him "stuck up." They therefore planned a little joke on him. At least, it ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope
... by Simplicius of Emona, who had been a schoolmaster, but was now the assessor of Maximin. After receiving this appointment, he did not grow more proud or arrogant, but assumed a supercilious look, which gave a repulsive expression to his countenance. His language was studiously moderate, while he meditated the most rigorous proceedings against many persons. And first of all he put Rufina to death with all the partners of her adultery, and all who were privy ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... suppose, wrote to you directly. That's the whole story of her, madam.' Whatever were Manston's real feelings towards the lady who had received his explanation in these supercilious tones, they remained locked within him as within a ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... Charley's new friend treated me not only increased the fault, but aided in the development of certain other stems from the same root of self-partiality. He never saluted me with other than what I regarded as a supercilious nod of the head. When I met him in company with Charley, and the latter stopped to speak to me, he would walk on without the least change of step. The indignation which this conduct aroused drove me to think as I had never thought before concerning my social position. I found it impossible ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... anybody. One sees every day how clear it is that specially fine, delicate, intellectual persons cannot portray satisfactorily coarse, common, uncultured characters. Their attitude is at once scornful and supercilious. The great man, like Socrates, or Dr. Johnson, or Abraham Lincoln, is just as surely coarse as he is fine, but the complaint I make with our humorists is that they are fine and not coarse in any healthful and manly sense. A great part of the best literature and the best art is ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... her ladyship thought she must in justice to her own understanding shew for her husband's, and the supercilious coldness with which she treated Miss Melvyn, made that young lady very glad that she was so seldom sent for to her father's house. But she wished to learn such accomplishments as whilst she lived in the ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... He received me with the utmost politeness. I did not keep him a moment in suspense as to the purport of my visit. But I had no sooner made it known, than, with a supercilious smile, he said, 'And have you, Madam, been prevailed upon to revive that ridiculous old story?' Ridiculous, I told him, was a term which he would find no one else do him the favour to make use of, in speaking of the horrible actions belonging ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... tone of the preface is that of one who wished to have it supposed, that he was writing concerning a subject rather beneath his notice, and only felt himself called forth to do so by the dogmatism of those who laid down confident rules or laws in matters so trifling. This affectation of supercilious censure appears deeply to have provoked Dryden, and prompted the acrimony of the following Defence, which he prefixed to a second edition of the Indian Emperor published in 1668, probably shortly after the offence had been given. The angry friends were afterwards reconciled; and Dryden, listening ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... of so great a man, but it paid all the penalties of folly—and this was his propensity to feel, or at least to express, a personal affection for the men whom he politically followed. Even of Hamilton, the most supercilious and least loveable of mankind, Burke speaks with a tenderness absolutely ridiculous amongst politicians. Of Lord Rockingham he seldom speaks but in a tone of romance, singularly inapplicable to that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... Everybody seems to know about you and to take an interest in what you are doing, and all the servants know your name and the number of your room, and when you go out into the great corridor, or when you sit on the terrace, there is not a trace of the supercilious scrutiny which takes a mental inventory of your clothes and your looks and your letter of credit, which so often spoils the sunset for you at ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... He had everything to spoil him,—beauty, precocious intelligence, and a personal charm which might have made him a universal favorite. Yet he does not seem to have been generally popular at this period of his life. He was wilful, impetuous, sometimes supercilious, always fastidious. He would study as he liked, and not by rule. His school and college mates believed in his great possibilities through all his forming period, but it may be doubted if those who counted most confidently on his future could have supposed that he would ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and epicures, perhaps, the lordly canvas-back—though brown from the oven, I challenge the supercilious gourmet to distinguish between his favorite, and a fat American coot. But for me the loud-voiced mallard, with his bottle-green head and audaciously curling tail; ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... they again encountered a downy-lipped youth in gray flannels accompanied by a fat gentleman with tortoise-shell eyes and a tallow smile; but the jaunty dimples of the fat man, the supercilious lift of the gray flannel's eyebrow—froze mid-way at sight of Meestress Leezie O'Finnigan, who bowed to Bat with the gravity ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... of my resolve, I chuckled. The picture of a tllooll trying to ride a four-wheeled bicycle, pumping each of his eight three-jointed legs up and down in turn, while maintaining his usual supercilious and indifferent facial ...
— Show Business • William C. Boyd
... F. Q. iii. 4.] 'to reprehend,' to lay hold of one with the intention of forcibly pulling him back; 'to exonerate,' to discharge of a burden, ships being exonerated once; that 'to be examined' means to be weighed. They would be pleased to learn that a man is called 'supercilious,' because haughtiness with contempt of others expresses itself by the raising of the eyebrows or 'supercilium'; that 'subtle' (subtilis for subtexilis) is literally 'fine-spun'; that 'astonished' (attonitus) is properly thunderstruck; ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... himself, were without masks, but he seemed to have curiously little facility in penetrating disguises. Presently a burly old man in the glittering green and gold of the Guard disengaged himself from the curtains at the back of the gallery, and nodding a supercilious acknowledgment of Rallywood's salute, brought his hand down with a rough heartiness ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... find he does not even mention this work of Occleve, but contents himself with a piece of supercilious criticism; whereas the notices which Occleve takes of passing events (of which the character of Chaucer is one) are at least valuable (although his poetry may not be the best in the world), and his work is also valuable in giving us the phraseology ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... Borrasca was flouting his sixties, fighting for his youth as a parent fights for its young. His withered little face wore the complacent smile of vanity; his arched brows furnished him with a supercilious expression which atoned for his lack of inches,—he was barely five feet two. His large curved nose was also a compensating gift from the godmother of dignity, and he carried himself so erectly that he looked like a toy general. His small black eyes were bright as glass beads, and his ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... York, how different from what she had expected, when a bow from Mark made her look up in time to see that they were meeting a carriage, in which sat Wilford, and with two gayly-dressed ladies, both of whom gave her a supercilious stare as they passed by, while the younger of the two half turned her head, as if for a ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... Cecilia to Mr Gosport, who now approached her, "but for your explanatory observations, how much would the sudden loquacity of this supercilious lady, whom I had imagined all ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... that was bound up with England. 'Men began to feel that foreigners did not eat or drink like Christians,' which is to say that the Englishman began his contempt for the foreigner which has resulted in nearly all our wars, and has made the Englishman abroad a supercilious creature, and has made the English schoolboy put his tongue out at ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... of Europe inherited from the Middle Ages a supercilious contempt for peaceful trade, which has exercised a modifying influence upon its growth, according to the national character of different countries. The pride of the Spaniards fell easily in with this spirit of contempt, and co-operated ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... important night, big with the fate of Peel's Administration, deliberately anchored down in the very centre of the disgusted Tories and at the very back of Sir Robert's bench, to the infinite annoyance of the somewhat supercilious party. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... got back, and was as conceited as ever, and as supercilious towards his old school-fellow Ellis, who still seemed always strangely cowed in his presence. In many respects Barber, unhappily, bade fair to rival Blackall. He was not so great a bully, but then he had not the power of being so, as he ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... exquisite, thin-featured man, high of nose and eyebrows, not large, but completely turned out as ample man and bright spirit. The slightest fragrance of scent was in his presence, and a shade of snuff on his upper lip appeared fine supercilious hairs. ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... not choose to ask them. One was Miss Clarke—you know her. She smiled in her usual supercilious manner, but in her case I believe it was only because Miss Clare looks so dowdy. But nobody knows any thing about her except what ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... see that significance simply because he was not accustomed to see men as men. He had no real interest in man as man. He was not a lover of his kind. Hence, when the Son of Man came out of Nazareth, the Pharisee was too careless or too supercilious to regard Him with interest. The divine wonder passed him by; all he saw was a wandering fanatic with no place to lay His head. He could not pierce the disguise of circumstance, and bow in love and awe before the soul of Jesus because ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... summer, too, when Norah and Mildred came together with Charlie Thesiger, their cousin, who was engaged to Mildred. Charlie was then a lieutenant in the South Kent Hussars. He was a large young man, correct, handsome, rather supercilious and rather stupid. He seemed to fill the house in Edwardes Square ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... in which he announced his readiness to accept any concession "which would shorten and smoothen the road to Home Rule." But it is significant that although Mr Dillon was in complete agreement with the Liberals "as to both policy and tactics," yet he devoted, with a rather supercilious levity, his speeches in Ireland to a demand for "Boer Home Rule as a minimum." This was the way in which the country was scandalously hoodwinked as to the real relations which existed between the ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... unconsciously withdrew from her, as from an inaccessible beauty. The more you looked at her, the more she satisfied your critical scrutiny; but your feelings went not out towards her—they were, in a manner, chilled and repulsed. Look, now, at our own Kate Aubrey—nay, never fear to place her beside yon supercilious divinity—look at her, and your heart acknowledges her loveliness; your soul thrills at sight of her bewitching blue eyes—eyes now sparkling with excitement, then languishing with softness, in accordance with the varying emotions ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... what it is worth. It is about eighteen years since I first made the acquaintance of this remarkable man. Though at first shocked, I was soon convinced of his talent, and set myself about praising him as well as I knew how. But my prophesying was answered by scoffs, jeers, supercilious smiles. Outside of the Cafe of the Nouvelle Athenes, Monet was a laughing-stock. Manet was bad enough; but when it came to Monet, words were inadequate to express sufficient contempt. A shrug of the shoulders or a pitying look, which clearly meant, "Art thou most of ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... a little in his seat, so that he could stare in the other direction, and he tried to screw up his mouth into what was meant to be a supercilious look, though it was a failure, being ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... at a heavy cost to the country. I should be curious to know how many years it would take to reduce the intelligence of an ordinary banker's clerk to the level of a Foreign Office bureaucrat. How the long-suffering English public can continue to support the incompetency and the supercilious contempt with which these gentry treat their employers is to me a mystery. Bureaucrats are bad enough in all conscience, but a nest of fine gentleman bureaucrats is a public curse, when thousands are subjected to their whims, their ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... was invariably surrounded by a band of fashionable admirers, among whom George de Croisenois was always to be found. Norbert disliked all these men, but he had a special antipathy to George de Croisenois, whom he regarded as a supercilious fool; but in this opinion he was entirely wrong, for the Marquis de Croisenois was looked upon as one of the most talented and witty men in Parisian society, and in this case the opinion of the world was a well-founded one. Many ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... direction for a moment, raised his eyebrows, glanced away, then back, in the most supercilious manner, ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... the want of assigning some happiness, proportioned to the soul of man, that caused many of them, either, on the one hand, to be sour and morose, supercilious and untreatable; or, on the other, to fall into the vulgar pursuits of common men, to hunt after greatness and riches, to make their court, and to serve occasions; as Plato did to the younger Dionysius, and Aristotle to Alexander the Great. So impossible is it for a man, who looks no further ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... contents of the box with a supercilious smile. "Too old-fashioned, my lord,—long ago played out. Yet," he added, with a gleam of interest, "for a consideration I might offer something—ahem!—that would make a taking substitute for these trifles. Give me," he continued, in a brisk, business-like way, "a slight percentage ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... relaxed, mournful face, an ageing skin that browned slowly, like meerchaum, and the unmistakable "look" by which one knew a Garnet. Beside her, pointedly ignoring her, smoking a cigarette while he ran over the passenger list with supercilious almond eyes, stood a youth in a pink shirt and a green plush hat, holding a French bull-dog on the leash. This was "Horace," Cressida's only son. He, at any rate, had not the Garnet look. He was rich and ruddy, indolent and insolent, ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... to the station of the Tiflis & Baku Railway, and he loses a wheel and upsets us into the street on the way. The station is a stone building, strong enough almost for a fort. Military uniforms adorn every employee, from the supercilious station-master to the ill-paid wretch that handles our baggage. Mine is the first bicycle the Tiflis & Baku Railroad has ever carried. Having no precedent to govern themselves by, and, withal, ever eager to fleece and overcharge, the railway officials charge double rates for it; that is, twice as ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... gifted, she felt and expressed something very like contempt. At this period, she had no patience with self-satisfied mediocrity. She afterwards learned patience and unlearned contempt; but at the time of which I write, she seemed, and was to the multitude, a haughty and supercilious person,—while to those whom she loved, she was all the more gentle, tender ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... lie in their looks to each other. At that time it was new to me, and gave me great pain; but I soon became accustomed though never reconciled to their manners; which were characterized by that low cunning, that supercilious mixture of insolence and meanness, that is always detested by the honest and the open. A set of—Pshaw! They are ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... in a box in the rear of the train, in which I could see no sitting accommodation. The way in which these men were treated presented nothing new, for I had invariably noticed that coloured people in the south, whether bond or free, were spoken to with supercilious haughtiness, which I never once ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... accomplished in a scow. Although by no means palatial, the Buford was a fair-sized, ocean-going steamer. The Francisco Reyes was a dirty old tub with pretensions to the contrary; and the General Blanco—well, metaphorically speaking, the General Blanco was a coal scuttle. She was a supercilious-looking craft, sitting at a rakish angle, her engines being aft. She had a freeboard of six or seven feet, and possessed neither cabin nor staterooms, the space between the superstructure and the rail being about three feet wide. You ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... the tender passion are sanctified by saving views of Regeneration and the Atonement. These novels differ from the oracular ones, as a Low Churchwoman often differs from a High Churchwoman: they are a little less supercilious and a great deal more ignorant, a little less correct in their syntax and ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... griefs, and subsequent shame-faced consolations were recalled to her? What pangs had the poor little thing, as she thought how much she had loved him, and that she loved him no more? There he stood, about whom she was going to die ten months since, dandified, supercilious, with a black crape to his white hat, and jet buttons in his shirt front: and a pink in his coat, that some one else had probably given him: with the tightest lavender-colored gloves sewn with black: and the smallest ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... into the room where I had been waiting for him, as I fancied he might have come on a wet, cold morning to meet an awkward-squad. He held the card I sent for his inspection in his hand, and referred to it, after he had looked me over with a supercilious glance. ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... shelter him from the treatment he deserves. I shall, on such an occasion, without scruple trample upon all those forms with which wealth and dignity intrench themselves, nor shall anything but age restrain my resentment; age which always brings one privilege, that of being insolent and supercilious without punishment. But with regard, sir, to those whom I have offended, I am of opinion, that if I had acted a borrowed part I should have avoided their censure; the heat that offended them was the ardor of conviction, and that zeal for the service of my country, which neither hope nor ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... meaninglessness of it all drove her to frenzy. She talked and stormed ideas, she corrected and nagged at the children, she turned her back in silent contempt on her breeding mother, who treated her with supercilious indifference, as if she were a pretentious child not ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Wrotham again had recourse to his eyeglass, which he stuck in one eye, while he fixed his interlocutor with a supercilious glance. "Of course I'm sure! What the devil d' ye take me for? It was a mere beggar's brat anyhow—there are too many of such little wretches running loose about the roads—regular nuisances—a few might be run over with advantage—Hullo! ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... York) for perhaps a quarter of a century. She was at the period when such as she realise with flaccid alarm that they have no future, and when they are ready to risk grave imprudences for youths who feel flattered by their extreme maturity. Christine gazed calmly at her, supercilious and secure in the immense advantage of at least ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... later the sound of advancing steps lifted Frederick's face from hers. Muttering an oath, he threw Tess forcibly from him, for there in the path was Ebenezer Waldstricker, about whose sagging lips played a supercilious smile. ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... more interesting, but without those attainments which grace and adorn society. They made tapestries and embroideries, and rode horseback, and danced well, and were virtuous; but were primitive, uneducated, and supercilious. Their beauty was of the ruddy sort, —physical, but genial. They were very fond of ornaments and gay dresses; and so were their lords on festive occasions, for semi-barbarism delights in what is showy and glittering,—purple, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... uncle always kept about his family, that I know all about it. Do you suppose that before selecting you as your cousin's husband I had not obtained every possible information about you? And what I have learned need not make you quite so supercilious to the police. Besides, as the vulgar saying is, the best of your nose is made of it. Your uncle belonged to the police, and, thanks to that, he became the confidant, I might almost say the friend, of Louis XVIII., who took the greatest pleasure in his companionship. And ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... could be otherwise than handsome, fascinating, intelligent, and everything else desirable, and this consciousness actually produced, in a large majority, the pleasing illusion that she was really all these. But she was not. On the contrary, stripped of the gloss, she was censorious, supercilious, and selfish. Deprived of her dressmaker, she was gaunt and unsightly. Separated from her position, she would have been unbearable. Arabella had many offers, of course, but she was too fond of her power and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... stirred. Here was no commonplace encounter, at least it was a departure from ordinary criminal methods. Who was this supercilious man? How dared he come on such an errand to him, Paul Coquenil? What desperate purpose lurked behind his self-confident mask? Could it be that he knew the assassin ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... the room and set the dishes on the table. He gave a sort of supercilious sniff when Micky asked for a saucer of milk for the cat. He looked at Charlie with scorn—Charlie, curled up on the girl's lap ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... Those four sulky, rather supercilious chorus-girls, coming to Rose under a threat of dismissal, for lessons in the one last thing that a free-born American will submit to dictation about, might not want to learn, nor mean to learn, but they couldn't help learning. You couldn't be unaware of Rose and, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... whether he simply broke her heart by the daily chill of silent contempt? For her, at all events, death must have been a release. She would have been happier with a drunken husband, with a brute who kicked her, rather than with this supercilious cold-hearted patrician. Toward the end of the poem, in his remarks about the dowry, we see that the Duke is as avaricious as he is cruel; though he says with a disagreeable smile, that the woman herself is his real object. The touch ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... addressed simply to "Phrataces," without the title of king, directed him to lay aside the royal name and withdraw from Armenia. The Parthian, however, instead of being cowed at this, wrote back in a generally supercilious tone, calling himself "king of kings," but the other only "Caesar."—Tigranes did not at once send any envoys, but when Artabazus somewhat later fell sick and died he despatched a letter, not writing the name "king" in it, and asked Augustus for the kingdom. Influenced ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... often-baffled, never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten. 'It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' Of all acts, is not, for a man, repentance the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin; that is death: the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact; is dead: it is 'pure' as dead dry sand is pure. David's life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man's moral progress ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... much disturbed the comfort of Agatha's humble friends, for Adolphe Denot was not popular among them: there was a haughtiness in his manner to the poor, to which their own lords and masters had never accustomed them. He was supercilious and proud in his bearing towards them, and had none of the cheering, frank look and tone of their own dear young M. Henri. They need not, however, have been alarmed, for Agatha Larochejaquelin was not at all disposed to take Adolphe Denot as her ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... country whose influence was felt in the attitude of its bishops was one whose government sent out no diplomatists. While the Austrian Chancellor regarded the issue of the Council with a profane and supercilious eye, and so much indifference prevailed at Vienna that it was said that the ambassador at Rome did not read the decrees, and that Count Beust did not read his despatches, the Catholic statesmen in Hungary were intent on effecting ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... necessary preliminary to efficient action of any kind, and indeed the basis of all fruitful philosophy. But in criticism this instinct can only be satisfied intelligently and soundly by a consideration of everything appealing to consideration, and not at all by heated and wilful, or superior and supercilious, exclusions. Catholicity of appreciation is the secret of critical felicity. To follow the line of least resistance, not to take into account those elements of a problem, those characteristics of a subject, to which, ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... and Brooks was quite sure then that she was different. He realized too that her teeth were perfect, and her complexion, notwithstanding its pallor, was faultless. She would have been strikingly good-looking but for her mouth, and that—was it a discontented or a supercilious curl? At any rate ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Dorothea Brooke displays itself. Toward every one with whom she comes in contact, it steals out unobtrusively and silently, as the dew from heaven on the tender grass, to each and all according to the kind and nearness of that relation. Even for her "pulpy" uncle she has no supercilious contempt—no sense of isolation or separation; not even the consciousness of toleration toward him. Toward Celia, with her delicious commonplace of rather superficial yet naive worldly wisdom, her half-conscious selfishness, her baby-worship, and her inimitable "staccato," she is more than ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... sensitively attuned as he judged her to be could journey for the first time unmoved through the valley which to him summed up the word Egypt. He allowed her to ride a few paces ahead, just behind the Sheikh. The camel's arrogant head, with its supercilious gaze, towered above them. To Margaret, Michael Amory and herself were still an offence in the valley. The camel, with the high-seated, turbaned Sheikh, seemed a part of the whole. The animal, with its prehistoric loneliness of expression, the Sheikh, with his splendid deportment ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... or girl whose inclinations tend to a profession get their instruction from some one whose complexion is akin to their own. It is a spur to ambition, a goal to be reached. The "what man has done, man may do" is so much easier from a successful brother than from a successful, though supercilious, neighbor. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... I pull, Nor think I 'm pious when I 'm only bilious; Nor study in my sanctum supercilious, To frame a Sabbath ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... children: And the Stoics too, that conceive themselves next to the gods, yet show me one of them, nay the veriest bigot of the sect, and if he do not put off his beard, the badge of wisdom, though yet it be no more than what is common with him and goats; yet at least he must lay by his supercilious gravity, smooth his forehead, shake off his rigid principles, and for some time commit an act of folly and dotage. In fine, that wise man whoever he be, if he intends to have children, must have recourse ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... materially in their opinion of England and its institutions. Mr. Slick evidently viewed them with prejudice. Whether this arose from the supercilious manner of English tourists in America, or from the ridicule they have thrown upon Republican society, in the books of travels they have published, after their return to Europe, I could not discover; but it soon became manifest ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... boy, in a skirt, with hardly any eyes or hair, and a pout; Cyril as a 'perfect pet' of a sailor, at six. Then Cyril in cricketing groups (how he stood out against the other ordinary boys!)—in Etons (looking neat and supercilious), and then in his uniform, in which ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... the hill, however, had come a few minutes ago a man, dressed in loose shooting clothes, and with a gun under his arm. He came to a standstill by the side of the boy, and stood there watching him for several moments, with a certain faintly amused curiosity shining out of his somewhat supercilious gray eyes. The newcomer was obviously a person of breeding and culture—the sort of person who assumes without question the title of "Gentleman." The boy wore ready-made clothes and hobnailed boots. They remained within a few feet of ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... withering influence of ten generations of cruel bondage, so weakened and half-destroyed—so denationalized and demoralized—so despoiled and naked, would be in the position they are now? In spite of the proud, supercilious, and dictatorial bearing of their teachers, in spite of the hampering of unsympathetic, alien oversight, in spite of the spirit of dependence and servility engendered by slavery, not only have individual members of the race entered into all the offices of dignity in [257] Church ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... time of her appearance, and then some other couple, by a judicious lagging for a moment or a sudden quickening, achieved the meeting that after all was no more than a furtive interchange of glances, supercilious or almost-smiling on her part, according to her mood and the boy that encountered it. None of the boys ever met the damsel in any other way, except sometimes at a select party; but this adoration was a cult, though ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... ofttimes gives reputation to vain arguments and idle words, it is not to be presumed but that a man, so attended and feared, has not in him more than ordinary sufficiency; and that he to whom the king has given so many offices and commissions and charges, he so supercilious and proud, has not a great deal more in him, than another who salutes him at so great a distance, and who has no employment at all. Not only the words, but the grimaces also of these people, are considered and put into the account; every one making ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Had they been conscious of the fact, the action was magnificent; but of it they were not conscious. They but answered an instinct: the eternal brotherhood of the frontier. Far away in his well-policed, steam-heated abode urban man listens to the tale of unselfishness, and, supercilious, smiles. We believe what we have ourselves felt, we humans. First of all to come was lean-faced Crosby, one cheek swelled round with a giant quid. Close at his heels followed Trapper Conway: grizzled, parchment-faced ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... of them, from my post of observation behind the kitchen door, and he did appear so ridiculous with his gold eye-glasses, looking as solemn as an owl, and glancing around with that expression of supercilious curiosity, as though he expected to find us all wild Indians, or something ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... love this arid land. I never see the supercilious curl of a camel's lip or meet the bland contempt of his eye but I imagine him saying, 'Ah, Feringhi, were it not for your white skin I might whisper strange secrets into your ear, but you are an ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... Audley, found himself where he never recollected to have been in his life before, among the cushions, arm-chairs, and tables covered with knick-knacks, of the Rectory drawing-room. Mr. Bevan in an easy- chair; Mr. Smith standing before the fire; Lady Price at work, looking supercilious; and her daughter writing ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the folding chair, I sat as far forward as my own shape and the car's allowed; Sir Samuel's fat knees in my back, Lady Turnour's sharp voice in my ears. And for scenery, I had Bertie's aggressive shoulders and supercilious gesticulations. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
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