"Overweening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and overweening fault was that form of "moral stupidity" which we term selfishness. Something of it may have come with the faculties which he had inherited—in tendencies and inclinations mysteriously associated with his physical conformation; much had been added thereto by the indulgence of his parents, by ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the satisfaction of their natural desires to all but a privileged few, and of the general visible coercion which came of those laws. All that cause of violent crime is gone. Again, many violent acts came from the artificial perversion of the sexual passions, which caused overweening jealousy and the like miseries. Now, when you look carefully into these, you will find that what lay at the bottom of them was mostly the idea (a law-made idea) of the woman being the property of the man, whether he were husband, father, brother, ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... penetrating into the last recesses of a ruined temple. And there, in the ultimate chamber crouched all that was left of the inmate, terrified, helpless, and ignorant. As I looked upon him I understood why man is never permitted really to know himself unless, in an access of mad folly and overweening pride, he succeeds in crossing the boundary which to pass is sheer wickedness. And I tried to turn away, but I could not—I could not. I made a supreme effort. It ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... an irreparable insult; but I care not a farthing if clerks who have never entered upon or trod the paths of chivalry should think me foolish. Knight I am, and knight I will die, if such be the pleasure of the Most High. Some take the broad road of overweening ambition; others that of mean and servile flattery; others that of deceitful hypocrisy, and some that of true religion; but I, led by my star, follow the narrow path of knight-errantry, and in pursuit of that calling I despise wealth, but not honour. I have redressed injuries, righted wrongs, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... She could not speak. Her anger against Ambrose was, at the best, a pumped-up affair. She felt obliged to hate him because she loved her father. And her overweening pride had supported it. All this fell away now. She longed to believe ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... glowing soul out of itself? How are these mighty sentiments lowered when he describes the prettyfoot and enticing airs of his little favourite! But, for the present, I waive the subject, and, instead of severely reprehending the transient effusions of overweening sensibility, I shall only observe, that whoever has cast a benevolent eye on society, must often have been gratified by the sight of humble mutual love, not dignified by sentiment, nor strengthened by a union ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... he repented that he had enlarged its territory both on the north and the south, to the Gulf of Bothnia and to the Danube. Hence, possibly, this eager desire to deal the country a blow arose from a spirit of preservation rather than from one of conquest, and the charge of an overweening and uncontrollable ambition is thus somewhat refuted." This observation is not wholly inaccurate. It may be that if the Emperor had had no son, he would not have made the Russian campaign, and possibly ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... directors. But Herr Schott, in an effort to promote his scheme, made an ungallant attack upon the artistic character of Mme. Materna, and this the public found to be "most tolerable and not to be endured." The occasion soon presented itself for Schott to show that he had an overweening sense of his own importance and popularity. At the end of the fourth of the five supplementary performances there was a demonstration of applause. Herr Schott interpreted it as a curtain call for himself, and promptly showed himself, and bowed his thanks. The applause was renewed, and he repeated ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... proposition to his mother and she agreed to it in every particular save the one. She would remain at Stone Ridge. It was impossible to move her. Moya was in despair. She had cultivated an overweening conscience in her relations with Mrs. Bogardus. It turned upon her now and showed her the true state of her own mind at the thought of being Two once more and alone with the child God had given them. Mrs. Bogardus appeared to see nothing ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... tolerably well-conceived, but intolerably ill-executed, attempt of Dumouriez to make himself a French Duke of Albemarle. It was quite as unprincipled as his political operations were at Paris in 1792, and in both cases he came to grief through his overweening self-confidence and consequent lack of the most ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... fat old seal, utterly unmilitary, and, as the French would say, "become cow-like." It was difficult to see in him the man who, however great his crimes in Mexico, had at least been a man of the most daring courage and of the most overweening ambition. In the suppressed volume of the papers of the Imperial family seized at the Tuileries there is a letter from General Felix Douay to his brother in which he describes Bazaine's attempt to become the Bernadotte of Mexico, and shows how, in order to ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... worthy of remark, that the nearer he approaches to the gallows—the great last scene to which the whole of these effects have been working up—the more the overweening conceit of the poor wretch shows itself; the more he feels that he is the hero of the hour; the more audaciously and recklessly he lies, in supporting the character. In public—at the condemned sermon—he deports himself as becomes the man whose autographs are precious, whose portraits ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... therefore, of receiving indulgence from the critics, whose asperity is rarely excited except by the overweening pretensions of confident ignorance and self-sufficiency, he ventures on the ground already trodden by so many distinguished men, whose works, deep in research, beautiful in description, and valuable from their scrupulous fidelity, have left little to ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... both a remodelled Germany and a largely remodelled Austria) in one great Federation—whose purpose would be partly to unite and preserve Europe against any common foe, from the East or elsewhere, and partly to regulate any overweening ambition of a member of the Federation, such as might easily become a menace to the other members. A secondary but most important result of the formation of such a United States of Europe would be that while each State would probably preserve a small ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... receded, came up and studied them, wheeled away, smiled sometimes at each other with the high self-assurance of beauty and position, pranced, pawed, curveted, were noble or coquettish as the inner self impelled, but always the embodiment of overweening pride. Among the "real gentry," as he called them, there had unfailingly been for him and his colleagues a courtesy which might have been called only a distinction ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... politico-ecclesiastical questions. He was by no means a good husband, rather the contrary, but, in other things, he could control himself; he was moderate in eating and drinking. Success did not make him overweening, but all the more prudent:[26] ill-success found him resolute; yet it was remarked that he was more severe in success, milder in adversity. If contradicted, he showed all the excitability of the Southern French nature; he passed from promises to threats, from flatteries ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... that the evils, of which I have spoken, would be brought about only by the obduracy, prejudices, and overweening self-estimation of the whites in refusing to blend the races by marriage, and so create a homogenous population?[252] But what, if it be not prejudice, but truth, and nature, and right reason, and just moral feeling? As I ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... human elements which he finds in himself, and which most of us try to conceal or belittle, with such frankness and perception of their real worth that they acquire new meaning and value in our eyes. If he paraded these things unduly, and showed an overweening preference for them, as some of his critics charge, this is of course an ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... commission of mestre de camp in 1655, he went to serve under Turenne in Flanders. He served there for several campaigns and distinguished himself at the battle of the Dunes and elsewhere; but he did not get on well with his general, and his quarrelsome disposition, his overweening vanity and his habit of composing libellous chansons made him eventually the enemy of most persons of position both in the army and at court. In the year 1659 he fell into disgrace for having taken part in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... creature appeared on the earth capable of turning their power to account, they are sources of power no longer. And here we might halt for a moment to remark on that tendency, so prevalent in the world, to regard everything as made for human use. Those who entertain this notion, hold, I think, an overweening opinion of their own importance in the system of nature. Flowers bloomed before men saw them, and the quantity of power wasted before man could utilise it is all but infinite compared with what now remains. We are truly heirs of all the ages; but as honest men it behoves us ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... see death written upon the countenance before them. This curious faculty was possessed by Rasputin to a very marked degree—a faculty which has puzzled scientists through all the ages, a faculty which usually runs side by side with an overweening vanity and an amazing self-consciousness. Sometimes the possessor of that most astounding and mysterious intuition is also possessed of a humble and retiring disposition. ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... Queen possess, but at times she had too overweening a contempt for her enemies. Her disdain for my master, the young Cardinal, was once too bitter, and begot in this presumptuous prelate's heart undying hatred. Educated under the same roof as M. le Cardinal, with the same teachers and the same ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... she guess how he laughed at her, his mother, and himself, most of all at her airs, while his mother, scolding him all the time, joined in the laugh, though she always maintained that Mademoiselle, in spite of her overweening conceit and vanity, would become an excellent and faithful wife, and make her husband's interests ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... will give birth to a woman-child fair and lovely; and dearly thou wilt love her; but high-born men shall woo thy daughter, coming from such quarters as the eagles seemed to fly from, and shall love her with overweening love, and shall fight about her, and both lose their lives thereby. And thereafter a third man, from the quarter whence came the falcon, shall woo her, and to that man shall she be wedded. Now, I have unravelled thy dream, and I think ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous
... the time she first saw him at Lee's cabin, but it was too vague for definite feeling, and she had been too strongly swayed by Poleon and her father in their attitude towards him to be conscious of it. Finding him now, however, in a gentle humor, she was drawn to him unwittingly, and felt an overweening desire to talk with him, even at the hazard of offending her own people. The encounter fitted in with her rebellious mood, for there were things she wished to know, things she must find out from some one who knew the world and would not be afraid ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... were like the headstones on a battlefield, you can scarcely see them for the flowers that have sprung up about them since. Of course, if the world had chosen, it might have said some hard truths about the Marquise, might have taken her to task for shallowness and an overweening preference for one child at the expense of the rest; but the world of Paris is swept along by the full flood of new events, new ideas, and new fashions, and it was inevitable the Mme. d'Aiglemont should be in some sort allowed ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... is thought necessary to confer such mutual right by express stipulation. Temptation was offered, to the distinguished gymnastic or musical competitors, by prizes of great value. Timaeus even asserted, as a proof of the overweening pride of Croton and Sybaris, that these cities tried to supplant the preeminence of the Olympic games by instituting games of their own with the richest prizes to be celebrated at the same time—a statement in itself not worthy of credit, yet nevertheless illustrating the animated rivalry ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... and are not disposed to run risks, almost all of them well-established, steady-going, mature, married folks who have sown their wild oats and whom experience in life has rendered distrustful of themselves and of theories. Overweening conceit is, most of the time, only average in the average human being, so speculative ideas will with most people only obtain a loose, transient and feeble hold. Moreover, in this society which, for ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... been Milburgh's overweening faith in his own genius. It may have been, and probably was, a consciousness that he had covered his trail too well to be detected. One or other of these causes had kept him up, but now he collapsed. To Tarling it was amazing that the man had maintained this show of bravado ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... for human qualities, in both men and women. Our educational system is thwarted and hindered, not as Prof. Wendell and his life would have us believe, by "feminization," but by an overweening masculization. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... a hateful thing and a menace to peace and organized government; but the communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrowth of overweening cupidity and selfishness, which insidiously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil, which, exasperated by ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... reflections perpetually centre upon myself?—self, an overweening regard to which has been the source of my errors! Falkland, I will think only of thee, and from that thought will draw ever-fresh nourishment for my sorrows! One generous, one disinterested tear ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... development; he wrote other works bearing more immediately on modern life and its destiny, but it is in connection with his views of Christ and Christianity that his name will be remembered; he entertained at last an overweening faith in science and scientific experts, and looked to the latter as the elect of the earth for the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the passions of mankind, Whether by words, looks, sighs, or tears, revealed; 165 There saw into the depth of human souls, Souls that appear to have no depth at all To careless eyes. And-now convinced at heart How little those formalities, to which With overweening trust alone we give 170 The name of Education, have to do With real feeling and just sense; how vain A correspondence with the talking world Proves to the most; and called to make good search If man's estate, by doom of Nature yoked 175 With toil, be therefore yoked with ignorance; ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... friends, who have so oft Fed full my ears with praises sweet and soft, Sweeter and softer than my song should win, Too sweet and soft—I must not listen more, Lest its dear perilous honey make me mad, And once again an overweening lad Presume against Apollo. Nay, no more! 'Tis not to pipes like mine sing stars at morn, Nor stars at night dance in their solemn dance: Nay, stars! why tell of stars? the very thrush Putteth my daintiest cunning to the blush And boasteth him the hedgerow laureate. ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... glorification of the Restoration only achieved a succes d'estime. He was glad to accept an appointment to Berlin as court composer for Frederick William III. There he brought out "Lalla Rookh," "Alcidor," and "Agnes Hohenstauffen," none of which found currency in other cities. His overweening conduct gradually made his position at Berlin untenable. He was finally driven out by the hostile demonstrations of his audiences, and retired, in 1841, a broken man. After a few years spent in Paris he returned ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... to the speculations of Shelley's earlier life, when his crusade against accepted usage was extravagant, and his confidence in the efficacy of mere eloquence to change the world was overweening. The experience of years, however, taught him wisdom without damping his enthusiasm, refined the crudity of his first fervent speculations, and mellowed his philosophy. Had he lived to a ripe age, there is no saying with what clear and beneficent ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... first regarded as a favorable omen; and, in the conscious security of the spot, in the belief that he had received none of the injuries she had apprehended from the motion of the boat, and, above all, in the indulgence of that overweening pride of affection which covets all pains and sacrifices for the loved one, she felt a satisfaction which was almost happiness, in her situation. But it was not destined to be of very long duration. She at length began to perceive a gradual reddening of his cheeks, and ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... heav'nly form, pretended To hellish falshood, snare them. But for thee I had persisted happie, had not thy pride And wandring vanitie, when lest was safe, Rejected my forewarning, and disdain'd Not to be trusted, longing to be seen Though by the Devil himself, him overweening To over-reach, but with the Serpent meeting Fool'd and beguil'd, by him thou, I by thee, 880 To trust thee from my side, imagin'd wise, Constant, mature, proof against all assaults, And understood not all was but a shew Rather then ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the form of a blind and overweening self-conceit. He has the 'great-man-mania' hardly less than Karl Moor. Accustomed to follow his own light, to command and to be obeyed, and to look with contempt upon the interference of priests and courtiers in the business of war, he thinks himself ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... as a secular judge, that he appeared in public surrounded by a crowd of servants, and that he took special pleasure in pomp and parade; and yet, had he not lapsed into heresy, there is no evidence that his overweening pride would have brought down upon him the vengeance of ecclesiastical discipline. In the third century the chief pastor of the Western metropolis must have been known to the great officers of government, and perhaps to the Emperor himself. Decius ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... humility, and directed toward a good end, have in them, doubtless, something of selfishness, but they may serve as a stimulus and a support to the noblest and most constant resolutions. The scruples that trouble my conscience now, therefore, have not their source in pride, in an overweening self-confidence, in a desire for worldly fame, or in a too great love of knowledge. Nothing of this nature it is that troubles me; nothing bearing any relation to self-conceit, but, in a certain sense, something entirely opposed to it. I ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... himself! It was such a keen, bitter humiliation! Not only that he had aspired to her, but that he should have misrepresented and traduced Jack, not from an overwhelming passion of jealousy,—that might be pardoned,—but a shallow, overweening vanity of wealth ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... impossible to describe the tremulous state of Lady Constantine during the interval. The warm interest she took in Swithin St. Cleeve—many would have said dangerously warm interest—made his hopes her hopes; and though she sometimes admitted to herself that great allowance was requisite for the overweening confidence of youth in the future, she permitted herself to be blinded to probabilities for the pleasure of sharing his dreams. It seemed not unreasonable to suppose the present hour to be the beginning of realization to her darling wish that this young man should become famous. He had ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... but the officers and men of each particular city should always be prepared for the advent of danger in their own quarters. The course of war cannot be foreseen, and its attacks are generally dictated by the impulse of the moment; and where overweening self-confidence has despised preparation, a wise apprehension often been able to make head against superior numbers. Not that confidence is out of place in an army of invasion, but in an enemy's country it should also be accompanied by the precautions ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... admirable precepts and teachings, and prolonged study of them produces a feeling of respect for all true believers. But a season of travel in India, entered upon with the desire to dispassionately study the Hindu religion in the land of its overweening strength, produces only bewilderment and mental nausea. The more determined one may be to lay bare the gems of this faith and its administration by the Brahmins, the keener will be his disappointment, for not ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... "Had he lived," said a very eminent man who had done more than any other to defeat him, "he would have been the unanimous candidate of the Republicans in 1920." Time brings its revenges swiftly. As I write these lines, it is not Capital, but overweening Labor which makes its truculent demands on the Administration at Washington, which it has already intimidated. Well may we exclaim, "Oh, for the courage of Roosevelt!" And whenever the country shall be in great anxiety or in direct peril from the cowardice of those who have sworn to defend ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... his enemies and by his alarmed friends, that vanity and a restless overweening desire for notoriety was the inspiring motive of Helvetius. He came from a German stock. His great-grandfather settled in Holland, where he cured his patients by cunning elixirs, by the powder of ground stag's horn, and the subtle virtues of crocodiles' ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... Fraternity, has clearly pointed out that Mr. Mill has only succeeded in duping himself on this point. A man cannot free himself from self-consideration. Christianity indeed appeals to the innate desire of happiness, but condemns the overweening and blind self-regard which cannot see that the highest happiness of self flows from a just respect to the selfhood of others and from the cultivation of the spiritual nature. Love your neighbor as yourself is the Christian precept; and it has the advantage of being practicable, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... the prominence which he craved above everything else. He was one of those unfortunates who can never be happy on a level—even with the highest—and who must look down in order to be at all content with life. Yet with this overweening and insatiable craving for distinction and prominence, he had been given no talent by which distinction may be won; had been granted no quality, mental, moral, or physical, by which he might rise above the mass of his fellows. It was a cruel trick ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... seized upon the great earldom of Strathern, which had descended to one of their party in right of his wife, declaring that it could not be inherited by a female. In this he appears to have acted unjustly, from the strong desire to avail himself by any pretext of an opportunity of breaking the overweening power of the great turbulent nobles; and, to make up for the loss, he created the new earldom of Menteith, for the young Malise Graham, the son of the dispossessed earl. But the proud and vindictive Grahams were not thus to be pacified. Sir Robert Graham, the uncle of the young earl, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... temperament and fierce in his loves and hates. Religion comforted him through his appetites; in his sight craft was a virtue, intrigue was politics, and love was a fury. His eyes never left Ta-user for long, and his every word seemed to be inspired by some overweening emotion. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... worked miracles. The bath of gold mounted to his knees. A golden heart was beating within his golden breast, with so clear a musical pulsation that the waiting crowds could hear it from outside. Then a feeling of overweening pride seized upon him. He was an idol. The golden beam mounted still higher, the high altar was all ablaze with glory, and the priest grew certain that the Divine grace must be returning to him, such was his inward satisfaction. The fierce snarl behind him had now grown ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... spirit of enjoyment and finer fancy, which constitute the essence of poetry and wit.... There was nothing spontaneous, no impulse or ease about his genius: it was all forced, up-hill work, making a toil of pleasure. And hence his overweening admiration of his own works, from the effort they had cost him, and the apprehension that they were not proportionably admired by others, who knew nothing of the pangs and throes of his Muse in child-bearing." Works, VIII, 39-41. Of Ben Jonson's tragedies Hazlitt held a higher ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... worries were not the result of genuine affection and deep human sympathy, the irrepressible and uncontrollable desires and longings of his heart to bring others into the full light of God's love, but of his overweening self-confidence in his own wisdom and judgment. And I say this in no personal condemnation of him, for I have now even forgotten who it was, but in condemnation of the spirit in which he and ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... were jealously kept apart, and when one monarch, in a fit of overweening self-importance, tried to unite in his own person the kingly and the priestly functions, 'the leprosy rose up in his forehead,' even as he stood with the censer in his hand, and 'Uzziah the king was a leper unto the day of his death.' And the history ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... sighed. 'Young man, I am nearly twice your age, and I have, at a modest estimate, about ten times as much sense. Yet, in your overweening self-confidence, with your ungovernable gall, you fancy you can hand me a lemon. Me! ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... expressed his confidence that four or five thousand choice troops of Spain would be enough to make a short war of it, but nevertheless warned his officers of the dangers of overweening confidence. He had been informed that the rebels had assumed the red scarf of the Spanish uniform. He hoped the stratagem would not save them from broken heads, but was unwilling that his Majesty's ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... it a small matter that thou hast taken away my husband? and wouldst thou take away my son's dudaim also?' And Rachel said, 'See, Jacob shall be thine to-night for thy son's dudaim.' But Leah insisted, 'Jacob is mine, and I am the wife of his youth,' whereupon Rachel, 'Be not boastful and overweening. To me he was betrothed first, and for my sake he served our father fourteen years. Thou art not his wife, thou wast taken to him by cunning instead of me, for our father deceived me, and put me out of the way the night of thy nuptials, so that Jacob could not see me. Nevertheless, give ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... roll in &c (plenty) 639; remain on one's hands, hang heavy on hand, go a begging. Adj. redundant; too much, too many; exuberant, inordinate, superabundant, excessive, overmuch, replete, profuse, lavish; prodigal &c 818; exorbitant; overweening; extravagant; overcharged &c v.; supersaturated, drenched, overflowing; running over, running to waste, running down. crammed to overflowing, filled to overflowing; gorged, ready to burst; dropsical, turgid, plethoric; obese &c 194. superfluous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... no conceivable iniquity which he has not perpetrated. His hapless fellow-citizens have been subjected to every form of cruelty and insult. Virgins have been seduced, boys corrupted, the feelings of his subjects outraged in every possible way. His overweening pride, his insolent bearing towards all who had to do with him, were such as no doom of yours can adequately requite. A man might with more security have fixed his gaze upon the blazing sun, than upon yonder tyrant. As for the refined cruelty ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... I was, how well I can recall the exaggerated ambition, nay, the certainty of success, as well as its desire, which then burned within me. I smile now at the overweening vanity of those hopes,—some, indeed, realized, but how many nipped and withered forever! seeds, of which a few fell upon rich ground and prospered, but of which how far the greater number were scattered: some upon the ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to those of their brothers, may alter; the military aristocracy depend upon the success of the chief they choose in the enterprise, and the army more upon plunder than regular pay; both may desert the cause of the more wary for that of the more daring; each is flattered into an overweening confidence in his own ability and good fortune; and all rush on to seize upon the throne yet filled by their wretched parent, who, in the history of his own crimes, now reads those of his children. Gibbon has justly observed (chap. 7): 'the superior prerogative ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Antonio," continued Salvator, his eyes sparkling with delight "Very well then, you may rely upon it, I will overwhelm your envious overweening persecutors, and get you the honour you deserve. Intrust your picture to me; bring it to my studio secretly by night, and then leave all the rest to me. ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the sage truth can never be bitter. He, too, has had his longings in the past, has conceived that truth might move mountains, that a loving act might for ever soften the hearts of men; but to-day he has learned to prefer that this should not be so. Nor is it overweening pride that thus has changed him; he does not think himself more virtuous than the universe; it is his insignificance in the universe that has been made clear to him. It is no longer for the spiritual fruit it bears that he tends the ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... and he smiled with a soft triumph to them. And the exquisite morning, the thrushes singing to the sun, the fluting of the blackbirds, the south wind swinging the blue-bells, the mystical murmur of the sea—all these things set themselves unconsciously to his overweening self-satisfaction. ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Waterloo in a frame of mind that baffles description. He was a modest man; he had never conceived an overweening notion of his own powers; he knew himself unfit to write a book, turn a table napkin-ring, entertain a Christmas party with legerdemain—grapple (in short) any of those conspicuous accomplishments that are usually classed under ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sum of evil as a thing not to be diminished. But he shared the opinions of the most commonplace believers in sin and trouble, and only congratulated himself on being exempt from their consequences. The overweening old man found himself comfortably off somehow; and it is good that he did. It is a comfort to all of us, wise or foolish. But to reverence him is a jest. You might as well make a god of an otter. Mr. Wordsworth, because of the servitor manners of Walton and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... solely to the advancement of the public good, I shall be among the very first to urge its repeal if it be found not to subserve the purposes and objects for which it may be created. Nor will the plan be submitted in any overweening confidence in the sufficiency of my own judgment, but with much greater reliance on the wisdom and patriotism of Congress. I can not abandon this subject without urging upon you in the most emphatic manner, whatever may be your action on the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... this moment have been standing by with folded arms and with such countenance as we could command while this small and unprotected State, in defense of her vital liberties, made a heroic stand against overweening and overwhelming force; we should have been admiring as detached spectators the siege of Liege, the steady and manful resistance of a small army to the occupation of their capital, with its splendid traditions and ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... drove between, That such through mere necessity might act. 350 First to his charioteers he gave in charge Their duty; bade them rein their horses hard, Shunning confusion. Let no warrior, vain And overweening of his strength or skill, Start from his rank to dare the fight alone, 355 Or fall behind it, weakening whom he leaves. [13]And if, dismounted from his own, he climb Another's chariot, let him not affect Perverse the reins, but let him stand, his spear Advancing ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... hear, ye warriors, / how denies he not at all The cause of all my sorrow. / Whate'er may him befall Reck I not soever, / that know ye, Etzel's men." The overweening warriors / blank gazed ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... composed of the two most unscrupulous partisans, Chief Justices Blackbourne and Doherty, and the weakest or falsest political convert, Mr. Justice Moore, simulated the uncontrollable emotions which an overweening loyalty awoke in the bosom of the Catholic Attorney-General. So far were their lordships swayed by the spirit of imitativeness, that the most polished speakers, mistaking the incoherent jargon of the official for the broken utterance of overwrought ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... departure from Durham House, in the Strand, were silent and sullen. Her youthful beauty and grace might win an involuntary cry of admiration, but the heart of the people was not hers. They recognised that she was but the tool of her father-in-law, whom, because of his overweening ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... the clergy were held, for more than a hundred years after this date, was due in all probability to two causes. The first was the natural reaction from the overweening reverence anciently felt for the sacerdotal order: when the sacerdos was found to be but a presbyter, his charm was gone. But the second was the disgrace which had been brought upon their profession at large, by the evil ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... streams which ought only to carry abroad health and blessing to the world. That spirit of emulation, also, which is naturally excited among so many aspirants for an honorable distinction, too often leads, on the one hand, in those who excel, to an overweening selfishness and an insatiable ambition, which, in the course of life, sacrifice all principle and the highest interests of society to private gratification; and, on the other, in those whose hopes are disappointed, to a destroying negligence and ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... to the active operations of an army, however gallant the men might be, and however able were the generals who directed and led them. From these causes, operating jointly, resulted undue caution at the North and overweening confidence at the South. The habits of our people in hunting, and protecting their stock in fields from the ravages of ferocious beasts, caused them to be generally supplied with the arms used for such purposes. The facility ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... Arthur was in general upon the outlook for her, but to-day he was not, being more vexed with her than usual for withholding the encouragement he desired, and indeed imagined he deserved—not exactly from vanity, yet no less from an overweening sense of ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... large party at the consul's, and he seemed inclined to exact a deference to his dogmas, that was more lordly than philosophical. One of the naval officers present, I think the captain of the Salsette, felt, as well as others, this overweening, and announced a contrary opinion on some question connected with the politics of the late Mr Pitt with so much firm good sense, that Lord Byron was perceptibly rebuked by it, and became reserved, as if he deemed that sullenness enhanced dignity. I never in ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... she would be blaspheming God, breaking her faith to the Saviour who loved her, sinning against the truth and her own conscience. A fearful dread fell upon her, and deprived her of the power to lift her soul in prayer. She could not, she dared not, do what was required of her, and yet the overweening love of life which exists in every mortal led her feet to the base of the idol and there stayed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Michael Angelo seems rather to have arisen from a contempt for others than from any overweening opinion of himself. He was too proud to be vain. He had placed his standard of perfection so high, that to the latest hour of his life he considered himself as striving after that ideal excellence which had been revealed to him, but to which he conceived that others were blind ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... Sanzio smiled to himself, and went his way in silence; for he who loved Andrea Mantegna did not bow down in homage before the old master-potter's estimation of himself, which was in truth somewhat overweening in its vanity. ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... Carthage as ever. He quickly returned home, and pointed out to the Senate that the former defeats and misfortunes suffered by the Carthaginians had not really broken their strength so much as they had dissipated their overweening self-confidence, and that in the late war they had not lost so much in strength as they had gained in experience and skill. Their present difference with the Numidians was, he urged, merely a prelude to an attack upon Rome, with which city they kept up ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... exchequer. It met with little favor in either House, and therefore it is necessary for me, Gentlemen, lest the whole burden fall on others, to say that it had my hearty, sincere, and entire approbation. Gentlemen, I hope that I have not manifested through my public life a very overweening confidence in my own judgment, or a very unreasonable unwillingness to accept the views of others. But there are some subjects on which I feel entitled to pay some respect to my own opinion. The subject of currency, Gentlemen, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... the foremost, but would hold him a little aback, and while the battle was young he forbore to smite, and would do nothing but help a kinsman who was hard pressed, or succour the wounded. So that if men were dealing with no very hard matter, and their hearts were high and overweening, he would come home at whiles with unbloodied blade. But no man blamed him save those who knew him not: for his intent was that the younger men should win themselves fame, and so raise their courage, and become high- ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... had done for him all he asked of it. It had put him thirty miles and more from Sunset, against which he felt a resentment which it little deserved; of a truth it was as inoffensive a hamlet as any in that region, and its sudden, overweening desire for a jail was but a legitimate impulse toward self-preservation. The fault was Ford's, in harassing the men of Sunset into action. But several times that day, and again while he was pulling the stale-odored blankets snugly about his ears, Ford anathematized the place as "a damned, rotten ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... the fleering of the Women they had about them, find it sore travail to remember what I had for dinner yesterday, what friends I conversed with, what Tavern I supped at, what news I read in the Gazette? But 'tis the knowledge of that overweening Craving to count up the trivial Things of my Youth that warns me to use despatch, even if the chronicle of my after doings be but a short summary or sketch of so many Perils by Land and Sea. And for this manner of the remotest things being the more distinct and dilated ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Walton was rising with dangerous rapidity; and the feeling grew strong within her that, having coped successfully with such temptations, she had little to fear from the future. And this feeling of overweening self-confidence and self- satisfaction was beginning to tinge her manner. Not that she would ever show it offensively, for she was too much of a lady for that. But at the supper-table that evening she gave evident signs of elation ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... suspicious. The latter would not be difficult. Manik Chand would gain nothing by blocking the fairway unless it were absolutely necessary to do so, and, in common with other of the Nawab's lieutenants, he had an overweening confidence in the power of the forts to repel an attack from the English ships. For this reason it was advisable to make the minds of the other men easy, and Desmond soon hit ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... and his achievements with a certain reticence, leaving it to others to judge of them. Nowhere that I know of has Wagner offended against this very proper rule. It has so long been the practice to represent Wagner as a man of overweening vanity, a man who tried to exalt himself at the expense of other artists, that some in England will not believe me when I say that there is no foundation whatever for such assertions. I only ask of those who think there is to read Wagner's own published ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... society, when they have wilfully debarred themselves from all the good they contain, and done their utmost to blight their own happiness and that of all around them. Misanthropy is sometimes the product of disappointed benevolence; but it is more frequently the offspring of overweening and mortified vanity, quarrelling with the world for not being ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... storey and removed the tiled roofs whose garrets were every bit as good as the jerry-built rooms that took their place. Sapp himself may have done it—one knows nothing of his principles—and at the same time in a burst of overweening vanity called his cottages his Court. But one rather likes to think that Sapp was with his forbears when this came about, when the wall was built up opposite, and the cottages could no longer throw ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... took up arms, he became eager to afford them such aid as he could give. He made the acquaintance of Silas Deane, one of the most unscrupulous of the American agents, who promised him, though he was only twenty years of age, the rank of major-general. As he was at all times the slave of a most overweening conceit, he was tempted by that bait; and, though he could not leave France without incurring the forfeiture of his military rank in the army of his own country, in April, 1777, he crossed over to America to serve as a volunteer under Washington, who naturally received with ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... children, but must feel sometimes that they have thoughts which are not his or hers; and wishes and secrets quite beyond the parental control: and, as people are vain, long after they are fathers, ay; or grandfathers, and not seldom fancy that mere personal desire of domination is overweening anxiety and love for their family, no doubt that common outcry against thankless children might often be shown to prove, not that the son is disobedient, but the father too exacting. When a mother (as fond mothers often will) vows that ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... afterwards learned that Dougal had originally come to Glasgow as a prisoner, from being concerned in some depredation, but had somehow found such favour in the eyes of the jailor, that, with rather overweening confidence, he had retained him in his service as one of the turnkeys; a task which Dougal had discharged with sufficient fidelity, so far as was known, until overcome by his clannish prejudices on the unexpected appearance of ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of the ambitious despot. With great judgment, both here and in the Seven before Thebes, the poet describes the issue of the war, not as accidental, which is almost always the case in Homer, but (for in tragedy there is no place for accident,) as the result of overweening infatuation on the one hand, and ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... for other gifts than courage or feats of arms, looked pale on each other, and had obviously received an unpleasant impression from the scene which had been just acted. Louis gazed on them with contempt, and then said aloud, "Although the Count of Crevecoeur be presumptuous and overweening, it must be confessed that in him the Duke of Burgundy hath as bold a servant as ever bore message for a prince. I would I knew where to find as faithful an Envoy ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... and twiddled his thumbs. His eyes roved lazily about the campus. The wind that fluttered the sparse forelock on his overweening forehead hummed in his ears. It had a distance in it. It brought soft cadences of faint voices from the athletic field. They seemed to come from no place nearer than the ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... most precious effects, took refuge in Cologne, and abandoned his capital and territories to the rapacity of a tyrannical garrison. But these preparations, which bespoke less of true courage than of weak and overweening confidence, did not prevent the Swedes from marching against Mentz and making serious preparations for an attack upon the city. While one body of their troops poured into the Rheingau, routed the Spaniards who remained there, and levied contributions on the inhabitants, another laid the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... at once confess frankly that, with the usual susceptibility of callow youth, I promptly became captivated by the charms of our lovely hostess; and I may as well complete my confession by stating that, with the equally usual overweening conceit of callow youth, I quite expected to find my clumsy and ill-timed efforts to render myself agreeable to my charmer speedily successful. In this expectation, however, I was doomed to be grievously disappointed; for I soon discovered that, whilst Dona ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... legislation. Mr. Fillmore declared that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was "the Pandora Box of Evil." Mr. Douglas was reviled by his opponents and burned in effigy at the North. His leadership in this fight was ascribed to his overweening ambition to reach the presidency. The clergymen of New England and of Chicago flooded the Senate with petitions crying against this "intrigue." On May 26, 1854, at one o'clock in the morning, the bill passed the Senate by a vote ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... insufficient tea-cups, and the elderly young assistant demonstrator hovered on the verge of the discussion, rejoicing, it is supposed, over the entanglements of Smithers. For at the outset Smithers displayed an overweening confidence and civility, and at the end his ears were red and his finer ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... assistance to you, you must have an army wherewith to attack the enemy who has driven you out. But with such an army you might succeed in recovering your State as readily without a fortress as with one; nay, perhaps, even more readily, since your subjects, had you not used them ill, from the overweening confidence your fortress gave you, might then have felt better disposed towards you. And the event shows that in times of adversity this very fortress of Milan has been of no advantage whatever, either to the Sforzas or to the French; ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... 21st—Sunday.—To-day I went to hear the celebrated Edward Irving. His preaching, for the most part, I considered commonplace; his manner, eccentric; his pretensions to revelations, authority, and prophetic indications, overweening. I was disappointed in his talents, and surprised at the apparent want of feeling manifested ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... mistaking what he meant by the signs of the times, 'those who arrogate the gift of the Holy Ghost, while their sole inspiration is the presumption of their own hearts and an overweening contempt of authority, may well mistake signs of their own causing for signs from heaven. I but repeat the very ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... future joy or woe For good or evil done below, The Judge of all the earth will order rightly! Flee winding error through the flowery way, To daily follow truth! to ponder nightly On time, and death, and judgment, nearer day by day! Bewail thy bane, deluded France, Vain-glory, overweening pride, And harrying earth with eagle glance, Ambition, frantic homicide! Lament, of all that armed throng How few may reach their native land! By war and tempest to be borne along, To strew, like leaves, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Bowen boys, his old Hannibal schoolmates. He was reveling in the river life, the ease and distinction and romance of it. No other life would ever suit him as well. He was at the age to enjoy just what it brought him —at the airy, golden, overweening age of youth. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and upon a dunghill. It lodges in palaces and cottages. Nay, it will spring and grow out of a pretended humility, and low carriage. In a word, the ambitious designs of men, the large appetite of earthly things, the overweening conceit of ourselves, and love to ourselves, the stirring of our affections, without observing a rule upon unlawful objects, or in an unlawful manner,—all these are common to men, and men walk after them. Every ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... inquisitive curiosity, or hostile malevolence; but the most astounding part of the assembly, at least to a Lowland ear, was the rival performance of the bagpipers. These warlike minstrels, who had the highest opinion, each, of the superiority of his own tribe, joined to the most overweening idea of the importance connected with his profession, at first, performed their various pibrochs in front each of his own clan. At length, however, as the black-cocks towards the end of the season, when, in ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... the Holy See, they will scarcely support the dizziest elevation in life without some suspicion of a strut; and the dizziest elevation is to love and be loved in return. Consequently, accepted lovers are a trifle condescending in their address to other men. An overweening sense of the passion and importance of life hardly conduces to simplicity of manner. To women, they feel very nobly, very purely, and very generously, as if they were so many Joan-of-Arc's; but this does not come out in their behaviour; and ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sides stood ready to die for the decisions of their councils which they did not understand, there was underlying the whole question the political jealousy existing between the two: Byzantium, embittered by the effacement of its political jurisdiction in the West, exasperated at the overweening pretensions of Roman bishops; Rome, watching for opportunity to cajole or compel the Eastern Church to submit ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... principles, but chiefly from the hopes he had of sharing in their spoils. But it fell out, that he was no way acceptable to the Queen or her new servants: these apprehended no little trouble and impediment to the public business, from his restless, talkative, overweening manner, if once he was suffered to have any part in affairs; and he stood very ill with the court, having made a motion in the House of Lords, and in Her Majesty's presence, that the Electoral Prince of Hanover might be invited to reside in England, although he had ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... to their fortunes; both had fallen from at least an intermediate Heaven of respectability and importance, and both were typical products of the monstrous and peculiar social curriculum of their overweening and bumptious ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... the fourth round, I was actually born into the fifth round of the human race in the planetary chain. "The adept," says an occult aphorism, "becomes; he is not made." That was exactly my case. I attribute it principally to an overweening confidence in myself, and to a blind faith in others. As Mr ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... actions were leading him, Smith did not stop to consider. He had no fear of results. With an overweening confidence arising from past successes, he believed that matters would adjust themselves as they always had. Smith wanted a home, and the MacDonald cattle, horses, and hay; but more than any of them he wanted Dora Marshall. How he was going to obtain them all was not then clear to him, but ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... to her glimmering stall; There let her stand and feed!— I am overweening, ambitious, small, A creature of pride and greed! Let me wash the hoofs, let me be the thrall, Jesus, ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... death go ever hand in hand. It was his wife's function to make comfortable his declining years; but it was his to make the task easy for her. He constantly repeats the assurance that he does not ask of her an overweening respect, or a service too humble or too hard, for such is not due to him; he desires only such care as his neighbours and kinswomen take of their husbands, 'for to me belongeth none save the ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... which gave the people of that country all they wanted to do. Here was the chance for Europe, and Napoleon III., the usurper of France, took advantage of it to send an army to Mexico and attempt the conquest of that country. It was the overweening ambition of Louis Napoleon which led him on. It was his scheme to found an empire in Mexico which, while having the name of being independent, would be under the control of France and would shed ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... animal already alluded to, actuated by an overweening desire of notoriety, and in order to catch the applause of some one, grovelling in the morasses of insignificance and vice, like himself, leaves his native obscurity, and indulges in falsehood, calumny, and defamation. I am convinced that none ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... the help of any but very great writers. We may very well doubt the substantial value for the purpose of anything written for the purpose. Such books may be of value for the teacher; they may possibly be of value in disposing of curiosity that has become overweening or even morbid, but their value as preachments I much question. The kind of writing upon which the young girl's mind will be nourished in years to come is best represented by the lecture on "Queens' Gardens" in Ruskin's "Sesame and Lilies," though in that magnificent and immortal piece of literature ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... Still, the white ladies constantly speak with the greatest contempt, and even with animosity, of these unhappy and oppressed beings. The strongest language of high nobility in the monarchies of the old world, cannot be more haughty, overweening or contemptuous towards their fellow creatures, than the expressions of the creole females with regard to the quadroons, in one of the much vaunted states of the free Union. In fact, such comparison strikes the mind ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... American title to the whole of it is "clear and unquestionable." They have displayed, in the conduct of their foreign relations during the past year, a vulgar indifference to the opinion of mankind, and an overweening estimate of their own power, which it is at once ludicrous and painful to behold. Nor is there reason to believe that these blots on the escutcheon of a nation, so young and so unembarrassed, are either deeply regretted or will be speedily effaced. We see no reaction of national virtue ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... and astonishing. But when the mind reflects on the tedious and irksome confinement, which they were compelled to undergo; the absence of the comforts, and frequently, of the necessaries of life, coupled with an overweening attachment to the enjoyment of forest scenes and forest pastimes, it will perhaps be matter of greater astonishment that they did not more frequently forego the security of a fortress, for the uncertain enjoyment of those comforts ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... in an affectionate way that she can let others enjoy his company betimes, secure in the knowledge that she is supreme in his affections—cajolery that flatters his overweening ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... Government and cause widely prevailed. This indifference was very unlike the strange absence of anxiety and solicitude about the result of the war, which characterized its early stages. The latter feeling proceeded from a blind and overweening confidence, and those who entertained it were not the less intensely patriotic and devoted to the cause. Nor was this species of disaffection, which began to influence so many, characterized by the slightest tendency toward ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... right. 'Tis he. I have but seen him once in Amsterdam, and yet I know him by his shock wig and crooked shoulders. It is whispered that of late his overweening conceit hath unseated his reason. See, the German places his hand upon his shoulder and persuades him to sheathe his weapon. King Monmouth glances round too, and smiles as though he were the Court buffoon with ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tour, and her book upon Turkey and Syria, with which latter, English readers have recently been made acquainted through an admirable translation, by the accomplished author of Caleb Stukely. She has her little conceits, and her little fancies; rather an overweening pride of caste, and contempt for the plebeian multitude, and an addiction to filling too many pages of her books with small personal and egotistical details about herself, and her sensations, and what dresses she wears, and how thin she is, and so on. But with all her faults, she is unquestionably ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... wrote) co-operate together to give to personal and party interests the overweening importance which attaches to them in the estimation of local politicians. There are no real grievances here to stir the depths of the popular mind. We are a comfortable people, with plenty to eat and drink, no privileged ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... of prepossessing appearance, had been one of the most promising officers, and had early been promoted to commandant. Whether through overweening ambition on his part or not I cannot say, but Vilonel, accused of insubordination, was thenceforth given the distasteful and inglorious task of commandeering. He wearied of this, and applied for active service, but in vain. Then, ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... Barbara Madden—she laughed in his face and told him he was a conceited old thing. To which he replied, with dignified self-restraint, that he was writing a serious and important book. It would be foolish to pretend that it was not serious and important. He hoped he had no overweening opinion of its merits, but one must preserve some sense of proportion and ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... "Your overweening conceit would be laughable if it were not so irritating," Myra retorted curtly. "I want to tell you bluntly that unless you give me your word of honour not to attempt to make love to me I shall refuse to go to Auchinleven if you are to be one ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... mis-spread the tale of her overweening pride through the hamlet, and when next she appeared there she was greeted ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... I am Mariquita Saville. Nothing that I can do can alter that fact, or take from me the position to which I was born," replied Peggy, with that air of overweening pride in her belongings which had a distinctly humorous aspect in the eyes of her companion, for though a county name and some well-won decorations are, no doubt, things to be valued, nothing short of a pedigree ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... amazingly sympathetic kindness which men of various temperaments, diverse views and different literary tastes have been for years displaying towards my work has done much for me, has done all—except giving me that overweening self-confidence which may assist an adventurer sometimes but in the long run ends by leading him ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... of the nobility and the people; their public institutions, edifices, monuments, and collections in the fine arts; the overweening influence of the clergy, their power and political subserviency; the character of the foreign ministers, and the policy of the courts they represented, were carefully observed and noted down for ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... Thirteen tiresome months saw much marching and counter-marching, frequent displays of courage—more courage than co-operation sometimes,—one or two defeats, and several rather barren successes. For the first eight months the advantage inclined to the insurgents. After that their overweening conceit of their Waikato contingent enabled our superior strength to assert itself. The Maoris, for all their courage and knowledge of the country, were neither clever guerillas nor good marksmen. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... to sofas and ottomans, in any reasonable proportion; but protest I must, and in the strongest terms too, against such a multiplication and variety of easy chairs, as effectually exclude the possibility of easy sitting; and against the overweening increase of spider-tables, that interferes with rectilinear progression. An harp mounted on a sounding-board, which is a stumbling-block to the feet of the short-sighted, is, I concede, an absolute necessity; and a piano-forte, like a coffin, should ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... not an unnatural product of the influences which had until now guided his life and formed his character. The reminiscences of his father's friend had greatly increased his sense of magnanimity in his intentions towards Marian. In the overweening pride of youth he felt as if he were almost regally born and royally endowed, and that a career was opening before him in which he should prove his lofty superiority to those whose heads were turned by the hurly-burly of the hour. Young as he was, he had the sense to be in accord ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... result of disease. These physical disadvantages, combined with an education 'whose object was pretension, and whose principle was arrogance, made him at once a thing fearful and pitiable, at war with its species and itself, ready to crush in manhood as to sting in the cradle, and leading his overweening ambition to pursue its object by ways dark and hidden—safe from the penalty of crime, and exposed only to the obloquy which he laughed to scorn. If ever there was a man formed alike by nature and education to betray ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... almost ruined if they have made a miscalculation; they defy even the owner of the animal, and they cheerfully give him the opportunity of putting down thousands if he wishes to do so. There must be some reason for this assurance which at first sight looks so very overweening. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... of French origin, hailing from Bourbonnais, members of which occupied for generations the thrones of France, Naples, and Spain, and who severally ruled their territories under a more or less overweening sense of their rights as born to reign. Two branches, both of which trace back to Henry IV., held sway in France, one beginning with Louis XIV., eldest son of Louis XIII., and the other, called the Orleans, with Philip of Orleans, second son ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... commands me to obey my rage, And justice urgeth some extreme revenge, To wreak the wrongs that have been offer'd us. But nature, that hath lock'd within thy breast Two lives, the same inclineth me to spare Thy blood, and so to keep mine own unspilt. This is that overweening love I bear To thee undutiful, and undeserved. But for that traitor, he shall surely die; For neither right nor nature doth entreat For him, that wilfully, without all awe Of gods or men, or of our deadly hate, Incurr'd the just displeasure of his king; And to be brief, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... exceeded his privilege as the richest man of the village; at once stept beyond the bounds of his own rank, and encroached upon those of the superior orders; and, in fine, had been guilty of a very overweening act of vanity and presumption. Respect for the memory of my deceased friend, Mr. Richard Tinto, has obliged me to treat this matter at some length; but I spare the reader his prolix though curious observations, as well upon the character of the French school as upon the state of painting ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... falling into a river called the Albula. This river was renamed Tiber from him. It flows through Rome and is of great value to the city and in the highest degree useful to the Romans. Amulius, a descendant of Tiberinus, displayed an overweening pride and had the audacity to deify himself, pretending an ability to answer thunder with thunder by mechanical contrivances and to lighten in response to the lightnings and to hurl thunderbolts. He met his end by the overflow of the lake beside ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... Albert with something of the affectionate authority of a father; but, on the other hand, Albert was no Leopold. As the Baron was very well aware, he had none of his uncle's rigidity of ambition, none of his overweening impulse to be personally great. He was virtuous and well-intentioned; he was clever and well-informed; but he took no interest in politics, and there were no signs that he possessed any commanding force of character. ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... leader, but must have that lord who is the especial incarnation of all those odious qualities which they ascribe most unjustly to the order of which he is a member: and he who is brimful of pride and arrogance, and of an overweening sense of his greatness and his rank, is content to associate with men whose chief recommendation is the profuseness with which they pander to his vanity, and to seek personal distinction and power by lending himself to the promotion of schemes the success of which no man would more earnestly ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... single agricultural product. What divinity hedges cotton, that competition may not touch it,—that some disease, like that of the potato and the vine, may not bring it to beggary in a single year, and cure the overweening conceit of prosperity with the sharp medicine of Ireland and Madeira? But these South Carolina economists are better at vaporing than at calculation. They will find to their cost that the figure's of statistics have little mercy for the figures of speech, which are so powerful in raising ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various |
