"Self-importance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tribunal of the praetorian guards; for the sovereignty, it seems, is not to be hereditary. One view of their F'ete of the 14th,(693) I suppose, is to draw money to Paris; and the consequence will be, that the deputies will return to the provinces drunk with independence and self-importance, and will commit fifty times more excesses, massacres, and devastations, than last year. George Selwyn says, that Monsieur, the King's brother, is the only man of rank from whom ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... there was a feeling of self-importance whenever these affidavits came to be sworn. Mr. Bumpkin would put down his ash-stick by the side of the fireplace, and bidding his visitor be seated, would compose himself with satisfaction to listen to ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... good Rector shook his head. He had not thought of that aspect of the subject. He was indeed so free from vanity or self-importance, that his only feeling in regard to the sudden appearance of the perpetual curate was respect and surprise. He would not be convinced otherwise even now. "He can do his ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... exaggerated the importance of birth till it became almost a mania. If you hadn't known the man, you couldn't have believed a human being—one of the million crawling units on the earth—could be so absurdly inflated with self-importance. It was pitiful. He went nowhere, and saw no one. I believe he thought that Providence had sent a wife of high rank to his very door to enable him partially to wipe out his reproach. She looked like a child ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... put on for the edification of us new chums, but there is no question that most of it is an expression of real feeling. All through the voyage these good people have been in great force, relating numberless yarns of their past experiences, more or less truthful in detail. But now their self-importance is overwhelming and superior to all considerations. Every headland, bay, or island that we pass is expatiated upon, and its especial story told, in which, I note, the narrator generally seems to have been the most prominent ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... glided rapidly away, and every day added to my self-importance, and brought with it fresh opportunities of enlarging the circle of my friends, and of acquiring a competent knowledge of the conventional rules of society. Though naturally fond of company, I hated dissipation, and those ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... the King is guilty, recommends that they may instantly proceed to his trial. But, after all this tremendous eloquence, perhaps Mr. Paine had no malice in his heart: he may only be solicitous to preserve his reputation from decay, and to indulge his self-importance by assisting at the trial of a Monarch whom he may not wish to suffer.—I think, therefore, I am not wrong in asserting, that Vanity is a very ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... if the Horror, homaged thus By frenzied eagerness and foolish fuss, Swells to a hideous self-importance, struts In conscious dignity, and gladly gluts With vanity's fantastic tricks the herd Whose pulses first by murderous crime it stirred. Narcissus-like, the slayer bends to trace Within Sensation's flowing stream its face, And, self-enamoured, smiles ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... is n't all, your honour," replied Joe, his face brightening and his self-importance evidently restored. "We are a forehanded lot, and we've got twenty half-barrels of powder laid ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... common-place, and endless repetition, as an exemption from mental effort; and if they are gratified by vulgarity of diction and illustration, as bringing religion to the level where they are at home? Nay, if an artful pretender, or half-lunatic visionary, or some poor set of dupes of their own inflated self-importance, should give out that they are come into the world for the manifestation, at last, of true Christianity, which the divine revelation has failed, till their advent, to explain to any of the numberless devout and sagacious examiners of it,—what is there in ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... Mrs. Bennett who spoke; her upright carriage, thin nose, and clear even voice, carried always the suggestion of mild but obstinate self-importance. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... before eleven the girls who were to have their Saturday morning lessons prior to the ride in the afternoon, went over to the school and an electric bell notified Dawson that his young ladies awaited their mounts. With due decorum and self-importance he and Henry, the groom, led the horses from the stable, ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... and the humblest of men, even when we carry the most magnificent of messages. But when our own hearts are not right the very magnificence of our message, and the very authority of our Master, become all so many subtle temptations to pride, pique, self-importance, and lothness-to-stoop. With so much still to learn, how slow we ministers are to stoop to learn! How still we stand, and even go back, when all other men are going forward! How few of us have made the noble resolution of Jonathan Edwards: 'Resolved,' he wrote, ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... marched to St. Ethelburga Church, off Bishopsgate Street, London, to partake of Holy Communion and ask God's aid. Back to the muddy water front, opposite the Tower, a hearty God-speed from the gentlemen of the Muscovy Company, pompous in self-importance and lace ruffles—and the little crew steps into a clumsy ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... whose memoirs all historians of this period are greatly indebted, and who in 1833 was clerk of the council, was inclined to disparage the proposed change as one of Brougham's fanciful projects, designed to gratify his own self-importance.[116] Even Greville, however, saw reason to modify his view, and the new court has ever since commanded general respect, except from those high Churchmen who resented its assumption of the appellate jurisdiction in ecclesiastical causes, formerly vested, along with a ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... he was far most to be pitied, although the situation was the direct result of his own arrogance and self-importance; but arrogance and self-importance were as essential ingredients of his character as was humour of Aunt Barbara's. They were very awkward and tiresome qualities, but this particular Lord Ashbridge would have no existence without them. He was deeply and mortally offended with Michael; ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... descriptions of persons would have turned any head but his own. I cannot say that I perceived any unfavourable effect which they left on his mind. He retained the same simplicity which had struck me so forcibly when first I saw him in the country, nor did he seem to feel any additional self-importance from the number and rank of his new acquaintance. He walked with me in spring, early in the morning, to the Braid Hills, when he charmed me still more by his private conversation than he had ever done ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... received, Rosa only looked prettier than usual with her flushed cheeks; and so many things had been put into her nonsensical little head during the last two days, especially by her aunt's denunciations, that her sense of self-importance was very much heightened in consequence. She looked at the Miss Wentworths with a throb of mingled pride and alarm, wondering whether perhaps she might know more of them some day, if Mr Wentworth was really fond of her, as people said—which thought gave ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... found me by the door and he moved a hand in a vague gesture. I went, walking stiff-legged, awe mingling with self-importance. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... him that his old chapel was rather at an unnecessary distance. Then, too, the fact of his house being called after New Zion seemed to impose a sort of obligation towards the sad old chapel. Besides, Mr. Moggridge was not inhumanly above the pleasures of self-importance, and though he did not express it in just those words, or indeed in any words at all, the idea of his being the Maecenas of New Zion was suddenly born ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... opportunity that offered, and the instrument that presented itself? What chances might lie in Sir Winterton's dogged honour and tender sensitiveness on the one hand, and on the other in that conscience of little Japhet's, stronger now in its alliance with hurt pride and outraged self-importance! And nobody could say that Quisante himself had had any part in it; he had spoken to nobody except Foster, and he had told Foster most plainly that he would have nothing to do with such a matter. There he lay, making his case, the case he could tell to all the ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... Bowser, putting aside all foolish notions about pride or self-importance, became one of the most faithful and attentive attendants of the Bible class. Rain or shine, the whole year round, his chair was rarely vacant, until Mr. Lloyd came to look upon him as his model member, ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... kept them, and the last words and compliments were of long duration, while Aurelia looked on in some surprise at the transformation of all Harriet's languishing affected airs into the bustling self-importance of Mrs. Arden. She was however much occupied with all she had heard, and was marvelling how her sister began again as soon as they were in the street again. "You are very discreet, Aurelia, as it becomes a young married lady, but have you no notion who this ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... may seem to illustrate the self-importance of the betheral tribe. The Rev. Dr. Hugh Blair was one Sunday absent from his pulpit, and next morning meeting his beadle in the street he inquired how matters went in the High Church on Sabbath. "'Deed, I dare say no very weel," was ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... not as a mere man among men. And the consciousness of such apparent superfluities, whether they be the expression of wealth or of hierarchy, of fashion or of caste, gives to their possessor that additional self-importance which is quite as much wanted by the ungainly or diffident moral man as the additional warmth of his more obviously needed raiment is by the poor, chilly, bodily human being. I will not enlarge upon the practical uses which ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... squadron. The prisoner had acquired a new status. Here was a human being within two weeks of the solution of the greatest of all mysteries. He was worth looking at. The condemned man saw the interest shown in him, and, upheld by the feeling of self-importance inherent in the negro character, and always brought to the surface by applause or other manifestation of unusual ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... powdered all over with brown powder. Who that has ever heard it, can forget the sounds of the various notes with which these little people intonated their 'Aleph, Zubbin ah, Zair a, Paiche oh,' as they moved backwards and forwards in their recitations? Who can forget the self-importance of the schoolmaster, who was generally a grey-bearded, dry, old man, who had no other means of proving his superiority to the scholars than by making more ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... element that the German classicists forgot to put into their beautiful balance was a sense of humour. And great poet as Goethe was, there is to the last something faintly fatuous about his half sceptical, half sentimental self-importance; a Lord Chamberlain of teacup politics; an earnest and elderly flirt; a German of the Germans. Now Carlyle had humour; he had it in his very style, but it never got into his philosophy. His philosophy largely remained a heavy ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... just estimate of ourselves the estimate must ever be accompanied with a distinct consciousness that all is God's gift. That will keep us from anything in the nature of pride or over-weening self-importance. It will lead to true humility, which is not ignorance of what we can do, but recognition that we, the doers, are of ourselves but poor creatures. We are less likely to fancy that we are greater than we are when we feel that, whatever we are, God ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... the news was "exclusive", the Despatch had thrown the name of Stephen Hallowell, his portrait, a picture of his house, and the words, "At Point of Death!" across three columns. The announcement was heavy, lachrymose, bristling with the melancholy self-importance of the man who "saw the deceased, just two minutes before the ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... armchair, regarding the pattern of the carpet with a silly air of self-importance; Mrs. Strongtharm in a chair opposite. By the window Miss Quiney, pulling at her knuckles, stares out through the dark panes. A ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... passion in the tone of a man who would have a rival's life if he crossed his path. The elderly butterfly of the Empire came down with his whole weight on the poor poet, and tried to frighten and crush him by his self-importance. He grew taller as he gave an embellished account of his perilous wanderings; but while he impressed the poet's imagination, the lover was by no means afraid ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... and recognized Ariel at his bedside. He feebly pronounced her name, and looked at her, and asked for me. They thought of sending for me, but it was too late. Before the messenger could be dispatched, he said, with a touch of his old self-importance, "Silence, all of you! my brains are weary; I am going to sleep." He closed his eyes in slumber, and never awoke again. So for this man too the end came mercifully, without grief or pain! So that strange and many-sided life—with its guilt and its misery, its fitful flashes ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... thereupon assumed a quality of mere bickering and she could even doubt whether Mrs. Pembrose wasn't justified in her attitude and wiser by her very want of generosity. She felt then something childish in the whole undertaking that otherwise escaped her, she was convicted of an absurd self-importance, she discovered herself an ignorant woman availing herself of her husband's power and wealth to attempt presumptuous experiments. In these moods of disillusionment, her mind went adrift and was driven to and fro from discontent to discontent; she would find herself taking soundings and ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... it had always done since his earliest lieutenant days. He knew that as he acted, looked, and spoke, so would the image of his country be stamped upon the minds of a hundred thousand and their children's children. There was no vanity, no self-importance in this conception of his duty. It was a stern, unbending acceptance of his responsibility; and as in the lonely fort upon the frontier where he had dominated, unaided, month after month, over wild, antagonistic races, so ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... colonel was a very pompous man, and the document he had just discovered on the priest added to his sense of self-importance. When, therefore, a large, carefully folded paper was produced from the neighbourhood of Valeria's lovely bosom, his eyes sparkled with anticipation. "Ho, ho!" he exclaimed, as he clutched it eagerly, "the plot is thickening!" and he spread out ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... and obeyed. The man, who seemed a little intoxicated, gave it with a look of ludicrous triumph and self-importance. ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... inasmuch as the Duke himself is reputed to have had an uncommonly good amount of it himself, though it took a different form and created a different impression. Wellington showed it in a cold, haughty, unimaginative, repelling self-importance; fearful of unbending to his inferiors lest his dignity should be offended. Nelson's peculiarities were the very antithesis; it was his delightful egotism and vanity that added to his charm and made him such ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... they found Rodier demolishing some of the good things provided by Mrs. Martin, the centre of an admiring crowd of curious white men and wonder-struck natives. Two Papuan constables were patrolling around with comical self-importance. The petrol had arrived. When it was transferred to the aeroplane the Administrator insisted on drinking Smith's health in a glass of Mr. Martin's beer, and then called for three cheers for the airmen. His daughter had brought her kodak and took a snapshot ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... found that in a month's time Vera's beauty had made her house the most popular one in London, and that people struggled for her invitation-cards and prayed to be introduced to her, Mrs. Hazeldine was at the zenith of her delight and self-importance. If only Vera herself had ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... one of his rings up-stairs," says Rosanna; "and I have been into the library to give it to him." The girl's face was all in a flush as she made me that answer; and she walked away with a toss of her head and a look of self-importance which I was quite at a loss to account for. The proceedings in the house had doubtless upset all the women-servants more or less; but none of them had gone clean out of their natural characters, as Rosanna, to all appearance, had now gone out ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... should have the distinction of calling me one of her sons, and accordingly I was in due time sent for preparation to a neighboring academy. Years of study and hard fare in country boarding-houses told upon my self-importance as the descendant of a great Englishman, notwithstanding all my letters from the honored three came with counsel to "respect myself and keep up the dignity of the family." Growing-up man forgets good counsel. The Arcadia of respectability is apt to give place to the levity of football and other ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... and brushed her up and gave her an excellent supper; and putting her into a first-class compartment labelled "Reserved," sent her back to Waterloo, and thence in a cab to Gough Square, where she arrived about midnight, suffering from a sense of self-importance, traces of which to ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... interested but passive observer. When taunted for his timidity, or as being a mere infant, he parried by using a number of nasty words, some of which he did not know the meaning of. When by himself, he soon found that he could play the game as well as the rest, and it increased his sense of self-importance very much, but of this he said nothing to any one. Something within his own nature protested against the flaunting of such an act, though the act itself carried no offence to his childish mind. The inner protest was not strong ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... for the half-mile, the first thing in the afternoon ... the mile, which was to be the last event, excepting the hammer-throw. My class, in a body, had urged me to enter for all the "events" I could ... when the delegation came, I welcomed them, with gratified self-importance, to my solitary room. I invited them in, and they sat about ... on my single chair ... my bed ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... it? You have just said that the Jews are an Eastern people. And all Eastern peoples are subtle and secretive. I invariably lose half of my self-importance in Egypt, for instance. There is something in the eye of the meanest fellah which ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... commands, the shepherds, who well knew that the flocks they tended belonged to him, called him their young master, and first in jest, then in earnest, paid him all the honor due a ruler, which prematurely increased his self-importance and made him an ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of sight, nothing is more deficient in picturesque features than a procession seen in its passage through narrow streets. The spectator feels it to be fool's play, when he can distinguish the tedious commonplace of each man's visage, with the perspiration and weary self-importance on it, and the very cut of his pantaloons, and the stiffness or laxity of his shirt-collar, and the dust on the back of his black coat. In order to become majestic, it should be viewed from some vantage point, as it rolls its slow and long array through the centre ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he is will generally be thought nothing of. We habitually make such large deductions for pretence and imposture that no real merit will stand against them. It is necessary to set off our good qualities with a certain air of plausibility and self-importance, as some attention ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... felt awkward at the contemptuous reference to his father, he sniggered and went on talking, as if nothing untoward had been said. He was one of the band impossible to snub, not because they are endowed with superior moral courage, but because their easy self-importance is so great that an insult rarely pierces it enough to divert them from their purpose. They walk through life wrapped comfortably round in the wool of their own conceit. Gourlay, though a dull man—perhaps because ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... admirably amends, [Greek: eis mellonta sosei chronon], i.e. "it will be a long time before it preserves them," a hit at the self-importance of the old gentleman. ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... not gratified to the extent of her wishes in the fortune of the campaign, at least her self-importance was nattered in another point, which could not fail of being interesting to a princess famed for a glowing zeal and inviolable attachment to the religion of Rome. In the month of August the pope conferred upon her the title of apostolical ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... quarter of an hour, were enviable distinctions. He, after the fashion of all the false prophets who have deluded themselves and others, drew new faith in his own lie from the credulity of his disciples. His countenance, his voice, his gestures, indicated boundless self-importance. When he appeared in public he looked,—such is the language of one who probably had often seen him,—like Atlas conscious that a world was on his shoulders. But the airs which he gave himself only heightened the respect and admiration ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... already established shallowness of his own nature—a brawling stream always ready to rave round any little impediment in its path; a mere miniature of the torrent, with no resolute strength or purpose in it, but full of a fussy vivacity and self-importance which he could most heartily and bitterly despise. All his life long the same futile story repeated: the same headlong impetuosity, the same want of steadfast force, the same absence of control. And yet, even in the depth of self-reproach, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... functions, the decent performance of which was utterly beyond the range of an illiterate man. Many of our readers may be acquainted with the witty satire in which, with a perpetual side glance at the fussy self-importance visible in Bishop Burnet's History, Pope writes 'the Memoirs of P.P., Clerk of this Parish.' With what delightful complacency this diligent representative of his class speaks of taking rank among 'men right worthy of their calling, of a clear and sweet voice, and of becoming gravity'—of his place ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Highness has arrived! His Royal Highness has arrived," gasped the little secretary, almost apoplectic with self-importance. "Come and help to get the ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... he learnt so much about so many future friends and foes) he left the army, not to return till he and Sherman had seen Blair and Lyon take Camp Jackson. After wisely declining to reenter the service under the patronage of General John Pope, who was full of self-importance about his acquaintance with the Union leaders of Illinois, Grant wrote to the Adjutant-General at Washington offering to command a regiment. Like Sherman, he felt much more diffident about the rise from ex-captain of regulars to colonel commanding ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... attempt to cast straws against the wind, was now completely over and done with, and would never be heard of again. Or such at least, he added, was the earnest hope of the law-abiding community. This irritated Purdy, who was spumy with the self-importance of one who has stood in the thick of the fray. He answered hotly, and ended by rapping out with a contemptuous click of the tongue: "Upon my word, Dick, you look at the whole thing like the ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... said I, "that the staff of power has passed from the hands of gentility into those of labor. We may think the working classes somewhat unseemly in their assertion of self-importance; but, after all, are they, considering their inferior advantages of breeding, any more overbearing and impertinent than the upper classes have always been to them in all ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... fat or lean, hook-nosed or eagle-eyed, well tanned by sun and wind, in faultless kit, on priceless mounts! How redolent they are of health and wealth, and the secure consciousness of high social position—of the cool business-like self-importance that sits so well on those who are knowing in the noblest pursuit that can ever employ the energies and engross the mind of a well-born Briton; for they can ride almost as well as their grooms, these mighty hunters before the Lord, ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... counts no one prime work of God among his friends. From the same source, he has no attachment to female society, no fondness for children, no perceptions of beauty in natural scenery; but he is fond of convivial indulgences, of that stimulation, which, keeping up the glow of self-importance, and the sense of internal power, gives feelings without ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... ready for the press, he carried it with him to London. He was then just come of age, or about to be so; and one of his objects in this visit to the metropolis was, to take his seat in the House of Lords before going abroad; but, in advancing to this proud distinction, so soothing to the self-importance of youth, he was destined to suffer a mortification which probably wounded him as deeply as the sarcasms of the Edinburgh Review. Before the meeting of Parliament, he wrote to his relation and guardian, the Earl ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... opinions which I do not believe. And I may be the more emboldened in my refusal, when I consider how mixed, or how selfish, are often the motives of those who solicit me, and that the love of notoriety, or the gratification of a feeling of self-importance, or a fussy restlessness, or the craving for preferment is frequently quite as powerful an incentive of their activity as a desire to promote the objects explicitly avowed. There is, moreover, an important consideration, connected with this ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... this lake called Punya, and this mountain Bhrigutunga and also (the water of) these two rivers, called Tushniganga. Here, O Kunti's son, appeareth the hermitage of the sage Sthulasiras. Resign here thy anger and sense of self-importance. There, O son of Pandu, is seen the beautiful hermitage of Raivya, where perished Bharadwaja's son, Yavakari, profound ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... recognized this, but he was merely incensed by it. What could he reply if they questioned him about his own devotions? Should he acknowledge that he thought prayer was no more than a pleasant form of administering to a sense of self-importance? Or, at most, a variety of self-help? Luckily they didn't ask. How outraged Fanny would be—he would be driven from the community—if he confessed the slightest of his doubts to his children. If, say at the table, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... not Anne's understanding nor temper. While well, and happy, and properly attended to, she had great good humour and excellent spirits; but any indisposition sunk her completely. She had no resources for solitude; and inheriting a considerable share of the Elliot self-importance, was very prone to add to every other distress that of fancying herself neglected and ill-used. In person, she was inferior to both sisters, and had, even in her bloom, only reached the dignity of being "a fine girl." She was now lying on the faded sofa of ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... was glad to escape from the clear-sighted, critical eyes of Madame de Nailles. On the other hand, to be sent off to the girls' corner, after being insulted by being told he had not grown, hurt his sense of self-importance. ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... upon a couch to music when he ought to be carrying her glove to battle. Olivia is in an unreal mood of mourning for her brother. Grief is a destroying passion. Olivia makes it a form of self-indulgence, or one sweet the more to attract flies to her. Malvolio is in an unreal mood of self-importance. Long posing at the head of ceremony has given him the faith that ceremony, of which he is the head, is the whole of life. This faith deludes him into a life of day-dreams, common enough among inactive clever people, but dangerous to the indulger, as all things are that ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... him squarely in the eye. In Roger's own eyes there was the glint of his old humorous twinkle, and I knew that the young man's bustling self-importance amused him. ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... stuff of thought unshaped, and every breath he drew seemed like God breathing afresh into his nostrils the breath of life. Who knows what the thing we call air is? We know about it, but it we do not know. The sun shone as if smiling at the self-importance of the sulky darkness he had driven away, and the world seemed content with a heavenly content. So fresh was Donal's sense that he felt as if his sleep within and the wind without had been washing him all the night. So ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... slight feeling of that pardonable self-importance which is natural to those who instruct others older than themselves, ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... only a vague, shadowy mist of facts and persons of no real significance. This it was that she would have to lay down when it came to her turn to die; this which gave to her that importance, that secret self-importance, without which none of us can bear to live; and to this she clung wistfully, with a greed that grew each day! If life were slipping away from her, this she would ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... man who slept at the stables. The Dunlops, as it happened, were childless for the winter, young Chauncey attending a "commercial college" in a neighboring town. After many interviews and a good deal of self-importance on Cerissa's part, the pair were persuaded to close the old house and occupy the servants' wing on the Hill, as a distinct family, yet at hand in case of need. It was late autumn before all these arrangements could be made. Paul and Moya, leaving the young scion ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... grasp her meaning, but the tone sounded contemptuous, and that sorted little with his self-importance. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... The self-importance of Bobadilla was incensed at this non-compliance, especially as he saw it had some effect upon the populace, who appeared to doubt his authority. He now produced the third mandate of the crown, ordering Columbus and his brothers ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... as a spy, however nerve-racking, contributes considerably to one's sense of self-importance. It's a rare thrill for a civilian to be waited on by a reception committee ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... maxims and manners of the world; he is to seek in the characters of individuals. He sees no beauty in the face of nature or of art. To him 'the mighty world of eye and ear' is hid; and 'knowledge,' except at one entrance, 'quite shut out.' His pride takes part with his ignorance; and his self-importance rises with the number of things of which he does not know the value, and which he therefore despises as unworthy of his notice. He knows nothing of pictures,—'Of the colouring of Titian, the grace of Raphael, the purity of Domenichino, the corregioscity of Correggio, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... for moving to Indianapolis, and at the end of ten days all was ready for the money to be delivered. Dic again asked for Rita, and Mr. Bays was for delivering the girl at once. His new venture at Indianapolis had stimulated his sense of self-importance, and he insisted, with a temerity never before dared, that Dic, whom he truly loved, should have the daughter whom they each loved. But the Chief Justice would agree to nothing more than an extension of the armistice, ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... stern and awesome dignitary of the Church, who immediately began to lecture the Abbot for his unseemly conduct the previous day, ordering him to undergo such penance as eventually, robbing him of half his size and all his self-importance, led ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... foot with a pack on his back, and who, being dressed a trifle better than the ordinary tramp, was probably the more dangerous for this reason. Like most of the village schoolmasters in France, this gentleman was also secretary at the mairie, a function highly stimulating to the sense of self-importance, and no wonder, considering that the person who fills it frequently supplies the mayor, who may scarcely be able to sign his name to official documents, with such intelligence as he may need for his ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... to observe the self-importance of the skipper of any of these diminutive vessels. He would give himself all the airs of an admiral on a three-decker's poop; and no doubt, thought quite as much of himself. And why not? What could ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... as he did this, and a man ascended, bearing in his hand a torch. This figure unlocked and held open the grating as for the passage of another, who presently appeared, in the form of a young man of small stature and uncommon self-importance, dressed in an ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... the royal party with refreshments as before.(1255) The new mayor, Sir John Robinson,(1256) had been a promoter of the king's restoration, and in return for his services received an augmentation of arms.(1257) He was a nephew of the late Archbishop Laud, and full of his own self-importance "a talking, bragging, buffle-headed fellow," Pepys calls him—boasting of his powers over his brother aldermen, but nevertheless attentive to the wants of ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... not give now to be restored to his old, balanced, easy life, with its little friendships and duties. How fantastic and unreal his aunt's theories seemed to him, reveries contrived just to gild the gaps of a broken life, a dramatisation of emptiness and self-importance. At every moment the face and figure of Maud came before him in a hundred sweet, spontaneous movements—the look of her eyes, the slow thrill of her voice. He needed her with all his soul—every fibre of his being cried out for her. And then the thought of being thus pitifully overcome, humiliated ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... House," said Mary, in reply to the query what should be done with her, in a tone which indicated self-importance in the speaker. She was indeed the idol of her mother, and more nearly resembled her in dis- position and manners ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... pen over the lines with inconceivable rapidity, the writer occasionally glancing over his left arm at the document he was copying. The tortoise-shell cat sat at her master's feet with an air of self-importance and a look which seemed to say, "woe be to him who dare ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... importance lived there. Even the physicians had their residences and offices in a more aristocratic locality. Upon the Main Street proper, that which formed the centre of the village, there were only shops and a schoolhouse and one or two mean public buildings. For a village of the self-importance of Fairbridge, the public buildings were very few and very mean. There was no city hall worthy of the name of this little city which held its head so high. The City Hall, so designated by ornate gilt letters upon the glass panel of a very small door, occupied part of the building in which ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... no uneasiness concerning the result of the interview, for his face was beaming with self-importance and he greeted the Prince with a confidence born of certainty. His eyes asked the question which his lips were too well-governed ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... these personal characteristics have nothing to do with Edison's position in the world of affairs. They show him to be a plain, easy-going, placid American, with no sense of self-importance, and ready at all times to have his mind turned into a lighter channel. In private life they show him to be a good citizen, a good family man, absolutely moral, temperate in all things, and of great ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... fine, he follows the maxims of our politicians, recapitulating a dozen or more things (wiping the sweat from his brow the while) that have no earthly connection with the subject. "They are all very well," Mr. Keepum rejoins, with an air of self-importance, dusting the ashes from his cigar. He only wishes to impress the old man with the fact that he is his ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... which we only discover after many readings, because he will not put a single tone of success into the flow of natural utterance, to draw our attention to the triumph of the author, and jar with the all-important reality of his production! Wherever an author obtrudes his own self-importance, an unreality is the consequence, of a nature similar to that which we feel in the old moral plays, when historical and allegorical personages, such as Julius Caesar and Charity, for instance, are introduced at the same time on the same stage, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... a fool of himself and repented, we should be badly off for clergy. You were conceited and provoking, and have let yourself be led into a nasty scrape—that's the long and short of the matter; but it is only hugging your own self-importance to sit honing and moaning up here. Come down, and behave like ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... their plaids and tartans in the same triumphant manner in which the birds ruffle up their feathers, begin to approach each other within such distance as might give to their brethren a sample of their skill. Walking within a short interval, and eyeing each other with looks in which self-importance and defiance might be traced, they strutted, puffed, and plied their screaming instruments, each playing his own favourite tune with such a din, that if an Italian musician had lain buried ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... to Mrs. Pett and Willie, its inventor, about Partridgite. Willie, on hearing himself addressed, had turned slowly with an air of absent self-importance, the air of a great thinker disturbed in mid-thought. He always looked like that when spoken to, and there were those—Mr. Pett belonged to this school of thought—who held that there was nothing to him beyond that look and that he had built up his reputation as a budding mastermind ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Shih Jung, who was seated in his sedan chair, made a bow and returned their salutations with a smile, proceeding to address them and to treat them, as he had done hitherto, as old friends, without any airs of self-importance. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... had said, and had the thrill in her voice, the tremor of her bosom under its fall of lace, meant that her heart was touched? Modest or humble I had never been. The will to fight—the exaggerated self-importance, the overweening pride of the strong man who has made his way by buffeting obstacles, were all mine; and yet, walking there that morning in the high wind between the rolling broomsedge and the blood-red sumach, I was aware again of the boyish timidity with which I had carried ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... has graduated at the head of her class and has executive ability, who knows exactly what to do and when to do it, may yet bring such a spirit of self-importance and bustle that everything she does for the invalid's ease, comfort, and recuperation is counteracted by the unrestful "professional" spirit with which ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... moved doubtfully in his chair, the fear—which Tavannes had shrewdly instilled into his mind—that he might be disowned if he carried out his instructions, struggling with his avarice and his self-importance. He was rather crafty than bold; and such things had been, he knew. Little by little, and while he sat gloomily debating, the notion of dealing with one or two and holding the body of the Huguenots to ransom—a notion which, in spite of everything, ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... metronymic. It must not be supposed that this change occurred very suddenly. It may have taken many centuries to bring it about, but as the man learned his part in procreation and his power in society, he delighted in his self-importance to lord it over the woman and her children. The marriage relation ceased to be free and reciprocal. The wife no longer had a choice in marriage. Bought or captured, she was no longer wooed for a companion, but was valued according to her economic worth. As population pressed, ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... the ostler as witnesses. There was a rush among some of the crowd who were nighest the scene to follow the prisoner into the room; and, sooth to say, the great Mountmeadow was much too enamoured of his own self-importance to be by any means a patron of close courts and private hearings; but then, though he loved his power to be witnessed, he was equally desirous that his person should be reverenced. It was his boast that he could keep a court of quarter sessions as quiet as a church; and now, when the ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... Mrs. Sharp's earliest thoughts, the next morning, were given to Caterina whom she had not been able to visit the evening before, and whom, from a nearly equal mixture of affection and self-importance, she did not at all like resigning to Mrs. Bellamy's care. At half-past eight o'clock she went up to Tina's room, bent on benevolent dictation as to doses and diet and lying in bed. But on opening the door she found the bed smooth and empty. Evidently it had ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... was as meagre in incidents as it is well possible for the life of an individual to be— "The eventful life which I am about to record, from the hour in which I rose into existence on this planet, etc." Yet when, notwithstanding this warning example of self-importance before me, I review my own life, I cannot refrain from applying the same epithet to it, and with more than ordinary emphasis—and no private feeling, that affected myself only, should prevent me from publishing the same, (for write it I assuredly shall, should life and leisure be ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... possibly be considered a gentleman. But Miss Belsize had laughed long and laughed loud; and—well, I will not labour the point. In due course our superior one found himself in the haunt of death I have briefly described above, still full of self-importance and as inconceivably ignorant as the majority are who come for the first time to the game ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... the shape of this unwillingness is changed but the fact of it remains. There are two or three features of what I take to be the plain Gospel of Jesus Christ which grate very much against all self-importance and self-complacency, and operate very largely, though not always consciously, upon very many amongst us. I just run ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... success, for they clearly gave everyone to understand that they preferred the company of each other, which did not tend to their popularity on board. Amongst the passengers was a young man who rejoiced in the high-sounding name of Hugh St. John Wilson-Mainwaring, and whose sense of self-importance was as extensive as his appellation. He was the younger son of a bishop, and intended to tour the Colonies at the expense of the inhabitants, feeling satisfied that he had only to make it known that his father was the Bishop of Doseminster to have the door ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... conjured up the vision of some grim-faced spinster-subscriber in a desolate country town starting out at last for the first time in her life, with real, cheery self-importance, rain or shine, to join the laughing, jostling, deliriously human Saturday night crowd at the village post-office—herself the only person whose expected letter never failed to come! From Squirrel or Pirate or Hopping Hottentot—what did it matter to her? ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Our self-importance as Arctic heroes of the first water received a sad downfall when we were first asked by a kind friend, what the deuce we came home for? We had a good many becauses ready, but he overturned them altogether; ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... me?" I asked with some self-importance. "I trust that there is nothing of consequence ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... travellers descended into the valley of the Way-lee-way, a considerable tributary of Snake River. Here they met the guide returning from his secret errand. Another private conference was held between him and the old managing chief, who now seemed more inflated than ever with mystery and self-importance. Numerous fresh trails, and various other signs, persuaded Captain Bonneville that there must be a considerable village of Nez Perces in the neighborhood; but as his worthy companion, the old chief, said nothing ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... hear him talk of being tempted to remain abroad, after he had mentioned his presence to be so necessary at Paris, that it was with difficulty he could steal away for a month or two; but St. Aubert understood the self-importance of the man too well to wonder at this trait; and the possibility, that these projected improvements might be deferred, gave him a hope, that they might ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... ingenuity, then, and discover it," said Alice—for a moment put out of temper at the Doctor's pertinacious self-importance—"Guess my purpose, as you can guess at every thing else. It is enough to have to go through my task, I will not endure the distress of telling it over, and that to one who—forgive me, dear Doctor—might not think my agitation ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... returned to Glashruach, but did not remain long. His schemes were promising well, and his self-importance was screwed yet a little higher in consequence. But he was kinder than usual to Ginevra. Before he went he said to her that, as Mr. Machar had sunk into a condition requiring his daughter's constant attention, he would find her an English governess as soon as he reached ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... politicians, and titled-lady lion-hunters as sedulously as ever. His letters, especially those to his friends the Crofts, of Stillington, abound, as before, in touches of the same amusing vanity. With how delicious a sense of self-importance must he have written these words: "You made me and my friends very merry with the accounts current at York of my being forbad the Court, but they do not consider what a considerable person they make of me when they suppose either my ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... love. I confess it shocks all my notions of propriety to see the sinner, even when he professes to be the most humble and penitent, thrust himself up ostentatiously, as if filled only with his own self-love and self-importance." ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... they had such a proverb. They were as remarkable, it seems, in those days as they are now for their national self-importance and vanity. ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... nature, such as John Ferguson's, the very absence of any intellectual requirements in the performance of the duties devolving upon him, caused him soon to feel a distaste for the service; while the indolence and self-importance practised and assumed by his colleagues (and so much emulated by the class of candidates for such honours) were to him extremely irksome and disagreeable, and early caused his energetic disposition to be dissatisfied with ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... head of a pin placed before the centre of the iris will block out the whole scope of vision. The most usual form of monomania has commonly the same beginning as that from which Edgar Caswall suffered—an over-large idea of self-importance. Alienists, who study the matter exactly, probably know more of human vanity and its effects than do ordinary men. Caswall's mental disturbance was not hard to identify. Every asylum is full of such cases—men ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... Buckingham were intensely indignant at the conduct of the scurvy burghers, and an immense amount of self-importance was displayed and shamefully wasted. This manifestation was at its highest when the messenger from Newgate arrived with Mary's poor little note as ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... tune I was not sure I liked his agreeable voice: it had a self-importance out of keeping with the humdrum nature of his story, as though a breeze engaged in shaking out a table-cloth should have fancied itself inflating a banner. But this criticism may have been a mere mark of my own ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... official decorum, in the expectation that he would find duplicates of himself in the crowds he addressed, and that mob diffused would heartily sympathize with Mob impersonated. Never was blustering demagogue led by a distempered sense of self-importance into a more fatal error. Not only was the great body of the people mortified or indignant, but even his "satraps and dependents," even the shrewd politicians—accidents of an Accident and shadows of a shade—who had labored so hard at Philadelphia to weave a cloak ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... village in itself, but, being the chief place of its neighbourhood, it supports enough municipal and other dignitaries to set up an Imperial Court. Never was such wisdom—never such pompous solemnity. The Burgomeister of Bergsdorf was a great elephant of a man. He went abroad radiating self-importance. He perspired wisdom on the coldest day. The other officials imitated the Burgomeister in so far as their corporeal condition allowed. The cure only was excepted. He was a thin, spare man with an ascetic face and a great talent for languages. One day during service he asked a ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... than most men, and if the time came when I must at last be caught beneath a belt-line car my removal from these mad activities would at least be dignified by a notice in the papers. The shrinkage to my self-importance added fire to my ambition. More carefully but resolutely I threaded my way up Cortlandt Street, and at every step my sense of my unimportance increased. Even my hotel seemed to be a hotel of no importance. Mr. Pound had stayed there in 1876, and his account of its ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... always called them, had their tea with the nurses and were given few toys and never allowed to accept presents. No fuss was made over the little accidents inevitable to childhood and in every way life was kept devoid of state formality, or anything that would breed a sense of childish self-importance. When the Prince and Princess were away from home, as they frequently had to be, letters were daily exchanged with the head nurse. The result of this general system and of the later plan of making the young Princesses more and more companions of their mother and the boys, ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... number. An elderly woman, uncommonly stout, with a double chin and small, proud eyes and an air of extreme haughtiness and self-importance. An elderly man, her husband, very tall and uncommonly thin, so that his coat hangs loosely on his body; a short goatee, long, smooth hair, as if wet, reaching to his shoulders; eye-glasses; has a frightened; ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... artificial place; it is so by our choice and for our sins. The subjection of women; the ideal imposed upon them from the cradle, and worn, like a hair-shirt, with so much constancy; their motherly, superior tenderness to man's vanity and self-importance; their managing arts—the arts of a civilised slave among good-natured barbarians—are all painful ingredients and all help to falsify relations. It is not till we get clear of that amusing artificial scene that genuine relations are founded, or ideas honestly compared. In the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was beginning to feel something of what it meant to hold office and there was creeping into his manner the quiet self-importance which is the first sign of ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... excuse themselves for much executive work in school and college on the ground that it is done in their leisure. That girl is a goose who allows herself through any sense of self-importance, or irreplaceable usefulness, to be so involved in executive work that all other aspects of her school life are slighted. If she refuses to be swamped by such "jobs" she can have the happiness of reflecting that probably some girls who need the training ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... curtly. He had a great notion of his self-importance, and had no intention of dancing attendance on a ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... neared the ground; the first indication of a settlement showing in the lobes of her ears, then in her cheeks, and then in her drab-apparelled person. Her whole aspect gave the impression of a great self-importance, early realised and made part of life, but kept in abeyance by the society of Aunt Mary and by a religious conviction that others also had their place, a sort of back seat, ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... its laws, and to its literature. The hypochondriac flatus is subsiding; the acres, which in imagination I had spread over—for the sick man swells in the sole contemplation of his single sufferings, till he becomes a Tityus to himself—are wasting to a span; and for the giant of self-importance, which I was so lately, you have me once again in my natural pretensions—the lean and meagre ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... a group of Indians, Curly came to my tepee when we were camped on the Little Big Horn. The whole company were greatly agitated because an Indian possessed with the spirit of self-importance had gone to Washington to make war against other Indians in the tribe who were industrious and loyal home builders. They all made speeches around the campfire, asking my interposition at Washington. In his argument Curly said: "Which man would you believe, the man who ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... a vain gossip. It had been madness on Rachel's part to give him the smallest hold on her. Very likely he had not yet actually betrayed her—his hope of favours to come might have been sufficient to prevent that. But his self-importance would certainly show itself somehow—in a hint or a laugh. He had probably already roused in the village mind a prying curiosity, a suspicion of something underhand, which might alter Rachel's whole relation to her neighbours. For once give ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gossip is often turned into solemn verdicts. Young women are seldom seen there; when they come it is to seek approbation of their conduct,—a consecration of their self-importance. This supremacy granted to one house is apt to wound the sensibilities of other natives of the region, who console themselves by adding up the cost it involves, and by which they profit. If it so happens that there is no fortune large enough to keep open house in this way, the ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... allowed to see it," said Father Payne. "But it wasn't arranged for the benefit of a silly old man like me. That is the worst of our religious theories—that we believe that God is for ever making personal appeals to us. It is that sort of self-importance ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... be of benefit, and its effect must be to belittle and contract the mind. But this is not the most serious objection to the publication of these worthless details. It cultivates self-consciousness in the community, and love of notoriety; it develops vanity and self-importance, and elevates the trivial in life above ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... porter. Jerry's usual manner had taken on an element of self-importance, resulting in what one might describe as a sort of condescending obsequiousness. Though still a porter, he was also a hero, and ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... long time, talking about various things; for the presence of the girl, reminding him of his young wife, brought out the best of the man, lying yet alive under the incrustation of self-importance, and its inevitable stupidity. At length, subject of further ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... light from the bull's-eye discovered a canvas bag squatting humbly in the secret compartment: a fat little canvas bag, considerably soiled from much handling, such as is used by banks for coin, a sturdy, matter-of-fact, every-day sort of canvas bag, with nothing about it of hauteur, no air of self-importance or ostentation, to betray the fact that it was the receptacle of ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... duties of righteousness, the consequence that results is that the desecrations committed by them soon become current among men. Pride, anger, arrogance, insensibility, paroxysms of joy and sorrow, and self-importance, all these, O descendant of Kuru, are to be seen in persons swayed by covetousness. Know that they who are always under the influence of covetousness are wicked. I shall now tell thee of those about whom ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... father left me with a great desire to know more of these Wynnes, and with a certain share of that pride of race, which, to my surprise, as I think it over now, was at that time in my father's esteem a possession of value. I am bound to add that I also felt some self-importance at being intrusted with this secret, for ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... pushed open, without a sound, and Alicia, in all the bursting charm of her youthfulness and the delicious naivete of her self-importance, stood in the doorway. She made no gesture; she just looked at Edwin with a peculiar ominous and excited glance, and Edwin rose quickly and left the room. Auntie Hamps had ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the greatest gravity, and evidently with an overwhelming sense of self-importance, to put the required questions, whilst we ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... seem to have given rather a priggish picture of Arthur, it is a totally erroneous one. He was far too casual and too retiring to be that; he had no appearance of self-importance, though an invincible reserve of self-respect. The prig wears chain armor outside, and runs at you with his lance when he catches a glimpse of you. Arthur wore his chain armor under his shirt, and it was not till you closed ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the reader to understand why it is that a man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by. The Alps and the glaciers together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only remain within the influence of their sublime presence long enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the expectant, but hope deferred; the bitterness depicted in waiting delegations on a mission of opposition bent; the gleam of gladness on success; homage to the influential—all these figure, strut or bemoan in the ratio of a self-importance or a dejected mien. There is no more humorous reading, or more typical, than the ups and downs of office-seekers. Sometimes it is that of William the "Innocent," and often that of William the "Croker." The trials of "an unsuccessful," a prototype of "Orpheus C. Kerr," the nom de plume of that prince ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Penguin ladies give themselves does not go so far back as that," answered M. Boutourle. "It dates from the day when the holy apostle gave them clothes. But this self-importance was long kept in restraint, and displayed itself fully only with increased luxury of dress and in a small section of society. For go only two leagues from Alca into the country at harvest time, and you will see whether women are over-precise ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... gets from the two sources of human happiness already discussed: and conversely, it is astonishing how infallibly a man will be annoyed, and in some cases deeply pained, by any wrong done to his feeling of self-importance, whatever be the nature, degree, or circumstances of the injury, or by any depreciation, slight, ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer |
