"Self-important" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yet I cannot help thinking that I have done the French almost as much damage as Mr. Dennis himself." At another time, when Dennis was visiting at a gentleman's house on the Sussex coast, and was walking on the beach, he saw a vessel, as he imagined, sailing towards him. The self-important timidity of Dennis saw in this incident a reason for the greatest alarm for himself, and distrust of his friend. Supposing he was betrayed, he made the best of his way to London, without even taking leave of his host, whom he believed ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... is too much like our own for that; something provincial lingering about it, although they have an emperor of their own. We cannot do without the other hemisphere yet, in spite of our self-important airs. We Yankees have coaxed Time out of a great deal, but he is not to be cheated for all that. People were not busy for thousands of years in the Old World, merely to qualify them for discovering America, whatever some of our patriots may say ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... propose at all,' he replied. 'When we really want to go for something better, we shall smash the old. Until then, any sort of proposal, or making proposals, is no more than a tiresome game for self-important people.' ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... tears; and a bevy of bride's-maids, so beautiful and sweet that it seemed quite preposterous to suppose that they could remain another day in the estate of spinsterhood. Mr Joseph Dowler was also there, self-important as ever, and ready for action at a moment's notice; besides a number of friends of the bride and bridegroom, among whom was a pert young gentleman, friend of Mr Dowler, and a Mr Crashington, friend ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... DEFINITIONS:—Swells, self-important personages. Guard, conductor. Legacy, something left by will. Boot, a place for baggage at either end of a stagecoach. Dip, slope. Dowager, ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... head of the rank and file, but it grew to a crushing beam for the officer who did not with alacrity habitually attend to his every duty, great or small. The do-nothing, the popinjay, the intractable, the self-important, the remonstrant, the I thought, sir—the It is due to my dignity, sir—none of these flourished in the Army of the Valley. The tendencies had been there, of course; they came up like the flowers of spring, but each poor bloom as it appeared met an icy blast. The root beneath learned ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... the front of the picture with his portliness and his long brown beard, whilst the faces of his family are arranged in two groups for the background. I think he is angry at our intrusion. He is very republican and self-important. But we eclipse him easily, with the aid of a large black velvet hat, and black furs, ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... ago I read an anecdote in Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. A frivolous little self-important captain of a coasting-sloop in the dried-apple and kitchen-furniture trade was always hailing every vessel that came in sight, just to hear himself talk and air his small grandeurs. One day a majestic Indiaman came ploughing by, with course on course of canvas towering into the sky, her decks ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... of the Commonwealth without any apparent reason. He used to call Chief Justice Chapman, one of the worthiest and kindest of men, Chief Justice Wheelgrease. He had a controversy in his paper of long standing with a man named Piper, a pompous and self-important little personage, who edited the Fitchburg Reveille. That was a Whig paper which circulated in the country towns where Robinson's paper was chiefly taken. He made poor Piper's life unhappy. One of the issues of his paper contained a life of Piper. It begun by saying that Piper ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... meditation reached this point, the inclination to go on grew strong and prevailed. He didn't want to give Godfrey that pleasure: he preferred that Master Godfrey should be vexed. Moreover, Dunstan enjoyed the self-important consciousness of having a horse to sell, and the opportunity of driving a bargain, swaggering, and possibly taking somebody in. He might have all the satisfaction attendant on selling his brother's horse, and not the less have the further satisfaction of setting Godfrey to ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... 'the Author and I,'—'the Editor and me,'—has sacrificed all his pretensions to friendship, honour, and humanity."[239] An anecdote in this pamphlet assigns a sufficient motive to excite some wrath in a much less irritable animal than the self-important editor of Bolingbroke's Works. The anecdote ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Minna, who in their own house had been less ill, had waited on both, and supplied the endless deficiencies of the kindly and faithful, but two-fisted Katty; Minna, whose wise and simple little head had never failed in sensible counsels, or tender comfort; Minna, whom the rudest and most self-important far-wester never disobliged, Minna, the peace-maker, the comfort and blessing—was laid low by fever, and fever that, as the experienced eyes of Cousin Deborah at once perceived, 'meant mischief.' Then it ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not like one of you bread-and-butter girls, though she is not much older than you. A man finds a girl like that worth talking to," said the young clergyman, holding himself erect. Certainly Reginald had not improved; he had grown ever so much more self-important since he got a ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... side with a refusal of his proposals, Mr. Elton returned to Highbury with his bride. Miss Augusta Hawkins—to give Mrs. Elton her maiden name—was the younger of the two daughters of a Bristol tradesman, and was credited with having ten thousand pounds of her own. A self-important, presuming, familiar, ignorant, and ill-bred woman, with a little beauty and a little accomplishment, who was always expatiating on the charms of Mr. Suckling's—her brother-in-law's—place, Maple Grove, she soon excited disgust in Emma, who ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... Hurstwood was exceedingly interesting in his affection for her. Troubled as he was, he never exposed his difficulties to her. He carried himself with the same self-important air, took his new state with easy familiarity, and rejoiced in Carrie's proclivities and successes. Each evening he arrived promptly to dinner, and found the little dining-room a most inviting spectacle. In a way, the smallness ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... two wives, ever since Phoebe's arrival, had been in a state of heavy despondency, caused, as it afterwards appeared, by her inability to lay an egg. One day, however, by her self-important gait, the sideways turn of her head, and the cock of her eye, as she pried into one and another nook of the garden,—croaking to herself, all the while, with inexpressible complacency,—it was made evident that this identical hen, much ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... surprised that M. de Cymier should have asked for the part of the husband, a local magistrate, stiff and self-important, whom everybody laughed at. Jacqueline alone knew why he had chosen it: it would give him the opportunity of giving her two kisses. Of course those kisses were to be reserved for the representation, but whether intentionally or otherwise, the young husband ventured ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... and sounds of a hen looking about for a place to deposit her egg; her self-important gait; the sideway turn of her head and cock of her eye, as she pries into one and another nook, croaking all the while,—evidently with the idea that the egg in question is the most important thing that has been brought to pass since the world began. A speckled black and white and tufted ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... chargin' up to a stranger that way in the bad lands! One of these days he's a-goin' to run up again' an abrupt foreshortin' of his reckless young career." The rider was close now and the Texan recognized a self-important young jackass who had found work with ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... when asked if they were not rather too self-important, bent his head quickly downward, and replied that he couldn't see the point, which was exceedingly brassy for ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... maundered out to the Campo Santo that last day, and on the road back, just after passing through the walls, an Englishman who had lost himself asked the way to the market-place. He was a little bit of a self-important chap, with a gruff, coarse voice, and schoolmaster written in large letters all over him. He knew no word of Italian, and was evidently feeling lonely to a degree; and so, as I had no objection to chatting with a countryman, we paced off together and dropped into conversation. He was "doing" ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... was brusque and too self-important for a man of such insignificant appearance, Coroner Talbot referred him to Mr. Fenton, who immediately proceeded to give him the result of such investigations as he and his men had been able to make; which done, Mr. Knapp put ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... beginnings, and belonging to a family more remarkable for eccentricity than for any solid merit, he had built up a good practice; he had made money and put it by; he enjoyed a good name for financial probity. But he was held to be a vain, fussy, self-important, peacocky fellow; very self-centered also and (as Beaumaroy had indicated) impatient of the family and social obligations which most men recognize, even though often unwillingly. As the years gathered upon his head, these characteristics were intensified. On the occasion of some ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... tables. The Two-Times table was nearest to her, being placed just to the left of the dimple-holder; and they increased regularly in size up to the Twelve-Times table, at which the officers were sitting. The whole crowd of invaders were disgustingly haughty and self-important—worse even than the Strained Relations, Sara thought; but the officers were the worst of all. From the Least Common Multiple up to the Greatest Common Divisor, from the thin, poker-like Quotient with the fierce white moustache to the enormous, puffy Multiplicand, Sara thought they were the most ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... in terms of human life and the silly blundering conditions of this splendid glorious earth.... Here was Vera Michailovna and her husband, Nina and Boris Grogoff, Bohun and Lawrence, myself and Semyonov—a jumbled lot—with all our pitiful self-important little histories, our crimes and virtues so insignificant and so quickly over, and behind them the fine stuff of the human and divine soul, pushing on through all raillery and incongruity to its goal. Why, I ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... the brain, but rushes up with the red blood from the heart. It makes me proud and sometimes it makes me humble, too. Many and many a year ago I gathered an incident from Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. It was like this: There was a presumptuous little self-important skipper in a coasting sloop engaged in the dried-apple and kitchen-furniture trade, and he was always hailing every ship that came in sight. He did it just to hear himself talk and to air his small grandeur. One ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... gentleman, in tortoise-shell spectacles, whose dignified appearance announced the judge; and round a long green-baized table below, something like a billiard-table without the cushions and pockets, were a number of very self-important-looking personages, in stiff neckcloths, and black gowns with white fur collars, whom we at once set down as proctors. At the lower end of the billiard-table was an individual in an arm-chair, and a wig, whom we afterwards discovered ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Mr. M'Leod came to settle accounts with me, I, with an air of self-important capability, as if I had been all my life used to look into my own affairs, sat down to inspect the papers; and, incredible as it may appear, I went through the whole at a sitting, without a single yawn; and, for a man who never before ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... tiny bird, A shining speck at sleepy dawn, Forgets the ant-hill so absurd, This self-important Buffalo. Descending twenty miles away He bathes his wings at break of day— ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... But, of course—it is very natural—they think that rather self-important and silly. I am thought very silly here, Rachel. And James does not mind being interrupted in writing his sermons. And the Pratts have got the habit of ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... circumspection as a magistrate has in some degree suffered. I only hint this: I will join in any step you, Sir Robert, think most advisable.' But Mr. Glossin was well aware that such a hint was of power sufficient to decide the motions of his self-important but not self-relying colleague. So that Sir Robert Hazlewood summed up the business in the following speech, which proceeded partly upon the supposition of the prisoner being really a gentleman, and partly upon the opposite belief that he was ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... by questioning the self-important foreman, that the first verdict had been an open one. The demand for Miss Cooper's testimony had been prompted by the "diversion"—I am using his own word—she had occasioned when she left the room, and afterward threw the proceedings into wild disorder by her scream. The interrupted ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... Frogs abound in this grass, and crickets come out of holes in the ground, and make a terrible whistling at night. For some time no adjutants appeared in this tank square to feast on the rich supply of frogs; but at last one day an adjutant was seen walking down the grass. With self-important step and craning his long neck forward, he came slowly on, hurrying a little when some frightened frog foolishly made a hop out of his way. At last he reached a gate leading into one of the private compounds, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... of the Household; M. le Duc had inherited him with the estate and kept him in his place for old time's sake. He was old, fussy, and self-important, and ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... the poorhouse, was a pompous, self-important bully who browbeat every one weaker than himself and scolded and cuffed the paupers to his heart's content. It was he who named the baby "Oliver Twist." He used to name all the babies as they came ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... that's pretty good! Ha! Ha!" laughed the self-important man. "Why, I was thinking of making a complaint against you for crossing my course that way. If I find my boat is damaged I shall certainly do so anyhow. Have we suffered any damage, Snuffin?" and he looked back at a grimy-faced mechinician who was oiling the ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... beckoned to him among the colonnades of the Alhambra; the same figure had mistily revealed itself through the ascending steam of the Great Geyser. At every effort of his memory he recognized some trait of the dreamy messenger of destiny in this pompous, bustling, self-important, little-great man of the village. Amid such musings Ralph Cranfield sat all day in the cottage, scarcely hearing and vaguely answering his mother's thousand questions about his travels and adventures. At sunset ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was no one else about the place who could cover the ground as quickly. But if he went, he must leave the sufferer to the tender mercies of Raffles and the housekeeper—a prospect at which Mr Armstrong shuddered; especially when the latter self-important functionary entered, talking at large, and proposing half a dozen contradictory specifics in the short passage from ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... A proud, self-important woman would have taken offence at the lack of hospitality and consideration shown her in the failure of the mistress of the house to be present with a welcome on her arrival, but such was not Elsie's character. She had but a humble opinion of her own importance and her own deserts, ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley |
