"Conceit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... say: "At any rate, we might moderate somewhat the splendour of our ideal and the audacity of our self-conceit, so that there should be a less grotesque disparity between the aim and the achievement. Surely such moderation would be more in accord with common sense! Surely it would lessen the spiritual fatigue and disappointment caused by sterile endeavour!" It would. But just try to moderate ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... she means to be, but when she wants to deprive you of good times with other girls, or is jealous of your friendship for them, she is encouraging conceit and selfishness. I'm glad you asked me about the way I feel toward Agnes, for it makes me see that I am by no means the true friend I ought to be. If I loved her as I should, I'd want her to have all the good ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... the room where Yeager was detained. His greedy little eyes sparkled; his face exuded malice and self-conceit. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... in the King, must have made her the happiest that ever was, if relying less on her Merit, or warned by a recent Experience, she had guarded against some of her own Sex, whom she must think envied her Elevation, and watch'd her Ruin; but as an illusory Conceit that a Passion which had subsisted for many Years, would never be extinguished, brought her into the very Misfortune from which Leutinemil's ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... irreverent remarks of Bob Ingersoll have fallen harmlessly upon the minds of our people. The flippant sneers and wicked sarcasms of the modern infidel, wise in his own conceit, have alike passed over our heads without damage or disaster. These times that have tried men's souls have only rooted us more firmly in the faith, and united us more closely as ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... particular order, and are given to a poet with a subject, on which he must write verses ending in the same rhymes, disposed in the same order. Menage gives the following account of the origin of this ridiculous conceit. Dulot, (a poet of the 17th century,) was one day complaining in a large company, that 300 sonnets had been stolen from him. One of the company expressing his astonishment at the number, "Oh," said he, "they are blank sonnets, or rhymes (bouts ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... please,' he answered, shrugging his shoulders, and assuming in a breath a mask of humility which sat as ill on his monstrous conceit as ever nun's veil on a trooper. 'Yet it may even be I; by the favour of the Holy Catholic Church, whose humble ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... sold in Paule's church-yard, at the signe of the Holy Ghost, 1608," 12mo. he thus concludes his address to the studious and well affected reader:—"And thus, gentle Reader, hauing acquainted thee with my long, costly, and laborious Collections, not written at adventure, or by an imaginary conceit in a Scholler's priuate Studie, but wrung out of the earth, by the painfull hand of experience: and hauing also giuen thee a touch of Nature, whom no man as yet euer durst send naked into the worlde without her veyle; and expecting, by thy good entertainement of ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... proposition some day if we can chain down some of his conceit. Only, where such friendships with him and Bleema comes in, I don't ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... conceit, while he took her hand as he spoke, and admired the ring. The white, warm hand ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... you speak, Alison," she said, "one would think that you were somebody of consequence to Mr. Hardy. Oh, dear—oh, dear, the conceit of some folks! Do you suppose it would make any difference to him whether you came or not? But take my word for it, I won't ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... One may be courageous to handle both the traditions and the novelties of men, and yet be modest before the solemn mysteries of fate and nature. He may place no veil before his eyes and no finger on his lips in presence of popular dogmas, and yet shrink from the conceit of esteeming his mind a mirror of the universe. Ideas, like coins, bear the stamp of the age and brain they were struck in. Many a phantom which ought to have vanished at the first cock crowing of reason still holds its seat on the oppressed heart ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... any of his measures, any farther than La Salle might deem it expedient to consult him or any other of his subordinates. With views so different, a speedy quarrel was inevitable. Beaujeu is represented as a man full of conceit, of narrow mind, and very irritable. La Salle was reserved, self-reliant, keeping his own counsel. Scarcely had the two men met, before they found themselves in antagonism. Before the vessels sailed, Beaujeu wrote to the king's minister ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... "For fiddlesticks! For conceit and vanity and vainglory. Go away! My head is fit to split. Natalina, why haven't you given me my smelling salts? And why will you ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... mistaken at the first glance for either. Indeed it would have been difficult, on a much closer acquaintance, to describe it in any more satisfactory terms than as a mixed expression of vulgar cunning and conceit. This gentleman wore a rather broad-brimmed hat for the greater wisdom of his appearance; and had his arms folded for the greater impressiveness of his attitude. He was somewhat shabbily dressed in a blue surtout reaching nearly to his ankles, short loose trousers of the same colour, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... people, if they had been on the lookout for a King, might have gone farther and fared worse,—but the four Georges had somehow got them out of conceit with the word "King," and William, the Sailor, had not quite reconciled them to it;—then they were jealous of foreigners, and last, but not least, there were apprehensions that the larger title would necessitate a larger ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... "scholars" and scholiasts—native Sanskritists and archeologists are often spoken of as "Calcutta" and "Indian sciolists"—affords no proof of their real inferiority, but rather of the wisdom of the Chinese proverb that "self-conceit ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... even death, to one or more of his victims. To save them from such a fate, he talked of suicide. All this was highly romantic, fearfully melodramatic, and even mysteriously tragic. But, unfortunately for Jack's self-conceit, the event did not coincide with these highly-colored views. The ladies refused to break their hearts. Those organs, however susceptible and tender they may have been, beat bravely on. Number Three viewed him with indifference. Miss Phillips coolly and contemptuously ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... bear-garden, which you set yourselves to climb, and slide down again with "shrieks of delight." When you are past shrieking, having no human articulate voice to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude of their valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with cutaneous eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive hiccough of self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two sorrowfullest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, taking the deep inner significance of them, are the English mobs in the valley of Chamouni, amusing themselves ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... going West to reduce the aboriginal population; I hope we shall have no trouble with the red men. When we get among the people who have always lived there, such a title will make us ridiculous, for it smacks of conceit; it ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... to be havin', though 'tis fine to see a man like yourself hasn't too much conceit of his clothes. But now have ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... and smooth this morning; There's some conceit or other likes him well When that he bids good morrow with such spirit. I think there's ne'er a man in Christendom Can lesser hide his love or hate than he; For by his face straight shall you ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... to use before. He began to drop opinions and information to Kent in a superior sort of way. On the fourth day word came that Doctor Cardigan would not return for another forty-eight hours, and with unblushing conceit Mercer intimated that when he did return he would find big changes. Then it was that in the stupidity of his ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... that I learned out of the King's last proclamation, the most prudent and best applied remedy for this offense, if it shall please his Majesty to use it, that the wit of man can devise. This offense, my lords, is grounded upon a false conceit of honor; and therefore it would be punished in the same kind, in eo quis rectissime plectitur, in quo peccat. The fountain of honor is the King and his aspect, and the access to his person continueth honor in life, and to be banished from his presence is one of the greatest eclipses ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... metal. It is plain the writer has outgrown his old self, yet not made acquaintance with the new. This letter from a busy youth of three-and-twenty, breathes of seventeen: the sickening alternations of conceit and shame, the expense of hope in vacuo, the lack of friends, the longing after love; the whole world of egoism under which youth stands ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an agreeable girl whose great failing was her self-conceit. She was sure she could do everything anybody could do. As she did not look down on other people's efforts, she was amusing rather than annoying. She was always ready to write a poem, or sing a song, ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... such eyes. Don't tell ME! A man who has been about town since the reign of George IV., ought he not to know better than you young lads who have seen nothing? The deterioration of women is lamentable; and the conceit of the young fellows more lamentable still, that they won't see this fact, but persist in thinking their time ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... visible on the snow. St. Thomas Becket, they say, was sometime a cure priest at Winter-bourn, and did use to goe along this path up to a chapell in Clarendon Parke, to say masse, and very likely 'tis true: but I have a conceit that this path is caused by a warme subterraneous steame from a long crack in the earth, which may cause snow to dissolve sooner there than elsewhere: and consequently gives the dissolving snow a darker colour, just as wee see the difference of ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... jewellery; she has no weakness for tinsel. What she wears is good of its kind, even when it is not costly. Wherever she goes, she impresses everyone with the fact that she is a true gentlewoman. She knows what is suited to her station and age, and, without conceit, understands what are her "points." She is well aware that no woman can afford to be indifferent to her personal appearance, and that no law, human or divine, requires her to disfigure herself. A married woman has to bear in mind that she must dress not only to please her husband, but ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... future retribution as the vindication of present impunity. For though, indeed, to the right-minded that doctrine was true, and of sufficient solace, yet with the perverse the polemic mention of it might but provoke the shallow, though mischievous conceit, that such a doctrine was but tantamount to the one which should affirm that Providence was not now, but was going to be. In short, with all sorts of cavilers, it was best, both for them and everybody, that whoever had the true light should stick behind the secure ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... scrapes, once, as has been shown, kept from suicide by a mere accident, and was now reduced to the alternative of beggary or of marrying for a living. None of these circumstances, which would have taken the conceit out of most men, at all impaired his opinion of his talent and sharpness. Replying to my observation merely by a slight shrug and smile of pity for the man who thus misappreciated his foresight, he again produced his pocket-book, and extracted from its innermost recesses a fragment ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... turned a look of indifference on the shrimp beside her. Had he possessed the soul of a real man, he would have shriveled; but, being oblivious to all things save the pride of wealth and monstrous self-conceit, he merely snickered and reached for his cocktail—which, by the way, he was absorbing ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... ask the reason of our dissensions of today, in a difference of interests, because such difference does not exist, but try to find it in the arrogance and the conceit of the two nations. We do not recognize you as a nation. But this recognition must be made with the understanding ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... said Mark, and he gave his cousin a meaning look, which was returned, the latter saying to himself, "It takes some of the conceit out of ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... the further enhancement of his social reputation. He returned in two years with a fashionable figure, a most recherche style of dress, moustachios of the most approved cut, and whiskers of faultless curl—a finished gentleman in his own conceit. With such attractions, the prestige which he derived from his reported travels and long residence abroad, and the savoir faire of one who had made the conventional arrangements of society his study, he quickly arose to the summit of his wishes, to the point which it had been his life's ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... XI "To a Master of Arts who said that a Certain Distinguished Painter was Half-educated," was a useful antidote to youthful self-conceit. I had not reached the stage, treated in the chapters on "Women and Marriage," "To a Young Gentleman Who Contemplated Marriage," but I thought the author very wise indeed, and found many other pages which were intensely stimulating. ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... boys liked him for his bright and gentle yet very firm ways; the parents, for getting their children on, and helping them to be steady; and the clergyman, for being so perfectly to be trusted, so anxious to do right, and, while efficient and well informed, perfectly humble and free from conceit. Now he has just got an appointment to Hazleford school, in another diocese, with a salary of fifty pounds a year; but, as Charles Hayward would tell you, 'he hasn't got one bit of pride, no more than when he lived up in ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... connexion betwixt cause and effect, makes us here infer a dependence of every quality on the unknown substance. The custom of imagining a dependence has the same effect as the custom of observing it would have. This conceit, however, is no more reasonable than any of the foregoing. Every quality being a distinct thing from another, may be conceived to exist apart, and may exist apart, not only from every other quality, but from that unintelligible chimera ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... British are not in manner a winning people. Their self-conceit is the principal reason. They have solid and excellent qualities, but their self-complacency is exorbitant and unparalleled. The majority are not content with esteeming Marlborough and Wellington the greatest Generals and Nelson the first Admiral the world ever ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... it is not always detected. Great genius and force of character undoubtedly make their own career. But because Walter Scott was dull at school, is a parent to see with joy that his son is a dunce? Because Lord Chatham was of a towering conceit, must we infer that pompous vanity portends a comprehensive statesmanship that will fill the world with the splendor of its triumphs? Because Sir Robert Walpole gambled and swore and boozed at Houghton, are we to suppose that gross sensuality ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... is a memorial of his own life; a relic suggesting an earlier opulence. He is big-framed, but his flesh is shrunken, as though the wind of conceit were oozing out of him day by day. His cheeks and stomach hang flabbily. His blond mustache is getting thin and discloses his full, sensual lips. His hands are thick and soft, always stained with nicotine. He lives in constant terror of his wife, and all the pockets ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... have this peculiar mark on their breasts. Never, from that time to this, has any ostrich been able to fly. But even this has not entirely subdued their pride and arrogance, and their insufferable conceit. ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... to a slowly gnawing torture, for any train might bring over an army man to administer the oaths of allegiance, and there would then be no escape. But as weeks passed and nothing happened he began to breathe more hopefully. The depression, born of fear, was wearing off, while the self-satisfied conceit slunk back into its former place. It would have been safe to say that Jeb was close ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... if I ever do. We new people are only in demand when there is a vote to be taken. We are put on minor committees, and are thankful for any crumbs that fall from the great man's table. I am a very small spar in the ship of state. It takes all the conceit out of a fellow when he finds how little he amounts to in Washington. He leaves his own part of the world a giant, puffed up with pride and importance; but the shrinking process begins as soon as the train rolls out of the home depot. It comes on like ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... lives in the struggle to acquire or maintain a position can appreciate this social luxury. The sea exercises a delightful influence over the character—its perils induce self-reliance and fearlessness, which are redeemed from conceit by a child-like simplicity arising naturally from the contemplation of an element menacing, invincible, and symbolical of eternity. Then, too, the legends of the sea invest the mind with a sensitive, poetic passion as delightful as it is unworldly, as reverent as it is credulous. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... temper grows up into youth in a dream of love. The lady of his mystic passion dies early. He dreams of her still, not as a wonder of earth, but as a saint in paradise, and relieves his heart in an autobiography, a strange and perplexing work of fiction—quaint and subtle enough for a metaphysical conceit; but, on the other hand, with far too much of genuine and deep feeling. It is a first essay; he closes it abruptly as if dissatisfied with his work, but with the resolution of raising at a future day a worthy monument to the memory of her ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in the country." Doubtless this charge of adopting and adapting the productions of others includes some dramas which have not been preserved, as the company to which Shakespeare was attached ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... must say," replied Mary Connynge, with indirection, "that I fancy the other far more, he being not so forward, nor so full of pure conceit. I like not a man so confident." This with an eye cast down, as much as though there were present in the room some man subject ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... a good conceit of himself from the conspicuous position achieved so unexpectedly, the morning papers did nothing to allay it. Most of them slurred over, as lightly as possible, the fact of his journalistic connection; as in the evening editions, the yacht feature was ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... beginning—displayed by the Whigs and by most of those with whom Burke had acted in politics, had an unfortunate effect on his temper. He broke off his friendship with Fox and others of his oldest associates and greatest admirers. He became hopeless and out of conceit with the world around him. One might have set down some of this at least to the effect of advancing years and declining health, if such onslaughts on revolutionary ideas as his 'Reflections on the French Revolution' and his 'Letters on a ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... on the Pool of Bethesda: "While I am coming, another steppeth down before me." The verse seems as if it were made on purpose for me; what a pity nobody else will understand it!' And he smiled quietly at the conceit, as he got the scented sheets of sermon-paper out of his little sandalwood davenport. For Arthur Berkeley was one of those curiously compounded natures which can hardly ever be perfectly serious, and which can enjoy a quaintness or a neat literary allusion ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... The over-weening conceit which the greater part of men have of their own abilities, is an ancient evil remarked by the philosophers and moralists of all ages. Their absurd presumption in their own good fortune has been less taken notice of. It is, however, if possible, still more universal. There is no ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... do a trick, to prove how clever they are. I believe that is the way ninety per cent of the boys and girls go wrong, and instead of teaching them the Bible, why not try reducing the size of their conceit and their disposition to boast. I just wonder how far wrong ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... change and exhilaration which hunting brings in its train. The whole countryside enjoys a wholesome tonic by the frequent visits of the hounds, and the well-equipped company with them. Nothing cheers up the village, or cures the influenza, or brings oblivion of war news, or puts every one into conceit with themselves, so quickly, or leaves such a glow of sound satisfaction behind it. It would be odd if it did not, considering the amount of time, money, and trouble spent before the pack trots up to the green before the old grey church at eleven on a February morning. ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... to the possibility of James having some of the self- conceit taken out of him; but then the squire's son interpreted the remark as a compliment. "Have you ever thought of going to college, Herbert?" asked Cameron, turning ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... This conceit struck popular fancy as plain argument could not have done, and the Republican party came to be called "Robbie Miller's Hoe "—an imperfect means of reaching a great end, and one that any one might use without becoming responsible for ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... not wish to see the great lighted yacht which illuminated the whole harbour. It had not occurred to her that she ought to say, "Don't trouble to come with me. I shall do very well alone." She took it for granted not only that he would come, but that he would be glad to come; and there was no conceit in this tacit assumption. It was borne in upon her mind from his, as if ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... onerous offices; they may operate upon the people to whom they relate; but no province can confer provincial privileges on itself. They may have a right to all which the king has given them; but it is a conceit of the other hemisphere, that men have a right to all which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... cake of delicious-looking soap on its sliding rack across the bath. He looked as a man in a fairy-story might look. It was as if an enchanted palace, with the princess just round the corner, had been offered him. Smiling at the conceit, he turned to the man. "I didn't notice the telephone," he said; "I suppose it ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... jargon and conceit, With tongue as prompt to lie as The veriest mountebank and cheat, Steps forth the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... to an enormous and original simplicity. Nothing has been worse than the modern notion that a clever man can make a joke without taking part in it; without sharing in the general absurdity that such a situation creates. It is unpardonable conceit not to laugh at your own jokes. Joking is undignified; that is why it is so good for one's soul. Do not fancy you can be a detached wit and avoid being a buffoon; you cannot. If you are the Court Jester you must be the ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... the history. In A Woman is a Weathercock, III, iii, printed in 1612, but written earlier, one of the actors exclaims of an insufferable pun: "O Newington Conceit!" The fact that this sneer is the only reference to the Newington Playhouse found in contemporary literature is a commentary on the low esteem in which the building was held by the Elizabethans, and its relative unimportance for the ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... dominion of this dogma, education was absolutely forbidden him. It became a crime even to attempt to educate this tertium quid which was regarded as little more than brute and little less than human. The white race, in its arrogant conceit, constituted the personalities and the Negro the instrumentalities. Man may be defined as a distinction-making animal. He is ever prone to set up barriers between members of his own species and to deny one part of God's human creatures the inalienable ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... who God is, and who man is. Thou lovest God? Then, if thou lovest Him, thou must needs love all that He has made. And what has He made? All things, except sin; and what sin is He has told thee. He has given thee ten commandments, and let no man give thee an eleventh commandment out of his own conceit and will worship; calling unclean what God hath made clean, and cursing what God hath blessed. Thou lovest God? Then thou lovest all that is good; for God is good, and from Him all good things come. But what is good? All is good except sin; for it is written, "God saw every thing ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... old? Ah woful Ere, Which tells me, Youth's no longer here! O Youth! for years so many and sweet 'Tis known, that Thou and I were one, I'll think it but a fond conceit— It cannot be, that Thou art gone! Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd:— And thou wert aye a masker bold! What strange disguise hast now put on, To make believe, that Thou art gone? I see these locks in silvery slips, This drooping gait, this altered size: But springtide ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... addition to the sum of 100 ducats already promised him as further recognition of his valor, he should receive a house with good will attached; that is, a shop in some growing business section. "His petitions to the municipal council", writes M. Bermann[66], "are amazing examples of measureless self-conceit and the boldest greed. He seemed determined to get the utmost out of his own self-sacrifice. He insisted upon the most highly deserved reward, such as the Romans bestowed upon their Curtius, the Lacedaemonians upon their Pompilius, the Athenians upon ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" "I shall like no laughing," said Feeble-mind; "I shall like no gay attire; I shall like no unprofitable questions." I think it took some self-conceit to refuse to sit at table beside Christiana because of her gay attire. And I hope Mercy did not give up dressing well, even after she was married, to please that weak-minded old churl. And as to unprofitable questions—we are all tempted to think that question unprofitable ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... seemed to be filled with great thoughts which would make him famous. Over and over again he said to himself: "The rain pours and the people down below chuckle as they move about each under his little umbrella of self-conceit. They look up to the mountain, saying, 'The fool! Why looks he so high? He is lost in the mists up there, and he might be safe and dry with us.' But the mountain has over him the arch of the universe, and sleeps calmly in the sun of truth. Little recks he of ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... woman had to stop here for a moment to chuckle at her own conceit, but her poor son did not respond. He had got far beyond the point where a perception ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... answer for the silent operations that take place in other men's minds, but in my own, even under the greatest misfortunes a droll conceit will more rally my crushed spirits than all the moral consolations ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... thirty-five years ago. Combined with this goes the fact that though I know the days of my stay on earth are greatly reduced, I seem to be less rather than more anxious about "the morrow." For though time has rounded off the corners of my conceit, experience of God's dealing with such an unworthy midget as myself has so strengthened the foundations on which faith stood, that Christ now means more to me as a living Presence than when I laid more emphasis on ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... time. Something like this must be the explanation; and I confess to you, Padre, that the failure of the prince to keep our tryst was the biggest disappointment and the sharpest humiliation of my life. It took most of the conceit out of me, and since then I've never been vain of my alleged "looks" or "charm" for more than two minutes on end. I've invariably said to myself, "Remember Jim Wyndham, and how he didn't think you worth the bother ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... genesis of a generalization that gives the less critical sort of women a great deal of needless uneasiness and vastly augments the natural conceit of men. Some pornographic old fellow, in the discharge, of his duties as director of an anti-vice society, puts in an evening ploughing through such books as "The Memoirs of Fanny Hill," Casanova's Confessions, the Cena Trimalchionis of Gaius Petronius, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... of conventional dignity and smooth decorum may think to despatch Fuller's claims by denominating him a quaint writer. This would be what is vulgarly called a snap-judgment indeed. His quaintness never runs into superficial conceit, but embodies always a deep and comprehensive wisdom. He insinuates truth with a friendly indirectness, and banters us out of our folly with a foreign instance. Plutarch or Montaigne is not more happy in historical parallels, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... but—Resolution number two—I, Una Sackville, solemnly vow to speak the plain truth about my own feelings in this book, and not cover them up with a cloak of fine words—I think there's a big sprinkling of conceit in my feelings. I do like being the Squire's daughter, and having people stare at me as I go through the town, and rush about to attend to me when I enter a shop. Ours is only a little bit of a ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... when I am stretched beneath the pines, Where the evening star so holy shines, I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, At the sophist schools, and the learned clan; For what are they all, in their high conceit, When man in the ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... the Devil's Ware-house, he has two constant Warehouse-keepers, Pride and Conceit, and these are always at the Door, showing their Wares, and exposing the pretended Vertues and Accomplishments of the Man, by way ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... gentleman, devoted to husbandry, and deep in platforms of hop gardens,[14]—a baronet, whose name for upwards of a century has been used as a synonyme for incurable political bigotry,[15]—a little, crooked, and now forgotten man, who died, as his biographer tells us, "distracted, occasioned by a deep conceit of his own parts, and by a continual bibbing of strong and high tasted liquors,"[16]—and last, but not least assuredly, of one who was by turns a fanatical preacher and an obscure practitioner of physic, and who passed his old age at Clitheroe in Lancashire in attempting to transmute ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... good motive," he said, "and I don't know that I ought to increase any boy's stock of conceit. It is usually quite big enough. But maybe you won't catch anything, and I'll ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... from my reverie with a laugh at Thorndyke's quaint conceit and a glance at the grotesquely distorted reflection of my face in the ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... on the voyage. For my own part, I enjoyed the stormy days, the howling winds and the infuriated waves dashing impotently over the steamer. They filled me with a sense of conflict and of amusement. It is always good to see man triumphing over the murderous forces of nature. It puts one in conceit ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... because it takes pleasure only in the element of ill-will and evil speech; he who indulges in this, soon becomes indifferent to God, contemptuous toward the world, and a hater of his fellows; but the true, genuine, indispensable feeling of self-respect is ruined in conceit and presumption." ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... here below, but the Elements themselves, and all the other Parts of the Universe, are compos'd of Salt, Sulphur and Mercury; yet the learned Sennertus, and all the more wary Chymists, have rejected that conceit, and do many of them confess, that the Tria Prima are each of them made up of the four Elements; and others of them make Earth and Water concur with Salt, Sulphur and Mercury, to the Constitution of ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... we shall be fighting the smaller and more dangerous, more elusive and more persistent moral troubles—HYPOCRISY, CONCEIT, UNCHARITABLENESS. These are the mosquitoes and flies of the world of immorality that will pursue us when the big fellows—murder and theft—shall have ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... nameless forgotten multitudes; and life lay before him rather as something definite, which he could take up and fashion to his own pleasure, than as a succession of days and years which would inevitably mould and influence him in their course. It is not wholly conceit, perhaps, which so assures these clever lads of the vastness of their untried capabilities, that there are moments when they feel as if they could grasp heaven and earth in their wide consciousness; it is rather a want of experience and clearness of perception. ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... passion at all, it is your WILL. It's your bullying will. You want to clutch things and have them in your power. You want to have things in your power. And why? Because you haven't got any real body, any dark sensual body of life. You have no sensuality. You have only your will and your conceit of consciousness, and your lust for power, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... to their prejudices, and little toys which they call gris, gris. It would be improper therefore to take them from them, or even speak of them to them; for they would believe themselves undone, if they were stripped of those trinkets. The old negroes soon make them lose conceit of them. ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... wonderful thing it is; and it shows how little I know of the wonders of nature, in spite of forty years' honest labour. I was just telling you that there could be no such creatures; and, behold! here is one come to confound my conceit and show me that Nature can do, and has done, beyond all that man's poor fancy can imagine. So, let us thank the Maker, and Inspirer, and Lord of Nature for all His wonderful and glorious works, and try ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... have pictured her. The smile lost itself in the shame with which the memory of her ignorance and prejudice filled her. How well Hadassah and her husband could afford to forget the narrow-mindedness and the conceit of ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... war were commemorated in songs which this Briton declared—and no doubt truthfully—to be "frothy, senseless bombast." But whatever limitations of culture were disclosed by this outburst of national conceit, no one could doubt for an instant that an exuberant vitality was coursing through the veins ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... so highly content them, that upon the Sunday next following the marriage was very worthily solemnised, and they lived and loved together very kindly. Thus the Divine bounty, out of the malignant enemy's secret machinations, can cause good effects to arise and succeed. For from this conceit of fearful imagination in her, not only happened this long-desired conversion of a maid so obstinately scornful and proud, but likewise all the women of Ravenna, being admonished by her example, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... replied his wife, "perfect! I never saw a house furnished with so much taste. I declare it has put me half out of conceit with things at home. Oh, dear! how common every thing ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... debauchery, a debauchery both secret and alarming, for they have all means at their disposal, and fix the morality of society. Their genuine stupidity lies hid beneath their specialism. They know their business, but are ignorant of everything which is outside it. So that to preserve their self-conceit they question everything, are crudely and crookedly critical. They appear to be sceptics and are in reality simpletons; they swamp their wits in interminable arguments. Almost all conveniently adopt social, literary, ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... you out of conceit with Castile, you are not likely to be put in again by Palencia; for a second-rate town in this kingdom is like a piece of the plain enclosed by a wall, and only emphasises the desolation at the expense of the freedom; ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... a long pause. The girls had been thrilled with the simple recital, so void of anything like conceit in the part that Denny himself had played in the ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... the thoughtful reader knows that he is unable to answer the arguments themselves. But really these silly sneers at woman's ability have lost their force, and are best met with a laugh at the stupendous 'male self-conceit' of the writer. I may add that such shafts are specially pointless against myself. A woman who thought her way out of Christianity and Whiggism into Freethought and Radicalism absolutely alone; who gave up every old friend, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... steadily diminishing. Other nations feel a universal distrust and dislike toward Germany. So great is this antipathy that the Germans imagine there is a malignant conspiracy against them. An upstart nation, suddenly wealthy and powerful, Germany has developed an inordinate self-conceit and self-assertion. The German glories in being a realist. He thinks only of political power and colonial expansion. Might is the supreme test of right. He constantly emphasizes the indelible character of the German race. Germans are suffering from "acute megalomania." They think the ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... that. It's curious how I feel about the English, Philip. They've got such a conceit that they irritate me terribly at times, yet I don't want to see them beaten by any other Europeans. ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the barber to me, 'this man simply raves, as you will have observed. Every baker and tailor knows more in his own conceit of bleeding than a barber of fifteen years' experience like myself. They are able to pass judgment as to the question of too much or too little without hesitation and with the utmost exactness. It is ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... resolv'd, sweet friends and followers! These lords perhaps do scorn our estimates, And think we prattle with distemper'd spirits: But, since they measure our deserts so mean, That in conceit [36] bear empires on our spears, Affecting thoughts coequal with the clouds, They shall be kept our forced followers Till with their eyes they view ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... self-conceit of human nature! Here was this ruffian proclaiming the limitations of Valmont, who half an hour before had shaken his hand within the innermost circle of his order! Yet my heart warmed towards the wretch who had remembered me ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... world of young men there was no greener or more simple Simon than I, Hugo Gottfried, as, playing a tune on the pipe of my own conceit, I marched up the High Street of Thorn to the entrance ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the long months of arduous training he had undergone himself before he had been considered sufficiently adept to be considered a finished flier, smiled at the conceit of the ignorant African who was already demanding that he be permitted to ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the article begins, "whose memoirs are now before us, appears to have possessed good abilities, and originally a good disposition, but, with an overweening conceit of herself, much obstinacy and self-will, and a disposition to run counter to established practices and opinions. Her conduct in the early part of her life was blameless, if not exemplary; but the latter part ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... Multiplicand, Sara thought they were the most pompous lot she had ever seen. However, since they were officers and units, she could imagine that they might have some excuse; but what possible excuse could there be for conceit in the Fractions, every one of whom had something missing about him? Some of them, of course, lacked only an ear or a little finger; but numbers of them had only one leg or one arm, and many of them were much worse off! Why, at ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... licentious [s]faining, and so put off as vaine fictions; yet seeing they deliuer nothing herein but that which was well knowne and vsuall in those times wherein they liued, they are not slightly, and vpon an imagined conceit, to be reiected: for they affirme no more then is manifest in the records of most approued Histories, whose essence is and must be [t]truth, [u]as straightnesse of a rule, or else deserue not that title. In which wee reade ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... people in and near Manchester, and they had also been excited to acts of desperation and violence, by some of those who professed to be their leaders. As for Johnson, the brush-maker, he was a composition of vanity, emptiness, and conceit, such as I never before saw concentrated in one person. It was the most ridiculous thing in the world to see him assuming the most pompous and lofty tone, while every one about him did not fail openly to express ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... coming, because I saw the pigeons were flying up from the valley below; and as dried venison won't do after a morning trip, why, I took the rifle to kill a beast out of my flock" The hunter grinned at his conceit. "You see," he continued, "this place of mine is a genuine spot for a hunter. Every morning, from my threshold, I can shoot a deer, a bear, or a turkey. I can't abide living in a country where an honest man must ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... his guest, and desired to know the nature of the particular business he had mentioned to his servant. 'This bond, sir,' said Satan, significantly. 'This bond? what of it, pray? It seems all right.' 'Is not that your signature?' 'I admit it.' 'Signed in your blood?' 'A conceit of your own; I told you at the time that ink was just as good in law.' 'It is past due, seven minutes and fourteen seconds.' 'So it is, I declare! but what of that?' 'I demand payment.' 'Nonsense! no one ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... badly-starched shirt-collar almost obscured his eyes. We shall never be able to claim any credit as a physiognomist again, for, after a careful scrutiny of this gentleman's countenance, we had come to the conclusion that it bespoke nothing but conceit and silliness, when our friend with the silver staff whispered in our ear that he was no other than a doctor of civil law, and heaven knows what besides. So of course we were mistaken, and he must ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... it is well if for no other purpose than to disarm the intolerance of the professional early riser who, were he in a state of perfect health, would not be the wandering victim of insomnia, and boast of it. There are few small things more exasperating than this early bird with the worm of his conceit in his bill. ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a man has come to understand what we have a right to mean by space, it does not imply a boundless conceit on his part to hazard the statement that space is infinite. When he has said this, he has said very little. What shall we say to the statement ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... not doubt there would be other foc'sles, and soon. Life ashore at the Knitting Swede's was not for me. Young fool, I was, with all the conceit of my years and inches. Yet I realized clearly enough I would only be happy with the feel of a deck beneath my feet, and the breath of open water in my nostrils. I was of the sea, and for the sea. And if anything were needed to make my decision ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... thus to refuse what the King wished to give me (for everything was done in the King's name), while so many of my equals in rank and dignity were running after these shares. I replied that such conduct would be that of a fool, the conduct of impertinence, rather than of conceit; that it was not mine, and that since he pressed me so much I would tell him my reasons. They were, that since the fable of Midas, I had nowhere read, still less seen, that anybody had the faculty of converting into gold all he touched; that ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... at this quaint conceit, and then rode on quickly. In a few minutes he stopped and listened again, but heard no noise save the loud breathing ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... spectacles one day when she and Susan walked together in the "crocodile" along a dull country lane. "A regular black, cringing slave—and what thanks do you get for it, I'd like to know? None! Not one little scrap. She's such a bat of self-conceit that she doesn't even know that she is helped. If you did a hundredth part as much for other people they'd go ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... as gallant as before; none but Grace observed the faint change in his manner. She was sure she could distinguish a change, yet at times, when he was gayest, she thrilled with the hope that her belief was the outgrowth of a conceit which she was beginning for the first time to know she possessed. Then came the belief again and the belief was stronger than the doubt. She could ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... the soutar's door: he saw it open and Maggie appear. For a moment he flattered himself she was coming to look for him, in order to tell him how sorry she was for her late behaviour to him. But her start when first she became aware of his presence, did not fail, notwithstanding his conceit, to satisfy him that such was not her intent. He made haste ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... coxcombs might fine-draw over a brace of small octavos. As it stands, the story is gracefully, yet energetically told, and is entitled to the place it occupies. The author of Pelham (vide the newspapers) has a pleasant conceit in the shape of a whole-length of fashion, which, being the best and shortest in its line that we have met with, will serve ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 340, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... looking fine. You always were a handsome youngster but you're—you're improving, young man. I'm blessed if you don't look like a work of art done in bronze." He laughed with the pleasure of his own conceit and ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... mine," and made his Eve thus reverently submissive to her Adam, he little thought of bright girls in the nineteenth century, well versed in science, philosophy, and the languages, sitting in the senior class of a college of the American republic, laughing his male conceit ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... happiness) constitute self-regard (solipsismus). This is either the self-love that consists in an excessive fondness for oneself (philautia), or satisfaction with oneself (arrogantia). The former is called particularly selfishness; the latter self-conceit. Pure practical reason only checks selfishness, looking on it as natural and active in us even prior to the moral law, so far as to limit it to the condition of agreement with this law, and then it is called rational self-love. But self-conceit ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... called his little brothers, I have only to point out here that nothing could be more despicably superstitious in the opinion of a vivisector than the notion that science recognizes any such step in evolution as the step from a physical organism to an immortal soul. That conceit has been taken out of all our men of science, and out of all our doctors, by the evolutionists; and when it is considered how completely obsessed biological science has become in our days, not by the full scope of evolution, but by that particular method ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... enlighten the minds of his compatriots, and to be a blessing to his country; although, if any one had asked me how I had deserved to be held in such high esteem, I could not have found an answer! Oh, vanity and conceit! How easily you are caught in ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... self-conceit. Did ye hear hoo often he said 'I'? a' got as far as saxty-three, and then a' lost coont. But a' keepit 'dear,' it ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... not good enough to compensate for the mischief they did him. He spoke his own language with purity: he had some merit, but more conceit: and he made no use of the merit he had, but to make himself enemies." Voltaire adds, "Bussi was released at the end of eighteen months; but he was in disgrace all the rest of his life, in vain protesting a regard for Louis XIV." Bussi ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... exposition of the weak sides of great men, inasmuch as it reads them a valuable lesson on their own infallibility, and tends to lower the molehills of conceit that are raised in the world as stumbling-blocks along every road of petty ambition. It would, however, be but a sorry toil for the most cynical critic to illustrate these vagaries otherwise than so many slips and trippings of the tongue and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... sunset shadows grew long. He knew the exact spot—the last bit of woodland—from where Martin, across level-lying fields, could obtain his first glimpse of the old farmhouse and porch. His moving-picture conceit next placed M'ri, dressed in white, with touches of blue, on the west porch. He had decided that in the Long Ago Days she had been wont to wear blue, which he imagined to be the Judge's favorite color. Then he caused the unimpressionable ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... ambition to play against a "champion" of the first water, When we appeared on the ground I noticed that the Countess had a small ivory mallet. "This," I said to myself, "is a foregone conclusion; any one who plays with a fancy mallet, and that of ivory, is sure to be beaten." And in my conceit I thought I need not give myself much trouble about the game. Alas! I never appreciated the saying that "pride has a fall" until that day. At first I played with utter indifference, I was so sure of winning, and even when the Countess de Paris walked triumphantly over the ground, ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... Meanness and conceit are frequently combined in the same character: for he who to obtain transient applause can be indifferent to truth and his own dignity, will be as little scrupulous about them if, by subserviency, he can improve his condition ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... you know, was a sort of gentleman farmer in —shire; and I, by his express desire, succeeded him in the same quiet occupation, not very willingly, for ambition urged me to higher aims, and self-conceit assured me that, in disregarding its voice, I was burying my talent in the earth, and hiding my light under a bushel. My mother had done her utmost to persuade me that I was capable of great achievements; but my father, who thought ambition was the surest road to ruin, and change but ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte |
