"Conceited" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... won't have me?" she asked mockingly. "You're too clever for me," he rejoined with spirit. "I'm too conceited. I must marry a girl that'd kneel to me and think me as wise as Socrates. But he's back again, as you say, and, in my view, his wife ought to be back ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... it. He asked and obtained a horse for his own use, and later an elegant little carriage was ordered from the city, in which he used to drive around the neighborhood with the airs of a young prince. To others he might seem arrogant and conceited—to his mother he was only possessed of the proper spirit of a gentleman. In her eyes he was handsome, though in the eyes of no ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... mind," says Nutt. "Everyone stands for Sukey—on account of his music. Only he is such a conceited, snobbish little whelp that it makes you ache to cuff him. Couldn't, of course. Why, he'll begin sniveling if you look cross at him! But it would be great sport to—— Say, Bob, who's going to be ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... "Conceited? Oh, all right!" Mr. Oliver accompanied the words with a sound only to be described as a snort, and returned, offended, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... answered, as one who makes a great concession. 'There's Herbert Alderney, who's member for somewhere or other—Church Stretton, I think—and makes speeches in the House; he's clever, they say, but such a conceited fellow to talk to. And there's Wilfrid Faunthorp, who writes poems, and gets them printed in the magazines, too, because he knows the editors. And there's Randolph Hastings, who goes in for painting, and has little red ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... "Different, I mean, from any one I ever met. And at first I thought him conceited. But he isn't really, he is just—well, different. I ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... sat Clare, the eldest daughter, and the daughter at home. She read her mother's novels, and her father's papers, and saw no harm in either. She thought the twins perverse and conceited, which came from being clever at school and college. Clare had never been clever at anything but domestic jobs and needlework. She was a nice, pretty girl, and expected to marry. She snubbed Jane, and Jane, in her irritating and nonchalant ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... he minds that as much as one might suppose, and when I began to cry he stopped at once and tried to comfort me, and said our lot was not a hard one by any means, when compared with what many had to endure; that it was a good thing to have to bestir himself; that he had been a lazy, conceited, selfish puppy long enough, and that if it were possible he meant to be a man. And then he spoke of you as his good angel, and said you were the truest, purest, and sweetest woman in all the world, and that neither of us could ever repay you and your husband for your generosity ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... "Conceited little creatures," Mrs. Britton said. "But my judgment coincides with theirs, Barbara—and yours. I think he is one of the nicest men I have met, and it is splendid to see them ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... a glance at Paul which seemed to say, "Be silent;" but the conceited young man paid ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... intelligent—to think I'd come back with tribute to pay for the spiders that fool Hanson and his men killed. Why, the ship's rays could wipe them all out, drill a hole in the ground—they didn't realize that. Thought that by holding Brady and that conceited Inverness for hostages, they'd be safe—and I'd be idiotic enough to not see this chance to get all the glory of the expedition for myself—instead of sharing it with those two. You're a quick thinker, ...
— The Death-Traps of FX-31 • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... words and smiling away, as conceited as a cock upon a wall, when, all in a breath, back went his right hand over his shoulder. Something sang like an arrow through the air; I felt a blow and then a sharp pang, and there I was pinned by the shoulder to ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reason made him own that he had fallen into a very disingenuous and unsound train of assertion, I know not, but his front relaxed, and with a smile he resumed: "Ellinor was the last person in the world to deceive any one willingly. Did she deceive me and Roland, that we both, though not conceited men, fancied that, if we had dared to speak openly of love, we had not so dared in vain; or do you think, Kitty, that a woman really can love (not much, perhaps, but somewhat) two or three, or half ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... know, Lucy, the Girl is prodigiously conceited. No Man can say a civil thing to her, but (like other fine Ladies) her Vanity makes her think he's her ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... bibliois saemeion, on the signification of rare words. (5) peri taes Kikeronos politeias, a justification of the conduct of Cicero, in opposition to some of his now numerous detractors, especially one Didymus, a conceited Alexandrine, called Chalcenterus, "the man of iron digestion," on account of his immense powers of work. (6) peri onomaton kai ideas esthaematon kai upodaematon, a treatise on the different names of shoes, coats, and other articles of dress. This may seem a trivial subject; but, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... ingeniously devised or conceived; possessed of intelligence, witty, ingenious (hence well conceited, etc.); disposed to joke; of opinion, possessed ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... this privilege. I can only tell you that he has some uncommonly strong interest to back him in certain high quarters, which you and I had better not mention except under our breaths. He has been a lawyer's clerk, and he is wonderfully conceited in his opinion of himself, as well as mean and underhand, to look at. According to his own account, he leaves his old trade and joins ours of his own free will and preference. You will no more believe that than I do. My notion is, that he has managed to ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... she broke in, and Pan imagined he saw a deeper red under her artificial color. "I despise Dick Hardman. He's stingy, conceited, selfish. He's low down, and he's ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... portrait of the Chinese Ambassador, Marquis Tseng, hung in the Academy, and over that painting he had had a trying experience. His sitter, like Queen Elizabeth, objected to shadows, not like the conceited Queen through vanity, but, being an Oriental, he really did not understand what the shadows were, and rushed to the glass to see if his face was dirty. He was a high official in his own country, and naturally anxious not to be mistaken for the Dirty Boy. Again he got into ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... a year. But I don't suppose I shall ever be any account. I lead an easy life, though, and I don't care a cent whether school keeps or not. Everybody knows me, and I fare like a prince wherever I go, be it on this side of the mountain or the other. And I am proud to say I am the most conceited ass in the Territory. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... her knees; Cursecowl lecturing away, at the dividual moment, like a Glasgow professor, to James Batter, whose een were gathering straws, on a pliskie he had once, in the course of trade, played on a conceited body of a French sicknurse, by selling her a lump of fat pork to make beef-tea of to her mistress, who was dwining in the ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... Then he would remain in her memory as a study of character. This she did not exactly formulate, but she had that feeling. Every woman makes a study of character about every man in whom she becomes ever so little interested. But we must not get conceited, my brothers, over this fact. The converse, unhappily, does not hold true. Very few men ever study the character of a woman at all. Either they fall in love with her before they have had time to make more than a sketch, and do not afterward pursue the subject, or they do not fall in love with ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... being of a much thicker substance, which severall persons which came in carried away some pieces of. The Commissioners were in debate of lodging there no more; but all their businesse was not done, and some of them were so conceited as to believe, and to attribute the rest they enjoyed the night before this last, unto the mastive bitch; wherefore, they resolved to get more company, and the mastive ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... sneering voice. "You are a very conceited little chap! Pray, what do you want?" and out came, from a cave in the mountain, a little man with one eye in the middle of his face, and ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... read for years; but the author and his wife are both haunted by the fact that there is a masterpiece which is lying—not fallow, but unused and sterile. They grow dissatisfied. The savour of life is lost for them. They develop persecution mania, grow very conceited, and finally come to believe that only they of all the men and women alive truly grasp the essentials of life. They say, if this were the silly muck that most authors write, it would be produced, and ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... reason as she might, her young conscience told her that this was not the proper thing to do, and she made up her mind not to do it again. Then she laughed at the notion of being ever even asked, and told herself that she was too conceited; and to cut the matter short, went very bravely ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Matt. xxviii. 18, 20.) Now there is a very close connection between the statement here made by the apostle, and the command here given by our Lord Jesus Christ; for it was in obedience to this command that the apostle was at that time at Athens. There, amid the proud and conceited philosophers of Greece, in the centre of their resplendent capital, surrounded on every hand by their noblest works of art and their proudest monuments of learning, the apostle proclaims the equality of ALL MEN, their common origin, guilt, and danger, and their universal obligations ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... I seem to hear you reproaching me for this conceited dogmatism, this lawless arrogance, which respects nothing, claims a monopoly of justice and good sense, and assumes to put in the pillory any one who dares to maintain an opinion contrary to its own. This ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Nora stoutly. "It's because she's handsome and clever—and yet she isn't conceited; she's always interested in other people. And she's an orphan—and people were very fond of her mother. And she talks scrumptiously about Italy. And she's new—and there's a bit of romance ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on the hypocritical apologies of conceited housekeepers is this bit from Mrs. Whicher ("Widow Bedott"): "A person that didn't know how wimmin always go on at such a place would a thought that Miss Gipson had tried to have everything the miserablest she possibly could, and that the ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... old man added, "some of the accepted things are not so far along in beauty. Tulips are supposed to be such rejoicers. I can't see it They are little circles, a bit unpleasant and conceited. If one were to explain on paper what a flower is like, to a man who had never seen anything but trees, he would draw a tulip. They are unevolved. There is raw green in the tulip yellows; the reds are like a fresh wound, and the whites are either leaden or clayey.... Violets are almost spiritual ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... of these two texts how can man be so daring and proud and self-conceited as to teach the impossibility of Christians living a pure and sinless life in this world? Surely, there is no fear of God before their eyes. Verse eighteen declares that to become servants of righteousness necessitates freedom from sin; and verse twenty declares that ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... have happened, you know. As you say, I'm not ugly. And I can be rather pleasant if I choose—so I believe. If he had only come to this land, to see what I was like, as Royal men did in the dear old fairy stories, and then had asked me to be his wife, why, I should have been conceited enough to think it was because he loved me, even more than because of other things. Then I should have been happy—yes, dear, I'll confess it to you now—almost happy enough to die of the great joy and triumph of it. But now I'm not happy. I will marry Leopold, ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... as we should have been," said the doctor testily. "But there, I don't know; it would have been a good riddance. Boys are more bother than they are worth, especially consequential and conceited boys, like you are. Hullo! what are you putting your hand there ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... 'intellectual,' which is what I suspect Miss Vinrace of doing. It's all the fashion now. If you're clever it's always taken for granted that you're completely without sympathy, understanding, affection—all the things that really matter. Oh, you Christians! You're the most conceited, patronising, hypocritical set of old humbugs in the kingdom! Of course," he continued, "I'm the first to allow your country gentlemen great merits. For one thing, they're probably quite frank about their passions, which we are not. My father, who is a clergyman ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... Russell, and how she'll paw her. And Lilias is just that weak sort of girl with all her grace and prettiness, to be taken in by that sort of thing. Lilias fancies that she has taken quite a liking for Maggie—as if she could make a friend of her! Why, Maggie's a baby, and a very conceited, troublesome one too." ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... is the best thing I've said. You haven't any ideals that would get any action out of you. You might tear down a house, but you'd never build one. No two of you could agree on a plan. Every one of you is too conceited about himself. If you had the guts to upset the Government to-morrow you'd be fighting among yourselves before night, and you'd have a chief or a king over you the next day, just as surely as they got one in Russia. It'll take them a hundred years over there ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... was Joel Hansen. Twenty-five years of age, well built, tall, like all Norwegian mountaineers, proud in bearing, though not in the least boastful or conceited. He had fine hair, verging upon chestnut, with blue eyes so dark as to seem almost black. His garb displayed to admirable advantage his powerful shoulders, his broad chest, in which his lungs had full play, and ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... he's not of the humble sort, is the most self-conceited thing alive. He can no more take in the idea that your objection to him is he than a board can draw a nail into itself. You've got to ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... coming to that point. But please do not think me overbearing and conceited. The respect of my fellow-men I hold far more lightly than self-respect. If I despised myself it would be no compensation if every one saluted me, and if I respect myself, it does not trouble me if others hold me lightly. When I am not forcibly compelled ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... great fund of information, and I assure you I am daily surprised at the power which she seems to possess of amusing herself by recalling and arranging the subjects of her former reading. We read together every morning, and I begin to like Italian much better than when we were teased by that conceited animal Cicipici. This is the way to spell his name, and not Chichipichi; you see I ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... storm, in their boisterous mimicry of the occupation of angels, are making,—what unkindly impression is left behind, or what more of harsh or contemptuous feeling, than when we quietly leave Uncle Toby and Mr. Shandy riding their hobby-horses about the room? The conceited, long-backed Sign-painter, that with all the self-applause of a Raphael or Correggio, (the twist of body which his conceit has thrown him into has something of the Correggiesque in it,) is contemplating the picture of a bottle, which he is drawing from an actual bottle that hangs ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... such a conceit of ourselves—that's where it is. We are so conceited, and so unproud. We've got no pride, we're all conceit, so conceited in our own papier-mache realised selves. We'd rather die than give up our little self-righteous ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... least a conceited fellow, but it was impossible that he should not understand the reason why Ida, who all the morning had looked forlorn enough, was now the life of the croquet-ground, and full of smiles and flushes. She was ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... "scavengers" might be, and when Mr. Rowles could be spared from the lock he brought a punting pole, and after a good deal of trouble fished up the bucket. He called Juliet a little idiot; and Philip remarked that girls never could do anything, especially London ones, who are always so conceited and stuck-up. ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... skin of his teeth!" he muttered. "A little more, and he would have gone right, and the Devil would have lost a good fellow. As it is"—he smiled with his usual conceited delight in his own sayings, even when they were uttered in soliloquy—"he is merely one of those splendid gentlemen one will meet with in hell." Then Dodson had a momentary nostalgia for goodness himself, but he soon overcame it, and stretching himself ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... enough," Billy assured her. "You see, she—well, I think she would have married me once. Yes, she cared for me once. And I quarreled with her—I, conceited young ass that I was, actually presumed to dictate to the dearest, sweetest, most lovable woman on earth, and tell her what she must do and what she mustn't. I!—good Lord, I, who wasn't worthy to sweep a crossing clean for her!—who wasn't worthy ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... the numerous persons who have been eminent above their far more numerous fellows, each in his own special department, being unknown to the generality. The merits of such men can be justly appreciated only by reference to records of their achievements. Let no reader be so conceited as to believe his present ignorance of a particular person to be a proof that the person in question does not merit the ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... don't ever let Linda Riggs hear you say anything like that, Laura Polk," admonished Bess. "She's so conceited that she wouldn't know it was sarcasm. She'd think it was a tribute drawn from ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... name to himself. By George, it fitted her! He did not know they bred her sort in the Newport cottage colony. Armitage was sufficiently conceited to believe that he knew a great deal about girls. He had this one placed precisely. She was a good fellow, that he would wager, and unaffected and unspoiled, which, if he were correct in his conjectures, was a wonderful thing, he ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... condition of things prevailed in the case of the St. Louis and Brooklyn clubs, the costly investment of the Brooklyn club for new players, only enabling them to reach second place in the pennant race, while the "weakened"(?) St Louis team, by better conceited work together were enabled to break the record by capturing the Association pennant for the fourth successive season, something only equaled by the Boston club under the reign of the old National Association in ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... his words most bitterly as soon as he had spoken them, for there was a hard light going on in the boy's mind. Naturally very conceited, he had had the misfortune to be made the head of a little set at his school—a little set, for they were rather small boys, who looked up to him,—and dressed at him as far as they could, the effect being to make him more conceited ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... the realm of wisdom must first divest himself of all intellectual pride. He must become as a little child. Prejudices, preconceived opinions and beliefs always stand in the way of true wisdom. Conceited opinions are always suicidal in their influences. They bar the door to the entrance ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... out. Will you have my baggage sent after me to-night? I am going at once to the station, and thence to Sibley. I will write you from there. If the midnight visitor should prove to have been Jerrold, he can be made to explain. I have always held him to be a conceited fop, but never either crack-brained or devoid of principle. There is no time for explanation now. Good-by; and keep a good lookout. That fellow may be ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... looked up to his best form, murmured a word of praise for the manner in which his evening coat was cut and smiled once or twice in order to have the satisfaction of getting a glimpse of his peculiarly good teeth. Then he laughed, called himself a conceited ass and went over to examine a rather virile sketch of a muscular, deep-chested young man in rowing costume which occupied an inconspicuous place among many well-chosen pictures. He recognized Martin, whom he had seen ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... my kinsman browbeaten at mine own table by the self-conceited son of a dalesman, even if he have got a round hat and Geneva band! Ah, well! one good thing is we shall leave both of them well behind us, though I would it were ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would not allow any homage to be paid to himself. He was by no means disposed to allow liberties to be taken or to put up with impertinence; for all that bordered on the unreal, for all that was pompous, conceited, affected, he had little patience; but almost beyond all these was his disgust at being made the object of foolish admiration. He protested with whimsical fierceness against being made a hero or a sage; he was what he was, he said, and nothing more; and he was inclined to be rude ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... only ones, and the rest of the human race will have to be humbly reverent toward them or suffer for it. That can surely happen, and when it happens, the word Irreverence will be regarded as the most meaningless, and foolish, and self-conceited, and insolent, and impudent and dictatorial word in the language. And people will say, "Whose business is it, what gods I worship and what things hold sacred? Who has the right to dictate to my conscience, and where did he get ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... here mention, lest the reader should not have perceived it, had a most inordinate opinion of his own abilities and acuteness. Like certain Yankees, he "conceited" it was necessary to rise before the sun to outwit him, and even then your chance was a poor one. He had been in hot water all his life, never out of difficulties and scrapes, once, as has been shown, kept from suicide by a mere accident, and was now reduced ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... that the man who had been "elevated by the grace of Providence and the suffrage of his fellow-citizens to the highest position the Government of his country" had been ignominiously expelled from his high position. Still even in his fall we must not be too hard upon him. Vain, ignorant, and conceited though he was, he seemed to have been an implicit believer in his mission; nor can it be doubted that he possessed a fair share of courage too—courage not of the Red River type, which is a very peculiar one, but ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... deep bass voice, I fancy giving pieces of his mind to Mr. Schurz, which were translated in a milder form. Mrs. Lawrence, who looks at everything in a rosy, sentimental light, thought they looked high-spirited and noble. I, who am prosaic to my finger-tips, thought they looked conceited, brutal, and obstinate. They all sat with their tomahawks laid by the side of their chairs. The chief was not insensible to the beauty of Miss Chapman, and sat behind his outspread fingers, gazing ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... not so conceited as that! No," she continued ingenuously, "I feared that if I accepted him it would look, over here, as if the home supply of husbands were of inferior quality; and then we had such disagreeable discussions at the beginning, I simply could not bear to leave ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... will never go beyond his day's wages, or expect the homeless to become ecstatic over the magnificence of Nabuchodonosor's Babylonian palace. Such extremes possess no influence over the ordinary mind, they are the mere vanities of the conceited, the mistakes ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... "She is a little conceited about it after all," said that unmarried lady. "If poor Mr. O'Brien had not shown so much premature anxiety with reference to that little journey to Naples, things might ...
— Mrs. General Talboys • Anthony Trollope
... you, mother!' laughed Jerry, as he softly tickled the head of the bullfinch he had retained as a gift for Miss Theedory out of the first and best batch. 'You're that conceited, you think that your own son can do all things better than other folk. But I could tell you a true story, now, of ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... reacheth not (so directly) the poor Publican in the text, therefore our Lord begins again, and adds to that other parable, this parable which I have chosen for my text; by which he designeth two things: First, The conviction of the proud and self-conceited Pharisee: Secondly, The raising up and healing of the cast down and dejected Publican. And observe it, as by the first parable he chiefly designeth the relief of those that are under the hands of cruel tyrants, so by this he designeth the relief of those that lie under the load and burden ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... black snails there, I think," said the Father Snail,—"black snails without houses! But they are too vulgar. And they're conceited at that. We can give the commission to the Ants, though; they run to and fro, as if they had business. They're sure to know of a wife for ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... shabbily on in Manchester House, hiding herself as much as possible from public view. Men can suck the heady juice of exalted self-importance from the bitter weed of failure—failures are usually the most conceited of men: even as was James Houghton. But to a woman, failure is another matter. For her it means failure to live, failure to establish her own life on the face of the earth. And this is humiliating, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... worth the wages they get; with an obvious deduction in his own case. But when or where had he ever got his chance—a real chance? Visions of the rich men among his acquaintance, sleek, half-breed financiers, idle, conceited youths of the "classes," pushed on by family interest; pig-headed manufacturers, inheritors of fortunes they could never have made; the fatteners on colonial land and railway speculation—his whole mind rose in angry revolt against the notion that he could not have done, personally, ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dislike for the Indian came from his ridiculous and hateful assumption of superiority over the negro. To my mind, and to all sensible minds I fancy, one simple, honest, devoted black was worth a score of these conceited, childish brutes. I was so fond of my boy Tulp, that, even as a little fellow, I deeply resented the slights and cuffs which he used to receive at the hands of the savages who lounged about in the sunshine in our vicinity. His father, mother, and brothers, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... her—that pleases her more than anything: and make yourself useful, if you get the chance. She's not half a bad little woman; and if you help me, Linda, I shall get in with her yet in spite of her conceited prig ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... of a man like Charles Reade that an actress learns—that is, if she is not conceited. Conceit is an insuperable obstacle to all progress. On the other hand, it is of little use to take criticism in a slavish spirit and to act on it without understanding it. Charles Reade constantly wrote and said things to ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... and Somerville, Edgeworth and De Stael, Barbauld and Benger, and Aikin, and Jameson, Hemans, Landon, and a thousand more, not less learned, less accomplished, nor less useful? Forgive, great names, my half-repeated slander: riding with the self-conceited cortege of male critics, my boasted loyalty was well-nigh guilty of leze majeste: but I repudiate the thought; my verdict shall have no reproach in it, as my championship no fear: how much has ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... can't tell you to your face, I don't want to make you conceited; but you can guess while you're waiting ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... in the fellow's attitude. I don't imagine there will be until the last moment. He is just a pig-headed, insufferably conceited Englishman, full of class prejudices ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... out of zealous envie 350 Would have the world imagine. And besides That all things have been likened to the mirth Us'd upon stages, and for stages fitted, The splenative philosopher, that ever Laught at them all, were worthy the enstaging. 355 All objects, were they ne'er so full of teares, He so conceited that he could distill thence Matter that still fed his ridiculous humour. Heard he a lawyer, never so vehement pleading, Hee stood and laught. Heard hee a trades-man swearing, 360 Never so thriftily selling of his wares, He stood and laught. Heard hee an holy brother, For hollow ostentation, ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... the spider, when it hath caught the fly that it hunted after, is not little proud, nor meanly conceited of herself: as he likewise that hath caught an hare, or hath taken a fish with his net: as another for the taking of a boar, and another of a bear: so may they be proud, and applaud themselves for their valiant acts against the Sarmatai, or northern nations lately defeated. For these ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... expressions so strangely mingled in the religious experience of otherwise apparently mature adults, which remind one of a male voice constantly modulating from manly tones into boyish falsetto. Some one has said of very early risers that they were apt to be conceited all the forenoon, and stupid and uninteresting all the afternoon and evening. So, too, precocious infant Christians are apt to be conceited and full of pious affectations all the forenoon of life, and thereafter commonplace enough in their religious ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... Maude could come with you. I could introduce her to society here, and, I have found—don't think me conceited—that there is nothing that improves an English gentleman so much as having an American wife. If some of your nice young American gentlemen would marry some English girls and transplant them to American soil, I think the English-speaking ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... "Cockney is universally known to be the contemptuous appellation given to an uneducated native of London, brought into life within the sound of Bow bell—pert and conceited, yet truly ignorant, they generally discover themselves by their mode of speech, notwithstanding they have frequent opportunities of hearing the best language; the cause, I apprehend, is a carelessness of every thing but the accumulation of money, which is considered so important ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... this that Leo made the Song of the Bull who had been a God and forgotten the fact, and he sang it in such a manner that half the young men in the world conceived that they too might be Gods without knowing it. A half of that half grew impossibly conceited, and died early. A half of the remainder strove to be Gods and failed, but the other half accomplished four times more work than they would have done ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... own times and referring to them. That is why even the rather ruffianly Hereward is so great an enemy of saints and monks. That is why, in "Hypatia" (which opens so well), we have those prodigiously dull, stupid, pedantic, and conceited reflections of Raphael Ben Ezra. That is why, in all Kingsley's novels, he is perpetually exciting himself in defence of marriage and the family life, as if any monkish ideas about the blessedness of bachelorhood were ever likely to drive the great Anglo- Saxon race ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... useful skits of du Maurier was that upon the conceited young man concealing appalling ignorance with the display of a still more appalling indifference to everything. The drawing among the Print-room series—"It is always well to be well informed"—is a good instance. It reveals a ballroom with couples dancing a quadrille. ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... is plain that I deserve it?" bristled the professor. "Understand, Dixon, that I do not regret my modesty, even though it permits conceited fools like Corveille, who have infinitely less reason than I for conceit, to win awards that mean nothing save prizes for successful bragging. Bah! To grant an award for research along such obvious lines that I neglected to mention them, thinking that even a Morell judge would appreciate their obviousness! ...
— The Point of View • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... could talk my head off! 'You must not think I was provoked with you,'" she mimicked Lemuel's dignity of diction in mincing falsetto. "'I will come to see you very soon.' Miserable, worthless, conceited whipper-snapper!" ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... deal," admitted Mr. Goodlow. "I should be sorry if Lydia ever lost anything of that native confidence of hers in her own judgment, and her ability to take care of herself under any circumstances, and I do not think she will. She never seemed conceited to me, but she was the most self-reliant girl ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... well), dry and smart in his words, and with a face like a pair of nutcrackers, for his front teeth were gone, so that his lips seemed dried on his gums, like the skin of a mummy. He was withal too self-conceited and boastful, and malicious, full of gossip and ill-nature, and running down every one that did not believe that he (Doctor Pomius) was the only learned physician in the world. Following the celebrated ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... pleasing. Characters pleased with themselves please others, for they are joyous and natural in mien, and are at liberty from thinking of themselves to pay successful attention to others. Still, the self-conceited and the bragging are never attractive, self being the topic on which all are fluent and none interesting. They who dwell on self in any way—the self-deniers, the self-improvers—are hateful to the heart of civilized man. The Chinese, who knew everything beforehand, are perfect ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... not mean by this that he is conceited. He is merely conscious of the fact that intellectually he is somewhat superior to his colleagues, most of whom, strangely enough, quite agree with him. They consult him and accept his counsel with almost childlike faith. To the mediocre politicians and ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... fair heroine. He could not take them up into his imagination as real beings as he did men. But then how living are his men, whether coarse or noble! What a picture, for instance, is that in A Legend of Montrose of the conceited, pragmatic, but prompt and dauntless soldier of fortune, rejecting Argyle's attempts to tamper with him, in the dungeon at Inverary, suddenly throwing himself on the disguised Duke so soon as he detects him by his voice, and wresting from him ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... the "Select Comedies of M. de Molire," this comedy is called "The Conceited Ladies." It is dedicated to Miss Le Bas in the ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... of any former generation, becomes masculine verse when contrasted with the nauseous pulings of Mr Patmore's muse. Indeed, we question whether the strains of any poetaster can be considered vile, when brought into comparison with this gentleman's verses. His silly and conceited rhapsodies rather make us sigh for the good old times when all poetry, below the very highest, was made up of artifice and conventionalism; when all poets, except the very greatest, spoke a hereditary dialect of their own, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... continued, thoughtfully, "that I was so happy, in those days, to have found anyone who was kind and talked decently to me, that I may have misled her. There has been a little trouble once or twice since. I have tried to be pleasant and friendly with her. She seems—forgive me if it sounds conceited—she ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... here, the daughter of a chorus girl, and she is a conceited, selfish, vain, posing, morbid, lying little minx, but she has eyelashes! Sandy has taken the most violent dislike to that child. And since reading poor Marie's diary, he has found a new comprehensive adjective for summing up all of her distressing ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... with Dick, or—to give him his real Christian name, now we have him at home—with Basil, the reader may have already formed an opinion. He had his faults—what boy hasn't?—and he wasn't specially clever. But he had pluck and hope, and resolution, and without being hopelessly conceited, had confidence enough in himself to carry him through ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... by her example) grew afterward more kind and tractable to mens honest motions, then ever they shewed themselves before. And let me make some use hereof (faire Ladies) to you, not to stand over-nicely conceited of your beauty and good parts, when men (growing enamored of you by them) solicite you with their best and humblest services. Remember then this disdainfull Gentlewoman, but more especially her, who being the death of so kinde a Lover, was therefore condemned to perpetuall punishment, ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... and temper there are certainly some handsome women who are conceited and arrogant; but, as they have all the best reasons in the world for being pleased with themselves, they afford you the best chance of general good humour; and this good humour is a very valuable commodity in the married state. Some that are called handsome, and that are such at ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... anything else that we value, but it has shown that these things have not brought us as far as we thought. That very knowledge, when you come to think of it, is itself a very distinct step in moral progress. Before the war we were growing morally conceited; we thought ourselves much better, more advanced in morality, than we really were, and this conceit was acting as a real barrier to our farther advance. A sharp lesson was needed to take this conceit out of us—to remind us that as yet we are only at the bare ...
— Progress and History • Various
... speech, he that is garrulous, he that is given to nursing anger, he that is boastful,—these six of wicked disposition, on obtaining wealth, cannot treat others with courtesy. He that regardeth sensual gratification as the end of life, he that is self-conceited, he that boasteth having made a gift, he that never spendeth, he that is weak in mind, he that is given to self-admiration, and he that hateth his own wife,—these seven are counted as wicked men of sinful habits. Righteousness, truth, asceticism, self-restraint, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... every circle. They have, usually, very deep, monotonous voices. They always persuade themselves that they are wonderful persons, and that they ought to be very miserable, though they don't precisely know why. They are very conceited, and usually possess half an idea; but, with enthusiastic young ladies, and silly young gentlemen, they are very wonderful persons. The individual in question, Mr. Theodosius, had written a pamphlet containing some very weighty considerations ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... when you conceited you heerd that strange voice," he said, presently. "I'll send you my passenger-list if you choose, and you can read it over keerfully. I don't think you'll find that name, though, in its kolynms," ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... criminology cannot stem the tide of crime in high and low circles. It is for this reason, that the positive school of criminology arises out of the very nature of things, the same as every other line of science. It is based on the conditions of our daily life. It would indeed be conceited on our part to claim that we, who are the originators of this new science and its new conclusions, deserve alone the credit for its existence. The brain of the scientist is rather a sort of electrical accumulator, which feels and assimilates the vibrations and ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... young Mr. Hughes. Thomas Pringle[376] is returned from the Cape, and called in my absence. He might have done well there, could he have scoured his brain of politics, but he must needs publish a Whig journal at the Cape of Good Hope! He is a worthy creature, but conceited withal—hinc illae lachrymae. He brought me some antlers and a skin, in addition to others he had sent to Abbotsford four years since. Crofton Croker made me a present of a small box of curious Irish antiquities containing a gold fibula, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... at the conference had not a little offended Davenport. A pompous and conceited man, any slight to himself, any failure to accord a deference he considered his due, he felt sensibly as an injury; much more, then, an open defiance and direct attack. That Holden or any one should have the hardihood, before an assemblage of his friends and acquaintances, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... confound the irresistible man with the fool. Neither is he stupid. Very often he is a man of no small amount of brain. He is, of course, always conceited, and generally, though not always, handsome. I am not describing the soft, sapient, pretty man who lisps, nor the weak-kneed young gentleman with pink cheeks who sings tenor. Far worse. The irresistible ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... conceited chap, like our lieutenant, Marion gave no quarter, but checked him at once, but still in a way that was quite gentlemanly, and calculated to overawe. He kept him at arms' length — took no freedoms with him — nor allowed any — and when visited on business, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... enough to accommodate fifty, my plate was set immediately opposite his. He was a young negro gentleman, with such a shining ebony skin that he was almost refreshing to eyes that had just left the dazzling whiteness of the outer world. He gave me the impression of being a rather conceited African, but this may have been because my dress compared so unfavourably with his. He was the son of a merchant at St. Louis in Senegal, and was just like a Frenchman in all but his colour. I asked him if he found the weather we were ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... experience should be had only after the attainment of physical and mental maturity. A young boy or girl, though ever so much of a prodigy, if taken on an extensive concert tour, not only becomes unduly self-conscious, conceited, vain and easily satisfied with his or her work, but—and this is the all-important point—runs the risk of undermining his or her health. The precious days of youth should be devoted primarily to the storing up of health, ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... chance of living with one of the finest women I ever knew," he said, stiffly, and paused for their usual wrangle about Mrs. Maitland. As they rose to go indoors, he looked at his guest, and shook his head. "Oh, Helena, how conceited you are!" ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... you must have a gull, a stockholder, a Hulot.—Well, I know a retired tradesman—in fact, a hosier. He is heavy, dull, has not an idea, I am licking him into shape, but I don't know when he will do me credit. My man is a deputy, stupid and conceited; the tyranny of a turbaned wife, in the depths of the country, has preserved him in a state of utter virginity as to the luxury and pleasures of Paris life. But Beauvisage—his name is Beauvisage—is a millionaire, and, like me, my dear, three years ago, he will give a hundred ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... at Brook Farm was composed of every kind of person. There were the ripest scholars, men and women of the most aesthetic culture and accomplishment, young farmers, seamstresses, mechanics, preachers—the industrious, the lazy, the conceited, the sentimental. But they were associated in such a spirit and under such conditions that, with some extravagance, the best of everybody appeared, and there was a kind of high esprit de corps—at least, in the earlier or golden age of the ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... conceited a set of deluded poor creatures already, I would say 'Yes,'" replied the Parson generously; and, taking hold of Riccabocca's umbrella, he applied the brass handle thereof, by way of a knocker, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... strength and ability to punish breach of treaty, and, therefore, that a peace made now, before they had been thoroughly beaten, would not be a lasting one, and would only end in worse trouble in the near future. The Afghans are an essentially arrogant and conceited people; they had not forgotten our disastrous retreat from Kabul, nor the annihilation of our array in the Khurd Kabul and Jagdalak Passes in 1842, and believed themselves to be quite capable of resisting ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... the conceited, booby lord, and rejected lover of Imogen, though not very agreeable in itself, and at present obsolete, is drawn with much humour and quaint extravagance. The description which Imogen gives of his unwelcome addresses to her—"Whose love-suit ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... specimen of the High Church English clergy, who, for the most part, so far from troubling their heads about persecuting people, only think of securing tithes, eating their heavy dinners, puffing out their cheeks with importance on country justice benches, and occasionally exhibiting their conceited wives, hoyden daughters, and gawky sons at country balls, ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... pleasure in pleasing them.... On the whole, I would far rather write verses for mine honest friend Punch and his audience";[126] and to a would-be tragedian he said: "In the present day there is only one reason which seems to me adequate for the encountering the plague of trying to please a set of conceited performers and a very motley audience,—I mean the want of money."[127] This degraded condition of the London stage Scott thought to be a consequence of limiting the number of theaters. We can hardly suppose, however, that he was pessimistic in regard to the written ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... bungling, that it may well be wondered at how even their high mightinesses could think of them. The truth is, no such thing was imagined—the whole had its root in causes which more deeply concern the public than Mr. Wood or Mr. Cone. A set of ignorant self-conceited young despots have erected themselves into a body of riot, for the purpose of controling the theatre, and bullying, not only the actors but the audience. Mr. Cone has really no more to do with it than Mr. Cooke or Mr. Kemble; but these fellows use him as drunken Irishmen in fairs are known to use ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... on the matter of a pinmaker's wife having pricked her fingers—marry, her husband that made the weapon might have salved the wound.—And here is this fantastic ape, pretty Mistress Marget, forsooth—such a beauty as I could make of a Dutch doll, and as fantastic, and humorous, and conceited, as if she were a duchess. I have seen her in the same day as changeful as a marmozet and as stubborn as a mule. I should like to know whether her little conceited noddle, or her father's old crazy calculating jolter-pate, breeds ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... wrote, in congratulating Captain Broke: "At this critical moment you could not have restored to the British naval service the preeminence it has always preserved, or contradicted in a more forcible manner the foul aspersions and calumnies of a conceited, boasting enemy than by the brilliant act you have performed. The relation of such an event restores the history of ancient times and will do more good to the service than it ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... another Shakespeare to culminate. Even I—little bit of a tot of I—have sometimes recognized my own thought in Shakespeare. But do not tell aunt Pickman of this. Not believing in an absolute source of thought, she would pronounce me either irrecoverably insane or infinitely self-conceited. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... may find many an amusing drive in the native parts of the town. Tall Sikhs, whose hair and beards have never known scissors or razor, and who stride along with a swagger and high-caste dignity; effeminate Cingalese; Hindoo clerks, smirking, conceited and dandified too, according to their own notions; almost naked palkee-bearers, who nevertheless, if there is the slightest shower, put up an umbrella to protect their shaven crowns; up-country girls with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... the session of the Court began by the examination of John Major before tea, the others crowding about the door and filling the piazza, quiet and orderly, but eager listeners. Not a single one of our people came up. John Major is a discontented, conceited fellow, who has never worked for Mr. Philbrick, though his wife and children have, and he headed the petition. It was splendid to see how quickly the Judge saw through him, when he has been only a week in the Department, and ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... d'Arthez threw himself into the general conversation with the gayety of a child, and a self-conceited air that was worthy of a schoolboy. When they left the dining-room, the princess took d'Arthez's arm, in the simplest manner, to return to Madame d'Espard's little salon. As they crossed the grand salon she walked ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... "I am ashamed of the nasty wounds I have given you. My state of repentance allows you to exact whatsoever you will of me, and, when all is said and done, I shall still be your debtor. Can you—will you pardon the coarse opinions of a conceited ass? I assure you I am not the man I was when ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... possesses a few drugs, given to him by travellers; but as he is not acquainted with their properties or doses, he wisely keeps them on a shelf for the admiration of the natives, and employs simples, with which, if he effects no wonderful cures, he still does no harm. Our confere is not at all conceited, though he no doubt imposes upon the credulity of the aborigines; when we met in "consultation," he always, with becoming ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... L. Stevenson of old Edinburgh days was a conceited, egotistical youth, but a true and honest one: a youth full of fire and sentiment, protesting he was misunderstood, though he was not. Posing as 'Velvet Coat' among the slums, he did no good to himself. He had not the Dickens aptitude for depicting the ways of life of his adopted friends. When ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... truth, hath passed so much for a virtue: a virtue, indeed, which, consisting for the most part in nothing but the fallacious and illusory use of obscure or deceitful terms, is only fit to make men more conceited in their ignorance, and ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... Don't think us conceited in supposing ourselves a little more enlightened than our neighbors. It is no great thing after all to be a little better than ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... "busy" within an hour after Dave's summary handling of him. Ardmore had never been considered a truly bad fellow, though he was foppish, conceited and wholly unable to understand why anything that he wanted should be denied him. Belle was now two years beyond her High School days, and had developed into a most attractive young woman. Ardmore had fallen victim to her charms and had decided that he would make a better husband ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... favourably disposed towards me! Morbleu! it is a rich letter! Hogg requested that he himself might review it, and gives me an extract from Jeffrey's answer, refusing him. 'I have, as well as you, a great respect for Southey,' he says, 'but he is a most provoking fellow, and at least as conceited as his neighbour Wordsworth.' But he shall be happy to talk to Hogg upon this and other kindred subjects, and he should be very glad to give me a lavish allowance of praise, if I would afford him occasion, &c.; but he must do what he thinks ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... air with which he made this speech, slapping me at the same time familiarly upon the back, showed him in his true character of egotist. Although good-natured and social to a degree, he was really one of the most self-conceited ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum |
