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More "Self-conceit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wondering at what this philosophy might be, which could feed the self-conceit of anything so abject as his ragged little apish guide; but the novel roar and whirl of the street, the perpetual stream of busy faces, the line of curricles, palanquins, laden asses, camels, elephants, which met and passed him, and squeezed him up steps and into doorways, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... up with her children, she'll find plenty of grovellers ready to support her and suffocate any defiant spirit. And women will sacrifice eleven men, fathers, husbands, brothers and lovers, for one baby—or for her own female self-conceit—" ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... ask the reason. But they would not be told. The secret would be guarded; such secrets were guarded, in Greece, in Italy, in medieval France, by the superstitious awe, the cunning, even the hidden self-conceit, of the conquered race. Then the conquerors would wish to imitate their own slaves. They might be in the right. There might be something magical, uncanny, in the hollow tree, which might hurt them; might be jealous of them as intruders. They, too, would invest the place with sacred awe. ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... speculative knowledge into their heads, with a volubility of speech, while they are destitute of spiritual wisdom and humility in their hearts; and therefore they conceive that they are wiser than the church, and more able to manage and order church affairs than their rulers. Their pride and self-conceit make them slight and contemn their teachers, and rise up in a rebellious contention with, and opposition unto them; as the prophet complains, Hos. iv. 4, This people are they that strive with the priests. Take heed then of strife and contention, and follow peace one with another, especially ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... was engaged to me. He said, coolly, that he would relieve me of the duty, but I declined his obliging offer. He looked mad enough, I can tell you. He's full of self-conceit, and I suppose he wondered how any one could prefer ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... of scorn relieved his mind, and the next morning he laughed at his self-conceit. But the laugh was not a healthy one. He re-read the letter from the master, and the wisdom in its lines, which had at first exasperated him, chilled and depressed him now. He saw himself as ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Paine, what is up? Why are you doing this? You're not afraid of me? No, of course you're not. You're not the kind to squeal and lie down because you think the odds are against you . . . Confound you!" with a sudden burst of impatience, "you are enough to upset all the self-conceit a man's got in him. Just as I think I'm beginning to size you up you break loose in ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... analytical mind, the various psychical phenomena evinced by the lower animals are not regarded as being either wonderful or extraordinary. Man is a conceited, arrogant individual, and his place in nature has done much toward fostering and enlarging this self-conceit and arrogance. Even in the time of Moses this self-glorification was en evidence. The genesis of the world, as related by this famous historiographer, geographer, naturalist, theologian, and lawgiver, plainly shows this. At the present time, science declares, emphatically, that man ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... adamant, waiting her explanation. With womanly swiftness she took her cue from his manner, and turned to snow and ice. Thus, and wider from this on, they had drifted apart. Where was his fault? Who had been to blame? Humbled now, he sought the answer amid the ruins of his self-conceit. If— ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... years since first we saw him, but not in conceit. Like all who succeed in this world, he had a good degree of positiveness in his make-up; but from this he left out strong self-conceit. In all things, as in his school life, he was prepared to sacrifice himself along whatever lines ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... very much superior to his own, would not be mortified by that fiction: But when a man, whom we are really persuaded to be of inferior merit, is presented to us; if we observe in him any extraordinary degree of pride and self-conceit; the firm persuasion he has of his own merit, takes hold of the imagination, and diminishes us in our own eyes, in the same manner, as if he were really possessed of all the good qualities which he so liberally attributes to himself. Our idea is here precisely in that medium, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... not of half so much importance as he had on starting from the Breckenridge farm. His adventure with Crow Wing had mightily taken down his self-conceit. Like most of the settlers he had very little confidence in the Indian character; so, although Crow Wing had rendered the defenders of the Grants a signal service that very day, Enoch was not at all sure that the red youth was not ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... regained the self-conceit that Stampa's words, no less than the depressing environment, had shocked out of him. The grotesque nature of the proposal was a tonic ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... is certain that the tears that people shed for themselves are apt to be sincere; but I doubt whether we are to be saved by any amount of vicarious salt water, and, though the philosophers should weep us into another Noah's flood, yet commonly men have lumber enough of self-conceit to build a raft of, and can subsist a good while on that beautiful charity for their own weaknesses in which the nerves of conscience are embedded and cushioned, as in similar physical straits they ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... afternoon was spent by the gentlemen in fishing in that same stream into which Herbert's folly and self-conceit had plunged him. ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... energy of Mac's last words produced a momentary silence. Charlie thoughtfully studied the carpet; Archie, who had been absently poking the fire, looked over at Mac as if he thanked him again, and Steve, forgetting his self-conceit, began to wonder if it was not possible to improve himself a little for Kitty's sake. Only a minute, for young men do not give much time to thoughts of this kind, even when love stirs up the noblest impulses within them. To act ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... at first took possession of the town of Mansoul, he brought thither, with himself, a great number of Diabolonians, men of his own conditions. Now among these there was one whose name was Mr. Self-Conceit, and a notable brisk man he was, as any that in those days did possess the town of Mansoul. Diabolus, then, perceiving this man to be active and bold, sent him upon many desperate designs, the which he managed better, and more to ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... Crites, think you any noble spirit, Or any, worth the title of a man, Will be incensed to see the enchanted veils Of self-conceit, and servile flattery, Wrapt in so many folds by time and custom, Drawn from his wronged and bewitched eyes? Who sees not now their shape and nakedness, Is blinder than the son of earth, the mole; Crown'd with no more ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... and, nobody being any the wiser, shoulder hardily for their sakes the consciousness of an obligation which might to the others have poisoned a gift, if not made it impossible to accept. No member of her family, it seemed to Mrs. Foss, knew quite as well as she how simple, native, and without self-conceit was Aurora Hawthorne's generosity; so that taking from her was hardly different, in a sense, from giving her something. You did not have to pay with gratitude. You paid, first and last and all ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... father gravely, "I can tell you the name of this thing that's been informin' you how great a man you can get to be. It ain't nothin' under God's heaven but self-conceit." ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... His mixed character of ambassador and of political surveillant, combined with the dependent state of the Kalmucks, gave him a real weight in the Tartar councils, and might have given him a far greater, had not his outrageous self-conceit, and his arrogant confidence in his own authority, as due chiefly to his personal qualities for command, led him into such harsh displays of power, and menaces so odious to the Tartar pride, as very soon made him an object of their profoundest malice. He ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... referred to as "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 is rarely companion ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... pair came M. de Bartas, known as Adrien among the circle. It was M. de Bartas who boomed out his song in a bass voice, and made prodigious claims to musical knowledge. His self-conceit had taken a stand upon solfeggi; he began by admiring his appearance while he sang, passed thence to talking about music, and finally to talking of nothing else. His musical tastes had become a monomania; he grew animated only on the one subject of music; ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... 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 Seneca, with whom ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... talk to all the authors who have a mind that I should be their publisher, I should have to shut up shop; I should pass my time very agreeably no doubt, but the conversations would cost too much. I am not rich enough yet to listen to all the monologues of self-conceit. Nobody does, except in classical tragedies ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... it not time that these men were transplanted at least into the nineteenth century, and, if they cannot be suddenly Americanized, made to understand something of the country which was too good for them, even though at the cost of a rude shock to their childish self-conceit? Is that a properly reconstructed Union in the Southern half of which no Northern man's life is safe except at the sacrifice of his conscience, his freedom of speech, of everything but his love of money? To ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... self-complacency was not of that imperturbable sort which, however intolerable to others, has at least the merit of keeping its possessor content and tranquil. With him it partook more of the nature of egotism than of self-conceit, and it therefore made him always restless and continually dissatisfied. But no effort was too great for Madame Recamier's devotion. Her friends looked upon her sacrifices with feelings of mingled regret and admiration, but she herself was unconscious of them. They were simply a labor of love; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Revolution Francaise (London, 1797), i. 68.) and at least one Clergyman: the Abbe Sieyes. Him also Paris sends, among its twenty. Behold him, the light thin man; cold, but elastic, wiry; instinct with the pride of Logic; passionless, or with but one passion, that of self-conceit. If indeed that can be called a passion, which, in its independent concentrated greatness, seems to have soared into transcendentalism; and to sit there with a kind of godlike indifference, and look down on passion! He is the man, and wisdom shall die with ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... prosperous one. Raff himself, who by his own accounts of his dissipated life under Liszt's patronage, had led me to regard him as an eccentric genius, at once disabused me of this idea when, on a closer acquaintance, I found him an uncommonly uninteresting and insipid man, full of self-conceit, but without any power of taking a wide outlook ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... service he was capable (without much hurt, or being slain) to render his dear country. First, taking things from their original, he considereth the causes creative of such authors—namely, dulness and poverty; the one born with them, the other contracted by neglect of their proper talents, through self-conceit of greater abilities. This truth he wrappeth in an allegory[193] (as the construction of epic poesy requireth), and feigns that one of these goddesses had taken up her abode with the other, and that they jointly inspired all such writers and such works. ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... laughed, for he appeared to have been somewhat favourably impressed by what he no doubt considered my impertinence and self-conceit, and told me that at the moment his company was full, but that if I left him my address he would communicate with me as ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... day many of your students and young scientific men and many actors—well, I have never once been so fortunate as to meet—I won't say a hero or a man of talent, but even an interesting man. It's all the same grey mediocrity, puffed up with self-conceit." ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... kreskajxo. Seek sercxi. Seem sxajni. Seeming sxajna, versxajna. Seemly deca. Seer profeto. Seethe boli. Seize ekkapti. Seldom malofte. Select elekti. Selection elektaro. Self, or selves mem. Self-conceit tromemfido. Self-denial memforgeso. Self-esteem memestimo. Self-evident klarega. Self-reproach memriprocxo. Self-taught memlerninta. Self-willed obstina. Selfish egoista. Selfishness egoismo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... E. P. Whipple, "springing not from self-conceit, but from an intense identification of the man with his object, lifts him altogether above the fear of danger and death, and communicates an almost superhuman ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... Your appetite. Your surplus fat. Your respect for the flag. Your self-conceit. Your love for your mother. Your fastidiousness. Your promptness. Your selfishness. Your democracy. Your ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... literature, art, lecturing-room—all preach the same gospel, that the highest product of humanity is the officer, and that "soldierly discipline and smartness"—in other words, slavish submission, self-conceit, arrogance, and the upholding of mere brute force—are the noblest qualities of a man and a patriot. The army is taught to forget that it is the armed population of the country, and is trained to be a band of body servants. And even when the soldiers return to private life, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... show the Middle Ages in a fairer light, and even to ascribe great merits to the Papacy. But in doing so, Johannes Mueller was only following in Herder's steps. Herder . . . had written against the self-conceit of his age, its pride in its enlightenment and achievements. He found in the Middle Ages the realization of his aesthetic ideas, namely, strong emotion, stirring life and action, everything guided by feeling and instinct, not by morbid thought: religious ardor ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... present, engaged in nearly the same occupation. At one side of the fire sat the village schoolmaster—a thin, pale, peak-nosed little man, with a powdered periwig, terminating behind in a long queue, and an expression of self-conceit strongly depicted upon his countenance. He was amusing himself with a pipe, from which he threw forth volumes of smoke with an air of great satisfaction. Opposite to him sat the parson of the parish—a fat, bald-headed personage, dressed in a rusty suit of black, and having ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... to thinking how he could draw Ratcliffe out, and accordingly, with his usual happy manner, combining self-conceit and high principles, he began to attack the Senator with some "badinaige" on the delicate subject of Civil Service Reform, a subject almost as dangerous in political conversation at Washington as slavery itself in old days before ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... blasphemy against the order of nature and of nature's God. His vow of perpetual chastity, made with so passionate an enthusiasm, for the moment appeared to him an act of absolutely monstrous vanity and self-conceit. In his stupid ignorance he had tried to be wiser than his Maker, preferring the ordinances of man, to the glad and merciful purposes of God. In so doing had he not, only too possibly, committed the unpardonable sin, the sin against ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... had excellent means of knowing the Duke of Guise, and I did not dispute her assertion. Moreover, I was now quite willing to go from the city wherein I was to have achieved such great things. My self-conceit had ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... 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, or political prejudices, to do away with the need of having opinions, just ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... hath abundance of wit, but too much seized with vanity and self-conceit; he is affable, familiar, and very brave; ... towards 50 years old.—Swift. The ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... neither an Arab nor a Moor, especially as the traders, from whom I have collected these accounts, have been either the one or the other; and I might consequently presume, that, if they did give me erroneous information on any points, it would at least not be to the prejudice, both of their national self-conceit, and of the credit and honour of ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... systematic, and methodical ways of a state-church, as well as to learn something from the irregular fervor of that revivalism which its neighbors on every hand have inherited from the Great Awakening. It would be the very extravagance of national self-conceit if the older American churches should become possessed of the idea that four millions of German Christians and one million of Scandinavians, arriving here from 1860 to 1890, with their characteristic methods in theology and usages of worship and habits of church organization and administration, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... the mind of the reader, that no one, after he has read it, shall ever be exactly the same man that he was before."—I put these things down just as they happened, and with the most entire frankness. I know that it will sound like the most pitiable degree of self-conceit. But such perhaps ought to be the state of mind of an author when he does his best. At any rate, I have said nothing of my vainglorious impulse ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... enough to understand you," retorted Gertrude, nettled. "Self-conceit is not so uncommon that one need be at a loss to recognize it. And mind, Agatha Wylie," she continued, as if goaded by some unbearable reminiscence, "if you are really going, I don't care whether we part friends or not. I have not forgotten the day when ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... neglect. Franklin quotes with approval the advice of a wise man to choose a wife 'out of a bunch,' as girls brought up together improve each other by emulation, learn mutual self-sacrifice and forbearance, rub off their angularities, and are not suffered to develop overweening self-conceit. A family where the ruling taste is vulgar, where the standard of honour is low, where extravagance and self-indulgence and want of order habitually prevail, creates an atmosphere which it needs a strong character altogether to escape. There is also the great question of physical ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... of Bostock's. Fathers went to scoff and remained to pay. Brunt's was not exactly alarmed, for nothing could alarm Brunt's; but there was just a sort of suspicion of something in the air at Brunt's that did not make for odious self-conceit. People seemed to become intoxicated when they went into Bostock's, to close their heads in a frenzy ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... radiance the romance of Cinderella paled to the complexion of a sordidly realistic narrative of commonplaces; contemplating them, Sally, for the sake of her self-conceit, felt constrained to adopt an aloof, superior, sceptical pose. Conceding freely the incredible reality of this phase of her history, she none the less contended that in it no more true permanence inhered than ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... brooding over the display I had made of myself to Dr. Cabot I ought to be thinking solely of my appearance in the sight of God, who could see far more plainly than any earthly eye could all my miserable pride and self-conceit. But I could not do that, and chafed about till I was worn out, body and soul. At last I sent the children away, and knelt down and told the whole story to Him who knew what I was when He had compassion on me, called me by my name, and made me His own child. And here, ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... those—a very few, I hope—who are sunk below that state; who have lost their sense of right and wrong; who only care to fulfil the lusts of the flesh in pleasure, ease, and vanity. There are those in whom the voice of conscience is lead for a while, silenced by self-conceit; who say in their prosperity, like the foolish Laodiceans, 'I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing,' and know not that in fact and reality, and in the sight of God, they are 'wretched, and miserable, and poor, and ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... considered herself insulted by being addressed by a man who had lost her lock of hair. When the chest was exhausted, Popanilla was seized with a profound melancholy. Nothing depresses a man's spirits more completely than a self-conviction of self-conceit; and Popanilla, who had been accustomed to consider himself and his companions as the most elegant portion of the visible creation, now discovered, with dismay, that he and his fellow-islanders were nothing more than a horde of ...
— English Satires • Various
... not so successful, though to be sure I pick them up for almost nothing. There is Erastus Prouty, who does the satirical 'society' articles and collects fashionable gossip for the Saturday Review, a sniggering, sneering chap, with a single eye-glass and immense self-conceit. He called me a cad in his paper once, but I am above personal feeling, and do not cut the man off from his income. Then, you have Herr Diddlej, the great Norwegian pianist, who will shatter your piano in half an hour; ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... expected after a little more rude sport, he fell into a sleep so profound and long, that every thought of Reuben was banished from his mind. And now, to return to the poor baby, the victim of mismanagement, or of his brother's self-conceit. Sobbing and roaring he was carried or dragged up stairs, undressed, and put to bed, where the extreme violence of his grief proved its own relief, for he fell asleep with the tear in his eye, and long long after the cause of sorrow was forgotten, his sobs might be ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood
... low-born insolence to that aristocracy with whom he would in vain claim the alliance of one illustrious friendship—to his paid panderism to the vilest passions of that mob of which he is himself a firebrand—to the leprous crust of self-conceit with which his whole moral being is indurated—to that loathsome vulgarity which constantly clings round him like a vermined garment from St. Giles'—to that irritable temper which keeps the unhappy man, in spite even of his vanity, in a perpetual ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... that the line which was to hold firm during the business of conquest in the west has broken—more, it is a sign of the doom of the aggressor. The writing of that fat, complacent figure—sorry imitator of the world's great conquerors—is arrested, and in place of stolid self-conceit there ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... lambs, unpastur'd as ye are, My thoughts are all now due to other care. Aegle with Hyas came, to sooth my pain, And Baucis' daughter, Dryope the vain,4 Fair Dryope, for voice and finger neat Known far and near, and for her self-conceit, Came Chloris too, whose cottage on the lands That skirt the Idumanian current stands; But all in vain they came, and but to see Kind words and comfortable lost on me. 130 Go, go, my lambs, unpastur'd as ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... a foreign country, the populace stare at them as they pass. Yet the make of a cap or the singularity of a gown is often the cause of the flattering attention which afterwards supports a fantastic superstructure of self-conceit. ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... a moment on such a crisis, without dropping a tear for the self-created infirmities of man: but there are considerations at which he shudders, and which he would rather varnish over with the sophistry of his refinement, and the fallacies of self-conceit. ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... is right, and paying no attention whatever to what is wrong, would be a great perversion of this counsel. There is a danger more insidious than this, but still very serious and real, of fostering a feeling of vanity and self-conceit by constant and inconsiderate praise. These things must be guarded against; and to secure the good aimed at, and at the same time to avoid the evil, requires the exercise of the tact and ingenuity which has before been referred to. But with proper skill and proper care the habit of ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... the project, but secretly she was anxious to save the French. The time was growing short, and she sought to have the commandant warned by hints of danger. These were brought him by soldiers, but in his supercilious self-conceit he paid no heed to them, but went on blindly towards destruction. He went so far as to put in irons seven of those who warned him of the peril, accusing them of cowardice. Finding this effort unavailing, the Strong Arm secretly pulled some rods out of the fatal bundle, hoping in this way to disarrange ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... serious obstacles to its introduction into China, on account of the suspicion with which was regarded any and everything European. With a modest disclaimer that his suggestion arose "from a plenitude of self-conceit and a disposition to offer advice upon all matters, however far they may be above my understanding," he proceeds to deal with the difficulties of distribution with ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... men, what are you? is the instinctive response. Do you not see, our pompous friend, that you are only pointing your own unimportance? If your father was Governor of the State, what right have you to use that fact only to fatten your self-conceit? Take care, good care; for whether you say it by your lips or by your life, that withering response awaits you—"then what are you?" If your ancestor was great, you are under bonds to greatness. If you are small, make haste to learn it betimes, and, thanking ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... intelligent, governs by particular volitions, this rule would certainly have place, and might serve to the wisest purposes: But were mankind to execute such a law; so great is the uncertainty of merit, both from its natural obscurity, and from the self-conceit of each individual, that no determinate rule of conduct would ever result from it; and the total dissolution of society must be the immediate consequence. Fanatics may suppose, THAT DOMINION IS FOUNDED ON GRACE, and THAT SAINTS ALONE INHERIT THE EARTH; ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... themselves statesmen, and their work survives; and the republic, laugh as sciolists may, is, for the present and future, the model republic—as much so as was Rome in her day; and it is not simply national pride nor American self-conceit that pronounces its establishment the beginning of a new and more advanced order of civilization; such is really ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... taken from the same model) than Zenobia and Miriam; and the difference between the persecutors of Priscilla and Miriam, as well as their respective methods, is world-wide; but there are none so blind as those who are enveloped in the turbid medium of their self-conceit. ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... Self-conceit presumption and obstinacy blast the prospects of many a youth. He is alternately supported by his father his uncle and his elder brother. The man of virtue and honor will be trusted relied upon and esteemed. Conscious guilt renders one mean-spirited timorous and base. An upright mind will never ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... well inclined; but, she's deficient in spirit, and so susceptible — and so tender forsooth! — truly, she has got a languishing eye, and reads romances. — Then there's her brother, 'squire Jery, a pert jackanapes, full of college-petulance and self-conceit; proud as a German count, and as hot and hasty as a Welch mountaineer. As for that fantastical animal, my sister Tabby, you are no stranger to her qualifications — I vow to God, she is sometimes so intolerable, that I almost think she's the devil incarnate come to torment me for ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... surveyor was a fat-cheeked, handsome man, with a silky brown beard, an effeminate voice, and prodigious self-conceit. He was pacing up and down the inside office, at the rear of the rough board building, when Van came in and found him. The horseman's business was one of maps and land-office data made essential to his needs by the new recording of the "Laughing Water" property as a placer ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... can hardly consent to sell our birthright for so poor a mess of pottage as this petty jealousy offers. A teachable spirit in matters of which we are ignorant, is usually as profitable and respectable as abundant self-conceit, and rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, quite as honest as to pocket the coin as our own, notwithstanding the "image ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... good to have at least one unpretentious and undictatorial human being in Hell. Nobody as a rule drops in on us save inordinately proud and conscientious ghosts, whose self-conceit is intolerable, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... imagination. Everything, that was soft, sensible, and engaging, in the character of that dear creature recurred to my remembrance, and every favourable circumstance of my own qualifications appeared in all the aggravation of self-conceit, to heighten my expectation! Neither was this transport of long duration. The dread of her being already disposed of intervened, and overcast my enchanting reverie! My presaging apprehension represented her encircled in ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... blow, since it was impossible for Adrian to put a favourable construction upon language so painfully straightforward. His self-conceit was pierced at last and ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... had a good share of self-conceit, however, and so was not greatly confused by the king's jest. He determined that he would avoid the mistake which his comrade had made. So he commenced reading the petition slowly and with great formality, emphasizing every word, and prolonging ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... described, the French are certainly better fitted than any other people,—their native gaiety and sprightliness of disposition,—the polish which their manners so readily acquire,—their irrepressible confidence and self-conceit,—their love of shewing off, and attracting attention, give really a stage effect to many of their serious actions, and to almost all their trifling conversation and amusements. Hence, a stranger is particularly ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... last week. Two books more will conclude it. It will not be much less than 9000 lines,—not hundred but thousand lines long,—an alarming length! and a thing unprecedented in literary history that a man should talk so much about himself. It is not self-conceit, as you will know well, that has induced me to do this, but real humility. I began the work because I was unprepared to treat any more arduous subject, and diffident of my own powers. Here, at least, I hoped that to a certain degree I should ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... enters a room she seems to charge it with electricity. You see no one else and you are impatient when others insist upon talking. Vitality, an immense intelligence without arrogance or self-conceit, a courtesy which has no relation to diplomatic caution, a kindly tact and an unmistakable integrity, combine to make Madame Waddington one of the ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... better than those of her acquaintances. She read everything she could on the subject, but, with her usual self-conceit, refused to ask any questions of those who might have enlightened her, and in fact, set herself up as ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... and marrow, so that all things are naked and open in the sight of Him with whom we have to do? What purity can we bring into His presence which will not seem impure to Him? What wisdom which will not seem folly? What humility which will not seem self-conceit? What justice which will not seem unjust? What love which will not seem hardness of heart, in the sight of Him who charges His angels with folly, and the very heavens are not clean in His sight? Who loved Him better, and whom did He love better, ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... position as justifiable; and they convert themselves physically into utterly useless parasites, and mentally they dislocate their brains and become mental eunuchs. And in precisely the same manner, according to the measure of their folly, do they acquire self-conceit, which deprives them forever of all possibility of return to a simple life of toil, to a simple, clear, and universally human train ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... a Kentuckian on the subject of woman's right to qualify under the law, you have to batter down his self-conceit that he is just and generous and chivalric toward woman, and that she can not possibly need other protection than he gives her with his own right arm—while he forgets that it is from man alone woman needs protection, and often does she need the right to protect herself from the avarice, brutality ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... for ages the knowledge of the more recent discoveries and institutions of the West, which have done so much for Europe, yet it has been unable to use them, the magnetic needle, gunpowder, and printing. The littleness of the national character, its self-conceit, and its formality, are further instances of an effete civilization. They remind the observer vividly of the picture which history presents to us of the Byzantine Court before the taking of Constantinople; or, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... requisites, in order to be thus acceptable, is the neglect, the forgetfulness of self—a readiness to put self in the back-ground. Any obtrusion of self, any appearance of self-love, self-interest, self-conceit, or self-applause, tends to expose a man to dislike, perhaps ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... conceive of such infatuation as has possessed this man. He can scarcely be deceived. It must be his consummate self-conceit that deceives him, if he is deceived. But this cannot be; he knows he has no title whatever to a single hint of any kind ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Spirit that they might renounce their errors before the altar. Indeed, it was not until he was back in the Rectory that the futility of his own bearing overwhelmed him with shame. Anxious to atone for his self-conceit, Mark gave the Rector an account of ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... bring himself to do it. It was strange! It was disgusting! ... No, he would be compelled to write the letter. Besides, the letter would be more effective. His father could not interrupt a letter by some loud illogical remark. Thus he salved his self-conceit. He also sought relief in reflecting savagely upon the speeches that had been made against him in the debate. He went through them all in his mind. There was the slimy idiot from Baines's (it was in such terms that his thoughts ran) who gloried in never having read a word of Colenso, and called ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... teach thee what is like to hap To self-conceit and folly; And show that who begins in sin Will end in melancholy. So take the book and learn of beast And animate creation The lesson that the least may teach, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... temper. When a young lady is told that she is vulgar, if she has any self-conceit—I mean self-respect—she feels insulted. I said something sharp in my turn. It was in the way of argument. I do not know how it may be with other young persons, I never reason so well myself as ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... flattery, if it does not, like that of Circe, reduce men to the level of beasts, is sure, if eagerly drained, to bring the best and the ablest down to that of fools. This risk was in some degree prevented by the mask which I wore; and my own stores of self-conceit were left to their natural course, without being enhanced by the partiality of friends or ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... read the greater part of the books of my friends. I went through nearly the whole library of a village about two miles distant from my native place. My native place itself could not boast a library in those days. I read scores, if not hundreds of books that taught me nothing but the ignorance and self-conceit of the writers, and the various forms of literary and religious insanity to which ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... of good company, precisely because she wished to appear thoroughly at home. If I prattled away with some of my trilling nonsense, she would stare at me, and in her anxiety not to be thought stupid, she would laugh out of season. Her oddity, her awkwardness, and her self-conceit gave me the desire to know her better, and I began ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... which did not affect his generosity in greater. "It isn't easy to get good port nowadays, but they tell me that this is not injurious. Hasn't young Birching been to see you? No, I suppose he would think it infra dig. to come to this neighbourhood. There's a damnable self-conceit in that family: you must have noticed it, eh? It comes out very strongly in the girl. By-the-bye I've done with her—haven't been there for three weeks, and don't think I shall go again, unless it's for the pleasure of saying or doing something ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... grace, great beyond all measure, has it ever done, or ever been able to do, anything of itself. It looks upon itself as most unworthy—for in a room into which the sunlight enters strongly, not a cobweb can be hid; it sees its own misery; self-conceit is so far away, that it seems as if it never could have had any—for now its own eyes behold how very little it could ever do, or rather, that it never did anything, that it hardly gave even its own consent, but that it rather seemed ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... The man's self-conceit was unlimited; his sense of humour nil; and in less than a month he had been unanimously voted a "pukka[12] bounder" by that isolated community of Englishmen, who played as hard as they worked, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... men into that sleep? What makes them do in one minute something which curses all their lives afterwards? Love of pleasure? Yes: that is a common curse enough, as we all know. But a worse snare than even that is pride and self-conceit. That was what ruined those old Jews. That was what blinded their eyes. They had made up their minds that they saw; therefore they were blind: that they could not go wrong; therefore they went utterly and horribly wrong thenceforth: that they alone of all people knew and kept ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... distrusts Nature; it thinks there is a general law without a particular application,—law for all that does not include any one. Reform in its antagonism inclines to asinine resistance, to kick with hoofs; it runs to egotism and bloated self-conceit; it runs to a bodiless pretension, to unnatural refining and elevation, which ends in hypocrisy and sensual reaction. And so, whilst we do not go beyond general statements, it may be safely affirmed of these two metaphysical antagonists that ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... degradation of mind and body—a complete unstringing of the moral fibres, which made even revenge seem an impossible output of energy. A nature of this sort, with such capacities and ambitions, carries about with it a sense of supremacy, a natural, indispensable self-conceit which acts as the sheath to the bud, and is the condition of healthy development. Break it down and you bruise and jeopardise ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... day he found out his mistake. I don't know exactly how Faith managed to pierce the rhinocerous hide of his self-conceit with the truth, but she did somehow let him know that his attentions wuz futile, futiler than he ever ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... up the papers may cause the starvation of my passion for politics, and that scab may drop off. God has shown me what the scabs are:—Evil-speaking, lying, slandering, back-biting, scoffing, self-conceit, boasting, silly talking, and ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... treason; while his great self-reliance, activity, and mental ability gave him a very high position in their confidence. He was tall and stout, though not corpulent; and was very negligent of his toilet and dress. Self-conceit was written on his countenance, and displayed itself in his arrogant assumptions of superiority. But his method of dealing with his Northern opponents was open and bold, although insolent and overbearing, and not like Hunter, Davis, and Benjamin, using ingenious sophistry ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... their share in my country's future glory? No; have but patience with us, you comfortable liberals of the Old World, who find freedom ready made to your hands, and we will pay you all. Remember, we are but children yet; our sins are the sins of youth,—greediness, intemperance, petulance, self-conceit. When we are purged from our youthful sins, England will not be ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... of humiliation. For there is not a taint of self-conceit, not even of self-satisfaction, in him. He only sees his own weakness, and want of life, of spirit, of manfulness, of power. His soul cleaveth to the dust. He is tempted, of course, again and again, to give way; to become low- minded, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... at least no more fit to be smiled at by the self-conceit of a vain ignorance, the wealth of whose knowledge consists solely in words, than the bosom of Abraham, as a home for the spirits of the just dead; the gulf of actual fire, for the eternal torture of spirits; and the City of the New ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... suspect your story, Speak modestly its history. The traveller, who overleaps the bounds Of probability, confounds; But though men hear your deeds with phlegm, You may with flattery cram them. Hyperboles, though ne'er so great, Will yet come short of self-conceit. ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... the gross Captain Mirvan, and the virago Madame Duval? Were it possible that a creature so horrid could be formed, as to partake of the worst qualities of all these characters,-a creature who should have the haughtiness of Mrs. Beaumont, the brutality of Captain Mirvan, the self-conceit of Mrs. Selwyn, the affectation of Lady Louisa, and the vulgarity of Madame Duval,-even to such a monster as that I would pay homage, and pour forth adulation, only to obtain one word, one look from my adored ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... a plain child, though a striking one. But now she had not only beauty, but the air of beauty. The self-confidence given by the possession of good looks was very evident in her behaviour. She was very accomplished, too, and more clever than was always quite agreeable to a father whose self-conceit was one of the few compensations left him by misfortune. Such a girl was sure to be admired. She would have lovers—friends of her own. It seemed that already, while Lord Maxwell was preparing to insult the father, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... flattery of that one exclamation makes me even now thrill with a delicious throb of self-conceit." ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... think then, that at present, he ought to be spared farther comment on what is so odious; but neither the apprehension, nor the experience of the unpleasant impressions it produces, is sufficient reason for declining the consideration of the atrocities of which human nature is capable. Self-conceit, indeed, may be mortified at the unavoidable thought of identity of species, which it may seek many imaginary devices to conceal; and feverish sensibility may be wrought up to indignant discontent, at the power which placed it amid such profligacy. But ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... even of the few friends she still clung to, so that his visits grew to be of the nature of childish treats to which she found herself looking forward—counting the days. Also, she came to be dependent upon him for the keeping alight within her of that little kindly fire of self-conceit at which we warm our hands in wintry days. It is not good that a young woman should remain for long a stranger to her mirror—above her frocks, indifferent to the angle of her hat. She had met the women superior to feminine vanities. Handsome enough, some of them must ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... which he nursed, And sought to banish her from his heart's core; — Her, who of all bad women is the worst, He still had censured, in his wiser lore, If by his brother Aquilant accurst, Her Gryphon, in his partial love, excuses, For mostly self-conceit our ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... discipline and authority, and a dangerous phase of ambition, which are fruitful sources of that kind of crime which is in these days most prevalent.... This superficial education causes, I think, self-deceit as well as self-conceit, and makes young people imagine that because, in addition to what they have learnt, they can present a good outward appearance, they are qualified to fill any ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... Self-contempt attacked self-conceit like an acid. He saw Michael Lanyard a sorry figure, sitting stultified with self-pity ... crying over ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... man whose whole literary output was a few precious essays and a few scraggy poems, who had never schemed out a novel before, not even, as far as I am aware, a short story; who had never, in any way, tested his imaginative capacity, setting out, in insane self-conceit, to write, not merely a commercial work of fiction, but a novel which would outrival a universally proclaimed work of genius. And he had no imaginative capacity. His mind was essentially critical; and the critical mind is not creative. He was a clever man. All critics are ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... interior parts of the continent where they can not be dangerous. This mode of proceeding I conceive (if any can) will be effectual—but whether it meets with the approbation or disapprobation of the congress, I most humbly conjure them not to attribute the proposal to arrogance, or self-conceit, or pragmatical officiousness, but, at worst, to an intemperate zeal for the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... in external ways, had turned its light inwards. The power of hearing what others could not hear, had faded, but a subtlety of mind, a clarity, a sort of pondering, intellectual self-consciousness (that had no kinship with that other form of self-consciousness that is only inverted self-conceit) had taken the place of those voices that she had once refused to ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... He was not possessed of a larger measure of self-conceit than falls to the lot of the average young man, but the thought that possibly Annette had come to regard him other than as a friend released a new tide of emotion within him. Rapidly he passed in review many incidents in their association during the months ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... into without any pain or trouble, so that by his ready apprehension of things, he was able to do more in one hour than others could do in many days by hard study and close application; and yet he was ever humble, and never exalted with self-conceit, the common foible ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... only so far as their self-conceit was concerned in it; the advantages which they contrived to draw from it were substantial enough. The Protestant merchants, who held in their hands the chief part of the wealth of the Netherlands, and who believed they could not at any price purchase too dearly the undisturbed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... in ROBINSON CRUSOE, after THAT, is a man with a screw loose in his understanding, or a man lost in the mist of his own self-conceit! Argument is thrown away upon him; and pity is better reserved for some person ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... an ability to solve all problems and to answer all questions would be a profession certain to convict any philosopher of extravagant boasting and self-conceit, and at once to destroy the confidence that might otherwise have been reposed in him. There are, however, sciences so constituted that every question arising within their sphere must necessarily be capable of receiving an answer from the knowledge already possessed, for the answer must be received ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... 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 ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... up John Bull's self-conceit (which is very easily done) with a few sentences of most outrageous flattery, and sat down in a general puddle of good feeling." In another he says: "I have taken a house in Rock Park, on the Cheshire side ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... feel a conscious superiority. In mere self-defence we turn against the world, when it turns against us; brood over the undeserved slights we receive; and thus the genial current of the soul is stopped, or vents itself in effusions of petulance and self-conceit. Mr. Wordsworth has thought too much of contemporary critics and criticism; and less than he ought of the award of posterity, and of the opinion, we do not say of private friends, but of those who were made so by their admiration of his genius. He did not court popularity ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... He may bring food out of the earth, and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make him a cheerful countenance, and bread to strengthen man's heart. Whilst the unbeliever, blinded by his self-conceit, is worshipping his own little stock of knowledge, and neglecting God, let us be singing our Te Deum—"We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... letters to him—sweet, frank, intelligent, sympathetic—they had been his founts of refreshing, his manna by the way. Until that fatal night, when Melrose had crushed in him all that foolish optimism and self-conceit with which he had entered into the original bargain! Since then, he knew well that his letters had chilled and disappointed her; they had been the ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... makes them value themselves upon a presumed refinement of judging. Poverty of language is the primary cause of the use which we make of the word, Imagination; but the word, Taste, has been stretched to the sense which it bears in modern Europe by habits of self-conceit, inducing that inversion in the order of things whereby a passive faculty is made paramount among the faculties conversant with the fine arts. Proportion and congruity, the requisite knowledge being supposed, are subjects upon which taste may be trusted; ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... complaint was of the one-sided reactionary training of the officers, which must separate them from the forward movement of the people; now, as then, there was a kind of hidebound narrow-mindedness, too often degenerating into overweening self-conceit, making them a laughing-stock to civilians; and, finally, now as then, there were the same stiff, wooden regulations, the mechanical drill, which, despite all personal bravery, failed utterly before the convinced enthusiastic onrush of the revolutionary army. But worse than defeat in battles ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... divine mission, his 'Herculean labours,' of which he has described the origin in the Apology; and he still hears the voice of his oracle, bidding him receive or not receive the truant souls. There he is supposed to have a mission to convict men of self-conceit; in the Theaetetus he has assigned to him by God the functions of a man-midwife, who delivers men of their thoughts, and under this character he is present throughout the dialogue. He is the true prophet who has an insight ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... retire upon the centre of his conscious resources, but be always at the circumference of appearances. He must envelop himself in a halo of mystery—he must ride in an equipage of opinion—he must walk with a train of self-conceit following him—he must not strip himself to a buff-jerkin, to the doublet and hose of his real merits, but must surround himself with a cortege of prejudices, like the signs of the Zodiac—he must seem any thing but what he is, and then he may pass for any thing he pleases. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... of the Riggan coal-pits. Crabbed, wrinkled, sarcastic old fellow, whose self-conceit is immeasurable. "The biggest trouble I ha' is settlin' i' my moind what the world'll do when I turn up my toes to th' daisies, an' how the government'll mak' up their moinds who shall ha' th' honer o' payin' fer th' moniment."—Frances Hodgson Burnett, That Lass ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... opinion, marches on cheerfully in the smooth path toward the temple of his own immortality. Yet even here, you see, I am indirectly lauding my own worship for not being persuaded to laud my own worship. How sleek, smooth-tongued, paradisaical a deluder art thou, sweet Self-conceit! Let great men give their own thoughts on their own thoughts: from such we can learn much; but let the small deer hold jaw, and remember what the philosopher says, 'Fleas are not lobsters: d——n ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... drank to excess, and never seemed inclined to sensual indulgences. He had, moreover, a way of moralizing that completely veiled his true quality from the not very penetrating Martin Green, whose shrewdness and knowledge of character were far less acute than he, in his self-conceit, imagined. ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... 15). The Colossians, then, have all that they need in Christ, and the apostle affectionately warns them against being spoiled through the philosophy of these false teachers, which is a compound of ignorance, self-conceit, and will-worship, void ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... discovered the means of making a new world out of the old. About this time, Dumont, the Benthamite, travelled with him from Paris to London. Dumont was irritated with "his incredible amour-propre and his presumptuous self-conceit." "He was mad with vanity." "The man was a caricature of the vainest of Frenchmen. He believed that his book on the 'Rights of Man' might supply the place of all the books that had ever been written. If it was in his power, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... young friend, I'm going to say some words to you that ye'll no like. Ye're very vain o' yoursel'—but maybe at your time o' life it's not a very great fault to have a decent bump o' self-conceit; you're the best-hearted, most honourable-minded, pleasantest lad I know any where, and very like some nephews of my own in the Company's service: ye'll be a baronet when your father dies, and as rich as a Jew. But oh, John Chatterton, ye're an ass—a reg'lar donkey, as a body ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... reluctantly admits that the right to hold such opinions is an inherent part of liberty. Soothe the vanity of the dicasts by humble acknowledgments, and gratify their avarice by a plentiful distribution of drachmae; flatter the self-conceit of the Athenians, by assurances that they are the greatest, most glorious, and most consistent people upon earth; be careful that Cleon the tanner, and Thearion the baker, and Theophrastus the maker of lyres, are supplicated and praised ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... 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 ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... like you," said Warner, with a smile. "Natural you should think him good-looking. But don't it show a little self-conceit, Louisa?" ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... grown streaky as his balloon; and with colours not so very dissimilar. I had stabbed upon his vital self-conceit, and the man ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which is ever changeful of mood, could not suffer him to live long in such repose, but, filling him with self-conceit and hope, led him to make known his love, in the expectation that she would then ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... moments, and I do sometimes pine to get away from all this to the lands of sun and lotus-eating. But, on the whole, I am too busy even to dream of dreaming. My real black moments are when I doubt if I am really doing any good. But yet on the whole my conscience or my self-conceit tells me that I am. If one cannot do much with the mass, there is at least the consolation of doing good to the individual. And, after all, is it not enough to have been an influence for good over one or two ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... be great, exalted and inspiring ideas because they are his own, while everything that opposes them must seem obscure, common folk, enemies of their own weal, evil-minded, and hateful. Such a man, in order to justify this self-conceit to himself as a divine vocation, and entirely absorbed in this thought, must stake everything upon it, nor can he rest until he has trampled under foot all that will not think as highly of him as he does himself, or until his ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... have several credible histories. Now, there are two modes of investigation open to us, the dogmatic and the inductive. We may take either. We may construct for ourselves, from the most flimsy suppositions, a metaphysical balloon, inflated with self-conceit into the rotundity of a cosmogony, according to which, in our opinion, the world should have been made, and we may paint it over with the figures of the various animals and noble savages which ought to have sprung up out of its fornea, and we ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... common vice of self-conceit, but there is also a common vice of excessive self-depreciation. "My Lord can do nothing with me!" Yes, my Lord knows thee and needs thee! And by the power of His grace thou canst ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... suggest an explanation. She had no self-conceit, and could not imagine that Gavin was grieving over her to the extent of loss of appetite. But she could not help wondering if she contributed in any measure to his trouble. For now that the matter was drawn to her attention she remembered that Gavin was not taking the part in the life of the ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... but they must know the origin of this beauty, and the cause of the harmony which strikes them with wonder. It is not enough for them to be told they are "fearfully and wonderfully made," but they must attend schools to learn why they live, move, and have their being. Such is man, blinded by his self-conceit; blasted not by the excess, but by the partial light which bursts upon him: whereas woman moves clear in her apprehension, because she believes that "whatever is, is right;" and great in her intelligence, because ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... went on, this disease of self-conceit went on too, gradually devouring the good that was in her. For there is no fault that does not bring its brothers and sisters and cousins to live with it. By degrees, from thinking herself so clever, she came to fancy that whatever seemed to her, must of course ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... thousand times wiser and better than herself, is an insufferably irritating phenomenon. It is a singular fact, that the people I have in view invariably combine extreme ugliness with spitefulness and self-conceit. Such a person will make particular inquiries of you as to some near relative of your own,—and will add, with a malicious and horribly ugly expression of face, that she is glad to hear how very much improved your relative now is. She will repeat the sentence several times, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... his life, or, rather, had been busy sowing thorns and nettles, that had grown all too quickly and rankly. Thousands had been spent on his education; and yet he was oppressed with a sense of his ignorance and helplessness. Rude contact with the world had thoroughly banished self-conceit, and he saw that his mind was undisciplined and his knowledge so superficial and fragmentary as to be almost useless. The editor of the paper whose columns he had hoped to illumine told him that he could ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... Mrs. Malpas became the absolute mistress of eight thousand pounds. Lemuel[1] had carefully foreseen this windfall, and wished to use the money in enterprises of the earthenware trade. Mrs. Malpas, pretty and vivacious, with a self-conceit hardened by the adulation of saloon-bars, very decidedly thought otherwise. Her motto was, 'What's yours is mine, but what's mine's my own.' The difference was accentuated. Long mutual resistances were followed by reconciliations, which grew more ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... love now supplied the place of all which she had lost pleased him, but he forbade himself to expect that this condition of affairs could be lasting. Nothing save exaggerated self-conceit would induce the hope. But he must have undervalued his own power of attraction—or Barine's love—for with each passing week the cheerful serenity of her disposition gained fresh steadfastness and charm. He, too, had the same experience; it was long ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... embroidery of his conversation was different, the groundwork was the same, and the high-flown and ornate compliments with which the gallant knight of the sixteenth century inter-larded his conversation, were as much the offspring of egotism and self-conceit, as the jargon of the coxcombs of ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... time: no scenery, no vivid pictures of street life, no distinct atmosphere of the period. It might just as well be of the eighteenth or nineteenth century. The character of Chiappino may be found in any provincial town. This compound of envy, self-conceit, superficial cleverness and real silliness is one of our universal plagues, and not uncommon among the demagogues of any country. And he contrasts him with Ogniben, the Pope's legate, another type, well known in governments, skilled ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... folly and uselessness of such a proceeding by arriving on the scene and being utterly unable to extricate him from his position. If children would realize their weakness and foolishness more in these days, they would develop into better men and women, but self-sufficiency and self-conceit are signs ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... practised before Granville Sharp and Clarkson were in existence. But even if the right of intercepting their slavers were acknowledged by treaty, which it never would be, the arrogance of the Southern slave-holders would not long submit to its exercise. Their pride and self-conceit, swelled to an inordinate height by their successful struggle, would defy the power of England as they had already successfully defied that of their Northern countrymen. After our people by their cold disapprobation, and our press by its invective, had combined with their own difficulties ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... the abilities and celebrity of many of the writers on this subject—from Whitehurst and Franklin to Reid and Gurney—I must ward off the imputation of self-conceit by expressing my belief that the errors of those who have failed should be chiefly ascribed to excessive cleverness; to unadvised attempts at outwitting nature! I hope to escape that snare. In the execution of my humble task, I shall entirely rely ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... going on, I should like to know? Supposing I was to be laid aside, are there to be no Prayers, ever, in this house because you've set yourself up in your silly self-conceit against the truth?" ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
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