"Overweening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... step-father. Oscar was, unfortunately, endowed by nature with a foolishness his mother did not perceive, in spite of the step-father's sarcasms. This foolishness—or, to speak more specifically, this overweening conceit—so troubled Monsieur Moreau that he begged Madame Clapart to send the boy down to him for a month that he might study his character, and find out what career he was fit for. Moreau was really thinking of some day proposing Oscar to the ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... mental to the animal nature cannot long proceed without betraying the succours of reason. When the bands of morality are thus spurned, a man rapidly sins his understanding into lameness; as its better forces must needs be quickly rotted in such a vapour-bath of sensuality. In this way an overweening pride of wit often results in causing a man to be deserted by his wits; this too in matters where he feels surest of them and has most need of them. In refusing to see what is right, he loses the power of seeing what is prudent and ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... are by no means sparing in abuse. Trithemius, a Benedictine abbot of Spanheim in the early part of the sixteenth century, writes of him with the most virulent contempt, as a debauched person and a criminal whose overweening vanity arrogated to itself the most preposterous supernatural powers. It would appear that he had been some sort of travelling charlatan, whose performing horse and dog were taken for evil spirits, like Esmeralda's goat in Victor Hugo's Notre Dame. Even Melanchthon and Luther seem ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... his name, her tears began to flow afresh; fallen in his overweening pride,—like ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... slowly. Many have done worse—they have maintained after sharp warnings the pride of their blind years; they have maintained that pride on into the great disasters, and when these came they have sullenly died. France neither consented to sink nor died by being overweening. Some men must have been at work to force their sons into the conscription, to consent to heavy taxation, to be vigilant, accumulative, tenacious, and, as it were, constantly eager. There must have been classes in which, unknown to ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... course; it had grown too confident, some said too corpulent; and it had slept on peacefully, in spite of the stirring strength of the labour leaders, in spite of the threatening coalition of the new factions, in spite even of the swift revolt against the stubborn forces of habit, of tradition, of overweening authority. His mother, he knew, held the world war responsible; but then his mother was so constituted that she was obliged to blame somebody or something for whatever happened. Yet others, he admitted, as well as his mother, ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... men-of-war to join his squadron, for the purpose of intercepting any French fleet that might be sent against the Spanish dominions in South America; but the supreme junta of Seville, instead of complying with his request, began to dismantle them. A want of confidence in the British government, and an overweening trust in their own internal resources, notwithstanding the serious reverses they had recently met with; still ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... proud of me! Why? When you answered you forgot to tell the truth, Mr. Hume. Because you need me, because you are beaten now and must come hiding a whimper under big words, come to a woman who holds you so in the hollow of her hand that she can break you so utterly that your own overweening conceit cannot find the fragments with the microscope of a distorted vanity! Love me as you'd love any other fine thing just because it was yours. Because you'd use me, because you see that such a wife as I could be would be but a stone for you to stand on to climb ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... which he finds in himself, and which most of us try to conceal or belittle, with such frankness and perception of their real worth that they acquire new meaning and value in our eyes. If he paraded these things unduly, and showed an overweening preference for them, as some of his critics charge, this is of course an element ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... pipe for a silent minute or two. Then picking up the thread of his story he told us how he had started hot foot for Tower Hill. He had not been that way since the day of his examination—the finest day of his life—the day of his overweening pride. It was very different now. He would not have called the Queen his cousin, still, but this time it was from a sense of profound abasement. He didn't think himself good enough for anybody's kinship. He envied the purple-nosed old cab-drivers on the stand, the boot-black boys at the edge ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... it the honour of being the mother-tongue of all, and to scorn all examination which did not commence with this confession. Even the late learned Dr. Owen Pugh has, in his Dictionary, by arbitrarily selecting certain syllables as the roots of all Cumrian words, done much to foster this overweening conceit. The system was carried to its extreme point of absurdity by the Rev. Edward Davies, who by the help of such syllables expected to unravel the mysteries of all languages. This failure has I hope paved the way for the more sober consideration of the question, which, if worked out fairly, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... the result of disease. These physical disadvantages, combined with an education 'whose object was pretension, and whose principle was arrogance, made him at once a thing fearful and pitiable, at war with its species and itself, ready to crush in manhood as to sting in the cradle, and leading his overweening ambition to pursue its object by ways dark and hidden—safe from the penalty of crime, and exposed only to the obloquy which he laughed to scorn. If ever there was a man formed alike by nature and education to betray the land which gave him birth, and to act openly as the pander of political corruption, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... will swarm and shut us in from the weary world," said Ebbo. "And alack! when they go, what a turmoil it will be! Councils in the Rathhaus, appeals to the League, wranglings with the Markgraf, wise saws, overweening speeches, ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... yams, cocos, and sweet potatoes. The negroes of the village were our nearest neighbours, and we visited them occasionally, in the hope of ameliorating their condition by communicating to them such instruction as they were capable of receiving; but their grotesque ideas of liberty, overweening egotism, and marvellous superstition, together with the shortness of our stay in their vicinity, combined to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... winter nights the heavenly bodies seem to take on an additional splendour, something next to blazing, overweening boastfulness. "Now sleeps the world," they seem to say, "but we are awake and weaving destiny" And on they swing ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... expose themselves to captivity or death, may at first appear strange and astonishing. But when the mind reflects on the tedious and irksome confinement, which they were compelled to undergo; the absence of the comforts, and frequently, of the necessaries of life, coupled with an overweening attachment to the enjoyment of forest scenes and forest pastimes, it will perhaps be matter of greater astonishment that they did not more frequently forego the security of a fortress, for the uncertain enjoyment ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... and his column. Setting out from Fort Cumberland on the Potomac, the English General made his way north-westward at the head of twenty-two hundred men, four hundred and fifty of these being veteran Virginians under the command of Colonel George Washington. But the overweening Braddock considered these raw colonials to be the least effective of his troops. From the first the progress of this imposing force was painfully slow. "Instead of pushing on with vigour without regarding a little rough road," writes George Washington, "we were halted to level every mole-hill, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... than in any other part of France. "The man of L'Houmeau" became little better than a pariah. Hence the deep, smothered hatred which broke out everywhere with such ugly unanimity in the insurrection of 1830 and destroyed the elements of a durable social system in France. As the overweening haughtiness of the Court nobles detached the provincial noblesse from the throne, so did these last alienate the bourgeoisie from the royal cause by behavior that galled their ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... lingered a moment to greet Simonides. The little poet was delighted, despite overweening hopes, at the manly beauty yet modesty of the athlete, and being a man who kept his thoughts always near his tongue, made Glaucon blush ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... in Australia are Sir Henry Parkes and Mr. Berry. Of these, Sir Henry Parkes is unquestionably the abler. He is a fair administrator, a good debater and leader of the House, has statesmanlike ideas, and but for his overweening conceit might have risen to the rank of a statesman. Mr. Berry's talent lies in a fluency of specious but forcible speech appealing to the mob, rather than in debating power. His vision is limited, and he is a poor administrator. ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... hateful thing and a menace to peace and organized government; but the communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrowth of overweening cupidity and selfishness, which insidiously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil, which, exasperated by injustice ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... came quickly. She could not speak. Her anger against Ambrose was, at the best, a pumped-up affair. She felt obliged to hate him because she loved her father. And her overweening pride had supported it. All this fell away now. She longed to ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... remained as rugged as before. Beset on all sides by enemies, each struggling for his own aggrandizement, Sten had all he could do to keep the kingdom from going to pieces. In every measure to increase the income of the crown he was hampered by the overweening power of the Cabinet, who were reluctant to give up a jot or tittle of their ill-acquired wealth. Chief among his opponents was the archbishop, Jacob Ulfsson,—a man of rare ability, but of high birth and far too fond of self-advancement. ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... thought of his fastidious overweening pride, his haughty scorn of everything plebeian, his detestation of all that appertained to the ranks of the ill-bred, a keen pang of almost intolerable shame darted through her heart, and a burning tide surged over her cheeks, painting them fiery scarlet. Would he accord her the shelter of his ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... reflections perpetually centre upon myself?—self, an overweening regard to which has been the source of my errors! Falkland, I will think only of thee, and from that thought will draw ever-fresh nourishment for my sorrows! One generous, one disinterested tear I will ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... apply to the speculations of Shelley's earlier life, when his crusade against accepted usage was extravagant, and his confidence in the efficacy of mere eloquence to change the world was overweening. The experience of years, however, taught him wisdom without damping his enthusiasm, refined the crudity of his first fervent speculations, and mellowed his philosophy. Had he lived to a ripe age, there is no saying with what clear and beneficent lustre might have ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... complain of my disgrace, O cruel fair one! fair with cruel crost; Nor of the hour, season, time, nor place; Nor of my foil, for any freedom lost; Nor of my courage, by misfortune daunted; Nor of my wit, by overweening struck; Nor of my sense, by any sound enchanted; Nor of the force of fiery-pointed hook; Nor of the steel that sticks within my wound; Nor of my thoughts, by worser thoughts defaced; Nor of the life I labour to confound. But I complain, that being thus ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... Hetty, with an unreasoning and unreasonable affection which would have been the ruin of her, if she had been any thing else but what she was, "the old Squire over again." As it was, the only effect of this overweening affection, on their part, was to produce a slow reversal of some of the ordinary relations between parents and children. As Hetty grew into womanhood, she grew more and more to have a sense of responsibility for her father's and mother's happiness. She was the most filially docile of creatures, ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... he shows Christ and his Church to be pointed out. The true sense of the holy scriptures he teaches, only to be opened to us by the spirit of assiduous prayer, (in Ps. 125, n. 2, &c.) The fatal and opposite errors, which the overweening spirit and study of a false criticism have produced in every age, justify this general remark of the fathers, that though the succor of reasonable criticism ought by no means to be neglected, a spirit of prayer is the only key ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... not suffer this or any other advantage of the colonial relation to divert them from the opinion to which their observation was gradually bringing them,—that its overweening loyalty placed a great country like Canada in s very silly attitude, the attitude of an overgrown, unmanly boy, clinging to the maternal skirts, and though spoilt and willful, without any character of his own. The constant reference of local hopes ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... chairs.[14] Oh how great did I see those who have been undone by their pride![15] and the balls of gold[16] made Florence flourish with all their great deeds. So did the fathers of those who always,when your church is vacant, become fat, staying in consistory.[17] The overweening race which is as a dragon behind him who flies, and to him who shows tooth or purse is gentle as a lamb,[18] already was coming up, but from small folk, so that it pleased not Ubertin Donato that his father-in-law ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... General, down to the youngest drum-boy, a confident anticipation of success seemed to pervade all ranks; and in the hope of an ample reward in store for them, the toils and grievances of the moment were forgotten. Nor was this anticipation the mere offspring of an overweening confidence in themselves. Several Americans had already deserted, who entertained us with accounts of the alarm experienced at New Orleans. They assured us that there were not at present 5000 soldiers in the State; that the principal inhabitants had long ago left the place; ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... see them for the flowers that have sprung up about them since. Of course, if the world had chosen, it might have said some hard truths about the Marquise, might have taken her to task for shallowness and an overweening preference for one child at the expense of the rest; but the world of Paris is swept along by the full flood of new events, new ideas, and new fashions, and it was inevitable the Mme. d'Aiglemont should be in some sort allowed to drop out of sight. So ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... by taking great liberties, which culminated in her drawing his attention to the fact that my poor stepmother displayed 'an overweening love of dress'. The accusation was perfectly false; my stepmother was, if rather richly, always, plainly dressed, in the sober Quaker mode; almost her only ornament was a large carnelian brooch, set in flowered flat gold. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... excellent tragedy The Duke of Guise, first performed 4 December. The play created a furore, and its political purport as a picture of the baffled intrigues of Shaftesbury in favour of Lucy Walter's overweening son is obvious, nor is it rendered less so by Dryden's clever and caustic Vindication of the Duke of Guise (1683). It is interesting to note that Lady Slingsby, who played the Queen Mother, Catherine de' Medici, in this play, has some very sardonic speeches put in her mouth; indeed, as Henri ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... of either upon England's sea power and honor. While England's policy thus steadily aimed at widening and strengthening the bases of her sway upon the ocean, the other governments of Europe seemed blind to the dangers to be feared from her sea growth. The miseries resulting from the overweening power of Spain in days long gone by seemed to be forgotten; forgotten also the more recent lesson of the bloody and costly wars provoked by the ambition and exaggerated power of Louis XIV. Under the eyes of the statesmen of Europe there was steadily and visibly being built up a third overwhelming ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... Hungarian throne. At the same time, we feel ourselves bound in duty to make known the motives and reasons which have impelled us to this decision, that the civilized world may learn we have not taken this step out of overweening confidence in our own wisdom, or out of revolutionary excitement, but that it is an act of the last necessity, adopted to preserve from utter destruction a nation persecuted to the limit of ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... the last recesses of a ruined temple. And there, in the ultimate chamber crouched all that was left of the inmate, terrified, helpless, and ignorant. As I looked upon him I understood why man is never permitted really to know himself unless, in an access of mad folly and overweening pride, he succeeds in crossing the boundary which to pass is sheer wickedness. And I tried to turn away, but I could not—I could not. I made a supreme effort. It was ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... pleasure when he had it in his power; nor is he the first lad that has been spoiled by the over-careful fondness of women. No training is so useful for children, great or small, as the company of their betters in rank or natural parts; in whose society they lose the overweening sense of their own importance, which stay-at-home people very ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... before I can suspect its presence; and my case too is somewhat peculiar, and hard to cure by the religious treatment commonly prescribed in such cases. For in fact," said he to himself, "my pride is not of the artless and overweening kind, elated, audacious, boldly displaying, and proclaiming itself to the world; no, mine is in a latent state, what was called vain-glory in the simplicity of the Middle Ages, an essence of pride diluted with vanity and evaporating within me in transient thoughts ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... next topic: you may work on the enemy's fears by the various devices of mock ambuscades, sham relief parties, false information. Conversely, his confidence will reach an overweening pitch, if the idea gets abroad that his opponents have troubles of their own and little ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... the tolerably well-conceived, but intolerably ill-executed, attempt of Dumouriez to make himself a French Duke of Albemarle. It was quite as unprincipled as his political operations were at Paris in 1792, and in both cases he came to grief through his overweening self-confidence and consequent lack of the most ordinary prudence ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... here's the ladder for the purpose. Why, Phaethon,—for thou art Merops' son,— Wilt thou aspire to guide the heavenly car, And with thy daring folly burn the world? 155 Wilt thou reach stars, because they shine on thee? Go, base intruder! overweening slave! Bestow thy fawning smiles on equal mates; And think my patience, more than thy desert, Is privilege for thy departure hence: 160 Thank me for this more than for all the favours, Which all too much I have bestow'd on thee. But if thou linger in my territories Longer than swiftest ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... appearance. Elizabeth was not to be thus cajoled. She ordered him into custody, deprived him of his offices, and, what was of more importance to him, refused to renew his patent of a monopoly of sweet wines. Although the earl soon regained his liberty he could not forget his disgrace, and his overweening vanity drove him to concert measures against the government. In 1601 he rode at the head of a few followers into the city, expecting the citizens to rise in his favour. The mayor had, however, been forewarned, and 1,000 ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... origin, hailing from Bourbonnais, members of which occupied for generations the thrones of France, Naples, and Spain, and who severally ruled their territories under a more or less overweening sense of their rights as born to reign. Two branches, both of which trace back to Henry IV., held sway in France, one beginning with Louis XIV., eldest son of Louis XIII., and the other, called the Orleans, with Philip of Orleans, second son of Louis XIII., the former ending with ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... on Clerambault, they unmasked their batteries and violently taxed him with absurd, criminal pride. They asked him if he thought himself cleverer than anyone else, that he set himself up against the entire nation? On what did he found this overweening self-confidence? Duty consists in being humble, and keeping to one's proper place in the community; when it commands, our duty is to bow to it, and, whether we agree or not, we must carry out its orders. Woe to the rebel against the soul of his country! To be in the right ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... declaration, that the American title to the whole of it is "clear and unquestionable." They have displayed, in the conduct of their foreign relations during the past year, a vulgar indifference to the opinion of mankind, and an overweening estimate of their own power, which it is at once ludicrous and painful to behold. Nor is there reason to believe that these blots on the escutcheon of a nation, so young and so unembarrassed, are either deeply regretted or will be speedily effaced. We see no reaction of ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... which liberty requires of them by being told that "the Duke," that gallant soldier and most able general, is a screaming coward and doting corporal. We have grave and solemn work to do. Making light of it or of our enemies may inspire a moment's overweening confidence, but would ensure ultimate defeat. We have much to contend against; but our resources are immense, and nothing but our own rashness or cowardice can ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... right to state that, in the early period of his history, a thoughtless disregard of his own life, and an overweening confidence in his ability to swim almost any length, and amid circumstances of great peril, often led him to deeds of 'reckless daring,' which in riper years he would have trembled to attempt. Respecting most of the following circumstances ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... himself, however, accompanied by the Bishop of Worms, and carrying with him his most precious effects, took refuge in Cologne, and abandoned his capital and territories to the rapacity of a tyrannical garrison. But these preparations, which bespoke less of true courage than of weak and overweening confidence, did not prevent the Swedes from marching against Mentz and making serious preparations for an attack upon the city. While one body of their troops poured into the Rheingau, routed the Spaniards who remained ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... name sometimes in the columns of the Times and the Morning Post. "He seems to go everywhere, and to know every one," she observed once to Dinah; "I am afraid he will be terribly spoiled." But she only said it to tease Dinah. She knew that Malcolm Herrick had no overweening estimate of himself—that, in spite of his success and his many friends, and all the smiles and adulation lavished on him, at heart he was a lonely man. Perhaps in her way Elizabeth was lonely too. In spite of her devotion to David's father, there were times when the ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... despised—either for men or flowers—may {124} be no ill-fortune; the real ill-fortune is only to be despicable. These faults of human character, wherever found, observe, belong to it as ill-trained—incomplete; confirm themselves only in the vulgar. There is no base pertinacity, no overweening conceit, in the Black Douglas, or Claverhouse, or Montrose; in these we find the pure Scottish temper, of heroic endurance and royal pride; but, when, in the pay, and not deceived, but purchased, idolatry of Mammon, the Scottish persistence and pride become ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... dramatist had penned these words, the management of Blackfriars met with disaster. The cause, however, went back to December 13, 1600, when Giles and Evans were gathering their players. In their overweening confidence they made a stupid blunder in "taking up" for their troupe the only son and heir of Henry Clifton, a well-to-do gentleman of Norfolk, who had come to London for the purpose of educating the boy. Clifton ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... recognized him, she started violently, smote her hands together and gazed at him with such overweening joy written on her face, that he would have swept her into his arms, but for her quick recovery and retreat. In shelter behind the exedra she halted, fended from him by the marble seat. He gazed across ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... most pacific human races there are some brave spirits, so amongst the American lions there are a few which possess all the courage of their jungle brothers. Actuated by overweening curiosity, or else by a thirst for blood, the big cat returned again and again to the edge of the hole. After his first throw Wade was unable to hit the beast with a stone, although his efforts had the temporary effect of frightening it. Gradually, however, it grew bolder, ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... not perpetrated. His hapless fellow-citizens have been subjected to every form of cruelty and insult. Virgins have been seduced, boys corrupted, the feelings of his subjects outraged in every possible way. His overweening pride, his insolent bearing towards all who had to do with him, were such as no doom of yours can adequately requite. A man might with more security have fixed his gaze upon the blazing sun, than upon yonder tyrant. As for the refined cruelty of ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... slave. And she restored the whole shell of him. She restored the whole form and figure of him. But the core was gone. His pride was bolstered up, his blood ran once more in pride. But there was no core to him: as a distinct male he had no core. His triumphant, flaming, overweening heart of the intrinsic male would never beat again. He would be subject now, reciprocal, never the indomitable thing with a core of overweening, unabateable fire. She had abated that ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... him worthy of his birth divine And high prediction, henceforth I expose To Satan; let him tempt, and now assay His utmost subtlety, because he boasts And vaunts of his great cunning to the throng Of his Apostasy. He might have learnt Less overweening, since he failed in Job, Whose constant perseverance overcame Whate'er his cruel malice could invent. He now shall know I can produce a man, 150 Of female seed, far abler to resist All his solicitations, and at length All his vast ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... education is impossible. This is indeed hoisting De Lammenais with his own petard. For, according to "Traditionalism," the mind is paralyzed by isolation, and can be duly developed only in society. An overweening self-confidence and slight regard for the labours of other thinkers usually characterizes self-taught genius. This it was that led him to cut all connection with the philosophy of the past, and to ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... she continued abruptly, "spread it out before you, with all its just defeats, all its broken faith, and overweening hopes, its beauty, and fear, and love, and its loss—its loss; then turn and say: this, this only, this duller heart, these duller eyes, this contumacious spirit is all that is left—myself. Oh! who could wish to ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... self-confident, he suffered from being deprived of the only weapon he could use with effect. No intelligence could penetrate the darkness of the Placid Gulf. There remained only one thing he was certain of, and that was the overweening vanity of his companion. It was direct, uncomplicated, naive, and effectual. Decoud, who had been making use of him, had tried to understand his man thoroughly. He had discovered a complete singleness of motive behind ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... or modern nation, civilized and refined like herself; the merciless whippings in her army, peculiar to herself alone, the conspicuous commission and freest acknowledgment of vice in the upper classes; the overweening distinctions shown to opulence and birth, so destructive of a sound moral sentiment in the nation, so baffling to virtue. These are some of the traits that rise up to a contemplation of ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... breaks forth one of those disgraceful panics, which so often follow overweening presumption; and shrieks, oaths, prayers, and reproaches, make night hideous. There are those too on board who recollect well enough Jenebelli's fire-ships at Antwerp three years before, and the wreck which they made of Parma's bridge across ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... death written upon the countenance before them. This curious faculty was possessed by Rasputin to a very marked degree—a faculty which has puzzled scientists through all the ages, a faculty which usually runs side by side with an overweening vanity and an amazing self-consciousness. Sometimes the possessor of that most astounding and mysterious intuition is also possessed of a humble and retiring disposition. But ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... the apostolic age Judaism was a consolidated, petrified system, defended from outward influence on all sides by an invulnerable bigotry, a haughty exclusiveness; while Christianity was in a young and vigorous, an assimilating and formative, state. Fourthly, the overweening sectarian vanity and scorn of the Jews, despising, hating, and fearing the Christians, would not permit them to adopt peculiarities of belief from the latter; but the Christians were undeniably Jews in almost ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... be almost ruined if they have made a miscalculation; they defy even the owner of the animal, and they cheerfully give him the opportunity of putting down thousands if he wishes to do so. There must be some reason for this assurance which at first sight looks so very overweening. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... matter that thou hast taken away my husband? and wouldst thou take away my son's dudaim also?' And Rachel said, 'See, Jacob shall be thine to-night for thy son's dudaim.' But Leah insisted, 'Jacob is mine, and I am the wife of his youth,' whereupon Rachel, 'Be not boastful and overweening. To me he was betrothed first, and for my sake he served our father fourteen years. Thou art not his wife, thou wast taken to him by cunning instead of me, for our father deceived me, and put me ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... discernment to know that he was right and these others wrong? Poor, arrogant fool. His worries were not the result of genuine affection and deep human sympathy, the irrepressible and uncontrollable desires and longings of his heart to bring others into the full light of God's love, but of his overweening self-confidence in his own wisdom and judgment. And I say this in no personal condemnation of him, for I have now even forgotten who it was, but in condemnation of the spirit in which he and ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... but amidst his greening Grey were the days of the hidden sun; Fair was the summer, but overweening, So soon his o'er-sweet days ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... false money, but that he was a good simple fellow, who could plead in his excuse that he had taken counsel with his confessor, and had received, as he said, from him permission to do this. Thereto he added: "If you send for this great artist to Rome, your Holiness will bring down the overweening arrogance of your favourite Benvenuto, and I am quite certain that Tobbia's work will please you far more than his." The Pope accordingly sent for him at once; and when the man arrived, he made us both appear before ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... must be instructed,' said Siegfried the good knight, 'To leave off idle talking and rule their tongues aright. Keep thy fair wife in order. I'll do by mine the same. Such overweening folly puts me indeed to ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... place. But he understood perfectly the artistic advantages of gradation, contrast, and relief. Taking Hamlet as the key-note, we find in him weakness of character, which, on the one hand, is contrasted with the feebleness that springs from overweening conceit in Polonius and with frailty of temperament in Ophelia, while, on the other hand, it is brought into fuller relief by the steady force of Horatio and the impulsive violence of Laertes, who ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... and for this purpose he has cheated the imagination of the illusions which the prejudices of sense and of the world put upon it, by reducing every thing to the abstract predicament of size. He enlarges or diminishes the scale, as he wishes to shew the insignificance or the grossness of our overweening self-love. That he has done this with mathematical precision, with complete presence of mind and perfect keeping, in a manner that comes equally home to the understanding of the man and of the child, does not take away ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... were barred to him, and in which his isolation was a constant insult to France. There was nothing left, therefore, but to grant the latter a recall which, smarting with a humiliation so unforeseen to his overweening arrogance, he demanded in accents of rage and despair. However, in order to salve his amour-propre, the Abbe d'Estrees continued to discharge the functions of the embassy, as though his uncle's absence were only temporary; but that state of things did not suit ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... had about them, find it sore travail to remember what I had for dinner yesterday, what friends I conversed with, what Tavern I supped at, what news I read in the Gazette? But 'tis the knowledge of that overweening Craving to count up the trivial Things of my Youth that warns me to use despatch, even if the chronicle of my after doings be but a short summary or sketch of so many Perils by Land and Sea. And for this manner of the remotest things being the more distinct and dilated upon, let ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... guns and troops had their places for the final movement under cover of darkness and he rose from his desk, the thing that had edged its way into a crowded mind took possession of the premises that strategy and tactics had vacated. It passed under the same analysis as his work. His overweening pride, so sensitive to the suspicion of a conviction that he had been fooled, put his relations with Marta in ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... two overweening spirits had been rebuked, matters in the shack went quietly for a while. The four men watched the girl, full of wonder; meanwhile each kept an eye on ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... battle wisely, conquers the unwary foe; As the Owl, awaiting night-time, slew the overweening Crow.' ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... despised," began he upon the horrible threshold, "wherefore is this overweening harbored in you? Why do ye kick against that will from which its end can never be cut short, and which many a time hath increased your grief? What avails it to butt against the fates? Your Cerberus, if ye remember well, still bears his chin and his throat peeled ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... meanwhile, and it was ready for business again. A number of good shots were made by different gunners. Enough to show that, amateur tars that we were, there was the making of good gunners in us. As the "Kid," in his overweening confidence, said, "Ain't we peaches? When we get down south we will have a little target practise, and the 'dagos' will be so scared that they will haul down their ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... curiosity, or hostile malevolence; but the most astounding part of the assembly, at least to a Lowland ear, was the rival performance of the bagpipers. These warlike minstrels, who had the highest opinion, each, of the superiority of his own tribe, joined to the most overweening idea of the importance connected with his profession, at first, performed their various pibrochs in front each of his own clan. At length, however, as the black-cocks towards the end of the season, when, in sportsman's language, ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... what he meant by the signs of the times, 'those who arrogate the gift of the Holy Ghost, while their sole inspiration is the presumption of their own hearts and an overweening contempt of authority, may well mistake signs of their own causing for signs from heaven. I but repeat the very words of ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... earth will order rightly! Flee winding error through the flowery way, To daily follow truth! to ponder nightly On time, and death, and judgment, nearer day by day! Bewail thy bane, deluded France, Vain-glory, overweening pride, And harrying earth with eagle glance, Ambition, frantic homicide! Lament, of all that armed throng How few may reach their native land! By war and tempest to be borne along, To strew, like leaves, the Scythian strand? Before Jehovah who can stand? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... and spent my time, when not employed in study, largely at the rooms of our Society, where Mrs. Marsh presided as secretary. There were countless circulars and pamphlets to be mailed, setting forth our purposes and needs. Mrs. Marsh, despite an inaccurate acquaintance with and an overweening curiosity regarding the doings of fashionable people, was a model of executive ability. With some one at hand to correct her grammar and spelling, she could transact a greater amount of business than half-a-dozen ordinary women. In my zeal to see things properly done, I ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... world." The daughter of Pitt's favourite sister, Lady Hester (1776-1839) was her uncle's constant companion (1803-6). In character she resembled her grandfather far more than her uncle, who owed his cool judgment to the Grenville blood. Lady Hester inherited the overweening pride, generosity, courage, and fervent heat of the "Great Commoner," as well as his indomitable will. Like him, she despised difficulties, and ignored the word "impossibility." Her romantic ideas were also combined with keen insight into character, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... morning, and their feelings were in accord with the fresh appearance of the world. No thoughts or anticipations of how their varying fortunes might be marred troubled for one instant their youthful minds. Their hearts were full of hope and the overweening vanity and self-confidence of their years. The East, to them, was paved with gold. Troubles looked like the necessary things to be combatted fearlessly to reach the success that must await them beyond; life, indeed, was one rosy, golden, glorious dream. The stern realities were to ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... the nursery, the counter, and the lap of unrestrained indulgence at home: and if most of them at least, by their impotency as officers, in all important functions at sea, by their boyish and overweening conceit of their gold lace, by their overbearing manner toward the seamen, and by their peculiar aptitude to construe the merest trivialities of manner into set affronts against their dignity; if by all this they sometimes ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... I do not know. What I do know is, that the bonds of it were rudely broken, and of the story nothing remained but disappointment and pain, doubt and distrust. Godfrey had most likely cherished an overweening notion of the relative value of the love he gave; but being his, I am certain it was genuine—by that, I mean a love with no small element of the everlasting in it. The woman who can cast such a love from her is not likely to meet with such another. But with this ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... This weed grows upon a glass window, and upon a dunghill. It lodges in palaces and cottages. Nay, it will spring and grow out of a pretended humility, and low carriage. In a word, the ambitious designs of men, the large appetite of earthly things, the overweening conceit of ourselves, and love to ourselves, the stirring of our affections, without observing a rule upon unlawful objects, or in an unlawful manner,—all these are common to men, and men walk after them. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... and thinking the Prince a mere landless exile, she only pitied him. Little did she guess how he laughed at her, his mother, and himself, most of all at her airs, while his mother, scolding him all the time, joined in the laugh, though she always maintained that Mademoiselle, in spite of her overweening conceit and vanity, would become an excellent and faithful wife, and make her husband's ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hope, therefore, of receiving indulgence from the critics, whose asperity is rarely excited except by the overweening pretensions of confident ignorance and self-sufficiency, he ventures on the ground already trodden by so many distinguished men, whose works, deep in research, beautiful in description, and valuable from ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... of this mischief, ariseth from ourselves or others, [1914]we are active and passive. It proceeds inwardly from ourselves, as we are active causes, from an overweening conceit we have of our good parts, own worth, (which indeed is no worth) our bounty, favour, grace, valour, strength, wealth, patience, meekness, hospitality, beauty, temperance, gentry, knowledge, wit, science, art, learning, our [1915] excellent gifts ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... against the truth and her own conscience. A fearful dread fell upon her, and deprived her of the power to lift her soul in prayer. She could not, she dared not, do what was required of her, and yet the overweening love of life which exists in every mortal led her feet to the base of the idol and there ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... most of them. The damsels of Woodstock looked as vainly for the laced cloaks, jingling spurs, slashed boots, and tall plumes, of the young cavaliers of this and other high-born houses, moving through the streets and the church-yard with the careless ease, which indicates perhaps rather an overweening degree of self-confidence, yet shows graceful when mingled with good-humour and courtesy. The good old dames, too, in their white hoods and black velvet gowns—their daughters, "the cynosure of neighbouring eyes,"—where were they all now, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... avail." Gudrun answered, "You make a swift work of looking into this matter; Bolli himself once bespoke it before me, and I rather warded it off, and the same is still uppermost in my mind." Osvif said, "Many a man will tell you that this is spoken more in overweening pride than in wise forethought if you refuse such a man as is Bolli. But as long as I am alive, I shall look out for you, my children, in all affairs which I know better how to see through things than you do." And ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... appears to have taken soldierly precautions, but Smith was not at all pleased with him from the first. He says "the President's overweening jealousy would admit of no exercise at arms, or fortifications but the boughs of trees cast together in the form of a half-moon by the extraordinary pains and diligence of Captain Kendall." He also says there was contention between Captain ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... fear from Carthage as ever. He quickly returned home, and pointed out to the Senate that the former defeats and misfortunes suffered by the Carthaginians had not really broken their strength so much as they had dissipated their overweening self-confidence, and that in the late war they had not lost so much in strength as they had gained in experience and skill. Their present difference with the Numidians was, he urged, merely a prelude to an attack upon Rome, with ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... spoils. But it fell out, that he was no way acceptable to the Queen or her new servants: these apprehended no little trouble and impediment to the public business, from his restless, talkative, overweening manner, if once he was suffered to have any part in affairs; and he stood very ill with the court, having made a motion in the House of Lords, and in Her Majesty's presence, that the Electoral Prince of Hanover might be invited to reside ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... falshood, snare them. But for thee I had persisted happie, had not thy pride And wandring vanitie, when lest was safe, Rejected my forewarning, and disdain'd Not to be trusted, longing to be seen Though by the Devil himself, him overweening To over-reach, but with the Serpent meeting Fool'd and beguil'd, by him thou, I by thee, 880 To trust thee from my side, imagin'd wise, Constant, mature, proof against all assaults, And understood not all was but a shew ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Annie Walton was rising with dangerous rapidity; and the feeling grew strong within her that, having coped successfully with such temptations, she had little to fear from the future. And this feeling of overweening self-confidence and self- satisfaction was beginning to tinge her manner. Not that she would ever show it offensively, for she was too much of a lady for that. But at the supper-table that evening she gave evident signs of elation and excitement. She talked more than usual, ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... last command, and embraces death to escape insult. The haughty spirit was unchanged, crushed but the same, unsoftened, and therefore roused to madder defiance of God and man. What an awful last saying for 'the anointed of Jehovah,' and how the overweening self-will and vehemence and passionate pride of his whole life are gathered up ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... made possible she must pass through the fire, and be purged of that corruption which is even now poisoning her blood and clouding her eyes in the presence of her enemies. The overweening lust of gold must be burnt out of her soul in the fiery crucible of war, and she must learn to hold honour once more higher than wealth, and rich and poor and gentle and simple must be as one family, and ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... in the political market, and the respectable constituency of the pleasant watering-place of Bath, in Somersetshire, elected the fierce little man as their representative in the Imperial Parliament. This was a great start in life for the new-fledged barrister, and, had he moderated his overweening vanity, and studied wisely, and with some self-abnegation and honest adherence to party, he might have risen to some useful position, and been saved, at least, from the indignity of fetching and carrying for the Emperor of Austria, and from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... balladmongers, entitled The Blason of Colours. Who made it? Whoever it was, he was wise in that he did not set his name to it. But, besides, I know not what I should rather admire in him, his presumption or his sottishness. His presumption and overweening, for that he should without reason, without cause, or without any appearance of truth, have dared to prescribe, by his private authority, what things should be denotated and signified by the colour: which is the custom of tyrants, who will have their will to bear ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... own prudence had been growing weaker, daily; and now it seemed to him as if a great darkness were gathering all around. He had fully trusted in himself; alas! how weak now seemed to him his human arm; how dim the vision with which he would penetrate the future. He was mocked of his own overweening and proud confidence. ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... House, and therefore it is necessary for me, Gentlemen, lest the whole burden fall on others, to say that it had my hearty, sincere, and entire approbation. Gentlemen, I hope that I have not manifested through my public life a very overweening confidence in my own judgment, or a very unreasonable unwillingness to accept the views of others. But there are some subjects on which I feel entitled to pay some respect to my own opinion. The subject of currency, Gentlemen, has been the study of my life. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... overweening antagonism to her betrothed; yet remember that though the words had not been uttered to give her good reason for it, nature reads nature; captives may be stript of everything save that power to read their tyrant; remember also that she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... worthy of remark, that the nearer he approaches to the gallows—the great last scene to which the whole of these effects have been working up—the more the overweening conceit of the poor wretch shows itself; the more he feels that he is the hero of the hour; the more audaciously and recklessly he lies, in supporting the character. In public—at the condemned sermon—he deports himself as becomes the man whose autographs are precious, ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... a native of the old country, however, and he entered but little into the colonial jealousies. He had lived from boyhood, and had married in New York, and was not apt to betray any of the overweening notions of superiority that we sometimes encountered in native-born Englishmen, though I can remember instances in which he would point out the defects in our civilization, and others in which he dwelt with pleasure on the grandeur and power his own island. I dare say this was all right, for few ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... Is there somewhat overweening in this claim? Then I reject all I have written, for what is the use of pretending to know what we know not? But it is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other. I hold our actual knowledge ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... that favoured spot. He who desires to see how narrow his countrymen and countrywomen can be abroad, and how completely the mass of British travellers lay themselves open to the charge of insularity, and an overweening estimate of themselves and their native customs, should spend a few weeks in a Paris boarding-house, somewhere in the Faubourg St. Honore—if he would have the full aroma of British conceit. The most surprising feature of the English quarter of ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... abounds, Eaton is a magnificent display of towers, and turrets, pinnacles and battlements, partly embosomed in foliage, and belted with one of the richest domains in England. Indeed, its splendour seldom fails to strike the overweening admirer of art with devotional fondness, which is not lessened by his approach to the fabric.[1] The most favourable distant views are from the Aldford road, and from the romantic banks of the Dee, whence there is a proud display of architectural grandeur. In every point, however, the ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... thou wilt not yield in this, i'faith, I approve thy choice, and will further thee therein as I best can. Nevertheless, Gunther hath many mighty men, were it none other than Hagen, an arrogant and overweening knight. I fear both thou and I must rue that thou ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... of that domain. Never have I seen Belinda, or rather Belle-bouche, so lovely, and I here disdainfully repel your ridiculous calumny that she's in love with you, you great lump of presumption and overweening self-conceit! Philippa too was a pastoral queen—in silk and jewels—and around them they had gathered together a troop of shepherds from the adjoining grammar-school, called William and Mary College, ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... like to be fetches of men: but thy wife sickens now, and she will give birth to a woman-child fair and lovely; and dearly thou wilt love her; but high-born men shall woo thy daughter, coming from such quarters as the eagles seemed to fly from, and shall love her with overweening love, and shall fight about her, and both lose their lives thereby. And thereafter a third man, from the quarter whence came the falcon, shall woo her, and to that man shall she be wedded. Now, I have unravelled thy dream, and I think things will ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous
... amused by these vain chimeras, which soon vanished before other reflections of more importance and solidity. His imagination, it must be owned, was at all times too chaste to admit those overweening hopes, which often mislead the mind of the projector. He had studied mankind with incredible diligence, and knew perfectly well how far he could depend on the passions and foibles of human nature. That he might now act consistent with his former sagacity, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... as varied as in the cross-roads schools to-day. There was the primer, and there were a few of the old Webster spelling-books, but, while the stories of the boy in the apple tree and the overweening milkmaid were familiar, the popular spelling-book was Town's, and the readers were First, Second, Third and Fourth, and their "pieces" included such classics as "Webster's Reply to Hayne" and "Thanatopsis," and numerous clever exploits ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... I was, how well I can recall the exaggerated ambition, nay, the certainty of success, as well as its desire, which then burned within me. I smile now at the overweening vanity of those hopes,—some, indeed, realized, but how many nipped and withered forever! seeds, of which a few fell upon rich ground and prospered, but of which how far the greater number were scattered: some upon the wayside, and were devoured by immediate cares; ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... abomination, are not only wild to have a lord for their leader, but must have that lord who is the especial incarnation of all those odious qualities which they ascribe most unjustly to the order of which he is a member: and he who is brimful of pride and arrogance, and of an overweening sense of his greatness and his rank, is content to associate with men whose chief recommendation is the profuseness with which they pander to his vanity, and to seek personal distinction and power by lending ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... indeed be thought that I have an overweening confidence in the principle of natural selection, when I do not admit that such wonderful and well-established facts at once annihilate my theory. In the simpler case of neuter insects all of one caste or of the same kind, which have been rendered by natural selection, as I believe ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... the King's household for other gifts than courage or feats of arms, looked pale on each other, and had obviously received an unpleasant impression from the scene which had been just acted. Louis gazed on them with contempt, and then said aloud, "Although the Count of Crevecoeur be presumptuous and overweening, it must be confessed that in him the Duke of Burgundy hath as bold a servant as ever bore message for a prince. I would I knew where to find as faithful an Envoy to carry back ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... pieces in glorification of the Restoration only achieved a succes d'estime. He was glad to accept an appointment to Berlin as court composer for Frederick William III. There he brought out "Lalla Rookh," "Alcidor," and "Agnes Hohenstauffen," none of which found currency in other cities. His overweening conduct gradually made his position at Berlin untenable. He was finally driven out by the hostile demonstrations of his audiences, and retired, in 1841, a broken man. After a few years spent in Paris he returned to Italy, where the Pope created him a count. Spontini returned to his birthplace of ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... only an assumption among mankind," said her husband. "In reality, it is frightful pride and overweening arrogance to think that we shall live for ever—become like God. These were the serpent's wily words, and he ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... use made of them by the possessor; this must include good or ill temper, and other moral dispositions. Some with transcendent talents waste these in futile projects; others make them a source of misery, by indulging that overweening anxiety for fame which ends in disappointment, and excites too often the powerful passions of envy and jealousy; others, too humble, or too weak, fret away their spirits and their life in deploring that they were not ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... exceedingly strange individuality, nor do I recollect having troubled to discover how far they were consistent with the high opinion I formed of him after I had got to know him more intimately. Obviously I had only seen the caricature of the man, although the tendency towards such plainly overweening self-confidence may, at all events, have manifested itself earlier in life. At the same time, one could trace in all this the influence of the decay of the musical and dramatic life of the period, which Spontini, situated as he was in Berlin, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... to good manners; and, where it is wanting, there is generally a reason for it, in some wrong feeling or appreciation of things. Vanity, a love of display, an overweening desire to be admired, are great obstacles to self-possession; whereas, a well-disciplined and well-balanced character will generally lead to composure and self-command. In a very elegant assemblage, in a large drawing-room in a Southern city, I saw ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... me is evidence that while, by a jealous scrutiny and, sometimes, perhaps, a sharp conflict, we are reciprocally imposing checks upon loose exaggerations and overweening pretensions, a comprehensive good feeling predominates over all; truth in its purity is getting eliminated; and characters and occurrences, in all parts of the country, brought under the ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... unformed personality. Nevertheless Duchemin was grateful, and with the young girl as guide for the nth time sailed with d'Artagnan to Newcastle and rode with him toward Belle Isle, with him frustrated the machinations of overweening Aramis and yawned over the insufferable virtues of that most precious prig of all ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... expensive to the public; but there is no well grounded room to suppose they will not fill up; and still less reason to believe, if the means for carrying on the war are attainable, that the vindictive spirit of the King and his ministry, and the overweening pride of the nation, will soon yield to make a peace, which involves their disgrace and humiliation. But as strength or weakness are mere comparative terms, we can form no judgment of the measures of Britain but by attending to the force and disposition ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... of none open, it must be for some secret vileness. They grow angry with him when he refuses to be persuaded against his knowledge of himself. They insist on his hypocrisy, he on his righteousness. Nor may we forget that herein lies not any overweening on the part of Job, for the poem prepares us for the right understanding of the man by telling us in the prologue, that God said thus to the accuser of men: 'Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... oath that he would surely die; he announced that Italy was not worth dying for and it was said that he had sailed away on an aeroplane. He had accomplished none of his desires; the town had not become Italian, though he had bathed it in Italian blood. His overweening personal ambitions had been shipwrecked on the rock of ridicule, for as he made his inglorious exit he shouted at the world that he was "still alive and inexorable." But yet he may have unconsciously achieved something, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... one whose lot it has been to grow old in literary retirement, devoted to classical studies with an exclusiveness which might lead to an overweening estimate of these two noble languages. Few, I will not say evil, were the days allowed to me for such pursuits; and I was constrained, still young and an unripe scholar to forego them for the duties ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... gentle blood in him somewhere," said the old lady to herself. She had a sense of humour which kept her knowledge of her own importance from becoming overweening. "I believe his respect is for my age, not for my rank. I wonder what the ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... desires to all but a privileged few, and of the general visible coercion which came of those laws. All that cause of violent crime is gone. Again, many violent acts came from the artificial perversion of the sexual passions, which caused overweening jealousy and the like miseries. Now, when you look carefully into these, you will find that what lay at the bottom of them was mostly the idea (a law-made idea) of the woman being the property of the ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... law, and is repealable by law, and, wedded as I am to no theory, but looking solely to the advancement of the public good, I shall be among the very first to urge its repeal if it be found not to subserve the purposes and objects for which it may be created. Nor will the plan be submitted in any overweening confidence in the sufficiency of my own judgment, but with much greater reliance on the wisdom and patriotism of Congress. I can not abandon this subject without urging upon you in the most emphatic manner, whatever may be your action on the suggestions ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler
... Winkelried on the field of Sempach. Switzerland has not existed as a political unit for many centuries, but during that time her roll of heroes has been large. In the formative hour of Swiss independence, when that tiny folk were struggling for their liberty against the overweening power of Austria, it must have seemed a hopeless undertaking—this group of mountaineers against the chivalry of an empire. The great battle of Sempach was fought. The Swiss, armed with nothing but their battle-axes, hurled themselves in vain all day long against the serried ranks of Austrian ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... valiant, in the rear; the worst, and those In whom he trusted least, he drove between, That such through mere necessity might act. 350 First to his charioteers he gave in charge Their duty; bade them rein their horses hard, Shunning confusion. Let no warrior, vain And overweening of his strength or skill, Start from his rank to dare the fight alone, 355 Or fall behind it, weakening whom he leaves. [13]And if, dismounted from his own, he climb Another's chariot, let him not affect Perverse the reins, but let him stand, his spear Advancing firm, far better so employ'd. 360 ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... that had I disdained to toil, But sate in my loathsome cave the while, And ne'er to these hateful sons of Heaven, GOLD, MONARCHY, and MURDER, given; Hadst thou with all thine art essayed One of thy games then to have played, With all thine overweening boast, Falsehood! I tell thee thou hadst lost!— Yet wherefore this dispute?—we tend, Fraternal, to one common end; In this cold grave beneath my feet, Will our hopes, our fears, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... was time for plain speaking between her and Adam, and rightly judged that a proper understanding come to at once would be the safest means of securing future comfort. Turn and twist Adam's abrupt announcement as she would, she could assign but one cause for it, and that cause was an overweening jealousy; and as the prospect came before her of a lifetime spent in the midst of doubt and suspicion, the strength of her love seemed to die away and her heart grew faint within her. For surely if the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... white ladies to their married lords. Still, the white ladies constantly speak with the greatest contempt, and even with animosity, of these unhappy and oppressed beings. The strongest language of high nobility in the monarchies of the old world, cannot be more haughty, overweening or contemptuous towards their fellow creatures, than the expressions of the creole females with regard to the quadroons, in one of the much vaunted states of the free Union. In fact, such comparison ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... smiled to himself, and went his way in silence; for he who loved Andrea Mantegna did not bow down in homage before the old master-potter's estimation of himself, which was in truth somewhat overweening in its vanity. ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... fury. He speeds across the earth in hasty flight, and they whom he visits soon discover that he brings no deity with him, but frenzy rather; yet none will he visit except those abounding overmuch in earthly felicity; for they, he knows, in their overweening conceit, are ready to afford him lodgment and shelter. This has been proven to us by many facts. Do we not see that Venus, the true, the heavenly Venus, often dwells in the humblest cot, her sole concern being the perpetuation of our race? But this ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio |
