"Prig" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old-fashioned quality; yet, in spite of his well-favoured youth, he was singularly lacking in sympathetic appeal. Already people were beginning to say that they "admired Culpeper; but he was a bit of a prig, and they couldn't get really in touch with him." His attitude of mind, which was passive but critical, had developed the faculties of observation rather than the habits of action. As a member of ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... the grocer, in the shop. A conceited young prig, not yet out of the quarrelsome age. He makes boy-love to Priscilla Tomboy and Miss La Blond; but says he will "tell papa" if they ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Lovelace, borne down by remorse, was killed in a duel by a cousin of Clarissa. Sir Charles Grandison, 1753, was Richardson's portrait of an ideal fine gentleman, whose stately doings fill eight volumes, but who seems to the modern reader a bore and a prig. All of these novels were written in the form of letters passing between the characters, a method which fitted Richardson's subjective cast of mind. He knew little of life, but he identified himself ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... of f's and g's and such like tailey, twirley, loopey things, when my heart is in the tender vein. And I hold that a man who will not do so, now he has been shown how to do it, is, in plain English, neither more nor less than a prig. The advantages of a varied spelling of names are very great. Industrious, rather than intelligent, people have given not a little time, and such minds as they have, to the discussion of the right spelling of our great poet's name. But he himself never ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... you hear it's a waluable dog—now is it feasible as I should go for to prig a dog ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... ask your permission to do so, Miss Eleanor,' he said slightly embarrassed, 'and I was prig enough to think you would allow it, but when you told me of your engagement I did not dare. After you left I had a dread that something might happen, and I could not rest satisfied until I had made up my mind to come on and see ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... one's virtue upon one's audience; it gives us a pleasing sense of superior delicacy and humor. But it is none the less mean and ridiculous. Instead of condemnation, the world needs to bestir itself to remove the stupid and cruel creatures that make evil conduct necessary; for can anyone, not a prig, say that the small part of the human race that does well does so because it is naturally better than the large part ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... I answered. "Well, I hardly know; but this I know. Ever since my prig of a brother has come home from Oxford with his affected smile and flattering ways, Ruth has had no ears or eyes ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... "I'm no prig, Lord knows," he went on deliberately. "I like pleasure—and I like a lot of it on a vacation like this, but you're—you're in awful shape. I never heard you talk just this way before. You seem to be sort of bankrupt—morally as well ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... nice brother read the marriage service. He reads better than any one I know, but he is not a bit of a prig really, when ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... Cromer was at his very strongest. He was an ideal Trustee. And what made this evident was the fact that he talked comparatively little about his trust, and never behaved in regard to it as a pedant or a prig. As long as the principle was firmly maintained, he bothered himself very ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... Shall we not censure all the motley train, Whether with ale irriguous, or champaign? Whether they tread the vale of prose, or climb, And whet their appetites on cliffs of rhyme; The college sloven, or embroider'd spark; The purple prelate, or the parish clerk; The quiet quidnunc, or demanding prig; The plaintiff tory, or defendant whig; Rich, poor, male, female, young, old, gay, or sad; Whether extremely witty, or quite mad; Profoundly dull, or shallowly polite; Men that read well, or men that only write; Whether peers, porters, tailors, tune ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... point of view. We have a healthy distrust of ascetics, whose anxiety over their soul's condition we properly regard as a form of egotism; and we know how easily the unco' guid become prigs. Fogazzaro's hero is neither an egotist of the ordinary cloister variety, nor a prig. That our sympathy goes out to Jeanne and not to him shows that we instinctively resent the sacrifice of the deepest human cravings to sacerdotal prescriptions. The highest ideal of holiness which medievals could conceive ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... duty as native-born or naturalized citizens in large sections of the United States, and among these words is the one that stands at the head of the present chapter. I know that some disdainful prig will assure me that it is but a corruption of the French "charivari," and so it is; but then "charivari" is a corruption of the low Latin "charivarium" and that is a corruption of something else, and, ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... has fallen into disrepute. Sir Charles Grandison is a comical rather than a courtly figure to this generation; and the man whose manners may be described as Grandisonian is usually called a pompous and grandiloquent old prig. Certainly the elaborately dressed gentleman speaking to a lady only with polished courtesy of phrase, and avoiding in her presence all coarse words and acts, handing her in the minuet with inexpressible grace and deference, and ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... reply. "Nasty, consequential little prig! And who is he, I should like to know? Panjandrums are not to be mentioned in the same breath as Dodos—we are a much more ancient family than they are, and, besides, we are extinct," he ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... who before drank beer; What's now the cause? we know the case is clear; Look in Prig's purse, the chev'ril there tells you Prig money wants, either to buy ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter "Little Prig"; Bun replied, "You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And a sphere. And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large as you, You are not so small as ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... of the fine gentleman from London," whispered Tina rather venomously to Nora when the game was finished. "I hate a town prig like poison." ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... his leave, and got out of the room as quickly as he could, inwardly denouncing his friend Tom Towers as a prig and a humbug. "I know he wrote those articles," said Bold to himself. "I know he got his information from me. He was ready enough to take my word for gospel when it suited his own views, and to set Mr Harding up before the public as an impostor on no other testimony than ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... now he was more careful to speak the truth than are most people, it was not his habit when a boy, and he had suffered severely in consequence. He was annoyed, therefore, at his question, set him down as a hypocritical, boastful prig, and was seized with a ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... I told him his father was ten thousand times nicer than ever he would be if be lived a hundred years, and I could not bear him if he talked in that wicked, disrespectful way, and Fly kissed me for it, mamma, and said her daddy was worth a hundred of such a prig as ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are shrewd, Miss Challoner; there is no deceiving you! I have seen Mr. Drummond pass and repass often enough; and—pardon me, if he be a friend—I thought from the cut of his coat that he was prig, and I have a ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... boy, not a bit of a prig. But he's not what you can call a success; and I fancy the Marlows won't want to exhibit him. Still, I shall have him to dinner and get some ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... in itself is not bad. Nevertheless,—thinking as the world around us does about hunting,—a clergyman in my position would be wrong to hunt often. But a man who can feel horror at such a thing as this is a prig in religion. If, as is more likely, a man affects horror, he is a hypocrite. I believe that most clergymen will agree with me in that; but there is no clergyman in the diocese of whose agreement I feel more certain ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... scorned the gambler, the spendthrift, the adulterer—in a word, all those whose actions bring about their own inevitable punishment! He had always been self-respecting and conscientious—not a prig, mind you, but inclined rather to the serious than to the flippant side of life; and, so inclining, he had found contentment and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... to her mind, or more imbued with her dislike to all that bears the name of Underwood. I own it is hard to have one's predecessor flung constantly in one's teeth, and by the very people who were the greatest thorns to dear Underwood himself. Then Clem, who was a born prig, though a very good boy, gave some of his little interfering bits of advice before he went away, and it has all been set down to Felix's account! One Sunday, Smith made a complaint of Felix having the biggest boys in the school. It was the consequence of his having taken ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... prig he was!" is scrawled across the page, as Charles Dilke's judgment on himself, when later the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... behalf, stating how much he had suffered in the cause of the ministry. Swift immediately carried his letter to Lord Bolingbroke, then Secretary of State, who railed much at Sacheverell, calling him a busy intermeddling fellow; a prig and an incendiary, who had set the kingdom in a flame which could not be extinguished, and therefore deserved censure instead of reward. Although Swift had not a much better opinion of the Doctor than Lord Bolingbroke, he replied, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... room to be sure! When Miss Chesterforth sings, everybody begins to talk. Hicks and old Fogy were on Ireland: Bass was roaring into old Pump's ears (or into his horn rather) about the Navigation Laws; I was engaged talking to the charming Mrs. Short; while Charley Bonham (a mere prig, in whom I am surprised that the women can see anything,) was pouring out his fulsome rhapsodies in the ears of Diana White. Lovely, lovely Diana White! were it not for three or four other engagements, I know a heart that would suit you ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... first present itself that the pips on playing-cards are significant of future events; and why did he think so? How did the 'grounds' of a teacup come to acquire that deep significance which they now possess for Mrs. Gamp and Betsy Prig? If the believers in these absurdities be asked why they believe, they answer readily enough either that they themselves or their friends have known remarkable fulfilments of the ominous indications of cards or tea-dregs, which must of necessity ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... twenty, I should not in any case have gone into languages as I do now. But I might have learnt a good deal, I think. A thoroughly good preparatory school is, I dare say, very difficult to find. I would make a great point, I think, to send a boy to a good one; not to cram him or make a prig of him, but simply to give him the advantage which will make his whole career in life different from what it will be if his opening days pass by unimproved. Cool of me, Jem, to write all this; but I think of this boy, and my boyish days, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... very interesting architecturally, when my nine-year-old brother remarked quite casually, "Where we are, it is decorated 1307-1377, but by the organ it's Early English, 1189-1307." The clergyman, no doubt, thought him a precocious little prig, but from perpetually playing Architectural Quartettes, this little piece of information came instinctively from him, for he had absorbed ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... returned to Cleeve Court, and announced with tears to his mother (his father had died two years before) that he could not be a priest. She told him, stonily, that he had disappointed her dearest hopes and broken her heart. His brother—the Squire now, and a prig from his cradle—took him out for a long walk, argued with him as with a fractious child, and, without attending to his answers, finally gave him up as a bad job. So an ensigncy was procured, and John a Cleeve ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the end of all our amusement?" he said, as he came near. "You bring Cynthia here in your tiresome, condescending way, you live among us like an almighty prig, smiling gravely at our fun, and then you go off when it is convenient to yourself; and then, when you want a little recreation, you come and sit here in a corner and hug your darling, when you have never given her a thought of late. You ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... absurd to obtrude herself thus on a scene shadowed by tragedy, yet when she saw a glint of real amusement on Mildred Caniper's face, a new thought came to her. Perhaps reserve was not so great a virtue as she had believed. She must not forget; nor must she forget that Miriam considered her a prig, that Mildred Caniper found her too helpful. She pressed her hands against her forehead and concentrated her ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... a moral prig," Haythorne blurted out, with apparently undue warmth. "He was a little scholastic shrimp without a drop of red blood ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... have been led has been blessed to my improvement. If I did not sin, and that so glaringly that my conscience is convicted on the spot, I do not know what I should become, but I feel sure I should grow worse. The man of very regular conduct is too often a prig, if he be not worse—a rabbi. I, for my part, want to be startled out of my conceits; I want to be put to shame in my own eyes; I want to feel the bridle in my mouth, and be continually reminded of my own weakness and the omnipotence of circumstances. (5) If I from my spy-hole, looking ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you and me may it be, Betsy Prig, as was constant partners afore them Chuzzlewidges, and Nadgetts, and Lewsomses, and Tiggses, and Chuffeys got that mixed and that aggerawating that to remember who of them poisoned which or for why in a slime draught, it makes ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... popularity is some form of compromise with things that harm and things that hate—then, if you are worth world-room, you will draw the line sharply and keep on one side of it. And that can be done without giving the impression that you are either a prig or a snob. When you go the right way about it, the attitude I advise is far harder in contemplation than it is in practice. The real difficulty in eight out of every ten of the critical places in life is not what is in them, but what we imagine is in them. Let it be felt that the things you hold ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... Drake," he growls savagely at the sentry, who has thrown himself in front of the opening. "It'll be the worse for you fellows that you ever confined me, no matter by whose order; but as for that stuck-up prig, by——! you'll see soon enough what'll come of his ordering me into ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... critic may wince and make faces over lapses from taste, and protest against a literary style which cannot be defended from any point of view; yet there is Mary in flesh and blood, and there is Caskoden, a veritable prig of a good fellow—there, indeed, are all the dramatis personae, not merely true to ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... satisfactory to add that this young prig of a Mather died when nineteen years of age. Except in Jonathan Edwards's "Narratives of Surprising Conversions," no more painful examples of the Puritanical religious teaching of the young can be found than the account given in the Magnalia of various young souls in whom the love of ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... finer than the staple of his argument.' In endeavouring to avoid vulgar terms he too frequently dignifies trifles, and clothes common thoughts in a splendid dress that would be rich enough for the noblest ideas. In short we are too often reminded of that great man, Mr. Prig, the auctioneer, whose manner was so inimitably fine that he had as much to say on a ribbon as on a Raphael." It seems as if Gibbon had taken the stilted tone of the old French tragedy for his model, rather than the ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... and the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter "Little Prig." Bun replied: "You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together To make up a year And a sphere; And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large as you, You are not so small as I, And not half so spry. I'll not deny you make A very pretty ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... Max, the ne'er-do-weel, the extravagant one, who drank little and did the listening. Dudley had cast off altogether the gravity and taciturnity which sometimes got him looked upon as a bit of a prig, and chatted and told his friend stories, with a tone and manner of irresponsible ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... wish to be thought a prig or one who made a pretence of great industry, and, although Miss Morgan's voice was without expression, he believed that irony ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... of the sinking of a packet-boat, and the first sound and sight of the sea—the author's childhood at Uphill Parsonage—his reminiscences of the clock of Wells Cathedral—and some real villatic sketches—a portrait of a Workhouse Girl—some caustic remarks on prosing and prig parsons, commentators, and puritanical excrescences of sects—to some unaffected lines on the village school children of Castle-Combe, and their annual festival. This is so charming a picture of rural joy, that we ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... these pounces, When I prig your pigs or pullen; Your culvers take Or mateless make Your chanticleer and sullen; When I want provant with Humphrey I sup, And when benighted, To repose in Paul's, With waking souls ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... fluttering time. Mr. WILBERFORCE'S name is unknown to me, and I judge him more experienced in the mysteries of the Stock Exchange than in the art of fiction; but I like his constructive ability and I like his courage. He does not hesitate to make his champion a prig, which is exactly what a youth so idolised by his family would be likely to become. But, though a prig by training, Jack was not by nature a bore, and his relations (especially his father and sister) are delightful people. Altogether ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... all we saw, beginning with Washacum Pond, which we passed on our way to Worcester: "of considerable magnitude, ... and the small islands which dot its surface render it very beautiful." The buildings of New York impressed the little prig greatly. Trinity Church he pronounces "one of the most splendid edifices which I ever saw," and he waxes into "Opalian" eloquence over Barnum's American Museum, which was "illuminated from ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... 'Don't take it like that. From your point of view you were quite right to call me a blackguard. And, mind you, there are plenty of people in the world who aren't blackguards. There's my brother, for instance. He's a bit of a prig—in fact, he's as priggish as he well can be—but he's never done anything but run straight. I don't suppose he could ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... sermon from such a perverse, bad- humoured preacher as Reginald Cruden, could do! Very likely, reader; but, after all, who are you or I to say so? Had any one told Reginald a week ago what would be taking place to-day, he would have coloured up indignantly and hoped he was not quite such a prig as all that. As it was, when it was all over, it was with no self-satisfied smile or inward gratulation that he returned to his work, but rather with the nervous uncomfortable misgivings of one who ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... one met her with her husband at all the best houses since the Castleclares had taken them up. Indeed, Mrs. Saxham was a relative—was it a cousin? No—now it all came back! Adopted daughter, that was it, of an aunt—no, a step-sister of Lord Castleclare, that ineffable little prig of twenty-two, who as a Peer and Privy Councillor of Ireland, and a Lord-in-Waiting to boot, was nevertheless a personage ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... a neglect of this fact, but otherwise reading should "come by nature." When I look through the list of The Best Hundred Books, I cannot help saying to myself, "Here are the most admirable and varied materials for the formation of a prig."'[13] ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... he had married a wife like you, a girl with a level head and a stiff upper lip, a girl with not sufficient sentiment to make her a fool, nor enough brains to be a prig, but just clever enough to supply her husband's deficiencies, he would have been my heir, and this place and all my money would have been ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... busybodies to mind their own business; third—that I should surrender, hands down, to a lot of trumpery complaints and grievances got up partly to spite a landlord, partly to get money out of him; and fourthly—with regard to the right of way—that I should let that young prig Tatham, a lad just out of the nursery, dictate to me, bring the whole country about my ears, and browbeat me out of my rights. Now—I warn you—I shall do none of ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... employers), which exist in the Newcastle MSS. in the British Museum. But the James of these letters is the James of "Catriona." The scenes with the advocates of James of the Glens, at Inveraray, read as if they had been recorded in shorthand, at the moment. David himself is, of course, the Lowland prig he is meant to be, but Catriona, at last, was a moving heroine, though Stevenson, justly, preferred to her the beautiful Miss Grant, and entirely overcame the difficulty of making us realise her beauty. The Princess, in "Prince Otto," is a fair shadow, compared to Miss Grant, and Stevenson ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bosom he burned. As he seared me he hissed: "You are wearing away. The good angels tell me you leave them today. You want to come down from the nails in the door. The victor must hang there three hundred years more. If any prig-saint would outvote all mankind He must use an immortally resolute mind. Think what the saints of Benares endure, Through infinite birthpangs their courage is sure. Self-tortured, self-ruled, they build their powers high, Until they are gods, overmaster the sky." Then he pulled out the nails. ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... more than angered Hugh; they had completely upset his mental equilibrium: his every ideal of college swayed and wabbled. He wasn't a prig, but he had come to Sanford with very definite ideas about the place, and those ideas were already groggy from the ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... "You're a self-satisfied prig," retorted Burns. "Hullo! Somebody's coming. Tell me what to do, Martha. Do I run to meet them and rush them up to Ellen, or do I display a studied indifference? I never 'received' at ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... gae kaim his wig, The sodger not to strut sae big, The lawyer not to be a prig; The fool he cried, Te-hee! I kenn'd that I could never fail! But she pinn'd the dishclout to his tail, And soused him frae the water-pail, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... said the father, "your mother, I know, has spoken for us both. Be honest to everybody, most of all yourself, and remember a boy can fear God without being a prig— Ah, here's ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... "You're a solemn prig, Prendick, a silly ass! You're always fearing and fancying. We're on the edge of things. I'm bound to cut my throat to-morrow. I'm going to have a damned Bank Holiday to-night." He turned and went out into the moonlight. "M'ling!" he cried; "M'ling, ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... to you, did he? and sent you down at a moment's notice? ha! ha! He's a solemn old prig, is Pritchett; but a good servant; a very good servant. When I am gone, he'll have enough to live on; but he'll want some one to say a word to him now and again. Don't forget what I say about him. It's not so easy to ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... flame: About mere peace or war a commotion to make, When the Party's existence was plainly at stake! When office was offer'd, to cast it behind, And to talk of such trash as the good of mankind! It is clear, my good friend, such a crotchety prig Has but little pretence to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... height into the air, and the story couldn't have been. He would have proved, by map and compass, that there was no such kingdom as the delightful kingdom of Casgar, on the frontiers of Tartary. He would have caused that hypocritical young prig Harry to make an experiment,—with the aid of a temporary building in the garden and a dummy,—demonstrating that you couldn't let a choked hunchback down an Eastern chimney with a cord, and leave him upright on the hearth to terrify the ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... your mouth, you young prig!" interrupted Grundy, and the entrance of Mr. Greyling put a stop ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... said Jock with a blush. "I was a little prig. Lucy, how strange it all is, like a picture one has seen somewhere, or a scene in a play or a dream! Sometimes I can remember little bits of it, just as he used to read it out to old Ford. Bits of it are all in and out of As You Like It, as if Touchstone had said them, or Jaques. Poor old ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... men spoke lightly of women in his presence he showed disapproval, if their character was attacked he championed their cause, if confronted with proofs, he flatly refused to consider them. Yet he was neither a prig nor a prude. He enjoyed a joke as well as any one, but at the same time he did not let his mind run in only one channel, as some men do. He pitied rather than blamed the wretched females who frequented the ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... minute, as though to see that if not with words, at any rate with thoughts, she was taking her share in the conversation which was certainly intended for her delight. The Quaker in the mean time ate his dinner very silently. He was conscious of having shown himself somewhat of a prig about that slang phrase, and was repenting himself. Mrs. Roden every now and then would put in a word in answer rather to her son than to the host, but she was aware of those electric sparks which, from Lord Hampstead's end of the wire, were being ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... the speech of soldiers. Yet he not merely kept his own lips" clean, but he shrank, as from a blow, from every coarse or indecent speech in others. He did not go around correcting people. He was too sensible for that. He was not a prig or a prude. But he knew, as we know, that vile speech is hateful to God; and, as so many of us do not do, he set his face ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... Oct., 1906). She considers that thirteen is quite early enough to begin teaching children the lessons of the Gospels, for a child who acted in accordance with the Gospels would be "aggravating," and would generally be regarded as "an insufferable prig." Moreover, she points out, it is dangerous to teach young children the Christian virtues of charity, humility, and self-denial. It is far better that they should first be taught the virtues of justice and courage and self-mastery, and the more ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... prig, by any means, who held aloof from sport and play; he could laugh with the merriest, run a race with the swiftest, and try a wrestling match ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... and Willis out of Bateman's lodgings. It was a Saint's day, and they had no lectures; they walked arm-in-arm along Broad Street, evidently very intimate, and Willis found his voice: "I can't bear that Freeborn," said he, "he's such a prig; and I like him the less because I am obliged ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... a fair question to ask any man, for an affirmative makes a prig of him and a negative a mere politician. I will therefore generalize freely and tell you that a man who believes himself to be a statesman considers the nation first, as a matter of course. Howard, for instance, nearly killed himself at the end of last session over a measure ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... boast was, first, that he was an Oxford Man of rare and shining parts, which may or may not have been true—I did not know enough to check his statements—and, secondly, that he "had his hand on the pulse of native life"—which was a fact. As an Oxford Man, he struck me as a prig: he was always throwing his education about. As a Mohammedan faquir—as McIntosh Jellaludin—he was all that I wanted for my own ends. He smoked several pounds of my tobacco, and taught me several ounces of things worth knowing; but he would never accept any gifts, not even when ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... him, and for a considerable time, until shortly before his departure from Lucerne, he was my daily companion, from whose intercourse I derived much pleasure, as he was a highly gifted musician and by no means a prig. But Drasecke was not ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... will see what can be done. Order and subordination are very good things; but people should know how much to require. As you tell the story, I cannot see that you are greatly to blame. Marlow is a coxcombical prig, that is the truth on't; and if a man will expose himself, why, he must even take what follows. I do hate a Frenchified fop with all my soul: and I cannot say that I am much pleased with my neighbour Underwood for taking the part of such a rascal. Hawkins, I think, is your name? ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... good friends after a fashion. He was a bit of a snob but not much of a prig. She had the feeling about him that if he could be weaned away from the family he might stand for something fine in the way of character. But he was an adept at straddling fences, so that he was never fully on one side or the other, no ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... lawyers, to acquire applause, Try various arts to get a doubtful cause; Or, as a dancing master in a jigg, With various steps instructs the dancing prig; Or as a doctor writes you different bills; Or as a quack prescribes you different pills; Or as a fiddler plays more tunes than one; Or as a baker bakes more bread than brown; Or as a tumbler tumbles up and down; So does our author, rummaging ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... are: so much depressed that a few more words would bring tears to your eyes—indeed, they are there now, shining and swimming; and a bead has slipped from the lash and fallen on to the flag. If I had time, and was not in mortal dread of some prating prig of a servant passing, I would know what all this means. Well, to-night I excuse you; but understand that so long as my visitors stay, I expect you to appear in the drawing-room every evening; it is my wish; don't neglect it. Now go, and send Sophie for ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... not fam'd for a reel or a jig, Tom Sheridan there surpasses Tom Bigg.— For lam'd in one thigh, he is obliged to go zig- Zag, like a crab—for no dancer is Bigg. Those who think him a coxcomb, or call him a prig, How little they know of the mind of my Bigg! Tho' he ne'er can be mine, Hope will catch a twig— Two Deaths—and I yet may become Mrs. Bigg. Oh give me, with him, but a cottage and pig, And content I would live on Beans, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... grievous torture. 'Tis as though thou hast at present done nothing worthy of praise; so, if thou be indeed a sharper, return and save the girl from being beaten and questioned." Quoth he, ' Inshallah! I will save both girl and purse." Then the prig went back to the Shroff's house and found him punishing the girl because of the purse; so he knocked at the door and the man said, "Who is there?" Cried the thief, "I am the servant of thy neighbour in the Exchange;" whereupon he came out to him ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... deal about art, and all four enjoyed the morning immensely. It was fine to go round recognising old favourites and finding new beauties, especially while so many people fumbled helplessly with Baedeker. Nor was he a bit of a prig, Miss Winchelsea said, and indeed she detested prigs. He had a distinct undertone of humour, and was funny, for example, without being vulgar, at the expense of the quaint work of Beato Angelico. He had a grave seriousness beneath it all, and was quick ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... discover "the new Washington." "The real man," he wrote, "has been so overlaid with myths and traditions, and so distorted by misleading criticisms, that ... he has been wellnigh lost. We have the religious and statuesque myth, we have the Weems myth (which turns Washington into a faultless prig), and the ludicrous myth of the writer of paragraphs. We have the stately hero of Sparks, and Everett, and Marshall, and Irving, with all his great deeds as general and President duly recorded and ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... said, "you're within an ace of being a prig. It's only the freckles on your little unpowdered nose, and the yellow lights in your eyes, and the way your hair curls up at the ends that save you. Remember, please, that three-and-twenty with a perfect complexion has no call to reprove her elders. ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... he said, "who, as a child, were wise, but as a young woman with a little knowledge, become—a prig. What harm is my money likely to do you? I may be the Devil himself, but my gold is not tainted. For the rest, granted that I am at war with the world, I do not number children ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at the cock again, which both began and ended the book. He stood and crowed so proudly and never slept. He was a regular prig, but when Sister was diligent he put a one-ore piece among the leaves. But the hens laid eggs, and it was evident that they were the same as the flowers; for when you were kind to them and treated them as if they belonged to the family, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... University of Copenhagen. But it is much more than that. Holberg gives us a memorable series of genre paintings of Danish life of his day, and at the same time presents a situation of universal interest. Erasmus is a prig who has adopted some new ideas, not so much from righteous conviction as from the feeling that they will give him intellectual caste. His revolutionary theories raise an uproar in the village. Each apostle of the old order opposes them in his characteristic way, and Erasmus has not enough ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... the vicious, the unwholesome; to give us for our companions, in our hours of leisure and relaxation, only the silly and the weak-minded woman, the fast and slangy girl, the intrigante and the "shady"—to borrow the language of the society she seeks—the hero of irresolution, the prig, the vulgar, and the vicious; to serve us only with the foibles of the fashionable, the low tone of the gay, the gilded riffraff of our social state; to drag us forever along the dizzy, half-fractured precipice of the seventh commandment; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to the cathedral for service, to which he was always keenly devoted, uneventful holidays, filled up most of his school life. His letters at this date are very ordinary; his early precocity seemed, rather to the delight of his parents, to have vanished. He was not a prig, though rather exclusive; not ungenial, though retiring. "A dreadful boy," he writes of himself, "who is as mum as a mouse with his elders, and then makes his school friends roar with laughter in the passage: dumb at home, a ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of "suggestion." I begin to suspect Hospitality's fudge, Meaning—mutually ruined digestion! He is such a bore, and his wife is so fat, And as fond of her bed as a dormouse. My girls say—in confidence—she is a cat; I'm sure he's a prig and a poor-mouse. I fancied he'd "influence," which he might use For DICK, our third son, who's a duffer. It doesn't come off, and I really refuse In DICK's interests longer to suffer. PAYN's right, and a Chamberlain ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... followed! The vitality of it swept down upon him now, so that he seemed never to have lived since then. He was the chosen of God and every one knew it. What a little prig and yet how simple it had all been, without any consciousness of insincerity or acting on his part. God had chosen him and there he was, for ever ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... days were among the pleasantest of the fellows, and have turned out by no means the dullest in life; whereas, many a youth who could turn off Latin hexameters by the yard, and construe Greek quite glibly, is no better than a feeble prig now, with not a pennyworth more brains than were in his head before ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... Mary is something of a little prig," said Miss Ada to her brother when the little girls had ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... young prig that ever pulled a throttle. I always loved the work and—well, you know how the first five years of it absorbs you if you are cut out for it and like it and intend to ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... excellent reason for the quantity of lace on his coat, which was due, it seems, to a sentiment of filial reverence; and he could not fix his hour for dinner without an eye to the reformation of society. In short, he was a prig of the first water; self-conscious to the last degree; and so crammed with little moral aphorisms that they drop out of his mouth whenever he opens his lips. And then his religion is in admirable keeping. It is intimately connected ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... enrolling me, they brought in two young coves. One I do not know; but the other, who wore a blue cotton cap and a gray blouse, struck my eye. I have seen the fellow somewhere. I think it was in the White Rabbit: a very fine-looking prig." ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... for a common twopenny-halfpenny sneeze-box! I never thought he'd a done it under a gold watch, chain, and seals, at the lowest. Oh, why didn't he rob some rich old gentleman of all his walables, and go out as a gentleman, and not like a common prig, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... raised his spirits, whether Albert Grey be returned or not; Life of Prince Albert, whom he admires heartily, but who according to him (and John) did not understand the British Constitution. Called Stockmar a "mischievous old prig." Said "Liberty is never safe," that even in this country an unworthy sovereign might endanger her even now. John sent down to say he wished to see them. I took them to him for a few minutes—happily he was clear ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... to tell," Drummond answered. "You know what a fearful old prig Ferringhall is, always goes about as though the whole world were watching him? We tried to show him around Paris, but he wouldn't have any of it. Talked about his years, his position and his constituents, ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter "Little Prig"; Bun replied: "You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together To make up a year And a sphere. And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large as you, You are not so small as I, And not half so spry. ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... theatre, Charles Surface is applauded, and Joseph Surface is hissed. The novel-reader's affection goes out to Tom Jones, his hatred to Blifil. Joseph Surface and Blifil are scoundrels, it is true; but deduct the scoundrelism, let Joseph be but a stale proverb-monger and Blifil a conceited prig, and the issue remains the same. Good humour and generosity carry the day with the popular heart all the world over. Tom Jones and Charles Surface are not vagabonds to my taste. They were shabby fellows both, and were treated a great deal too well. But there are other vagabonds whom I ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... suspect, would never have been done by Dryden. Gray, Johnson, Richardson, Fielding, are all highly esteemed by the great body of intelligent and well informed men. But Gray could see no merit in "Rasselas," and Johnson could see no merit in "The Bard." Fielding thought Richardson a solemn prig, and Richardson perpetually expressed contempt and ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... shoplifting. thievishness, rapacity, kleptomania, Alsatia^, den of Cacus, den of thieves. blackmail, extortion, shakedown, Black Hand [U.S.]. [person who commits theft] thief &c 792. V. steal, thieve, rob, mug, purloin, pilfer, filch, prig, bag, nim^, crib, cabbage, palm; abstract; appropriate, plagiarize. convey away, carry off, abduct, kidnap, crimp; make off with, walk off with, run off with; run away with; spirit away, seize &c (lay violent hands on) 789. plunder, pillage, rifle, sack, loot, ransack, spoil, spoliate^, despoil, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... beautiful, upright life are a living witness to his religious faith, known and read of all men. Angry, sneering, and selfish folk come to regard him with an affection akin to holy awe. But he is not in the least a prig or a stuffed curiosity. He is essentially a reasonable, kind-hearted man, who goes about doing good. Every one confides in him, all go to him for advice and solace. He is a multitudinous blessing, with masculine virility ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... effect of her good looks and wit on men. In fact, she was fond of flirting, and as it must probably have been impossible to flirt with Montagu, she indulged herself in that agreeable pastime with more than one other—to the great annoyance of that pompous prig of an admirer of hers. The following letter, dated September 5, 1709, written to Anne Wortley for her brother's perusal, was clearly an endeavour to sooth ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... get all these ideas?" he asked. "At your age I never had any; and if I had, I should have been ashamed to own it. You'll be a prig, sir, if you ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... endeavouring to accomplish this task, nothing but the want of means shall make me desist.'[183] He had a right to make that boast, and his ardour in the cause was as unimpeachable as honourable. It explains why Cobbett has still a sympathetic side. He was a mass of rough human nature; no prig or bundle of abstract formulae, like Paine and his Radical successors. Logic with him is not in excess, but in defect. His doctrines are hopelessly inconsistent, except so far as they represent his stubborn prejudices. Any view will serve his purpose which can be made a weapon of offence ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... upon the full use of one's time to the great end of living (as distinguished from vegetating) without briefly referring to certain dangers which lie in wait for the sincere aspirant towards life. The first is the terrible danger of becoming that most odious and least supportable of persons—a prig. Now a prig is a pert fellow who gives himself airs of superior wisdom. A prig is a pompous fool who has gone out for a ceremonial walk, and without knowing it has lost an important part of his attire, namely, his sense of humour. A prig is a tedious individual who, having made a discovery, is so ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... have cut out your daughter after your own pattern,' he answered; 'not let her be such a raw insignificant little spitfire. 'Tis a pity. I don't want the estate to go out of the name, though I won't leave it to an interfering prig like Mark unless he chooses to ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all other steps in making an argument, so in defining, there is no formula for all cases. In each case your knowledge of your audience must guide you, and your own sagacity. Unnecessary definitions will make them think you a prig; insufficient definition will let them ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... lot of college fellows yesterday, and they were giving one another the best addresses in the West End to go to." "But didn't you say anything?" "No, I only kept silence. Had I said anything, they would only have called me a confounded prig. There were three other fellows who kept silence, and I could see they did not approve, but we none of us spoke up." "Oh, my son," exclaimed his mother in great distress, "how are we to help you young fellows? Do you think if the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... according to Dickens' own expression, "sent them all stark staring raving mad across the water;" we must frequent the boarding establishment for single gentlemen kept by lean Mrs. Todgers, and sit with Sarah Gamp and Betsy Prig as they hideously discuss their avocations, or quarrel over the shadowy Mrs. Harris; we must follow Jonas Chuzzlewit on his errand of murder, and note how even his felon nature is appalled by the blackness and horror of his guilt, and how the ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... done best, because, after a deal of excavation and execration, bribery to the Waywode, mining and countermining, they have done nothing at all. We had such ink-shed, and wine-shed, which almost ended in bloodshed![209] Lord E.'s "prig"—see Jonathan Wild for the definition of "priggism"[210]—quarrelled with another, Gropius[211] by name (a very good name too for his business), and muttered something about satisfaction, in a verbal ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... to which it is still congenial, and where it will be preserved. But it has been challenged and (what is perhaps more insidious) it has been discovered. No one need be browbeaten any longer into accepting it. No one need be afraid, for instance, that his fate is sealed because some young prig may call him a dualist; the pint would call the quart a dualist, if you tried to pour the quart into him. We need not be afraid of being less profound, for being direct and sincere. The intellectual world may be traversed in many directions; the whole has not ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... of this charming rosebud of a girl going to marry Eustace Medlicott—insufferable, conceited prig, I remember him at Oxford," the cousin was musing to himself. "Lord Carford is an old stick-in-the-mud, or he would have prevented that. She is his own niece, and one can see by her frock that the poor child never even goes ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... of the class she meant to join, though by no means into the worst phase of it. She was sure that if she closed her eyes she should see Madame Bonanni vividly before her, and hear her talking to Logotheti, and smell the heavy air of the big room. She felt that she could not call Lushington a prig. ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... leads up to the sad admission upon our part that Payson, Jr., was a prig. And in the very middle of his son's priggishness Payson, Sr., up and died, and Tutt and Mr. Tutt were called upon to ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... come away," laughed Cripps, mimicking the boy's tones. "When I calls up at the school I'll let them all know what a nice young prig he is, coming down and drinking at my public-house and then turning round on me. Never fear! I'll let them know, my beauties! I'll have a talk with your Doctor and open his eyes for ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... is generally about people who mean well something pathetic and something else which is worse, and these characteristics are apt to become so exaggerated in fiction as to be almost offensive. Mr. CAINE'S young person is not of that sort; she is no prig, and her fault is not weakness but irrepressible activity. To whatever extent she annoyed me, I was always possessed with the morbid desire to see some even worse result attending her efforts; and all the while I had to give her credit for infecting the other characters of the story ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... think it a bad thing at all; but that is another argument. The argument here is that Bernard Shaw, in aiming at mere realism, makes a big mistake in reality. Misled by his great heresy of looking at emotions from the outside, he makes Eugene a cold-blooded prig at the very moment when he is trying, for his own dramatic purposes, to make him a hot-blooded lover. He makes the young lover an idealistic theoriser about the very things about which he really would have been a sort of mystical materialist. Here the romantic Irishman is much more ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... but Polly must have explained, must have convinced him that owing to a prig's self-confidence they were all equally foolish, equally misled. Unless Hubert—? But then, how is she at fault? In imagination she says it all through Polly's lips. The words glow hot and piteous, carrying her soul with ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... replied Jack, adding, 'if we had but a book of po'try we'd weave in some lines here. You haven't a book o' no sort with you that we could prig a little po'try from?' ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... conspicuous place among his fellow students. It is true that, as a schoolboy, a certain pompousness in the style of his letters home suggested to the more clear- sighted among his relatives the possibility that young Thomas might grow up into a prig; but, after all, what else could be expected from a child who, at the age of three, had been presented by his father, as a reward for proficiency in his studies, with the twenty-four volumes ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... all you youngsters. Listen, boy. Brenton is a mixture of genius, and prig, and ignorant young hermit; or, rather, he has the elements all inside him, ready to be mixed. You'll have to ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray |
