"Priggish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Jane!" said Rosamund. "I am not a very good girl myself, and perhaps that is why I partly understand her. At the present moment I hate my position. I like Mr. and Mrs. Merriman very well, and some of the girls; but I can't stand that priggish Lucy. Perhaps that is why I comprehend Irene—anyhow, if I may sometimes come ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... and subordination, when once he had this universal key to insight. Applying it wholesale as he did, innumerable truths unobserved till then had to fall into his gamebag. And his peculiar trick, a priggish infirmity in daily intercourse, of treating every smallest thing by abstract law, was here a merit. Add his sleuth-hound scent for what he was after, and his untiring pertinacity, to his priority in perceiving the one great truth and you fully justify the popular estimate of him as ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... William Penn stood unarmed upon that spot and made his treaty with the Red Indians, his creed of humanity did have a triumph and a triumph that has not turned back. The praise given to him is not a priggish fiction of our conventional history, though such fictions have illogically curtailed it. The Nonconformists have been rather unfair to Penn even in picking their praises; and they generally forget that toleration cuts both ways and that an open mind is open on all sides. Those who deify ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... lips or eyes,' if they were not combined with 'A smooth and steadfast mind, Gentle thoughts, and calm desires.' A rosy cheek, a coral lip, and even star-like eyes, as he sagely said, would waste away. And in this somewhat priggish, and perhaps not wholly sincere, vein, he finds a rival in the anonymous bard who declared that ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... recognise it as courage if a sensitive, conscientious, and right-minded boy risks unpopularity by telling a master of some evil practice which is spreading in a school. He simply regards it as a desire to meddle, a priggish and pragmatical act, and even as a sneaking desire ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to be spent in discovering that public school and university men form a very small proportion of the world's population. Sometimes I almost regret that my mother did not let me acquire that Cockney accent. You can say a lot of things in a Cockney accent which said without any accent sound priggish. You must admit, Rector, that your inner comment on my tale of the gospellers and the innkeeper is 'Dear me! I am afraid Mark's turning ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... faults of boyhood have something exciting and even romantic about them—they would not be so alluring if they had not—while the homely virtues of honesty, frankness, modesty, and self-restraint appear too often as a dull and priggish abstention from the more daring and adventurous joys of eager living. If evil were always ugly and goodness were always beautiful at first sight, there would be little of the trouble and havoc in the world that is ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to frustrate the profligacies of high-placed paladins like Lancelot and Tristram, and ultimately discovering, with deep regret but unshaken moral courage, that there was no way to frustrate them, except by overthrowing the cold and priggish and incapable egotist who ruled the country, and the whole artificial and bombastic schemes which bred these moral evils. It might be that in spite of this new view of the case, it would ultimately ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... thought I knew him. He seemed an ordinary, rather priggish, opinionated country boy, and I wrote and said—Oh, I said that the world is the world; take it as it is. You wrote differently, and he ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... very air of romance in these stories. There is none of your modern priggish care for the state of your soul. Men take rank according to their might, women are valued for their beauty alone. Adventures are to the adventurous, and the world is full of them. Every place but that in which one is born is equally strange and wondrous. Once beyond the bounds of the city ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris
... to have you regard John Strong as an ignorant or inferior person, Rita," she said gently, knowing that she seemed priggish, but encouraged by Peggy's ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... with some frequency to Ewart, self-conscious, but, as I remember them, not intelligent letters, dated in Latin and with lapses into Latin quotation that roused Ewart to parody. There was something about me in those days more than a little priggish. But it was, to do myself justice, something more than the petty pride of learning. I had a very grave sense of discipline and preparation that I am not ashamed at all to remember. I was serious. More serious than I am at the present time. More serious, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... will! But if he did—No, I think he will be a staff to guide a silly, priggish heart to the ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... turn; and when their characters speak, I should like to hear them speak true American, with all the varying Tennesseean, Philadelphian, Bostonian, and New York accents. If we bother ourselves to write what the critics imagine to be "English," we shall be priggish and artificial, and still more so if we make our Americans talk "English." There is also this serious disadvantage about "English," that if we wrote the best "English" in the world, probably the English themselves would not know it, or, if they did, certainly would not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and as a sophomore her fellows began to know her and take pride in her. She was relieved to find herself swept naturally into the social currents of the college. She had been afraid of appearing stiff or priggish, but her self-consciousness quickly vanished in the broad, wholesome democracy of college life. The best scholar in her class, she was never called a grind and she was far from being a frump. The wisest ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... dunce onyway," said the boy. "He canna spell an easy word like 'examination,' an' he had twenty-two mistakes in his dictation test," he went on, and she was quick to note the air of priggish ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... least objection to your amusing yourself with a parson, if you like! The conversation in the picture-gallery just now was quite idyllic—all about a cigarette and Psyche! Really it was most absurd!—and the little sermon of the enamoured clergyman to his pretty penitent was as unique as it was priggish. I'm sure you must have been vastly entertained! And the final allusion he made to his age—THAT was a masterstroke of pathos!—or bathos? Which? Du sublime au ridicule il ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... mentor nettled her, his attitude seemed to her priggish and dictatorial, and as the sun disappearing behind a sudden cloud, so her childish merriment quickly gave place to a ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... conversations as he said he had had with North Wind, had I not known already that some children are profound in metaphysics. But a fear crosses me, lest, by telling so much about my friend, I should lead people to mistake him for one of those consequential, priggish little monsters, who are always trying to say clever things, and looking to see whether people appreciate them. When a child like that dies, instead of having a silly book written about him, he should be stuffed like one of those awful big-headed fishes ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... said Carol, is reinforced by vows of poverty and chastity in the matter of knowledge. Except for half a dozen in each town the citizens are proud of that achievement of ignorance which it is so easy to come by. To be "intellectual" or "artistic" or, in their own word, to be "highbrow," is to be priggish ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... extravagant character of the crimes which polluted the palaces of the Renaissance. But they need not be so anxious to show that Savonarola was no ascetic, that he merely picked out the black specks of wickedness with the priggish enlightenment of a member of an Ethical Society. Probably he did hate the civilisation of his time, and not merely its sins; and that is precisely where he was infinitely more profound than a modern moralist. He saw that the actual ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... given me as a child for Sunday reading. There they all were! Little Henry and his Bearer, Anna Ross the Orphan of Waterloo, Agathos, and many, many more, including a well-remembered American book, Melbourne House. The heroine of the last-named work, an odiously priggish child called Daisy Randolph, refused to sing on a Sunday when desired to do so by her mother. For this, most properly, she was whipped. A devoted black maid who shared Daisy's religious views, comforted her little ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... good music—Mozart, Bach, Beethoven—and were almost priggish in their contempt for anything of a lighter kind; especially with a lightness English or French! It was only the musical lightness of Germany they could endure at all! But whether in Paris or London, enter Barty Josselin, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Donatello is also said to have made a tomb for the Albizzi, but it has perished.[106] The tomb of Chellini in San Miniato, which tradition ascribed to Donatello, is probably the work of Pagno di Lapo. The prim and priggish Cardinal Accaiuoli in the Certosa of Florence does not suggest Donatello's hand. Though conscientious and painstaking, the work is without a spark of energy or conviction. These latter are slab-tombs, flat plates fastened into the church pavements. We have two authentic tombs of this character, ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... Johnson detested, he knew, like his preceptor, how to win Johnson's warmest regard. He was the most eminent of the younger generation who now looked up to Johnson as a venerable relic from the past. Another was young Burke, that very priggish and silly young man as he seems to have been, whose loss, none the less, broke the tender heart of his father. Friendships, now more interesting, were those with two of the most distinguished authoresses of the day. One of them was Hannah ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... points of his little moustache went up again in the habitual barometrical smile. Rather a priggish, supercilious smile, she thought, taking ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... be or I shouldn't have come. You think Life's an important thing, don't you? That's priggish, isn't it? Good-bye. We're coming to dinner ... Aunt Julia and I. Miss Trebell arrived to ask us just as ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... experience; he is often a little frightened of it, and he is exceedingly frightened of other people's contempt for it. And he is unable, because the words he is accustomed to use are valueless in this connection, and he feels priggish if he tries to use others.... But, though unexplained, the mystical tendency is there, and should be appealed ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... impatient and inconsiderate creature upon the globe as yourself. It would be unpardonably rude in us to send the man away, if he is a charlatan, without letting him see me. Have him up, by all means, and let us hear what priggish nonsense he has to say. He will feel the easier ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... it quite hard to be as nice to him as she wanted to be, for fear he should think her priggish. But that soon wore off, and both she and Phyllis were, as he observed, jolly good sorts. Mother sat with him when his sisters were out. And the words, "he's not a coward," made Peter determined not to make any fuss about ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... birds, and we proceeded leisurely on our way, and in a short time were overtaken by the waggons, when we advanced together towards the house, which we reached in about an hour more. As soon as we came in sight of it, the dogs gave notice of our approach, and a tall, straight, priggish-looking man marched, for he did not hurry himself, bareheaded towards the bars in the pole fence. He was soon afterwards followed by a little old woman at a foot amble, or sort of broken trot, such as distinguishes a Naraganset pacer. She had a hat in her hand, which ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... now that I know him he doesn't seem interesting in the least. He's priggish and conceited; he's a poser, too. It is too bad, Pat, for you to tire yourself out and get such a—a dry ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... economists that people like Nelse should be prohibited from having children. It occurs to us that perhaps the handsome fellow's immense good-humor and generosity are as good inheritance as the selfishness and cold avarice of priggish young Horace Gallatin, who never drinks a drop. Perhaps at some future date all people who are not perfectly worthy to have children will be kept from it by law. In Hillsboro, we think, that after such a decree the human race would last just one generation; but that is not the point now. The ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... the ice of their commonplaces. She looked directly at him, her cheeks flushing. "I don't know how you're going to forgive me, Clay. I've been awf'ly small and priggish. I hate to think I'm ungenerous, but that's just what ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... be said that education of the type we have been considering demands great gifts in the teacher: simplicity, enthusiasm, sympathy, and also a vigorous sense of humour, keeping him sharply aware of the narrow line that divides the priggish from the ideal. This education ought to inspire, but it ought not to replace, the fullest and most expert training of the body and mind; for the spirit needs a perfectly balanced machine, through which to express ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... the desire to stand well with others, and in particular the desire to seem manly, increases. If a debased public opinion demands of a boy the cheap manliness of profanity, tobacco, and irreverence, the demand creates a plentiful supply, while it also suppresses as priggish or "pi" any avowed or suspected devotion to higher ideals. A healthy public opinion, working in harmony with a boy's nobler instincts, calls forth in him an earnest devotion to high ideals, and causes him ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... impose a sort of Pax Germanica, which would satisfy all the needs of order and of freedom forever; leaving no need for revolutions or reactions. I am myself of a different opinion. When I was a child, when the toy-trade of Germany had begun to flood this country, there was a priggish British couplet, engraven on the ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... not volunteered himself. He could not say that Billy employed the wrong tailor; it would show only gross ignorance or temper to say so. But just the things in which he felt himself superior, utterly different in fact from Billy, were the stupid, priggish things that no one boasts of. He read a good deal; he thought a good deal; he knew he might have had a future, and the bitterness of his heart lay in the fact that at fifteen years later in life than Billy he was still so completely a slave to all that Billy loved. ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... lights, the laughter, the very smell of the smoke endeared by a thousand triumphs. How dared he speak of Nelly O'Neill as though she couldn't be touched with a pitchfork! Yes, and Bob Maper, too—her anger ricocheted to him—with his priggish notions of saving her from black bogs! And who was it that now stood over her like a fuddled accusing angel? She pulled out his ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... respect for his superior officer on the Supervisor's part encouraged Brent to deliver from time to time rather priggish little homilies on the way to run a Forest. California John listened, but with a sardonic smile concealed beneath his sun-bleached moustache. After a little, however, Brent became more inclined to bring home the personal application. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... asked Mignon La Salle with cool impudence. "You look like that priggish Miss Stevens. I hope for your sake you are not a relative ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... of silly moralizing, he nearly buried the real Washington, giving us instead a priggish, punk youth, and a Madame Tussaud, full-dress general, with a wax-works manner and a ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... enough now," said Dandy, airily. "The young ladies who drove with my master used to say that it was priggish and tiresome to be too good. To go on with my story: I stayed with Mrs. Judge Tibbett till I got sick of her fussy ways. She made a simpleton of herself over those poodles. Each one had a high chair at the table, and a plate, and they always sat in these chairs and ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... and everything in sight, even to the point of changing her mind on the instant, if circumstances seemed to make it advisable. Her instinctive point of view, when she went so far as to hold one, was somewhat cut and dried; in a word, priggish. She kept a young man strictly on his good behavior, that much could be said in her favor; the only criticism that could be made on this estimable trait was that no bold youth was ever tempted to overstep the ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and suffering, out of the breeding darknesses of Time, that will presently crush and consume him again. Why not flounder with the rest, why not eat, drink, fight, scream, weep and pray, forget Hugh, stop brooding upon Hugh, banish all these priggish dreams of "The Better Government of the World," and turn to the brighter aspects, the funny and adventurous aspects of the war, the Chestertonian jolliness, Punch side of things? Think you because your sons ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... as I needn't tell you, Mr. Fakrash, riches alone don't make any fellow happy. You must have observed that they're apt to—well, to land him in all kinds of messes and worries.... I'm talking like a confounded copybook," he thought, "but I don't care how priggish I am if I can only ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... romances became appreciated. He is a profound psychologist, a force in literature, and his style is very pure and attractive. He advocates resignation and the domestic virtues, yet his books are neither dull, nor tiresome, nor priggish; and as he has advanced in years and experience M. Bazin has shown an increasing ambition to deal with larger problems than are involved for instance, in the innocent love-affairs of 'Ma Tante Giron' (1886), ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... go off, half-cocked. Go clear through with this thing," she exhorted herself. "There must be more in it than mere childish, silly vanity." She probed deep and brought up, "Yes, there is more to it. In the first place I was priggish and hypocritical when I tried to pretend that it was nothing to me when I looked in the glass and saw for the first time that my youth has begun to leave me. That was Anglo-Saxon pretense, trying to seem ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the prim and priggish Richardson is Henry Fielding (1707-1754), a big, jovial, reckless man, full of animal spirits, who was ready to mitigate any man's troubles or forget his own by means of a punch bowl or a venison potpie. He was noble born, but seems to have been thrown on the world ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... vexation, and, failing to find the man he had sought, he finished hastily. As he went out, Silas Trimmer, though looking straight in his direction, did not seem to be at all aware of Bobby's approach. He was deep in a business discussion with his priggish son-in-law. ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... delivering myself of this somewhat priggish speech—designed, I may add, in self-defense, to spur Coverly to a rejoinder which might throw some light upon the mystery—he had regarded me with an expression of ever increasing dislike. I noted that there were ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... such new vistas of what can be done with time that was wasted in former years have opened before me that time seems to me the greatest luxury in the world—time that was formerly wasted and now is used! I hope that does not sound priggish. I have tried to show that I value highly the privilege of associating with my fellows, and that I like their ways and their talk and their company. What I mean by this paean to time is that I can have company in a modified measure, if I choose; and that I can and do have ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... addresses fitted them to conquer the wilderness—qualities of daring, bravery, reckless abandon, heavy self-assertiveness. A lot of them were hell-raisers, for they had a lust for life and were maddened by tame respectability. Nobody but obsequious politicians and priggish "Daughters" wants to make them out as models of virtue and conformity. A smooth and settled society—a society shockingly tame—may accept Cardinal Newman's definition, "A gentleman is one who never gives offense." Under this definition ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... mocking exquisitely at slavery to them, and interesting you, attracting you, tempting you, inexplicably forcing you to range the hero with his enemy the statue on a transcendant plane, leaving the prudish daughter and her priggish lover on a crockery shelf below to ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... age when such knowledge is almost instinctively sought and is most pleasant and easy in its acquisition. These things need not be specially forced upon him. In no way should he be led to emphasize them or give a priggish importance to his knowledge of them. They will come into his toys and play mingled with a thousand other interests, the fortifying powder of clear general ideas, amidst the ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... eyes in unfeigned astonishment. The grave, studious, young pupil-teacher was no favorite with the other boys, who thought him priggish and rather arbitrary; but at least he was always courteous in his dealings with them, and, indeed, rather ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... grow,—the atmosphere and climate of the country being reported as having a wonderful effect on growth. Another entertained me with a long account of how he was leaving England because of his wife; but, as he was of a somewhat priggish nature, I suspect the fault may have been his own as much ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... worship; and very rightly. For a monster with mysterious eyes and miraculous thumbs, with strange dreams in his skull, and a queer tenderness for this place or that baby, is truly a wonderful and unnerving matter. It is only the quite arbitrary and priggish habit of comparison with something else which makes it possible to be at our ease in front of him. A sentiment of superiority keeps us cool and practical; the mere facts would make, our knees knock under as with religious fear. It is the ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... awful conclusion that two and two are four, and at the same time be thankful that not even in fairyland can two and two make five; he can state quite calmly that the weakness of Feminism is that it drives the woman from the freedom of the home to the slavery of the world; he can make priggish clergymen, who accuse him of joking and taking the name of the Lord in vain, bite their words by explaining that to make a joke of anything is not to take it in vain. As an essayist, Chesterton stands apart from ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... breaking rules. I want you to know this, because some one may have seen us come out of the Christian Science hall together and might think she took me there; but she never breaks a rule, and she isn't a bit priggish about it, either. She tried her best to make me go back to my room before the 'racket' last night, and I just want you to know that she's true ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... seeing that he could do no more, hastily put on his cap again and disappeared. "What a pity," he thought, "that such a fine young Prince should be so priggish when his own interests ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... rather trivial person. Then suddenly, for no very sure reason that any one could discover, her character changed. She had known Bobby during many years and had always laughed at him for a solemn, rather-priggish young man—then she fell in love with him and, to his own wild and delirious surprise, married him. The companions of her earlier girlhood missed her cynicism and complained that brilliance had given way to commonplace but you could not find, in the whole ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... body. To them, straight thought ought to be as lovable as a firm and supple body. In this matter our young people are less exacting. The ordinary conversation of people gathered together for social purposes is not particularly intellectual, and any attempt to make it so at present seems priggish. With a broader education, will come keener demand for intelligence. We may hope the time is not too far distant when a question of governmental policy, a new book or play, or a new discovery in science will stimulate as much ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... some priggish youths, we have heard a cheerful old man declare that, apparently, there would soon be nothing but "old boys" left. Cheerfulness, being generous and genial, joyous and hearty, is never the characteristic of prigs. Goethe used to exclaim of goody-goody ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... developed plot, constructed with a fine sense of proportion and vivid characterization, except in one respect, which constitutes the weak point of the story—that is to say, the character of Dick Lawton, who is somewhat priggish ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... was settled without serious difference of opinion. If Sir Robert Perry really could not go on—and Lady Eynesford was by no means prepared to concede even that—then Mr. Puttock, bourgeois as he was, or Mr. Coxon, conceited and priggish though he might be, must come in. At any rate, the one indisputable fact was the impossibility of Mr. Medland: this was, to Lady Eynesford's mind, axiomatic, and, in the safe privacy of her family ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... as a go-between. He pushed a button in the row on his study table. "This new job as mayor seems to be playing some sort of a devil's trick with Stewart. I'll admit, Daunt, that I didn't relish some of the priggish preachment on politics mouthed by him in his office when we were there. But I didn't pay much attention—any more than I did to his exaggerated flourish in the way he attended to city business. The new ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... straight by the priggish or surly Thou didst not enthuse or beguile; But tilted a little and curly Of brim—how seductive thy style! And never was pride that is proper Sartorially better expressed Than when an immaculate topper Sat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... Coleridge gives this scene as an instance of Shakespeare's "wonderful judgement"; the introduction of the gardener, he says, "realizes the thing," and, indeed, the introduction of a gardener would have this tendency, but not the introduction of this pompous, priggish philosopher togged out in old Adam's likeness. Here is the way this gardener criticises the King: "All superfluous branches We lop away, that bearing boughs may live; Had he done so, himself had borne the crown, Which waste of idle hours hath ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... she conceived a doubt whether Lucian was so safe an authority and example in matters of personal deportment as she had hitherto unthinkingly believed. He could not dance; his conversation was priggish; it was impossible to feel at ease when speaking to him. Was it courageous to stand in awe of his opinion? Was it courageous to stand in awe of anybody? Alice closed her lips proudly and began to be defiant. Then a reminiscence, which had never before failed to rouse indignation ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... it has a priggish sound. Let us say the character; and that is developed through ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... the next street rival the personality of Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne, Baronet? No, the real fact is this: if there were thunderbolts, the question of their nature and action would be a wholly dull, scientific, and priggish one; it is their unreality alone that invests them with all the mysterious weirdness of pure fiction. Lightning, now, is a common thing that one reads about wearily in the books on electricity, a mere ordinary matter ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... wonderful country," he said aloud, "where you get people studying Spanish in their off-hours." Ellen thought it rather wonderful too, and looked at her toes with a priggish blankness. "You've got a marvellous educational system...." He paused, conscious that he was too manifestly talking at random. "In two continents you've enjoyed the reputation of being able to talk the hind-leg off a donkey," he reminded himself. "It's the language to learn," he said ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... I see you, you are more and more like your father. You're going off—just as he did. That baffled, MULISH look—priggish—solemn! Oh! it's strange the stuff a poor woman has to bring into the world. But you'll do nothing. I know you'll do nothing. You'll stand everything. You—you Cuckold! And she'll drive by me, she'll pass me in theatres ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... true on both its different sides. Suppose somebody proposes to mix up England and America, under some absurd name like the Anglo-Saxon Empire. One man may say, "Why should the jolly English inns and villages be swamped by these priggish provincial Yankees?" Another may say, "Why should the real democracy of a young country be tied to your snobbish old squirarchy?" But both these views are only versions of the same view of a great American: "God never made one people ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... unnatural; self-conscious; maniere; artificial; overwrought, overdone, overacted; euphuist &c. 577. stiff, starch, formal, prim, smug, demure, tire a quatre epingles, quakerish, puritanical, prudish, pragmatical, priggish, conceited, coxcomical, foppish, dandified; finical, finikin; mincing, simpering, namby-pamby, sentimental. Phr. "conceit in weakest ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and what does the tone matter?" said Bertha. "You are one of those painfully priggish people, Mr. Trevor, who will never get on in the world. Have you not yet discovered that being extra good ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... princes on their honor to be neither negligent nor wanton in the fulfilment of their duties; and the jester to break us of our too self-conscious airs and exhibit to us our follies. See what we have done instead! When our growing sense of priggish decorum and our dishonest ceremoniousness of speech made the jester a figure no longer possible, we substituted for him the poet-laureate!—not to persuade us of our follies, but to chant our undeserved praises. And alas, how much more ridiculous, at certain ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... seems you don't know me yet. That was a frolic, indulged in out of humor, for your benefit. You see, your role demanded a good deal more ability than you ever displayed in it, and it did not seem fitting that a very puritanical and priggish person should pose as me at Silverdale. The little affair was the one touch of verisimilitude about the thing. No doubt my worthy connections are ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... now," rejoined Kathleen sadly, "but I was furious with you at the time. Then, too, I had made up my mind not to like you. I thought you priggish and narrow-minded. I didn't understand college in the least. I was ready to ride over every Overton tradition for the sake of having my own way. Patience was the first to show me where I stood, and I tried to see ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower |
