"Self-importance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the news was "exclusive", the Despatch had thrown the name of Stephen Hallowell, his portrait, a picture of his house, and the words, "At Point of Death!" across three columns. The announcement was heavy, lachrymose, bristling with the melancholy self-importance of the man who "saw the deceased, just two minutes before the train ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... was a very pompous man, and the document he had just discovered on the priest added to his sense of self-importance. When, therefore, a large, carefully folded paper was produced from the neighbourhood of Valeria's lovely bosom, his eyes sparkled with anticipation. "Ho, ho!" he exclaimed, as he clutched it eagerly, "the plot is thickening!" and he ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... and give him the right of dealing ex officio, not as a mere man among men. And the consciousness of such apparent superfluities, whether they be the expression of wealth or of hierarchy, of fashion or of caste, gives to their possessor that additional self-importance which is quite as much wanted by the ungainly or diffident moral man as the additional warmth of his more obviously needed raiment is by the poor, chilly, bodily human being. I will not enlarge upon the practical uses ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... one of her light-headed acquaintance betrayed the rest, they might all be ordered out of Rome in four-and-twenty hours, or might even disappear into that long range of dark buildings to the left of the colonnade of St. Peter's, martyrs to the cause of their own self-importance and semi-theatrical vanity. There were many knots of such self-fancied conspirators in those days, whose wildest deed of daring was to whisper across a glass of champagne in a ball-room, or over a tumbler of Velletri wine in a Trasteverine cellar, the magic and awe-inspiring ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... Cynthia during the course of the day was extraordinary. She exhibited a mixture of self-importance and fluttering anticipation that was highly puzzling to her companions. She refused to explain, but dropped sufficient hints to arouse interest. It was presently whispered among the juniors that ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... of course, and say, sarcastically, "What a treat for the new boy!" But if he only knew with what fear and trembling I made that resolution, he would acquit Fred Batchelor of any very great self-importance ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the parent of the bantling that "has just come into this breathing world, scarce half made up," without the aid of criticism and puffing, yet we are the gossips and foster-nurses on the occasion, with all the mysterious significance and self-importance of the tribe. If we wait, we must take our report from others; if we make haste, we may dictate ours to them. It is not a race, then, for priority of information, but for precedence in tattling and dogmatising. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... all the self-importance of one who prided himself on the practical, "I do not see that Miss Clare has proposed any remedy for the state of things concerning the evil of which we are all agreed. What is to be done? What can I ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... at least have been consulted, enlisted, or at any rate apprised of what was toward. But instead of that, here he had been hoodwinked (by this marvel of incarnate candor employed in the dark about several little things), and then suddenly enlightened, when the job was done. Gentle and void of self-importance as he was, it misliked him to ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Sir John Robinson,(1256) had been a promoter of the king's restoration, and in return for his services received an augmentation of arms.(1257) He was a nephew of the late Archbishop Laud, and full of his own self-importance "a talking, bragging, buffle-headed fellow," Pepys calls him—boasting of his powers over his brother aldermen, but nevertheless attentive to the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... I was hustling about my garret floor, vibrating with energy and self-importance, when he came up the stairs, saying: "There is a woman on the main floor who wants to see you. She says you know her." Was it Dora? I descended the stairs ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... in the servants' hall, with stewards, and butlers, and cooks, and footmen, and valet de chambres, and ladies' maids of every degree, all dressed in tawdry finery, and assuming the most disgusting airs of self-importance. She went home despising in her heart both lords and menials, and dreaming, with new aspirations, of her Roman republic. One day, when Madame Roland was in power, she had just passed from her splendid dining-room, where she had been entertaining the most distinguished men of the empire, ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... me, my, mine, etc., too frequently occur to be worth estimating. And it will be seen, upon examination, that not merely the verbiage, but the sentiment, is thus egotistic throughout, exhibiting a degree of arrogance and self-importance, only to be met with in a Clerical Locofoco, used by bad men for ignoble purposes. To carry out the idea of your vanity, you say in the winding up ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... that she did not feel more. But she saw all "through a glass darkly." There had been first that moment when the sexton and Uncle Mathew, still like dogs sniffing, had peered with their eyes through her father's door. Then there had been the summoning of Dr. Bubbage from the village, his self-importance, his continual "I warned him. I warned him. He can't say I didn't warn him," and then (very dim and far away) "Thank you, Miss Cardinal. I think I will have a glass if you don't mind." There had been cook crying in the kitchen (her red roses intended for ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... seek in the characters of individuals. He sees no beauty in the face of nature or of art. To him 'the mighty world of eye and ear' is hid; and 'knowledge,' except at one entrance, 'quite shut out.' His pride takes part with his ignorance; and his self-importance rises with the number of things of which he does not know the value, and which he therefore despises as unworthy of his notice. He knows nothing of pictures,—'Of the colouring of Titian, the grace of Raphael, the purity of Domenichino, the corregioscity of ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... perception of the system by which things like this should be done. Unfortunately, the system is in bad hands here, and these good ladies have been left to work for themselves, and it is no wonder that there is plenty of little self-importance, nonsense, and the like, among them; but for their own sakes we should rather show them the way, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... escaped me?" I asked with some self-importance. "I trust that there is nothing of ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... occupation of a border town. Behind us lay India; in front, the Unknown. The garrison of Capoo was small and self-important, but sickness made itself conspicuous among its members. Their doctor— poor young Barber—died, and the self-importance of the Capoo garrison oozed out of their finger-ends. They sent down post-haste to us for help, and a special letter addressed to me detailed ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... exaggerated the importance of birth till it became almost a mania. If you hadn't known the man, you couldn't have believed a human being—one of the million crawling units on the earth—could be so absurdly inflated with self-importance. It was pitiful. He went nowhere, and saw no one. I believe he thought that Providence had sent a wife of high rank to his very door to enable him partially to wipe out his reproach. She looked like a child when she came, but she shot up very suddenly into womanhood. If you ask me if she was ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... the position struck the chaplain as soon as he collected himself from his first surprise. It never would do for him to look as if he had any thing to be ashamed of; so, summoning to his aid all the dignity of his office and his own self-importance, with a great effort, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... the petty circumstances and period of my first publication, a memorable aera in the life of a student, when he ventures to reveal the measure of his mind: his hopes and fears are multiplied by the idea of self-importance, and he believes for a while that the eyes of mankind are fixed on his person and performance. Whatever may be my present reputation, it no longer rests on the merit of this first essay; and at the end of twenty-eight ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... unimportant to the present troubles. They looked guilty as they said it, though of what I did not know. I was reminded of my indignation at their ignoring of the sufferings of the Munams and became once more impatient with their self-importance, so I yielded the floor and they began to make their cases. In order to decide who went first, they drew lots, and as the shorter was drawn by Wagner, he went first. ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... A few hours before he breathed his last he rallied for a while, and recognized Ariel at his bedside. He feebly pronounced her name, and looked at her, and asked for me. They thought of sending for me, but it was too late. Before the messenger could be dispatched, he said, with a touch of his old self-importance, "Silence, all of you! my brains are weary; I am going to sleep." He closed his eyes in slumber, and never awoke again. So for this man too the end came mercifully, without grief or pain! So that strange ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... belittle and contract the mind. But this is not the most serious objection to the publication of these worthless details. It cultivates self-consciousness in the community, and love of notoriety; it develops vanity and self-importance, and elevates the trivial ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... treated them with brutality and contempt. It would be hard to guess whence these unkindly feelings originated, but they felt that they had not deserved them, yet the consciousness of their own insignificance sadly militated against every idea of self-love or self-importance, and taught them a plain and useful moral lesson. Although they made the most charitable allowances for the Eboe people, they were, notwithstanding, obliged to consider them the most inhospitable tribe, as well as the most covetous and uncivil, that they were acquainted ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... thoughts, the next morning, were given to Caterina whom she had not been able to visit the evening before, and whom, from a nearly equal mixture of affection and self-importance, she did not at all like resigning to Mrs. Bellamy's care. At half-past eight o'clock she went up to Tina's room, bent on benevolent dictation as to doses and diet and lying in bed. But on opening the door she found the bed smooth and empty. Evidently it ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... society gossip is often turned into solemn verdicts. Young women are seldom seen there; when they come it is to seek approbation of their conduct,—a consecration of their self-importance. This supremacy granted to one house is apt to wound the sensibilities of other natives of the region, who console themselves by adding up the cost it involves, and by which they profit. If it so happens that there is no fortune large enough to keep open ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... ample, they determined that Swiftmouth College should have the distinction of calling me one of her sons, and accordingly I was in due time sent for preparation to a neighboring academy. Years of study and hard fare in country boarding-houses told upon my self-importance as the descendant of a great Englishman, notwithstanding all my letters from the honored three came with counsel to "respect myself and keep up the dignity of the family." Growing-up man forgets good counsel. The Arcadia of respectability is apt to give place to the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... Church servant to other functions, the decent performance of which was utterly beyond the range of an illiterate man. Many of our readers may be acquainted with the witty satire in which, with a perpetual side glance at the fussy self-importance visible in Bishop Burnet's History, Pope writes 'the Memoirs of P.P., Clerk of this Parish.' With what delightful complacency this diligent representative of his class speaks of taking rank among 'men right worthy ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... known by the diminutive. Belotto, too, went to Rome early in his career, where he attached himself to Panini, a painter of classic ruins, peopled with warriors and shepherds. He was, by all accounts, full of vanity and self-importance, and on a visit to Germany managed to acquire the title of Count, which he adhered to with great complacency. He travelled all over Italy looking for patronage, and was very eager to find the road to success and fortune. About the same time as his uncle, he paid a visit to London and was ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... Ramee or Corporal Pitou.... A curious spectacle for those who would care to look.... A savage and decadent people whom we are civilising by giving them our own vices. The cruel and uncontrolled authority of Pashas, inflated with self-importance in their cordons of the legion of honour, who at their whim have people beaten on the soles of their feet. The so-called justice of bespectacled Cadis, traitors to the koran and to the law, who sell their judgements as did Esau his birthright for a plate of cous-cous. Drunken and libertine headmen, ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... is consistent with the fear of discomposing his dress. The insolence of power in one of the bailiffs, and the unfeeling heart, which can jest with misery, in the other, are strongly marked. The self-importance, too, of the honest Cambrian is not ill portrayed; who is chiefly introduced to settle the chronology of the story.—In pose of grace, we have nothing striking. Hogarth might have introduced a degree of ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... complain of me. If I have written dull Essays, they have hitherto treated them as dull Essays. Thus far we are at least upon par, and until they think fit to make me their humble debtor by praise, I am resolved not to lose a single inch of my self-importance. Instead, therefore, of attempting to establish a credit amongst them, it will perhaps be wiser to apply to some more distant correspondent; and as my drafts are in some danger of being protested at home, it ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... has a distaste to new faces, to new books, to new buildings, to new customs. He is shy of all imposing appearances, of all assumptions of self-importance, of all adventitious ornaments, of all mechanical advantages, even to a nervous excess. It is not merely that he does not rely upon, or ordinarily avail himself of them; he holds them in abhorrence: he utterly abjures and discards them. He disdains all the vulgar ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... all over with brown powder. Who that has ever heard it, can forget the sounds of the various notes with which these little people intonated their 'Aleph, Zubbin ah, Zair a, Paiche oh,' as they moved backwards and forwards in their recitations? Who can forget the self-importance of the schoolmaster, who was generally a grey-bearded, dry, old man, who had no other means of proving his superiority to the scholars than by making more noise than even ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... am older, love—are you? Over all youth's fuss and flurry, All its everlasting hurry, All its solemn self-importance and to-do. Perhaps we missed the highest reaches of high art; Love we missed not, and the laughter, Seeing both before and after— Life was such a serious ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... their part well, until they understand and feel its importance, and comprehend and justly appreciate all the duties belonging to it. It is not to inflate national vanity, nor to swell a light and empty feeling of self-importance, but it is that we may judge justly of our situation, and of our own duties, that I earnestly urge upon you this consideration of our position and our character among the nations of the earth. It cannot be denied, but ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... for an author to be dwelling continually among those who make his writings a frequent and familiar subject of conversation, but who must necessarily be partial judges of works composed in their own society. The habits of self-importance which are thus acquired by authors are highly injurious to a well-regulated mind; for the cup of flattery, if it does not, like that of Circe, reduce men to the level of beasts, is sure, if eagerly drained, to ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... to its laws, and to its literature. The hypochondriac flatus is subsiding; the acres, which in imagination I had spread over—for the sick man swells in the sole contemplation of his single sufferings, till he becomes a Tityus to himself—are wasting to a span; and for the giant of self-importance, which I was so lately, you have me once again in my natural pretensions—the lean and meagre ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... imposing circle. Above all, he was glad to escape from the clear-sighted, critical eyes of Madame de Nailles. On the other hand, to be sent off to the girls' corner, after being insulted by being told he had not grown, hurt his sense of self-importance. ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... Olivia is in an unreal mood of mourning for her brother. Grief is a destroying passion. Olivia makes it a form of self-indulgence, or one sweet the more to attract flies to her. Malvolio is in an unreal mood of self-importance. Long posing at the head of ceremony has given him the faith that ceremony, of which he is the head, is the whole of life. This faith deludes him into a life of day-dreams, common enough among inactive clever people, but dangerous to the indulger, as all things ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... allowed to see it," said Father Payne. "But it wasn't arranged for the benefit of a silly old man like me. That is the worst of our religious theories—that we believe that God is for ever making personal appeals to us. It is that sort of self-importance ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... dimly gathered that he thought me ill. I combined this in my mind with a speech of my nurse's that I had overheard, and which gave me the horrors at the time—"He's got the look! It's his poor ma over again!"—and I felt a sort of melancholy self-importance not uncommon with children who are ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a scoundrel," said Noel Vanstone, recovering his self-importance, and raising himself gradually in ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... just estimate of ourselves the estimate must ever be accompanied with a distinct consciousness that all is God's gift. That will keep us from anything in the nature of pride or over-weening self-importance. It will lead to true humility, which is not ignorance of what we can do, but recognition that we, the doers, are of ourselves but poor creatures. We are less likely to fancy that we are greater than we are when we feel that, whatever we are, God made us so. 'What hast thou that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... restored to his old, balanced, easy life, with its little friendships and duties. How fantastic and unreal his aunt's theories seemed to him, reveries contrived just to gild the gaps of a broken life, a dramatisation of emptiness and self-importance. At every moment the face and figure of Maud came before him in a hundred sweet, spontaneous movements—the look of her eyes, the slow thrill of her voice. He needed her with all his soul—every fibre of his being cried out for her. And then the thought of being thus pitifully overcome, humiliated ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... exercised by committees selected ad hoc on each occasion. Charles Greville, to whose memoirs all historians of this period are greatly indebted, and who in 1833 was clerk of the council, was inclined to disparage the proposed change as one of Brougham's fanciful projects, designed to gratify his own self-importance.[116] Even Greville, however, saw reason to modify his view, and the new court has ever since commanded general respect, except from those high Churchmen who resented its assumption of the appellate jurisdiction in ecclesiastical causes, formerly vested, along with a similar ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... the remark, smiled with conscious self-importance; but Marjorie's thoughts flew back to the time when she was in Florence's place: a freshman eager to make good among the upper classmen. But then it was a question of popularity and personal favoritism; ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... politeness with which she was received in the family of Mr. Harewood, did not appear to affect the Barbadoes girl in any other way than to increase that self-importance which was evidently her characteristic; and even the mild, affectionate Ellen, who had predisposed her heart to love her very dearly, shrunk from the proud and haughty expression which frequently animated her features, ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... a spy, however nerve-racking, contributes considerably to one's sense of self-importance. It's a rare thrill for a civilian to be waited on by a reception committee in full ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... man, the steady, truthful gaze of the blue-grey eyes seeming a direct appeal from the upright spirit within. Gordon's usual manner charmed by its simple, unaffected courtesy, but although utterly devoid of self-importance he had plenty of quiet dignity, or even of imperious authority at command when required. With his friends he had a fund of innocent gaiety that seemed to spring from his impulsiveness, while his strong sense of humour often enabled him to relieve his ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... five minutes before eleven the girls who were to have their Saturday morning lessons prior to the ride in the afternoon, went over to the school and an electric bell notified Dawson that his young ladies awaited their mounts. With due decorum and self-importance he and Henry, the groom, led the horses from the stable, Dawson ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... peoples of England and the United States,' the guests filled a bumper, and with three hearty cheers let the liquid run down so smoothly. Sir Arthur Coddlecomb's name being coupled with the toast, and that compound of self-importance and bad grammar esteeming himself a great speaker, rose, and relieved himself of what is commonly called a very neat and appropriate speech. To Smooth his mind seemed on a wandering expedition; notwithstanding, he took occasion to refer to that approaching curse—an Eastern war, and also ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... of the Circolo, to whom Signor Leandro recounted his great tidings with all the self-importance to which the exclusive possession of news of such interest so well entitled him, it is impossible to do justice to the enthusiasm which ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... abbess was full of self-importance, and much occupied with her position. After Agnes's taunts when they were both at St. Cyr—oh, long ago now!—it was delightful to be able to send her own carriage for her, and play at the old home games in the garden. ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... with giant "butter-bur" leaves; in and out of which the hounds are brushing—beautiful black-and-tan dogs, of which poor Trebooze may be pardonably proud; while round the burleaf-bed dances a rough white Irish terrier, seeming, by his frantic self-importance, to consider himself the master of ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... walk up and down the verandah, putting his foot down firmly. His loose linen suit was smart enough: his complexion had been improved by the sun. The consciousness that his business affairs were promising well did not lessen his sense of self-importance. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... that they had such a proverb. They were as remarkable, it seems, in those days as they are now for their national self-importance and vanity. ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... was a feeling of self-importance whenever these affidavits came to be sworn. Mr. Bumpkin would put down his ash-stick by the side of the fireplace, and bidding his visitor be seated, would compose himself with satisfaction to listen to ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... of each other, which did not tend to their popularity on board. Amongst the passengers was a young man who rejoiced in the high-sounding name of Hugh St. John Wilson-Mainwaring, and whose sense of self-importance was as extensive as his appellation. He was the younger son of a bishop, and intended to tour the Colonies at the expense of the inhabitants, feeling satisfied that he had only to make it known that his father was the Bishop of Doseminster to have ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... Our self-importance as Arctic heroes of the first water received a sad downfall when we were first asked by a kind friend, what the deuce we came home for? We had a good many becauses ready, but he overturned them altogether; so we had resort to the ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... referred to Batavia, where no doubt it would fade away in a fog of official papers. . . . It was heartrending to read all this. That active and zealous officer, Lieutenant Heemskirk, his air of sullen, darkly-pained self-importance not lightened by the approval of his action conveyed to him unofficially, had gone on to take up his station in ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... following may seem to illustrate the self-importance of the betheral tribe. The Rev. Dr. Hugh Blair was one Sunday absent from his pulpit, and next morning meeting his beadle in the street he inquired how matters went in the High Church on Sabbath. "'Deed, I dare say no very ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... ceremony. Shih Jung, who was seated in his sedan chair, made a bow and returned their salutations with a smile, proceeding to address them and to treat them, as he had done hitherto, as old friends, without any airs of self-importance. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... descriptions of persons, were such as would have turned any head but his own. He retained the same simplicity of manner and appearance which had struck me so forcibly when I first saw him in the country; nor did he seem to feel any additional self-importance from the number and rank of his new acquaintance. His dress was perfectly suited to his station, plain and unpretentious, with a sufficient attention to neatness.' Principal Robertson has left it on record, that he had scarcely ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... of our gravitation are to be abolished, and we flung forth into chaos, a hurlyburly of jostling and splintering stars, whenever Robert Toombs or Robert Rhett, or any other Bob of the secession kite, may give a flirt of self-importance. The first and greatest benefit of government is that it keeps the peace, that it insures every man his right, and not only that, but the permanence of it. In order to this, its first requisite is stability; and this once firmly settled, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... important thing "within the circle of that lonely waste"; and the sense of his own dignity enables him to sustain the shock of considerable hazard with spirit and fortitude. But, in London, the feeling of self-importance is totally lost and suppressed in the bosom of a stranger. A painful conviction of insignificance—of nothingness, I may say—is sunk upon his heart, and murmured in his ear by the million, who divide with him ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... post he held for three years. He succeeded the Marquis Duquesne as Governor of Canada in the year before Montcalm arrived. He meant well but he was a vain man, always a leading figure in the small society about him, and obsessed by a fussy self-importance. He was not clever enough to see through flattery. The Intendant Bigot, next to the Governor the most important man in Canada, an able and corrupt rascal, knew how to manage the Governor and to impose his own will upon the weaker man. Vaudreuil ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... mimickry were an infallible resource. In particular, he could mimick the two Clays to perfection, could take off the affected tone, foreign airs, and quick talkative vanity of French Clay; and represent the slow, surly reserve, supercilious silence, and solemn self-importance of English Clay. He used to imitate not only their manners, gesture, and voice, but could hold conversations in their characters, fall naturally into their train of thinking, and their modes of expression. Once a week, at least, the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... with never flagging tongue, and Jamie carried everything he could lift to and fro, regardless of whether he was bringing or taking away. Vada chid him in her childishly superior way, but her efforts were quite lost on his delicious self-importance. Nor could there be any doubt that, in his infantile mind, he was quite assured that ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... encouraging the growth of luxurious habits, or spreading opinions which I do not believe. And I may be the more emboldened in my refusal, when I consider how mixed, or how selfish, are often the motives of those who solicit me, and that the love of notoriety, or the gratification of a feeling of self-importance, or a fussy restlessness, or the craving for preferment is frequently quite as powerful an incentive of their activity as a desire to promote the objects explicitly avowed. There is, moreover, an important consideration, ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... anomaly, if her former habits had been so indecent and depraved as Mr. Wood alleges. Her chief faults, so far as we have discovered them, are, a somewhat violent and hasty temper, and a considerable share of natural pride and self-importance; but these defects have been but rarely and transiently manifested, and have scarcely occasioned an hour's uneasiness at any time in our household. Her religious knowledge, notwithstanding the pious care of her ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... conscious of an undercurrent of suspicion in the constable's manner. He was wroth with the man, but recognized that he had to deal with narrow-minded self-importance, so contrived ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... father always called them, had their tea with the nurses and were given few toys and never allowed to accept presents. No fuss was made over the little accidents inevitable to childhood and in every way life was kept devoid of state formality, or anything that would breed a sense of childish self-importance. When the Prince and Princess were away from home, as they frequently had to be, letters were daily exchanged with the head nurse. The result of this general system and of the later plan of making the young Princesses more and more ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... persons under the domination of covetousness apparently practise the duties of righteousness, the consequence that results is that the desecrations committed by them soon become current among men. Pride, anger, arrogance, insensibility, paroxysms of joy and sorrow, and self-importance, all these, O descendant of Kuru, are to be seen in persons swayed by covetousness. Know that they who are always under the influence of covetousness are wicked. I shall now tell thee of those about ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... empress-queen was not gratified to the extent of her wishes in the fortune of the campaign, at least her self-importance was nattered in another point, which could not fail of being interesting to a princess famed for a glowing zeal and inviolable attachment to the religion of Rome. In the month of August the pope conferred upon her the title of apostolical ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... and every day added to my self-importance, and brought with it fresh opportunities of enlarging the circle of my friends, and of acquiring a competent knowledge of the conventional rules of society. Though naturally fond of company, I hated dissipation, and those low vices which many young men designate as ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... doubt whether Mrs. Pembrose wasn't justified in her attitude and wiser by her very want of generosity. She felt then something childish in the whole undertaking that otherwise escaped her, she was convicted of an absurd self-importance, she discovered herself an ignorant woman availing herself of her husband's power and wealth to attempt presumptuous experiments. In these moods of disillusionment, her mind went adrift and was driven to and fro from discontent to discontent; she would ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... self-importance and intellectual superiority had abandoned him. He was so much agitated that he saw her but dimly through the mists of excitement and passion. He stretched out his hands appealing to her. He might have been on his ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... up the hoe and begins to weed the potato patch. After a while there approaches, unnoticed by her, the machinist ARTHUR STRECKMANN dressed in his Sunday coat. He is what would generally be called a handsome man—large, broad-shouldered, his whole demeanour full of self-importance. He has a blond beard that extends far down his chest. His garments, from his jauntily worn huntsman's hat to his highly polished boots, his walking coat and his embroidered waistcoat, are faultless and ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... was that very real sense of proportion which was at the root of all his humour. 'Why doesn't God explain these things to a gentleman like me?' There, a profound habitual reverence of mind suddenly encounters with a ludicrous perception of his own momentary self-importance. The two electric opposites meet, and emit that flash ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... the way here," he said. "Certainly he does his best, but this is not his place." Nikitin wore the same preoccupied air as the others.—"Whatever you do," he said, "don't let Andrey know that I spoke to you." Andrey Vassilievitch, on his side with much nervousness and self-importance, told me that he thought that Nikitin was suffering from overwork and needed a complete rest. "You know, Ivan Andreievitch, he is really not at all well; I sleep in the same room. He talks in his sleep, fancies ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... reckoned in the paternal line, and society had become patronymic instead of metronymic. It must not be supposed that this change occurred very suddenly. It may have taken many centuries to bring it about, but as the man learned his part in procreation and his power in society, he delighted in his self-importance to lord it over the woman and her children. The marriage relation ceased to be free and reciprocal. The wife no longer had a choice in marriage. Bought or captured, she was no longer wooed for a companion, but was valued according to her economic ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... understanding nor temper. While well, and happy, and properly attended to, she had great good humour and excellent spirits; but any indisposition sunk her completely. She had no resources for solitude; and inheriting a considerable share of the Elliot self-importance, was very prone to add to every other distress that of fancying herself neglected and ill-used. In person, she was inferior to both sisters, and had, even in her bloom, only reached the dignity of being "a fine girl." She was now lying on the faded sofa ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... A spirit of self-importance is fatal to all work for Christ. The biggest enemy of true spiritual power is spiritual self-consciousness. Joshua must die before ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... wedge, and she widened slowly as she neared the ground; the first indication of a settlement showing in the lobes of her ears, then in her cheeks, and then in her drab-apparelled person. Her whole aspect gave the impression of a great self-importance, early realised and made part of life, but kept in abeyance by the society of Aunt Mary and by a religious conviction that others also had their place, a sort of back seat, in the ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... portly, comely burgess, is now emaciated with poverty and anxiety, and rendered wild by an insane lightness about the eyes; a withered and blighted skin and complexion; features begrimed with snuff, charged with the self-importance peculiar to insanity; and a habit of perpetually speaking to himself. Such was my unfortunate client; and I must allow, Darsie, that my profession had need to do a great deal of good, if, as is much to be feared, it brings many individuals to such ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... where he would give them an evening of delight. He did not give notice of these gracious recognitions, preferring to make the event sweeter with surprise. On his part it was a generous forgetfulness of self-importance—it was as if a placid and beneficent moon had come to beam upon a cluster of stars. To the men he would quote stocks, as if, a lover of letters, he were giving a poem to a "mite society." Upon the ladies he would smile and throw off vague hints ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... it? You have just said that the Jews are an Eastern people. And all Eastern peoples are subtle and secretive. I invariably lose half of my self-importance in Egypt, for instance. There is something in the eye of the meanest fellah which ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... and upon it, as if it were all creation; but the infinitely nobler things of ever-changing but perpetual beauty, and no selfishness. These, without deigning to us even sense to be aware of them, shape our little minds and bodies and our large self-importance, and fail to know when the lord or king who owns is buried under them. To have perception of such mighty truths is good for all of us: and I never had keener perception of them than when I sat down on the Major's camp-stool, and ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... words, Mr Lillyvick, whose manner had exhibited through the whole of this interview a most extraordinary compound of precipitation, hesitation, confidence and doubt, fondness, misgiving, meanness, and self-importance, turned his back upon the room, and left Nicholas to enjoy a laugh by himself if he felt ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... image of Cybele, very gaudy and garish. Behind the chariot paced two priests of Cybele, not Phrygian Eunuchs, but Roman officials, in their pontifical robes, a pair of dignified old senators, ex-consuls both, Vitrasius Pollio and Flavius Aper, full of self-importance. Then came the Chief Priest, tall, full-bearded, swarthy, his robes a blaze of gold and jewels, pacing solemnly, on either side of him, as assistant priest, a young Roman nobleman, chosen from the college of the Pontiffs of Cybele, habited in very gorgeous robes. One was Marcus Octavius Vindex, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... lodged, and to the first floor, where Madame's apartments were situated. Then, by means of one of the servants who was passing, he sent to apprise Malicorne, who was still with Monsieur. After having waited ten minutes, Malicorne arrived, full of self-importance. The king drew back towards the darkest part of the vestibule. Saint-Aignan, on the contrary, advanced to meet him, but at the first words, indicating his wish, Malicorne drew ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... but hope deferred; the bitterness depicted in waiting delegations on a mission of opposition bent; the gleam of gladness on success; homage to the influential—all these figure, strut or bemoan in the ratio of a self-importance or a dejected mien. There is no more humorous reading, or more typical, than the ups and downs of office-seekers. Sometimes it is that of William the "Innocent," and often that of William the "Croker." The trials of "an unsuccessful," ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... drawing-room door was pushed open, without a sound, and Alicia, in all the bursting charm of her youthfulness and the delicious naivete of her self-importance, stood in the doorway. She made no gesture; she just looked at Edwin with a peculiar ominous and excited glance, and Edwin rose quickly and left the room. Auntie ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... and foes) he left the army, not to return till he and Sherman had seen Blair and Lyon take Camp Jackson. After wisely declining to reenter the service under the patronage of General John Pope, who was full of self-importance about his acquaintance with the Union leaders of Illinois, Grant wrote to the Adjutant-General at Washington offering to command a regiment. Like Sherman, he felt much more diffident about the rise from ex-captain of regulars to colonel commanding a battalion than some mere civilians ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... question that most of it is an expression of real feeling. All through the voyage these good people have been in great force, relating numberless yarns of their past experiences, more or less truthful in detail. But now their self-importance is overwhelming and superior to all considerations. Every headland, bay, or island that we pass is expatiated upon, and its especial story told, in which, I note, the narrator generally seems to have been the most prominent ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... self-respect, which kept an intellectual person from dwelling too sorely upon the sense of ineffectiveness; as an addiction not more serious in its effects upon character than the practice of playing golf, a thing in which a leisurely person might immerse himself, and cultivate a decent sense of self-importance. But Amroth showed me that the danger of it lay in the tendency to consider the intellect to be the basis of all life and progress. "The intellectual man," he said, "is inclined to confuse his own acute perception ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sections of the party are aggressively patriotic and favourably inclined to the idea of an upstanding, well-fed, and well-exercised population in uniform. Of course there are reactionary landowners and old-fashioned country clergy, full of localised self-importance, jealous even of the cottager who can read, but they have neither the power nor the ability to retard the constructive forces in the party as a whole. On the other hand, when matters point to any definitely confiscatory proposal, to the public ownership and collective control ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... County House," said Mary, in reply to the query what should be done with her, in a tone which indicated self-importance in the speaker. She was indeed the idol of her mother, and more nearly resembled her in dis- position and manners ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... and most of his implements of husbandry,—and while a European would consider himself as an outcast, he feels perfectly at home in the depth of the forest. In new countries likewise the mind acquires those ideas of self-importance and independence so peculier to Americans. For the man who spends the greater part of his time alone in the forest, as free as the beasts that range it without controul, his wants but simple and those supplied from ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... purity. And remember, too, that when He challenges the world with, 'Which of you convinceth Me of sin?' with the exception of half a dozen men, of whom we can scarcely say whether their want of spiritual insight or their arrogance of self-importance is the most flagrant, who, in the course of nineteen centuries, have ventured to fling their little handfuls of mud at Him, the whole world has answered, 'Thou art fairer than the children of men; grace is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... entered a private chamber, to which Goodman Crane himself had condescended to usher them, and dispatched their worthy and obsequious host on the errand of procuring wine and refreshment, than Wayland Smith began to give vent to his self-importance. ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... curiosity at me and my Londoner's clothes, as, with no small feeling of self-importance, I pushed my way to the foot of the stone. The man who stood on it seemed to have been speaking some time. His words, like all I heard that day, were utterly devoid of anything like eloquence or ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... not unfrequently presents an object for the patronage superior to the would-be patron; for the temptation is one to which slight persons chiefly are exposed; it affords an outlet for the vague activity of self-importance. Few have learned that one is of no value except to God and other men. Miss Palmer worshipped herself, and therefore would fain be worshipped—so dreamed of a friendship de haut en bas with ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... costume. It speaks well for the accuracy of feeling, anyway, of our various "Midways," "Pikes," and the like of our world's expositions that the streets of Port Said looked like Midways raised to the nth power. Along them we sauntered with a pleasing feeling of self-importance. On all sides we were gently and humbly besought—by the shopkeepers, by the sidewalk vendors, by would-be guides, by fortune-tellers, by jugglers, by magicians; all soft-voiced and respectful; all yielding as ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... is neither swollen with self-importance nor shrunk into littleness; but being placed between the two, and enriched by a peculiar elegance, is contained within its own ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... father, he distinguished himself by a gallant deed of arms. On the south-east of the Ostrogothic kingdom, in the country which we now call Servia, there reigned at this time a Sclavonic chief called Babai, who was full of pride and self-importance because of a victory which he had lately gained over the forces of the Empire. Theodoric had probably heard at Constantinople the other side of this story: on his journey to the north-west he had passed through those regions, ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... him that his old chapel was rather at an unnecessary distance. Then, too, the fact of his house being called after New Zion seemed to impose a sort of obligation towards the sad old chapel. Besides, Mr. Moggridge was not inhumanly above the pleasures of self-importance, and though he did not express it in just those words, or indeed in any words at all, the idea of his being the Maecenas of New Zion was suddenly born ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... intensely indignant at the conduct of the scurvy burghers, and an immense amount of self-importance was displayed and shamefully wasted. This manifestation was at its highest when the messenger from Newgate arrived with Mary's poor little note as ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... along but a futile attempt to cast straws against the wind, was now completely over and done with, and would never be heard of again. Or such at least, he added, was the earnest hope of the law-abiding community. This irritated Purdy, who was spumy with the self-importance of one who has stood in the thick of the fray. He answered hotly, and ended by rapping out with a contemptuous click of the tongue: "Upon my word, Dick, you look at the whole thing like the tradesman ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... village cure. "Men are forbidden to gallop their horses within a third of a mile from the church on {190} Sundays." New laws, regulations, arrests, are promulgated by the public crier, "crying up and down the highway to sound of trumpet and drum," chest puffed out with self-importance, gold braid enough on the red-coated regalia to overawe the simple habitants. Though the companies holding monopoly over trade yearly change, monopoly is still all-powerful in New France,—so all pervasive that in 1741, in order to prevent smuggling to defraud the Company of the Indies, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... a striking symptom of a certain decadence in German music; an incapacity to tell the sincere quality of feeling in the dense, brilliant growth of technical virtuosity. In the worship at the Bayreuth shrine, somehow reinforced by a modern national self-importance, has been lost a heed for all but a certain vein of exotic romanticism, long ago run to riotous seed, a blending of hedonism and fatalism. No other poetic message gets a hearing and the former may be rung in endless repetition and reminiscence, provided, ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... suggestion of the clerk, and gave judgment accordingly. A policeman was ordered to carry out their instructions. Now, this officer was young and raw, and had only recently been enrolled in the constabulary. He was a fat, rosy man, with an air of self-importance. He set out from the court with the cock under his arm. An excited crowd streamed after the policeman, who stalked on with no little pomposity. When he reached the common, which lay between the houses of the ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... from obscurity; he counts no one prime work of God among his friends. From the same source he has no attachment to female society, no fondness for children, no perceptions of beauty in natural scenery; but he is fond of convivial indulgences, of that stimulation, which, keeping up the glow of self-importance and the sense of internal power, gives feelings ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... of the prestige which attaches to the province of which it is the capital, and to the Sikh population which inhabit it, the state of affairs in Afghanistan, and on our frontier, would render a demonstration which would at once afford evidence of our military strength and gratify the pride and self-importance of the Sikh chiefs, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... and brushed her up and gave her an excellent supper; and putting her into a first-class compartment labelled "Reserved," sent her back to Waterloo, and thence in a cab to Gough Square, where she arrived about midnight, suffering from a sense of self-importance, traces of which to this day are ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... insect creeping on a "tas de boue," which Voltaire so vividly illustrated in Micromegas. But man is resourceful; [words in Greek]. Displaced, along with his home, from the centre of things, he discovers a new means of restoring his self-importance; he interprets his humiliation as a deliverance. Finding himself in an insignificant island floating in the immensity of space, he decides that he is at last master of his own destinies; he can fling away the old equipment of final ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... all, your honour," replied Joe, his face brightening and his self-importance evidently restored. "We are a forehanded lot, and we've got twenty half-barrels of ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... could at least do no harm, and she could give some advice. Perhaps she mingled it with too many excuses and lamentations at being forced to stay at home; at least, Theodora thought her fanciful, rejoicing in the self-importance of imaginary ill-health. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seating of themselves, their producing of cigars, their puffings thereon, was the same studied ignoring of observation; a manner which, it must be acknowledged, becomes second nature to those forced to its adoption. It was a certain blown impressiveness, a significance in the smallest movements, a self-importance, in short, too large for the affairs of any private citizen. It is to be seen in those who sit in high places, in clergy, actors off the boards, magistrates, and people behind shop windows demonstrating things to street crowds. Bob's first thought ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... elaborate both in style and in the handling of current events, while they serve to reveal his personality, and to throw light upon Roman life in the last days of the Republic in an extremely vivid fashion. Cicero as a man, in spite of his self-importance, the vacillation of his political conduct in desperate crises, and the whining despondency of his times of adversity, stands out as at bottom a patriotic Roman of substantial honesty, who gave his life to check the inevitable fall of the commonwealth to which he was devoted. The evils ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... suddenly asked Maula, pretending not to know, where my hut was; why everybody said I lived so far away; and when told, he said, "Oh! that is very far, he must come nearer." Still I could not say a word, his fussiness and self-importance overcoming his inquisitiveness. ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... in her fears. In the course of a few months after this brief conversation, Mr. Sharp had reached a great height of self-importance. He failed in most of the amiable virtues which adorned his early career. He deteriorated in the zeal and spirituality of his preaching. He became florid, self-assured, and self-displaying. He thought his abilities too great for the Church at C——. The congregation ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... former carrying seventy packages of ninety pounds, the latter twenty-five, exclusive of provisions;) and each of the passengers had a canoe for his own accommodation—an arrangement that seemed to increase in no small degree the self-importance of some of our number. Our guide was now obliged to perform the duty of bowsman, still, however, retaining his authority over the ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... antiquity. I question whether there are many Bible readers who have ever laboured through the list. Yet these family trees, as we may call them, were very precious to the Jews. They thought as much of long descent as my lord Noodle does now. It swelled them immeasurably in self-importance if they could trace their lineage back in unbroken line to one of the twelve patriarchs, or to one of those who came out of Egypt. And the historian ministers to this prejudice or vanity by diligently recording the whole dry catalogue, and ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... violence does not naturally produce the peaceful virtues. It produces courage, indeed, but physical rather than moral,—least of all, that spiritual courage which makes martyrs and saints. It makes boon companions, not friends. It gives exaggerated ideas of self-importance. It exalts the outward and material, not the spiritual and the real. The very tread of a military veteran is stately, proud, and conscious,—like that of a procession of cardinals, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... ring, because of wind upon the water! In the days that were not more than two years old, Springhaven could have taken all this news, with a swiftly expanding and smoothly fluent circle, with a lift of self-importance at the centre of the movement, and a heave of gentle interest in the far reflective corners. Even now, with a tumult of things to consider, and a tempest of judgment to do it in, people contrived to be ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... enormous sense of self-importance at medical school, where they proudly endured the high pressure weeding out of any free spirit unwilling to grind away into the night for seven or more years. Anyone incapable of absorbing and regurgitating ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... emphasized by its smooth-shaven mobile mouth, below which his almost white chin beard hung pendent, expressed a curious interplay of emotional sanctity, urbane shrewdness, and solemn self-importance. ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... a group of Indians, Curly came to my tepee when we were camped on the Little Big Horn. The whole company were greatly agitated because an Indian possessed with the spirit of self-importance had gone to Washington to make war against other Indians in the tribe who were industrious and loyal home builders. They all made speeches around the campfire, asking my interposition at Washington. In his argument Curly said: "Which ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... to kiss him, while the white lips tried to speak his pardon. Sometimes Wilford was very sorry and full of remorse, knowing how Katy was suffering for his sin; and then, when he remembered her long refusal to pardon him, notwithstanding that he sued for it so earnestly, his self-importance was touched, and he felt she had no right to be so obstinate. He did not deserve it. He was a very kind, indulgent husband, who had raised her from the humblest position to the very highest, and she ought not to feel so indignant because he had kept from her an act which, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes |
