"Cocksure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... decidedly awkward. Yes, she was changing, growing fast. And Roger did not like it. Here she was spending money like water, absorbed in her pleasures, having no baby, apparently at loose ends with her husband, and through it all so cocksure of herself and her outrageous views about war, and smiling about them with such an air, and in her whole manner, such a tone of amused superiority. She talked about a world for the strong, bits of gabble from Nietzsche and that sort of rot; she spoke ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... white-gloved hand and put back a tendril of her gay hair. She looked at him level-eyed. The man's constant and cocksure "I," "me," "mine," rubbed her strongly the wrong way. This was Dr. Vivian's Settlement, and nobody else's. She was convinced that Vivian would have made a far ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... amount; in fact, as early as the first of October they had been cut down to two-thirds. Whether, therefore, the Government was right in ordering the withdrawal, or Nelson in his condemnation of it, may be left to the decision of those fortunate persons who can be cocksure of the true solution ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... the atrocious mistakes that doctors make in prognosis be accounted for. How many, many times doctors have declared that a given case must end in death, and they are so cocksure that they are right that they leave the patient to die; some sort of a fake, mountebank or fanatic comes in, the drug disease wears off and in a few days the patient is well. That is exactly the sort of a case Dr. Deaver describes. The faker gets busy with drugs that antidote the morphine ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... foreordained. If it was not "the opposition" it was the police. When Mulberry Street took a rest the publisher's "reader" began it, and the proof-reader. This last is an enemy of human kind anyhow. Not only that he makes you say things you never dreamed of, but his being so cocksure that he knows better every time, is a direct challenge to a fight. The "reader" is tarred with the same stick. He is the one who passes on the manuscript, and he has an ingrown hatred of opinion. If a man has that, he is his enemy before he ever sets eye on him. He ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... in this country to laugh at the German Hausfrau, and pity her for a drudge; and it is the way with many Germans to talk as if all Englishwomen were pleasure loving and incompetent. The less people know of a foreign nation the greater nonsense they talk in general, and the more cocksure they are about their own opinions. A year ago, when I was in Germany, I asked a friend I could trust if there really was much Anglophobia abroad except in the newspapers. She reflected a little before she answered, for she was ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... don't let me discourage you. I only suggest that you may have to guard against believing so intensely that you produce the impression of being an impracticable, a fanatic. Be cautious always; be especially cautious when you are cocksure you're right. Unadulterated truth always arouses suspicion in the unaccustomed public. It has the alarming tastelessness ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... A scientist, living in an age when science is dogmatically irreligious, he turned from its cocksure reasoning to ask for the facts. He went to the lives of the saints! Not to Herbert Spencer, you see. When he wanted to study the religious experience he went to the people who had had it, to Santa Theresa and Mrs. Eddy. They might know ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... any detective, either," said Richard Hartley. "He's altogether too cocksure. That sort of man would rather die than admit he is wrong about anything. He's a good old chap, though, isn't he? I liked him to-day better than ever before. I thought he was rather pathetic when he ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... as Mallowe and Rockamore are, at least, would not have attempted such a gigantic fraud if they'd anticipated the possibility of being discovered! Carlis has weathered so many storms, so many attacks upon his reputation and civic honor, that he may have felt cocksure of his position and gone into this thing without thought for the future, but the other two are men of different caliber, men with everything ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... puttin' a black brand on any feller; as my mother used to say, never say a bad thing till ye ask, 'Is it true, is it kind, is it necessary?' An' I tell you, the older I git, the slower I jedge; when I wuz your age, I wuz a steel trap on a hair trigger, an' cocksure. I tell you, there ain't anythin' wiser nor a sixteen-year-old boy, ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... a little too much inclined to be cocksure, Mr. Holmes," said Lestrade. The man's insolence was maddening, but we could ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... all about it! ALL. Well—what's the news? How is the election going? ERN. Oh, it's a certainty—a practical certainty! Two of the candidates have been arrested for debt, and the third is a baby in arms—so, if you keep your promises, and vote solid, I'm cocksure of election! OLGA. Trust to us. But you remember the conditions? ERN. Yes—all of you shall be provided for, for life. Every man shall be ennobled—every lady shall have unlimited credit at the Court Milliner's, and all salaries shall be paid weekly in advance! GRET. Oh, it's quite ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... her terrible anxiety, which she managed to hide from him. She herself had been to see M. Noiret, who was no longer so confident and cocksure ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... occasioned, especially to lawyers, was principally due, I think, to my friend's habit of viewing occurrences from an unusual standpoint. He did not look at things quite as other men looked at them. He had no prejudices and he knew no conventions. When other men were cocksure, Thorndyke was doubtful. When other men despaired, he entertained hopes; and thus it happened that he would often undertake cases that had been rejected contemptuously by experienced lawyers, and, what is more, would bring them ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman |
