"Overweening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... springs from consciousness of rectitude and of power equal to demands. Self-assertion at times becomes a duty; but self-conceit is always a weakness. Self-consciousness is the keeping of one's thoughts upon oneself, with the constant anxious question of what others will think. Vanity is an overweening admiration of self, craving equal admiration from others; self-consciousness is commonly painful to its possessor, vanity always a source of satisfaction, except as it fails to receive its supposed due. Self-esteem is more solid and better founded than self-conceit; ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... how far they were consistent with the high opinion I formed of him after I had got to know him more intimately. Obviously I had only seen the caricature of the man, although the tendency towards such plainly overweening self-confidence may, at all events, have manifested itself earlier in life. At the same time, one could trace in all this the influence of the decay of the musical and dramatic life of the period, which Spontini, situated as he was in Berlin, was well able to witness. The surprising fact that he ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... which did not commence with this confession. Even the late learned Dr. Owen Pugh has, in his Dictionary, by arbitrarily selecting certain syllables as the roots of all Cumrian words, done much to foster this overweening conceit. The system was carried to its extreme point of absurdity by the Rev. Edward Davies, who by the help of such syllables expected to unravel the mysteries of all languages. This failure has I hope paved the way for the more sober consideration of the question, which, if worked out fairly, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... our veneration for the work of our fathers, which taught us to contemn the sentiments of Henry and Mason and Pendleton, which weaned us from our reverence for the constituted authorities of the State, was an overweening passion for internal improvement. I say this with perfect knowledge, for it has been avowed to me by gentlemen from the West over and over again. And let me tell the gentleman from Albemarle (Mr. Gordon) that it has been another principal object of those who set ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... the clergy were held, for more than a hundred years after this date, was due in all probability to two causes. The first was the natural reaction from the overweening reverence anciently felt for the sacerdotal order: when the sacerdos was found to be but a presbyter, his charm was gone. But the second was the disgrace which had been brought upon their profession at large, by the evil lives of the ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... experiment of setting a planet, invisible by reason of its smallness, to revolve in the vast region of seemingly desert space separating Mars from Jupiter.[195] The disproportionate magnitude of the same interval was explained by Kant as due to the overweening size of Jupiter. The zone in which each planet moved was, according to the philosopher of Koenigsberg, to be regarded as the empty storehouse from which its materials had been derived. A definite relation ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... and fierce in his loves and hates. Religion comforted him through his appetites; in his sight craft was a virtue, intrigue was politics, and love was a fury. His eyes never left Ta-user for long, and his every word seemed to be inspired by some overweening emotion. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... ambitious despot. With great judgment, both here and in the Seven before Thebes, the poet describes the issue of the war, not as accidental, which is almost always the case in Homer, but (for in tragedy there is no place for accident,) as the result of overweening infatuation on the one hand, and ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... words,—when, a moment later, she met the gaze of profound pity and disappointment with which Dr. Grey's eyes dwelt upon her countenance, hardened now by its expression of insolent haughtiness; but he allowed her no opportunity for retraction, even had she mastered her overweening pride, and stooping to whisper a brief sentence in his sister's ear, he took a medical book from the ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... her, sinning against the truth and her own conscience. A fearful dread fell upon her, and deprived her of the power to lift her soul in prayer. She could not, she dared not, do what was required of her, and yet the overweening love of life which exists in every mortal led her feet to the base of the idol ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... woman; she had the vanities rather than the weaknesses of one; she would fain have inspired and responded to the passions natural to one; but policy always had the dominion over her sentiments without extinguishing them, and the proud sovereign sent to the block the overweening and almost rebel subject whom she afterwards grievously regretted. These inconsistent resolutions and emotions caused Elizabeth's life to be one of agitation, though without warmth, and devoid of serenity ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... co-operate together to give to personal and party interests the overweening importance which attaches to them in the estimation of local politicians. There are no real grievances here to stir the depths of the popular mind. We are a comfortable people, with plenty to eat and drink, no privileged classes ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... fain to admit the supremacy of the great Tsin emperor. About this time the Hiongnou[45] Tartars were governed by two chiefs in particular, one named Tonghou, the other Meha or Mehe. Of these the former appears to have been instigated by a reckless ambition or an overweening arrogance, and at first it seemed that the forbearance of Meha would allow his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... blood-guilt for this wanton war and to their misinformed and misguided peoples that the spirit which unchained it cannot prevail, that the hateful doctrines and methods in pursuance of which and in compliance with which it is conducted are rejected with abhorrence by the civilized world, and that the overweening ambitions which it was meant to serve can ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... it was this enterprise miscarried, or that undertaking brought to a successful issue. It would not be difficult to furnish a lengthy catalogue of the blunders historical writers have perpetrated through their overweening addiction to this folly. Let two instances here suffice: When the Roman Church, about the middle of the eleventh century, was endeavouring to insure the celibacy of its priesthood, the married clergy, who braved its censures and contemned its authority, became known as Nicolaites; which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... something which was little better than a vacuum. And in his trouble he found himself wishing he was gifted with Sunny's wit. Wild Bill's force would have carried him through, or even Sandy Joyce's overweening confidence would have kept his head above water. As it was he was stuck. Hopelessly, irretrievably at the end ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... was all contradictory. In one breath, on the self-abnegation principle, he would say, 'I don't know any thing about paintings;' in the next breath, his overweening egotism would make him loudly proclaim: 'There never was but one painter in this world, and his name is Hockskins; he lives in my town, and he knows more than any of your 'old masters'! I ought to know!' Or, 'I am an uneducated man,' meaning uninstructed; immediately following it with the assertion: ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... by his enemies and by his alarmed friends, that vanity and a restless overweening desire for notoriety was the inspiring motive of Helvetius. He came from a German stock. His great-grandfather settled in Holland, where he cured his patients by cunning elixirs, by the powder of ground stag's horn, and the subtle ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... speaking of Shadynook and the fairies of that domain. Never have I seen Belinda, or rather Belle-bouche, so lovely, and I here disdainfully repel your ridiculous calumny that she's in love with you, you great lump of presumption and overweening self-conceit! Philippa too was a pastoral queen—in silk and jewels—and around them they had gathered together a troop of shepherds from the adjoining grammar-school, called William and Mary College, of which I am an aspiring bachelor, and you were an ornament ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... brought him down rather more to the level of ordinary mortals. They show him to us as a man possessed of splendid talents, of extensive and various attainments, and of the seeds of many noble and generous qualities; but as a man actuated by ungovernable passions, and by an overweening opinion of his own superiority to all other mortals. Self, whether intellectual or sensual, seems to have been the idol that he worshipped. His own antient family, his own talents, his own ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... insufficient tea-cups, and the elderly young assistant demonstrator hovered on the verge of the discussion, rejoicing, it is supposed, over the entanglements of Smithers. For at the outset Smithers displayed an overweening confidence and civility, and at the end his ears were red and his finer ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... refused to lend his name to a scheme under which Lars Larssen would hold the reins of control. He knew the ruthlessness of the man and his overweening lust of power, which had passed the bounds of ordinary ambition and had become a ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... The doctrine of nemesis following close on [Greek: hubris], or overweening pride, is here very clearly enunciated. The only protector against the things that "assault and hurt" the soul is the "Bishop and Shepherd of our souls" ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... aplomb—and not culture, or any knowledge or intellect whatever.) With regard to the mental-educational part of our model, enlargement of intellect, stores of cephalic knowledge, &c., the concentration thitherward of all the customs of our age, especially in America, is so overweening, and provides so fully for that part, that, important and necessary as it is, it really needs nothing from us here—except, indeed, a phrase of warning and restraint. Manners, costumes, too, though important, we need not dwell upon ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... of her face was, I thought, one of sweetness and humility, contradicted in some degree by rather harsh lines about the mouth, denoting strong will and purpose. As a proof of the existence of this last characteristic, I may here mention that, when her first overweening confidence had yielded to doubt, she, although dotingly fond of her nephew, at this time about eight years of age, firmly refused to see him, "in order," she once said to me—and the thought brought a deadly pallor to her face—in ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... Society, where Mrs. Marsh presided as secretary. There were countless circulars and pamphlets to be mailed, setting forth our purposes and needs. Mrs. Marsh, despite an inaccurate acquaintance with and an overweening curiosity regarding the doings of fashionable people, was a model of executive ability. With some one at hand to correct her grammar and spelling, she could transact a greater amount of business than ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... suppress, and could only retard the production of Dryden and Lee's excellent tragedy The Duke of Guise, first performed 4 December. The play created a furore, and its political purport as a picture of the baffled intrigues of Shaftesbury in favour of Lucy Walter's overweening son is obvious, nor is it rendered less so by Dryden's clever and caustic Vindication of the Duke of Guise (1683). It is interesting to note that Lady Slingsby, who played the Queen Mother, Catherine de' Medici, in this play, has some very sardonic speeches put in her mouth; indeed, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... cause of this mischief, ariseth from ourselves or others, [1914]we are active and passive. It proceeds inwardly from ourselves, as we are active causes, from an overweening conceit we have of our good parts, own worth, (which indeed is no worth) our bounty, favour, grace, valour, strength, wealth, patience, meekness, hospitality, beauty, temperance, gentry, knowledge, wit, science, art, learning, our [1915] ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... dangers which encompassed it. "Had he lived," said a very eminent man who had done more than any other to defeat him, "he would have been the unanimous candidate of the Republicans in 1920." Time brings its revenges swiftly. As I write these lines, it is not Capital, but overweening Labor which makes its truculent demands on the Administration at Washington, which it has already intimidated. Well may we exclaim, "Oh, for the courage of Roosevelt!" And whenever the country shall be in great anxiety or in direct peril from ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... sneer. The young Squire and his wife loved each other devotedly, and their only child, Hetty, with an unreasoning and unreasonable affection which would have been the ruin of her, if she had been any thing else but what she was, "the old Squire over again." As it was, the only effect of this overweening affection, on their part, was to produce a slow reversal of some of the ordinary relations between parents and children. As Hetty grew into womanhood, she grew more and more to have a sense of responsibility for her father's and mother's happiness. ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... some flaw will be assumed to affect and to vitiate his creative instinct or his spiritual reason. And in the case of John Marston, the friend and foe of Ben Jonson, the fierce and foul-mouthed satirist, the ambitious and overweening tragedian, the scornful and passionate humorist, it is easy for the shallowest and least appreciative reader to perceive the nature and to estimate the weight of such drawbacks or impediments as have so long and so seriously interfered with the due recognition of an independent and remarkable ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... multiplied to such an extent—what advantage, we ask, has she derived from her faculty of scribbling, except that she has made herself pretty widely known, and ridiculed wherever she is known? Presumptuous ignorance, and overweening conceit, have, in her case, completely nullified, nay worse, have converted into a curse, in some respects, what was intended every way for a blessing. If Lady Morgan would forego her mongrel idiom, and use the English language; if she would confine herself to subjects ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... him. "But I am, Guy. I am." Her voice sounded strained even to herself, for she was strangely discomfited by his attitude. She had expected a broken man kneeling at her feet in an agony of contrition. His overweening confidence confounded her. "Have you no sense of right ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... habits, of the nobility and the people; their public institutions, edifices, monuments, and collections in the fine arts; the overweening influence of the clergy, their power and political subserviency; the character of the foreign ministers, and the policy of the courts they represented, were carefully observed and noted down ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... not returning you my thanks for your most valuable present, Zeluco. In fact, you are in some degree blameable for my neglect. You were pleased to express a wish for my opinion of the work, which so flattered me, that nothing less would serve my overweening fancy, than a formal criticism on the book. In fact, I have gravely planned a comparative view of you, Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett, in your different qualities and merits as novel-writers. This, I own, betrays ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... and the fleering of the Women they had about them, find it sore travail to remember what I had for dinner yesterday, what friends I conversed with, what Tavern I supped at, what news I read in the Gazette? But 'tis the knowledge of that overweening Craving to count up the trivial Things of my Youth that warns me to use despatch, even if the chronicle of my after doings be but a short summary or sketch of so many Perils by Land and Sea. And for this manner ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... open, it must be for some secret vileness. They grow angry with him when he refuses to be persuaded against his knowledge of himself. They insist on his hypocrisy, he on his righteousness. Nor may we forget that herein lies not any overweening on the part of Job, for the poem prepares us for the right understanding of the man by telling us in the prologue, that God said thus to the accuser of men: 'Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... a frame of mind that baffles description. He was a modest man; he had never conceived an overweening notion of his own powers; he knew himself unfit to write a book, turn a table napkin-ring, entertain a Christmas party with legerdemain—grapple (in short) any of those conspicuous accomplishments that are usually classed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The overweening love of money is a seed, a soil, and a sun that generates a certain crop: the aim of my poor husbandry is only to reap this; but my sickle does not wish to wound the growers: let them stand aside; or, better far, let them help me cut those rank ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... allowances for them. But instead of thus furthering his object, he sacrifices the whole—and his story becomes, instead of a broad and faithful human record, really a curiosity of autobiographic perversion, and of overweening, if not extravagant egotism of the more refined, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... second one is that religion is a progressive movement, an unfolding revelation of life. "What a height of Presumption is it," he says, "to believe that the Wisdom and fullness of God can ever be pent up in a Synodical Canon? How overweening are we to limit the successive manifestations of God to a present rule and light, persecuting all that comes not forth in its height and breadth!" It is through this "unnatural desire" to keep Christians in "a perpetual infancy" that "our dry nurses" in the Church have ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... rule of routine, despite that turbulent and licentious independence which ever suggests revolt against the ruler: his mental torpidity, founded upon physical indolence, renders immediate action and all manner of exertion distasteful: his conscious weakness shows itself in overweening arrogance and intolerance. His crass and self- satisfied ignorance makes him glorify the most ignoble superstitions, while acts of revolting savagery are the natural results of a malignant fanaticism and a furious hatred of every creed beyond the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the effects of either upon England's sea power and honor. While England's policy thus steadily aimed at widening and strengthening the bases of her sway upon the ocean, the other governments of Europe seemed blind to the dangers to be feared from her sea growth. The miseries resulting from the overweening power of Spain in days long gone by seemed to be forgotten; forgotten also the more recent lesson of the bloody and costly wars provoked by the ambition and exaggerated power of Louis XIV. Under the eyes of the statesmen ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... arrival. We dined together with a large party at the consul's, and he seemed inclined to exact a deference to his dogmas, that was more lordly than philosophical. One of the naval officers present, I think the captain of the Salsette, felt, as well as others, this overweening, and announced a contrary opinion on some question connected with the politics of the late Mr Pitt with so much firm good sense, that Lord Byron was perceptibly rebuked by it, and became reserved, as if he deemed that sullenness enhanced dignity. I ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... not suffer this or any other advantage of the colonial relation to divert them from the opinion to which their observation was gradually bringing them,—that its overweening loyalty placed a great country like Canada in s very silly attitude, the attitude of an overgrown, unmanly boy, clinging to the maternal skirts, and though spoilt and willful, without any character of his own. The constant reference of local hopes to that remote centre ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... future. From the General, down to the youngest drum-boy, a confident anticipation of success seemed to pervade all ranks; and in the hope of an ample reward in store for them, the toils and grievances of the moment were forgotten. Nor was this anticipation the mere offspring of an overweening confidence in themselves. Several Americans had already deserted, who entertained us with accounts of the alarm experienced at New Orleans. They assured us that there were not at present 5000 soldiers in the State; that the principal inhabitants had long ago left the place; that such ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... between different cities in which it is thought necessary to confer such mutual right by express stipulation. Temptation was offered, to the distinguished gymnastic or musical competitors, by prizes of great value. Timaeus even asserted, as a proof of the overweening pride of Croton and Sybaris, that these cities tried to supplant the preeminence of the Olympic games by instituting games of their own with the richest prizes to be celebrated at the same time—a statement in itself not worthy of credit, yet nevertheless illustrating ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... great dramatist had penned these words, the management of Blackfriars met with disaster. The cause, however, went back to December 13, 1600, when Giles and Evans were gathering their players. In their overweening confidence they made a stupid blunder in "taking up" for their troupe the only son and heir of Henry Clifton, a well-to-do gentleman of Norfolk, who had come to London for the purpose of educating the boy. Clifton says in his complaint ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... sailed on, past the Macrones and the far-stretching land of the Becheiri and the overweening Sapeires, and after them the Byzeres; for ever forward they clave their way, quickly borne by the gentle breeze. And lo, as they sped on, a deep gulf of the sea was opened, and lo, the steep crags ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... "friends," than many of the white ladies to their married lords. Still, the white ladies constantly speak with the greatest contempt, and even with animosity, of these unhappy and oppressed beings. The strongest language of high nobility in the monarchies of the old world, cannot be more haughty, overweening or contemptuous towards their fellow creatures, than the expressions of the creole females with regard to the quadroons, in one of the much vaunted states of the free Union. In fact, such comparison strikes the mind of a thinking ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... upon governments, nations, peoples—a general field of inquiry for which Kirtley had had some predilection at college. The vast superiority of the German Government had been again, as often before, so emphasized in Villa Elsa that he felt now that he ought to raise a question. Should this overweening assumption ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... As she thought of his fastidious overweening pride, his haughty scorn of everything plebeian, his detestation of all that appertained to the ranks of the ill-bred, a keen pang of almost intolerable shame darted through her heart, and a burning tide surged ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... aspect that by no means fairly represents its true nature, noble lady; trust my words! Have you not yourself seen, even in your short life, that what is highest and greatest can in its excess, be all that is most hideous? A noble pride, if not kept within bounds, becomes overweening ambition; the lovely grace of humility degenerates into an indolent sacrifice of opinion and will; high-hearted enterprise into a mad chase after fortune, in which we ride down everything that comes in the way of success. What is nobler ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... many not inconsiderable details of the dispute, and that so-called orthodox Christians in their hearts knew it but would not own it—or that if they did not know it, they were only in ignorance because it suited their purpose to be so—this conviction gave an overweening self-confidence to infidels, as though they must be right in the whole because they were so in part; they therefore blinded themselves to all the more fundamental arguments in support of Christianity, because certain shallow ones had been put forward ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... hellish falshood, snare them. But for thee I had persisted happie, had not thy pride And wandring vanitie, when lest was safe, Rejected my forewarning, and disdain'd Not to be trusted, longing to be seen Though by the Devil himself, him overweening To over-reach, but with the Serpent meeting Fool'd and beguil'd, by him thou, I by thee, 880 To trust thee from my side, imagin'd wise, Constant, mature, proof against all assaults, And understood not all was but a shew Rather then solid vertu, all but a Rib Crooked by nature, bent, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... ordered him into custody, deprived him of his offices, and, what was of more importance to him, refused to renew his patent of a monopoly of sweet wines. Although the earl soon regained his liberty he could not forget his disgrace, and his overweening vanity drove him to concert measures against the government. In 1601 he rode at the head of a few followers into the city, expecting the citizens to rise in his favour. The mayor had, however, been forewarned, and 1,000 men were held in readiness in each ward fully armed for the safeguard of ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... batteries and violently taxed him with absurd, criminal pride. They asked him if he thought himself cleverer than anyone else, that he set himself up against the entire nation? On what did he found this overweening self-confidence? Duty consists in being humble, and keeping to one's proper place in the community; when it commands, our duty is to bow to it, and, whether we agree or not, we must carry out its orders. Woe to the rebel against the soul of his country! To be in the right ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... submission naturally swelled the overweening insolence of the Deys. A consul had a Maltese cook: the Dey objected to the Maltese, and took the man by force from the consul's house and sent him away in irons. If the consul objected, he might go too. When Captain Hope, of H.M.S. Romulus, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... utterly unmilitary, and, as the French would say, "become cow-like." It was difficult to see in him the man who, however great his crimes in Mexico, had at least been a man of the most daring courage and of the most overweening ambition. In the suppressed volume of the papers of the Imperial family seized at the Tuileries there is a letter from General Felix Douay to his brother in which he describes Bazaine's attempt to become the Bernadotte of Mexico, and shows how, in order to obtain the Mexican throne, he ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... slumber, which she at first regarded as a favorable omen; and, in the conscious security of the spot, in the belief that he had received none of the injuries she had apprehended from the motion of the boat, and, above all, in the indulgence of that overweening pride of affection which covets all pains and sacrifices for the loved one, she felt a satisfaction which was almost happiness, in her situation. But it was not destined to be of very long duration. She at length began to ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... assisted by large contingents from the allied Greek cities for his war in Asia; but Athens, Corinth, and Thebes stood aloof. Lysander accompanied him as one of the generals, but gave so great offense by his overweening arrogance, that he was sent to command at the Hellespont. The truce between the Spartans and Persians being broken, Agesilaus prosecuted the war vigorously against both Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus. He gained a considerable victory over the Persians near Sardis, invaded Phrygia, and laid waste the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... you, sold by the hawking pedlars and balladmongers, entitled The Blason of Colours. Who made it? Whoever it was, he was wise in that he did not set his name to it. But, besides, I know not what I should rather admire in him, his presumption or his sottishness. His presumption and overweening, for that he should without reason, without cause, or without any appearance of truth, have dared to prescribe, by his private authority, what things should be denotated and signified by the colour: which is the custom of tyrants, who will have their will to bear sway in stead of equity, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... swarm and shut us in from the weary world," said Ebbo. "And alack! when they go, what a turmoil it will be! Councils in the Rathhaus, appeals to the League, wranglings with the Markgraf, wise saws, overweening speeches, all ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as much to fear from Carthage as ever. He quickly returned home, and pointed out to the Senate that the former defeats and misfortunes suffered by the Carthaginians had not really broken their strength so much as they had dissipated their overweening self-confidence, and that in the late war they had not lost so much in strength as they had gained in experience and skill. Their present difference with the Numidians was, he urged, merely a prelude to an attack upon Rome, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... acknowledged belle of his circle. She had in no way changed. She was just as pretty, as fascinating, as gay as ever; and something told him that she loved him—something which had not been there before he went away, something that had come when the overweening vanity of youth went. And it was just this knowledge to which he clung with a nervous mental grip. He did not feel elated as he should; he was aware of that, and he could not account for it. But Millicent loved him, so it ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... 21st—Sunday.—To-day I went to hear the celebrated Edward Irving. His preaching, for the most part, I considered commonplace; his manner, eccentric; his pretensions to revelations, authority, and prophetic indications, overweening. I was disappointed in his talents, and surprised at the apparent want of feeling manifested throughout his ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... art of painting; for if these were not acknowledged in Rome and Florence by those who could reward them, yet in France he found one to recompense him for them, and that in such sort, that his glory might have sufficed to quench the thirst of the most overweening ambition that could possess the heart of any craftsman, be he who he may. Nor could he have obtained in this life greater dignities, honour, or rank, seeing that he was regarded with favour and much esteemed beyond any other man of his profession by a King so great as is the King of France. And, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... cover of darkness and he rose from his desk, the thing that had edged its way into a crowded mind took possession of the premises that strategy and tactics had vacated. It passed under the same analysis as his work. His overweening pride, so sensitive to the suspicion of a conviction that he had been fooled, put his relations with Marta in ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... myself. It was not thus that I desired to be loved. And then I began to fall into a great pity for the girl herself. I thought how sharp must be her mortification, that she, the student, the recluse, Felipe's saintly monitress, should have thus confessed an overweening weakness for a man with whom she had never exchanged a word. And at the coming of pity, all other thoughts were swallowed up; and I longed only to find and console and reassure her; to tell her how wholly her love was returned on my side, and ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... huge yet gracious Miss Brown. Arthur was in general upon the outlook for her, but to-day he was not, being more vexed with her than usual for withholding the encouragement he desired, and indeed imagined he deserved—not exactly from vanity, yet no less from an overweening ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... to know. He could not find there very quickly on his large-sized maps, or pretended not to, though I concluded that this was "camouflage," in case I might tell "old Fritz" that such places existed. Like most of our generals, he had amazing, overweening optimism. He had always got the enemy "nearly beat," and he arranged attacks during the Somme fighting with the jovial sense of striking another blow which would lead this time to stupendous results. In the early days, in command of the 7th Division, he had done well, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... shown how German commerce had penetrated every land, to an extent unknown to the best informed. If the German merchants wanted this war in order to gain a German monopoly of the world's trade, then they are rightly suffering from the results of overweening covetousness. ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... work out fairly and fully complete what I have begun. And when that is done, I will courageously and cheerfully turn my back upon all my old aspirations. The world is wide, and there is everywhere room for honesty of purpose and earnest endeavour. Had I failed in attaining my wishes from an overweening self-confidence,—had I found that the obstacles after all lay within myself—I should have bitterly despised myself, and, worst of all, I should have felt that you had just ground ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... is certain that France under his reign became the most aggressive nation of Europe, and the overweening ambition and self-confidence of the new emperor led him to the same end as his great uncle, that of disaster and overthrow. He was evidently bent on playing a leading part in European politics, showing the world that one ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... the freedom promised by the Spartans, only another empire had been established, whilst Lysander was even meditating to extort from the subject cities a yearly tribute of one thousand talents. And all these oppressions were rendered still more intolerable by the overweening pride and harshness ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... the world, the weight of the inexorable conscience, as has Carlyle, or drawn such fresh inspiration from that source. However we may differ from him (and almost in self-defense one must differ from a man of such intense and overweening personality), it must yet be admitted that he habitually speaks out of that primitive silence and solitude in which only the heroic soul dwells. Certainly not in contemporary British literature is there another writer whose bowstring has ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... harshly withstood even the most friendly advances, for there lay at times a vague yearning for love in the depths of his eyes. To grow hard because unfulfilled claims afflict and darken the soul, to retire into solitude because overweening pride shuns to lay bare the glowing heart, to be unjust from a feeling of shame and misunderstood defiance—that was perhaps his lot, and certainly ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... superiority seems to have given him an almost overweening confidence in his ability to induce his brethren to accept the broader theology he loved to preach; nor did he apparently realize that comprehension was incompatible with a theocratic government, and that his success would have undermined the organization he was laboring to perfect. He thus committed ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... are permitted to fire upon them, to withstand and drive them back, or to make prisoners of them." This appeal to a force which the Chinese did not possess was an act of indiscretion that betrayed an overweening confidence or a singular depth of ignorance. When the mandarins refused to supply the ships with water and other necessaries they carried their animosity to a length which the English naval officers at once defined as a declaration of open hostilities. They retaliated by ordering their ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... animal already alluded to, actuated by an overweening desire of notoriety, and in order to catch the applause of some one, grovelling in the morasses of insignificance and vice, like himself, leaves his native obscurity, and indulges in falsehood, calumny, and defamation. ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... single agricultural product. What divinity hedges cotton, that competition may not touch it,—that some disease, like that of the potato and the vine, may not bring it to beggary in a single year, and cure the overweening conceit of prosperity with the sharp medicine of Ireland and Madeira? But these South Carolina economists are better at vaporing than at calculation. They will find to their cost that the figure's of statistics have little mercy for the figures of speech, which are so powerful ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... whole form and figure of him. But the core was gone. His pride was bolstered up, his blood ran once more in pride. But there was no core to him: as a distinct male he had no core. His triumphant, flaming, overweening heart of the intrinsic male would never beat again. He would be subject now, reciprocal, never the indomitable thing with a core of overweening, unabateable fire. She had abated that ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... He had been accustomed to hear himself called the great, the mighty son of Roussillon, ever since he was a helpless child. A succession of complacent tutors would by no means destroy the illusion; and it is from their hands that Shakspeare receives him, while yet in his minority. An overweening pride of birth is Bertram's great foible. To cure him of this, Shakspeare sends him to the wars, that he may win fame for himself, and thus exchange a shadow for a reality. There the great dignity that his valor acquired for him places him on ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... smiled to himself, and went his way in silence; for he who loved Andrea Mantegna did not bow down in homage before the old master-potter's estimation of himself, which was in truth somewhat overweening ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... foolish rashness or overweening presumption that led the admiral to leave the new home he had made within the strong defences of La Rochelle; or was he moved solely by a conscientious persuasion that he had no right to consider personal danger when the great interests of his country and his faith ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... at the remark. She spoke in sentences that all began with "I don't like," or "I despise," or "I do detest." In the face of that vast cosmic drama unfolding itself before her senses, she sat wholly unmoved and unsympathetic, displaying the overweening arrogance of a spoiled child. Frederick wanted to jump up, but remained where he was, pulling nervously at the end of his moustache, while his face assumed a stiff, mocking expression. Mara noticed it, and was visibly upset by this ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... prisoner; I have exposed the weakness of the evidence; I have had the world searched for the missing girl; I have petitioned and agitated. In vain. I have failed. Now I play my last card. As the overweening Wimp could not be allowed to go down to posterity as the solver of this terrible mystery, I decided that the condemned man might just as well profit by his exposure. That is the reason I make the exposure to-night, before it is too ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... crown of Spain should go to Charles of Austria, second son of the Emperor Leopold, who was the descendant of younger sisters of the royal Spanish line, but did not excite the fear and jealousy of Europe, as did a scion of the already overweening house of Bourbon. This led to the War of the Spanish Succession, England and Holland supporting Charles, and fighting with Louis in Spain, Savoy, and the Low Countries. In Spain Louis was ultimately successful, and his grandson Philip V. retained the throne; but the troops which his ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heart there entered also the exceeding bitterness of a lost ideal. She became to him, as he had become to her, the image of broken faith, capricious feeling, and overweening worldly ambition. ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... idea, conception, fancy; whim, caprice, vagary, freak; priggery, vanity, egotism, self-conceit, inflation, self-glorification, overweening, conceitedness. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... teaching him mathematics, of which his mind was perfectly incapable, so that any comparison of the intellectual powers of the two men" would indeed be as "exquisitely ridiculous" as the critic declares it. But lord Orford, speaking of d'Alembert, complains of the overweening importance which he, and all the men of letters of those days in France, attributed to their squabbles and disputes. The idleness to which an absolute government necessarily condemns nine-tenths of its subjects, sufficiently accounts for the exaggerated importance given to and assumed by ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... fancy, which constitute the essence of poetry and wit.... There was nothing spontaneous, no impulse or ease about his genius: it was all forced, up-hill work, making a toil of pleasure. And hence his overweening admiration of his own works, from the effort they had cost him, and the apprehension that they were not proportionably admired by others, who knew nothing of the pangs and throes of his Muse in child-bearing." Works, VIII, 39-41. Of Ben Jonson's tragedies Hazlitt ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... In overweening exultation so Vaunted a Trojan. Fool!—he had no vision Of ruin onward rushing upon himself And Troy, and Penthesileia's self withal. For not as yet had any tidings come Of that wild fray to Aias stormy-souled, Nor to Achilles, waster of tower ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... nourishment it receives, I think it more likely to be injured by the milk of a married woman who will desert her own child for the sake of gain. The misfortune which has happened to this young woman is not always a proof of a bad heart, but of strong attachment, and the overweening confidence of simplicity." ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... it was time for plain speaking between her and Adam, and rightly judged that a proper understanding come to at once would be the safest means of securing future comfort. Turn and twist Adam's abrupt announcement as she would, she could assign but one cause for it, and that cause was an overweening jealousy; and as the prospect came before her of a lifetime spent in the midst of doubt and suspicion, the strength of her love seemed to die away and her heart grew faint within her. For surely if the demon of jealousy could be roused by the sight ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... counter-marching, frequent displays of courage—more courage than co-operation sometimes,—one or two defeats, and several rather barren successes. For the first eight months the advantage inclined to the insurgents. After that their overweening conceit of their Waikato contingent enabled our superior strength to assert itself. The Maoris, for all their courage and knowledge of the country, were neither clever guerillas nor good marksmen. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... moment to greet Simonides. The little poet was delighted, despite overweening hopes, at the manly beauty yet modesty of the athlete, and being a man who kept his thoughts always near his tongue, made Glaucon blush ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... a contest we should not stand spiritually alone, but all on this vast globe whose feelings and thoughts are proud and free will join us in this campaign against the overweening ambitions of one nation, which, in spite of all her pretence of a liberal and a philanthropic policy, has never sought any other object than personal advantage and the unscrupulous ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... Oh how great did I see those who have been undone by their pride![15] and the balls of gold[16] made Florence flourish with all their great deeds. So did the fathers of those who always,when your church is vacant, become fat, staying in consistory.[17] The overweening race which is as a dragon behind him who flies, and to him who shows tooth or purse is gentle as a lamb,[18] already was coming up, but from small folk, so that it pleased not Ubertin Donato that his father-in-law should afterwards ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... in an affectionate way that she can let others enjoy his company betimes, secure in the knowledge that she is supreme in his affections—cajolery that flatters his overweening ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... and little mother smiled at this excess of tenderness, but Julien, whose habitual routine had been interfered with and his overweening importance diminished by the arrival of this noisy and all-powerful tyrant, unconsciously jealous of this mite of a man who had usurped his place in the house, kept on saying angrily and impatiently: "How wearisome ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... overweening pride. The trouble with Coriolanus is not ambition, as is the case with Macbeth. He cares little for crowns, office, or any outward honor. Self-centered, self-sufficient, contemptuous of all mankind outside of his own immediate circle of friends, he dies at last because he refuses ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... of the tolerably well-conceived, but intolerably ill-executed, attempt of Dumouriez to make himself a French Duke of Albemarle. It was quite as unprincipled as his political operations were at Paris in 1792, and in both cases he came to grief through his overweening self-confidence and consequent lack of the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... for enforcing a policy which until that time had thriven conspicuously, if somewhat illusively, in its commercial results, and had substantially attained its especial object of maritime preponderance. Other peoples had to submit to the compulsion exerted by her overweening superiority. The obligation upon foreign shipping to be three-fourths manned by their own citizens, for instance, rested only upon a British law, and applied only in a British port; but the accumulations of British capital, with the consequent facility ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... hast taken away my husband? and wouldst thou take away my son's dudaim also?' And Rachel said, 'See, Jacob shall be thine to-night for thy son's dudaim.' But Leah insisted, 'Jacob is mine, and I am the wife of his youth,' whereupon Rachel, 'Be not boastful and overweening. To me he was betrothed first, and for my sake he served our father fourteen years. Thou art not his wife, thou wast taken to him by cunning instead of me, for our father deceived me, and put me out of the way the night of thy nuptials, so that Jacob could not see me. Nevertheless, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... alter; the military aristocracy depend upon the success of the chief they choose in the enterprise, and the army more upon plunder than regular pay; both may desert the cause of the more wary for that of the more daring; each is flattered into an overweening confidence in his own ability and good fortune; and all rush on to seize upon the throne yet filled by their wretched parent, who, in the history of his own crimes, now reads those of his children. Gibbon has justly observed (chap. 7): 'the superior prerogative ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... "Simply overweening conceit of himself, and an enormously exaggerated opinion of his own importance as master of this ridiculous little brig; together with, perhaps, an unusually violent and ungovernable temper, I imagine," answered Leslie, with a smile. "I am ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Setting out from Fort Cumberland on the Potomac, the English General made his way north-westward at the head of twenty-two hundred men, four hundred and fifty of these being veteran Virginians under the command of Colonel George Washington. But the overweening Braddock considered these raw colonials to be the least effective of his troops. From the first the progress of this imposing force was painfully slow. "Instead of pushing on with vigour without regarding a little ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... as a dukedom or the Holy See, they will scarcely support the dizziest elevation in life without some suspicion of a strut; and the dizziest elevation is to love and be loved in return. Consequently, accepted lovers are a trifle condescending in their address to other men. An overweening sense of the passion and importance of life hardly conduces to simplicity of manner. To women, they feel very nobly, very purely, and very generously, as if they were so many Joan-of-Arc's; but this does not come out in their behaviour; and they treat them to ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... embraces death to escape insult. The haughty spirit was unchanged, crushed but the same, unsoftened, and therefore roused to madder defiance of God and man. What an awful last saying for 'the anointed of Jehovah,' and how the overweening self-will and vehemence and passionate pride of his whole life are gathered up ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... other fault than her exaggerated tenderness for her boy,—the bete-noire of his step-father. Oscar was, unfortunately, endowed by nature with a foolishness his mother did not perceive, in spite of the step-father's sarcasms. This foolishness—or, to speak more specifically, this overweening conceit—so troubled Monsieur Moreau that he begged Madame Clapart to send the boy down to him for a month that he might study his character, and find out what career he was fit for. Moreau ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... General Dru this information, but much else that was of extreme value. Dru soon came to know that at heart Selwyn was not without patriotism, and that it was only from environment and an overweening desire for power that had led him into the paths he had heretofore followed. Selwyn would have preferred ruling through the people rather than through the interests and the machinations of corrupt politics, but he had little confidence that the people would take enough ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... befel. When Fergus heard that, what he said was:[2] [W.1921.] "Liefer to me what thou hast done, [3]O fosterling," said Fergus, "that Etarcumul is slain, and[3] a blessing on the hand that smote him, [4]for it is he that was overweening."[4] ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... like a new book to be read. And a trained priest learns to read keenly the faces of those who assemble to worship under his guidance. But American vagrants, with no thoughts save of gold-digging, and an overweening illiterate jargon for speech, had long ceased to interest this priest, even in his starvation for company and talk from the outside world; and therefore after the intoning he sat with his homesick thoughts unchanged, ...
— Padre Ignacio - Or The Song of Temptation • Owen Wister
... Croesus on the plain of Cappadocia, a fiercely fought, but indecisive battle took place, which resulted in the retreat of Croesus to his capital, Sardis, to seek the assistance of his allies and prepare to meet Cyrus with a larger force. In overweening confidence in his own success, he dismissed his mercenary troops, and sent messengers to Babylon, to Egypt, and to Sparta, calling on them to come with troops to his assistance within five months. No sooner had he shut himself up in Sardis, and dismissed his mercenaries, depending upon ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... any mark of your displeasure, or humbled that it should be known to my equals in your own household," she replied, "it is time I were deprived of the privileges that have rendered me so overweening." ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... could not speak. Her anger against Ambrose was, at the best, a pumped-up affair. She felt obliged to hate him because she loved her father. And her overweening pride had supported it. All this fell away now. She longed ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... tolerable to me than his son. Glimpses of his mind would at times flash out through those unnaturally bright eyes; and betray somewhat of the hell within; but Theophilus was close and dark—a sealed book which no man could open and read. An overweening sense of his own importance was the only trait of his character which lay upon the surface; and this, his master-failing, was revealed by every look ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... parliament of the Prussian monarchy? And if uncongenial to the generation of Prussians among whom he had grown up, how infinitely greater was the dislike against him of South Germans, more gifted, as a rule, by nature, to whom the name of Prussian is synonymous of all that is strait-laced and overweening and unnatural and—generally inconvenient. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... rear; the worst, and those In whom he trusted least, he drove between, That such through mere necessity might act. 350 First to his charioteers he gave in charge Their duty; bade them rein their horses hard, Shunning confusion. Let no warrior, vain And overweening of his strength or skill, Start from his rank to dare the fight alone, 355 Or fall behind it, weakening whom he leaves. [13]And if, dismounted from his own, he climb Another's chariot, let him not affect Perverse the reins, but let him stand, his spear Advancing firm, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... of Mr. Pickwick to the firm was, as I said, a mistake and damaged his case. It showed that he was nervous and anxious, and insecure. He took nothing by it. There was in truth much short-sighted cunning in his ways, which came of his overweening vanity. But this was only one of several attempts he made to worm out something to his ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... "Now hear, ye warriors, / how denies he not at all The cause of all my sorrow. / Whate'er may him befall Reck I not soever, / that know ye, Etzel's men." The overweening warriors / blank ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... this day forth the hen-house was locked at night and unlocked in the morning by the hand of Miss Chris, and Aunt Verbeny's overweening ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... powers by taking great liberties, which culminated in her drawing his attention to the fact that my poor stepmother displayed 'an overweening love of dress'. The accusation was perfectly false; my stepmother was, if rather richly, always, plainly dressed, in the sober Quaker mode; almost her only ornament was a large carnelian brooch, set in flowered flat gold. To this the envenomed Paget drew my Father's attention ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... scheme, made an ungallant attack upon the artistic character of Mme. Materna, and this the public found to be "most tolerable and not to be endured." The occasion soon presented itself for Schott to show that he had an overweening sense of his own importance and popularity. At the end of the fourth of the five supplementary performances there was a demonstration of applause. Herr Schott interpreted it as a curtain call for himself, and promptly showed himself, and bowed his thanks. The applause was renewed, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... part of the assembly, at least to a Lowland ear, was the rival performance of the bagpipers. These warlike minstrels, who had the highest opinion, each, of the superiority of his own tribe, joined to the most overweening idea of the importance connected with his profession, at first, performed their various pibrochs in front each of his own clan. At length, however, as the black-cocks towards the end of the season, when, in sportsman's language, they are said to flock or crowd, attracted ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... read. Courage! Edward has seen the merchants; he has flouted Hastings,—who would gainsay us. For the rest, Elizabeth, be it yours to speak of affronts paid by the earl to your highness; be it yours, Jacquetta, to rouse Edward's pride by dwelling on Warwick's overweening power; be it mine to enlist his interest on behalf of his merchandise; be it Margaret's to move his heart by soft tears for the bold Charolois; and ere a month be told, Warwick shall find his embassy a thriftless laughing-stock, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... d'estime. He was glad to accept an appointment to Berlin as court composer for Frederick William III. There he brought out "Lalla Rookh," "Alcidor," and "Agnes Hohenstauffen," none of which found currency in other cities. His overweening conduct gradually made his position at Berlin untenable. He was finally driven out by the hostile demonstrations of his audiences, and retired, in 1841, a broken man. After a few years spent in Paris he returned to Italy, where the Pope created ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... blow of his artistic reputation; nor could I see that he copied him well. I urged and remonstrated, but to no effect. "Ah, Miller," he has said, "what matters it how I amuse myself? You have stamina in you, and will force your way; but I want strength: the world will never hear of me." That overweening conceit which seems but natural to the young man as a playful disposition to the kitten, or a soft and timid one to the puppy, often assumes a ridiculous, and oftener still an unamiable, aspect. And yet, though it originates many very foolish things, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... depend,—without a single reference to the moral iniquity of waste and sloth and ignorance. But I have also seen men who have mastered the scientific method,—the method of controlled observation, and unprejudiced induction and inference,—in the laboratories of pure science; and who have gained so overweening and hypertrophied a regard for this method that they have considered it too holy to be contaminated by application to practical problems,—who have sneered contemptuously when some adventurer has proposed, for example, to subject the teaching ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... awoke and cried in him all the repressed and frustrated pride of a man's life—lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, overweening ambition of power and place, of cruelty even, of gross licence and debauch. For the moment he ceased to be an individual, limited by time and circumstances, and became, in desire, the possessor of the passions and reckless curiosity ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... an army wherewith to attack the enemy who has driven you out. But with such an army you might succeed in recovering your State as readily without a fortress as with one; nay, perhaps, even more readily, since your subjects, had you not used them ill, from the overweening confidence your fortress gave you, might then have felt better disposed towards you. And the event shows that in times of adversity this very fortress of Milan has been of no advantage whatever, either to the Sforzas or to the French; but, on the contrary, has brought ruin on ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... that other personality that had marred his fair hopes in his mine—that perverse, impulsive, overweening inner spirit that took the helm at each crisis of his life—was a rage to make the gods above weep if they did not laugh at the jest. And this blind, drunken self that rose up within him to sit leeringly in judgment on his acts, it judged not so ill, if the truth must be spoken. He ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... love-making in a bad school. She dropped dark hints that frightened Lorania, who would sometimes piteously demand, "Don't you think he could care for me—for—for myself?" Margaret knew that she had an overweening distrust of her own appearance. How many tears she had shed first and last over her unhappy plumpness it would be hard to reckon. She made no account of her satin skin, or her glossy black hair, or her lustrous violet eyes with their long, black lashes, or her flashing white teeth; she ...
— Different Girls • Various
... (plenty) 639 remain on one's hands, hang heavy on hand, go a begging. Adj. redundant; too much, too many; exuberant, inordinate, superabundant, excessive, overmuch, replete, profuse, lavish; prodigal &c. 818; exorbitant; overweening; extravagant; overcharged &c. v.; supersaturated, drenched, overflowing; running over, running to waste, running down. crammed to overflowing, filled to overflowing; gorged, ready to burst; dropsical, turgid, plethoric; obese &c. 194. superfluous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... for a little while her eyes were upon that gleaming water, which rose high in a crystal column, then broke and fell, a shower of glittering jewels, into the broad marble basin. Then, her eyes growing tired, they strayed to the marble balustrade, where a peacock strode with overweening dignity; they passed on to the gardens below, gay with early blossoms, in their stately frames of tall, boxwood hedges, and flanked by myrtles and tall cypresses standing gaunt and black against the deep ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... a disposition prone to sudden fits of anger and melancholy, and a fierce and indomitable will. He brought to his exalted position the clearly formulated theories of the canonists as to the nature of the papal power, as well as the overweening ambition, the high courage, the keen intelligence and the perseverance and energy necessary to turn the theories of the schools ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... was a bright spring morning, and their feelings were in accord with the fresh appearance of the world. No thoughts or anticipations of how their varying fortunes might be marred troubled for one instant their youthful minds. Their hearts were full of hope and the overweening vanity and self-confidence of their years. The East, to them, was paved with gold. Troubles looked like the necessary things to be combatted fearlessly to reach the success that must await them beyond; life, indeed, was one rosy, ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... latter, English readers have recently been made acquainted through an admirable translation, by the accomplished author of Caleb Stukely. She has her little conceits, and her little fancies; rather an overweening pride of caste, and contempt for the plebeian multitude, and an addiction to filling too many pages of her books with small personal and egotistical details about herself, and her sensations, and what dresses she ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... below, The Judge of all the earth will order rightly! Flee winding error through the flowery way, To daily follow truth! to ponder nightly On time, and death, and judgment, nearer day by day! Bewail thy bane, deluded France, Vain-glory, overweening pride, And harrying earth with eagle glance, Ambition, frantic homicide! Lament, of all that armed throng How few may reach their native land! By war and tempest to be borne along, To strew, like leaves, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... pitched battle. We have had, in modern times, some instances of a hectoring soldiery arrogantly prancing amongst populations whose official defenders it had defeated in battle; but nonesuch could vie with the Spartans in the sublimity of their military self-esteem. Overweening confidence in the prowess of her army led Sparta to trample with ruthless disdain on the rights of others. The iniquitous attack on Thebes, a state thought incapable of effectual resentment, was avenged by the defeat of Leuctra, which announced the end of the political supremacy ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... know, that had I disdained to toil, But sate in my loathsome cave the while, And ne'er to these hateful sons of Heaven, GOLD, MONARCHY, and MURDER, given; Hadst thou with all thine art essayed One of thy games then to have played, With all thine overweening boast, Falsehood! I tell thee thou hadst lost!— Yet wherefore this dispute?—we tend, Fraternal, to one common end; In this cold grave beneath my feet, Will our hopes, our fears, and our ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... corps of American midshipmen is mostly replenished from the nursery, the counter, and the lap of unrestrained indulgence at home: and if most of them at least, by their impotency as officers, in all important functions at sea, by their boyish and overweening conceit of their gold lace, by their overbearing manner toward the seamen, and by their peculiar aptitude to construe the merest trivialities of manner into set affronts against their dignity; if by all this they sometimes contract the ill-will of the seamen; ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... the respectable constituency of the pleasant watering-place of Bath, in Somersetshire, elected the fierce little man as their representative in the Imperial Parliament. This was a great start in life for the new-fledged barrister, and, had he moderated his overweening vanity, and studied wisely, and with some self-abnegation and honest adherence to party, he might have risen to some useful position, and been saved, at least, from the indignity of fetching and carrying for the Emperor of Austria, and from the impertinence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... I may add, where the wealthy are not blindly idolized. In Spain the very beggar does not feel himself a degraded being, for he kisses no one's feet, and knows not what it is to be cuffed or spitten upon; and in Spain the duke or the marquis can scarcely entertain a very overweening opinion of his own consequence, as he finds no one, with perhaps the exception of his French valet, to fawn ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... possible, can it be believed, that ministers are yet blind to this impending destruction? I did hope, that instead of this false and empty vanity, this overweening pride, engendering high conceits and presumptuous imaginations, ministers would have humbled themselves in their errors, would have confessed and retracted them, and by an active, though a late, repentance, have endeavored to ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... was complaining in somewhat sanscritised phraseology of being worked to death tied by the neck to his post of duty. My father asked me to explain the sentiment. I did it in my way, but he thought a different explanation would fit better. My overweening conceit made me stick to my guns and argue the point with him at length. Another would have shut me up with a snub, but my father patiently heard me out and took pains to ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... pretensions or any recognised right to be arrogant." (Henry James.) The spirit of goodwill, of a desire to make others happy (especially when it does not incommode you to do so), swings through a much larger arc in American society than in English. One can be surer of one's self, without either an overweening self-conceit or ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... the poet may yearn to teach the wrong of overweening, vaulting ambition and he writes "Paradise Lost" and "Recessional." He pictures Satan overthrown, like the Giants who would climb into the throne on Olympus. He pictures Hell as the fitting place for Satan overthrown, and ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... shall I tell you?—A theory of a sort, the same one by which I for instance consider that a single misdeed is permissible if the principal aim is right, a solitary wrongdoing and hundreds of good deeds! It's galling too, of course, for a young man of gifts and overweening pride to know that if he had, for instance, a paltry three thousand, his whole career, his whole future would be differently shaped and yet not to have that three thousand. Add to that, nervous irritability from hunger, from lodging in a hole, from rags, from a vivid sense ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... have made a miscalculation; they defy even the owner of the animal, and they cheerfully give him the opportunity of putting down thousands if he wishes to do so. There must be some reason for this assurance which at first sight looks so very overweening. Better have ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... taken soldierly precautions, but Smith was not at all pleased with him from the first. He says "the President's overweening jealousy would admit of no exercise at arms, or fortifications but the boughs of trees cast together in the form of a half-moon by the extraordinary pains and diligence of Captain Kendall." He also says there was contention between Captain Wingfield and Captain ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... re-entered the salon, she found there Mlle. Moiseney, whose boisterous, overwhelming joy had just put M. Moriaz to flight. This time Mlle. Moiseney knew everything. She had seen Samuel Brohl arrive, she had been unable to control her overweening curiosity, and, without the slightest scruples, she had listened at the door. She cast herself into Antoinette's arms, pressed her to her heart, and cried: "Ah, my dear! oh, my dear! Did I not always say that it would ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... physical disadvantages, combined with an education 'whose object was pretension, and whose principle was arrogance, made him at once a thing fearful and pitiable, at war with its species and itself, ready to crush in manhood as to sting in the cradle, and leading his overweening ambition to pursue its object by ways dark and hidden—safe from the penalty of crime, and exposed only to the obloquy which he laughed to scorn. If ever there was a man formed alike by nature and education to betray the ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... that though belonging by rights to the fourth round, I was actually born into the fifth round of the human race in the planetary chain. "The adept," says an occult aphorism, "becomes; he is not made." That was exactly my case. I attribute it principally to an overweening confidence in myself, and to a blind faith in others. As Mr Sinnett ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... Poor, arrogant fool. His worries were not the result of genuine affection and deep human sympathy, the irrepressible and uncontrollable desires and longings of his heart to bring others into the full light of God's love, but of his overweening self-confidence in his own wisdom and judgment. And I say this in no personal condemnation of him, for I have now even forgotten who it was, but in condemnation of the spirit in which he and all ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James |
