"Self-conceited" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... herself, during her husband's absence, by playing with the passion of a clever but heartless man, distracted (so he said) with love, the love that combines readily with every petty social ambition of a self-conceited coxcomb. Mme. d'Aiglemont, whose long experience had given her a knowledge of life, and taught her to judge of men and to dread the world, watched the course of this flirtation, and saw that it could only end in one way, if her daughter should fall into the hands ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... not struck. Not so Mrs. Hare. Since her husband had first brought her home to that house, four and twenty-years ago, she had never dared to express a will in it; scarcely, on her own responsibility, to give an order. Justice Hare was stern, imperative, obstinate, and self-conceited; she, timid, gentle and submissive. She had loved him with all her heart, and her life had been one long yielding of her will to his; in fact, she had no will; his was all in all. Far was she from feeling the servitude a yoke: some natures do not: and to do Mr. Hare justice, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... and charming that listeners ran ahead in their minds to fix the number of verses there were in the hymn, and to hope that none would be left out. Toward the end, when some of the intolerably self-conceited local singers, fancying they had caught the tune, started to join in, they were stopped by an indignant "sh-h!" which rose from all parts of the class-room; and the Soulsbys, with a patient and pensive kindliness written on their uplifted ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... show, he had learnt to regard him with love and respect, and to think him a very great and wise and good man. But as regarded his own position in the School, of which he was no little proud, Tom had no idea of giving any one credit for it but himself, and, truth to tell, was a very self-conceited young gentleman on the subject. He was wont to boast that he had fought his own way fairly up the School, and had never made up to or been taken up by any big fellow or master, and that it was now quite a different place from what it was when he first came. ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... story goes, Loquacious, pert, and self-conceited, Espied a bee upon a rose, And thus the busy ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... attractive in it, had still much of boyish incompleteness and roughness: it had noble aims, it had generosity, it had loyalty, it had a very real reverence for purity and religion; but it was young in experience of a new world, it was wanting in self-mastery, it was often pedantic and self-conceited; it was an easier prey than it ought to have been to discreditable temptations. And there is a long interval between any of Spenser's superficial and thin conceptions of character, and such deep and subtle creations as Hamlet or Othello, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... will know, Gilbert, till you're married. Then, when you've got some trifling, self-conceited girl like Eliza Millward, careless of everything but her own immediate pleasure and advantage, or some misguided, obstinate woman, like Mrs. Graham, ignorant of her principal duties, and clever only in what concerns her least to know—then ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... opportunity of growing into a great and comprehensive Church. We have the opportunity of dwindling into a self-conscious, self-conceited, and unsympathetic sect. Which shall it be? With those to whom, under God, the remoulding of our organic law has been intrusted it largely rests ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... characterization by Marmontel may be true, too much must not be attributed to self-conceit, for Marivaux was rather timid and suspicious of himself at heart than self-conceited, and this very lack of confidence, this desire to please and to be thought well of, which caused him, at times, to emphasize before his friends his own worth, is a key to his nature, without which ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... so long as incapability could shield itself under the first of these creeds, or presumption vindicate itself by the second; so long as the feeble painter could lay his faults on his palette and his panel; and the self-conceited painter, from the assumed identity of materials proceed to infer equality of power—(for we believe that in most instances those who deny the evil of our present methods will deny also the weakness of ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... subject to the effects of training. But I am unjust in accusing Weimar of a fault which during the last generation has invaded all the theatres in the world, the more so as I lay myself open to the suspicion of doing so in the self-conceited interest of a work which perhaps for different reasons, derivable from intrinsic faults, may be exposed to the displeasure of the public. However that may be, your care for my work is in the circumstances ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... cranky Governor— His name it wasn't Waterman. For office he was hotter than The love of any lover, nor Was Boruck's threat of aiding him Effective in dissuading him— This pig-headed, big-headed, singularly self-conceited Governor Nonwaterman. ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... 'As for your friend's secret, do not be uneasy about it; I am not going to meet Pedro to-night. I shall take advantage of his absence to make a call on my lady-love. Pedro is a good fellow, but shockingly self-conceited; he fancies himself far smarter than I—perhaps he is—but somehow I fancy, this time he must be early if he catches ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... being before. Her saintliness (for Grace was a saint in the truest sense of that word) had long since made her free of that "communion of saints" which consists not in Pharisaic isolation from "the world," not in the mutual flatteries and congratulations of a self-conceited clique; but which bears the sins and carries the sorrows of all around: whose atmosphere is disappointed hopes and plans for good, and the indignation which hates the sin because it loves the sinner, and sacred fear and pity for the self-inflicted miseries of those who might be (so runs the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... up my pet abomination," Fenton observed, with emphasis. "I do hate Carlyle. I've even lain awake nights to think how I'd like to pound his head. The self-conceited, self-centered, self-adoring old humbug! He was the sham par excellence of the nineteenth ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... you begin by declining causes you disapprove of, the public will end by letting you alone in your self-conceited squeamishness. It's human nature you've got to deal with, not theories about law and justice. I tell you that men like litigation. They want to have it out with somebody. And it ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... me why it is that you—a Parisian artisan, the type of a class the most insubordinate, the most self-conceited that exists on the face of earth—take without question, with so docile a submission, the orders of a man who plainly tells you he does not sympathise in your ultimate objects, of whom you really know very little, and whose views you candidly own you think are those of an old and ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... army who hated Alcibiades, Thrasybulus, the son of Thrason, was his particular enemy, and went purposely to Athens to accuse him, and to exasperate his enemies in the city against him. Addressing the people, he represented that Alcibiades had ruined their affairs and lost their ships by mere self-conceited neglect of his duties, committing the government of the army, in his absence, to men who gained his favor by drinking and scurrilous talking, whilst he wandered up and down at pleasure to raise money, giving himself up to every sort ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... to the devil for a self-conceited ass. One pleasure of this twist of intrigue is, to revenge me of that villain, who thought himself so essential, that, by Heaven! he forced himself on my privacy, and lectured me like a schoolboy. Hang the cold-blooded hypocritical vermin! If he mutters, I will have his nose slit as ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... instantly summoned. Doctor Pomius was a pompous little man (for my father knew him well), dry and smart in his words, and with a face like a pair of nutcrackers, for his front teeth were gone, so that his lips seemed dried on his gums, like the skin of a mummy. He was withal too self-conceited and boastful, and malicious, full of gossip and ill-nature, and running down every one that did not believe that he (Doctor Pomius) was the only learned physician in the world. Following the celebrated rules laid down by Theophrastus ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... almost the same lordly fashion as the preachers. Of a certain congregation at Norwich Wesley writes, 'I told them in plain terms that they were the most ignorant, self-conceited, self-willed, fickle, untractable, disorderly, disjointed society that I knew in the three kingdoms. And God applied to their hearts, so that many were profited, but I do not find that one was offended.'[727] At one time he had an idea that tea was expensive and unwholesome, and his people are commanded ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... or to attempt it upon so high and brilliant and bold a key as you have assumed here to-night, if you don't kill the Alumni dinners, the Alumni dinners will kill you. [Great laughter.] Yale College, as represented by its graduates, is not self-conceited nor obtrusive. It is true they have always felt the magnificent compliment paid to the College by that greatest of English thinkers and philosophers Lord Bacon, who said in a famous passage, as you will recall: "Eating makes a full ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the playground when acting as drill sergeant to the juniors. But the very same glance with quite as much personality in it, passed on to Crazy, who, to the exuberant delight of little Louis, had by this time intruded himself. It was impossible for the most self-conceited to bring away much comfort or encouragement from favours so slight ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... and the restitution of mankind in such a condition in which they will be truly happy, a glorious message and such truths which when sufficiently explained, will satisfy all lovers of progression into the true happiness. But there may join with our Peace-Union some self-conceited person who would not give up what would be shown by us as necessary to be removed for the restoration of mankind to their true happiness, and what he would not be able to refute, and notwithstanding this he would remain in his bad habit. In this case he would compel us to ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... honest mind whether he ever should do any good, in versification, or anything else. He said to himself that he had been too sanguine, eager, self-confident, ardent, impetuous, and, if the nasty word must be faced, even too self-conceited. Only yesterday he had tried, by delicate setting of little word-traps, to lead Mr. Twemlow towards the subject, and obtain that kind-hearted man's comforting opinion. But no; the gentle Rector would not be brought to ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... Godfrey is like her. He is a self-conceited, disagreeable young jackanapes. I wouldn't give much for his chances of honorable distinction in life. I'll tell you of a boy who will, in my opinion, beat him in the race ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... divider" who divides her from man, and makes her live a life-long tragedy, which goes on in more cottages than in palaces—a vie e part, a vie incomprise—a life made up half of ill-usage, half of unnecessary, self-willed, self-conceited martyrdom, instead of being (as God intended) half of the human universe, a helpmeet for man, and the one bright spot which makes this world endurable. Towards making her that, and so realising the primeval mission by every cottage ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... thought we find we cannot acquiesce in them, we must follow our consciences, and stand prepared for the censure of others. We must submit (should it be unavoidable) to appear to those who have no means of understanding us, self-willed, or self-conceited, or obstinate, or eccentric, or headstrong, praying the while that God's mercy may vouchsafe to us, that we be not really what we seem ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman |
