"Self-importance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remembered. But I question whether it was meant for Dryden, as has been reported; for we know some of the passages said to be ridiculed, were written since The Rehearsal; at least a passage mentioned in the Preface[497] is of a later date.' I maintained that it had merit as a general satire on the self-importance of dramatick authours. But even in this light he held it ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... learnt so much about so many future friends and foes) he left the army, not to return till he and Sherman had seen Blair and Lyon take Camp Jackson. After wisely declining to reenter the service under the patronage of General John Pope, who was full of self-importance about his acquaintance with the Union leaders of Illinois, Grant wrote to the Adjutant-General at Washington offering to command a regiment. Like Sherman, he felt much more diffident about the rise from ex-captain of regulars to colonel commanding ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... indeed, an artificial place; it is so by our choice and for our sins. The subjection of women; the ideal imposed upon them from the cradle, and worn, like a hair-shirt, with so much constancy; their motherly, superior tenderness to man's vanity and self-importance; their managing arts - the arts of a civilised slave among good-natured barbarians - are all painful ingredients and all help to falsify relations. It is not till we get clear of that amusing artificial scene that genuine relations are founded, or ideas honestly ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had been visibly possessed by a pompous self-importance since his elevation to the dignity of runner, saw fit to interpose his contrary opinion of the Lady of the Golden Bough. Because the man was ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... the rings to travel pleasantly, yet not to make one ring, because of wind upon the water! In the days that were not more than two years old, Springhaven could have taken all this news, with a swiftly expanding and smoothly fluent circle, with a lift of self-importance at the centre of the movement, and a heave of gentle interest in the far reflective corners. Even now, with a tumult of things to consider, and a tempest of judgment to do it in, people contrived to be positive ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... found that in a month's time Vera's beauty had made her house the most popular one in London, and that people struggled for her invitation-cards and prayed to be introduced to her, Mrs. Hazeldine was at the zenith of her delight and self-importance. If only Vera herself had been a little ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... considered a gentleman. But Miss Belsize had laughed long and laughed loud; and—well, I will not labour the point. In due course our superior one found himself in the haunt of death I have briefly described above, still full of self-importance and as inconceivably ignorant as the majority are who come for the first time to the game ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... doree of the Circolo, to whom Signor Leandro recounted his great tidings with all the self-importance to which the exclusive possession of news of such interest so well entitled him, it is impossible to do justice to the enthusiasm which ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... in WILLIAM SUDLEY, a little oldish gentleman. He is and appears thoroughly insignificant. But his opinion of the place he occupies in the world is enormous. His manners, voice, presence, are all those of a man of breeding and self-importance. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... applied, and too grateful to the million to want popularity. Those who write with no higher motive than to please the prevailing taste, must beware of touching upon topics which are likely to rouse the hostile feelings of self-importance, and to disgust would-be statesmen and intuitive divines. Ridicule will never disprove those opinions which were held by the wisest and most illustrious persons that England ever produced. Should I be so unfortunate as to provoke ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... become patronymic instead of metronymic. It must not be supposed that this change occurred very suddenly. It may have taken many centuries to bring it about, but as the man learned his part in procreation and his power in society, he delighted in his self-importance to lord it over the woman and her children. The marriage relation ceased to be free and reciprocal. The wife no longer had a choice in marriage. Bought or captured, she was no longer wooed for a companion, but was valued according to her economic worth. As population pressed, the domestication ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... But instead of that, here he had been hoodwinked (by this marvel of incarnate candor employed in the dark about several little things), and then suddenly enlightened, when the job was done. Gentle and void of self-importance as he was, it misliked him to be ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... not deny that he was influenced by human passions, and human feelings, (cheers)—possibly by human weaknesses—(loud cries of "No"); but this he would say, that if ever the fire of self-importance broke out in his bosom, the desire to benefit the human race in ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... prospect of success. Genius has no participation in his studies: his knowledge of Greek and Latin is grammatical and pedantic; he reads Livy, Tacitus, Sallust, Caesar, Xenophon, Thucydides, in their original language; boasts of his learning with a haughty mien and scornful look of self-importance, and thinks this school-boy exercise of memory, this mechanism of the mind, is to determine the line between genius and stupidity; and has never taken into consideration that the mere linguist, destitute of native powers, with his absurd parade of scholastic knowledge, is a solitary barren plant, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... for every disgraceful act-every savage law. In fine, he follows the maxims of our politicians, recapitulating a dozen or more things (wiping the sweat from his brow the while) that have no earthly connection with the subject. "They are all very well," Mr. Keepum rejoins, with an air of self-importance, dusting the ashes from his cigar. He only wishes to impress the old man with the fact that he ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... two offices were jealously kept apart, and when one monarch, in a fit of overweening self-importance, tried to unite in his own person the kingly and the priestly functions, 'the leprosy rose up in his forehead,' even as he stood with the censer in his hand, and 'Uzziah the king was a leper unto the day of his death.' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... nurse who has graduated at the head of her class and has executive ability, who knows exactly what to do and when to do it, may yet bring such a spirit of self-importance and bustle that everything she does for the invalid's ease, comfort, and recuperation is counteracted by the unrestful "professional" spirit with which the ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... this point that Juliet came upon the scene, walking up from the shore with her hair blowing in the breeze. She carried a towel and a bathing dress on her arm. Columbus trotted beside her, full of cheery self-importance. ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... servant to other functions, the decent performance of which was utterly beyond the range of an illiterate man. Many of our readers may be acquainted with the witty satire in which, with a perpetual side glance at the fussy self-importance visible in Bishop Burnet's History, Pope writes 'the Memoirs of P.P., Clerk of this Parish.' With what delightful complacency this diligent representative of his class speaks of taking rank among 'men right ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... of course, and say, sarcastically, "What a treat for the new boy!" But if he only knew with what fear and trembling I made that resolution, he would acquit Fred Batchelor of any very great self-importance in the matter. ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... during a review at the commander-in-chief, intoxicated with self-importance, followed by his retinue, all on magnificent and gayly appareled horses, in splendid uniforms and wearing decorations, and see how they ride to the harmonious and solemn strains of music before the ranks of soldiers, all ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... smiled with conscious self-importance; but Marjorie's thoughts flew back to the time when she was in Florence's place: a freshman eager to make good among the upper classmen. But then it was a question of popularity and personal favoritism; now ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... him squarely in the eye. In Roger's own eyes there was the glint of his old humorous twinkle, and I knew that the young man's bustling self-importance amused him. ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... he reached the room where the baby lay, and peered cautiously out of the window at the detectives, who had been joined by two other men, with whom they were talking earnestly. Raegen knew the new-comers for two of McGonegal's friends, and concluded, with a momentary flush of pride and self-importance, that the detectives were forced to be up at this early hour solely on his account. But this was followed by the afterthought that he must have hurt McGonegal seriously, and that he was wanted in consequence very much. This disturbed him most, he was surprised ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... Blake dropped one of his rings up-stairs," says Rosanna; "and I have been into the library to give it to him." The girl's face was all in a flush as she made me that answer; and she walked away with a toss of her head and a look of self-importance which I was quite at a loss to account for. The proceedings in the house had doubtless upset all the women-servants more or less; but none of them had gone clean out of their natural characters, as Rosanna, to all appearance, had now gone out ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... to any god; for he lacked nothing, and while other boys obeyed their parents' commands, the shepherds, who well knew that the flocks they tended belonged to him, called him their young master, and first in jest, then in earnest, paid him all the honor due a ruler, which prematurely increased his self-importance and made him ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Our self-importance as Arctic heroes of the first water received a sad downfall when we were first asked by a kind friend, what the deuce we came home for? We had a good many becauses ready, but he overturned them altogether; so we had resort to the usual resource of men in such a position: we said, "There ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... trusted subordinates, considered him as a person fitted by education perhaps to sign papers in an office and to give orders, but otherwise of no use whatever, and something of a fool. The necessity of winding round his little finger, almost daily, the pompous and testy self-importance of the old seaman had grown irksome with use to Nostromo. At first it had given him an inward satisfaction. But the necessity of overcoming small obstacles becomes wearisome to a self-confident personality ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... case, about which the whole city, and in fact the whole country was talking. It was known that he had "turned State's"; but just what he knew and what he had told was a mighty secret, and Peter "held his mouth" and looked portentous, and enjoyed thrills of self-importance. ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... nursery, kitchen, guard-room, everywhere, on the success of his hastily-formed scheme for the chastisement of their presumption. The household had looked for a merry time on the occasion of the wedding, but had not expected such a full cup of delight as had been pressed out for them betwixt the self-importance of the overweening yokels and the inventive faculties of Tom Fool. All the evening, one standing in any open spot of the castle might have heard, now on the one, now on the other side, renewed bursts of merriment ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... Drone was beginning to feel something of what it meant to hold office and there was creeping into his manner the quiet self-importance which is the first ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... particular, he could mimick the two Clays to perfection, could take off the affected tone, foreign airs, and quick talkative vanity of French Clay; and represent the slow, surly reserve, supercilious silence, and solemn self-importance of English Clay. He used to imitate not only their manners, gesture, and voice, but could hold conversations in their characters, fall naturally into their train of thinking, and their modes of expression. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... Bennett who spoke; her upright carriage, thin nose, and clear even voice, carried always the suggestion of mild but obstinate self-importance. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... the story had so many tellings that there seemed a little danger of Dorothy's penitence evaporating in self-importance. "I had the last turn, anyway," she boasted; "and he runned faster with me on his ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... at high purpose, but had been thwarted, beaten, and habitually insulted! What a gloom lay on the features of those famous chieftains, Calhoun, Clay, and Webster; what varied expression of defeat and unsatisfied desire; what a sense of self-importance and senatorial magniloquence; what a craving for flattery; what despair at the sentence of fate! And what did they amount to, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... priest, and give him the right of dealing ex officio, not as a mere man among men. And the consciousness of such apparent superfluities, whether they be the expression of wealth or of hierarchy, of fashion or of caste, gives to their possessor that additional self-importance which is quite as much wanted by the ungainly or diffident moral man as the additional warmth of his more obviously needed raiment is by the poor, chilly, bodily human being. I will not enlarge upon the practical uses which recent ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... in doing things frequently during work, tends to a careless off-hand style of self-importance that has often caused trouble and mishap. A crane driver employed at the Midland Railway Extension at St. Pancras, came to work one winter's morning and the steam being already up, turned it on to warm the steam chest and cylinder, preparatory to commencing work ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... frequent use of the pronouns I, me, my, mine, etc., too frequently occur to be worth estimating. And it will be seen, upon examination, that not merely the verbiage, but the sentiment, is thus egotistic throughout, exhibiting a degree of arrogance and self-importance, only to be met with in a Clerical Locofoco, used by bad men for ignoble purposes. To carry out the idea of your vanity, you say in the ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... front of the speaker, intently listening, made no immediate reply. His eyes—half absently—considered the man before him. In Barron's aspect and tone there was not only the pompous self-importance of the man possessed of exclusive and sensational information; there were also indications of triumphant trains of reasoning behind that ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her up and gave her an excellent supper; and putting her into a first-class compartment labelled "Reserved," sent her back to Waterloo, and thence in a cab to Gough Square, where she arrived about midnight, suffering from a sense of self-importance, traces of which to this day ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... period of somewhat fragile self-importance, the acquaintance with Tough McCarty had strengthened into an eternal friendship in a manner that had a certain ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... number. An elderly woman, uncommonly stout, with a double chin and small, proud eyes and an air of extreme haughtiness and self-importance. An elderly man, her husband, very tall and uncommonly thin, so that his coat hangs loosely on his body; a short goatee, long, smooth hair, as if wet, reaching to his shoulders; eye-glasses; has a frightened; yet pedantic expression; a low black silk hat in ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... in Caesar's house, that he might bring the curse of his blood upon Octavius. In these uncertainties he drifted into his own villa at Formiae,[6] saying in weariness, and with a sad note of his old self-importance, that he would die in the country which he had so often saved. Here, on the 4th of December, B.C. 43, Popilius Loenas, an officer of Antony's, came to find him. Peasants from the neighborhood brought news to the villa that the soldiers were approaching. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... savagely virulent and idiotically tyrannous in principle as to suggest that his household contained representatives of the "shrieking sisterhood," who had been one too many for him. The boys who saw the joke enjoyed it very much indeed, as he strolled along with the self-importance befitting so ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... to cast straws against the wind, was now completely over and done with, and would never be heard of again. Or such at least, he added, was the earnest hope of the law-abiding community. This irritated Purdy, who was spumy with the self-importance of one who has stood in the thick of the fray. He answered hotly, and ended by rapping out with a contemptuous click of the tongue: "Upon my word, Dick, you look at the whole thing like the ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... feeling of self-importance whenever these affidavits came to be sworn. Mr. Bumpkin would put down his ash-stick by the side of the fireplace, and bidding his visitor be seated, would compose himself with satisfaction to listen ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... village on foot with a pack on his back, and who, being dressed a trifle better than the ordinary tramp, was probably the more dangerous for this reason. Like most of the village schoolmasters in France, this gentleman was also secretary at the mairie, a function highly stimulating to the sense of self-importance, and no wonder, considering that the person who fills it frequently supplies the mayor, who may scarcely be able to sign his name to official documents, with such intelligence as he may need for ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... the maxims and manners of the world; he is to seek in the characters of individuals. He sees no beauty in the face of nature or of art. To him 'the mighty world of eye and ear' is hid; and 'knowledge,' except at one entrance, 'quite shut out.' His pride takes part with his ignorance; and his self-importance rises with the number of things of which he does not know the value, and which he therefore despises as unworthy of his notice. He knows nothing of pictures,—'Of the colouring of Titian, the grace of Raphael, the purity of Domenichino, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... meanwhile, was talking to Mrs. Pett and Willie, its inventor, about Partridgite. Willie, on hearing himself addressed, had turned slowly with an air of absent self-importance, the air of a great thinker disturbed in mid-thought. He always looked like that when spoken to, and there were those—Mr. Pett belonged to this school of thought—who held that there was nothing to him beyond ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the level of the pavement as he did this, and a man ascended, bearing in his hand a torch. This figure unlocked and held open the grating as for the passage of another, who presently appeared, in the form of a young man of small stature and uncommon self-importance, dressed in an obsolete and very ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... not admire this Butterfly, Young reader; I will tell you why. At first, goodnature seems a cause, Why she should merit your applause; But 'twas conceit that filled her breast: Her self-importance made a jest Of what might otherwise have claimed Your praise,—but now she must be blamed. Should any case occur, when you May have some friendly act to do; Give all your feeble aid—as such, But ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... the Cambridge editor admirably amends, [Greek: eis mellonta sosei chronon], i.e. "it will be a long time before it preserves them," a hit at the self-importance of the old gentleman. ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... well, until they understand and feel its importance, and comprehend and justly appreciate all the duties belonging to it. It is not to inflate national vanity, nor to swell a light and empty feeling of self-importance, but it is that we may judge justly of our situation, and of our own duties, that I earnestly urge upon you this consideration of our position and our character among the nations of the earth. It cannot be denied, but by those who would dispute against the sun, that with America, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... grand piano inlaid with silver that ornamented his drawing-room. A change had passed over him. His swelling rotundity, suggestive generally of a bladder inflated to its extremest limits by excess of self-importance, appeared to be shrinking. I put the idea aside as mere fancy at the time, but it was fact; he became a mere bag of bones before he died. He was wearing an old pair of carpet slippers and smoking ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... the pen over the lines with inconceivable rapidity, the writer occasionally glancing over his left arm at the document he was copying. The tortoise-shell cat sat at her master's feet with an air of self-importance and a look which seemed to say, "woe be to him who dare ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... self-respect, which kept an intellectual person from dwelling too sorely upon the sense of ineffectiveness; as an addiction not more serious in its effects upon character than the practice of playing golf, a thing in which a leisurely person might immerse himself, and cultivate a decent sense of self-importance. But Amroth showed me that the danger of it lay in the tendency to consider the intellect to be the basis of all life and progress. "The intellectual man," he said, "is inclined to confuse his own acute perception ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... praetorian guards; for the sovereignty, it seems, is not to be hereditary. One view of their F'ete of the 14th,(693) I suppose, is to draw money to Paris; and the consequence will be, that the deputies will return to the provinces drunk with independence and self-importance, and will commit fifty times more excesses, massacres, and devastations, than last year. George Selwyn says, that Monsieur, the King's brother, is the only man of rank from whom ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... with which she was received in the family of Mr. Harewood, did not appear to affect the Barbadoes girl in any other way than to increase that self-importance which was evidently her characteristic; and even the mild, affectionate Ellen, who had predisposed her heart to love her very dearly, shrunk from the proud and haughty expression which frequently animated her features, and was ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... education; and you have some perception of the system by which things like this should be done. Unfortunately, the system is in bad hands here, and these good ladies have been left to work for themselves, and it is no wonder that there is plenty of little self-importance, nonsense, and the like, among them; but for their own sakes we should rather show them the way, than throw ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... call me Lal?" inquired the Lion, as he lifted his head up with an intensely comical air of self-importance. ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... everyone to understand that they preferred the company of each other, which did not tend to their popularity on board. Amongst the passengers was a young man who rejoiced in the high-sounding name of Hugh St. John Wilson-Mainwaring, and whose sense of self-importance was as extensive as his appellation. He was the younger son of a bishop, and intended to tour the Colonies at the expense of the inhabitants, feeling satisfied that he had only to make it known that his father was the Bishop ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... on the ground. And his delight when a bombing expedition was successful in giving instant assistance to the Infantry is frequently shown. After his training in England "NIGHT HAWK" was attached as an observer to a night-flying squadron in France, and he tells us of his adventures with no sense of self-importance but with an honest appreciation of their value to the general scheme of operations. He has also a keen eye for the humours of life, and can make his jest with most admirable brevity. "Doubtless," he says in a foreword, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... civilised element that the German classicists forgot to put into their beautiful balance was a sense of humour. And great poet as Goethe was, there is to the last something faintly fatuous about his half sceptical, half sentimental self-importance; a Lord Chamberlain of teacup politics; an earnest and elderly flirt; a German of the Germans. Now Carlyle had humour; he had it in his very style, but it never got into his philosophy. His philosophy largely remained a heavy Teutonic idealism, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... no legitimate child of his own, and who yet had not altogether abandoned the hope of having one. She pressed on, with bulky vigour, along the course she had laid out. Sir John Conroy, an Irishman with no judgment and a great deal of self-importance, was her intimate counsellor, and egged her on. It was advisable that Victoria should become acquainted with the various districts of England, and through several summers a succession of tours—in the West, in the Midlands, in Wales—were arranged ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... poor parson, with the usual large family in inverse proportion to his means. That she unexpectedly made a good match with a very wealthy manufacturer who had raised himself; and that she was puffed up accordingly with a sense of self-importance." ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... His best possession was that very real sense of proportion which was at the root of all his humour. 'Why doesn't God explain these things to a gentleman like me?' There, a profound habitual reverence of mind suddenly encounters with a ludicrous perception of his own momentary self-importance. The two electric opposites meet, and emit ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... a border town. Behind us lay India; in front, the Unknown. The garrison of Capoo was small and self-important, but sickness made itself conspicuous among its members. Their doctor— poor young Barber—died, and the self-importance of the Capoo garrison oozed out of their finger-ends. They sent down post-haste to us for help, and a special letter addressed to me detailed symptoms ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... and properly attended to, she had great good humour and excellent spirits; but any indisposition sunk her completely. She had no resources for solitude; and inheriting a considerable share of the Elliot self-importance, was very prone to add to every other distress that of fancying herself neglected and ill-used. In person, she was inferior to both sisters, and had, even in her bloom, only reached the dignity of being "a fine girl." She was now lying on the faded sofa of the pretty little drawing-room, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... his father, he sniggered and went on talking, as if nothing untoward had been said. He was one of the band impossible to snub, not because they are endowed with superior moral courage, but because their easy self-importance is so great that an insult rarely pierces it enough to divert them from their purpose. They walk through life wrapped comfortably round in the wool of their own conceit. Gourlay, though a dull man—perhaps because ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... as being a mere infant, he parried by using a number of nasty words, some of which he did not know the meaning of. When by himself, he soon found that he could play the game as well as the rest, and it increased his sense of self-importance very much, but of this he said nothing to any one. Something within his own nature protested against the flaunting of such an act, though the act itself carried no offence to his childish mind. The inner protest was ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... Post-boy, or Gazette peruse; Smoke, nod, and talk with voice profound, And fix the fate of Europe round. 10 Sheaves piled on sheaves, hid all the floor; At dawn of morn, to view his store The farmer came. The hooting guest His self-importance thus express'd: 'Reason in man is mere pretence: How weak, how shallow is his sense! To treat with scorn the bird of night, Declares his folly, or his spite. Then too, how partial is his praise! The lark's, the linnet's chirping lays 20 To his ill-judging ears ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... outside the circle, munching an apple and staring at him with astonished blue eyes, and then his attention fixed itself on his enemy-in-chief. There was no mistaking him. He was a big, lumpy fellow, fifteen years of age, with an untidy mouth, the spots of a premature adolescence and an air of heavy self-importance. When he spoke, the rest fell ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... You have just said that the Jews are an Eastern people. And all Eastern peoples are subtle and secretive. I invariably lose half of my self-importance in Egypt, for instance. There is something in the eye of the meanest fellah which is ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... had such a proverb. They were as remarkable, it seems, in those days as they are now for their national self-importance and vanity. ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... the pittance he gets from the two sources of human happiness already discussed: and conversely, it is astonishing how infallibly a man will be annoyed, and in some cases deeply pained, by any wrong done to his feeling of self-importance, whatever be the nature, degree, or circumstances of the injury, or by any ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... would have thought his place was in the clubs of Piccadilly if not (at that particular hour) at a tea table on the river terrace of the Houses of Parliament. On the other hand, there wasn't a trace of self-importance in his habit, it achieved distinction solely through the unpretending dignity of ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... the minority—and it inspired him, as it had always done since his earliest lieutenant days. He knew that as he acted, looked, and spoke, so would the image of his country be stamped upon the minds of a hundred thousand and their children's children. There was no vanity, no self-importance in this conception of his duty. It was a stern, unbending acceptance of his responsibility; and as in the lonely fort upon the frontier where he had dominated, unaided, month after month, over wild, antagonistic races, so now, unarmed ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... ignoring of observation; a manner which, it must be acknowledged, becomes second nature to those forced to its adoption. It was a certain blown impressiveness, a significance in the smallest movements, a self-importance, in short, too large for the affairs of any private citizen. It is to be seen in those who sit in high places, in clergy, actors off the boards, magistrates, and people behind shop windows demonstrating ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... seem to have given rather a priggish picture of Arthur, it is a totally erroneous one. He was far too casual and too retiring to be that; he had no appearance of self-importance, though an invincible reserve of self-respect. The prig wears chain armor outside, and runs at you with his lance when he catches a glimpse of you. Arthur wore his chain armor under his shirt, and it was not till you closed with him that you felt ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... covetousness, lust, ignorance, laziness, malice, self-importance, continuous desire of gain, affection, jealousy and evil speech,—these twelve, O monarch, are grave faults that are destructive of men's lives. Each of these, O monarch, wait for opportunities to seize mankind. Afflicted by them, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... on his arrival in Paris, obtained admission into the "Society of Families." His ways were known, and the police kept a watch on him. He was one of those who fought in the outbreak of May, 1839, and since then he had remained in the shade; but, his self-importance increasing more and more, he became a fanatical follower of Alibaud, mixing up his own grievances against society with those of the people against monarchy, and waking up every morning in the hope of a revolution which in a fortnight or a month would turn the world upside down. At last, disgusted ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... content, and made pleasant noises as he remembered the day before. On that day, owing to the kindly feeling of me, his true and real friend, he had had a great time three miles towards Glenallen, and had beaten a newly-imported bull out of all sense of self-importance. He was pleased with himself, pleased with me, pleased with ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... and beauty of Gordon's whole expression came from within, and as it were irradiated the man, the steady, truthful gaze of the blue-grey eyes seeming a direct appeal from the upright spirit within. Gordon's usual manner charmed by its simple, unaffected courtesy, but although utterly devoid of self-importance he had plenty of quiet dignity, or even of imperious authority at command when required. With his friends he had a fund of innocent gaiety that seemed to spring from his impulsiveness, while his strong sense of humour often enabled him to ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... peaceful constellation, we shall not believe, without further proof, that the laws of our gravitation are to be abolished, and we flung forth into chaos, a hurlyburly of jostling and splintering stars, whenever Robert Toombs or Robert Rhett, or any other Bob of the secession kite, may give a flirt of self-importance. The first and greatest benefit of government is that it keeps the peace, that it insures every man his right, and not only that, but the permanence of it. In order to this, its first requisite is stability; and this once firmly settled, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... world alike; to its laws, and to its literature. The hypochondriac flatus is subsiding; the acres, which in imagination I had spread over—for the sick man swells in the sole contemplation of his single sufferings, till he becomes a Tityus to himself—are wasting to a span; and for the giant of self-importance, which I was so lately, you have me once again in my natural pretensions—the lean and meagre ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... reverse; as may be seen in these meetings of candidates with electors puffed up by their own self-importance, eager to exercise for a moment the sovereignty they are about to delegate to their deputy, and selling it as dearly as they can to him. Considering the impertinence of certain questions addressed to a candidate, it would really seem as if the latter were a serf over whom each elector ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... often turned into solemn verdicts. Young women are seldom seen there; when they come it is to seek approbation of their conduct,—a consecration of their self-importance. This supremacy granted to one house is apt to wound the sensibilities of other natives of the region, who console themselves by adding up the cost it involves, and by which they profit. If it so happens that there is no fortune large enough to keep open ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... was full of pride and self-importance at being thus selected, but secretly he shrank from the journey, the mere idea of which filled him with vague apprehension and alarm. His nature had lost all its adaptability; he trembled like a young girl at the prospect of new ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... Galbraith returned to Glashruach, but did not remain long. His schemes were promising well, and his self-importance was screwed yet a little higher in consequence. But he was kinder than usual to Ginevra. Before he went he said to her that, as Mr. Machar had sunk into a condition requiring his daughter's constant attention, he would ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... to be restored to his old, balanced, easy life, with its little friendships and duties. How fantastic and unreal his aunt's theories seemed to him, reveries contrived just to gild the gaps of a broken life, a dramatisation of emptiness and self-importance. At every moment the face and figure of Maud came before him in a hundred sweet, spontaneous movements—the look of her eyes, the slow thrill of her voice. He needed her with all his soul—every fibre of his being cried out for her. And then the thought of being thus pitifully ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Merrington curtly. He had a great notion of his self-importance, and had no intention of dancing attendance on a mere ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... the house, sat a man, who, by his black stock and military appearance, together with a scar over his brow that gave him a most repulsive look, was evidently a pensioner or old soldier. This person was engaged in examining some rusty fire-arms that had been submitted to his inspection. His self-importance was amusing, as was also the deferential aspect of those who, with arms in their hands, hammering flints or turning screws, awaited patiently their turn for his opinion of their efficiency. But perhaps the most striking group of all was that in which a thick-necked, ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... little panting ferries that carried the good folk of the neighbourhood across the water to buy their goods in Southampton, or to sell the produce of their farms; she was intimate with their sturdy skippers, and she delighted in their airs of self-importance. She loved the fishing boats that went out in all weathers, and the neat yachts that fled across the bay with such a dainty grace. She loved the great barques and the brigantines that came in with a majestic ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... for moving to Indianapolis, and at the end of ten days all was ready for the money to be delivered. Dic again asked for Rita, and Mr. Bays was for delivering the girl at once. His new venture at Indianapolis had stimulated his sense of self-importance, and he insisted, with a temerity never before dared, that Dic, whom he truly loved, should have the daughter whom they each loved. But the Chief Justice would agree to nothing more than an extension of the armistice, and graciously consented that Dic might visit the family at Indianapolis ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... distaste to new faces, to new books, to new buildings, to new customs. He is shy of all imposing appearances, of all assumptions of self-importance, of all adventitious ornaments, of all mechanical advantages, even to a nervous excess. It is not merely that he does not rely upon, or ordinarily avail himself of them; he holds them in abhorrence: he utterly abjures and discards them. He disdains all the vulgar ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... The reporter's status is unique. Youth on the threshold of no other profession commands the same respect, gains audience so readily to the same august personages. Doors slammed in his face only flatter his self-importance. He becomes cynical as he sees how easily the spot light is made to flash upon the unworthiest figures by the flimsiest mechanism. He drops his plummet into shoal and deep water and from his contemplation ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... soon as they can utter a word, that they are free and have equal rights with the mightiest potentates of the universe."[1125] Petion's account of the journey in the king's carriage, on the return from Varennes, must be read to see how far self-importance of a pedant and the self-conceit of a lout can be carried.[1126] In their memoirs and even down to their epitaphs, Barbaroux, Buzot, Petion, Roland, and Madame Roland[1127] give themselves certificates of virtue and, if we could take their word for it, they would pass for Plutarch's model characters.—This ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a profession, and success in business, can be attained only by persevering industry. None who thinks himself above his vocation can succeed in it, for we can not give our attention to what our self-importance despises. None can be eminent in his vocation who devotes his mental energy to a pursuit foreign to it, for, in such a case, success in what we love is failure in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... friendly, and apparently simple, entirely without a trace of hauteur. If one met him without knowing who he was, one would not guess that he is possessed of great power or even that he is in any way eminent. I have never met a personage so destitute of self-importance. He looks at his visitors very closely, and screws up one eye, which seems to increase alarmingly the penetrating power of the other. He laughs a great deal; at first his laugh seems merely friendly and jolly, but gradually I came to feel it rather grim. ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... can, as yet, have no just reason to complain of me. If I have written dull Essays, they have hitherto treated them as dull Essays. Thus far we are at least upon par, and until they think fit to make me their humble debtor by praise, I am resolved not to lose a single inch of my self-importance. Instead, therefore, of attempting to establish a credit amongst them, it will perhaps be wiser to apply to some more distant correspondent; and as my drafts are in some danger of being protested at ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... from the house. At five minutes before eleven the girls who were to have their Saturday morning lessons prior to the ride in the afternoon, went over to the school and an electric bell notified Dawson that his young ladies awaited their mounts. With due decorum and self-importance he and Henry, the groom, led the horses from the stable, Dawson calling over ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... on the petty circumstances and period of my first publication, a memorable aera in the life of a student, when he ventures to reveal the measure of his mind: his hopes and fears are multiplied by the idea of self-importance, and he believes for a while that the eyes of mankind are fixed on his person and performance. Whatever may be my present reputation, it no longer rests on the merit of this first essay; and at the end of twenty-eight years I may appreciate my ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... may seem to illustrate the self-importance of the betheral tribe. The Rev. Dr. Hugh Blair was one Sunday absent from his pulpit, and next morning meeting his beadle in the street he inquired how matters went in the High Church on Sabbath. "'Deed, I dare say no very weel," ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... of much self-importance, which comes out in his remarks to a young lady of great beauty who was called as a witness in the trial of Glengarry for murder. "Young woman, you will now consider yourself as in the presence of Almighty God, and ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... top. Her forehead was the thin edge of the wedge, and she widened slowly as she neared the ground; the first indication of a settlement showing in the lobes of her ears, then in her cheeks, and then in her drab-apparelled person. Her whole aspect gave the impression of a great self-importance, early realised and made part of life, but kept in abeyance by the society of Aunt Mary and by a religious conviction that others also had their place, a sort of back seat, in the ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... squires, fat or lean, hook-nosed or eagle-eyed, well tanned by sun and wind, in faultless kit, on priceless mounts! How redolent they are of health and wealth, and the secure consciousness of high social position—of the cool business-like self-importance that sits so well on those who are knowing in the noblest pursuit that can ever employ the energies and engross the mind of a well-born Briton; for they can ride almost as well as their grooms, these mighty hunters before the Lord, and know the ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... but also a sense of discontent. And John Walden, keenly alive to every touch of feeling, was more conscious of the change than many another man would have been who was not endowed with so quick and responsive a nature. He noted the quaint self-importance of Mrs. Tapple with a kindly amusement, not altogether unmixed with pain,—he watched regretfully the attempts made by the young girls of his little parish to trick themselves out with cheap finery imported from the town of Riversford, in order to imitate ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... the tremendous posts, which I fancied could easily hold fast a Spanish Armada in a tropical hurricane. But sometimes a great ship, an East Indiaman, with rusty, seamed, blistered sides, and dingy sails, came slowly moving up the harbor, with an air of indolent self-importance and consciousness of superiority, which inspired me with profound respect. If the ship had ever chanced to run down a row-boat, or a sloop, or any specimen of smaller craft, I should only have wondered at the temerity ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... find themselves in the presence of a stern and awesome dignitary of the Church, who immediately began to lecture the Abbot for his unseemly conduct the previous day, ordering him to undergo such penance as eventually, robbing him of half his size and all his self-importance, led to his resignation. ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... Pandolfini's speeches!) were those occupations which the city could not give: the buying and selling of plants, grain, and kine, the meddling with new grafted trees, the mending of spaliers, the straightening of fences, the going round (with the self-importance and impatience of a cockney) to see what flowers had opened, what fruit had ripened over-night; to walk through the oliveyards, among the vines; to pry into stable, pig-stye, and roosting-place, taking up handfuls of drying grain, breaking twigs of olives, to see how things were doing; and ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... anecdote of the loquacious horseman, that men of all callings are equally disposed to vaunt themselves. If the poet seems especially voluble about his merits, this may be owing to the fact that, words being the tools of his trade, he is more apt than other men in giving expression to his self-importance. But our specific objection to the poet is not met by this explanation. Even the horseman does not expect panegyrics of his profession to take the place of horseshoes. The inventor does not issue an autobiography in lieu of a ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... ten minutes' talk with him—was a vain gossip. It had been madness on Rachel's part to give him the smallest hold on her. Very likely he had not yet actually betrayed her—his hope of favours to come might have been sufficient to prevent that. But his self-importance would certainly show itself somehow—in a hint or a laugh. He had probably already roused in the village mind a prying curiosity, a suspicion of something underhand, which might alter Rachel's whole ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is alone with himself, where, to be sure, his intense consciousness of virtue just breathes around him "the air of Paradise." Thus his continual frothing over with righteous indignation all proceeds from the yeast of pride and self-importance working mightily within him. Maria, whose keen eye and sure tongue seldom fail to hit the white of the mark, describes him as not being "any thing constantly, but a time-pleaser." And it is remarkable that the emphasized moral rigidity of such men is commonly but the outside of a mind secretly ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... remarks he beguiled my drive, and though I smiled at the self-importance of his tone, I could tell that he was an attached and faithful servant. We stopped at length at a gate, drove through it up a short avenue of limes, and then came to one of the prettiest old-fashioned farmhouses that ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... present. He was not, however; sorry to leave their imposing circle. Above all, he was glad to escape from the clear-sighted, critical eyes of Madame de Nailles. On the other hand, to be sent off to the girls' corner, after being insulted by being told he had not grown, hurt his sense of self-importance. ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... world reached her ears. This gave her aunt a further opportunity of repeating the same taunts. She said, "See now who cares for you in your present circumstances. It is not praiseworthy to display such self-importance as you did in the lifetime of your father." And again she pressed her to go with her, but the Princess still clung to the hope that the time would come when Genji would remember ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... between the peoples of England and the United States,' the guests filled a bumper, and with three hearty cheers let the liquid run down so smoothly. Sir Arthur Coddlecomb's name being coupled with the toast, and that compound of self-importance and bad grammar esteeming himself a great speaker, rose, and relieved himself of what is commonly called a very neat and appropriate speech. To Smooth his mind seemed on a wandering expedition; notwithstanding, he took occasion to refer to that approaching curse—an ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... Indians, Curly came to my tepee when we were camped on the Little Big Horn. The whole company were greatly agitated because an Indian possessed with the spirit of self-importance had gone to Washington to make war against other Indians in the tribe who were industrious and loyal home builders. They all made speeches around the campfire, asking my interposition at Washington. In his argument Curly said: "Which man would you believe, the man who is trying to raise wheat ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... are generally hollow, heartless, and selfish. Their own aggrandisement is the end of their patriotism; and they always look with secret satisfaction on the disappointment or fall of one whose loftier genius and superior talents overshadow their own self-importance, or whose integrity and incorruptible honor are in the way of their selfish ends. The influence of the small aspirants is always against the great man. His accession to power may be almost for a lifetime. One of themselves will be more easily displaced, and each hopes to succeed him; and so ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... of self-importance is fatal to all work for Christ. The biggest enemy of true spiritual power is spiritual self-consciousness. Joshua must die ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... bathed from head to foot with warm rose-water; while the others sat round and chatted together, and admired her ivory skin, with the wild rose Syrian bloom upon it, and her masses of gold-tinted chestnut hair. And the black slave bathed and anointed and dressed her with the utmost care and great self-importance, and sent the underslaves flying in all directions, one to gather syringa, and other heavy-scented blossoms from the garden, and another to fetch the jewels for her neck; and as the attar of rose bottle was found to be empty, a slave was sent with ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... about my garret floor, vibrating with energy and self-importance, when he came up the stairs, saying: "There is a woman on the main floor who wants to see you. She says you know her." Was it Dora? I descended the ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... women are incapable of such a masculine virtue—that women cannot put their private feelings in their pocket and act in subordination to the good of the whole—that they cannot sink their self-importance and their petty jealousies—that they cannot suppress themselves for a cause. Schools like ours have done a great deal for the mental education of women. I think they will do something more valuable still if they show that through ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... of self-importance dilated as he saw this alteration in her. Swollen no less by her past scorn of him, and his so recent feeling of disadvantage, than by her present submission (as he took it to be), it became too mighty for his breast, and burst all bounds. Why, who could long ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... empress-queen was not gratified to the extent of her wishes in the fortune of the campaign, at least her self-importance was nattered in another point, which could not fail of being interesting to a princess famed for a glowing zeal and inviolable attachment to the religion of Rome. In the month of August the pope conferred upon her the title of apostolical queen ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the greatest gravity, and evidently with an overwhelming sense of self-importance, to put the required questions, whilst we ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... get sufficiently rich not to have to work they grow to like whatever will appeal to their vanity and self-importance. There is a halo round a title, and you can leave it to your children. A king becomes ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... are specialists, individuals whose main reactions are built around one great trait. Thus there are those whose egoism takes the form of pride in family, or in personal beauty, or some intellectual capacity, or in being independent of others, who worship self-reliance or self-importance. There are the individuals whose social instincts express themselves in loquacity, in a talkativeness that is the main joy of their lives, though not at all the joy of other lives. A fascinating series of personalities in this respect come to my mind—L. B., who talks at ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... if the Horror, homaged thus By frenzied eagerness and foolish fuss, Swells to a hideous self-importance, struts In conscious dignity, and gladly gluts With vanity's fantastic tricks the herd Whose pulses first by murderous crime it stirred. Narcissus-like, the slayer bends to trace Within Sensation's flowing stream its face, And, self-enamoured, smiles a loathsome smile Of fatuous conceit and gloating ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... help the reader to understand why it is that a man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by. The Alps and the glaciers together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only remain within the influence of their sublime presence long enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a scarlet waistcoat and breeches, and immense jack-boots, seemed to have added fresh stiffness and rigidity to his tall, perpendicular figure; and the consciousness of military command and authority had increased, in the same proportion, the self-importance of his demeanour, and the dogmatism ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... I asked with some self-importance. "I trust that there is nothing of consequence ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... the expectation that he would find duplicates of himself in the crowds he addressed, and that mob diffused would heartily sympathize with Mob impersonated. Never was blustering demagogue led by a distempered sense of self-importance into a more fatal error. Not only was the great body of the people mortified or indignant, but even his "satraps and dependents," even the shrewd politicians—accidents of an Accident and shadows of a shade—who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... to the County House," said Mary, in reply to the query what should be done with her, in a tone which indicated self-importance in the speaker. She was indeed the idol of her mother, and more nearly resembled her in dis- position and manners than ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... to her father with never flagging tongue, and Jamie carried everything he could lift to and fro, regardless of whether he was bringing or taking away. Vada chid him in her childishly superior way, but her efforts were quite lost on his delicious self-importance. Nor could there be any doubt that, in his infantile mind, he was quite assured that ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... temper, the Irish humour. This latter gift, displayed constantly in a company which had little knowledge of the peculiar quality of Irish wit and no faculty of sympathy or imagination, is at the bottom of the constant depreciation of him on the part of Boswell and others of his set. His mock self-importance they thought ill-breeding; his humorous self-depreciation and keen sense of his own ridiculousness, mere lack of dignity and folly. It is curious to read Boswell and watch how often Goldsmith, without Boswell's knowing ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... Cockney. It simply defies accurate delineation. Dickens has attempted to paint the portrait of such a character in "Bleak House"; but Sir Leicester Dedlock, even in the hands of this great artist, is not a success,—merely because, in the case of the Baronet, selfishness and self-importance are only a superficial crust, while with your true Chesterton these attributes penetrate to the core and are as much a part of the man as any limbs or any feature of his face. A genuine Chesterton is as unlike his stupid caricature in our own theaters in the person of "Lord Dundreary," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... had no uneasiness concerning the result of the interview, for his face was beaming with self-importance and he greeted the Prince with a confidence born of certainty. His eyes asked the question which his lips were too well-governed and discreet ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... around me, and I said that I could move in it as boldly as any man, and perhaps a little better than most men, and if the time came when I must at last be caught beneath a belt-line car my removal from these mad activities would at least be dignified by a notice in the papers. The shrinkage to my self-importance added fire to my ambition. More carefully but resolutely I threaded my way up Cortlandt Street, and at every step my sense of my unimportance increased. Even my hotel seemed to be a hotel of no importance. Mr. Pound had stayed ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... an undercurrent of suspicion in the constable's manner. He was wroth with the man, but recognized that he had to deal with narrow-minded self-importance, so contrived again ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... a very pompous man, and the document he had just discovered on the priest added to his sense of self-importance. When, therefore, a large, carefully folded paper was produced from the neighbourhood of Valeria's lovely bosom, his eyes sparkled with anticipation. "Ho, ho!" he exclaimed, as he clutched it eagerly, "the plot is thickening!" and he spread out triumphantly, ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... one prime work of God among his friends. From the same source, he has no attachment to female society, no fondness for children, no perceptions of beauty in natural scenery; but he is fond of convivial indulgences, of that stimulation, which, keeping up the glow of self-importance, and the sense of internal power, gives feelings without ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... Ackroyd would be the safest of confidants. In fact, though he spoke to Mrs. Butterfield as if he had conceived some deep plan of rascality, the man was not capable of anything above petty mischief. He liked to pose in secret as a sort of transpontine schemer; that flattered his self-importance; but his ambition did not seriously go beyond making trouble in a legitimate way. He did indeed believe that something scandalous was going on, and it would be all the better fun to have Ackroyd join him with malicious pleasure in a campaign against reputations. Luke ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... that. It never once occurred to her to feel ashamed of being such a trial to everybody. Dorcas tied her hood, pinned her yellow blanket over her little shoulders, kissed her good by, and off she trotted between Mary and Moses, full of triumph and self-importance. ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... at him at first in surprise and some displeasure, but in a moment or two his gaze was changed into a kindly smile. He read well the youth before him, his amusing confidence, his eagerness, and his self-importance, that had not ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... so changed as scarcely to be recognizable. He was no longer the happy man of the world, with smiling face, firm look, the pride of which betrayed plainly his self-importance and prosperity. In a few hours he had grown twenty years older. He was broken, overwhelmed; his thoughts wandered in a sea of bitterness. He could only repeat, vacantly, ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... Belotto, too, went to Rome early in his career, where he attached himself to Panini, a painter of classic ruins, peopled with warriors and shepherds. He was, by all accounts, full of vanity and self-importance, and on a visit to Germany managed to acquire the title of Count, which he adhered to with great complacency. He travelled all over Italy looking for patronage, and was very eager to find the road to success and fortune. About the same time as his uncle, he paid a visit to London ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... his old chapel was rather at an unnecessary distance. Then, too, the fact of his house being called after New Zion seemed to impose a sort of obligation towards the sad old chapel. Besides, Mr. Moggridge was not inhumanly above the pleasures of self-importance, and though he did not express it in just those words, or indeed in any words at all, the idea of his being the Maecenas of New Zion ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... sharp shower of rain, and as I went in the water was dripping from my hat. 'Oh! dear me,' said the little hostess, when she saw me, 'Ta tu an-rhluc anois' ('You are very wet now '). She was alone in the house, breathing audibly with a sort of simple self-importance, as she washed her jugs and teacups. While I was drinking my tea a little later, some woman came in with three or four little girls—the most beautiful children I have ever seen—who live in one of the nearest cottages. ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... dimly gathered that he thought me ill. I combined this in my mind with a speech of my nurse's that I had overheard, and which gave me the horrors at the time—"He's got the look! It's his poor ma over again!"—and I felt a sort of melancholy self-importance not uncommon with children ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... The self-importance of Bobadilla was incensed at this non-compliance, especially as he saw it had some effect upon the populace, who appeared to doubt his authority. He now produced the third mandate of the crown, ordering Columbus and his brothers to deliver up ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... fat little canvas bag, considerably soiled from much handling, such as is used by banks for coin, a sturdy, matter-of-fact, every-day sort of canvas bag, with nothing about it of hauteur, no air of self-importance or ostentation, to betray the fact that it was the receptacle of ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... was pushed open, without a sound, and Alicia, in all the bursting charm of her youthfulness and the delicious naivete of her self-importance, stood in the doorway. She made no gesture; she just looked at Edwin with a peculiar ominous and excited glance, and Edwin rose quickly and left the room. Auntie Hamps ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... wicked-souled persons under the domination of covetousness apparently practise the duties of righteousness, the consequence that results is that the desecrations committed by them soon become current among men. Pride, anger, arrogance, insensibility, paroxysms of joy and sorrow, and self-importance, all these, O descendant of Kuru, are to be seen in persons swayed by covetousness. Know that they who are always under the influence of covetousness are wicked. I shall now tell thee of those about whom thou askest, viz., those who are called good and whose practices ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown |
