"Superciliousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... watched this performance with a carriage of the head which, for superciliousness, I never have seen equaled in man, woman, or beast. His war-cry was a tinny bleat: the cry of a soul bursting with sardonic merriment. It was like the Falstaffian laughter of the duck, without ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... disproportioned feet for which she had rejoiced to pay thirty dollars each, made as they had been from specially selected imported leather, dyed to match her rich robe. It was true, her pleasure had not been wholly unalloyed, for she had been conscious of a trace of superciliousness on the part of some of the gorgeous birds of paradise, twittering and hopping in their hampering skirts about the Ames parlors, and pecking, with milk-fed content, at the rare cakes and ices. But she only held her empty head ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... and Frau Dellwig could not face her infinite superciliousness more than once, and kept out of the way in spite of their burning curiosity. When Dellwig's shouts became intolerable, she did not hesitate to wince conspicuously and to put up her hand to her head. When Manske forgot that it was not Sunday, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... short-sighted, deaf, or crippled, why should there not be others who are specially predisposed to experience a certain series of sensations? Moreover, even an ordinary observer will constantly discover faces which bear the unmistakable imprint of a ruling passion—such as superciliousness, self-satisfaction, misanthropy, sensuality, and many others. Sometimes, no doubt, we meet with a face that expresses nothing; but when the physiognomy has a marked stamp it is almost always a true index. The passions act upon the muscles, and frequently, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... interests of her South African subjects, English, Dutch, and Natives. There have been in her management of this great Colony alternations of apathy and inaction, with interference which was sometimes unwise and hasty. Some of her acts have been the result of ignorance, indifference, or superciliousness on the part of ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... generously conceded. They are often men of a certain cultivation. They have traveled, many of them—spending a year or two in Paris, and a month or two in the rest of Europe. Consequently they endure society at home, with a smile, and a shrug, and a graceful superciliousness, which is very engaging. They are perfectly at home, and they rather despise Young America, which, in the next room, is diligently earning its invitation. They prefer to hover about the ladies who did ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... American dude was unique. He carried it to an extreme impossible to the youth of any nation less "gifted." And if the American girl goes in seriously for "repose," she will be able to give odds to any modern languidity or to any ancient marble. If what is wanted in society is cold hauteur and languid superciliousness or lofty immobility, we are confident that with a little practice she can sit stiller, and look more impassive, and move with less motion, than any other created woman. We have that confidence in her ability and adaptability. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sight of Martin Holt because of his unpretending ways, his willingness, nay, his eagerness to learn, his ready submission to the authority exercised by the master of the house upon all beneath his roof, and the absence of anything like presumption or superciliousness on his nephew's part on the score of his patrician birth on his father's side. Trevlyn though he was, the lad conformed to all the ways and usages of the humbler Holts; and even Mistress Susan soon ceased to look sourly at him, for she ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... her head to give herself airs, and treat me with some coldness and superciliousness, I did not hesitate to set down at breakfast my dish of tea not half drank, go for my hat and stick that lay in the corner of the room, turn my back to the house insalutato hospite, and walk away to London without uttering ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... fresh and youthful a smile played upon the soft red lip, you could but suppose the heart young, confiding, and impressible. But the eyes were in wonderful contrast to these beautiful lips; they shone like great, mysterious, unfathomable stars—one moment sparkling with youthful superciliousness, the next with the firm, steady, piercing glance of an observing sage. The lofty, somewhat retreating forehead, and the straight, finely-pointed nose, formed a profile indicating commanding elevation of character. And the soul imprisoned behind these temples was powerfully ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... where bald stones break through sandy earth, camels come and go, passing from south to north, from north to south, marching slowly with rhythmic gait, as if to the sound of music which only they can hear, glancing from side to side with unutterable superciliousness, looking wistfully here and there at some miniature oasis thrown like a dark prayer-carpet on the yellow sand. Two or three in a band they go, led by desert men in blowing white, or again in a long train of twelve or twenty, their legs a moving lattice, their heart-shaped feet making ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... lives, and knock their confiding "feelers" back into the shell. But the advance-guard at least of our countrymen will find here a human nature poor and narrowed but right-minded, true, unwarped either by feudal lordliness or modern superciliousness. Reciprocity of treatment, let us hope, will endeavor to keep it so for ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... a willingness to please and to be pleased. Some men seem to think it beneath them, and a mark of littleness of mind, to wish or to try to please any body, and wrap themselves up in a cold superciliousness. Others seem determined never to be pleased with any thing or any person, but are always finding fault. They have no eye for, no perception of, merits or beauties, either external or internal, but are keen and quick-sighted in detecting blemishes, ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... travelled on four days with malevolence perpetually increasing, and without any endeavour but to outvie each other in superciliousness and neglect; and when any two of us could separate ourselves for a moment we vented our indignation at the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... Ebenezer, on Rosebury Green; and it was only by her charities and kindness at Christmas-time, that the Rev. Dr. Potter, the rector at Rosebury, knew her. The old clergy, you see, live with the county families. Good little Madame de Florac was pitied and patronised by the Doctor, treated with no little superciliousness by Mrs. Potter, and the young ladies, who only kept the first society. Even when her rich brother died, and she got her share of all that money Mrs. Potter said poor Madame de Florac did well in not trying to move out of her natural sphere ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... are very good to say you would accept of my letters, though I should have no particular news to tell you; but at present it would be treating heroes and conquerors with great superciliousness, if I made use of your indulgence and said nothing of them. We have taken more places and ships in a week than would have set up such pedant nations as Greece and Rome to all futurity. If we did but call Sir William Johnson "Gulielmus Johnsonus Niagaricus," ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... The superciliousness that lurked in her manner told Venn that thus far he had utterly failed. He inwardly sighed and felt it necessary ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... cheaper market. This led us along the rivulet called Tamba, where we found the people, who had not been visited so frequently by the slave-traders as the rest, rather timid and very civil. It was agreeable to get again among the uncontaminated, and to see the natives look at us without that air of superciliousness which is so unpleasant and common in the beaten track. The same olive color prevailed. They file their teeth to a point, which makes the smile of the women frightful, as it reminds one of the grin of an alligator. The inhabitants ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... experience of the world should have wrought in it. Perhaps this was nothing more than a slight perversion which he had contracted in the school of Warburton. What was a coarse arrogance in the master himself, assumed the form of nicety and superciliousness in the less confident and better regulated tempers of Mason and Hurd. His harmless vanity cleaved to him longer. As a proof of this, it is related that, several years after the publication of Isis, when he was travelling ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... in that mild tone of subdued superciliousness with which we should always address kings, and which, while it vindicates our dignity, satisfactorily proves that we are above the vulgar passion of envy. "Sire!" But let us not encourage that fatal faculty of oratory ...
— English Satires • Various
... Lucien might meet with better treatment than he had done," such was the matter of M. du Chatelet's discourse. "The Court was less insolent that this pack of dolts in Angouleme. You were expected to endure deadly insults; the superciliousness you had to put up with was something abominable. If this kind of folk did not alter their behavior, there would be another Revolution of '89. As for himself, if he continued to go to the house, it was because he had found Mme. de Bargeton ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... counsel, "the defendant's counsel will observe that he is already furnished with the matter—which I regret to say he has treated—in the presence of the Court—and of his client, a deacon of the church—with—er—great superciliousness. When I state to your Honor that the books in question are hymn-books and copies of the Holy Scriptures, and that they are for the instruction of the jury, to whom I shall have to refer them in the course of my opening, I believe I ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... a home of wealth, culture, and refinement as an equal; and the frank cordiality and naturalness of her hostess's evident expectation of meeting a congenial companion was like balm to a sensitive soul rendered morbid by long years of superciliousness and snubbing. ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... said the king, smiling. "I do not love war, but it is sometimes a necessary evil; and if I cannot relieve my godmother, Maria Theresa, of this mortal malady of pride and superciliousness without a general blood-letting, I must even play the physician and open a vein. The alliance with France is concluded; Charles the Seventh goes to Frankfort for coronation; the French ambassador accompanies him, and my army stands ready for battle, ready to ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... fashionable acquaintances, always shrank from recognizing her; and finally, thinking any allusion to former years, and the asylum, a personal insult, she passed her without even a bow. The first time this occurred Beulah was deeply wounded; she had loved Claudia very warmly, and her superciliousness was hard to bear. But the slight was repeated several times, and she learned to pity her weakness ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... a sense of need and a humble trust and a daily experience have to appropriate and suck out the blessing that lies in the love of Jesus Christ. Blessed be His name! The end of all aristocracies of culture and superciliousness of intellect lies in that great truth that we possess the deepest knowledge and highest wisdom when we love and by ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... Forsytes, who, in the course of innumerable transactions concerned with property of all sorts (from wives to water rights), had occasion for the services of a safe man, found it both reposeful and profitable to confide in Soames. That slight superciliousness of his, combined with an air of mousing amongst precedents, was in his favour too—a man would not be ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... only strong and ardent when there was no occasion for it, a man who blended the faults of Grub Street with the faults of St. James's Street, and who united to the vanity, the jealousy and the irritability of a man of letters, the affected superciliousness and apathy of a man of ton. The Whartons over-praise Walpole where Lord Macaulay under-rates him; the truth lies between the two. He was not in the least an estimable or an admirable figure, but he wrote admirable, indeed incomparable letters ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... ones. In fact, there was that evening, among all those in the pulp-mill, only one man who seemed to disassociate himself from the general good-will. That man was Waynefleet. He wore his old velvet jacket as a cloak of superciliousness—or, at least, that was how it seemed to the Bush-ranchers, who recognized and resented an effete pride in the squeak of his very ancient lacquered shoes. It is possible that he did not mean to make himself in any way offensive, and merely desired to indicate that he was graciously ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... nobleman, that he compelled his wife and daughters to walk backwards, in quitting his presence, as is done at court! This was said of a man, whom I found to be of more simple, off-hand, unpretending, gentleman-like deportment, whose demeanour had more of the nice tact which neither offends by superciliousness, nor wounds by condescension, than that of any other man of rank in England. To return to our subject;—the Austrian face is, certainly, getting to be prevalent among the southern catholic families, for all of them are closely allied to the ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to fancy that the rebels were officered by a set of planters or merchants, and to treat them accordingly with superciliousness and contempt, instead of which, besides General Washington, there were many who had been engaged from their youth upward in border warfare, not only with Indians, but with the disciplined troops of France. Many had aided in the conquest of Canada, while ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... the county. The lady seemed to be emphatic; so did Paragot. She regarded him stonily out of flint-blue eyes. He waved his hands; she raised her eyebrows. She was one of those women whose eyebrows in the normal state are about three inches from the eyelids. I understood then what superciliousness meant. Paragot raised his voice. At that moment one of those strange coincidences occurred in which the ends of all casual conversations fell together, and a shaft of silence sped through the room, killing all sound save that of ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... disrespect, disesteem, disestimation[obs3]; disparagement &c. (dispraise) 932, (detraction) 934. irreverence; slight, neglect, spretae injuria formae [Lat][Vergil], superciliousness &c. (contempt) 930. vilipendency|, vilification, contumely, affront, dishonor, insult, indignity, outrage, discourtesy &c. 895; practical joking; scurrility, scoffing, sibilance, hissing, sibilation; irrision[obs3]; derision; mockery; irony &c. (ridicule) 856; sarcasm. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the disapproval you speak of, and to say disagreeable things on slight acquaintance, fully justified her opinion of him; and if he seemed to change later, I should think it probable that something in her had shamed him out of his coldness and his selfishness. As for the superciliousness, I should be inclined to set down the appearance of that to the charge of an unconquerable shyness masquerading in the guise of self-assertion,—I have known men like that,—but the other qualities I believe were there. I suspect it was a reversal of the old story ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... detested or respected opinion, and instinctively sought to escape a cold shade that mere sensitiveness would have endured. He could have submitted to separation, sickness, exile, drudgery, hunger and thirst, with stoical indifference, but superciliousness ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... who believe this of us, must be taught to think differently and truthfully. If they lived in China, it would be otherwise; but linked to us as they are, we can no longer tolerate such outrageous superciliousness as they manifest. Those among them who will learn, may be taught; those who will not, must be supplanted by people who are not too proud to work, who do not 'abominate the system of free schools, because the schools are free,'[B] and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... too many affairs to be afraid of risking my reputation as a man of honor by postponing our little meeting. I have other things to attend to first. And first I must have a little leisure to get rid of that bitterness and gall which you, senor, with your English superciliousness, have poured into my heart. For a time you had your hour of triumph, and I was made to feel by you all the insolent superiority of a man of wealth over a man of the people. But now, senor, our positions have changed. I have the power, and ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... this before: and I believe I hinted to you once, that the superciliousness you put on only to him, was capable of a construction, which at the time would have very little gratified your pride to have had made; since it would have been as much in his ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... features proclaimed ambition, energy, intelligence. To see Josh Craig was to have instant sense of the presence of a personality. The contrast between him standing half- dressed in the doorway and the man seated in fashionable and cynically-critical superciliousness was more than a matter of exteriors. Arkwright, with features carved, not hewn as were Craig's, handsome in civilization's over-trained, overbred extreme, had an intelligent, superior look also. But it was the look of expertness in things hardly worth the trouble of learning; it was aristocracy's ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... tutor left the office, telling Nicholas that he might go home with the little girls if he liked. "I shall try to have the books you need by to-morrow," he said, and, his natural amiability overcoming his assumed superciliousness, he ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... acrobatic, and other feats, were of a very high order. And I will say here that the characteristic flavor of the humor and fun-making of the average English people, as it impressed my sense, is what one gets in Sterne,—very human and stomachic, and entirely free from the contempt and superciliousness of most current writers. I did not get one whiff of Dickens anywhere. No doubt it is there in some form or other, but it is not patent, or even appreciable, to the sense of such an ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... seers and poets had not attained to this sublime superciliousness of self-contempt; for this, of course, is a fruit to be borne only by the "progress of the species." They are still weak enough to believe in gods and godlike men, in spirit and inspiration, in the ineffable fulness and meaning of a noble life, in the cosmic relationship ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... Thyrsis had got involved in a serious discussion with Mrs. Patton and Symington, and was in the act of saying that the social problem could not be much longer left unsolved; and then he chanced to turn, and discovered young Macklin, surveying him with elaborate superciliousness, and asking with his British drawl, "Aw—I beg pawdon—but what do you mean by the social problem?" And Thyrsis, with a quick glance at him, answered, "I mean you." So Macklin subsided; and Thyrsis learned afterwards that ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... feared them in crowds unless the crowd was around him. He wondered how much each one contributed to the party, for there was somewhat of a spiritual tax levied. Alec and Kerry were the life of it, but not quite the centre. Somehow the quiet Humbird, and Sloane, with his impatient superciliousness, ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... subdued sagacity in the perfect simplicity of his whole exterior. And Fanny—Fanny was puzzled. The bourgeoisie and ledger-bred hardness of manner which she had looked for were not there, nor any variety of the "foreign slip-slop" common to travelled youth, nor any superciliousness, nor (faith!) any wear and tear of youth and good looks—nothing that she expected—nothing! Not even ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... wish to be a philosopher, prepare yourself to be thoroughly laughed at since many will certainly sneer and jeer at you, and will say, 'He has come back to us as a philosopher all of a sudden,' and 'Where in the world did he get this superciliousness?' Now do not you be supercilious, but cling to the things which appear best to you in such a manner as though you were conscious of having been appointed by God to this position." Again in the little discourse ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... asked, with just the shade of superciliousness in the tone admired in the Senate for suavity. "I hope I am always sorry when I do wrong, in speech or act; I teach my ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... He enjoyed the intercourse of particular friends, but avoided general society; in company, he seldom talked, and only with a neighbour; he shunned the acquaintance of persons of rank, because he disliked patronage, and dreaded the superciliousness of pride. His conversation was simple; he possessed, but seldom used, considerable powers of satire; but he applied his keenest shafts of declamation against the votaries of cruelty. In performing acts of kindness he took delight, but he was scrupulous of accepting favours; he was strong in the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... complexion too light and sanguine for the profound and varied emotions of deep tragedy. There was a tinge of affectation in his deportment, which had the effect of creating among many a strong feeling of prejudice against him. His bearing was always gentlemanly, and with the exception of a slight superciliousness of manner, amiable to every body; and his talent, though not of the highest order, was still sufficiently prominent to enable him to maintain a distinguished position. And yet this man, with so little to justify spleen, was literally, from an unaccountable prejudice, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... advanced quickly under the sun of Africa. His figure was slender and boyish, his face thinly bearded, a lack which was accentuated by the beard being divided into two points. Yes, now they, saw; it was his eyes that had dispelled the boast and swagger of the Gaul, the superciliousness of the Capuan, and whatever of brawling boldness had been in either. These eyes were black and large and flashing with courage and energy and the pride of noble birth. No detail of the scene seemed to escape their first glance, and he asked no question, ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... folds of my drab merino pelisse, and now lingering on the plain trimming of my cottage bonnet. Young ladies have a remarkable way of letting you know that they think you a "quiz" without actually saying the words. A certain superciliousness of look, coolness of manner, nonchalance of tone, express fully their sentiments on the point, without committing them by any positive rudeness ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... indifference. She detested him more than ever for not running true to the form she had predicted; her apprehensiveness gave way to irritation. She resented his dignified, pleasant "good mornings"; she complained acidly to Ruth about what she was now pleased to describe as "disgusting superciliousness." ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... and glittering habiliments, they seem to admire all the more for their profligacy and crimes. Does not a blood-spot or a lust-spot on the clothes of a blooming emperor give a kind of zest to the genteel young god? Do not the pride, superciliousness, and selfishness of a certain aristocracy make it all the more regarded by its worshippers? And do not the clownish and gutter-blood admirers of Mr. Flamson like him all the more because they are conscious that he is a knave? ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the advice of the other girls and made the rounds of the religious and charitable homes for working girls. She believed she could endure perhaps better than could girls with more false pride, with more awe of snobbish conventionalities—at least she could try to endure—the superciliousness, the patronizing airs, the petty restraints and oppressions, the nauseating smugness, the constant prying and peeping, the hypocritical lectures, the heavy doses of smug morality. She felt that she ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... "Evening Post," and other principal papers, were not a whit behind. They came in good time, for they were needed. For in the humiliation of Bull Run, the popular feeling north, from its extreme of superciliousness, recoil'd to the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... history that I am here undertaking, I should give at this place an account of my first duel, which was fought with swords, in Bayard's Woods, my opponent being an English lieutenant of foot, from whom I had suffered a display of that superciliousness which our provincial troops had so resented in the British regulars in the old French War. By good luck I disarmed the man without our receiving more than a small scratch apiece; and subsequently brought him to the humbleness of a fawning spaniel, by a mien ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... an easy, quiet, young gentleman, with not the least air of pretence or superciliousness, and one of those men to whom attentions ever become ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... glanced hurriedly at the terminals, and seeing that they were apparently secure, thought the boy beside him must be mistaken. He missed the crossed wires. He said to Harry, with just a suspicion of superciliousness, "Oh, she is quite O.K., thanks," and started his engine and sprang into his seat as the plane ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... such a one as to pay their share of the land-tax—never. It had been proposed also to destroy the monopoly of the grain trade, and to abolish the road-work, a task more hateful to the people than any tax, because it brought them into direct contact with the exasperating superciliousness of petty officials. But in all these proposed reforms, Necker, Calonne, and Lomenie de Brienne, each approaching the nobles from a separate standpoint, had alike failed. The nobility could see in such retrenchment and change nothing but ruin for themselves. An assembly of notables, called ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... prickly arguments, intricate conceptions; humbug and gammon and wishy-washy hair-splittings without end; and hullo! why here's avarice, and self-indulgence, and impudence! luxury, effeminacy and peevishness!—Yes, I see them all; you need not try to hide them. Away with falsehood and swagger and superciliousness; why, the three-decker is not built that would hold ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... same sort as I had read in books. I confess that time has now accustomed me to incidents of this character among my acquaintance. But I was a little shocked. Strickland was certainly forty, and I thought it disgusting that a man of his age should concern himself with affairs of the heart. With the superciliousness of extreme youth, I put thirty-five as the utmost limit at which a man might fall in love without making a fool of himself. And this news was slightly disconcerting to me personally, because I had ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... not going out, but these were few. As for Philip, he never dined at home. When he had no engagements he dined at his club, leaving Elinor with her mother. He gave Mrs. Dennistoun very little of his company, and when they did meet there was in his manner too a sort of reflection of the superciliousness of the "smart" visitors and the "smart" servant. She was to him, too, in some degree the landlady, the old lady down-stairs. Elinor, as was natural, redoubled her demonstrations of affection, her excuses and sweet words ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... and enchanted to be in the rare fairyland of child companionship. And that indeed she had, Mysie and Valetta, between whose ages she stood, hung to her inseparably, and Jasper was quite transformed from his grim superciliousness into her devoted knight. At tea-time there was a competition for the seats next to her, determined by Valetta's taking one side, in right of the birthday, and Jasper the other, because he secured it, and Mysie gave way to him because he was ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kitchen had the efficiency of a laboratory and the superciliousness of a hair-dresser's booth. With awe Milt beheld walls of white tiles, a cork floor, a gas-range large as a hotel-stove, a ceiling-high refrigerator of enamel and nickel, zinc-topped tables, and a case of utensils like a surgeon's ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... presumption, self-respect, conceit, reserve, superciliousness, disdain, self-complacency, vainglory, haughtiness, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... But this is denied by others. It would not be strange that a vain man like Pizarro, with a superficial, undisciplined mind, when he saw himself thus raised from an humble condition to the highest post in the land, should be somewhat intoxicated by the possession of power, and treat with superciliousness those whom he had once approached with deference. But one who had often seen him in his prosperity assures us, that it was not so, and that the governor continued to show the same frank and soldierlike bearing as before his elevation, mingling on familiar terms with ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... suggested menace I recognised as a young lieutenant of a line regiment (the 102nd) whom I had shaved that morning. The other wore the uniform of a staff officer, and at the first glance I read a touch of superciliousness in his indignant face. His left hand held his horse's bridle, his other he still kept tightly clenched while ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... philosophy, very proud of being an unbeliever; and fancied myself, in the complacency of my wretched ignorance, at an immeasurable elevation above the church-going, Bible-reading herd, whom I treated with a good-humoured superciliousness ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... he served. But it was perfectly evident that to neither side was the situation in the slightest degree embarrassing. Dr. Leete addressed the young man in a tone devoid, of course, as any gentleman's would be, of superciliousness, but at the same time not in any way deprecatory, while the manner of the young man was simply that of a person intent on discharging correctly the task he was engaged in, equally without familiarity or obsequiousness. It was, in fact, the manner ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... invited Sir Thomas to a banquet. A large party of Flemish nobles were collected, among whom I felt myself a very humble person. The conversation turned upon the thoroughly hated Cardinal Granvelle, his luxurious style of living, and the air of haughty superciliousness with which he treated all who approached him. As the wine circulated, the abuse of the Cardinal became more vehement. His magnificent equipages, liveries, and the arrangements of his household, excited their derision; the way he lived, and the tinsel and glitter in which the prelate pranked ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... his conduct on this occasion. He spoke with a calmness, sobriety, and dignity well suited to the audience which he was addressing. A subsequent speech which he made on the same subject was less successful. He bade defiance to aristocratical connections, with a superciliousness to which the Peers were not accustomed, and with tones and gestures better suited to a large and stormy assembly than to the body of which he was now a member. A short altercation followed, and he was told very plainly that he should ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with one another, and the degree of their acquaintance or intimacy will always be largely dependent on community of tastes, interests, occupations, and early associations. But these facts afford no reason why one set of men should look down with superciliousness and disdain on another set of men who have not enjoyed the same early advantages or are not at present endowed with the same gifts or accomplishments as themselves, or why they should hold aloof from them when there is any opportunity of common action or social intercourse. The pride of class is ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... something—in fact, pumping me. He alluded constantly to Europe, to the people I was supposed to know there—putting leading questions as to my acquaintances in the sepulchral city, and so on. His little eyes glittered like mica discs—with curiosity,—though he tried to keep up a bit of superciliousness. At first I was astonished, but very soon I became awfully curious to see what he would find out from me. I couldn't possibly imagine what I had in me to make it worth his while. It was very pretty to see how he baffled himself, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... the dapper head of the consequential little gentleman, but with such a girl standing by it would have been impossible to treat him with any disrespect, and as I looked at him I felt sure that his apparent superciliousness was probably the result of too much money and too ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... the Jews in and shutting the world out. It is becoming more and more plainly recognized and admitted, that it was, in reality, an attempt at reform rendered imperative by the tyranny of the kahal, the rigorism of the rabbis, the superciliousness of the learned classes, and the superstition of the masses. Its aim was to bring about a deep psychologic improvement, to change not so much the belief as the believer. It insisted on purity rather than profundity of thought. Unable to ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... superiority which animated his looks, and raised his voice in conversation, cast likewise an impenetrable veil over him when he said nothing. His talk, therefore, had commonly the complexion of arrogance, his silence of superciliousness. He was, however, seldom inclined to be silent when any moral or literary question was started; and it was on such occasions that, like the sage in "Rasselas," he spoke, and attention watched his lips; he reasoned, and conviction closed his periods; if poetry was talked of, his quotations were ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... New England, being no less narrow and prejudiced, filled with a sensitive pride and a jealous local patriotism, and bred up in a lofty appreciation of the merits and importance of their country, regarded British superciliousness with a resentment which their strong love for England could not overcome. This feeling was far from being confined to the officers. A provincial regiment stationed at Half-Moon, on the Hudson, thought itself affronted by Captain Cruikshank, a regular officer; ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... curious thing in their rivalry, that Pompey's name and interest in the city was greatest when he was absent, for his renown in war, but when present he was often less successful than Crassus, by reason of his superciliousness and haughty way of living, shunning crowds of people, and appearing rarely in the forum, and assisting only some few, and that not readily, that his interest might be the stronger when he came to use it for himself. Whereas Crassus, being a friend always at hand, ready to be had and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... beneath that look of good-humor you will find a little something of superciliousness. You will see a line running down the cheek from behind each nostril, drawing the whole face, good-humor and all, into a sneer of habitual contempt,—contempt, no doubt, of the vain endeavors and devices of men to provide against the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... more dutiful as a child!) But his face was not strong, as the face of Madam Des Anges had been. Some strain of a weaker ancestry reappeared in it, and, so to speak, changed the key of the expression. What had been pride in the old lady bordered on superciliousness in the young man. What had been sternness became a mere haughtiness. Yet it was a handsome face, and pleasant, too, when the young smile came across it, and you saw the white small teeth and the bright, intelligent light ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... they'd make short work of a man like him," said Winslow, whose superciliousness was by no means lessened by the community of sentiment between Miss Keene and Brace. "I reckon, his political reforms, and his poetical high-falutin' wouldn't go as far in the forecastle among live men as it does in the cabin with a lot of women. You'll more likely find ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... travelling in Scotland. As Eugenie saw this pretty piece of work, done in the vacant hours which were lost to love, she looked at her cousin to see if it were possible that he meant to make use of it. The manners of the young man, his gestures, the way in which he took up his eye-glass, his affected superciliousness, his contemptuous glance at the coffer which had just given so much pleasure to the rich heiress, and which he evidently regarded as without value, or even as ridiculous,—all these things, which shocked the Cruchots ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... ended in his resigning his pension. His feelings appear to have been deeply hurt by Hamilton's superciliousness, and his demand for the right to employ the whole time of his private secretary. In a long explanatory letter to Hutchinson, a leading member of the Irish parliament, and father of the late Lord Donoughmore, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various |
