"Conceit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... across Mersea Island from Wigborough, so we may catch the glint and glare of the lights of Manhattan, and, on stormy nights, feel on our lips the sharpness of the salt wind that blows across Staten Island from the Atlantic. It is an innocent conceit, and our only critic so far had been Miss Fraenkel, who had objected to the name, and advocated with American succinctness the advantage of a number. As Bill had remarked mournfully, "It wouldn't be so bad if it was number three or four, but Five hundred and Eighty-two Van Diemen's ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... reflected that city life must differ greatly from that in the country, even more than he had conceded with all his a priori reasonings; and he decided to draw no hasty inferences, but to proceed in the Baconian method by calling at Number Three. He was rather out of conceit with his strategy of thirst, which had so fallen below the actual modes of effecting an entrance, and now resolved to march boldly up with the irresistible engine of straight-forward inquiry,—as straight-forward, at least, as the circumstances ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... is by any means perfect. Many leaves have been torn out of the book by the childish conceit of recent centuries, which vainly imagined that they could write something instead, which any mortal would now care to read. The destroying hand of the so-called Renaissance has passed over these churches, defacing ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... am stretched beneath the pines, When the evening star so holy shines, I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, At the sophist schools and the learned clan; For what are they all, in their high conceit, When man in the bush with ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... weak brain. But an hour agone enfranchised from Grub Street, thou must sing 'I'd be a butterfly.' Thou art vanity absolute, conceit beyond measure, and presumption out of all whooping. Yea, and but as a fool Pygmalion, not content with loving thine own handiwork, thou must needs fall in love with the goddess that breathed life into its stiff limbs; ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... their hands a complete Babel. The sons of Noe attempted in their pride to ascend to heaven by building the tower of Babel, and their scheme ended in the confusion and multiplication of tongues. The children of the Reformation endeavored in their conceit to lead men to heaven by the private interpretation of the Bible, and their efforts led to the confusion and the multiplication of religions. Let me give you one example out of a thousand. These words of the Gospel, "This is My Body," were ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... noticeable that wherever Ivan came into personal contact with the journalists, no praise was afterwards too high for him. For the magnetism of his personality had increased with the years; and, added to the absence of any conceit in his manner, it made him an object of adulation that drove him into frequent fits of ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... in the public service. If, on the contrary, I should undertake the election, and fail of success, I was full as anxious that it should be manifest to the whole world that the peace of the city had not been broken by my rashness, presumption, or fond conceit of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... as I would, I faced the great Decision. My life's last and greatest door stood ajar. What with all my dreaming, studying, and teaching was I going to do in this fierce fight? Despite all my youthful conceit and bumptiousness, I found developed beneath it all a reticence and new fear of forwardness, which sprang from searching criticisms of motive and high ideals of efficiency; but contrary to my dream of ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... a pin in a piece of bread, cried and lamented as though she had an intolerable pain in her throat, where she thought she felt it stick; but an ingenious fellow that was brought to her, seeing no outward tumor nor alteration, supposing it to be only a conceit taken at some crust of bread that had hurt her as it went down, caused her to vomit, and, unseen, threw a crooked pin into the basin, which the woman no sooner saw, but, believing she had cast it up, she presently found herself eased ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... middle of a Spanish fleet—ran alongside one of their ships, boarded and carried her, and took her out free without the Spanish admiral discovering what we had been about. There's no end to the wonderful things I have seen done, or, I may say, without conceit, have done, Mr Merry. But I rather suspect that we shall have to lose sight of the Dons and Monsieurs for a few days. There's bad weather coming on, and we shall have to stand out to sea; but, never mind, they'll not make their escape with a gale in ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... I wish you not to be ignorant, brothers, of this mystery; that you may not be wise in your own conceit. For hardness in part has come upon Israel, till the fullness of the gentiles shall come in, [11:26]and so all Israel shall be saved; as it is written, A deliverer shall come from Zion, he shall turn away impiety from Jacob. [11:27]And this is the promise to them from me, when I take ...
— The New Testament • Various
... Conceit, n. [cnsit] Concepcion; concepto, capricho, imaginacion; amor propio, presuncion, arrogancia. Kasi, bungang-isip, kath, isipan; yabag, ...
— Dictionary English-Spanish-Tagalog • Sofronio G. Calderon
... Shadynook and the fairies of that domain. Never have I seen Belinda, or rather Belle-bouche, so lovely, and I here disdainfully repel your ridiculous calumny that she's in love with you, you great lump of presumption and overweening self-conceit! Philippa too was a pastoral queen—in silk and jewels—and around them they had gathered together a troop of shepherds from the adjoining grammar-school, called William and Mary College, of which I am an aspiring bachelor, and you were an ornament before your religious ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... eye upon the chronicles of shameful humiliation, childish deference, grovelling servility, and whimsical reward or punishment, favour, or neglect, that marked the "golden age" when musicians found patrons from whose conceit or ennui they might wheedle ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... statement of this doctrine takes the form of an intimate conversation, this time between a Brahman, Uddalaka Aruni, and his son Svetaketu who is twenty-four years of age and having just finished his studentship is very well satisfied with himself. His father remarks on his conceit and says "Have you ever asked your teachers for that instruction by which the unheard becomes heard, the unperceived perceived and the unknown known?" Svetaketu enquires what this instruction is and his father replies, "As by one lump of ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... brothers, I have only to point out here that nothing could be more despicably superstitious in the opinion of a vivisector than the notion that science recognizes any such step in evolution as the step from a physical organism to an immortal soul. That conceit has been taken out of all our men of science, and out of all our doctors, by the evolutionists; and when it is considered how completely obsessed biological science has become in our days, not by the full scope of evolution, but by that particular method of it which ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... movement. And the disrespectful manner in which he crammed my friend Lucien's scarcely dried essay into the breast of his blouse would have certainly called forth remarks from a journalist of more self-conceit. ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... ironical at all, but a most serious panegyrist, who never laughs, but does sometimes make his readers laugh, when they see his very unbecoming, mocking grimaces against the "old masters"—not that it can be fairly asserted that it is a laughable book. It has much conceit, and but little merriment; there is nothing really funny after you have got over, (vide page 6,) that he "looks with contempt on Claude, Salvator, and Gaspar Poussin." This contempt, however, being too limited ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... the summit of Ben Rinnes and swept stones and mortar into the bed of the Avon. The laird, sorely puzzled at this strange phenomenon, lay in watch one night, with the result that he was blown off his feet, and landed right up among the branches of a holly-tree. Having taken the conceit out of the laird in this abrupt way, the Mysterious Power, chuckling in fiendish fashion, called out "Build on the cow-haugh." Frightened out of his wits, the laird was only too glad ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... threescore years and ten; fortunate that such a number are knocked opportunely on the head in what they call the flower of their years, and go away to suffer for their follies in private somewhere else. Otherwise, between sick children and discontented old folk, we might be put out of all conceit of life. ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Review, in which Mallet himself sometimes wrote, characterised this pamphlet as 'the crude efforts of envy, petulance and self conceit.' There being thus three epithets, we, the three authours, had a humourous contention how each should be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Parliamentary History, 1765.—On Wednesday, Dec. 6, 1654, an attempt was made to disfranchise Queenborough: the then member, Mr. Garland, suddenly and jocularly moved the Speaker that we give not any legacies before the Speaker was dead. This pleasant conceit so took with the House, as, for that time, Queenborough was reprieved, but was voted for the future to be dismembered, and to be added to the county.—Ap. Burton i. cxi. Archaeological Mine, i. 12. Queenborough was one of the victims included in Schedule A of the act of parliament ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... Observations," pages 66, 67).) that rivers deepen and the sea widens valleys, and I am inclined largely to stick to this, adding ice to water. I am sorry to hear that Tyndall has grown dogmatic. H. Wedgwood was saying the other day that T.'s writings and speaking gave him the idea of intense conceit. I hope it is not so, for he is a ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... of ancient time Waxed arrogant in boastful pride; Debauched were they, and borne along On foul corruption's loathsome tide, Till in their stiff-necked self-conceit They e'en ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... his more intimate acquaintance did not scruple to bargain their charms. From such trollops, he gained his estimate of the sex. The sordid pretense by Plutina completed his delusion. The truckling of familiars had inflated conceit. He swelled visibly. The finest girl in the mountains was ready to drop into his arms! ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... dinner." [Translator's Note: A pun which it is impossible to translate. The Danish word Portviin according to sound, may mean either port wine or the creaking of a door.] The brother, the only son of the house, with whom we shall become better acquainted, had written down this conceit; "but that was only to be rude toward her," said Miss Grethe. "Such good ideas as this I have every ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... taking the trouble to be afraid, ma'am! I am calling my Howel as good or better as your Netta. There was a time when you might been looking higher, but now I conceit it, it will be us as do condescend. There's Miss Rice Rice, and the Miss Jamms's, Plas Newydd, and Miss Lawis, Pontammon, and Miss Colonel Rees, and Miss Jones the 'Torney, and Miss Captain Thomas, and I 'ouldn't say but Miss ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... dandiacally dressed, seemed to tell something under twenty years and had a handsome wistful face atop of a heavy, lumbering, almost corpulent figure, which however did not betoken inactivity; for David's purple hat (a conceit of his mother's of which we were both heartily ashamed) blowing off as we neared him he leapt the railings without touching them and was back with it in three seconds; only instead of delivering it straightway he seemed to expect David to chase ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... quality instilled by the whole system. Ask the veterans of the Admiralty, the War Office, the Board of Trade, and the Customs, and you will get but the same report, that for thorough incompetency and inordinate conceit there is nothing like the prize candidate of a Civil Service examination. Take my word for it, you could not find a worse pointer than the poodle which would pick you out all the letters ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... in it. A sort of permanent satisfaction radiated from his face; and this expression of inward glory (which in reality was to a large extent structural and not "expressive" at all) was displeasing to many new acquaintances on whom it made an impression of too much conceit. The impression of conceit was not diminished in their eyes by the freedom with which Davidson contradicted, corrected and reprehended other people. A longer acquaintance invariably diminished the impression. ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... of criticism is at an end; not so our pleasure. We shall look at this choice volume again and again; and as we have somewhat arrogantly, and with a conceit of our ability and right so to do, taken the Etching Club under our especial care, regard, and patronage, we shall think ourselves at liberty to encourage and to exhort them whenever we see fit. We therefore do exhort them ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... of Man, by way of defiance, sent him his shoes, ordering him to hang them on his shoulders on Christmas-day, as he passed through his hall. The Irish were, of course, much enraged at the insult offered to their master, but Morogh only laughed at the folly of the conceit, saying, "I will not only bear his shoes, but I had rather eat them, than that he should destroy one province in Ireland." Magnus did not, however, give up his purpose of invasion, but was killed in reconnoitring the coast. Morogh was murdered ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... insincere in her tone, in the lift of her eyes, in her cryptic smile. But he smothered such unworthy promptings. It was fresh proof of his own unreasonable conceit. He turned away from his wife in silence, but he was sure that his ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... other gentleman who wrate the late 'Shepherd's Calendar'[108]. For dirty and amorous ode I find sir Walter Raleigh's vein most lofty, insolent and passionate. Master Edward Dyer for elegy, most sweet, solemn and of high conceit. Gascoigne for a good metre and for a plentiful vein. Phaer and Golding for a learned and well corrected verse, specially in translation clear and very faithfully answering their author's intent. Others have also written ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... present grim conceit ran somewhat to the effect that if he remained long enough in the Central Hotel he would accumulate sufficient evidence to electrocute three criminals, at least, and send others to the penitentiary, but ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... these conceit-drugged travesties on the male sex by caring about anything they say," she tells him. "You have so many things they never will have! Why, you're a big, clean, two-handed man and—" She breaks off and gives a giggle that I would have took Verdun for. "But there!" she goes on. ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... front door, shining with self-conceit at the passers by; and its owner is up some weary stairway, yawning over "twice told tales" of legal lore, copying precedents for the sake of practice, or keeping hope alive upon the back benches of the court-rooms in listening ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... down and watched the scorner of girls disappear eagerly around a bend in the road. At the end of a half hour of waiting I began to speculate. Had Dickie's courage failed him, had he taken to the woods, or was he upbraiding her of the gatepost for the sin of conceit? I would go and see ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... It was so easy to kill, he felt no pride in having been able to accomplish that much. But it was not everybody who could escape the consequences of his crime. It required an acute brain to plan after events so that shrewd detectives would be baffled. There was a complacent conceit about Melville Hardlock, which was as much a part of him as his intense selfishness, and this conceit led him to believe that the future path he had outlined for himself would not ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... conceit. Barren, black, and desolate, the great moor gripped the imagination as no smiling landscape of field and forest could—does yet, where enough of it remains. Far as eye reaches the dun heather covers hill and plain with ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... often enough without our knocking at her door," he continued. "Mankind is the only creature with conceit enough to seek to emulate the gods. It is wrong to think that to be moral is to be miserable. Nature's scheme for us, faithfully fulfilled, is always pleasurable. We have only to recognize it, and receive its benefits. Nothing on earth is luckier than man, if he but knew it. A murrain on ambition! ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... occur to hold up his conduct to the just reprobation of the school, with great advantage. By this means, if it is done in such a way as to secure the influence of the school on the right side, many good effects are sometimes attained. His pride and self-conceit are humbled,—his bad influence receives a very decided check, and he is forced to draw back at once from the prominent stand ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... Edward MacDowell, for instance, knew what it was to receive cordial and commendatory letters from you, to be assisted by you in their careers, to have their compositions brought to performance by the best German orchestras through your aid. And you had no conceit in you, smilingly referred to your symphonic poems as "Gartenmusik," and replied to Wagner, when he informed you that he had stolen such and such a theme from you, "Thank goodness, now it will at least be heard!" Had you, O Liszt, expressed ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... considerably astonished his instructors. By adroitly using his good fortune, SAUNDERS accumulated a pile of most egregious testimonials, and these he regarded as the mainspring of success in life. He had early discovered in himself a singular capacity for drawing salaries, and as he had unbounded conceit and unqualified ignorance, he conceived himself to be fit for any post in life to which a salary is attached. He had also really great gifts as a crampon, or hanger-on, and neglected no opportunity, while he made many, of securing useful acquaintances. Thus it was the custom of his college ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... persuade them that we are worth our schooling; and the "Old Maids of England" may look forward to receive a tabby-bound manual of their duties, as well as its "Wives." I have really no patience with the selfish conceit of these married women, who fancy their well-doing of such importance. See how they were held by the ancients!—treated like beasts of burden, and denied the privilege of all mental accomplishment. When the Grecian matrons affected to weep over the slain, after some ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... farewell, and such as were mediatours for peace, in departing from this meeting, spake manie reprochfull words to him, [Sidenote: Archb. Becket wilfull in his owne opinion.] alledging that he had bene euer stout and wise in his owne conceit, and a folower of his owne will and opinion: adding that it was a great hinderance to the church, that he was ordeined archbishop, and that by him the church was alreadie in part destroied, and would shortlie be ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed
... truth, always a new source of delight to the pure and the innocent. The heart that does not love flowers, or the voice of a playful child, is one that we should not like to consort with. It was a beautiful conceit that invented a language of flowers, by which lovers were enabled to express the feelings that they dared not openly speak. But flowers have a voice to all,—to old and young, to rich and poor, if they ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... the old man proudly—"if only I can lick his infernal conceit out of him!" He gripped her hand. "Good-by, ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... little poem, Spenser's only successful effort at satire, is stated by the author to have been composed in the raw conceit of his youth. There is internal evidence, however, that some of the happiest passages were added at the date of its publication, at which time the whole was probably retouched. Although Mother Hubberds Tale is in its plan an imitation of the satires ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... "My silly conceit, I presume. I couldn't bear the thought of having that roughneck return and muss up one of my ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... such help as you can give. You can't do anything without making a blunder. I should like to knock the conceit out of you." ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... not. Ye oceans of intolerable delight, The blazing photosphere of central Night, Be ye forgot. Terror, thou swarthy Groom of Bride-bliss coy, Let me not see thee toy. O, Death, too tardy with thy hope intense Of kisses close beyond conceit of sense; O, Life, too liberal, while to take her hand Is more of hope than heart can understand; Perturb my golden patience not with joy, Nor, through a wish, profane The peace that should pertain To him who does by her attraction move. Has all not been before? One ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... I am stretched beneath the pines, When the evening star so holy shines, I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, At the sophist schools and the learned clan; For what are they all in their high conceit, When man in the bush ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... I am," he resumed with deadly calm, a moment later. "But there's no conceit in my saying that people like the ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... thinking of? Do you ever think? I don't believe you do. Tightened up as you seem to be with wind or fat or conceit, if you were to attempt to think the effort would crack your skin, so you'd better not try. But, after all, you've some good points about you. If it were not that you would become vain I would tell you that you've got a very good pair of bright eyes, and a pretty mottled ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... enough, if you like to be overhauled and put out of conceit with yourself,—it may do you good; but I wouldn't go to 'the governor' with my verses, if I were you. For either he will think what you have written is something wonderful, almost as good as he could have written himself,—in fact, he always did believe ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... his Grace even more than Agnosticism. His favorite epithet for it is "dogmatic." "Surely," he cries, "the boasted enlightenment of this century will never tolerate the gross ignorance and arrogant self-conceit which presumes to dogmatise as to things confessedly beyond its ken." Quite so; but that is what the theologians are perpetually doing. To use Matthew Arnold's happy expression, they talk familiarly about God as though he were a man living in the next street. ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... glad to hear it," she answered, not able to forbear smiling; "but sit down then, you great, long-legged fellow, you put me out of conceit with this room; you make ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... Caucasian race, it is repulsive to your sentiments to believe that man belongs to the animal kingdom as its highest link, and springs from this kingdom. Yet this feeling is false, and must be destroyed, since it originates only in self-conceit and it is not so very difficult to arrive at a juster view. Only go back to the time of Charlemagne or to that of Augustus, and observe the great mass of your forefathers, and you will find so great a difference, that you will be as much alarmed ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... which is ever changeful of mood, could not suffer him to live long in such repose, but, filling him with self-conceit and hope, led him to make known his love, in the expectation that she would then ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... accumulation of little motives they could not themselves analyse, or because it is their habit to ask things. And a proper reply must be given. It was said that "Darby Griffith destroyed Lord Palmerston's first Government," and undoubtedly the cheerful impertinence with which in the conceit of victory that Minister answered grave men much hurt his Parliamentary power. There is one thing which no one will permit to be treated lightly—himself. And so there is one too which a sovereign assembly will never permit to be lessened ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... the most exclusive in the latter. Women have only learned to lead one life; they must be all public or all private, there is no medium. Those who give up the private life for which Providence destined them, to assume the public existence to which their own conceit urges them, have their own reward. They taste all the bitterness of fame and never know its sweets, because the bitterness is public and the sweets ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... Highway of Life, all charming or effective as the case may be. For the background of Mr. Wickfield's garden at Canterbury we have a glimpse of the famous cathedral, and from Betsey Trotwood's domain we get a view of the chalk cliffs and downs at Dover. A happy conceit throws shadow pictures of the principal characters upon a sheet as they cross the stage just before the first curtain rises.—MATTHEW WHITE, ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... had not been satisfied, he would have been very difficult to please; but he was quite contented and contemplated his own countenance with a sentimental air which expressed some small amount of conceit. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... in great dispute with myself to speak in the case of this gentleman; a former dearness between me and him tyed so firm a knot of my conceit of his virtues, now broken by a discovery of his imperfections. I protest, did I serve a king that I knew would be displeased with me for speaking, in this case I would speak, whatever came of it; but seeing he is compacted of piety and justice, ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... one of those men who are blinded by self-conceit, and who would rather be cut to pieces than admit that they ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... college humorous publications originated a bloodthirsty conceit which touched the doings ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... exhilaration which hunting brings in its train. The whole countryside enjoys a wholesome tonic by the frequent visits of the hounds, and the well-equipped company with them. Nothing cheers up the village, or cures the influenza, or brings oblivion of war news, or puts every one into conceit with themselves, so quickly, or leaves such a glow of sound satisfaction behind it. It would be odd if it did not, considering the amount of time, money, and trouble spent before the pack trots up to the green before ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... had stood during the Deemster's sentence with his bald head bent, wiping his eyes on his sleeve and leaving marks on his face, recovered his self-conceit as he was being hustled ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... Betsy, fed the stock, and visited with the birds. After supper he took his purchases and entered her room. He opened the drawers of the chest he had made, and selecting the labelled boxes he laid them in. But not a package did he open. Then he arose and radiated conceit of himself. ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... was as admirable in reality as the man was in appearance. Unexpected inheritance of large wealth is almost sure to alter, at least for a time, and generally for the worse, the manner and morale of a young person, whether male or female. Conceit or haughtiness or extravagance or greediness, or some other vice, pretty surely enters into either deportment or conduct. If this girl was changed at all by her great good fortune, she was changed for the better. She had never been more modest, gentle, affable, and sensible than ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... in all creeds three human impulses: fear, conceit, and hatred; and religion has given an air of respectability to these passions. Religion is a malignant disease born of fear, a cancer which has been eating into the vitals of everything that is worth while in our civilization; ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... and quiet strength of character would, in a measure, keep her safe from this troublesome spring disorder, but my uncle's account of her doings led me to fear that perhaps her wholesome armor of self-conceit was not so invulnerable as ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... military efficiency had been reached from which no further ascent was possible. He could not imagine anything in the whole world more honourable than to belong to that splendid army of Sedan; and he wore his officer's sword-knot with a pride far removed from any kind of conceit: in fact, ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... sooner or later, no matter what had happened. On the whole, it was just as well that she was going. "I can take her on East in the fall. As soon as she has a little knowledge of the world she'll not expect me to marry her. She can get something to do. I'll help her." And now he felt in conceit with himself again—felt that he was going to be a good, generous ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... which is not visible or demonstrable, which the hand cannot handle or the intellect weigh and measure. Even to this extreme may the reason run. Its vulnerable point is pride. It is easily encouraged by success, easily incited to conceit, readily inclined to overestimate its power. It has a Chinese weakness for throwing up a wall on its involuntary boundary-line, and for despising and defying all that is beyond its jurisdiction. The reason may be the greatest or the meanest faculty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... nor his collaborators could have written a tragedy nearly so good. The Critical Review, in which Mallet himself sometimes wrote, characterized the pamphlet as "the crude efforts of envy, petulance, and self-conceit." "There being thus three epithets," says Boswell, "we, the three authours, had a humourous contention how each should be appropriated."[8] The Monthly Review was hardly less severe. It conceived the author of Critical Structures to be either a ...
— Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch (1763) • James Boswell, Andrew Erskine and George Dempster
... proud in his own conceit, and, mimicking one greater than he, flew down forthright and lighted on the back of a fat ram with a thick fleece, that was matted by his lying till it was like woolen felt. As soon as the Sparrow pounced upon the sheep's back ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of this passage have been set forth by Butler's commentators. Dr. Grey asks, "Why the north-east side? Do Fiddlers always, or most generally, stand or sit according to the points of the compass?" Dr. Nash suggests the poet may have had in view "a conceit," which is in Brown's "Vulgar Errors," viz., that the body of man is magnetical, and being placed in a boat will never rest till the head respecteth the north. Dr. Nash remarks, "Now, the body lying on its back with ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... track up on him more frequent than once a week, as he's miles from my camp. I almost forgets to say that with this yere Goliath bull is a milk-white steer, with long, slim horns an' a face which is the combined home of vain conceit an' utter witlessness. This milky an' semi-ediotic steer is a most abject admirer of the Goliath bull, an' they're allers together. As I states, this mountain of a bull an' his weak-minded follower ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the most curious that ever was. And for the sake of the national peace of mind, the national dignity, and the national conceit, it was allowed to drop into forgetfulness after a few days. And when the papers announced that, by Priam's wish, the Farll museum was to be carried to completion and formally conveyed to the nation, despite all, the nation decided to accept that honourable amend, and went off to the seaside ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... "And yet of those who pass I but implore A simple shelter, but I frighten them. Alas! I see an aged woman gains But small consideration!" "Younger than I," Saith Fable, "are you? Yet I may aver, Without conceit, that everywhere I am received with joy. But Mistress Truth, Why did you brave the light in such scant robe? 'Twas most ill-judged. Come, let's arrange for both, Since the same end is aim for me as you; Get 'neath my cloak, and we'll together ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... for recognition, the germ of my idea, I see that it must have consisted not at all in any conceit of a "plot," nefarious name, in any flash, upon the fancy, of a set of relations, or in any one of those situations that, by a logic of their own, immediately fall, for the fabulist, into movement, into a march or a rush, a patter of quick steps; but altogether ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... a good conceit of himself from the conspicuous position achieved so unexpectedly, the morning papers did nothing to allay it. Most of them slurred over, as lightly as possible, the fact of his journalistic connection; as ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... gardens I noticed that the little paths were paved with what looked like circular tiles, but which, on inspection, I found to be old-fashioned stone ink-bottles, buried bottom upwards; and I was meditating upon the quaint conceit of the forgotten scrivener who had thus adorned his habitation—a law-writer perhaps, or an author, or perchance even a poet—when I perceived the number that I was seeking inscribed on a shabby door in a high wall. There was no bell or knocker, so, lifting the latch, I ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... not like 'both,'" with composed lightness. "If you had said that you felt yourself develop angelic qualities when you were near me, I should feel flattered, and swell with pride. But 'both' leaves me unsatisfied. It interferes with the happy little conceit that one is an all-pervading, beneficent power. One likes to contemplate a large picture of one's self—not plain, but coloured—as a ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... this time prevalent a French conceit,—"imported," as Camden tells us, "from Calais, and so well liked by the English, although most ridiculous, that, learned or unlearned, he was nobody that could not hammer out of his name an invention by this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... cockney, pecking among the brood most plethoric with conceit, of all the coop-fed citizens who tread the pavements of earth's many-chimneyed towns! America has made implements of husbandry which out-mow and out-reap the world. She has contrived man-slaying engines which kill people faster than any others. She has modelled the wave-slicing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... to act and feel as if all this painted scenery were solid rock and mountain. By our own inconsiderateness and sensuousness, we live in a lie, in a false dream of permanence, and so in a sadder sense we walk in 'a vain show,'—deluding ourselves with the conceit of durability, and refusing to see that the apparent is the shadowy, and the one enduring reality God. It is hard to get even the general conviction vivified in men's minds, hardest of all to get any man to reflect upon ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Greek and Roman literature has made us so accustomed to the idea of a Cupid awakening love by shooting arrows that we fail to realize how entirely fanciful, not to say whimsical, this conceit is. It would be odd, indeed, if the Hindoo poets had happened on the same fancy as the Greeks of their own accord; but there is no reason to suppose that they did. Kama is one of the later gods of the Indian Pantheon, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... it was, on the self-love of both parties, into which his client had fallen headlong. Now, while Mathias was more than a mere notary, Solonet was still a young man, and brought into his business the vanity of youth. It often happens that personal conceit makes a man forgetful of the interests of his client. In this case, Maitre Solonet, who would not suffer the widow to think that Nestor had vanquished Achilles, advised her to conclude the marriage on the terms proposed. Little he cared for the future ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... Burton says of the Arabs, "Above all their qualities, personal conceit is remarkable; they show it in their strut, in their looks, and almost in every word. 'I am such a one, the son of such a one,' is a common expletive, especially in times of danger; and this spirit is not wholly to be condemned, as it certainly acts as an incentive to gallant actions."—Pilgrimage, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... enlightened discretion of a judge, awed by a censorial House of Commons. But then it rests upon those who object to a legislative interposition to prove these inconveniences in the particular case before them. For it would be a most dangerous, as it is a most idle and most groundless, conceit to assume as a general principle, that the rights and liberties of the subject are impaired by the care and attention of the legislature to secure them. If so, very ill would the purchase of Magna Charta have ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... "And I shall never forget your 'Conundrum of the Anvil' which appeared in it. How often have I laughed at that most wonderful conceit, and how often have I put it to ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... hide a smile of bitter derision, but he might have spared his pains; for Lord Almeric, never very wise, was blinded by vanity. 'No, I should think not,' he said, with a conceit which came near to deserving the other's contempt. 'I should think not, Tommy. Give me twenty minutes of a start, as Jack Wilkes says, and you may follow as you please. I rather fancy I brought down the bird at the ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... every creature of God was dear, from Sister Swallow to Brother Wolf. So he learned, as he grew older, to love men and women and little children, even although they might be ugly, or stupid, or bad-tempered, or even wicked, and this sympathy cleansed away many a little fault of pride and self-conceit and impatience and hot temper, and in the end of the days made a man of John Carmichael. The dumb animals had an instinct about this young fellow, and would make overtures to him that were a certificate for any situation ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... was under little delusion about the matter. He had no conceit in his composition, but neither had he any false modesty. He merely accepted the situation as really powerful men do accept such events—with thankfulness, but without surprise. He had got his chance at last, and like any other able man, whatever his walk of life, ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... give themselves such airs about their learning; though men of credit now think that the helm has been snatched from their hands by Erasmus.' This is how Zwingli writes in 1521 of an Italian who had attacked Luther and charged him with ignorance: 'But we must make allowances for Italian conceit. In their heads is always running the refrain, "Heaven and earth can show none like to us". They cannot bear to see Germany outstripping them in learning.' Rarely a different note is heard, evoked by rivalry perhaps or ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... than of character, more of obstinacy than of firmness, of impetuosity than of tact, a charlatan in administration as well as in virtue, made to bring the one into disrepute and the other into disgust, in other respects shy from self-conceit, timid from pride, as unfamiliar with men, whom he had never known, as with public affairs, which he had always seen askew; his name was Turgot. He was one of those half-thinking brains which adopt all visions, all manias of a gigantic sort. He was believed ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... kind on the Red Sea route, and the only seniors who chose the long passage round the Cape were men returning after sick-leave—none too sweet-tempered individuals, and none too prone to give the young idea a good conceit of himself. He and the other youngsters landed with a crushed-in notion that India would treat them very cavalierly before she took them to herself. And all, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... there is always a being more unhappy than we are. In approaching a classic, the true wisdom is to place ourselves in the position of the mental inferior, aware of mental inferiority, humbly stripping off all conceit, anxious to rise out of that inferiority. Recollect that we always regard as quite hopeless the mental inferior who does not suspect his own inferiority. Our attitude towards Lamb must be: "Charles Lamb was a greater man than I am, cleverer, sharper, subtler, finer, intellectually ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... an elephant, or something big like that, to work in the water with me, I'll have to thrill the crowds by making them wonder how I can live so long without breathing," decided Joe. "I'll do four minutes or—bust!" and he smiled at his conceit. ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... Carlyle, thinking possibly of rose-water Hunt and the litterateurs of his tribe, expressed himself with incisive and memorable truth: "It is but doubt and indifference. Touch the thing they do believe and value, their own self-conceit: they are rattlesnakes then." ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... been, and still continues for the season, severer than ever was recollected by the oldest stagers, and has rather put our Halifax friends out of conceit with the fine climate of Canada, particularly as Lady Prevost's health is delicate, and she is very sensible of cold. Mrs. Cator and Mrs. Baynes beg to be most kindly remembered to you. General Bowes accompanied Kempt to Portugal in ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... call to lay doon t' law, on sic matters at aw. Mappen tha'll recolleck t' Bible—headstrong as tha art i' thy aan conceit. Bit t' Bible says 'How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough—whose taak is o' bullocks?' Aa coom on that yestherday—an A've bin sair exercised aboot thy ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... know that I am anxious about him? Let me tell you, my little girl, I shall not drag upon myself the responsibility of increasing the self-conceit of ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... easy stroke, and the Bishop's uncle took it with an absurd amount of conceit and carelessness. Hardly troubling to aim, he struck his ball. The cue slid off in one direction, the ball rolled sluggishly in another. And when the cue had finished its run, the smooth green surface of the table was marred by a jagged ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... enough, just like them, fighting and dying for they know not what, and fancying that posterity will take the trouble to put laurel wreaths on their rusty and battered helmets. Could you help smiling, Prince Jason, to see the self-conceit of that last fellow, just ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and of the deepest imaginings, that is of no definite country, but seems to be of its own power and beauty, and not of the brain and heart of any one man. It exists for eternity, and its creator can only wonder and worship before it, far from conceit as God was when He said, "Let there be light." Such music, too, is recognized on the instant by the men who have loved and studied the secrets of the most divine of the arts, for profound genius can ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... he, smiling at the conceit,—"here come three elderly personages, and the first of the three is a venerable sage with a staff. What if this embassy should bring me the message of ...
— The Threefold Destiny (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dissimilarity in tastes. Nearly every one preferred spring to any other season, with a very few exceptions in favor of autumn. The women loved Mrs. Browning and Longfellow; the men showed decided preferences after Emerson and Macauley. Conceit stuck out when the majority wanted to be themselves and none other, and only two did not want to live in the 19th century. But in one place, in answer to the question, "Whom would you rather be, if ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... English Marquery, or Mercury, and Tota bona; or, Allgood, the latter from a conceit of the rustics that it will cure all hurts; "wherefore the leaves are now a constant plaster among them for every green wound." It bears small flowers of sepals only, and is grown by cottagers as a pot herb. The young shoots peeled and boiled ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... conceit alone their taste confine, And glittering thoughts struck out at every line; 290 Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit; One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit. Poets, like painters, thus, unskill'd to trace The naked nature and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... VI., who, tradition says, had been himself a prisoner in Ludgate, till released by a rich widow, who saw his handsome face through the grate and married him. St. Martin's church, Ludgate, is one of Wren's churches, and is chiefly remarkable for its stolid conceit in always getting in the way of the west ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... she does"—and he grinned at the conceit—then setting his teeth hard, "or rather, I will blow the schooner up with my own hand before I strike; better that than have one's bones bleached in chains on a key at Port Royal.—But, you see you cannot control ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... of the Brothers of Pity put me out of conceit with all other heroes. It seemed better than anything I had ever thought of—to do good works unseen of men, without hope of reward, and to those who could make no return. For it rang in my ears that Godfather Gilpin had said, "He has no friends—that ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Self-conceit presumption and obstinacy blast the prospects of many a youth. He is alternately supported by his father his uncle and his elder brother. The man of virtue and honor will be trusted relied upon and esteemed. Conscious ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... so far from taking away from you, that by every occasion he hath promised and assured the full enjoyment of it to you. We therefore advise that you should not deny the liberty of conscience to any, especially where the King requires it; and that upon a vain conceit of your own that it will disturb your enjoyments, which the King often hath said it ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... goin' to jibe with the Ranch, and if he ain't been eddicated out of all knowledge of station business or keer for it. New York ain't Hays' Ranch, and these yer 'assemblies' and 'harmony' doin's and their airs and graces may put him out of conceit with our plain ways. I reckon ye didn't take that to mind when you've been hustlin' round payin' two hundred and fifty dollar drafts for Jack and quo'llin' with Bijah! I ain't sayin' nothin', father, only mebbe if Bijah had had drafts and extrys flourished around him a little ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... churchgoing is stamped out; heretics are ruthlessly persecuted; and such pleasures as money can purchase are suppressed so that its possessors are compelled to go on making money because there is nothing else to do. And the compensation for all this privation is partly an insane conceit of being the elect of God, with a reserved seat in heaven, and partly, since even the most infatuated idiot cannot spend his life admiring himself, the less innocent excitement of punishing other ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... but rarely with far-sighted wisdom. Taine, the prophet, has more than ever something to tell us. He warned his countrymen against themselves, their humanity, and hence against their fears, anxieties, greed, ambitions, conceit and excessive imagination. His remarks and judgments exhort us to be responsible, modest and kind and to select wise and modest leaders. He warns us against young hungry men's natural desire to mass behind a tribune ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... capital, which they could not have attended save for your means; how many decent country parsons return critics and spouters, by way of importing the newest taste from Edinburgh? And how will your conscience answer one day for carrying so many bonny lasses to barter modesty for conceit and levity at ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... daily use." It is well said; but the last letter to Frank Scott is scarcely of a noble metal. It is plain the writer has outgrown his old self, yet not made acquaintance with the new. This letter from a busy youth of three-and-twenty, breathes of seventeen: the sickening alternations of conceit and shame, the expense of hope in vacuo, the lack of friends, the longing after love; the whole world of egoism under which youth stands groaning, a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a matter of assuming that one's own mind is superior. A very poor mind, on the premises, put right in with one's own body, carefully fitted to it, to one's very nerves and senses, is worth all the other minds in the world. It may be conceit to believe this, and it may be self-preservation. But, in any case, keeping up an interest in one's own mind is excusable. Even the humblest man must admit that the first, the most economical, the most humble, the most necessary thing for a man to do in ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... whole crew as if they were her brothers; and favourite brothers at that!" had been his thought more than once during the past few months. It was all very well with Dick,—a gentleman through and through, without a grain of conceit in him; but there were scores of others who would not understand. Garth, for instance, had clearly not understood; and for her sake, as well as his own, Lenox did not choose that she should multiply ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... enjoy myself and order about the poor fellows whose bread I was eating. But I was left one day where I couldn't grab any more of their bread, and had to make some for myself—ay, and some extra for loafers that had the power to make me pay for what they didn't own. That took the conceit out of me fast enough. But what do ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... seen beauty like THAT, heard such a voice, seen such hair, such eyes. Don't tell ME! A man who has been about town since the reign of George IV., ought he not to know better than you young lads who have seen nothing? The deterioration of women is lamentable; and the conceit of the young fellows more lamentable still, that they won't see this fact, but persist in thinking their time ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... oracle, oft-times believe that they are in very truth full of the god, and speak not their own thoughts, but the inspirations of him whose priests they are. To themselves more than to others are they impostors. The conceit of the peculiar favor of God, or of the gods in return for extraordinary devotion, is a weakness that besets our nature wherever it is found. An apostle perhaps never believed in his inspiration more firmly ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... respectable character, they will think, that though you differ from him, you may be in the wrong. Sir, treating your adversary with respect, is striking soft in a battle. And as to Hume,—a man who has so much conceit as to tell all mankind that they have been bubbled[72] for ages, and he is the wise man who sees better than they,—a man who has so little scrupulosity as to venture to oppose those principles which have been thought necessary to human happiness,—is he to be surprized if another ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... this would add to my affliction, to conceit that I should be guilty of such a sin for which he did not die. These thoughts would so confound me, and imprison me, and tie me up from faith, that I knew not what to do; but, oh! thought I, that he would come down again! Oh! that the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and exaggerated versions of these generalisations. These social and political followers of Darwin have fallen into an obvious confusion between race and nationality, and into the natural trap of patriotic conceit. The dissent of the Indian and Colonial governing class to the first crude applications of liberal propositions in India has found a voice of unparalleled penetration in Mr. Kipling, whose want of intellectual deliberation is only ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Attic. He wrote a life of Alexander the Great, of which Plutarch (Alexander, c. 3) gives the following specimen: "On the day of Alexander's birth the temple of Artemis in Ephesus was burnt down, a coincidence which occasions Hegesias to utter a conceit frigid enough to extinguish the conflagration. 'It was natural,' he says, 'that the temple should be burnt down, as Artemis was engaged with bringing Alexander into the world'" (Pauly, ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... did not occur to me that I was a mere boy and he a muscular man, for I'm afraid I had plenty of conceit, and, drawing in a long breath, I lifted the ladder straight up easily enough, took a couple of steps in the right direction, and then felt to my horror that the strength of my arms was as nothing as soon as the balance ceased to be preserved, for in spite ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... beneficence. Vanity, indeed, predominates among all ranks, to such a degree, that they are the greatest egotists in the world; and the most insignificant individual talks in company with the same conceit and arrogance, as a person of the greatest importance. Neither conscious poverty nor disgrace will restrain him in the least either from assuming his full share of the conversation, or making big addresses ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Milton has transferred this conceit, though scarcely worth the pains of removing, into one of his ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Our Lord did not cast out even an apostle for his conceit and self-sufficiency, but he ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... animal origin, and count themselves "children of God," love to prate of their "humble sense of servitude." In most of the sermons that have poured out from pulpit and altar against the doctrine of evolution human vanity and conceit have been a conspicuous element; and, although we have inherited this very characteristic weakness from the apes, we must admit that we have developed it to a higher degree, which is entirely repudiated ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... enjoying life may fraternize with the whole population. He who lives in the struggle to acquire or maintain a position can appreciate this social luxury. The sea exercises a delightful influence over the character—its perils induce self-reliance and fearlessness, which are redeemed from conceit by a child-like simplicity arising naturally from the contemplation of an element menacing, invincible, and symbolical of eternity. Then, too, the legends of the sea invest the mind with a sensitive, poetic passion as delightful as it is unworldly, as ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sort of men, whose visages Do cream and mantle like a standing pond, And do a willful stillness entertain, With purpose to be dressed in an opinion Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit, As who should say, "I am Sir Oracle, And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!" O! my Antonio, I do know of these That therefore are reputed wise For saying nothing, when, I am sure, If they should speak, would almost dam those ears, Which, ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... Maxwell had gone to her husband after a good deal of thought and anxiety, and told him what she feared; asking him to say a word to Hubert. Sir Nicholas had been startled and furious. It was all the lad's conceit, he said; he had no real heart at all; he only flattered his vanity in making love; he had no love for his parents or his faith, and so on. She took his old hand in her own and held it while ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... one after another, and when her eye rested on me, I began to suspect that insolent as she was she was even duller; in fact, that she was so sodden in her conceit of wealth that she was plain stupid. So when she said to me, "You are an American by birth, I believe. Can you tell me the meaning of ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... come to explain and apologize, and in his perky conceit really seemed to fancy that I might be hurt at his desertion. So when he asked if I would "bid him good-bye pleasantly, and remember to keep my promise," I had a small inspiration. I would bid him good-bye pleasantly, I bargained, provided he let me off keeping the promise until he ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... course, our little hero was a poet. All the common usages of life, all the ways of the world, and all the customs of society, seemed to be quite unknown to him; add to these good qualities, a magnificent conceit, a cowardice inconceivable, and a face so irresistibly comic, that every one who first beheld it was compelled to burst out a-laughing, and you will have some notion of this strange little gentleman. He was very proud ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... away the Wench oth' sudden from him, And give him no lawful warning, he is tender; And of a young girles constitution, Sir, Readie to get the greene sickness with conceit; Had he but tane his leave innavailing language, Or bought an Elegie of his condolement, That th' world might have tane notice, he had beene An Asse, 't had beene some favour. Mir. Thou sayest true, Wise Andrew, but these ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... marvellous illusion of conquered love that had visited him for a moment in the agitated watches of the night which might have been his last on earth, he comprehended now its true nature. It had been merely a paroxysm of delirious conceit. Thus to this man sobered by the victorious issue of a duel, life appeared robbed of much of its charm simply because ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... infatuated with conceit, can send out a book full of thought and feeling which, whatever they may be worth, are his own, without a parental anxiety in regard to the fate of his offspring. And there are few prefaces which do not in some way betray ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... and by means calculated to have a powerful emotional impact on those to whom it was presented. 'There are limits to the exercise of these liberties [of speech and of the press]. The danger in these times from the coercive activities of those who in the delusion of racial or religious conceit would incite violence and breaches of the peace in order to deprive others of their equal right to the exercise of their liberties, is emphasized by events familiar to all. These and other transgressions of those ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Common put an end to my summer's campaign. I was cured of my poetical enthusiasm for rebels, robbers, and highwaymen. I was put out of conceit of my subject, and what was worse, I was lightened of my purse, in which was almost every farthing I had in the world. So I abandoned Sir Richard Steele's cottage in despair, and crept into less celebrated, though no less ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... only a Panegyric upon the Victory: but, if need be, a Funeral Elegy upon the Duke, and, after they have crowned his valour with many laurels, at last, deplore the odds under which he fell; concluding that his courage deserved a better destiny." All the company smiled at the conceit of LISIDEIUS. ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... set crosselegg'd, or with our fingers pectinated or shut together, is accounted bad, and friends will perswade us from it. The same conceit religiously possessed the ancients, as is observable from Pliny: 'Poplites alternis genibus imponere nefas olim;' and also from Athenaeus, that it was an old veneficious practice."—Vulg. Err., lib. v. cap. xxi. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various
... legs, and runs off occasionally. But, at any rate, there is quite enough to make her a great prize, and an object of admiration and attention to all the little men—not to the old hands, like White and Sumner; they are built up in their own conceit, and wouldn't marry Sam Weller's 'female marchioness,' unless she made love to them first, like one of Knowles's heroines. But the juveniles are crazy about her. Robinson went off more ostentatiously love-sick than a man of his size I ever saw; and Sedley is always chanting her praises—the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... said, "I cannot thank you as I should like, nor indeed you either, Mr. Harker. I am deeply grateful to you all for what you have done for me. Truly a man should take heed of his self-conceit, lest he fall, ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... first to feel the full significance of the multiplicity of sects. [Sidenote: Multiplicity of sects] "Is there any opinion so fantastical, or conceit so extravagant . . . or opinion so strange," he asked, "that custom hath not established and planted by laws in some region?" Usage sanctions every monstrosity, including incest and parricide in some places, and in others ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... increased his admiration for her, if that were possible, that she had so carefully maintained her maidenly reserve. A conceited man, or at least a man whose soul was infested with the meanest kind of conceit—that of imagining that the woman who gives him a friendly word or smile is disposed to throw herself into his arms—would no doubt have surmised her secret before; but although Van Berg was intensely proud, as we have seen, and had been rendered ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... said many things which it were better a boy should not know were said. Conceit is only too ready to take ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... want of customers. All are in pursuit of length of years and health; and I think the Chinese pharmacist shows his great wisdom in offering to all who are suffering from the ills to which flesh is heir a panacea for their ailments. It takes the fancy, it is a pleasing conceit for the mind, and the mere thought that you are entering Longevity Hall gives ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... way; he is glad their conceit has been checked. The Blackfeet are great boasters, and he has reproved them many times. Mul-tal-la saw him smile when Deerfoot came home many paces in front of that tall warrior, who is the greatest boaster of them all. Taggarak was glad ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... the case of woman. It was the subterfuge and defiance of negro slavery. It has been raised in all ages by tyrants and usurpers against the toiling, over-burdened millions, seeking redress for their wrongs, and protection for their rights. It always indicates intense self-conceit, and supreme selfishness. It is at war with reason and common-sense, and is a bold denial of the oneness of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... broke no subtle rabbinical precept. So they were foiled at every turn, driven off the field of argument, and baffled in their attempt to find ground for laying an information against Him. But neither His gentle wisdom nor His healing power could reach these hearts, made stony by conceit and pedantic formalism; and all that their contact with Jesus did was to drive them to intenser hostility, and to send them away to plot His death. That is what comes of making religion a round of outward observances. The ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... backwoods' conceit and large patronizing manner, had been especially amusing to Hughie, but now in this uncomfortable situation she looked like a haven in a storm as he saw her towering by nearly half a head above ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... disposed to work his passage by his wit. I have long been cured of the notion "that the name of an American is a passport all over Europe," and have learned to understand in its place, that, on the contrary, it is thought to be prima facie evidence of vulgarity, ignorance, and conceit; nor do I think that the French, as a nation, have any particular regard for us; but knowing the inherent dislike of a Frenchman for an Englishman, and that the new-fangled fraternity, arising out ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... most susceptible. Instead of forming their young minds to that docility, to that modesty, which are the grace and charm of youth, to an admiration of famous examples, and to an averseness to anything which approaches to pride, petulance, and self-conceit, (distempers to which that time of life is of itself sufficiently liable,) they artificially foment these evil dispositions, and even form them into springs of action. Nothing ought to be more weighed than the nature of books recommended ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... characteristic of mine through life has been to hide away in the rear rather than rush to the front, unless, indeed, forced forward by duty, when I can be bold enough, if need be; and that one defect in me all know to be a dislike to any assumption of dignity—surely a feeling the opposite to self-conceit; whilst, if I am not true, simple, and sincere, I am worse than I hope I am, and all my friends are deceived in their ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... "Well, you have conceit enough to be anything," said Carol frankly. "Maybe you'll make it go, after all. I should like to have an author in the family and since Lark's lost interest, I suppose it will have to be you. I couldn't think of risking my complexion at such a precarious livelihood. But ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... Marien. He had seen enough in his relations with women to have no doubt about Jacqueline's feelings, of which indeed he had watched the rise and progress from the time she had first begun to conceive a passion for him, with a mixture of amusement and conceit. The most cautious of men are not insensible to flattery, whatever form it may take. To be fallen in love with by a child was no doubt absurd—a thing to be laughed at—but Jacqueline seemed no longer a child, since for him she had uncovered ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... Spaw unto this Fountaine about thirty yeares since, or more. For he also formerly had spent some time at the Spaw in Germany; so that he was very able to compare those with this of ours. Nay, hee had futhermore so good an opinion, and so high a conceit of this, that hee did not onely direct, and advise others to it, but himselfe also (for most part) would use it in the ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... all have this peculiar mark on their breasts. Never, from that time to this, has any ostrich been able to fly. But even this has not entirely subdued their pride and arrogance, and their insufferable conceit. ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin |
