"Conceit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Amy was probably the most conceited woman in Polchester. There is of course ordinary human conceit, of which every living being has his or her share. I am not speaking of that; Miss Amy Trefusis might be said to be ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... conceit can become. The joy of seeing the Saviour was stolen because they gained it in the absence of ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... only during my moments of self-forgetfulness that my grief was wholehearted. True, both before and after the funeral I never ceased to cry and to look miserable, yet I feel conscience-stricken when I recall that grief of mine, seeing that always present in it there was an element of conceit—of a desire to show that I was more grieved than any one else, of an interest which I took in observing the effect, produced upon others by my tears, and of an idle curiosity leading me to remark Mimi's bonnet and the faces of all present. The mere circumstance ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... had reached the mature age of twenty-one, he was formally admitted to the House of Lords as a Peer of the realm. His titles and pedigree were so closely scanned on this occasion that he grew quite out of conceit with the noble company, and was seriously thinking of launching a dunciad in their direction. His good nature was especially ruffled by Lord Carlisle, his guardian, who refused to stand as his legal sponsor. The chief cause of the old Lord's prejudice against ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the contrary, a huge self-conceit still hold possession of him, and he straightens stiffly up to the assertion of his old and valueless self,—or, if he sink discouraged upon the threshold of a life of fierce competitions, and more manly emulations, he might as well be a dead man. The world has no use for such ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... a cornelian of no great price, which bore this conceit, to the wife of the emperor's ambassador, but conceiving there was no more in the purchase than some waywardness of fancy, I took no precaution to note the stone. A gentleman in the family of the Legate of Ravenna, ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... their satisfaction is called happiness) constitute self-regard (solipsismus). This is either the self-love that consists in an excessive fondness for oneself (philautia), or satisfaction with oneself (arrogantia). The former is called particularly selfishness; the latter self-conceit. Pure practical reason only checks selfishness, looking on it as natural and active in us even prior to the moral law, so far as to limit it to the condition of agreement with this law, and then it is called rational self-love. But self-conceit reason strikes down altogether, ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... easy to answer all your questions, sir. Beat him we did, beyond a question, and that with a heavy loss to his army—and out of New York we have driven him, beyond a question—but—I will not increase Beulah's conceit by stating ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... immense power of sympathy, she applied herself to the task of awakening and extending such sympathies in others. This she does by the creation of agreeable, interesting and noble types, such as may put us out of conceit with what is mean and base. Goodness, as understood and portrayed by her, must recommend itself not only to the judgment but to the heart. She worked to popularize high sentiments, and to give shape and reality to vague ideas of human excellence. Her idea of virtue ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... skysail seems high enough in all conscience; and the idea of any thing higher than that, seems preposterous. Besides, it looks almost like tempting heaven, to brush the very firmament so, and almost put the eyes of the stars out; when a flaw of wind, too, might very soon take the conceit out of ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... God make us, instead of painfully trying to make ourselves; to follow the path that his love shows us, instead of through conceit or cowardice or mockery choosing another; to trust Him for our strength and fitness as the flowers do, simply giving ourselves back to Him in grateful service,—this is to keep the laws that give us the freedom of the city in which there ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... about in their barouches, at the close of his second season, innuendoing, nodding, and hinting to their friends, 'that, &c.,' when there wasn't one of their daughters who had penetrated the rhinoceros-like hide of his own conceit. The consequence was that all these ladies, all their daughters, all the relations and connexions of this life, thought it incumbent upon them to 'blow' our friend Puff—proclaim how infamously he had behaved—all because he had danced three supper ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... you see a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than him. Let another man praise you and not your own mouth; Some other, and not ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... this quaint conceit, and then rode on quickly. In a few minutes he stopped and listened again, but heard no noise save the loud breathing of ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... lost; and, as there is no want of bold pretensions, which the common belief (though for the philosopher this is no credential) does not reject, the understanding lies exposed to every delusion and conceit, without the power of refusing its assent to those assertions, which, though illegitimate, demand acceptance as veritable axioms. When, therefore, to the conception of a thing an a priori determination is synthetically added, such a proposition ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... as a friend, a faithful friend," she resumed, almost frightened by the tones of her own voice; "but as to the slightest feeling of love between us, love the most spiritual, the most platonic—yes, all men, I fancy, have a little of that kind of self-conceit. Dear Fred, don't imagine it—Enguerrand ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... imaginary work was there; Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, That for Achilles' image stood his spear, Griped in an armed hand; himself behind Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind: A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head, Stood for the whole ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... was utterly for his own good to yield. But if you seriously expected him to yield, your knowledge of human nature lacks depth. Something far stronger than argument, something far stronger than desire for his own happiness, prevented him from yielding. Pride, a silly self-conceit, the greatest enemy of the human race, forbade him to yield. For, on the previous night, Helen had snubbed him—and not for the first time. He could not accept the snub with meekness, though it would have paid him handsomely to do so, though as a Christian and a philosopher he ought to have done ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... Conceit, more rich in matter than in words, Brags of his substance, not of ornament: They are but beggars that can count ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... venomous qualitee. (2) It is a vulgar fallacie that the affection of mankind for the Practise is a proof that it is good for them; inasmuch as men are ledd astray by a mode, & furthermore, the affectation & conceit of the patient persuadeth him he is benefited; yet how shall one drug cure of all diseases men of all complexions? (3) Men are by this custom disabled in their goods, spending many pounds a year upon this precious stinke, and are no better ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... I understand," rejoined the other, with adorable conceit. "You aren't used to it yet, but one soon gets into it, you know! See how perfectly at my ease I am ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... before vnder the simplicitie of childhood, or the lightnes of youth, appeere at this age in their perfection. We speake of none in this place but such as are esteemed the wisest, and most happie in the conceit of the world. We played as you haue seene in feare: our short pleasures were attended on with long repentance. Behold, now present themselues to vs auarice, and ambition, promising if wee will adore ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... shone in her face, the breath of her life was the breath of the moorland winds. He had written verses about this fancy of hers; and he had conveyed them secretly to her, sure that she, at least, would find no defects in them. And many a time, far away from Loch Roag and from Sheila, lines of this conceit would wander through his brain, set to the saddest of all music, the music of irreparable loss. What did they say to him, now that he recalled them like some half-forgotten voice out ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... not once occur to his mind that such artifices might be directed as much toward herself as him; he lacked the conceit which could have convinced him that they merely marked a secret struggle for mastery, a desperate effort to crush an inclination to surrender before the temptation of the moment. It was a battle for deliverance ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... quaintly neat, All pride and business, bustle and conceit; With looks unaltered by these scenes of woe, With speed that, entering, speaks his haste to go, He bids the gazing throng around him fly, And carries fate and physic in his eye: A potent quack, long versed in human ills, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... now. She had been guilty of an absurdity in supposing that because the man had been in earnest, therefore she had been justified in keeping him in suspense, for his own sake. She had been guilty of an absurdity, and also of great self-conceit. She could do nothing now but wait till she should hear from him,—and then answer him steadily. After what had passed she could not go to him and declare that it was all over. He was coming to-night, and she was nearly sure that he would not say a word to her on the subject. If he ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... it was to bring him? Unless this book, with its scathing analysis of the dangers and difficulties of the secularist State, were not only a book, but an event, of what use would it be to him? He was capable both of extravagant conceit, and of the most boundless temporary disgust with his own doings and ideas. Such a disgust seemed to be mounting now through all his veins, taking all the savour out of life and work. No doubt it would be the same to the end,—the politician in him just strong enough to ruin the man ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her fear had only suggested the anxiety of a friend for himself, at the jeopardy in which public suspicion had placed him. Now he laughed at the conceit of the thought, although, at the time, it had seemed natural enough. Then the intensity of her fears had become so great, and the personal, selfish note in her attitude so pronounced, that his suspicion was aroused, and he found himself groping for ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... our illustrious progenitors, the Mohocks, either life or limbs; yet we have in the midst of Covent Garden buried a tailor, who had been troublesome to some of our fine gentlemen, beneath a heap of cabbage-leaves and stalks, with this conceit, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... it," said Mr. Birket. "The better conceit we have of ourselves the more we accomplish. Now I think we'd ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... upon nearer approach found to be your worshipful self, posting to the opera, clad in a great-coat of the newest cut, all fringe and frippery, the offspring of a German tailor. You and your cloak were so enveloped in frogs and self-conceit, that I could compare you to nothing but king Pharaoh, inoculated with a plague greater than any in Egypt, an Italian singer. After desiring me in a surly tone, to call tomorrow morning, your worship mounted your vehicle, and scampered away to the region of recitative. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... His conceit of himself was high, as is the case with many self-made men, but he had a fine code of conduct for the direction of his private affairs, was aggressively honest and fearless, and an earnest believer in God, himself, ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... depreciate the American railway system and American civil engineers, for their own private advantage in obtaining work, some Americans have been so foolish as to decry the book altogether, as traitorous to the interests of the country. Such mingled bigotry and conceit, shrinking from just criticism, would fetter all progress but fortunately it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... would be glad, when scarce settled on his throne, to secure the powerful friendship of King David. No!—he was young, insolent, inconsiderate, and fond of practical joking,—a vulgar-minded fellow, puffed up with conceit at his elevation to power. Hanun took the servants, the ambassadors of David, and shaved off half their beards, and cut off the lower half of all their clothes, and sent them back to David. And when it was told unto David that his messengers had been ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... immediately proceeded to discover means of overriding the limit. God gifted man with intellect that he might know his Maker. Man abused it, so that he might forget his Maker. I am so constructed that I can only serve my immediate neighbours, but, in my conceit, I pretend to have discovered that I must with my body serve every individual in the Universe. In thus attempting the impossible, man comes in contact with different natures, different religions, and is utterly confounded. ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... amount of loveliness. We saw some choice old editions of books in a small separate room; but as these were all ranged in shut bookcases, and as each volume, moreover, was in a separate cover or modern binding, this exhibition did us very little good. By the by, there is a conceit struggling blindly in my mind about Petrarch and Laura, suggested by those two lifelike portraits, which have been sleeping cheek to cheek through all these centuries. But I cannot lay ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... others happy (especially when it does not incommode you to do so), swings through a much larger arc in American society than in English. One can be surer of one's self, without either an overweening self-conceit or ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Compromise kompromiti. Compromise kompromiso. Compulsion devigo. Compunction memriprocxo. Computation kalkulo. Compute kalkuli. Comrade kamarado. Concave kaveta. Conceal kasxi. Consecutive intersekva. Concede cedi. Conceit malmodesteco. Conceited malmodesta. Conceive gravedigxi. Concentrate koncentrigi. Concentric koncentra. Conception (idea) elpenso. Concern koncerni. Concern (anxiety) zorgemo, malkvieto. Concerning pri. Concert koncerto. Concession cedo, cedemo. Conciliate ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... sense, which convinceth to the imagination; from all which the Sceptic concluded, that what these things are in their own nature, whether red, white, bitter, or sweet, he cannot tell; for, says he, why should I prefer my own conceit in affirming the nature of things to be thus, or thus, because it seemeth so to me—when other living creatures, perhaps, think it is otherwise? But the greatest fallacy is in the operation of our inward senses; for the fancy is sometimes persuaded that it hears and sees what it does ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... show a depth of ignorance and a depth of conceit, compared to which even Thiers is modest and skilful. Canrobert is not a great general, but he is not a man to whom a civilian, who never saw a shot fired, ought to give lectures on what he calls "the great principles" or "the absolute principles of war." He seems to have ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... he surveyed himself in the glass. Not in the way of ordinary human conceit; he was clear sighted enough as to the pulchritude of his present encasement; but with the eyes of the young who see visions. Raptly scrutinizing his meagre form he chanted a line of ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... who are most successful in the former are 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 ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... the curse of the Coast, and you find him in European clothes and without, all the way down from Sierra Leone to Loanda. The pagans despise him, the whites hate him, still he thinks enough of himself to keep him comfortable. His conceit is marvellous, nothing equals it except perhaps that of the individual rife among us which the Saturday Review once aptly described as "the suburban agnostic"; and the "missionary man" is very much like the suburban ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... I may have written from the recollection of this passage. The conceit is the same, and I willingly attribute it to Chamberlayne, a Poet to whom I am indebted for many hours of delight, and whom I one day hope to rescue ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... lives in her world, which ain't Shampuashuh by a long jump, and they live in Shampuashuh, and have got to live there. Ain't it a pity to get their heads so filled with the other things that they'll be for ever out o' conceit o' their own?" ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... whose morals were irreproachable, had, in the course of his reading, met with some of the ordinary arguments against the Bible. He fancied that he had lighted on a mine of wisdom which had been hidden from the rest of mankind, and, with the conceit from which half educated lads of quick parts are seldom free, proclaimed his discoveries to four or five of his companions. Trinity in unity, he said, was as much a contradiction as a square circle. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not seem able to play when people are looking on. The shots he misses when people are looking on would give you a wrong idea of him. When nobody is about, a prettier game you do not often see. If some folks who fancy themselves could see me when there is nobody about, it might take the conceit out of them. Only once I played up to what I feel is my real form, and then it led to argument. I was staying at an hotel in Switzerland, and the second evening a pleasant-spoken young fellow, who said he had read all my books—later, he appeared ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... with him the bitterest possible cud of failure, retired within himself and gloomed angrily at the situation from all points of view. He was completely out of conceit with himself. After he had finished his performance, he naturally took to reviewing it and recasting it in terms of success. If he'd only shot at first, before he lost his breath! If he'd only remembered to get ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... He discourses of that charity which is patient and meek, humble and single-minded, disinterested, contented, and persevering. He tells us to prefer each the other before himself, to give way to each other, to abstain from rude words and evil speech, to avoid self-conceit, to be calm and grave, to be cheerful and happy, to observe peace with all men, truth and justice, courtesy and gentleness, all that is modest, amiable, virtuous, and of good repute. Such is St. Paul's exemplar of the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... said that the British are not in manner a winning people. Their self-conceit is the principal reason. They have solid and excellent qualities, but their self-complacency is exorbitant and unparalleled. The majority are not content with esteeming Marlborough and Wellington the ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... the paper; as if you should take a hollow dish, and with your hand squieze the bottom down, till it lie flat vpon a bord, or any other plaine thing for then will those circles that before were of equall distance, runne closer together towards the midst. After this conceit, vniversall Maps are made of two fashions, according as the globe may be devided two waies, either cutting quite through by the meridian from North to South, as if you should cut an apple by the eye ...
— A Briefe Introduction to Geography • William Pemble
... of his own immortality. Yet even here, you see, I am indirectly lauding my own worship for not being persuaded to laud my own worship. How sleek, smooth-tongued, paradisaical a deluder art thou, sweet Self-conceit! Let great men give their own thoughts on their own thoughts: from such we can learn much; but let the small deer hold jaw, and remember what the philosopher says, 'Fleas are not lobsters: d——n ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... that he might pursue his wooing. Satisfied of the wealth and social standing of the lady, he felt no doubt whatever that if given a fair field he could win her, and win her he would. If unlimited conceit has not yet been mentioned or indicated as one of Mr. Gleason's prominent traits, the omission is indeed important. He felt that up to the time of Truscott's coming his progress had been satisfactory. Officers and ladies were already making sly allusions ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... talking to a Kentuckian on the subject of woman's right to qualify under the law, you have to batter down his self-conceit that he is just and generous and chivalric toward woman, and that she can not possibly need other protection than he gives her with his own right arm—while he forgets that it is from man alone woman needs protection, and often ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... was, that she had been able to bring Bacchus into subjection, with the exception of his love for an occasional spree. Spoiled by an indulgent master, his conceit and wilfulness had made him unpopular with the servants, though his high tone of speaking, and a certain pretension in his manner and dress, was not without its effect. He was a sort of patriarch among waiters and carriage-drivers; ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... back to an enormous and original simplicity. Nothing has been worse than the modern notion that a clever man can make a joke without taking part in it; without sharing in the general absurdity that such a situation creates. It is unpardonable conceit not to laugh at your own jokes. Joking is undignified; that is why it is so good for one's soul. Do not fancy you can be a detached wit and avoid being a buffoon; you cannot. If you are the Court Jester you must be ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... "you have gotten the wrong end of the stick. The wise in their own conceit are blinded. In Cumberland, where all this befell, they went not to God for light, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... conceit which reminds one of the pretty epistle of Philostratus, in which the footsteps of the beloved are called [Greek: ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... to mix with wise men by and by,—clever men and scholars,—and to hold my own among them. I could do it, I feel I could, if only I had the opportunity for study, and the health to improve it; this isn't conceit,—she knew that,—but a cool, calm gauging of the sort of ability that ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... now, good is real or apparent. Love is blind, and needs reason to discern for it what is good and what is not, reason to direct its affections into their legitimate channels. But the heart may refuse to be thus controlled, swayed by the whisperings of ignorant pride and conceit; or it may be unable to receive the impulse of the reason on account of the unhealthy fumes that arise from a too exuberant animal nature unchastened by self-denial. Then it is that, free to act as it lists, it accepts ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... ant saw this, she was greatly puffed up with Pharisaical conceit. "How thankful I ought to be," said she, "that I am industrious and prudent, and not like this poor grasshopper. While he was flitting about from flower to flower, enjoying himself, I was hard at work, putting by against the winter. Now he is dead, while I am about to make myself cosy ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... to reflect on the staying powers of the race, I have not the remotest idea of pandering to conceit or vanity, to the contrary, I decry any disposition to extol and magnify whatever we are subjectively, and whatever we have achieved. The fierce conflicts we have undergone and the terrible crucible through ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... of it, so that every one longed for a Ridd again, soon as ever I should be old enough. This Nicholas Snowe was to come in the evening, with his three tall comely daughters, strapping girls, and well skilled in the dairy; and the story was all over the parish, on a stupid conceit of John Fry's, that I should have been in love with all three, if there had been but one of them. These Snowes were to come, and come they did, partly because Mr. Huckaback liked to see fine young maidens, and partly because none but ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... by my remembrance, of certain of the mechanics and artisans; but there was also the English contingent, these predominantly internes and uniformed, blue-jacketed and brass-buttoned, even to an effect of odd redundancy, who by my conceit gave our association a lift. Vivid still to me is the summer morning on which, in the wide court—as wide, that is, as I liked to suppose it, and where we hung about helplessly enough for recreation—a brownish black-eyed youth, of about my own ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... God, I can perceive nothing but an abyss and mass of mercies, either in general to mankind, or in particular to myself: and whether out of the prejudice of my affection, or an inverting and partial conceit of His mercies, I know not; but those which others term crosses, afflictions, judgments, misfortunes, to me, who inquire further into them than their visible effects, they both appear, and in event have ever proved, the secret and dissembled favours of His ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... say, if the faults of all these, drawn as they are with a precision of touch like a Corinthian sculptor's of the acanthus leaf, can be found in anything like the same strength in other races, or if so stubbornly folded and starched moni-plies of irritating kindliness, selfish friendliness, lowly conceit, and intolerable fidelity, are native to any other spot of the wild ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... would not court martyrdom to hold Upon his head a laurel of gold, Where for each rich conceit a ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wann'd; Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... 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; and by its growth obstructing those advances which make for ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Continent. An attempt to recruit his finances at Baden-Baden terminated, as might be expected, in their further reduction, and at last he found his way to Paris. Unfortunately for him, his ruinous career in England had been so short, and his self-conceit, and great opinion of his own knowingness, had made him so utterly reject the advice and experience of the very few friends who cared a rush for his welfare, that he was still in the state of a six-day-old puppy, and as unable ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... every system there was its own measure of truth. He was always setting his mind to think about itself, and felt that he worked both hard and well if he had gained a clearer glimpse into that dark cavern. "Yet I have not been altogether idle," he writes in December, 180O, "having in my own conceit gained great light into several parts of the human mind which have hitherto remained either wholly unexplained or most falsely explained." In March, 1801, he declares that he has "completely extricated the notions of time and space." "This," he says, "I have done; but I ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... that isn't why she likes me, old bunch of conceit! Though, I must admit, she likes you, Chet. She said you were not only kind, but you have a fair amount of intelligence—no, she didn't use those words, exactly, but I gathered that was what she meant. The funeral is to be tomorrow evening, you know. I ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... all that arrogance, conceit, selfishness, and high temper could render him. Yet he was a favorite with the fair sex for all that, as he had a manly figure, and a warm, caressing way when he chose, that won their admiration ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... the higher anthropoids. Doubtless it is hard to get anything like scientific evidence out of people so uncultivated, whose language and modes of conception are so alien to our own. Individual travellers, moreover, have been the victims of their own credulity, stupidity, self-conceit, and prejudice. "But the best testimony of the truth of the reports as to the actual belief in the facts, is the undesigned coincidence of the evidence from all quarters. When the stories brought by travellers, ancient and modern, learned ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... "unknowns" then,' exclaimed the Flower angrily. 'I am sure I am'—she hesitated a moment—'quite as lovely as a Rose, or any other garden beauty;' but she could not help hanging her head for very shame whilst uttering this piece of self-conceit. ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, infinitely wise and happy being. And though we are told that there are different species of angels; yet we know not how to frame distinct specific ideas of them: not out of any conceit that the existence of more species than one of spirits is impossible; but because having no more simple ideas (nor being able to frame more) applicable to such beings, but only those few taken from ourselves, and from the actions ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... his form alone Doth stroke his hound, at meat doth sit, And, for the soul that was his own, A fiend awhile inhabits it; While he sinks through the fiery throng, Down, to fill an evil bond, Since false conceit of others' wrong Hath wrought him to ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... not from any novel or fantastic modulation of it,—thus contrasting strongly with such rollicking, hilarious songsters as the bobolink, in whom we are chiefly pleased with tintinnabulation, the verbal and labial excellence, and the evident conceit and delight of ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... you, fond man! to regard that as glory when performed by a nation, which is condemned as a crime and a barbarism, when committed by an individual? In what vain conceit of wisdom and virtue do you find this degrading morality? Where is it declared that God, who is no respecter of persons, is a respecter of multitudes? Whence do you draw these partial laws of a powerful and impartial God? Man is immortal; but states ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... replied. "I was inclined to think so at first; your fine acting and man's conceit, I reckon. But my conceit has been punctured, and you've slipped a bit in your acting; therefore, to descend to the extremely common-place, the jig ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... The same equivocating conceit of the poet Will's title to identity with the lady's 'will' in all senses is pursued in Sonnet ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... was new. Mallet told him, that the newest piece was something called an Essay on Man, which he had inspected idly, and seeing the utter inability of the author, who had neither skill in writing nor knowledge of the subject, had tossed it away. Pope, to punish his self-conceit, told him the secret[194] ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... completely off his guard by her apparent acquiescence, and touched by her desire to accompany him, which he attributed, with the conceit of his kind, to his ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... he was not a fool. He was modest and diffident, but, as is generally the case with modest and diffident persons, there existed, somewhere within the recesses of his consciousness, a very good conceit of himself. He had already learnt, the trout, to look up through the water from his hole and compare the skill of the various anglers on the bank who were fishing for the rise. And he decided that morning, finally: 'Snyder shall catch me.' His previous ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... perhaps, you may meet them creeping away. They are a very stupid creature, utterly neglecting their safety. They are most like rats than anything. I have for necessity, in the wilderness, eaten of them. Their flesh is very white and well-tasted, but their ugly tails put me out of conceit with that fare. They climb trees as the racoons do. Their fur is not esteemed or used, save that the Indians spin it into ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... record. Already in 1592, Greene, in his posthumous Groat's-worth of Wit, had expressed the earliest vocation of Shakspeare in the following sentence: "There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers; in his own conceit the only Shakscene in a country!" This alludes to Shakspeare's office of recasting, and even recomposing, dramatic works, so as to fit them for representation; and Master Greene, it is probable, had suffered in his self-estimation, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... sin than bottomless conceit Can comprehend in still imagination! Drunken Desire must vomit his receipt, Ere he can see his own abomination. While Lust is in his pride, no exclamation Can curb his heat or rein his rash desire, Till like a ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... ever beheld. For, indeed, while I was in that prince's country, I could never endure to look in a glass after mine eyes had been accustomed to such prodigious objects, because the comparison gave me so despicable a conceit of myself. The captain said that while we were at supper he observed me to look at everything with a sort of wonder, and that I often seemed hardly able to contain my laughter, which he knew not well how to take, but imputed it to some disorder in my brain. I answered it was very true; ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... the greatest influence. 'There is no learning so proper for the direction of the life of man as Historie; there is no historie so well worth the reading as Tacitus. Hee hath written the most matter with best conceit in fewest words of any Historiographer ancient or moderne.'[4] This had been said at the beginning of the first English translation of Tacitus, and it was the view generally held when he came to be better known. He appealed to Englishmen of the ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... "philanthropy," just about as much consideration as Dian yields to the fast-yelping cur. It is all unfortunate, for poor Elihu Burritt will never be persuaded that he is a subject of derision only, instead of admiration; that men pause to regard him as a miracle of conceit and assurance rather than as a prophet; and that his commonplaces about "olive leaves," "calumets," "universal brotherhood," "fatherland," etc., have no more influence than the maudlin rigmarole of the madman ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • 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
... one of the Normans round, but, in the conceit of their skin-deep yesterday's civilization, look on Hereward as a barbarian Englishman, who has his throat tattooed, and wears a short coat, and prefers—the churl—to talk English in his own hall, though he can talk as good French as they when he is with them, beside three or four ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... syllables which rhyme, arranged in a particular order, and are given to a poet with a subject, on which he must write verses ending in the same rhymes, disposed in the same order. Menage gives the following account of the origin of this ridiculous conceit. Dulot, (a poet of the 17th century,) was one day complaining in a large company, that 300 sonnets had been stolen from him. One of the company expressing his astonishment at the number, "Oh," said he, "they are blank sonnets, or rhymes (bouts rimes) of all the sonnets I may have occasion ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... a long pause. The girls had been thrilled with the simple recital, so void of anything like conceit in the part that Denny himself had played ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... "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 ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... Roman Empire, of which we have several credible histories. Now, there are two modes of investigation open to us, the dogmatic and the inductive. We may take either. We may construct for ourselves, from the most flimsy suppositions, a metaphysical balloon, inflated with self-conceit into the rotundity of a cosmogony, according to which, in our opinion, the world should have been made, and we may paint it over with the figures of the various animals and noble savages which ought to have sprung up out of its fornea, and we may stripe ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... "It's like your conceit!" said Miss Cardigan. "Now, what is it that you require? I would like to know; that is, if you know yourself. It appears that you have ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... apparent as in her novels; she takes less delight in these creations, and evidently created them for purposes of dissection. She is never so weak in her other writings as in these essays, so wanting in genius and large-heartedness. She scourges many of the intellectual follies of the time, the conceit of culture, the pride of literature, and the narrowness of politics; but in most of the essays this ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... The man's self-conceit was unlimited; his sense of humour nil; and in less than a month he had been unanimously voted a "pukka[12] bounder" by that isolated community of Englishmen, who played as hard as they worked, and invariably "played the game"; a code of morals which had apparently been left ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... her whenever possible, said that "in most of her letters the wit and style are superior to any letters I have ever read but Madame de Sevigne's." A very pleasant tribute from one who had a goodly conceit of ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... such a plea, and at such a moment, might appear an ingenious and rhetorical artifice. In his argument, Mr. Roebuck charged the government, the officials at home, and those in command abroad, with incapacity, conceit, and indifference to the welfare of the soldiery. When at last the house divided, the motion was supported by 305 members, and opposed by only 148, leaving a majority of 157—one of the largest, on a great public question involving the fate of a government, ever known in the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the reason I was so violent about them. I had always supposed that I hated other people's cruelty because I was merciful, and their meanness because I was magnanimous, and their intolerance because I was generous, and their conceit because I was modest, and their selfishness because I was disinterested; but after listening to Brother Peck a while I came to the conclusion that I hated these things in others because I was cruel ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... of raree-show for their entertainment. At best, they consider men of genius only as artists formed for their use, who, if not in a situation to be paid with money, are yet to be easily recompensed by praise—by their praise—their praise! Heavens! what conceit! And these amateur-patrons really think themselves judges, and presume to advise and direct genius, and employ it to their petty purposes! Like that Pietro de Medici, who, at some of his entertainments, set Michael Angelo to make a statue of snow. My lord, did you ever happen to meet ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 old grey ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... there. A tram had sufficed to take them out; but for the return, Gerald, who had been drinking champagne, would not be content with less than a carriage. Further, he insisted on entering Paris by way of the Bois and the Arc de Triomphe. Thoroughly to appease his conceit, it would have been necessary to swing open the gates of honour in the Arc and allow his fiacre to pass through; to be forced to drive round the monument instead of under it hurt the sense of fitness which champagne engenders. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... to her early successes a charming modesty and an utter absence of conceit or of pose that added greatly to her reputation, and paved the way ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... also, that despair is the cause that there are so many that would fain be Atheists in the world: For because they have entertained a conceit that God will never be merciful to them; therefore they labour to persuade themselves that there is no God at all, as if their misbelief would kill God, or cause him to cease to be. A poor shift for an immortal soul, for a soul who liketh not to retain God in its knowledge! If this be ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... most confidential friend, was the real object of his love and pride, the slowly-growing work of secret hours. The subject of this picture was Christ teaching the Doctors. And in those doctors he had expressed all he had already observed of the pedantry and shallow conceit of those in whom mature years have not unfolded the soul: and in the child, all he felt that early youth should be and seek, though, alas! his own feet failed him on the difficult road. This one record of the youth of Jesus, had, at least, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... L. Stevenson I knew well as a lad and often met him and talked with him. He acted in private theatricals got up by the late Professor Fleeming Jenkin. But he had then, as always, a pretty guid conceit o' himsel'—which his clique have done nothing to check. His father and his grandfather (I have danced with his mother before her marriage) I knew better; but 'the family theologian,' as some of R. L. Stevenson's friends dabbed his father, was a very touchy theologian, and ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... herself rich in what I had given her, although she still rode to grand dinners in the elevated trains, carrying her slippers in a bag. It was her patient industry, her cheerful acceptance of endless household drudgery which kept me clear of self-conceit. I began to suspect that I would never be able to furnish her with a better home than that which we already owned, and this suspicion sometimes ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... come off with the loss. Their old master, Epicurus, seems to have had his brains so muddled and confounded with them, that he scarce ever kept in the right way; though the main maxim of his philosophy was to trust to his senses, and follow his nose. I will not take notice of his doting conceit, that the sun and moon are no bigger than they appear to the eye, a foot or half a yard over; and that the stars are no larger than so many glow-worms. But let us see how he manages his atoms, those almighty tools that do every thing of themselves, without the help of a workman. ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... retain an unfaltering faith in it for ourselves. The most dogged reformer distrusts himself every little while, and says inwardly, like Luther, "Art thou alone wise?" So he is compelled to exaggerate, in the effort to hold his own. The community is bored by the conceit and egotism of the innovators; so it is by that of poets and artists, orators and statesmen; but if we knew how heavily ballasted all these poor fellows need to be, to keep an even keel amid so many conflicting tempests of blame and praise, we should hardly reproach them. But the simple enjoyments ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... temptation to any murder which seemed either more than usually abominable, or more than usually difficult. Thus, when the two consuls were seated at his table, he burst out into sudden and profuse laughter; and, upon their courteously requesting to know what witty and admirable conceit might be the occasion of the imperial mirth, he frankly owned to them, and doubtless he did not improve their appetites by this confession, that in fact he was laughing, and that he could not but laugh, (and then ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... wretched folly, however much it may dress itself as wisdom. There are lures and deceits, enchanting at an early period, which, at a later one, ought to be outgrown, seen through and left behind, but not with arid and scoffing conceit. The way to escape sadness, when the light of one beautiful promise after another goes out, is to kindle in place thereof the light of one glorious reality after another. If the gathered experience we carry at evening renders worthless many things we prized in the morning, it should ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... other way. There were many letters received (the majority being in the female hand), but very few answered. The men received them indifferently, or as a matter of course. A few opened and read them on the spot, with a barely repressed smile of self-conceit, or quite as frequently glanced over them with undisguised impatience. Some of the letters began with "My dear husband;" and some were never called for. But the fact that the only regular correspondent of Five ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte |
