"Prig" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interesting to learn just what proportion of solitary children there is on the roll of those who have become great in our world. One thinks of John Ruskin, a particularly fine specimen of the highly focussed single son. Prig perhaps he was, but this world has a certain need of such prigs. A correspondent (a schoolmistress of experience) who has collected statistics in her own neighbourhood, is strongly of opinion not only that solitary children ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... exploit of the night before. Miss Day and Miss Marsh had repeated this good story. It had impressed them at the time, but they did not tell it to others in an impressive way, and the girls, who had not seen Prissie, but had only heard the tale, spoke of her to one another as an "insufferable little prig." ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... I have been," he said, sadly, and then with sudden conviction, as if he read her thoughts: "You do know! That prig of a parson has told you! Well, it's just as well you should ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... distinguished from vegetating) without briefly referring to certain dangers which lie in wait for the sincere aspirant towards life. The first is the terrible danger of becoming that most odious and least supportable of persons—a prig. Now a prig is a pert fellow who gives himself airs of superior wisdom. A prig is a pompous fool who has gone out for a ceremonial walk, and without knowing it has lost an important part of his attire, ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... these books. I throw out this list as a tentative effort in the direction of suggesting a hundred books with which to start a library. The young student will find much to amuse, and certainly nothing here to bore him. These books will not make him a prig, as Mr. James Payn said that Lord Avebury's list would make him a prig. They will make the dull man less dull, the bright man brighter. Here is good, cheerful, robust reading for boy and girl, for man and woman. There are many sins of omission, but none of commission. Our young ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... Buchanan, and editorial notices by Prof. Saintsbury and the late Richard Garnett, together afford nothing more than a perfunctory appreciation. Two writers, indeed, have attempted a more elaborate estimate: James Spedding, an able prig,[5] reviewed Peacock's novels in the Edinburgh of January 1839, and more than half a century later Mr. Herbert Paul contributed to the Nineteenth Century a paper on the same subject. Unluckily, the judgment ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the institute, and the manner in which I pestered distinguished authors for presentation copies of their books, in order to furnish the shelves of the library, I am driven to the painful conclusion that I must have been a terrible person in the days of my youth, and something of a prig to boot. Apropos of the begging for books as free gifts from authors, I had one or two amusing experiences. Among those whom I importuned in this impertinent way were Charles Kingsley, and the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Longley. Kingsley replied ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... Say pretty things to her—that pleases her more than anything: and make yourself useful, if you get the chance. She's not half a bad little woman; and if you help me, Linda, I shall get in with her yet in spite of her conceited prig of a husband." ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... married a wife like you, a girl with a level head and a stiff upper lip, a girl with not sufficient sentiment to make her a fool, nor enough brains to be a prig, but just clever enough to supply her husband's deficiencies, he would have been my heir, and this place and all my money would have been ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... "Odious prig!" thought Hannah. "He actually doesn't see I'm sitting on him!" Aloud she said, "No? But you can't marry ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... New Zealand on account, with other goods and chattels, of that moral corporation, the New Zealand trading and emigration company, which so liberally salaries him with L.600 per annum for the use of his "principle?" Again, who so fitted as the renowned Rowland Hill, the very prig pragmatic of pretension, for the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer, or First Lord of the Treasury if you will? A man who could contrive a scheme for annihilating some two millions of post-office revenue ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... who read this narrative are beginning to have an idea that this fourteen-year-old boy was by way of becoming a prig they may be relieved by the knowledge that when the youngster was not taking a hand in polemics in the smithy or the cobbler's cottage he was often enough leading the boys of the village into some kind of mischief. One old inhabitant came to have the fixed belief that ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... of the young women and most of the young men, who had dimly known of him as a sort of celebrity, and suspected him of being a prig, were reconciled, and accepted him for a nice fellow, and became of his opinion as to the details of the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... will send Tribulation hither as soon as ever he comes home. I could have brought young Mr. Prig to have kept my mistress company in the meantime. But ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... shrewdly. More than once she had felt that Terry was on the verge of becoming a complacent prig. So she countered ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... preaches, and Prince won't stand it. He told Arch he was a prig and a parson, and Arch told him he wasn't a gentleman. My boots! weren't they both mad, though! I thought for a minute they'd pitch into one another and have it out. Wish they had, and not gone stalking round stiff and glum ever since. Mac and I settle ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... this company. How now, my masters, is there to be no discipline when my foot is off the quarter-deck? If another man speaks above his breath, by the beard of father Neptune, I will stop his grog. Where was I? Let me take the latitude once more. Aye, here away bearing up to tell how I liked this prig of a town." ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... sneer now and then. They were laughed at, or railed at, as "unco gude," or as "prood, upsettin' creatures, with their meetings, and classes, and library books," and the names which in the Scotch of that time and place stood for "prig" and "prude," were freely bestowed upon them. But, all the same, it could not be denied that they were not "living to themselves," that they were doing their duty in all the relations of life, and of some of them it was said that "they might be heard o' yet" in wider ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... I'm beginning to like you a little. I perfectly loathed you at first. I thought you the most odious, self-satisfied, boresome elderly prig I ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... a cigaret case for Marion when the thought came to him. He had not bought a Christmas present for a girl, except flowers, since the first year he was at college. He had sent Delight one that year, a half-dozen little leather-bound books of poetry. What a precious young prig he must have been! He knew now that girls only pretended to care for books. They wanted jewelry, and they got past the family with it by pretending it was not real, or that they had bought it out of their allowances. One of Toots' ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... thank Heaven, even to war; but Mr. THURSTON had a great chance of doing serious good and he has only half used it. I am certain (though he may call me a prig for saying it) that if he had set himself to serve his country's cause through the great influence which the theatre commands, he could have done better work than this; and he ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... said Jock with a blush. "I was a little prig. Lucy, how strange it all is, like a picture one has seen somewhere, or a scene in a play or a dream! Sometimes I can remember little bits of it, just as he used to read it out to old Ford. Bits of it are all in and out of As You Like It, as if Touchstone had said them, or Jaques. Poor ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... pages into the breast of his jelab, and sat brooding over the paling fire for a while; then, by an abrupt transition, he said—"A fatal inclination for instructing the young was, perhaps, my undoing. I believe that I am a prig to the very fibres of me. If I had kept my didactics for my own sex, all might have gone well: I have never doubted but that I had things to teach my generation which it would be the happier of knowing. But it's a dangerous power to put into a man's hands ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... every young prig from the North is sure to say at first, but they get to be one of the 'fast ones' at last. I was quite sober myself when I first came here. I was from the land of steady habits, ye see—the only son of my mother, and she was a widder; but she died, and nobody cared for ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... view-halloo. Then there is the moist-eyed, mottle-cheeked, puffy, convivial sub, who is knowing on the condition of ale, and is too friendly with Saccone's sherry. The convivial sub, I am happy to say, is dying out. Then there is the prig, who is "going in" for his profession. I call him a prig, because when people are going in for anything they should have the good sense not to blow about it. To hear Mr. Shells and his prattle about Hamley ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... of view, a better filled life than James Tapster. How he had scorned the gambler, the spendthrift, the adulterer—in a word, all those whose actions bring about their own inevitable punishment! He had always been self-respecting and conscientious—not a prig, mind you, but inclined rather to the serious than to the flippant side of life; and, so inclining, he had found contentment ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Challoner; there is no deceiving you! I have seen Mr. Drummond pass and repass often enough; and—pardon me, if he be a friend—I thought from the cut of his coat that he was prig, and I have a horror ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... affection goes out to Tom Jones, his hatred to Blifil. Joseph Surface and Blifil are scoundrels, it is true; but deduct the scoundrelism, let Joseph be but a stale proverb-monger and Blifil a conceited prig, and the issue remains the same. Good humour and generosity carry the day with the popular heart all the world over. Tom Jones and Charles Surface are not vagabonds to my taste. They were shabby fellows both, and were treated a great deal too well. But there are other vagabonds whom I love, and ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... what he meant to do when they saw him draw first a D and then an O on the frame. But when they saw a C and a T follow, they thought what a conceited little prig Willie was! ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... at the relief held out to me. To sit in the company of that condescending prig, to bore him and to be bored by him, was a doleful grievance I did not wish to inflict upon myself, and I eagerly answered that the day had been a long and hard one, and that I would be glad to ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... a dear, plump little prig who adores the woman, and wears with as much gravity as her religious opinions—only eight, Jack!—a venerable horsehair atrocity which she calls her Bustle. I have just burned it, and the child is asleep ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... has said, "'at it was a trial to Jamie to tak her ony gait, an' I often used to say to her 'at I wondered at her want o' pride in priggin' wi' him. Ay, but if she could juist get a promise wrung oot o' him, she didna care hoo muckle she had to prig. Syne they quarrelled, an' ane or baith o' them grat (cried) afore they made it up. I mind when Jamie went to the fishin' Leeby was aye terrible keen to get wi' him, but ye see he wouldna be seen gaen ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... had been good friends after a fashion. He was a bit of a snob but not much of a prig. She had the feeling about him that if he could be weaned away from the family he might stand for something fine in the way of character. But he was an adept at straddling fences, so that he was never fully on one side or the other, no ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... wasn't much like her mother then, an' she hoped she wouldn't grow up a little prig, or some such thing. An' she told me"—here Sarah Emily paused dramatically, knowing she was by this reinstating herself into the family—"she told me to tell you she was goin' to drive out some day next week and see you all, an' see what ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... in that little vague complimentary speech, and she thought nothing at all about it. It is quite impossible for a man to talk all day without saying meaningless if not foolish things, unless he happens to be a very solemn prig who carefully considers his words and lays them down like dominoes; and Eden was not that. His naturalness was his great charm, and she judged his feelings from her own; his simple transparent kindliness was enough to account for all his attentions to her. After that day ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... his characters. It has the amateurish fault of halting the narrative to talk with the reader; and it moralizes to such an extent that the heroine (who is pictured as of almost angelic virtue) eventually becomes a prig and a preacher,—two things that a woman must never be. Nevertheless, the romance has a host of enthusiastic readers, and to criticize it adversely is to bring a storm about one's ears.] In The Blithedale Romance (1852) Hawthorne deals with the present rather than the past and apparently ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... that?" replied Sanine. "Literature is a very great, and a very interesting thing. Real literature, such as I mean, is not polemical after the manner of some prig who, having nothing to do, endeavours to convince everybody that he is extremely intelligent. Literature reconstructs life, and penetrates even to the very life- blood of humanity, from generation to generation. To destroy literature would be to take away all colour ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... "Now, my feller prig, honor's what I expect from you, and, to remind you of it, Levin, I'm a-goin' to pint this barking-iron at your mummer, so that if you patter a cackle, a blue plum will go right down ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... simple, he and she, And swell, and blood, and prig; And some had carts, and some a ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... assembled to witness our departure." It recounts all we saw, beginning with Washacum Pond, which we passed on our way to Worcester: "of considerable magnitude, ... and the small islands which dot its surface render it very beautiful." The buildings of New York impressed the little prig greatly. Trinity Church he pronounces "one of the most splendid edifices which I ever saw," and he waxes into "Opalian" eloquence over Barnum's American Museum, which was "illuminated from ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... is a prig," Theodora said restively. "She may be worse than you are, Hope; but I doubt it. Never mind," she added sagely to herself, as she left the room; "it is two weeks till then, and there's plenty of chance for things to happen, before ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... Marie Wilton," he interrupted impatiently, writing, "but Alfred Evelyn is such an awful prig." ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... I meet you here and there... When Shakespeare's played you hold a chair, And some defunct, moth-eaten star Enchants the mental prig you are... A radical comes down and shocks The atheistic orthodox? You're representing Common Sense, Mouth open, in the audience. And, sometimes, even chapel lures That conscious tolerance of yours, That broad and beaming view of truth (Including Kant ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... 'scaped from transportation All upon the briny main; So never give way to no temptation, And don't get drunk nor prig again! ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... merchant, as the prancing horses drew him away. "After all," he thought bitterly, "she might be happier with that rich prig than she could be with me." He stepped into the hall, and spoke to the servant. The man had his message ready. Miss Regina would see Mr. Goldenheart, if he would be so good as ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter "Little Prig"; Bun replied, "You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And a sphere. And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large as you, You are not so small as I, And not half so spry. I'll not deny you make A very pretty ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... expected the planter, but I did hope for the house. Nothing of the kind. All I saw was a moderate-sized square house, with piazzas and a flat roof, all sadly in need of paint. Now, I'm like Betsey Prig; 'I don't believe there's no sich person.' It's a myth, like the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... drinks water, who before drank beer; What's now the cause? we know the case is clear; Look in Prig's purse, the chev'ril there tells you Prig money wants, either to buy ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... clearing up. Even Mademoiselle Fifi seemed unable to keep still. He rose and sat down again. His harsh and clear eye was looking for something to break; suddenly, glaring at the lady with the mustache, the young prig drew his revolver: "You shall not witness it, you!" said he, and, without leaving his seat, he aimed. Two bullets fired in rapid succession put out the ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... the squirrel Had a quarrel; And the former called the latter "Little Prig." Bun replied, "You are doubtless very big; But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together To make up a year And a sphere; And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I'm not so large as you, You are ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... always managed to find time for, even when she did not get up as early as on this occasion. For her age, and perhaps because of her mother's death, which still seemed recent to Janice, she was rather serious-minded. Yet she was no prig, and she loved fun and was as alert for good times as any girl ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... his behalf, stating how much he had suffered in the cause of the ministry. Swift immediately carried his letter to Lord Bolingbroke, then Secretary of State, who railed much at Sacheverell, calling him a busy intermeddling fellow; a prig and an incendiary, who had set the kingdom in a flame which could not be extinguished, and therefore deserved censure instead of reward. Although Swift had not a much better opinion of the Doctor than Lord Bolingbroke, he replied, "True, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig. The only way your powers can become great is by exerting them outside the circle of your own narrow, special, selfish interests. And that is the reason of Christianity. Christ came into the world to save others, not to save himself; and no man is a true Christian who does not think constantly ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... is, that too many people take a fancy to it, and the competition is in consequence excessive. Every ignoramus of a fellow who finds that he hasn't brains in sufficient quantity to make his way as a walking advertiser, or an eye-sore prig, or a salt-and-batter man, thinks, of course, that he'll answer very well as a dabbler of mud. But there never was entertained a more erroneous idea than that it requires no brains to mud-dabble. Especially, there ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Mark, "you're not such a prig that you can't understand the possibility of a man's losing his head about ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... Benjamin, brother Benjamin!" in a scene of which all the rest is gone from my memory. Another favorite role of hers was Dickens' character of Sarah Gamp in the nocturnal interview with her friend Betsy Prig. As Mrs. Jarley exhibiting her wax tableaux she was inimitable. She did it with a snap. Once she was called upon to assist at an entertainment given at the house of the village blacksmith: she invented a charade which was both novel and ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... laughed Cripps, mimicking the boy's tones. "When I calls up at the school I'll let them all know what a nice young prig he is, coming down and drinking at my public-house and then turning round on me. Never fear! I'll let them know, my beauties! I'll have a talk with your Doctor and open his eyes for him. Good-bye, ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... for aw've nowt they can tak, Unless it's thease tatters at hing o' mi back; An if they prig them, they'll get suck'd do yo see, They'll be noa use to them, for they're little to me. Aw live, ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... as she watched her walk primly down the corridor and out of the side entrance. "That infant," she said to Elinor who had been leaving Judith out, "is trembling on the brink of becoming a little prig. We've got to see to it, Norn, that she doesn't ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... presence in the house. She knew the history of every other woman who had ever lived here since the place was built in the seventeenth century by an Alexander Hillard, an ancestor of Grandma's. A forbidding old prig he must have been, judging from the portrait over the dining-room mantelpiece, a worthy forbear of Ann Hillard, who had married Barrie's grandfather, John MacDonald of Dhrum. Barrie often said to herself that she did not feel related to Grandma. She wanted to be all ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... if you speak as the ordinary man, to ask if you will like the saint. But as the ordinary man you do like him. You revel in him. If you dislike him it is not because you are a nice ordinary man, but because you are (if you will excuse me) a sophisticated prig of a Fleet Street editor. That is just the funny part of it. The human race has always admired the Catholic virtues, however little it can practise them; and oddly enough it has admired most those of them ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... it gives us a pleasing sense of superior delicacy and humor. But it is none the less mean and ridiculous. Instead of condemnation, the world needs to bestir itself to remove the stupid and cruel creatures that make evil conduct necessary; for can anyone, not a prig, say that the small part of the human race that does well does so because it is naturally better than the ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... my bosom he burned. As he seared me he hissed: "You are wearing away. The good angels tell me you leave them today. You want to come down from the nails in the door. The victor must hang there three hundred years more. If any prig-saint would outvote all mankind He must use an immortally resolute mind. Think what the saints of Benares endure, Through infinite birthpangs their courage is sure. Self-tortured, self-ruled, they build their powers high, Until they are gods, overmaster the sky." Then he pulled out the ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... no prig, no saintly child, this little King Louis Seventeenth to be, he was just a sensitive, affectionate boy, whose winning manner and charm of person attracted all to him, and made him an especial pet of the older people from whose conversation ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... was not only girls who carried themselves differently before Beatrice: every man who met her seemed to try and show her the best in him, or at least to suppress any thought or act which might displease her. It was not that she was a prig, or an angel, but she herself was so fine and sincere, and treated all with such an impersonal and yet gracious manner that it became contagious, and everybody who met her imitated the model she unconsciously furnished. I was very much struck with this when she ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... enrichments which have made each edition an improvement on the last. The public notices were, on the whole, extremely kind, and some were unintentionally amusing. Thus one editor, putting two and two together, calculated that the writer could not be less than eighty years old; while another, like Mrs. Prig, "didn't believe there was no sich a person," and acutely divined that the book was a journalistic squib directed against my amiable garrulity. The most pleasing notice was that of Jean La Frette, some extracts from which I venture to append. It is true ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... was at his very strongest. He was an ideal Trustee. And what made this evident was the fact that he talked comparatively little about his trust, and never behaved in regard to it as a pedant or a prig. As long as the principle was firmly maintained, he bothered himself very little about matters ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... crowd in the Lung' Arno Corsos, throw himself, half-fainting, into a chair, overpowered by the atmosphere of evil passions, as he used to say, in that sensual and unintellectual crowd." Some people, on reading a passage like this, will rush to the conclusion that Shelley was a prig. But the prig is a man easily wounded by blows to his self-esteem, not by the miseries and imperfections of humanity. Shelley, no doubt, was more convinced of his own rightness than any other man of the same fine ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... with a touch of the prig in him. He was a Catholic with a Puritan temperament and a Gallic imagination. The idolatry of Toinette had, as a matter of fact, spoiled him a little; it was so much that he weakly questioned the reality of it, as if it were too good to be true. All the time he was in Ottawa ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... Graham—prig; What was thy delighted musing? Now accepting, now refusing, Till on the Admiralty pitch'd, Still would that thought his speech prolong; To gain the place for which he long had itch'd, He call'd on Bobby ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... began with a low laugh, "there lived a singularly sickening little prig of a kid, pampered and spoiled to his selfish marrow. Though I hate to roast a small boy, I am bound to say that this one was pretty nearly a total loss—and he was I. He threatened to grow into a more odious ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... was silence. Both men felt uncomfortable. Led by some sudden, ungovernable impulse, they had both gone further than their slight acquaintance justified. Olva was convinced that he had made a fool of himself, that he had talked like a prig. Lawrence was groping hopelessly amongst a forest of dark thought for some little sensible thing that he might say. He found nothing and so relapsed, with false, ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... taken a disgust to it. At such schools as he had been able to frequent, he had gained the character of a boy rather insusceptible of ordinary teaching; and his letters (they are rare throughout his life) show him to us as something very like a juvenile prig. According to his own account, he "thought for at least eight years" without being able to pen a line, or at least a page; and the worst accusation that can truly be brought against him is that, by his own confession, he left off reading when ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... East"—he said. His boast was, first, that he was an Oxford Man of rare and shining parts, which may or may not have been true—I did not know enough to check his statements—and, secondly, that he "had his hand on the pulse of native life"—which was a fact. As an Oxford Man, he struck me as a prig: he was always throwing his education about. As a Mohammedan faquir—as McIntosh Jellaludin—he was all that I wanted for my own ends. He smoked several pounds of my tobacco, and taught me several ounces ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... for aw've nowt they can tak, Unless it's thease tatters' at hing o' mi back; An' if they prig them, they'lt get suck'd do yo see, They'll be noa use to them, for they're little to me, Aw live, an' ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... shouldn't call her that," she said; "but she isn't very mischievous, and she's as honest as the day is long. She positively abhors deceit. And, somehow, Alicia, all the things that you think are fun, are the sort of things she doesn't stand for. That's all. Doll isn't a prig,—is she, Bernice?" ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... thievishness, rapacity, kleptomania, Alsatia^, den of Cacus, den of thieves. blackmail, extortion, shakedown, Black Hand [U.S.]. [person who commits theft] thief &c 792. V. steal, thieve, rob, mug, purloin, pilfer, filch, prig, bag, nim^, crib, cabbage, palm; abstract; appropriate, plagiarize. convey away, carry off, abduct, kidnap, crimp; make off with, walk off with, run off with; run away with; spirit away, seize &c (lay violent hands on) 789. plunder, pillage, rifle, sack, loot, ransack, spoil, spoliate^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... as beneath the dignity of the Mortons, but Herbert had loudly insisted on inviting Rose for the evening and had had his way, but after all she would not come. Herbert felt himself aggrieved, and said she was as horrid a little prig as Constance, who on her side felt a pang of envy as she thought of Rose going to church and singing hymns and carols to her father and mother, while she, after a struggle under the mistletoe, which made her hot and miserable, had to sit playing waltzes. One good-natured ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... idiot! Bully for the guy! You could be a prig yourself, if you would only try! Altruistic asses keep the fun alive; Clowns are growing scarcer; hurry ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... others of that type or to have her dawdle over glasses, tall, broad, or short, in places of general democratic assemblage; and he told her so. I believe it was about here that she began to find him something of a prig and a doctrinaire; and she was not incapable, under provocation, of mentioning her impressions. It was about here, I suspect, that he told her something of Johnny McComas and his origins—at least he once or twice spoke of Johnny with a certain sharp scorn to me. He assuredly spoke of other country ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... material recreations of garrison life, and a gentle check upon the younger officers. For, while Peter did not gamble or drink, there was yet an unobtrusive and gentle dignity in his abstention that relieved him from the attitude of a prig or an "example." Mrs. Lascelles was popular with the officers, and accepted more tolerantly by the wives, since they recognized her harmlessness. Once or twice she was found apparently interested in the gesticulations of a few "friendlies" who had penetrated the parade ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... the least scrap of a prig. She never preaches or finds fault with one, and she's just as jolly as ever she can be; and yet she always makes one feel ashamed if one isn't doing what's absolutely straight. I've never seen her play a nasty, mean trick, nor heard her say anything horrid or unkind since she came; and if ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... were pure joy to them both. In them they went back to the early world. They did not make the hard and self-conscious imaginative effort of the prig to hurl themselves into an historic past. They just let the land and its memories take them. As, sitting on the warm ground among the wild myrtle bushes, they looked across the emerald green unruffled waters to Salamis, that very long isle with its ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... camps and the speech of soldiers. Yet he not merely kept his own lips" clean, but he shrank, as from a blow, from every coarse or indecent speech in others. He did not go around correcting people. He was too sensible for that. He was not a prig or a prude. But he knew, as we know, that vile speech is hateful to God; and, as so many of us do not do, he set his face ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... know; she shrieked when they called to her to come to me, and cried, 'That's ugly Corney! I won't have ugly Corney!' So you may see how I am used! But I've got her under my thumb at last, and she's useful. Then there's that prig Mark! I always liked the little wretch, though he is such a precious humbug! He's in bed—put out his knee, or something. He never had any stamina in him! Scrofulous, don't you know! They won't let me go near him—for fear of frightening him! But that's that braggart, major Marvel—and a marvel ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... though sand-blind by nature, and bigoted by Education, one of the truly great men of England, and "her men are of men the chief," alike in the dominions of the understanding, the reason, the passions, and the imagination. No prig shall ever persuade me that Rasselas is not a noble performance—in design and execution. Never were the expenses of a mother's funeral more gloriously defrayed by son, than the funeral of Samuel Johnson's mother by the price of Rasselas, written for the pious purpose of laying her head ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... prayer meetings, nor the trip to the Holy Land that he made in one long vacation ever deceived anyone who knew the fellow into thinking him a prig. He never pretended that his ideals of practical conduct were a bit higher than those of scores of the men who had none of these interests of his. So marked was this absence of the goody-goody in Tip that I, though I recalled his face and vaguely ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... of the fine gentleman from London," whispered Tina rather venomously to Nora when the game was finished. "I hate a town prig like poison." ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... been done by Dryden. Gray, Johnson, Richardson, Fielding, are all highly esteemed by the great body of intelligent and well informed men. But Gray could see no merit in "Rasselas," and Johnson could see no merit in "The Bard." Fielding thought Richardson a solemn prig, and Richardson perpetually expressed contempt ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... acquire applause, Try various arts to get a doubtful cause; Or, as a dancing master in a jigg, With various steps instructs the dancing prig; Or as a doctor writes you different bills; Or as a quack prescribes you different pills; Or as a fiddler plays more tunes than one; Or as a baker bakes more bread than brown; Or as a tumbler tumbles up and down; So does our author, rummaging his ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... time sailed with d'Artagnan to Newcastle and rode with him toward Belle Isle, with him frustrated the machinations of overweening Aramis and yawned over the insufferable virtues of that most precious prig of all Romance, Raoul, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... got out of the room as quickly as he could, inwardly denouncing his friend Tom Towers as a prig and a humbug. "I know he wrote those articles," said Bold to himself. "I know he got his information from me. He was ready enough to take my word for gospel when it suited his own views, and to set Mr Harding up before the public as an impostor on no other testimony than my chance conversation; ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... the purely academic training that produces the prig. Football, cricket, and other athletic sports are not favourable to his growth; and he receives equally little encouragement from his companions. The important point about him is that he is not a natural product at all, but the outcome of an artificial ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... written all these essays as a member of the public, as one who has to find a right attitude towards art so that the arts may flourish again. The critic is sure to be a charlatan or a prig, unless he is to himself not a pseudo-artist expounding the mysteries of art and telling artists how to practise them, but simply one of the public with a natural and human interest in art. But one of these essays is a defence of criticism, and I ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... 'Don't take it like that. From your point of view you were quite right to call me a blackguard. And, mind you, there are plenty of people in the world who aren't blackguards. There's my brother, for instance. He's a bit of a prig—in fact, he's as priggish as he well can be—but he's never done anything but run straight. I don't suppose he could go ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... must be made to see clearly that he must make his choice between the evil doing and you—that he cannot be chums with both. Chums should have strict honour between themselves, and always be ready to stand up for one another. A good chum prevents one becoming a prig, and there is nothing short of actual vice which is so hateful in a boy as priggishness. There is as much difference between a prig and a right- minded boy as between chalk and cheese. A right-minded boy goes on his way trying to do right and live honestly ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... his favorite newspaper in favor of free trade and Mr. Cleveland. History? The Wall Street man rarely knows in what year Columbus discovered America, and would be in straits wild enough to horrify that talented arch-prig, Mr. Andrew Lang, if you mentioned either Cortes or Pizarro. Fiction? He admired Robinson Crusoe when a boy, and since then he has read a few translated volumes of Dumas the elder. Poetry? He doesn't like it "for a cent"; but he once did come across ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... "Promise me, swear it, that until you are thirty you'll never do anything your instincts and your intelligence don't assure you is right,—really right without any sophistry. Of course I mean in regard to men. I don't want you to make yourself into a prig—but I am ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... prig; I can see that, Aunt Clara. I can tell by the way she walks and moves around. She hasn't any ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... had fucked her, she laid still on the bed and before she washed her cunt examined the handkerchief very carefully. "It's a rare good new one, it will pop for half-a-crown where I am known, where did you prig it?" looking at me as she spoke, and then added, "Yet you look like a gentleman too." I recollect it as well as if it were yesterday. I at that time used to take pleasure in laying as long as I could after I had spent, then getting up and kneeling between the girl's ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... is real air. The critic may wince and make faces over lapses from taste, and protest against a literary style which cannot be defended from any point of view; yet there is Mary in flesh and blood, and there is Caskoden, a veritable prig of a good fellow—there, indeed, are all the dramatis personae, not merely true to life, ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... winked on Adderly, and whispered to him slily, "Smoke the prig, Adderly, smoke him." Then turning to Jones, said to him, "I am very glad, sir, you have chosen our regiment to be a volunteer in; for if our parson should at any time take a cup too much, I find you can supply his place. I presume, sir, you have been at ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... funny boy you are!" she said. "But you must take care, you know; you have all the makings of a perfect prig." ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... Cecil as subtle, and pleased him. It put their visitor in the position of a prig. Somewhat mollified, ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... imagine the situation of an adventurer who had figured virtually in many lives, to resemble that of the late revered Mr. Prig Bentham, when sitting like a contrite spider at the centre of his 'panopticon'; all the lines, which meet in a point at his seat, radiate outwards into chambers still widening as they increase their distance. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... always plenty of people to sneer at the teetotaler; people who make money out of drink naturally do so; people who drink themselves naturally do so; the unmarried girl may do so, thinking that the teetotaler is a prig and not quite a man. But there is one great class of the community, the most important of all, which does not sneer at teetotalers, and that is the wives. They know better, nay, they know best, and their verdict stands and will remain against that of all others. I am now addressing the ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... infer that you and I are alike? What does the old prig mean? I'll banter him, and laugh at him, and leave him. [Aside.] I fancy you have ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... but nice brother read the marriage service. He reads better than any one I know, but he is not a bit of a prig really, when you come to ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... the reply. "Nasty, consequential little prig! And who is he, I should like to know? Panjandrums are not to be mentioned in the same breath as Dodos—we are a much more ancient family than they are, and, besides, we are ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... prig of the first water, and there was no use arguing with him. I thought I had best meet him on his own ground, so I said, "Your clients, sir, are happy in having so resolute a guardian of their confidence. I am ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... point. Its emotional qualities are due to its associations. Perhaps that is how it has always been, with ballads. From the standard of pure aesthetics, one ought not to consider "associations" in judging a poem or a tune, but with a song like "Tipperary" you would be an inhuman prig if you didn't. We all have our "associations" with this particular tune. For me, it recalls a window in Hampstead, on a grey day in October 1914. I had been having the measles, and had not been allowed to go back to school. Then suddenly, down the street, that tune ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... that very likely I am a prig. I understand the futility of what I am trying to do. I see that I have been mistaken in my power. I'm going ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... irriguous, or champaign? Whether they tread the vale of prose, or climb, And whet their appetites on cliffs of rhyme; The college sloven, or embroider'd spark; The purple prelate, or the parish clerk; The quiet quidnunc, or demanding prig; The plaintiff tory, or defendant whig; Rich, poor, male, female, young, old, gay, or sad; Whether extremely witty, or quite mad; Profoundly dull, or shallowly polite; Men that read well, or men that only write; Whether peers, porters, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... and peremptory convention which dictates what may be talked about and what may not. No society in the world is under so oppressive a taboo. They must not speak of anything emotional or intellectual, at the cost of being thought a fool or a prig. They talk about games, they gossip about boys and masters, sometimes their conversation is nasty and bestial. But it conceals very real if very fitful emotions; yet it is impossible to recall or to reconstruct; and when older people ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... spight of this new Abjuration, Did banter the lawful King of this great Nation: Who call'd God's anointed a foolish old Prig, Was both a base and unmannerly Whigg: But since he is Dead No more shall be said, For he in Repentance has laid down his Head; So I wish each Lady, who in mournful Tone is, In Charity Grieve for ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... her conversation. "And I wanted to talk over old times with him so badly. His poor wife was my greatest friend. Mira Montanaro, daughter of the great banker, you know. It's not possible that that miserable little prig is my poor Mira's girl. The heiress of all the Montanaros in a black-lace gown worth twopence! When I think of her mother's beauty and her toilets! Does she ever wear the sapphires? Has anyone ever seen her in them? Eleven large stones in ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... Come True"[24] again brings us in touch with Tancred Ennever, the stupid hero of "The Transient Guest." In the meantime he has become an almost intolerable prig. It is probable that Saltus meant more by this fable than he has let appear. The roar of the waves on the coast of Lesbos is distinctly audible for a time and the denoument seems to belong to quite another story.... Ennever has turned author. We are ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... I mean—is with her; I am certain of it. The girl was always very much attached to her, and I know the sly old devil has been sent to negotiate with me, but I declined. I knew better than to involve myself in a controversy with an old she prig who deals in nothing but maxims, and morals, and points of duty. I consequently sent her off in double quick time, as they say. Get me some burgundy and water. I really am not well. There is something wrong, Gibson, whatever it is; but I think it's nothing but anxiety. Gibson, listen. I have never ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... prig! They should bottle him in spirits of wine as a specimen. It's the only thing he'll ever be fit for," remarked Mr. Page, who rarely said so sharp ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... world, such as Mario and Grisi and Rachel; blue-stockings like Lady Eastlake and Madame Mohl; Mademoiselle de Montijo, who captivated an Emperor, and Lola Montez, who ruled a kingdom. No advantages of social education will convert a fool or a bore or a prig or a churl into an agreeable member of society; but, where Nature has bestowed a bright intelligence and a genial disposition, her gifts are cultivated to perfection by such surroundings as Frederick Leveson enjoyed in early ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... perusal of that monstrous Autobiography, he must have been a man almost as astounding as his father. Now Franklin could only have written his "immortal classic" from one of three motives: (1) Sheer conceit. He was a prig, but he was not conceited. (2) A desire that others should profit by his mistakes. He never made any mistakes. Now and again he emphasizes some trifling error, but that is "only his fun." (3) A desire that others should profit by the ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... some pretty Anacreontics, but his turn of mind was rather grave than gay. He was generally pompous, which together with his self-sufficiency led Cowper, somewhat irreverently, to call him a "prig." Among his few light and humorous snatches, we have lines written in ridicule of ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... want o' sense for want o' affection laird. The lad is a conceited prig. He's set up wi' himsel' about something he is going to do. Let him hae the money. I would show him you can gie as grandly as he can ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Renshaw. "Why Hermia asks such people I can't imagine. You're never certain whom you're asked to meet nowadays. Prig, isn't he?" ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... was two months ago. I don't think I am the morally self-satisfied prig I was two months ago.... I'd be easier on anything now, even a cat. But don't think I mean more than I do mean, Duane," she added hastily. "I've missed you a little. I want you to be nice to me.... After all, you're the oldest ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... appealing hands. "But, I protest, it was the narrow-mindedness of that pernicious prig, your cousin—who firmly believes himself to be an improved and augmented edition of ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... preparing myself for a governess, that I should make a point of honor of such things, little pragmatical prig that you are; nor are you, that I know of. You will always have plenty of money. 'Rich as a Jew' is a proverb, you know, all the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... daughter that she was a frivolous fool! What was his conscience driving at, he wondered. How could he, who did not know her in the least, commit such an act of impertinence as tell her how much he disapproved of her? It would be the act of a prig, ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... shield your reputation, you know." He looked about carelessly, his glance settling on the open doors of the Gayety. "Don't strike me this is exactly the sort of place for one of your moral respectability to be discovered in. Lord! but what would the old man or that infernal prig of a brother of yours say, if they could only see you now? A monologue artist at the Gayety was bad enough, but this, ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... partly the result of that audacious impulse that had led her—a modest virgin—to seek a gentleman in this personal fashion. Modesty in a young girl has a comfortable satisfying charm, recognized easily by all humanity; but he must be a sorry knave or a worse prig who is not deliciously thrilled when Modesty puts her charming little foot just over the ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... ever found the young creature again he would befriend her, if she were still in need of a friend, and take the consequences. He was not so irresistible, he told himself, as to be necessarily dangerous to the peace of mind of all the women of his acquaintance. He had acted the part of a prig and he was well punished ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... Reverend Ronald Macdonald, and the most disagreeable, condescending, ill-tempered prig ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... But it has been challenged and (what is perhaps more insidious) it has been discovered. No one need be browbeaten any longer into accepting it. No one need be afraid, for instance, that his fate is sealed because some young prig may call him a dualist; the pint would call the quart a dualist, if you tried to pour the quart into him. We need not be afraid of being less profound, for being direct and sincere. The intellectual world may ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... never be forgiven. And, after all, remember, it is no business of mine. I know of agents at the docks who do such things as a matter of course. It is only that I happen to know that Harris at Liverpool does not. Very possibly old Frith knows all about it. I should only get scored down as a meddlesome prig, worse hypocrite ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the exaggerated admiration with which our professional censors greet the crowd of new-comers, it is instructive to note the contempt into which some of our old gods have fallen. The Superior Person we have always with us. He is, in his essence, a Prig; but when, as occasionally happens, his heart and intelligence ripen, he loses the characteristics which once made him a superior person. Whilst he holds his native status his special art is not to admire anything which common people find admirable. A year or two ago it became the ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... says that McFee found little intellectually in common with his engineering colleagues, that is not to say that he was a prig. He was interested in everything that they were, but in a great deal more, too. And after obtaining his extra chief's certificate from the London Board of Trade, with a grade of ninety-eight per cent., he was not inclined ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... description of the sinking of a packet-boat, and the first sound and sight of the sea—the author's childhood at Uphill Parsonage—his reminiscences of the clock of Wells Cathedral—and some real villatic sketches—a portrait of a Workhouse Girl—some caustic remarks on prosing and prig parsons, commentators, and puritanical excrescences of sects—to some unaffected lines on the village school children of Castle-Combe, and their annual festival. This is so charming a picture of rural joy, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... his side. In all this there is no passion, and scarcely anything that can be called preference. The hero intrigues just as he wears a wig; because, if he did not, he would be a queer fellow, a city prig, perhaps a Puritan. All the agreeable qualities are always given to the gallant. All the contempt and aversion are the portion of the unfortunate husband. Take Dryden for example; and compare Woodall with Brainsick, or Lorenzo ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to ask your permission to do so, Miss Eleanor,' he said slightly embarrassed, 'and I was prig enough to think you would allow it, but when you told me of your engagement I did not dare. After you left I had a dread that something might happen, and I could not rest satisfied until I had made up my mind to come on and see that you had arrived safely. I thought you would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... character, hers was the stronger personality. It was because Elisabeth was so much to him that he now and then worried her easy-going conscience with his strictures; for, to do him justice, the boy was no prig, and would never have dreamed of preaching to anybody except her. But it must be remembered that Christopher had never heard of such things as spiritual evolutions and streams of tendency: to him right or wrong meant heaven or hell—neither ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... its effect upon Mr. Tyrrel. "Well, well, man," replied he, "we will see what can be done. Order and subordination are very good things; but people should know how much to require. As you tell the story, I cannot see that you are greatly to blame. Marlow is a coxcombical prig, that is the truth on't; and if a man will expose himself, why, he must even take what follows. I do hate a Frenchified fop with all my soul: and I cannot say that I am much pleased with my neighbour Underwood for taking the part of such a rascal. Hawkins, I think, is your name? You may call on ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... "You're a solemn prig, Prendick, a silly ass! You're always fearing and fancying. We're on the edge of things. I'm bound to cut my throat to-morrow. I'm going to have a damned Bank Holiday to-night." He turned and went out into the moonlight. "M'ling!" he ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... hurried up to him, he turned and stiffly saluted the Mayor of Falaise. Admiral de Saint Vilquier had no liking for M. de Wissant—a cold prig of a fellow, and yet married to such a beautiful, such a charming young woman, the daughter, too, of one of the Admiral's oldest friends, of that Admiral de Kergouet with whom he had first gone to sea a matter of fifty years ago! The lovely Claire ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... disproves the oft-found myth that a dash of Mephisto in a young man is a valuable adjunct. John Jay was neither precocious nor bad. It is further a refreshing fact to find that he was no prig, simply a good, healthy youngster who took to his books kindly and gained ground—made head upon the whole ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... past has set up as the incarnation of all that is best in wit and virtue—is a scholar and a gentleman. He is, moreover, on his own showing, a perfect combination of humour, wisdom, and honour; and yet, in spite of it all, not a bit of a prig. It is true that when he donned the dress-coat, and "Punch" and "Toby" put on airs as "Mr. Punch" and "Toby, M.P.," he became milder at the expense of some of his political influence. Yet what he lost in power he gained in respectability, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... spirit. "Who knows if it wasn't the only really happy thing in her life? The snobs and prigs all scold her and preach sermons at her—they did it in her lifetime: they do it now——" "Oh come, I'm neither a snob nor a prig," put in Celia, looking up in her turn, and tempering with a smile the energy of her tone—"I don't blame her for her Bothwell; I don't criticize her. I never was even able to mind about her killing Darnley. You see I take ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... "bringing in Private J. Wilson, 19th Cavalry, who was wounded, under a heavy fire from the Indians, at the imminent risk of his own life," the sergeant had never received a harsh word or a rebuke that he did not know was merited. But the sullen fury that this young prig aroused in him was unbearable. He felt that his inherent subordination to discipline ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... little sitting-room; and we toasted the bread ourselves, which reminds me of a little circumstance not unworthy of being set down among these minutiae. Happening both of us to be engaged a few minutes one morning, when we had a young prig of a Scotch lawyer to breakfast with us, my dear sister, with her usual simplicity, put the toasting-fork with a slice of bread into the hands of this Edinburgh genius. Our little book-case stood on one side of the fire. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... hard luck. Believe me, father, I'm no prig, but I do realize the necessity for grafting a little gringo hustle to our family tree. Consider the supergrandson you will have if you leave me to follow my own desires in this matter. In him will be blended the courtliness ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... Bain's most interesting little book on John Stuart Mill, the youth at nine was appointed to supervise the education of the rest of the family, "a position more pleasing to his vanity than helpful to his manners." That he was a beautiful prig at this ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... is one of those few rather brilliant persons who have contrived to keep sane without becoming a prig," she remarked. ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his being requested to name his own terms of compensation. Johnson signified his displeasure at Mr. Mason's conduct very strongly; but added, by way of showing that he was not surprised at it, 'Mason's a Whig.' Mrs. Knowles (not hearing distinctly): 'What! a prig, Sir?' Johnson: 'Worse, Madam; a Whig! But ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... unmake than to make a gentleman; I have known many gentlemanly youths go to college, and return anything but what they went. Young Mr. Platitude did not go to college a gentleman, but neither did he return one; he went to college an ass, and returned a prig; to his original folly was superadded a vast quantity of conceit. He told his father that he had adopted high principles, and was determined to discountenance everything low and mean; advised him to eschew trade, and to purchase him a living. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to say, he was not a prig, or a snob, but a gentleman. And if he remembered that he "came over in the Mayflower," it was because he felt that that circumstance bound him to higher enterprises, to better work, than other men's. And he believed in his heart, as he wrote in the opening chapter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... notes in 1865, 'did their utmost to make me squint intellectually about this time, but I never learnt the trick.' A very different writer of whom he read a good deal at college was Baxter, introduced to him, I guess, by one of his father's essays. 'What a little prig I was when I made all these antitheses!' he says in 1865. 'I learnt it of my daddy' is the comment of 1880. 'Was any other human being,' he asks in 1880, 'ever constructed with such a clumsy, elaborate set of principles, setting his feelings going as if they were clockwork?' ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... proceeded to make themselves quite at home. Ste. Marie regarded them with a reflective and not over-enthusiastic eye, and he wondered a good deal why he had been asked here to meet them. He was as far from a prig or a snob as any man could very well be, and he often went to very Bohemian parties which were given by his painter or musician friends, but these people seemed to him quite different. The men, with the exception of two eminent ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... do? Neither of them has any effective choice in the matter: their children must either go to the schools that are, or to no school at all. And as the duke thinks with reason that his son will be a lout or a milksop or a prig if he does not go to school, and the coster knows that his son will become an illiterate hooligan if he is left to the streets, there is no real alternative for either of them. Child life must be socially organized: no parent, rich or poor, can choose institutions that do not exist; and the ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... rude and rough form of practical joking. The players 'dumfounded' each other with sudden blows stealthily dealt. cf. Shadwell's The True Widow (1678), Act iv, I. Prig in the theatre says: 'You shall see what tricks I'll play; 'faith I love to be merry'. (Raps people on their backs, and twirls their hats, and then looks demurely, as if he did not do it.) The pit, often a very ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn |
