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More "Conceit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Benjy, whose suavity had never wavered, and who appeared to take a greater interest in some approaching race than in his coming marriage. But Shelton knew from his own sensations that this could not really be the case; it was merely a question of "good form," the conceit of a superior breeding, the duty not to give oneself away. And when in turn he marked the eyes of Stroud fixed on Benjy, under shaggy brows, and the curious greedy glances of the racing man, he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Women are beginning to do much of the writing and public speaking, and not only are they going to extol us (to the fattening of our conceit) but they are bound to disclose, even to the unthinking, certain defects of character in themselves which their silence had veiled. Their competition, too, in several kinds of affairs will slowly but certainly provoke ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... statistical work, falls into the great error of most American writers—that of lauding his own country and countrymen, and inducing them to believe that they are superior to all nations under heaven. This is very injudicious, and highly injurious to the national character: it upholds that self-conceit to which the Americans are already so prone, and checks that improvement so necessary to place them on a level with the English nation. The Americans have gained more by their faults having been pointed out by travellers than they will choose to allow; and, from his moral courage in fearlessly ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... go to Europe, you'll wait in vain. You must make the opportunity. One must have youth to enjoy Italy thoroughly. The desire to go becomes less and less as one grows older. Besides, it completes every man's education; it broadens his charity and smooths down the rough edges of his conceit. I'll put the proposition in a way you can't possibly get round. You've simply got to go. You will always have that thousand, so don't worry about that. You have twenty-five hundred on hand, you say. With that you can see Italy like a prince for three months. I know the tongue ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... not known in the long ago, when Ezekiel Bailey pictured in his mind how they might be made, and it was in the little hamlet of East Winthrop that the conceit of their manufacture was hatched and executed. Ezekiel Bailey was, in the days prior to the war of 1812, looked upon as a very likely boy. He was studious and industrious, and while other boys of the village were out in the white oak groves setting box traps for gray squirrels, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... to at the best? There was no conceit in the thought that, had he beckoned, Joyce would have leaped into the circle of his love and protection. Not in any low or self-seeking sense would the girl have responded—of that, too, he was aware; but as a lovely blossom ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... 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
... I speak is the thing to be desired by all. We must try to see things as they are, not obscured by prejudice or privilege or sentiment or selfishness; and sin does not cloud the vision so much as stupidity and conceit. I have a dream, then, of what I desire and aspire to, though it is hard to put it into words. I want to learn to distinguish between what is important and unimportant, between what is beautiful and ugly, between what is true and false. The ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... near relations. They had no personal quarrels. Her own destiny was settled and Don Carlos's own efforts to wrest the Crown from her son had ended in failure. Why, therefore, any need for further enmity? I am reminded of a quaint conceit of Isabella's, which amused not only her but also her friends. Isabella had grown to be a woman of large proportions—in fact, of unmistakable proportions. One of her favourite ladies-in-waiting was similarly endowed by nature, if not more so. Isabella's hospitality ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... Betty," cried Anita, interrupting him. "She can swim better than I can, and I thought I was pretty good." There was no conceit in this remark—it was simply ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... Why should you not be loved for yourself? You have an interesting appearance. I think you very pretty. You have choice accomplishments and agreeable conversation and the sweetest temper in the world. You want a little self-conceit, my dear. If I were you and admired, I should never think of ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... have are taken on authority and trust Others adore all of their own side Pitiful ways and expedients to the jugglers of the law Prepare ourselves against the preparations of death Profession of knowledge and their immeasurable self-conceit Quiet repose and a profound sleep without dreams Reasons often anticipate the effect Refusin to justify, excuse, or explain myself Remotest witness knows more about it than those who were nearest Restoring what has been lent us, ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... of you. I've known heaps of girls, but never one who would have taken it like that. You don't seem to have a scrap of conceit—" ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... proclamation was so moderate as to seem pusillanimous. John Randolph called it an apology. Thomas Jefferson did not mean to have war. With that extraordinary confidence in his own powers, which in smaller men would be called smug conceit, he believed that he could secure disavowal and honorable reparation for the wrong committed; but he chose a frail intermediary when he committed this delicate ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... Ball. "I can tell you, without self-conceit or any such thing, that where I loved I'd stick, and the woman as shared my life would share my all. There's a lot in me only hid because nothing have yet happened to draw it out. I'm busy and I'm wishful to do my little bit of work in the world for other ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... famous Chao She. From his boyhood, he had been wholly engrossed in the study of war and military matters, until at last he came to believe that there was no commander in the whole Empire who could stand against him. His father was much disquieted by this overweening conceit, and the flippancy with which he spoke of such a serious thing as war, and solemnly declared that if ever Kua was appointed general, he would bring ruin on the armies of Chao. This was the man who, in spite of earnest protests from his own mother and the veteran statesman Lin ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... meaning of his pious conceit, and I offer it as a solution of what has long served for a riddle to the visitors of our cathedral. Beyond this, your readers and myself may be equally indifferent to such cabalistical quaintness. But let ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... a little sigh, "the world's a disappointing place at best, and I suppose it serves us right for centuries of conceit ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... of being made into a somebody; it fairly hurts me, and if I had stayed a week with you and the host of people you had about you, I should have shriveled up into the size of a pea. I can't deny having streaks of conceit, but I know enough about myself to make my rational moments bid me keep in the background, and it excruciates me to be set up on a pinnacle. So don't blame me if I fled in terror, and that I am looking forward ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... we have thought over heartless professions, and cannot help conceiving that of a postman, (it may be conceit!) the most callous and unfeeling of all. He is waited for with more anxiety than any guest of the morning; for his visits invariably convey something new to the mind. He is not love! but he bears it in his pocket; he cannot be friendship! but he daily hawks about its assurances. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... commanding officer. The keen analysis of the characters he portrays enables us humanly to understand the catastrophe on the plains of Sedan. The whole Second Empire undermined by corruption; the army, head and front, honeycombed with loose morals, favoritism, and boundless conceit,—we begin to perceive the main reasons underlying the utter defeat of a gallant nation. And this all the more when, side by side with the sombre painting of Zola, we read the God-fearing letters written home from the reeking battlefields by William ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... despair of soon putting him and la Peyrade at loggerheads. In the management of a newspaper there are lots of inevitable disagreements, and by always taking the side of the fool against the clever man, I can increase the conceit of one and wound the conceit of the other until life together becomes impossible. Besides, you spoke just now of political danger; now the manager of a newspaper, as you ought to know, when he has the intellect to be something better than a man of straw, can ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... by sin? They are emblems of purity and truth, always a new source of delight to the pure and the innocent. The heart that does not love flowers, or the voice of a playful child, is one that we should not like to consort with. It was a beautiful conceit that invented a language of flowers, by which lovers were enabled to express the feelings that they dared not openly speak. But flowers have a voice to all,—to old and young, to rich and poor, if they would but ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... though likewise, no doubt, in many ways, by reason of its size, of the safest. In Boston, the winter before, the young lady in whom we are interested had, on the spot, deeply, yet almost tacitly, appealed to her, dropped into her mind the shy conceit of some assistance, some devotion to render. Mrs. Stringham's little life had often been visited by shy conceits—secret dreams that had fluttered their hour between its narrow walls without, for any great part, so much as mustering courage to look out of its rather ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... were told over and over again that they were not chosen for anything in themselves, and that they had no reason to plume themselves on the fact that they were chosen. And when they degenerated into self-conceit on the ground of their having been so highly privileged, they were finally cast out of the land of promise. Nor is this all. In the system under which they were placed by Moses, they were taught to look ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... conversation had driven all thoughts of doubt out of her mind. She would not have denied herself of his company now for any foolish pretext of convention. In that hurried summary of himself and his affairs, proving himself by it, without any pride and conceit, to be a man of very different stamp and interest to Mr. Arthur Montagu, he had marked her in her flight for liberty. Nothing was binding her—no interest in life but to be loved. Had there been any such bond—the ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... is another reason, too. You might just as well know it, for my conceit is not pride really, and it may be you know it already. Whatever love Frederick failed to kill in me—and the very idea of passionate love almost nauseates me, even yet—is not in my power to give you, Jerry dear. It might, some day, later, wake again, but it would not be ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... M. de Blacas did not receive me, and I only had the honour of speaking to his secretary, who, if the fact deserve to be recorded, was an abbe named Fleuriel. This personage, who was an extraordinary specimen of impertinence and self-conceit, would have been an admirable study for a comic poet. He had all the dignity belonging to the great secretary of a great Minister, and, with an air of indifference, he told me that the Count was not there; but M. de Blacas was there, and I ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the Netherlands, seeking relief from their wretched condition in a still more wretched quibble, transposed two letters of the word Pardona, and re-baptized the new measure Pandora. The conceit was not without meaning. The amnesty, descending from supernal regions, had been ushered into the presence of mortals as a messenger laden with heavenly gifts. The casket, when opened, had diffused curses instead of blessings. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his curate hinted to him what was being said, he had so clearly formulated his own theory of Mrs. Quarrier's death that only the strongest evidence would have led him to reconsider it. Obstinacy and intellectual conceit forbade him to indulge his disposition to paint an enemy's character in the ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... tall, narrow, angular young man with a small clipped head and preeminent ears. His narrow face was set with narrower features, and his eyes were very bright, and the windows of his conceit. Although his income was minute he boasted a father of note in the University of Leipzig, and his mother had traveled and written a scathing satire on the United States of America. He had not a grain ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... SINGULAR vanity in this presumption, Belford. Wert thou to know the secret vanity that lurks in the hearts of those who disguise or cloke it best, thou wouldst find great reason to acquit, at least, to allow for me: since it is generally the conscious over-fulness of conceit, that makes the hypocrite most upon his guard to conceal it. Yet with these fellows, proudly humble as they are, it will break out sometimes in spite of their clokes, though but in ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... children of hell than they were before: And than their teachers were (Matt 23:15), that is, their doctrine begat such blindness, such vain confidence, and groundless boldness in their disciples, as to involve them in that conceit of conversion that was false, and so if ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... The tall Swede knows how to take down your pride and bring you to a proper sense of your false conceit of the beauty and wit of the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... woorse matched with many ill disposed people, that his rare iudgement and regiment premeditated for these affaires, was subiected to tolerate abuses, and in sundry extremities to holde on a course, more to vpholde credite, then likely in his owne conceit happily ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... need had such wise pows as theirs of being taught or lectured to? What need had such feelosophers of having a king to rule over, or a Parliament to direct them? There was not a single one among their number, that did not think himself, in his own conceit, as wise as Solomon or William Pitt, and ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... man may as well show a smile to the world as a worried look, or a mean look, or one of the countless casts of countenance that are moulded by conceit and vanity. A smile is frequently misconstrued by the simple-hearted into the outward sign of inward kindness. Many think that it conciliates children and little dogs. But that which the many think is ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... all outside ourselves, Is but our own conceit of what we see, Our own reaction upon ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... early, instead of a late Sir Wycherly, rather, Mr. Thomas," put in Dutton, laughing at his own conceit; "for I can remember no other than the honourable baronet before us, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... one with whom I could exchange a thought or a word of kindness. I addressed several individuals, and in every instance repented; from some I got no answers, from others what was worse than no answers at all—in every countenance near me suspicion, brutality, or conceit, was most legibly imprinted—I was not amongst Welsh, but ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... 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 jade ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... according to an English model; but the Hoo-poo or collector of the customs being apprized of it, not only obliged him to relinquish his project but fined him in a heavy penalty for presuming to adopt the modes of a barbarous nation. So great is their national conceit that not a single article imported into the country, as I have elsewhere observed, retains its name. Not a nation, nor person, nor object, that does not receive a Chinese appellation: so that their language, though ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... dismemberment of their country; and because I prefer a Republic to a Monarchy where a King reigns by right divine. But when I read the bombastic articles in the newspapers—when I see the insane conceit and the utter ignorance of those with whom I am thrown—when I find them really believing that they are heroes because they are going, they say, to win battles, it is difficult to entertain any great sympathy for them. How utterly must poor ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... present times look back to Ages past, And men in being fancy those are dead, It makes things gone perpetually to last, And calls back moneths and years that long since fled. It makes a man more aged in conceit, Then was Methuselah, or's grandsire great; While of their persons & their acts his mind ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... volumes, the first of which, now before us, preceded by a poetical dedication and autobiographical memoir. The poem is an exquisite performance; but the biography, with due allowance for the Shepherd's claim, is a most objectionable preface. It is so disfigured with self-conceit and vituperative recollections of old grievances, that we regret some kind friend of the author did not suggest the omission of these personalities. They will be neither advantageous to the writer, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... not Southern, educated to a notion of office as a pedestal, were inclined to play the turkey cock and spread their tails a trifle. Since that sort of self-conceit never fails to transact itself at the expense of the spectator, Richard looked upon it with no favor, and it drew from him opinions, not of compliment, concerning those by whom it was exhibited. It set him to comparisons which ran much in ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... natural for Anthony and Gloria to decide, in their jealousy, that he was so swollen with conceit as to be a bore. To Dick's great annoyance Gloria publicly boasted that she had never read "The Demon Lover," and didn't intend to until every one stopped talking about it. As a matter of fact, she had no time to read now, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... drolled the minx, "one can never tell. But he has never said so. He is perhaps afraid, being born without the self-conceit of some people—archers of the guard, fledgling ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... conceit of his person was never increased towards him by his place or honours; but I have and do reverence him for his greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever by his work one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... as ever was; but then Johnny Low is mischievous, you see, and he gets Sam out of his tracks once in a while. I never see a finer growth of wheat. I had a sight rather cut and harvest the hull of it than to lie here and think of it getting spoiled. I'm a'most out o' conceit ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... (take): (1) receive, deceive, perceive, deceit, conceit, receipt, reception, perception, inception, conception, interception, accept, except, precept, municipal, participate, anticipate, capable, capture, captivate, case (chest, covering), casement, incase, cash, cashier, chase, catch, prince, forceps, occupy; (2) receptacle, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Insular conceit could surely scarcely go further. However, the Edinburgh Reviewer is forgotten and his name unknown; Pinel's name covered with glory, although not a popular hero; for when I made a pilgrimage to his grave in the great Paris cemetery, ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... tell?" She turned to look him full in the eyes. "Promise me ye'll never tell; for if the word of it gets abroad there'll be no keeping him in bounds, he's so filled with conceit of himself already." She leaned toward Frank and whispered: "It's Alan Breck. Ah," she cried, "you feel so fine and sure when ye're out with him! With his glittering sword and his belt of gold, and the way he takes the centre of the stage and ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... debauchee of a husband loves his wife and children, but of what use is that love? We, so we are told in our own newspapers, love our great motherland, but how does that love express itself? Instead of knowledge—insolence and immeasurable conceit; instead of work—sloth and swinishness; there is no justice, the conception of honour does not go beyond "the honour of the uniform"—the uniform which is so commonly seen adorning the prisoner's dock in our courts. Work is what is wanted, and the rest can ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... fortunate that such a number are knocked opportunely on the head in what they call the flower of their years, and go away to suffer for their follies in private somewhere else. Otherwise, between sick children and discontented old folk, we might be put out of all conceit of life. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with me," he said quietly. "Stay for tiffin, and talk it all out with my wife. She'll be able to answer you far better than I can. Nothing like a woman's sympathy to put a dash of conceit back into a man. Will you follow on? Or shall I wait while ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... numbers of mankind are too little self-reverent to dispense with the services of self-conceit, they like to think themselves equal, and very easily equal, to any truth, and habitually assume their extempore, off-hand notion of its significance as a perfect measure of the fact. As if a man hollowed his hand, and, dipping it full out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... He is an Englishman, but learned to write in Germany. He was once a cook. He does not write Malcolm as if used to it, and that is an assumed name. Great nerve, assurance, self-reliance, and patience. Is fond of children. Has more conceit than his manners indicate, kind-hearted man and even generous in his way, but has no notion of truth or morals. Should say he had spent much of his time in Baden Baden and other like places. Is good at gambling, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... the streets more like a hunted beast than a human being. All the bad side of his nature—his pride, his conceit, his selfishness—was stirred within him under a bitter sense of shame and indignity. He forgot how much his own intractable temper and stupid self-importance had contributed to his fall, and could think of nothing but Durfy's triumph and the evil fate which at the very moment, ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... respect'st thou [259] more thy slavish life Than honour of thy country or thy name? Is not my life and state as dear to me, The city and my native country's weal, As any thing of [260] price with thy conceit? Have we not hope, for all our batter'd walls, To live secure and keep his forces out, When this our famous lake of Limnasphaltis Makes walls a-fresh with every thing that falls Into the liquid substance of his ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... them to adore Men for their Art, or to detest them for their Cunning in deceiving others, when they are, in Reality, the Objects only of Ridicule, for deceiving themselves. Strip off the thin Disguise of Wisdom from Self-Conceit, of Plenty from Avarice, and of Glory from Ambition. Come thou, that hast inspired thy Aristophanes, thy Lucian, thy Cervantes, thy Rabelais, thy Moliere, thy Shakespear, thy Swift, thy Marivaux, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... delighted to be with us, he takes great pleasure in my company," I remarked with assumed complacence as we drove home; and I watched Dawn smile at my conceit in imagining any one took pleasure in my company while she was present, and that any normal male under ninety should do so would have been so phenomenal that she had reason ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... things, each generation must assume the task of adapting the working of its government to new conditions of life as they arise, it would be the folly of ignorant conceit for any generation to assume that it can lightly and easily improve upon the work of the founders in those matters which are, by their nature, of universal application to the permanent relations of men ...
— Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution • Elihu Root
... predestination to tobacco. But his shrewdness and learning only left him, in the phrase of Henry the Fourth of France, "the wisest fool in Christendom." He had in fact the temper of a pedant, a pedant's conceit, a pedant's love of theories, and a pedant's inability to bring his theories into any relation with actual facts. It was this fatal defect that marred his political abilities. As a statesman he had shown no little capacity in his smaller realm; his cool humour and good temper had ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... sensational climax. Re-reading it, I feel dimly that there ought to be a moral in it somewhere for the benefit of struggling fellow-scribblers. But the best I can find is this: That if you are blessed with some talent, a great deal of industry, and an amount of conceit mighty enough to enable you to disregard superiors, equals and critics, as well as the fancied demands of the public, it is possible, without friends, or introductions, or bothering celebrities to read your manuscripts, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... red letter hour for Dawson. He had a vague feeling that some influence, perhaps his evil genius, was bestirring itself. At all events, he was ill at ease, something of his accustomed self-conceit was lacking and he was, as the result, somewhat irritable, though he dared not ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Evringham, without hope or God in the world. She gave her both, that little Jewel did. Then, most of all, she crept into Mr. Evringham's empty heart and filled it full, and made his whole life, as you might say, blossom again. That's what she's done, single handed, in two months, and she has no more conceit of her work than a ray of God's sunshine has when it's opening ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... unexpected pleasures that it seemed as if her heart would burst with gladness; she thought of the girls who had done so much to give her this beautiful holiday; she thought of the scene on the stairs, and of Bertha's words, which, without a particle of conceit, she felt were the truth; she thought of Tom away at college, and wondered if his holiday had been as delightful as hers; she thought of the friends at Silver Bow, of Aunt Maria in the East, of the stern father keeping lonely vigil on the desert, and here ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Ben Jonson's translation from Philostratus; and Lucian has a conceit upon the same idea, "that you may at once both ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... and suppressed envy—perhaps your fathers' conceit and envy: in you break they forth as flame and ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... might have been facetious, but he had concentrated his energies entirely on money, till there was nothing left to go in other directions, and his humor was now as sombre as the grin of a hanged man. He had self-conceit, which is a talent when combined with some other qualities. Doctor Johnson's observation, that to make money requires talents, is true: a dull man cannot do it. Uncle Nate had to remember thirty thousand articles ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... Provost to an auction of pictures, and laid out fourteen shillings. I am in for it, if I had money; but I doubt I shall be undone; for Sir Andrew Fountaine invited the Provost and me to dine with him, and play at ombre, when I fairly lost fourteen shillings. Fais, it won't do; and I shall be out of conceit with play this good while. I am come home; and it is late, and my puppy let out my fire, and I am gone to bed and writing there, and it is past twelve a good while. Went out four matadores and a trump ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... Servant were not introduced by consent of men, but by difference of Wit; which is not only against reason; but also against experience. For there are very few so foolish, that had not rather governe themselves, than be governed by others: Nor when the wise in their own conceit, contend by force, with them who distrust their owne wisdome, do they alwaies, or often, or almost at any time, get the Victory. If Nature therefore have made men equall, that equalitie is to be acknowledged; or if Nature have made men unequall; ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... mine," and made his Eve thus reverently submissive to her Adam, he little thought of bright girls in the nineteenth century, well versed in science, philosophy, and the languages, sitting in the senior class of a college of the American republic, laughing his male conceit to scorn. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... not to be ignorant, brothers, of this mystery; that you may not be wise in your own conceit. For hardness in part has come upon Israel, till the fullness of the gentiles shall come in, [11:26]and so all Israel shall be saved; as it is written, A deliverer shall come from Zion, he shall turn away impiety from Jacob. [11:27]And ...
— The New Testament • Various
... unheard of quite! Vanish; we now have fill'd the world with light! Laws are unheeded by the devil's host; Wise as we are, yet Tegel hath its ghost! How long at this conceit I've swept with all my might, Lost is the labor: 'tis unheard ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... very much resembling an impromptu gallows, was being built, for the purpose, as I afterwards learnt, of giving the worshipful the lord mayor the opportunity of opening the city gates to royalty; creating the obstacle where none existed; being a very ingenious conceit, and considerably Irish into the bargain. I could not help feeling some desire to witness how all should go off, to use the theatrical phrase; but, in my anxiety to get on to the continent, I at once abandoned every thought of delay. When I returned to the coffee-room ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... she, 'I was glad to use any sudden conceit by which to gain a more solitary ride than I was like to have. It was my ambition to be Piso's companion, that I might enjoy the pleasure of pointing out to new eyes the beauties of the country. I trust I was rightly comprehended by our ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... people be called upon to support two schools within speaking distance of each other to preserve an infamous distinction, a sneaking caste prejudice? Why! Because the people are wise in their own conceit—perfectly rational upon all other questions save the color question. The South is weighted down with debt, almost as poor as the proverbial "Job's turkey," and yet she supports a dual school system simple to gratify a prejudice. I notice with surprise that among ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... absolute equality." In none of the branches into which it is now divided—Presbyterian or Episcopalian—does the Church of Scotland forget that it is an ancient national Church which never admitted subjection to its greater sister of the South. We may have too good "a conceit of ourselves," but we shall at least, like the worthy bailie, be true and friendly. And indeed we—or some of us—were already moving towards something of the kind. The Second Interim Report—it bears the title ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... well enough, if you like to be overhauled and put out of conceit with yourself,—it may do you good; but I wouldn't go to 'the governor' with my verses, if I were you. For either he will think what you have written is something wonderful, almost as good as he could have written himself,—in fact, he always did believe in ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... great many ways," Victoria agreed. "If he didn't have such an impenetrable conceit, he might go far, because he learns quickly, and has an industry that is simply appalling. But he hasn't quite the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were so far possessed with the false conceit of their own righteousness and holiness, and of the horrid wickedness of all others, that they refused obedience to the civil magistrate, and all laws and ordinances of men. Upon pretence that God commanded them to bear no arms, they ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... maxims of ancient wisdom are unworthy of their notice. In this manner, eloquence is dethroned; she is banished from her rightful dominions, and obliged to dwell in the cold regions of antithesis, forced conceit, and pointed sentences. The consequence is, that she, who was once the sovereign mistress of the sciences, and led them as handmaids in her train, is now deprived of her attendants, reduced, impoverished, and, stripped of her ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... heeds it, and a dull man who holds it in derision. When an English writer in "Macmillan" remarks with airy contempt that French criticisms on England have "all the piquancy of a woman's criticisms on a man," the American—standing outside the ring—is amused by this superb simplicity of self-conceit. ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... three circles, of three colours and one magnitude; one by the second as Iris by Iris seemed reflected, and the third seemed a fire breathed equally from one and from the other. Oh, but how scant the utterance, and how faint, to my conceit! and it, to what I saw, is such that it sufficeth not to call it little. O light eternal who only in thyself abidest, only thyself dost understand, and to thyself, self-understood, self-understanding, turnest love and smiling! That circling which appeared in thee to be conceived as a reflected ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... and generous friend; her fault would appear to have been her conceit. As Mr. Lucas finely remarks, everything conspired to increase her self-esteem and importance, for the three things that might have corrected it were all lacking: poverty, London life, ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... man out east bin awfully cut up in a mowin'-machine," said he, glancing up at Miss Custer sideways from under his broad-brimmed straw hat, sure that she would appreciate the news, he being the first to tell it; for he had a boyish conceit that Miss Custer had a very high opinion of him, and even indulged the fancy that if he were a man—say twenty-one—instead of a youth of seventeen, he could cut out all them downtown fellers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... will say: "At any rate, we might moderate somewhat the splendour of our ideal and the audacity of our self-conceit, so that there should be a less grotesque disparity between the aim and the achievement. Surely such moderation would be more in accord with common sense! Surely it would lessen the spiritual fatigue ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... to enter the arena, and then we shall be dull indeed if we do not lay bets enough on him to keep us in wine for a year. There is no fear of Lupus himself saying a word about it. You may be sure that, roughly shaken as his conceit may be, he will hold his tongue as to the fact that he has found his master in what he was pleased to call a boy. Mind, if I ever hear a word spoken outside the school on the subject, I will make it my business to find out who spread the report, and it will be very bad for the man who did it when ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... the man who said the thing had a gleam of satisfaction at the idea of taking a complacent-looking fool down a peg, but it is just as possible he did not know at the time that his stray shot had hit. He had thrown it as a boy throws a stone at a bird. And it not only demolished a foolish, happy conceit, but it wounded. ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... go back to what I then was! Why can we not revive past times as we can revisit old places? If I had the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write a Sonnet to the Road between Wem and Shrewsbury, and immortalize every step of it by some fond enigmatical conceit. I would swear that the very milestones had ears, and that Harmer-hill stooped with all its pines, to listen to a poet, as he passed! I remember but one other topic of discourse in this walk. He mentioned Paley, praised the naturalness ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... an incredible conceit! A Don Juan, perhaps. Or a Joseph? On my soul, I think you are ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... (though we have done so at present to expose the miserable pretensions of Mr. Coleridge), but look through all the bright ranks of men distinguished by mental power, in whatever department of human science. It is our faith, that without moral there can be no intellectual grandeur; and surely the self-conceit and arrogance which we have been exposing, are altogether incompatible with lofty feelings and majestic principles. It is the Dwarf alone who endeavours to strut himself into the height of the surrounding company; but the man of princely stature seems ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... said Mrs. Charrington brusquely, "don't trouble yourself about him. I haven't lived fifty years for nothing. Oh! these men, these men! They take themselves too seriously, the dear creatures. But they are just like ourselves, with a little more conceit and considerably less wit. And they are not really worth all the trouble we take for them. I must get to know your medallist, my dear. That was a strong face and an honest face. I have heard John rave about him. John is my young son, first ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... enough a vein of romance ran through the massive strata of conceit, and intolerance, and vainglory, and pertinacity, and pugnacity that made up the very definite structure of his nature. He dearly loved a lover. He was as sentimental as a girl of eighteen, and he melted instantly ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... silence. With the utmost desire to avoid any offence and the most sincere alarm, he yet had not self-control enough to be prudent; the word had to come out, when a petulant witticism stung him, or when his self- conceit almost rendered crazy by the praise of so many noble lords gave vent to the well-cadenced ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... short gloss. The name letrilla is applied sometimes to a little poem in short lines which may be set to music (p. 9), and sometimes to a strophic poem with a refrain (p. 16). A madrigal is a short silva upon a light topic, an expanded conceit. The term cantilena is given to any short piece of verse intended to be set to music (p. 17). Serranillas, in which is described the meeting of a gentleman with a rustic maiden, are famous for the examples written by Juan Ruiz and the Marquis of Santillana. ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... water seems to be receding; you can see that there is an ebb; and then an unusually long wave comes up and wets your feet. Great writers are guilty of a similar error without any intention of contriving a literary conceit (as I suspect many a past outcry to have been). Even Pater declared that he would not disturb himself by reading any contemporary literature published by an author who did not exist before 1870. He never read Stevenson or Kipling. Now that is a terrible state to be in; it is a symptom ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... death and eternity to two such ladies—two such children? Ah—I know, I am really old—I only deceive myself into pretending I'm young. You will do the same, both of you, some day. But come and see my good works. You know everyone has his little corner of conceit—I have mine. I like to do good, and then to boast of it. ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... thought they were the most contemptible little creatures I had ever beheld. For indeed, while I was in that prince's country, I could never endure to look in a glass, after my 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 ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... his father, "take yourself off, it you cannot maintain civility. And your mother does not like fishing-tackle at the breakfast-table go! I believe," he said as Ransom bounded away, "I believe conceit is the normal ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... mimicry, but observes that every one who conversed with her retired humbled from her presence, since her language was always calculated to bring men down to their proper level, to strip off affectation, and to expose conceit. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... man would pursue Philosophy, his first task is to throw away conceit. For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he has a conceit that ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... nor a code of snobs, who divide their time between licking the boots of those above them and kicking at those below, but a system of rules of conduct based on respect of self coupled with respect of others. Meanwhile, to guard against conceit in his new knowledge, he may at odd moments recall Ben ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... have so much work ahead of us this morning," said Fred, "I should suggest that we stop here for a minute and take the conceit out of him." ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... a trouble! Not but I've every reason not to care What happens to him if it only takes Some of the sanctimonious conceit Out of one of ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... despise the man in my heart who laid such a stress upon morals, leaving grace out of the question; and viewed it as a deplorable instance of human depravity and self-conceit; but, for all that, I was obliged to accept of his terms, for I had an inward thirst and longing to distinguish myself in the great cause of religion, and I thought, if once I could print my own works, how I would astonish mankind, and confound their self-wisdom and their esteemed ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... translate. The Danish word Portviin according to sound, may mean either port wine or the creaking of a door.] The brother, the only son of the house, with whom we shall become better acquainted, had written down this conceit; "but that was only to be rude toward her," said Miss Grethe. "Such good ideas as this I have every hour of ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... calmly reflected on the spirit displayed by the witnesses for the truth, he might have seen that they were partakers of a higher wisdom than his own; but the tenacity with which they adhered to their principles, only mortified his self-conceit, and roused his indignation. It is remarkable that this philosophic Emperor was the most systematic and heartless of all the persecutors who had ever yet oppressed the Church. When Nero lighted up his gardens with the flames which issued from the bodies of the dying Christians, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... too absurd," said Rosalind Merton, sidling up to Maggie and casting some disdainful glances at poor Priscilla, "the conceit of some people! Of all forms of conceit, preserve me ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... quarterstaff over Feeble-mind's shoulders—"Man, dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" "I shall like no laughing," said Feeble-mind; "I shall like no gay attire; I shall like no unprofitable questions." I think it took some self-conceit to refuse to sit at table beside Christiana because of her gay attire. And I hope Mercy did not give up dressing well, even after she was married, to please that weak-minded old churl. And as to unprofitable questions—we are all tempted to think that question unprofitable which our incapacity ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... also according to the propriety of our English tongue so far as Grammar and the verse will permit. A significant comment in the "Directions" runs: "As for the fear of making truants by these translations, a conceit which arose merely upon the abuse of other translations, never intended for this end, I hope that happy experience of this kind will in time drive it and all like to it utterly out of schools and out of the minds of all." Apparently ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... if you allow your adversary a respectable character, they will think, that though you differ from him, you may be in the wrong. Sir, treating your adversary with respect, is striking soft in a battle. And as to Hume,—a man who has so much conceit as to tell all mankind that they have been bubbled[72] for ages, and he is the wise man who sees better than they,—a man who has so little scrupulosity as to venture to oppose those principles which have been thought necessary to human happiness,—is he to be surprized ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... days we had a youth of talent in the family,—a sort of sophomorical boil, that the soap and sugar of indiscriminate adulation had drawn to a head of conceit. This youth bestowed a great deal of attention on a certain young woman of a classical turn of mind, who once had a longing to attend a fancy-ball as a sibyl. About the same time Sophomore missed the first volume of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... Slowly the loose life he was leading was lowering him to the level of the common herd. A few years ago he would not have thought of drinking with his own mill hands. To-night he was there, the most reckless of them all. Analyzed, it was for the most part conceit with him; the low conceit of the superior intellect which would mingle in infamy with the lowest to gain its ignorant homage. For Intellect must have homage if it has to ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... study on account of the noise made by the shells; and a large miscellaneous mass of poverty, starvation, recklessness, and ruin precipitated so suddenly upon the country that many were buried beneath it beyond hope of being extricated." This universal tragedy he attributes in part to the conceit of the Southern people. He himself became "convinced of his ability to whip at least five Yankees. The author does not know now and did not then, by what course of reasoning he arrived at this said conviction; in the best of the author's judgment he did not reason it out at ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... be merely a poetical conceit of mine, but it seems to me that the horses prance higher, and shake their bells more merrily on New Year's than any other day, as if they partook in our enjoyment of the occasion. May not the horse, by ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... way of looking at things, or, rather, into them," said Mr. Markland, forcing a smile. "There is a common saying about taking the conceit out of a man, and I must acknowledge that you can do this as effectually as any one ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... respectful homage to its various goings and comings as it ran hither and thither, he should be punished with loss of his limbs. Also Gunnar imposed on the nation a double tribute, one to be paid out of the autumn harvest, the other in the spring. Thus he burst the bubble conceit of the Norwegians, to make them feel clearly how their pride was gone, when they saw it forced to ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... But Will's conceit might be quite as effectual. He was under orders to communicate the matter to no one not already aware of it, and as above all things he desired to see the execution as the most memorable spectacle ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... see it like that. And Bogdanich was a brick: he told you you were saying what was not true. It's not pleasant, but what's to be done, my dear fellow? You landed yourself in it. And now, when one wants to smooth the thing over, some conceit prevents your apologizing, and you wish to make the whole affair public. You are offended at being put on duty a bit, but why not apologize to an old and honorable officer? Whatever Bogdanich may be, anyway he is an honorable and brave old colonel! You're quick at taking ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the poor little soul," Grace declared. "I'm sure she belongs to enough charitable boards and committees so that she ought to be delighted that we bring a real 'case,' as she calls them, to her," and Grace laughed at her own conceit. ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... carelessness or of momentary inability to do what is wanted—are by nature or education impossible. His nature did not give him this endowment, and his education was of the very last sort to procure it for him. He himself, not out of pique or conceit, things utterly alien from his nature, still less out of laziness, but, I believe, as a genuine, and, what is more, a correct self-criticism, has left in his private writings repeated expressions of his belief that revision ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... feet, moving to the front, talking as she went. "I really haven't the self-assertion to walk up to strange students and tell them the error of their ways. To me, that course of action savors too much of conceit of our own virtues. The best we can do is to be perfectly honorable about the examinations. Our mental attitude toward dishonorable proceedings ought to have its influence without our going about making ourselves odious ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... comes from home. It is biting to find that accident has given me a country which has not manliness and pride to maintain its own opinions, while it is overflowing with conceit. But never mind all this. See that you do not decamp before my departure and I'll promise not to ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... thus speaking all rejoiced; in some the love of virtue increased, in others carelessness was thrown aside, the self-conceit of others was stopped; and all were persuaded to despise the assaults of the Evil One, and marvelled at the grace given Anthony from the Lord for the discerning of spirits. So their cells were in the mountains, ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Dean Smedley, Of dulness, pride, conceit, a medley, Was equally allow'd to shine As poet, scholar, and divine; With godliness could well dispense, Would be a rake, but wanted sense; Would strictly after Truth inquire, Because he dreaded to come nigh her. For Liberty no champion bolder, He hated bailiffs at his ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... where he already had a footing. He had a footing everywhere, and got information about everything. He was of an uneasy and envious temper. He was well aware of his own considerable abilities, and nervously exaggerated them in his self-conceit. He knew he would play a prominent part of some sort, but Alyosha, who was attached to him, was distressed to see that his friend Rakitin was dishonorable, and quite unconscious of being so himself, considering, on the contrary, that ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... contradictory, but it was evident that, while Kalliope disowned conceit of station for herself, she could not always cross her mother's wishes. It was further elicited that if Lady Flight had taken up the matter there would have been no difficulty. Half a year ago the ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as English Marquery, or Mercury, and Tota bona; or, Allgood, the latter from a conceit of the rustics that it will cure all hurts; "wherefore the leaves are now a constant plaster among them for every green wound." It bears small flowers of sepals only, and is grown by cottagers as a pot herb. ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... court martyrdom to hold Upon his head a laurel of gold, Where for each rich conceit ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... this side, and be respectful. Of course it is only Pretend, you know," she added, with a quick consciousness of Frere's conceit. "Now then, the Queen goes down to the Seashore surrounded by her Nymphs! There is no occasion to laugh, Mr. Frere. Of course, Nymphs are very different from you, but then we can't ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... reputation. He returned in two years with a fashionable figure, a most recherche style of dress, moustachios of the most approved cut, and whiskers of faultless curl—a finished gentleman in his own conceit. With such attractions, the prestige which he derived from his reported travels and long residence abroad, and the savoir faire of one who had made the conventional arrangements of society his study, ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... his conceit of tacking a tragic head with a comic tail, in order to refresh the audience, it is such a piece of jargon, that I don't know what to ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... he offered no welcome to this ragged squad. The leader modestly offered him some advice about the military condition of the South, but the general in command was clothed in too dense an armor of conceit to be open to advice from any quarter, certainly not from the leader of such a Falstaffian company, and he was glad enough to get rid of him by sending him on a scouting expedition in advance of the army, to watch the enemy and report ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... odious; but neither the apprehension, nor the experience of the unpleasant impressions it produces, is sufficient reason for declining the consideration of the atrocities of which human nature is capable. Self-conceit, indeed, may be mortified at the unavoidable thought of identity of species, which it may seek many imaginary devices to conceal; and feverish sensibility may be wrought up to indignant discontent, at the power which placed it amid such profligacy. But the humble philosopher, on the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... India and Peru, mosaic work from Italy, and bronzes from France, were all heaped together pell-mell with the coarse deal boxes and dingy leather cases which served to pack them for traveling. The little man apologized, with a cheerful and simpering conceit, for his litter of curiosities, his dressing-gown, and his delicate health; and, waving his hand toward a chair, placed his attention, with pragmatical politeness, at the visitor's disposal. Magdalen looked at him with a momentary doubt whether Mrs. Lecount had not ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... rhymes? Why, anyway, fold back a sentence or idea to get it into a prescribed arbitrary form? Why should we call this verse-tinkering and verse-shaping art, when it is only artifice? Why should we call the man who makes one pretty conceit rhyme with another pretty conceit an artist, and deny the term to the man whose sentences pair ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... hand, the hand of a man, woman, or child. These hands, drying in the sun, could be seen at the posts along the river. They are no longer in evidence. Neither is the flower-bed of Lieutenant Dom, which was bordered with human skulls. A quaint conceit. ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... way; but, as Pliny informeth, when they intended to take up the root of this plant, they took the wind thereof, and with a sword describing three circles about it, they digged it up, looking toward the west. A conceit not only injurious unto truth and confutable by daily experience, but somewhat derogatory unto the providence of God; that is, not only to impose so destructive a quality on any plant, but to conceive a vegetable whose parts are so useful unto many, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... his own conceit and vainglory, the pride of his age and experience, and then he told of the lesson he had learned. "Why, people," he said, "I feels like a ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... was at once established; but he had the advantage of a quick imagination and a sanguine temperament; also the manly courage to look at Fortune with respectful recognition, as we all look at royalty,—even as though he had sometime been presented,—not with a snobbish conceit which would seem to defy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... at his conceit. "You are a merry peddler," he said, and took out of his pouch a few coins, from which he counted scrupulously the sum that the bookseller had asked, and gave it to him. Then he moved slowly away from the stall, reading in his new purchase until he came to the fountain that ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... anything at all about the matter; elsewise, it is certain that my wish to shield a silly mannikin from reproach, if only for our country's sake, would have made me find out some excuse to mend the bungling of his foolish self-conceit. ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... who was the comedian of the company, met with a grin of approval as he faced the ring of torches like an actor facing the footlights, posing before the crowd that had gathered, flashing his vulgar conceit in the public eye. And he praised God in a song and dance, fitting his words to the latest ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... Manuel, declare that such self-conceit is a fault, and our elders, they say, are ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... awkward, and she gives her estimate of him in an undertone. It will be bad for Chough if he is at all airish or scholastic, or individual in his opinions, for between a senior pastor's wife and his young assistant there is an hereditary distrust; conceit has no show at all ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... people, finery seems to mean good dressing, yet their clothes jar, cry out, even "scream out their unfitness and unwholesomeness, and betray their dishonesty, shame and sacrifice." Clothes show silliness, conceit, and selfishness more than any other thing, and often they shame a home, so a colored girl should study her individuality and her life position and dress accordingly. She should wear only becoming colors, and she might affect a certain color to her advantage. She should ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... a little. Either the brigands here are clever, or some man who is more clever has them in hand, and knows enough not to mix with them,—some man who can persuade them, or terrorize them, or shield them. Have you no conceit as to who in this city is fitted for a ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... conspicuous features in his character seems to have been a remarkable, and, as some think, a culpable degree of flexibility. That such a disposition is preferable to its opposite extreme, will be admitted by all who think that modesty, even in excess, is more nearly allied to wisdom than conceit and self-sufficiency. He who has attentively considered the political, or, indeed, the general concerns of life, may possibly go still further, and rank a willingness to be convinced, or in some cases even without conviction, to concede our own ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... talked to them of his charming acquaintances in the town, the beauties he had admired, did admire, or thought he was going to admire, until Celandine, who heard it all, was ready to cry with vexation. The Fairy too was quite shocked at his conceit, and hit upon a plan for curing him of it. She sent to him by an unknown messenger a portrait of Princess Celandine as she really was, with this inscription: 'All this beauty and sweetness, with a loving heart and a great kingdom, might have been yours but ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... years he created a sensation by declining to join the Hasty Pudding Club. This was looked upon as a piece of inordinate self- conceit; whereas, the true reason for it was that he had little money and preferred to spend it in going to the theatre. He said afterwards, in regard to this, that he was not sorry to have done it, for "the students placed too much ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... off occasionally. But, at any rate, there is quite enough to make her a great prize, and an object of admiration and attention to all the little men—not to the old hands, like White and Sumner; they are built up in their own conceit, and wouldn't marry Sam Weller's 'female marchioness,' unless she made love to them first, like one of Knowles's heroines. But the juveniles are crazy about her. Robinson went off more ostentatiously love-sick than a man of his size I ever saw; and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... 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, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... that his life is worth the venture of a record in the form of an autobiography suggests a degree of self-conceit of which I am not guilty. From my own initiative this would never have been written, and the first suggestion that I should write it, coming from a man of such experience in books and judgment of men as the late ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... The conceit amused him, and he advanced further into the musty porch hoping to find a bell. But as he did so his ear caught the distant sound of shuffling feet. The shuffle of feet drew nearer and presently a beam of light shone out from under the door. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... horror I think of Germany and of my future enterprises in that country. God forgive me, but I discover nothing but mean and miserable things, conceit and a pretence of solid work without any real foundation; half-heartedness in everything. After all I prefer to see "Le Pardon de Ploermel" in Paris than under the shadow of the famous, glorious German oak tree. I must also confess to you that my treading once ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... sunshine of the morn A butterfly (but newly born) Sat proudly perking on a rose, With pert conceit his bosom glows; His wings (all glorious to behold) Bedropt with azure, jet, and gold, Wide he displays; the spangled dew Reflects his eyes and various hue. His now forgotten friend, a snail, Beneath his house, with slimy trail, Crawls ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... verses by fashionable people, which were put into her Vase at Batheaston villa[991], near Bath, in competition for honorary prizes, being mentioned, he held them very cheap: 'Bouts rimes (said he,) is a mere conceit, and an old conceit now, I wonder how people were persuaded to write in that manner for this lady[992].' I named a gentleman of his acquaintance who wrote for the Vase. JOHNSON. 'He was a blockhead for his pains.' BOSWELL. 'The Duchess of Northumberland ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... hesitation in such a fateful moment; but the great Capuchin friar neither paused nor hesitated. That strange confidence in his own mission, his belief that God had called him to the protection of Venice, perchance even a personal conceit in his own skill as a swordsman, sent him hurrying to the work. It was a draught of life to him to see men tremble at his word; the knowledge which treachery poured into his ear was a study finer than that of all the ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... and did the right thing; destined alas! never to pass from mind to speech, for if ever tongue essayed the telling it faltered some fatuous abortion as little like love's dream as Caliban resembled Ariel. Fresh from the brave world of day-dreams, still smiling happily from some whimsical conceit as well as with anticipation of Aileen's gladness at sight of me, I passed through the ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... noon, and the news of the completion of the road being flashed abroad as it fell. Then the two locomotives, one from the west and the other from the east, drew up to each other on the single line, coming into gentle collision, that they in their way, in the pleasing conceit of their drivers, might symbolise the fraternisation that went on. It does not spoil the story of the ceremony to state that the laurel tie, with its inscriptions and its magnificent mountings, was only ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... not impossible that this conceit occurred to Hawthorne before he had himself seen the Old Man of the Mountain, or the Profile, in the Franconia Notch which is generally associated in the minds of readers with ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... great,—never so great, perhaps, as now and here,—and these people assemble every week to converse upon them. What more rational thing could they do? If they came together to snivel and cant, and to support one another in a miserable conceit of being the elect of the human species, we might object. But no description can show how far from that, how opposite to that, is the tone, the spirit, the object, of the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Dodger, or whatever he calls himself, has been imposed upon by his fears, and that he has actually seen no Indians at all. The springing up of a bush from under his horse's feet, and the starting away of a dozen frighted rabbits, might easily explain his conceit of the long-legged Indian, and his five murderous accomplices; and as for the savages seen in ambush at the Ford, the shaking of the cane-brake by the breeze, or by some skulking bear, would as readily account for ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... its destined place on the shelf — where it stays. And this saith the scoffer, is all; but even he does not fail to remark with a certain awe that the owner goeth thereafter as one possessing a happy secret and radiating an inner glow. Moreover, he is insufferably conceited, and his conceit waxeth as his coat, now condemned to a fresh term of servitude, groweth shabbier. And shabby though his coat may be, yet will he never stoop to renew its pristine youth and gloss by the price of any book. No man ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... monotonous. Keep, then, your pity for those who require it. From the height of my philosophy I compassionate you. No one is so vain as a recluse; and your jests at my hermitship and hermitage cannot penetrate the folds of a self-conceit, which does not envy you in your suppers at D—— House, nor even in ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... out of the professional creases in his lower jaw. Saunders pulled down his mouth to express extra grief when a five-foot grave had been ordered. His seven-foot manifestations of respect for the deceased were a sight to see. He held the opinion that anybody that had no more 'conceit o' themsel'' [were so much left to themselves] than to be buried in a three-foot grave, did not deserve to be mourned at all. This crease, then, was one of Saunders's assets, and had therefore to be carefully attended to. Even love must ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... the hour brings it to me unsought; a quip, a quip! I shall preach on the Pool of Bethesda: "While I am coming, another steppeth down before me." The verse seems as if it were made on purpose for me; what a pity nobody else will understand it!' And he smiled quietly at the conceit, as he got the scented sheets of sermon-paper out of his little sandalwood davenport. For Arthur Berkeley was one of those curiously compounded natures which can hardly ever be perfectly serious, and which can enjoy a quaintness or a neat literary allusion even at a moment of the bitterest ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... think you over estimate yourself, which I never did. You thought you ought to have had an "A" in English, and were not prepared for your low mark in French and German. Do a little self-examination and nip the bud of conceit; get a fair estimate and make it too low rather than too high. I am sure I know my own weak points, see if you can't find yours. That saying of the ancients, "know thyself," is to be pondered daily. I ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... Conceit is usually seen during our first investigations after knowledge; but time and more accurate research teach us that not only is our comprehension limited, but knowledge itself is so imperfect, as not to warrant any vanity upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... apply our endeavours unto the examination of these old opinions, which though they have for a long time lien neglected by others, yet in them may you finde many truths well worthy your paines and observation. Tis a false conceit, for us to thinke, that amongst the ancient variety and search of opinions, the best hath still prevailed. Time (saith the learned Verulam) seemes to be of the nature of a river or streame, which carrieth downe to us that which is light, or blowne up, but sinketh that which is weighty ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins
... to be a poetical conceit. A Pict being painted, if he is slain in battle, and a vest is made of his skin, it is a painted vest won from ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... again the following evening, and a thought of high conceit flew suddenly into my mind: it was myself she came to see! But, watching her more closely, I saw that she was busy, doing something about a grave, so it was not me she had come for. I stole away up to the big ant-heap in the wood and watched the insects as long as I could see; afterwards, ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... into utterly useless parasites, and mentally they dislocate their brains and become mental eunuchs. And in precisely the same manner, according to the measure of their folly, do they acquire self-conceit, which deprives them forever of all possibility of return to a simple life of toil, to a simple, clear, and universally human train ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... observed that my last quarter was cut short in the middle; which untoward event arose from no arrogance or supercilious conceit on my part, as though I had perfected myself in the mysteries of pigeon-wing and balancez, but from the abrupt departure of the professor himself, who, true to the name indicative of his constitutional levity, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... hardness of life, its pathos and unequal chances, its conceit, self-forgetfulness, and patience, were presented on the battle-field ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Malpas became the absolute mistress of eight thousand pounds. Lemuel[1] had carefully foreseen this windfall, and wished to use the money in enterprises of the earthenware trade. Mrs. Malpas, pretty and vivacious, with a self-conceit hardened by the adulation of saloon-bars, very decidedly thought otherwise. Her motto was, 'What's yours is mine, but what's mine's my own.' The difference was accentuated. Long mutual resistances were followed by reconciliations, which grew more and more transitory, and ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... about the world, catching all the butterflies, rubbing the bloom off all the plums, tunneling mountains, bridging seas, smoothing the facets off ideas so that they may be swallowed harmlessly like pills. With true Anglo-Saxon conceit we had thought that our own Mr. Wells was the most universal of these universal geniuses. He has so diligently brought science, ethics, sex, marriage, sociology, God, and everything else—properly deodorized, of course—to the desk of the ordinary man, that he may ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... a strike; it would have suited his book well enough. So when the men came to ask for the five per cent. they are claiming, he told 'em he'd think about it, and give them his answer on the pay day; knowing all the while what his answer would be, of course, but thinking he'd strengthen their conceit of their own way. However, they were too deep for him, and heard something about the bad prospects of trade. So in they came on the Friday, and drew back their claim, and now he's obliged to go on working. ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... nothing much; only young men will be young men; and father was put out by his vanity and conceit. He actually got talking to ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... in which such words are said. I imagined that living in fashionable society in London, he did not like the somewhat scholastic title of Professor which, in London particularly, has always a by-taste of diluted omniscience and conceit. I accordingly addressed him in my next letter as "My dear Sir," and this, I am sorry to say, produced quite a coldness and stiffness, as my friend evidently imagined that I declined to be on more intimate terms with him, the fact being that through life I have always been one of his most devoted ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... can't, don't cry, little girl. There's nothing to cry about. I can stand it. All the trouble is, it does seem to me that I could take care of you better than any other fellow on earth, but maybe that's my conceit, and you'll find somebody else that will do better than I. Now don't cry." Francis pulled her hat off gently, and patted her head. His face was quite white, but he tried to smile. "Don't cry, dear," he said ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... find relief in the view of a periodical revolution, wherein all comes to an end from time to time and takes a fresh start. It would be wiser for us simply to resign the problem as too great. For the conception to which we have recourse is evidently a mere conceit of imagination, without scientific basis or ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... every art. The Italian princes were not, like their contemporaries in the North, dependent on the society of an aristocracy which held itself to be the only class worth consideration, and which infected the monarch with the same conceit. In Italy the prince was permitted and compelled to know and to use men of every grade in society; and the nobility, though by birth a caste, were forced in social intercourse to stand up on their personal qualifications alone. But this is a point which we shall ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... as the type of self-sufficient stupidity and conceit—a custom, perhaps, like some few other customs, more conventional than fair—then the purest jackass in Cloisterham is Mr. Thomas ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... added, "I cannot doubt that Miss Beaufort is the favored Semel; but, my dear, you over-acted your character? As confidant, a few tears were enough when your lady fainted." During these attacks, Euphemia reclined pompously on a sofa, and not deigning a reply, repelled them with much conceit and haughtiness. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... her share to the Christian thought and life of the world. We, of the proud West, are prone to think that our type of life is all-embracing and that our religious thought is all-satisfying. Nothing can be more fallacious or more injurious than such a conceit. The East is the full complement of the West. In life and thought we are only an hemisphere, and we need the East to fill up our full-orbed beauty. The mystic piety of India will correct our too practical, ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... sugar-value did Mr. Linden himself attribute his rise in the world, and gradual increase in rotundity, riches, and respectability. This constant success engendered, as it is too apt to do, inordinate egotism, conceit, self-esteem, vanity. There was scarcely a social, governmental, or economical problem which he did not believe himself capable of solving as easily as he could eat his dinner when hungry. "Common-sense business-habits"—his ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... articles has been nothing but half-truths, and a half-truth is worse than a lie. You know that it is to gratify your personal spite, and not to help the general public, that you have engaged in your frenzied writings. The public is wiser than you think, although your conceit has blinded you ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... immense dome. Tons upon tons—Pelion on Ossa—of literature meet the eye and stun the imagination. Every book was wrought out by eager labour of some hopeful mortal; joy, anguish, despair, mad ambition, placid assurance, wild conceit, proud courage once possessed the breasts of those myriad writers, according to their several dispositions. The piles rest in stately silence, and the reputations of ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... image, eidolon [Gr.], sentiment, reflection, observation, consideration; abstract idea; archetype, formative notion; guiding conception, organizing conception; image in the mind, regulative principle. view &c (opinion) 484; theory &c 514; conceit, fancy; phantasy &c (imagination) 515. point of view &c (aspect) 448; field ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... saying that he made sonnets to my Lord. Howbeit, my Lord was exceeding wroth, and I, to beguile him, did propose that we should leave our horses and cargoes of manuscript behind and cross on the ice afoot, which conceit pleased him mightily. In sooth it chanced well with what followed, for hardly were we on the river when we saw a great crowd coming from Westminster, before a caravan of strange animals and savages in masks, capering and capricolling, dragging ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... Howells is the kindliest of critics, but now and then some popular novelist's conceit will cause him to ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... building a railroad which passed through Geneva. Alac had been in the neighborhood for two months supervising operations. He was striking in appearance—a florid-faced' blonde, brusque in business, quite jovial socially, and cracking—full of the conceit of youth, wealth and station. So far, life had, in practically nothing, ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... is rescued from any tinge of conceit or egotism by its absolute simplicity and truth. The imitation referred to is of the moral "Tales" for popular reading of the lower classes, which my cabman had studied. The pity of it is, when so many of the contemporary writers of Russia owe their inspiration, their very existence, to Turgeneff ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... explain and apologize, and in his perky conceit really seemed to fancy that I might be hurt at his desertion. So when he asked if I would "bid him good-bye pleasantly, and remember to keep my promise," I had a small inspiration. I would bid him ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... self-conceit and confidence in his own ability to carry out the mission he had so bravely undertaken were rapidly oozing away, "I have a good map of the country, a good horse, plenty of money with which to hire guides, am well armed, and could make a good fight if necessary. I ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... Robin," said the Knight, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth, "thou hast a quaint conceit. As for the pair of eyes with which I regard thee, I would say that they are as favorable as may be, for I hear much good of thee and little ill. What is thy ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... learned one thing at the courting of her which is the gist of my word of wisdom to you, Colin. Keep it in mind till you need it. It's this: There's one thing a woman will put up with blandly in every man but the one man she has a notion of, and that's the absence of conceit about himself or her." In the field by the river, the harvesters sat at a mid-day meal, contentedly eating their bannock and cheese. They were young folks all, at the age when toil and plain living but give a zest to the errant pleasures of life, so they filled their hour of leisure ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... than ill-nature. His education had not been neglected, and he inherited an estate of five thousand a year. Miss Darnel, however, had penetration enough to discover and despise him, as a strange composition of rapacity and profusion, absurdity and good sense, bashfulness and impudence, self-conceit and diffidence, awkwardness and ostentation, insolence and good-nature, rashness and timidity. He was continually surrounded and preyed upon by certain vermin called Led Captains and Buffoons, who showed him in leading-strings ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... of taking the conceit out of him. He little thought of this when he made that random shot. "May I ask, my lad," I said, in the blandest voice, "what your trade ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the clean, unvarnished truth in dogged fashion, and had so impressed all by his simple story, in which he seemed only trying to tell facts, no matter how they bore upon himself, that even the prosecutor was out of conceit with his side ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... voluptuous, little person, is mated to a bull-necked He, pompous, broad and full of the conceit of the ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... subject so full of unprofitable but curious hints as to the work of unseen forces, that one does not weary easily of it. I am not speaking here of megalomaniacs who rest uneasy under the crown of their unbounded conceit—who really never rest in this world, and when out of it go on fretting and fuming on the straitened circumstances of their last habitation, where all men must lie in obscure equality. Neither am I thinking of those ambitious minds who, always looking forward to some aim of aggrandizement, can ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... force, with a predisposition towards novelty, and novelty, especially if founded on theory, is abhorrent to such as old Johnny Galvin the steward, or Peter Flood the gardener, or, stiffest in her own conceit of all, Mrs. Twomey ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... suggests the Teutonic superlative; "So bigger as never vas," and the "Xmas 1898" reads like the advertisement of a department store: "Gents pants for Xmas gifts." But we must admit that the stamp is a pretty conceit, in spite of these defects and of the ambition of the artist, which has spread the "thin red line" over territory that has not otherwise been acquired. In addition to the things to be learned from the pictorial part of stamps, there are other things which attract the attention of the thoughtful and ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... men were dead of the plague, and the ship cast ashore And with the great men in curing of their claps Expressly taking care that nobody might see this business done Having some experience, but greater conceit of it than is fit Helping to slip their calfes when there is occasion Her months upon her is gone to bed I had agreed with Jane Welsh, but she came not, which vexed me Lay long caressing my wife and talking Let her brew as she has baked New ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... For he was to all intents and purposes the originator and head man of the little campaign, till suddenly casting his eyes sidewise he caught sight of Mark looking at him in an amused way, which discharged all his conceit upon the instant, as he flushed up and changed back to the old Dummy ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... lunch, and, whether by accident or intention, made a better impression than he had ever made before. He was intelligent, easy, full of information and o rara avis! proved himself to be a man without conceit. He never complained of his ill-fortune in life, but his individuality thrust the fact into every mind, that this was a man destined for distinction who had missed it. He seemed to be riding through life for a fall, and rode with his chin up, gay ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... any one who doesn't toady to him," thought Captain Cartwright moodily. "I can see that I've got to make it my business to take the conceit and arrogance out ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... of our modern journals, those monuments of editorial self-conceit, that Catherine the Great died happily as she had lived. Everybody knows that she died suddenly on her close stool. By calling such a death happy, the journalist hints that it is the death he himself ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... his family had, at an early age, inspired him with courage and self-conceit, so that in his blind, frivolous presumption, the only person, as he thought, who exceeded his own fascination was possibly the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... little dingy thing in pearls and laces. Ten to one but what she will marry that lame imp next door as soon as she is grown, and endow him with the whole of it—that 'little devil on two sticks,' and I must have my run before then, of course." She laughed merrily at the conceit. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Director whom you prefer! What do you mean by it, what do you mean by it? Were others to regard things in the same way, the Service would find itself without a single individual. Reconsider your conduct—forego your pride and conceit, and make Lienitsin amends." ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the notion of an animal origin, and count themselves "children of God," love to prate of their "humble sense of servitude." In most of the sermons that have poured out from pulpit and altar against the doctrine of evolution human vanity and conceit have been a conspicuous element; and, although we have inherited this very characteristic weakness from the apes, we must admit that we have developed it to a higher degree, which is entirely repudiated by sound and normal intelligence. We are greatly amused at all the childish follies ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... every pause, "You are a dupe; but I like you the better for it. And," added he, "you don't—blind buzzard! as your want of conceit makes you, for which I like you the better, too—you don't see the reason why he banished you from Castle Hermitage—you don't see that he is jealous of your rivalling that ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... very different;—but Mr. Vivian wouldn't think of such a thing. He understands the nature of things, and knows his own position. There is a conceit about ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... not good enough to compensate for the mischief they did him. He spoke his own language with purity: he had some merit, but more conceit: and he made no use of the merit he had, but to make himself enemies." Voltaire adds, "Bussi was released at the end of eighteen months; but he was in disgrace all the rest of his life, in vain protesting a regard for Louis XIV." Bussi ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... morning all the party in the Chateau d'Anzy were astir, little La Baudraye having arranged a day's sport for the Parisians—less for their pleasure than to gratify his own conceit. He was delighted to make them walk over the twelve hundred acres of waste land that he was intending to reclaim, an undertaking that would cost some hundred thousand francs, but which might yield an increase of thirty to sixty thousand francs a year in the ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... time he brought the letters, Anna received him with her usual kindness; but there was something in his manner that displeased her, whether it was self-assurance, or conceit, or a way he had of looking at her, she could not tell, nor did she waste many seconds trying to decide; but the next day when he came he was not admitted to her presence, nor the next after that, nor for some time to come. This surprised Herr Klutz, who was of Dellwig's opinion that ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... into youth in a dream of love. The lady of his mystic passion dies early. He dreams of her still, not as a wonder of earth, but as a saint in paradise, and relieves his heart in an autobiography, a strange and perplexing work of fiction—quaint and subtle enough for a metaphysical conceit; but, on the other hand, with far too much of genuine and deep feeling. It is a first essay; he closes it abruptly as if dissatisfied with his work, but with the resolution of raising at a future day a worthy monument to the memory of her whom he has lost. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... all the vanities of this world should not entreat a moment's breath from me; could the Devil work my belief to imagine I could never die, I would not outlive that very thought. I have so abject a conceit of this common way of existence, this retaining to the sun and elements, I cannot think this to be a man, or to live according to the dignity of humanity. In expectation of a better, I can with patience embrace this life, yet in my best meditations ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... harmony with the noblest soul, grand by every charm of culture, useful and beautiful because useful; feminine purity and delicacy and refinement giving their luster and their power to the most absolute science—woman learned without infidelity and wise without conceit, the crowned queen of the world by right of that Knowledge which is Power and that Beauty which ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... not like 'both,'" with composed lightness. "If you had said that you felt yourself develop angelic qualities when you were near me, I should feel flattered, and swell with pride. But 'both' leaves me unsatisfied. It interferes with the happy little conceit that one is an all-pervading, beneficent power. One likes to contemplate a large picture of one's self—not plain, but coloured—as ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... stranger to us. Obstinate, with his dogged determination and stubborn common-sense, and Pliable with his shallow impressionableness, are among our acquaintances. We have, before now, come across "the brisk lad Ignorance from the town of Conceit," and have made acquaintance with Mercy's would-be suitor, Mr. Brisk, "a man of some breeding and that pretended to religion, but who stuck very close to the world." The man Temporary who lived in a town two miles off from Honesty, and next door to Mr. Turnback; Formalist and Hypocrisy, ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... was going. "I can take her on East in the fall. As soon as she has a little knowledge of the world she'll not expect me to marry her. She can get something to do. I'll help her." And now he felt in conceit with himself again—felt that he was going to be a good, generous ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... 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 robbed me ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... garde,—le meme comme Napoleon,—le petit Caporal." With a hearty laugh we bade "le petit Caporal" bon nuit, and returned to our hotel, asking ourselves what need there could be for the Philosopher's Stone, whilst there existed such a talisman as Conceit? ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... things holy that were therein contained, and especially, the priest and clerk most happy, and without doubt greatly blessed, because they were the servants, as I then thought,[49] of God, and were principal in the holy temple, to do his work therein. This conceit grew so strong in little time upon my spirit, that had I but seen a priest, though never so sordid and debauched in his life,[50] I should find my spirit fall under him, reverence him, and knit unto him; yea, I thought, for the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... often as it hears sweet music. The tale is not precise whether this river is neighbor to us or is a stream of the older world. "It dances at the noise of musick," so runs the legend, "for with musick it bubbles, dances and grows sandy." This tale may be the conceit of one of those older poets whose verses celebrate the morning and the freshness of the earth—Thomas Heywood could have written it or even the least of those poets who sat their evenings at the Mermaid—or the tale may arise more remotely from an old worship of the god Pan, who is said to have ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... scarcely of a noble metal. It is plain the writer has outgrown his old self, yet not made acquaintance with the new. This letter from a busy youth of three and twenty, breathes of seventeen: the sickening alternations of conceit and shame, the expense of hope IN VACUO, the lack of friends, the longing after love; the whole world of egoism under which youth ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and imperilling their Sunday bests; he was letting precious time slip. Then, too, by Farwell's advice, old Jerry was growing rigid along financial lines, and at last the States took definite shape in Jerry-Jo's mind, but he meant to have Priscilla before he heeded the lure. With all his brazen conceit and daring he intuitively knew that the girl had never thought of him as he thought of her, and he dared not awaken her by legitimate means. Quite in keeping with his unrestrained nature, he plotted, indirectly, to secure what otherwise ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... offered his forlorn hope, his one greenback, to procure the transportation of his goods across the river. But that five-dollar bill was so scorned and snubbed by the ascendent truckmen that the doctor found himself smiling at his conceit that the poor, despised thing, when returned to his purse, went sneakingly into the farthest and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... could a child like you read the Bible? It is a book for bishops and archbishops, and the Immaculate Father himself. What an arrogance? What an insolence of self-conceit must possess so young a heart? Saints ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... cannot be closed, And thou resistance need'st not try, Listen to the gloss that I On this sweet conceit composed: "The bless'ed rapture of forgetting Never doth my heart deserve; What my memory would preserve Is the memory I 'm regretting". When Nature from the void obscure Her varied world to life awakes, All things find use and so endure:— Thus she a poison never makes Without its ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... through his brain that something serious was intended by the Cowboy. He called entreatingly to be released, and made rapid and incoherent promises of important information, mingled with affected pleasantry at their conceit, which he would hardly admit to himself could mean anything so dreadful as it seemed. But as he heard the tread of the horses moving on their course, and in vain looked around for human aid, violent trembling seized his limbs, and his eyes began to ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... became confused with the pestle, so, "the Soma-plant, whose stalks are crushed by the priests to make the Soma-libation, becomes in the Vedas itself the Crusher or Smiter, by a very characteristic and frequent Oriental conceit in accordance with which the agent and the person or thing acted on ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... lofty and grand, A blessin' to others, a power in the land. All was gone, gifts an' graces, the greatest, the least, Were hidden beneath the broad mark o' the beast— Stamped on, I may say, frae the head to the feet, All lost of the man but his pride an' conceit; Varnished ower wi' the airs o' the shabby genteel, He was gingerly steppin' his way to the diel. But now he is gaun to greet me on the way Comin' forrid as ane that has something to say. Takin' off wi' a flourish the bit o' a hat, He booed wi' an air maist genteel ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... with the conscientious, loving student of the art. Some among the former, gifted with phenomenal voices or with rare powers for instrumental performance, having reached, perhaps, with a few easy strides, their high positions, and caring but little for music save as it ministers to their vanity, conceit, or cupidity,—these have missed that gradually unfolding culture of the mind and heart that belongs to the progress of one who conscientiously seeks to know music's manifold beauties, and who with real appreciation for the beautiful in art, loving music for ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... 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, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... all his own, and saying in a high, pragmatical voice, "How d'ye do, Miss Helstone?" dropped into a seat at Caroline's elbow, to her unmitigated annoyance, for she had a peculiar antipathy to Donne, on account of his stultified and immovable self-conceit and his incurable narrowness of mind. Malone, grinning most unmeaningly, inducted himself into the corresponding seat on the other side. She was thus blessed in a pair of supporters, neither of whom, she knew, would be of any mortal use, whether for keeping up the conversation, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... lay too much polemic stress upon the doctrine of future retribution as the vindication of present impunity. For though, indeed, to the right-minded that doctrine was true, and of sufficient solace, yet with the perverse the polemic mention of it might but provoke the shallow, though mischievous conceit, that such a doctrine was but tantamount to the one which should affirm that Providence was not now, but was going to be. In short, with all sorts of cavilers, it was best, both for them and everybody, that whoever had the true light should stick behind the secure Malakoff ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... death the case was woondrously altered with the ambassador: for whereas both, in his owne conceit, and in all mens opinion els, he was in great forwardnes to haue growen a great man with the Emperor, what for the loue he bare to her Maiesty, and the particular liking he had of himselfe, he now fell into the hands of his ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... religious exaltation has before now been made the ally of the unpurified passions, is parodied by him in a simpler and more useful device. By alleging a moral purpose he is enabled to gratify the prurience of his public and to raise them in their own muddy conceit at one and the same time. The plea serves well with those artless readers who have been accustomed to consider the moral of a story as something separable from imagination, expression, and style—a quality, it may be, inherent in the plot, ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... the terror of this conceit, everything tended to confirm and strengthen it. His double crime, the circumstances under which it had been committed, the length of time that had elapsed, and its discovery in spite of all, made him as it were the visible object of the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... whole harbour. It had not occurred to her that she ought to say, "Don't trouble to come with me. I shall do very well alone." She took it for granted not only that he would come, but that he would be glad to come; and there was no conceit in this tacit assumption. It was borne in upon her mind from his, as ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to cure whatever they regard as faults in the character of a member; for instance, idleness, disorderly habits, impoliteness, selfishness, a love of novel-reading, "selfish love," conceit, pride, stubbornness, a grumbling spirit—for every vice, petty or great, criticism is held to be a remedy. They have even a "criticism-cure," and hold that this is almost as effective ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... refrain to all the reflections of Hubert Marien. He had seen enough in his relations with women to have no doubt about Jacqueline's feelings, of which indeed he had watched the rise and progress from the time she had first begun to conceive a passion for him, with a mixture of amusement and conceit. The most cautious of men are not insensible to flattery, whatever form it may take. To be fallen in love with by a child was no doubt absurd—a thing to be laughed at—but Jacqueline seemed no longer ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... marvellous illusion of conquered love that had visited him for a moment in the agitated watches of the night which might have been his last on earth, he comprehended now its true nature. It had been merely a paroxysm of delirious conceit. Thus to this man sobered by the victorious issue of a duel, life appeared robbed of much of its charm simply because it was no ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... period of this most lively narrative I will not call a conceit: it is one of the grandest conceptions I ever met with. One feels the ashes of Wickliffe gliding away out of the reach of the Sumners, Commissaries, Officials, Proctors, Doctors, and all the puddering ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... discovered the means of making a new world out of the old. About this time, Dumont, the Benthamite, travelled with him from Paris to London. Dumont was irritated with "his incredible amour-propre and his presumptuous self-conceit." "He was mad with vanity." "The man was a caricature of the vainest of Frenchmen. He believed that his book on the 'Rights of Man' might supply the place of all the books that had ever been written. If it was in his power, he would destroy all the libraries ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... earlier student compositions; the reference to the practice of throwing hats into the fire is alone sufficient to suggest it. But it is as a writer of the lyric proper that Lyly is best known. No one but Herrick, perhaps, has given us more graceful love trifles woven about some classical conceit. Mr Palgrave has familiarized us with the best, Cupid and my Campaspe played, but there are others only less charming than this. The same theme is employed ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... may long enough get upon stilts, for be we upon them, yet must we go with our legs. And sit we upon the highest throne of the world, yet sit we upon our own tail. The best and most commendable lives, and best pleasing me are (in my conceit), those which with order are fitted, and with decorum are ranged, to the common mould and human model; but without wonder or extravagancy. Now hath old age need to be handled more tenderly. Let us recommend it unto that God who is the protector of health and ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... had acquired for Done was vastly increased by his rescue of Lucy Woodrow. Conduct that had previously been ascribed to mere conceit was now accounted for by most romantic imaginings, for it is a cardinal belief amongst men of their class that the true fighter is superior to all little weaknesses and small motives. When the girl crossed the moonlit deck to Done's side, the sailors drifted away out of earshot, and inquisitive ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... a pryer in at the chinks or lockhole, I am presently on the bones of him. If a friend comes, I make him sit down by me on a form or chest. The rest may walk, a God's name!" There has been seldom a better portrait of the pragmatic conceit and self-importance of a small ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... instinctive aversion, nature avenges herself by creating an unhealthy insane attraction. For this reason, the most earnest truth-seeking men fall into the worst delusions. They will not let their mind alone; they force it toward some ugly thing, which a crotchet of argument, a conceit of intellect recommends: and nature punishes their disregard of her warning by subjection to the ugly one, by belief in it. Just so, the most industrious critics get the most admiration. They think it unjust to rest in their instinctive natural horror; they overcome it, and angry ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... stuffs of every kind, and the maid has already fallen to work. How do you do, Mistress Primrose? Rose would better become such a blossoming maid without the Prim," and she laughed gayly, as if pleased with her conceit. "Come hither, child; do not be afraid. There, I'll lay my whip on the floor. It has a threatening look, I will admit, yet 'tis a harmless thing without the owner's hand. I am sent to measure thee, Mistress Rose, and to announce ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... said I, thoughtlessly, "any adventure that will cure you of conceit—you know that is my ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... and so put off as vaine fictions; yet seeing they deliuer nothing herein but that which was well knowne and vsuall in those times wherein they liued, they are not slightly, and vpon an imagined conceit, to be reiected: for they affirme no more then is manifest in the records of most approued Histories, whose essence is and must be [t]truth, [u]as straightnesse of a rule, or else deserue not that title. In which wee reade of [x]Martiana, [y]Locusta, ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... many galleries and churches devoted to his works; for Antwerp is Rubens's shrine. None of them impressed me, as compared with this. One of his Madonnas, however, I must not forget to describe, it was a conceit so just like him. Instead of the pale, downcast, or upturned faces, which form the general types of Madonna, he gives her to us, in one painting, as a gorgeous Oriental sultana, leaning over a balcony, with full, dark eye and jewelled turban, and rounded outlines, sustaining ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... evident sincerity of his purpose had given simplicity to his speech. He for once had been neither formal nor absurd, and the uniqueness of the fact, taken in conjunction with her share in it, seemed to have given him a claim on her consideration. He had cast aside the armour of self-conceit at which she could have thrown a dart without remorse, and the man seeming so defenceless, she had a desire to deal ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... foreign king, but did not inculcate fanatical and useless rebellion against overwhelming power. But such a reply, which would have satisfied a more commonplace mind, has in it nothing brilliant and striking. I cannot but think that Jesus shows a vain conceit in the cleverness of his answer: I do not think it so likely to have been a conscious evasion. But neither does his rebuke of the questioners at all commend itself to me. How can any man assume to be an authoritative teacher, and then claim that men shall not put ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... Wit, as "an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his tyger's heart wrapt in a player's hide supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you ... and is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a countrie." He is said to have written rapidly and with facility, rarely requiring to alter what he had set down. In addition to his generally received works, others have been attributed to him, some of which have been already mentioned: ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... the return of the Knight of the Mirrors, who would bring him word about his beloved one. He was anxious to know whether she was still enchanted. Then he thought of the great victory he had won over this bold knight, and it was perhaps only pardonable if it aroused some conceit in his breast. ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the Church may, after all, have succeeded in tying up the infinite with red-tape and sealing-wax—believes that God is a large, dark notary-public who has recorded her marriage in a book—she will do better to stay. Doubtless the conceit of it will console her—that the God who looks after the planets has an eye on her, to see that she makes but one guess about so uncertain a ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... attempt to utilise new scenes and conditions. But the whole class has special interest for us in one peculiarity which makes it perhaps unreadable to any but students, and that is its saturation with the Elizabethan conceit and word-play which is sometimes called Euphuism. Nor is this wonderful, considering that more than one of these "pamphlets" is directly connected with the matter and the personages of Euphues itself. To this famous book, therefore, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... fancifully marked coats of morocco, and washed and ironed within (for you collectors must have recourse to a woman's occupation) with so much care and nicety that even the eyes of our ancient Rebecca, with "spectacle on nose" to boot, could hardly detect the cunning' conceit of your binder! ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to me, have upheld me in my career, both against myself and against unjust attacks; against the calumny which has often persecuted me, against discouragement, and against the too eager hopefulness whose utterances are misinterpreted as those of overwhelming conceit? I had resolved to display stolid stoicism in the face of abuse and insults; but on two occasions base slanders have necessitated a reply. Though the advocates of forgiveness of injuries may regret that ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... of those?" he inquired, handing the glasses, and blandly ignoring Miss Deane's petulance. Her brain was busy with other things while she twisted the binoculars to suit her vision. Rainbow Island—Iris—it was a nice conceit. But "menial" struck a discordant note. This man was no menial in appearance or speech. Why was ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... imagination to be its author? It is not a conglomerate idea, but a single one. Now, if there is no God, we have a clear, definite idea of nothing. How will you account for this? Are you not now unable to give a reason for your premises? Is it not the truth that fools are wiser in their own conceit than men who can give ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... contains each and all of the others, but that whatever is in the universe is in every individual part of it; that even the meanest holds the elements of the noblest; that the highest life is even in what in short-sighted conceit we call death."—W. N. Hailmann, Law of Childhood, ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... apt to be sincere; but I doubt whether we are to be saved by any amount of vicarious salt water, and, though the philosophers should weep us into another Noah's flood, yet commonly men have lumber enough of self-conceit to build a raft of, and can subsist a good while on that beautiful charity for their own weaknesses in which the nerves of conscience are embedded and cushioned, as in similar physical straits they can ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... all, but a most serious panegyrist, who never laughs, but does sometimes make his readers laugh, when they see his very unbecoming, mocking grimaces against the "old masters"—not that it can be fairly asserted that it is a laughable book. It has much conceit, and but little merriment; there is nothing really funny after you have got over, (vide page 6,) that he "looks with contempt on Claude, Salvator, and Gaspar Poussin." This contempt, however, being too limited for the "graduate of Oxford," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... "Your conceit is superb, Adherbal," Thyra laughed. "You get worse and worse. Had I ever dreamed of it I should never have consented so submissively when my father ordered me to regard you as my ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... The antique fabric needed the sparkle of those costumes on her deck to make her aspect fit in with the imaginations she bred. But, as I had anticipated, the cold proved too powerful for their conceit, and they were presently glad to ship their more modern trousers, though they clung obstinately to their waistcoats, and could not be persuaded to remove their hats on ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... at the chapar-khana half an hour later. In this visit he is preceded by his farrash, and he walks with a magnificent peacock strut that causes the skirts of his faultless roundabout to flop up and down, up and down, in rhythmic accompaniment to his steps. Apart from his insufferable conceit, however, he tries to make himself as agreeable as possible, and after tea and cigarettes, I give him and the people a tomasha, at the conclusion of which he asks permission ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... triumph for Vesalius; of triumph deserved, because earned by patient and accurate toil in a good cause: but Vesalius, being but a mortal man, may have contracted in those same days a temper of imperiousness and self-conceit, such as he showed afterwards when his pupil Fallopius dared to add fresh discoveries to those of his master. And yet, in spite of all Vesalius knew, how little he knew! How humbling to his pride it would have been had he known then—perhaps he does know now—that he had actually again ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... lovers. He pictured the Judge riding down the dust-white road as the sunset shadows grew long. He knew the exact spot—the last bit of woodland—from where Martin, across level-lying fields, could obtain his first glimpse of the old farmhouse and porch. His moving-picture conceit next placed M'ri, dressed in white, with touches of blue, on the west porch. He had decided that in the Long Ago Days she had been wont to wear blue, which he imagined to be the Judge's favorite color. Then he caused the unimpressionable Judge to tie his horse to the hitching post at the side ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... I believe; but Thurio thinks not so. Proteus, the good conceit I hold of thee— For thou hast shown some sign of good desert— Makes me the better ...
— Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... overwhelmed by the first full view of the extent of the injuries he had inflicted, the first perception that pride and malevolence had been the true source of his prejudice and misconceptions, and for the first time conscious of the long-fostered conceit that had been his bane from boyhood. All had flashed on him with the discovery of the true purpose of the demand which he thought had justified his persecution. He saw the glory of Guy's character and the part he had acted,—the scales of self-admiration fell from ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seldom that a person's fault or folly injures himself alone, and, alas for me! I was the victim of Craven's conceit and obstinacy. At his next fire I felt a pang that I never can forget. His ill-directed shot had entered my shoulder, and I sank down howling with agony. My companions instantly surrounded me, uttering exclamations of alarm, regret, and pity, Craven ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... over a fool, if the fool's ancestors had happened to hold the same office over those of the man of wisdom. The fancy seemed to be held that folly and wisdom are handed down from father to son, a conceit which is often the very reverse of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... to ride, and he's picked up some of her tricks. Course he ain't got her way with 'em. But he might make a tidy little 'orseman one o' these days, as I tells him, if so be he was to tumble on his head a nice few times and get the conceit knocked out ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... when he had occasion to be absent on a Lord's Day from his Flock, employ'd an honest Neighbour of some small Talents for a Mechanick, to read a Sermon out of some good Book unto 'em. This Honest, whom they ever counted also a Pious Man, had so much conceit of his Talents, that instead of Reading a Sermon appointed, he to the Surprize of the People, fell to preaching one of his own. For his Text he took these Words, 'Despise not Prophecyings'; and in his Preachment he betook himself to bewail ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... fully occupied with the new scenes around her, but her Scottish cousin took up every moment open to conversation. He was older than Norman, and had just taken his degree, and he talked with that superior aplomb, which a few years bestow at their time of life, without conceit, but more hopeful and ambitious, and with ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... lined in frocks suspended from hangers, and just wide enough for two very perfect thirty-sixes to stand abreast, August fell heavily. So heavily that occasionally a cloak-model, her lot to show next December's conceit in theater wraps, fainted on the show-dais; or a cloth-of-gold evening gown, donned for the twentieth time that sweltering day, would suddenly, with its model, crumple, a glittering ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... us one after another, and when her eye rested on me, I began to suspect that insolent as she was she was even duller; in fact, that she was so sodden in her conceit of wealth that she was plain stupid. So when she said to me, "You are an American by birth, I believe. Can you tell me the meaning of ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... quickly ended, and without desperate need. They served, however, to pierce certain gold-laced bubbles which had been strutting about the stage pretending to be great and impressing many people with their greatness; but which were, in reality, great only in self-conceit, and in that colossal! So did the Revolution and the Civil War, at first, and costly work it was until the last of them had vanished, to be replaced by men who knew how to fight; for it seems one of the axioms of history that the fiercer your soldier is in peace, the more useless he is ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... smiled. "My confounded conceit may help me on in the world, but it doesn't make me a grateful friend or ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... grating metal had set my teeth on edge. My diseased consciousness was more intensely and continually occupied with his thoughts and emotions, than with those of any other person who came in my way. I was perpetually exasperated with the petty promptings of his conceit and his love of patronage, with his self-complacent belief in Bertha Grant's passion for him, with his half- pitying contempt for me—seen not in the ordinary indications of intonation and phrase and slight action, which ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... Thomasine, her sons, and her gallant. Farther reflections on keeping. A state not calculated for a sick bed. Gives a short journal of what had passed relating to the lady since his last. Mr. Brand inquires after her character and behaviour of Mrs. Smith. His starchedness, conceit, and pedantry. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... say, "I am satisfied of the fact from my own disposition." He might as well give a child's reason at once, and say, "CAUSE!" Such persons have seldom heard a lecture, or read a syllable, and yet are always prating with a great show of wisdom, but rather, in fact, of blind conceit. Their silence would be of far more service to the cause of virtue than their opinions. In many cases, it will be found that such persons are ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... good share of conceit, and knowing Nellie to be quite friendly to himself, he imagined that his advantage over Fred would be so great that he could readily monopolize the attention of the young lady in question, and therefore ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... case of woman. It was the subterfuge and defiance of negro slavery. It has been raised in all ages by tyrants and usurpers against the toiling, over-burdened millions, seeking redress for their wrongs, and protection for their rights. It always indicates intense self-conceit, and supreme selfishness. It is at war with reason and common-sense, and is a bold denial of the oneness ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... streets, and ordered them never to come into our quarter again." Abou Hassan's mother little thought her son had any share in this adventure, and therefore had turned the discourse on purpose to put him out of the conceit of being the commander of the faithful; but instead of effacing that idea, she recalled it, and impressed the more deeply in his mind, that it was not imaginary ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... they are less acquainted with the works of man's hands than with those of God; their occupations, too, which are simple, and requiring less of ingenuity and skill than those which engage the attention of the other portion of their fellow-creatures, are less favourable to the engendering of self-conceit and sufficiency so utterly at variance with that lowliness of spirit which constitutes the best foundation of piety. The sneerers and scoffers at religion do not spring from amongst the simple children of nature, but are ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... contracting her pretty brows, "I can't imagine him any different." And then she laughed. "It's not a bit of use trying to put me out of conceit with him, Court Godmother—so you may ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... his hope had lied to him, that the judgment he prided himself upon, and which had prompted him to this great deed, was at fault. The more than common tact and delicacy of feeling he had sometimes suspected he possessed in rare, exalted moments, were now shown vain ideas born from his own conceit; and the event had proved him no more subtle, clever, or far-seeing than other men. Indeed, he rated himself as an abject blunderer and thought he saw how a great overwhelming fear, at the bottom of his worship of Chris, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... King Shehriyar, "thou puttest me out of conceit with my kingdom and makest me repent of having slain so many women and maidens. Hast thou any stories of birds?" "Yes," answered ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... purely literary and artistic, and that she devoted herself to his society simply because he offered an interesting problem and an inspiring theme. An ingenious charity may find in that attitude evidence of modesty; to my thinking it argues a more subtle and magnificent conceit than if he had fathomed the truth, as many humbler men in his place ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... known each the other from childhood. And she perhaps came nearer to liking him for himself than did any one else of his acquaintance. She was used to his conceit, his selfishness, his meanness and smallness in suspicion, his arrogance, his narrow-mindedness. She knew his good qualities—his kindness of heart, his shamed-face generosity, his honesty, the strong if limited sense of justice which made ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... could go back to what I then was! Why can we not revive past times as we can revisit old places? If I had the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write a Sonnet to the Road between Wem and Shrewsbury, and immortalize every step of it by some fond enigmatical conceit. I would swear that the very milestones had ears, and that Harmer-hill stooped with all its pines, to listen to a poet, as he passed! I remember but one other topic of discourse in this walk. He mentioned Paley, praised the naturalness and clearness of his style, but condemned his sentiments, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the humility of courtly adulation merged in the ecstasies of Platonic love. She was charming by indefeasible right;—a jure divino beauty. Her fascinations multiplied with her wrinkles, and her admirers might have anticipated the conceit of Cowley, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... terms of symmetry. With a most amazing conceit they have decided upon the contours of their bodies as the standards of beauty. Therefore I am pleased to look at trees or at anything that grows, unhandicapped by the mediocritizing force of reason, and note ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... those who consider—and I agree with them—that the education of boys under the age of twelve years ought to be entrusted as much as possible to women. Let me ask—of what period of youth and manhood does not the same hold true? I pity the ignorance and conceit of the man who fancies that he has nothing left to learn from cultivated women. I should have thought that the very mission of woman was to be, in the highest sense, the educator of man from infancy to old age; that that was the work towards which all the God-given ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... from any tinge of conceit or egotism by its absolute simplicity and truth. The imitation referred to is of the moral "Tales" for popular reading of the lower classes, which my cabman had studied. The pity of it is, when so many ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... went this morning to my Lord of Warwick; but he was gone to the king's, and hearing of the merry-makings here, I came hither for kill-time. A chance word of my Lord of Montagu—whom Saint Dunstan confound!—made me conceit that a feat of skill with the cloth-yard might not ill preface my letter to the great earl. But, pardie! it seems I reckoned without my host, and in seeking to make my fortunes too rashly, I have helped to mar them." Wherewith he related the particulars of his ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Iblis, who was the noblest of all that Allah (magnified be His name!) created of angels[FN126] and men and Jinn, and the love of the Truth was inherent in him, for he knew naught but this; but whenas he saw himself unique in such dignity, there entered into him pride and conceit, vainglory and arrogance which revolted from loyalty and obedience to the commandment of His Creator; wherefore Allah made him inferior to all creatures and cast him out from love, making his abiding- place to be in disobedience. So when he knew that Allah (glorified be His ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... some state were given in the larger towns, the table was not set or served like the formal dinner of to-day, for all the sweets, pastry, vegetables, and meats were placed on the table together, with a grand "conceit" for the ornament in the centre. At one period, when pudding was part of the dinner, it was served first. Thus an old-time saying is explained, which always seemed rather meaningless, "I came early—in pudding-time." There was considerable ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... already? I've just been telling the dress-maker that she can go. What you were saying to me has quite put me out of conceit of my new frock; I can quite well get on without one—" said good-natured Mrs. Abel; but her lips trembled ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... from conceit has often been remarked. At a luncheon given in his honor by the well-known deputy, Captain Lasies, he would not say a word about himself, but extolled his comrades until somebody said: "You ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... laugh. The doctor had one annoying habit—imagined he had the right to poke fun at everybody simply because he was a doctor. "The man's riddled with conceit, like all these professionals," ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... discouragement fell on me. A spiritual drowsiness. Giles' voice was going on complacently; the very voice of the universal hollow conceit. And I was no longer angry with it. There was nothing original, nothing new, startling, informing, to expect from the world; no opportunities to find out something about oneself, no wisdom to acquire, no fun to enjoy. Everything was stupid and overrated, ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... to an astounding degree the quality of incorrectly diagnosing other peoples, due partly to the unbounded conceit engendered by their three wars of unification and their rapid increase of prosperity. Their mental food in recent years has been war, conquest, disparagement of others and glorification of self. They entered the struggle thinking only in army corps and siege artillery. Certain undefinable ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... Cerizet, "if I were once installed near Thuillier, I shouldn't despair of soon putting him and la Peyrade at loggerheads. In the management of a newspaper there are lots of inevitable disagreements, and by always taking the side of the fool against the clever man, I can increase the conceit of one and wound the conceit of the other until life together becomes impossible. Besides, you spoke just now of political danger; now the manager of a newspaper, as you ought to know, when he has the intellect to be something better than a man of ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... answerest me, either compelled by Fate or entrapped by my cunning into so doing, or thereby gratifying thy vanity and conceit, I leave thee and return to my favourite place and position in the siras-tree, but when thou shalt remain silent, confused, and at a loss to reply, either through humility or thereby confessing thine ignorance, and impotence, and want ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... dashed the hansom; and from the curb-line Hickey watched it with a humorous light in his dull eyes. Indeed, the detective seemed in extraordinary conceit with himself. He chewed with unaccustomed emotion upon his cold cigar, scratched his cheek, and chuckled; and, chuckling, pulled his hat well down over his brows, thrust both hands into his trousers pockets, and shambled back to the St. Luke ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... and that is the belief that we can lay down the burden of our wretched little makeshift individualities for ever at each lift towards the goal of evolution, which can only be a being that cannot be improved upon. After all, what man is capable of the insane self-conceit of believing that an eternity of himself would be tolerable even to himself? Those who try to believe it postulate that they shall be made perfect first. But if you make me perfect I shall no longer be myself, nor will it be possible for ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... a sort of stones should be brought thither, and of what matter theyr cement that ioyned and held them together, was made the heygth of the Obelisk and statelinesse of the Pyramides, exceeding the imagined conceit of Dimocrates proposed to Alexander the great, about a worke to be performed vpon the hill Athos. For the strangenes of the Egiptian building might giue place to this. The famous laborinths were far inferior, Lemnos is not ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... ambition to play against a "champion" of the first water, When we appeared on the ground I noticed that the Countess had a small ivory mallet. "This," I said to myself, "is a foregone conclusion; any one who plays with a fancy mallet, and that of ivory, is sure to be beaten." And in my conceit I thought I need not give myself much trouble about the game. Alas! I never appreciated the saying that "pride has a fall" until that day. At first I played with utter indifference, I was so sure of winning, and even when the Countess de Paris walked triumphantly over ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... must not be supposed that his quaint manners proceeded from affectation or conceit; for all testimony declares that a more simple and natural child never lived, or a more lively and merry one. He had at his command the resources of the Common; to this day the most unchanged spot within ten ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... there ought to be a moral in it somewhere for the benefit of struggling fellow-scribblers. But the best I can find is this: That if you are blessed with some talent, a great deal of industry, and an amount of conceit mighty enough to enable you to disregard superiors, equals and critics, as well as the fancied demands of the public, it is possible, without friends, or introductions, or bothering celebrities to read your manuscripts, or cultivating ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... these accomplishments, carried to the highest degree in one and the same man, have given him great presumption; that is the trouble with him up to a certain point, and that certain point, I am very much afraid, is the highest degree in the thermometer of self-conceit." ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... the most conspicuous features in his character seems to have been a remarkable, and, as some think, a culpable degree of flexibility. That such a disposition is preferable to its opposite extreme, will be admitted by all who think that modesty, even in excess, is more nearly allied to wisdom than conceit and self-sufficiency. He who has attentively considered the political, or, indeed, the general concerns of life, may possibly go still further, and rank a willingness to be convinced, or in some cases even without conviction, ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... what they looked." Aristarchi laughed at his own conceit. "The girl was doing some kind of work. The young man stood beside her, resting one hand against the tree. I could not see his face all the time, but I saw hers. She is in love with him. They were talking earnestly ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... terror of this conceit, everything tended to confirm and strengthen it. His double crime, the circumstances under which it had been committed, the length of time that had elapsed, and its discovery in spite of all, made him as it were the visible object ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... dislike when alone, from the fear of being frightened by something which may appear from behind a tree. I saw a beautiful white fox, several skunks, some chipmunks and gray squirrels, owls, crows, and crested blue-jays. As the sun was getting low I reached Bergens Park, which was to put me out of conceit with Estes Park. Never! It is long and featureless, and its immediate surroundings are mean. It reminded me in itself of some dismal Highland strath—Glenshee, possibly. I looked at it with special interest, as it was the ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... letra may be a short gloss. The name letrilla is applied sometimes to a little poem in short lines which may be set to music (p. 9), and sometimes to a strophic poem with a refrain (p. 16). A madrigal is a short silva upon a light topic, an expanded conceit. The term cantilena is given to any short piece of verse intended to be set to music (p. 17). Serranillas, in which is described the meeting of a gentleman with a rustic maiden, are famous for the examples written by Juan Ruiz and the Marquis of Santillana. ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... the fact that he was caring for her victim was not lost on his shrewd understanding. He was gathering up and helping patch the wreckage she was making. It was a curious conceit, and Elijah Rasba, while he smiled at the humour of it, was at the same time conscious ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... left him to his own conceit and devices. He let go in less than five fathoms, paid out too much cable, and went stern first on to a coral patch, where he stuck for a couple of days, much to ...
— "Pig-Headed" Sailor Men - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... ambition, and perhaps at the last it is called heroic sacrifice. Vanity is an unsatisfied desire, hollow in itself, but capable of holding both bad and good. It is not identical with self-complacency, nor yet with conceit. ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... back at the post, 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 ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... woman, is really an exaggerated form of self-consciousness. It is far removed from conceit or self-esteem, yet it causes one's personality to overshadow everything else. A sensitive person feels that, whatever he does, wherever he goes, or whatever he says, he is the center of observation. He imagines that people are ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... divan again and permitted his sister to feed him and tell him that his disaster was only an accident. He tried to think so, too, but serious doubts persisted in his mind. There had been a clean-cut finish to that swing and jab which disturbed his boy's conceit. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the smallest conceit or smugness, but he had a little child-like vanity. You could not spoil him nor improve him; he remained egotistical, sound, sunny and unreasonable; violently impatient, not at all self-indulgent—despising the very idea of a valet or ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... impatient of control. He has no idea of that implicit obedience to orders that is at the foundation of success in civil life as well as in the army; and, above all, he is possessed of such an inordinate self-conceit that if it is not speedily curbed by one or more severe lessons, it may ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... the character I had assumed in fulfilling them, the city itself and all my surroundings, the environment of the moment and all that went with it, faded from my mental view, and left us two there, utterly alone in a world of our own, self created by my own conceit ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... looked for, your Majesty. It is an army of bourgeois and craftsmen, stout fellows who could doubtless defend their walls against an attack, or might fight stoutly shoulder to shoulder, but they have an over-weening conceit in themselves, and deem that all that is necessary in war is to carry a pike or a pole-axe and use it stoutly. A party of children would do as well, or better, were they set to besiege a town. Leadership there is none. Parties go out to skirmish with the garrison; a few lives are lost, and ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... legend of the "Lurleiberg" or the charming "Bridal of Belmont" of the author of "Lillian," or who have gazed at it for hours when presented upon the stage in the shape of "Ondine" or the "Naiad Queen,"—have fully realized its significance. To most it has been merely a pretty conceit or an effective spectacle; to the close student it is an absorbing picture of the enthralment of human energies. Sir Huldebrand of Kingstettin is a true as well as a valiant knight, and he has a golden-haired and white-handed ladie-love in the neighboring castle of the Baron of Steinbrunnen. ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... at a window and saw some one reading," thought Amy; and she smiled so sweetly at the conceit that Webb asked, "How many pennies will ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... unspeakable man! Your conceit is just extraordinary! If you wanted any other good thing in life, from a big ship to a gold ring, would you not expect to buy it? Would your loving it, and wanting it, be sufficient? Jamie Logan knew well what he was ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... down his paper when I was announced, and said he was glad to see me; and I honestly believe that the phrase of welcome was no empty one, even before he knew what I had come about. He seemed—I say it without conceit—to have taken a fancy to me at our ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... thus, as in the case of Byron, be burnt out of the young man by the egotism of passion; but it may also be frozen up in his breast by the egotism of opinion. Woe to the young shoulders afflicted with the conceit that they support old heads! When this mental disease assumes the form of flippancy, it renders a young person happily unconscious that Nature has any stores of wisdom which she has not thought fit to deposit in his cranium, or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... with those of God; their occupations are simple, and requiring less of ingenuity and skill than those which engage the intention of the other portion of their fellow-creatures, are less favourable to the engendering of self-conceit and sufficiency, so utterly at variance with that lowliness of spirit which constitutes the best test of piety. The sneerers and scoffers at religion do not spring from amongst the simple children of nature, but are the excrescences of overwrought refinement, ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... the animals I've met The Puppy is the worst one yet. Clumsy and crude, he hasn't brains Enough to come in when it rains. But with insufferable conceit He thinks that he ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... the minister's niece. At that moment Anderson himself came in, and some ceremony of introduction took place. Anderson was a fair-haired, good-looking young man, with that thorough look of self-satisfaction and conceit which attaches are much more wont to exhibit than to deserve. For the work of an attache at Brussels is not of a nature to bring forth the highest order of intellect; but the occupations are of a nature to make a young man feel that he is not like ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... value of his goods?" "Oh!" rejoined the Bashaw, "that is not a man, he is only a dog. Let me call him back and you shall see what he is." Immediately the Bashaw called the man back and asked him, "Who was the better, God or Mahomet?" The Arab bluntly answered, smiling with conceit, "Why do you ask me such a thing? What harm do I receive from Mahomet or what harm do others receive from our prophet? But God kills one man with a sword, hangs another, drowns another. All the evil ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... riding-habit of my own, and need not hire one at Hastings; but I shall be glad to hire a horse while I am with you, as, you know, I do not mind riding alone.... I feel intensely stupid, which makes me think I must be ill (admire, I beg, the conceit of that inference), as I have no other symptoms of indisposition. Farewell. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... and yet perhaps a little of each," Darrell answered, lightly, not wishing to alarm her or lead her to attach undue importance to the occurrence. "I think Mr. Walcott has an abnormal amount of conceit, and that most of those little mannerisms of his are mainly to attract attention to himself. He was probably trying to produce some sort of an impression on your mind, and to that extent he certainly succeeded, ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... man, with a good conceit of himself, and had much that was interesting to say of the new countries he had visited. Gudrid was rapt in attention, for every word he said seemed to make Einar visible to her, with his bright eyes, his ear-rings, his soft ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... For in self-conceit babbles the fool,[294] X.14a. The silly man multiplieth his words; 15. The fussiness of the fool jadeth him. Who knows ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... thousand a year. Miss Darnel, however, had penetration enough to discover and despise him, as a strange composition of rapacity and profusion, absurdity and good sense, bashfulness and impudence, self-conceit and diffidence, awkwardness and ostentation, insolence and good-nature, rashness and timidity. He was continually surrounded and preyed upon by certain vermin called Led Captains and Buffoons, who showed him in leading-strings like a sucking giant, rifled his pockets without ceremony, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... falls more properly into other hands than mine. Only I would put in a caution—do not let us mingle self-conceit with our congratulations; and, above all, do not let us 'rest and be thankful.' There is much to be done yet. Listening ears can catch on every side vague sounds that tell of unrest and of the stirrings into wakefulness of 'The spirit ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is impossible for an officer to make the best use of his men unless he is armed with all available research data and can talk the language of the philosopher and modern social scientist is little more than a twentieth century conceit. To seek and use all pertinent information is commendable, but truth comes of seeing all things in their natural proportion. To know more than is necessary blunts one's own weapons. The application of common sense to the problem is more vital than ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... Meanness and conceit are frequently combined in the same character: for he who to obtain transient applause can be indifferent to truth and his own dignity, will be as little scrupulous about them if, by subserviency, he can improve his condition in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... that my opinion goes for nothing. Well, the conceit of the rising generation is only equalled by—by that o' the one that went before it. But, now, isn't it strange that you are the very man ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... from equalling their predecessors. M. de Lefebvre de la Barre was a clever sailor but a deplorable administrator; as for the commissioner, M. de Meulles, his incapacity did not lessen his extreme conceit. ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... being entwined in and out through all the incidents of the story, like an outward token of the inward similitude of their souls. With this, again, is connected, like a second reflection of that inward similitude, the conceit of two marvellously beautiful cups, also exactly like each other—children's cups, of wood, but adorned with gold and precious stones. These two cups, which by their resemblance help to bring the friends together at critical moments, were given ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... said Rosalind Merton, sidling up to Maggie and casting some disdainful glances at poor Priscilla, "the conceit of some people! Of all forms of conceit, preserve me from the ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... acquired an assured position of security and importance as the chosen companion of man, so dreaded by all its kith and kin. The tail went up at once and stayed there; when it could go no higher, it curled over. But promotion breeds conceit only in base natures. The greyhound is a gentleman, respectful and self-respecting, and it shows that by the very carriage of its tail. Only a snob at heart, petted and pampered for many generations, could have produced that perfect incarnation ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... rest, Be calm, as being not. Ye oceans of intolerable delight, The blazing photosphere of central Night, Be ye forgot. Terror, thou swarthy Groom of Bride-bliss coy, Let me not see thee toy. O, Death, too tardy with thy hope intense Of kisses close beyond conceit of sense; O, Life, too liberal, while to take her hand Is more of hope than heart can understand; Perturb my golden patience not with joy, Nor, through a wish, profane The peace that should pertain To him who does by her attraction ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... one's ability to heal mentally. Conceit cannot avert the effects of deceit. Taking advantage of the present ignorance in relation to Christian Science Mind-healing, many are flooding our land with conflicting theories and practice. We should not spread abroad patchwork ideas that ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... it, Though it worketh first by seeing; Nor conceit that can unfold it, Though in thoughts be ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... position made up for any want in his love? Had she been conventionally a lady, instead of an angel in peasant form, would he have been so ready to return her kindness with an offer of marriage? There was little conceit in supposing that some, even of higher position than his own, would have accepted the offer on lower terms; but knowing Aggie as he did, he ought not to have made it to her: she was too large and too fine for such an experiment. This he now fully understood; and had he not been brought up ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... She covered her face with her hands. At one time she made a movement as if to leave. She looked earnest and troubled. I could vow she was about to burst into tears. Her face was very expressive. No one who shows such sudden changes can help being a person of rare sensibility. I am almost out of conceit of making her the heroine of my story, though, to be sure, I am not likely to interfere with her personal rights, so long as I do not know either her name or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... the right thing; destined alas! never to pass from mind to speech, for if ever tongue essayed the telling it faltered some fatuous abortion as little like love's dream as Caliban resembled Ariel. Fresh from the brave world of day-dreams, still smiling happily from some whimsical conceit as well as with anticipation of Aileen's gladness at sight of me, I passed through the courtyard ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... They are like children undimmed by sin. They are emblems of purity and truth, a source of fresh delight to the pure and innocent. The heart that does not love flowers, or the voice of a playful child, cannot be genial. It was a beautiful conceit that invented a language of flowers, by which lovers were enabled to express the feelings that they dared not openly speak. But flowers have a voice for all,—old and young, rich and poor. "To ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... 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 ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... afraid of my fierce-looking visitor, I could scarcely keep my gravity; there was such an air of pompous self-approbation about the Indian, such a sublime look of conceit in ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... bodies. Yet by an odd anomaly this ogre benefactor, this Brocklehurst, must have been a zealous and self-sacrificing enthusiast, with all his goodness spoiled by an imperious love of authority, an extravagant conceit. ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... were you I would put the matter shortly and simply, for it is the business of one describing a pilgrimage or any other matter not to puff himself up with vain conceit, nor to be always picking about for picturesque situations, but to set down plainly and shortly what he has seen and heard, describing ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... 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 ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... moment you start two ideas which are the bane of sport, jealousy of what others are doing, and conceit of what you are doing yourself; keep your eyes on the pack, on your horse's ears, and the next fence, instead of burning to beat Thompson, or hoping that Brown saw how cleverly you got over ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... last concert of Max Bohrer. Such profound knowledge of the power of the instrument, such utter ignorance of its intention. It seemed to groan in despair, that he, who knew its changes so well, could not awaken it to melody, but, with solemn conceit, show that he did know them, and gain approbation for that knowledge. Knoop, with the same exact science, showed a hearty reverence for art, and reverently withdrew himself and his violoncello. Castellan's voice was so full that her person was necessarily forgotten. One would ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... one was eager to give something to the hero of the hour. Offers of pipes, clasp-knives, tobacco, etc., rained upon him from the very men who had cuffed and kicked him like a dog but a few days before; and even his refusal of these gifts, which would formerly have been set down to conceit and "uppishness," was now taken in perfectly good part. In fact, that one deed of promptitude and courage had raised him from the last to one of the first among the whole crew. So true is it that they who succeed best ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... who, apart from the morbid excess of vanity which has evidently led him into this scrape, may be, for aught we know, worthy and amiable. His exposure, however, is on his own head: he has ostentatiously and pertinaciously forced his ignorance, conceit, and effrontery on public notice." We quite agree ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... with a new gaud or a pretty toy; but behind the self-sufficiency of her demeanor, and the frivolity of her tastes, there was something new—something more real and living than mere self-indulgence and conceit. The faculty of giving and spending herself for others had sprung into being with the first love she had known. For the man with whom she had gone away from Lettice's house she was willing to lay down her life if he would ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... troubled and perplexed about his affair and said to the Persian, 'O sage, look how thou mayst make him descend.' But he answered, 'O my lord, I can do nothing, and thou wilt never see him again till the Day of Resurrection, for that he, of his ignorance and conceit, asked me not of the peg of descent and I forgot to acquaint him therewith.' When the King heard this, he was sore enraged and bade beat the sorcerer and clap him in prison, whilst he himself cast the crown from his head and buffeted his ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... 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, ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... said Mark, and he gave his cousin a meaning look, which was returned, the latter saying to himself, "It takes some of the conceit ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... with a sly smile at Jason. "The world will always have simpletons enough, just like them, fighting and dying for they know not what, and fancying that posterity will take the trouble to put laurel wreaths on their rusty and battered helmets. Could you help smiling, Prince Jason, to see the self-conceit of that last fellow, just as ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... said that Marten could not have been aware of this foolish weakness of Mary Roscoe, but Marten was not free of blame in the affair, for he had started wrongly as regarded Reuben, and in his self conceit he had placed himself in circumstances where the temptations that surrounded him were more than his nature unaided could resist. Marten would not listen to those who would have taught him that our blessed Saviour verily took ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood
... when in his grave. The failure of the expedition was attributed both in England and America to his obstinacy, his technical pedantry, and his military conceit. He had been continually warned to be on his guard against ambush and surprise, but without avail. Had he taken the advice urged on him by Washington and others to employ scouting parties of Indians and rangers, he would never have been ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... 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 hold him still ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... be a pleasure to them to see me," thought little Inger. "I have a pretty face, and am well dressed;" and she dried her eyes. She had not lost her conceit. She had not then perceived how her fine clothes had been soiled in the brewhouse of the Old Woman of the Bogs. Her dress was covered with dabs of nasty matter; a snake had wound itself among her hair, and it dangled over her neck; and from every fold in her garment peeped out a toad, ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... looked earnest and troubled. I could vow she was about to burst into tears. Her face was very expressive. No one who shows such sudden changes can help being a person of rare sensibility. I am almost out of conceit of making her the heroine of my story, though, to be sure, I am not likely to interfere with her personal rights, so long as I do not know either her name ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... of the honey cake was simply that it was a friendly present to the infernal gods; later came the conceit that it was a sop to fling to the dog Cerberus, who guarded ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Her complexion was extremely fair, but not pale, blooming, but not ruddy. Her countenance was serious without being severe, mild and pleasant without levity or vulgarity. Her eyes were sparkling, but without indication of pride or conceit. Her whole figure was so finely proportioned that amongst other women she appeared with superior dignity, yet free from the least degree of formality or affectation. In walking or in dancing, or in other exercises which display the person, every motion ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... of God's bounty, engendering those spiritual tastes in men, philosophers and learned men, wise in their own conceit, obstinately shut their eyes to it, and look afar off for what is really close to them, so that they incur the penalty of being "branded on the nostrils" [Kuran, lxviii. 16], adjudged against unbelievers. This is illustrated by the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... their lips; they wear dresses made of the most expensive silks, and, like people generally who have sprung from nothing and find themselves lodged among higher folks than themselves, they give themselves airs, and cultivate a sickening conceit. Among the Coreans, however, they command and receive much admiration, and many an intrigue and scandal has been carried out, sometimes at the cost of many heads, through the mercenary turn of mind of ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... too long to explain, and you probably would not understand. Besides, you might take it—really, you might take it for a declaration. But it has nothing to do with you personally; it's what you represent. Fortunately you don't know all that, or your conceit would increase insufferably." ...
— The American • Henry James
... brightly, "Because I wouldn't like him if he was. No, no—now you listen here" as Baird had grinned. "This lad believes in himself, that's all. That's different from conceit. You can believe a whole lot in yourself, and still be as modest as a new—hatched chicken. That's what he reminds me ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... value forty shillings to my coson Hunton's credit, as I gaue her noe thankes. Mr Downes (Iheare) is sent for home by his father w{i}th an intent to keepe him w{i}th him, but I doe imagine that when my coson Hunton shall be other where disposed off, he shall returne; for my conceit is stronge that the feare of his beinge match'd to his disadvantage, who was placed w{i}th Mr Evelyn a youth to be bred for his p{re}ferment, hath caused this alteration; howsoever there be noe wordes made of it. Iconfess that when I have ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... told you are a pretty fighter," said she. "Well, I hold some small skill in arms myself, and have a conceit that I am something of a judge. To-morrow we will take a taste of battle together. But to-day I must carry through the honourable reception I have planned for you, Deucalion. The feast will be set ready soon, and you will wish to make ready for the feast. There are chambers here selected ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... heal mentally. Conceit cannot avert the effects of deceit. Taking advantage of the present ignorance in relation to Christian Science Mind-healing, many are flooding our land with conflicting theories and practice. We should not spread abroad patchwork ideas that in some vital ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... Though I must say," replied Mary Connynge, with indirection, "that I fancy the other far more, he being not so forward, nor so full of pure conceit. I like not a man so confident." This with an eye cast down, as much as though there were present in the room some man subject ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... own obstinacy and conceit," said Lord Marney. "I took you to Mowbray Castle, and the cards were in your own hands if you chose ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... loves his wife and children, but of what use is that love? We, so we are told in our own newspapers, love our great motherland, but how does that love express itself? Instead of knowledge—insolence and immeasurable conceit; instead of work—sloth and swinishness; there is no justice, the conception of honour does not go beyond "the honour of the uniform"—the uniform which is so commonly seen adorning the prisoner's ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... have discovered anything. You were too clever for him, piccinina! Besides, his conceit saved him—he had so good an opinion of himself that he would not have deemed it possible for you to ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... lifeless eyes glistened with malice and rancorous joy. She had read just enough to make her pedantic, and too little to give her any improving knowledge. Her understanding was naturally small, and her self-conceit great. In her person she was tall and meagre, her hair black, and her complexion of the darkest brown, with an additional sallowness at her temples and round her eyes, which were dark, very large and prominent, and entirely ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... it is not wrong to dream. My father was so modest as well as ambitious, so good as well as so gallant, that I would rather die than disgrace him by empty conceit and ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... o'er the very same; Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine, Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name. So that eternal love in love's fresh case Weighs not the dust and injury of age, Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place, But makes antiquity for aye his page; Finding the first conceit of love there bred, Where time and outward ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... man!" He laughed shortly. "Conceit, no doubt, Miss Crawford, but none the less I really do fancy that a Conniston is as good as the sort of men I have been herding with ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... perhaps five feet nine or ten in height, with a plain, heavy, rather sullen face, and quick, hot eyes. He was a mass of self-conceit, all bristling with suspicion, and in regard to money, prudent to meanness. He cared nothing for books, but liked outdoor sports and under a rather abrupt, but not discourteous, manner hid an irritable, violent temper. He was combative and courageous as very nervous people ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... the old lady, after a silence which lasted quite five minutes, "if you could not try giving him a good conceit of himself. My father used to say that if ye tell a dog all the time that he is a worthless puppy and will never be good for anything, he will herd the sheep ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... to the understanding, be taken as the whole of the world-pervading Anglo-Saxon family. The Negroes of the West Indies number a good deal more than two million souls. Does this suggester of extravagances mean that the prejudices and vain conceit of the few dozens whom he champions should be made to override and overbear, in political arrangements, the serious and solid interests of so many [187] hundreds of thousands? That "the two races are not ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... organisms live and why they die. And finally he defines a condition of things in which an organism would never die—in which it would enjoy a perpetual and perfect Life. This to him is, of course, but a speculation. Life Eternal is a biological conceit. The conditions necessary to an Eternal Life do not exist in the natural world. So that the definition is altogether impartial and independent. A Perfect Life, to Science, is simply a thing which is theoretically possible—like a ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... sister to feed him and tell him that his disaster was only an accident. He tried to think so, too, but serious doubts persisted in his mind. There had been a clean-cut finish to that swing and jab which disturbed his boy's conceit. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... realised that he had been less than an infant crying for the light, and with no language but a cry. He had shut out the light by a poor little conceit of his own. He had dared to judge life by paltry little standards. He had dared to say what was and what was not—he! ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... ten; fortunate that such a number are knocked opportunely on the head in what they call the flower of their years, and go away to suffer for their follies in private somewhere else. Otherwise, between sick children and discontented old folk, we might be put out of all conceit of life. ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at her startled. He dared not glance forward at any future with her. Nevertheless, in spite of himself, he was relenting. He would have relented quicker had she not continually put him out of conceit with himself by making him blush. Naturally, he blamed ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... is power, and the like. Methinks there is equal need of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge. By long years of patient industry and reading of the newspapers—for ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... bed in it. Oh, he's an awful ass! It was he who said at a public function 'The Mayor of Wymington must be like Caesar's wife—all things to all men!' Oh, he's a colossal ass! And his conceit! My word!" ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... Henry VI., who, tradition says, had been himself a prisoner in Ludgate, till released by a rich widow, who saw his handsome face through the grate and married him. St. Martin's church, Ludgate, is one of Wren's churches, and is chiefly remarkable for its stolid conceit in always getting in the way of the west ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... father, "take yourself off, it you cannot maintain civility. And your mother does not like fishing-tackle at the breakfast-table go! I believe," he said as Ransom bounded away, "I believe conceit is ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... classes rather than individuals, although certain characters like Fielding the plagiarist, in 'Armorel of Lyonesse,' are studied from life. The village of bankrupts in 'All in a Garden Fair' is a whimsical conceit, like the disguise of Angela in 'All Sorts and Conditions of Men,' and the double identity of Edmund Gray in 'The Ivory Gate.' In reading Besant we are constantly reminded that humanity is wider than the world; and though its simplest ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... bring food out of the earth, and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make him a cheerful countenance, and bread to strengthen man's heart. Whilst the unbeliever, blinded by his self-conceit, is worshipping his own little stock of knowledge, and neglecting God, let us be singing our Te Deum—"We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee to be ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... Mahometan (1718); and Pantheisticon (1720). The outcry raised by the orthodox party against the "poor gentleman" who had "to beg for half- crowns," and "ran into debt for his wigs, clothes, and lodging," together with his own vanity and conceit, changed him from being a somewhat free- thinking Christian into an infidel and atheist or Pantheist. He died in extreme poverty at Putney ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... for extending their influence. The Mississippi scheme of John Law, which so dazzled and captivated the French people, inspired them with an idea that they could carry on the same game in England. The anticipated failure of his plans did not divert them from their intention. Wise in their own conceit, they imagined they could avoid his faults, carry on their schemes for ever, and stretch the cord of credit to its extremest tension, without causing it to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... clung to the clean, unvarnished truth in dogged fashion, and had so impressed all by his simple story, in which he seemed only trying to tell facts, no matter how they bore upon himself, that even the prosecutor was out of conceit with his ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... a window and saw some one reading," thought Amy; and she smiled so sweetly at the conceit that Webb asked, "How many pennies will you take for ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... always thoroughly intelligible and for the most part thoroughly natural, of suiting itself without effort to every change of mood, as quick, warm, and comprehensive as the sympathies it is taxed to express. The tone also is excellent. We are never repelled by egotism or conceit, and misplaced ridicule never disgusts us. When good is going on, we are sure to see all the beauty of it; and when there is evil, we are in no danger of mistaking it for good. No one can paint more picturesquely by an apposite epithet, or illustrate more happily by ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... a dirty staircase, into a mean, slovenly back-office, where a small, uncleanly man sat tipped back in his chair, picking his teeth. He seemed the personification of nonchalance, impudence, and conceit. As I entered, he looked up with a lazy insolence, which, had I been a woman, would have brought a hot flush of indignation to my face, and, on my mentioning my name, he rose and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... wouldn't be sure I wasn't killing you. Some folks would say the whole thing was perfectly dreadful, but I don't care so long as you—so long as you don't. I'm not conceited really, but it looks like conceit—me talking like this and assuming that you're ready to stand and listen. I assure you it isn't conceit. I only know—that's all. It's difficult for you to say anything—I can feel that—but I'd like you just to tell ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... obtaining nor for retaining this grace, great beyond all measure, has it ever done, or ever been able to do, anything of itself. It looks upon itself as most unworthy—for in a room into which the sunlight enters strongly, not a cobweb can be hid; it sees its own misery; self-conceit is so far away, that it seems as if it never could have had any—for now its own eyes behold how very little it could ever do, or rather, that it never did anything, that it hardly gave even its own consent, but that it rather seemed as ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... dispose of any subject at a moment's notice as would Mr. Uppinall; but, nevertheless, he was no fool. Sir Gregory, like many other wise men, thought that there were no swans but of his own hatching, and would ask, with all the pompous conceit of Pharisees in another age, whether good could come out of the ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... that John considered Gilbert smarter than himself, and his self-conceit was so great ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... insanity is on a more rational and efficient footing. The statistician collects, and invites the moral philosopher to collate, the records of crime. The naturalist studies the life of the lower animals, and gives the coup de grace to the uncompromising distinction drawn by human conceit between instinct and intelligence. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... a good conceit of himself from the conspicuous position achieved so unexpectedly, the morning papers did nothing to allay it. Most of them slurred over, as lightly as possible, the fact of his journalistic connection; as in the evening ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to Vyas; but in the country itself, it is commonly said, that its proper name is Niyampal, derived from a certain Niyam, a Muni, or very holy person, the Nymuni of Colonel Kirkpatrick. {187a} This, however, is probably some modern conceit, as the Brahmans of both south and north agree in writing the name Nepala, or Nepal, and as the fables on which this etymology is built, as Colonel Kirkpatrick justly observes, {187b} ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... after classifying them, forwarded them to his firm friend and companion, Sir Gilbert Elliott, in England. So far as he was able, he continued to contribute to the guidance and protection of his country. He was patient and fearless, his only regret taking the form of a pardonable conceit that, could he but live, the Revolution could be controlled and guided, that the awful Reign of Terror, so soon to follow, could be averted. The progress of his decline was without hindrance, in spite of all that science could devise. It is reported ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... concluding chapter of the present work makes a powerful statement of the position which a man, conscious of great and noble aims, would then have occupied; and shows, too, how familiar the age was with all methods of secret communication, and of hiding thought beneath a masque of conceit or folly. Applicably to this subject, I quote a paragraph from a manuscript of the author's, not intended ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... (Demochares, the nephew of Demosthenes) wrote several Orations, and a regular History of what was transacted in Athens under his own observation; not so much, indeed, in the style of an Historian, as of an Orator. Hegesias took the former for his model, and had so vain a conceit of his own taste for Atticism, that he considered his predecessors, who were really masters of it, as mere rustics in comparison of himself. But what can be more insipid, more frivolous, or more puerile, than that very concinnity of expression ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... acquire or maintain a position can appreciate this social luxury. The sea exercises a delightful influence over the character—its perils induce self-reliance and fearlessness, which are redeemed from conceit by a child-like simplicity arising naturally from the contemplation of an element menacing, invincible, and symbolical of eternity. Then, too, the legends of the sea invest the mind with a sensitive, poetic passion as delightful as it is unworldly, as ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... history of the past two years, that all the people of our country, North, South, East, and West, have been undergoing a salutary political schooling, learning lessons which might have been acquired from the experience of other people; but we had all become so wise in our own conceit that we would only learn by actual experience of our own. The people even of small and unimportant localities, North as well as South, had reasoned themselves into the belief that their opinions were superior to the aggregated interest of the whole nation. Half our territorial nation rebelled, on ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... footing. He had a footing everywhere, and got information about everything. He was of an uneasy and envious temper. He was well aware of his own considerable abilities, and nervously exaggerated them in his self-conceit. He knew he would play a prominent part of some sort, but Alyosha, who was attached to him, was distressed to see that his friend Rakitin was dishonorable, and quite unconscious of being so himself, considering, on the contrary, that because he would ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... work was there; Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, That for Achilles’ image stood his spear Grip’d in an armèd 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 ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... and beckoning me for wine Seated himself to listen, Will himself, While Marlowe read aloud with knitted brows. "'Trust them not; for there is an upstart crow Beautified with our feathers!' —O, he bids All green eyes open:—'And, being an absolute Johannes fac-totum is in his own conceit The only Shake-scene in a country!'" "Feathers!" Exploded Ben. "Why, come to that, he pouched Your eagle's feather of blank verse, and lit His Friar Bacon's little magic lamp At the Promethean fire of Faustus. Jove, It was a faery buck, indeed, that Will ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... this conceit, Tom walked on, almost mechanically, for nearly twenty miles that day, with scarcely ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... many questions that at last he got the particulars from Hiram, which naturally he very much enjoyed. These particulars were recounted with modesty, without the slightest exhibition of egotism or conceit. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... rich death of day, And flourishing a silver pouncet-box With many a courtly jest and rare conceit, There as he sat in rich attire, out-braved The rest. Though darker-hued, yet richer far, His murrey-coloured doublet double-piled Of Genoa velvet, puffed with ciprus, shone; For over its grave hues the gems that bossed His golden ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... foreign out-of-the-way air: something that should be seen beneath the flowing wigs of the Stuart period. He had long wanted to do a statue of the ill-fated Monmouth, and another greater than that. Here was the very man: with a proud, daring, homeless look, a splendid body, and a kind of cavalier conceit. It was significant of him, of his attitude towards himself where his work was concerned, that he suddenly turned and shut the door again, telling Falby, who appeared, to go to his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... go peddlin' names around here. You think nobody knows anything but you! You're the little boy that invented flyin'—got the idea from yore own head, by thunder, when it swelled up like a balloon with self-conceit! That there gas-head of yourn'll take yuh right up amongst the clouds some day, and you won't need no flyin' machine, neither! Skyrider—is—right!" Accidentally Johnny had touched Bud's self-esteem in ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... was old? Ah, woful Ere, Which tells me, Youth's no longer here! O Youth! for years so many and sweet, 'Tis known that Thou and I were one. I'll think it but a fond conceit— It cannot be that Thou art gone! Thy vesper-bell hath not yet tolled:— And thou wert aye a masker bold! What strange disguise hast now put on To make believe that thou art gone? I see these locks in silvery slips, This drooping ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... looking at him at all. Some time since I beheld a portrait of a very, very small literary man. It was easy to discern from it that the small author lives in the belief, that, wherever he goes, he is the object of universal observation. The intense self-consciousness and self-conceit apparent in that portrait were, in the words of Mr. Squeers, "more easier conceived than described." The face was a very commonplace and rather good-looking one: the author, notwithstanding his most strenuous exertions, evidently could make nothing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... was on the deck, kneeling once more in prayer. His hat had fallen before him; behind him knelt his slave. In thundering tones he was confessing himself "a plum fool," from whom "the conceit had been jolted out," and who had been made to see that even his "nigger had the ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... This pleasant conceit simply ravished my soul for some twenty minutes, and then the old sense of injury began to well up afresh, and to call for new plasters and soothing syrups. This time I took refuge in happy thoughts of the sea. The sea was my real sphere, after all. On the sea, in especial, ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... laying down the law to them as to the future in a fashion which made Maisie poke fun at me for a crowing cockerel. It was only natural that I should suffer a little from swelled head that night—I should not have been human otherwise. But Andrew Dunlop took the conceit out of me with a vengeance when Maisie and I told him the news, and I explained everything to him in his back-parlour. He was at times a man of many words, and at times a man of few words—and when he said ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... red"—asceticism appeared to him as a blasphemy against the order of nature and of nature's God. His vow of perpetual chastity, made with so passionate an enthusiasm, for the moment appeared to him an act of absolutely monstrous vanity and self-conceit. In his stupid ignorance he had tried to be wiser than his Maker, preferring the ordinances of man, to the glad and merciful purposes of God. In so doing had he not, only too possibly, committed the unpardonable sin, the sin against the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... it is only the monstrous conceit of mankind which makes him think that all this stage was erected ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... expected to read, perhaps to recommend to a publisher, at any rate to express a well-digested and agreeably flavored opinion about; which opinion, nine times out of ten, disguise it as we may, has to be a bitter draught; every form of egotism, conceit, false sentiment, hunger for notoriety, and eagerness for display of anserine plumage before the admiring public;—all these come in by mail or express, covered with postage-stamps of so much more cost than the value of the waste words they ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to write to a lady civil things, as Maria desires. Time was, when I could have told her, "I had received a letter from her fair hands; and that, if this paper trembled as she read it, it then best expressed its author," or some other gay conceit. Though I never saw her, I could have told her, "that good sense and good-humour smiled in her eyes; that constancy and good-nature dwelt in her heart; that beauty and good-breeding appeared in all her actions." When I was five-and-twenty, ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... "For fiddlesticks! For conceit and vanity and vainglory. Go away! My head is fit to split. Natalina, why haven't you given me my smelling salts? And why ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... You got it wrong, brother. It's to take the conceit out of a coward by making him realize he's no better than anybody else. That's ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... courtier and a country gentleman, and as one of the most prominent members of the recently established Royal Society, gave him a much higher degree of prominence than such adventitious aids would ensure in our present far more democratic days. Finally, he had no small confidence in his own ability ('conceit' his friend Mr. Samuel Pepys calls it in his diary); and this has been recognised in the numerous editions of Sylva that have from time to time been found worthy ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... green, and pink is simply detestable, though many people would consider it decidedly 'chic,' to use her favorite word. I suppose you will dress your wife like a Spartan matron of the time of Lycurgus," added Rose, much tickled by his new conceit. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... out of conceit with the noble red man. Rectus took his proclamation out of his pocket as we walked along the sea-wall, and, tearing it into little pieces, threw it into the water. When we reached the steam-ship wharf, we walked out to the end of it, to get rid of the rope and grapnel. ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... impression of 'John' for you, to give you the notion of his 'perfect gentleness and lowlihood.' He certainly bursts out with a remark, and in a contradictious way, but only because he believes it, with no air of dogmatism or conceit. He is different at home from that which he is in a lecture before a mixed audience, and there is a spiritual sweetness in the half-timid expression of his eyes; and in bowing to you, as in taking wine, with (if I heard aright) 'I drink to thee,' he had a look that ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... of Henri III., pleased her till he was going to the army, when he begged for one favour before his departure, which was only to put her hand to the hilt of his sword, a compliment so insipid that her Majesty was out of conceit with him ever after. She approved the gallant manner of M. de Montmorency much more than she loved his person. The aversion she had to the pedantic behaviour of Cardinal de Richelieu, who in his amours was as ridiculous as he was in other things excellent, made her irreconcilable to his addresses. ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... 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 robbed me ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... beat that for conceit! I will be the first to undergo the ordeal!" cried Glogowski, and with brimming glass, already a bit wobbly on his pins he ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... not be very profitable, but honorable it always is, and there is nothing to be ashamed of about it. The man who has reason to be ashamed is the one who does nothing, or is always on the lookout for an easy berth with good pay and no work. Let the young man whose conceit greatly exceeds his brains, be ashamed of his cane and kid gloves; but never let a man who works be ashamed of his hard hands. There is an old proverb which says, "Mere gentility sent to market, won't buy a ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... word, coz," laughed Armadas, "I think we have stumbled upon a pretty conceit intended to do honor to our master. Methinks His Royal Highness here has the right on't—the man who made that ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... of the customs being apprized of it, not only obliged him to relinquish his project but fined him in a heavy penalty for presuming to adopt the modes of a barbarous nation. So great is their national conceit that not a single article imported into the country, as I have elsewhere observed, retains its name. Not a nation, nor person, nor object, that does not receive a Chinese appellation: so that their language, though ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... Deborah, nodding her head; "and yet"—it was evident from her persistence that Miss Deborah had a grievance of some kind—"yet he seems to have more than a proper conceit. I heard him talk about whist, one evening at the rectory; he said something about a person,—a Pole, I believe,—and his rules in regard to 'signaling.' I asked him if he played," Miss Deborah continued, her hands showing a little angry ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... dancing forward into the centre of the darkened room, and seemingly blind to the two before her. "Eet ees I that am to ride. Bueno! eet vill be mooch fun! Senor Brown he not like let me go; he tink I do all eet for him. Oh, de conceit of de men, ven I care not for anyting but de fun, de good time! But I talk him long vile, an' Beell he talk, an' maybe he say si for to git us rid of. Tink you not ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... vanity and quiet strength of character would, in a measure, keep her safe from this troublesome spring disorder, but my uncle's account of her doings led me to fear that perhaps her wholesome armor of self-conceit was not so invulnerable as ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... interested. Incongruously enough a vein of romance ran through the massive strata of conceit, and intolerance, and vainglory, and pertinacity, and pugnacity that made up the very definite structure of his nature. He dearly loved a lover. He was as sentimental as a girl of eighteen, and he melted instantly into ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... 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
... been well said that "New York is the best place in the world to take the conceit out of a man." This is true. No matter how great or flattering is the local reputation of an individual, he finds upon reaching New York that he is entirely unknown. He must at once set to work to build up a reputation here, where he will be ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... foreign correspondents had been sent to our shores, whose ignorance and confidence had led them into egregious blunders; for their travelling outlay merely, I would have guaranteed thrice the information, and my sanguine conceit half persuaded me that I could present it as acceptably. I did not wait to ponder upon this suggestion. The guns of the second action of Bull Run growled a farewell to me as I resigned my horse and equipments to a successor. With a trifle of money, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... subject that did cause sore feeling, and that was mosquitoes. We had thought we knew all about them, we were proud with the conceit of nets, ammonia, and veils, but our pride had a fall. Comparatively speaking, we had only known mosquitoes theoretically before (though that knowledge was bad enough); last night we learnt of them practically, none of us had thought ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... know that I am anxious about him? Let me tell you, my little girl, I shall not drag upon myself the responsibility of increasing the self-conceit of ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... respect for antiquity, conceit, prejudice, call it what we will, has something in it that extorts our respect. Let us imagine a dignified and cultivated Chinese official conversing with a pushing Manchester or Birmingham manufacturer, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... over the stones of sacrifice and service to a dignified usefulness. Her fresh young beauty and enthusiasm, her golden virginity and unself-consciousness, her unaffected joy in being alive, her superb health and vitality had shattered his conceit and self-obsession, broken down his aloofness and lack of scruple and filled the empty frame that he had hung in his best thoughts ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... connection Woodrow Wilson says, "And yet the surprising and delightful thing about this book (the Autobiography) is that, take it all in all, it has not the low tone of conceit, but is a staunch man's sober and unaffected assessment of himself and the circumstances of ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... but 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: ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... of the examinations sent in by the bishop. In the letter which he sent along, he expressed doubt about the whole matter. "Conceit and malice," he wrote, "are so powerful with many in those parts that they will easily afford an oath to work revenge upon their neighbour." He would, he intimated, have gone further in examining the counter charges brought by the accused, had ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... of this Favourite, who only loved the Lover in the King, must have made her the happiest that ever was, if relying less on her Merit, or warned by a recent Experience, she had guarded against some of her own Sex, whom she must think envied her Elevation, and watch'd her Ruin; but as an illusory Conceit that a Passion which had subsisted for many Years, would never be extinguished, brought her into the very Misfortune from which Leutinemil's Death had ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... once for all, when I say we, please to understand that it is not out of conceit, for my share in our adventures was always very small, but to avoid uncling you all too much, and making so many repetitions of the names of Uncle Dick, Uncle ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... brand Till it is burnt out; Fire is kindled from fire; A man gets knowledge By talk with a man, But becomes wilful by self-conceit. Ha'vama'l. ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... 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
... fact that he was caring for her victim was not lost on his shrewd understanding. He was gathering up and helping patch the wreckage she was making. It was a curious conceit, and Elijah Rasba, while he smiled at the humour of it, was at the same time conscious of its ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... cried in his great voice, "now shall you sing the rest. You have put me out of conceit with my own singing. Why are you not at the feast, where I would be if ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... learning; though men of credit now think that the helm has been snatched from their hands by Erasmus.' This is how Zwingli writes in 1521 of an Italian who had attacked Luther and charged him with ignorance: 'But we must make allowances for Italian conceit. In their heads is always running the refrain, "Heaven and earth can show none like to us". They cannot bear to see Germany outstripping them in learning.' Rarely a different note is heard, evoked by rivalry perhaps or the desire to encourage. Locher from Freiburg could call ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... Montreal, mixing his metaphors as topers mix drinks. But I had long since learned not to remonstrate against these outbursts of explosive eloquence—not though all the canons of Laval literati should be outraged. "What, Sir?" he had roared out when I, in full conceit of new knowledge, had audaciously ventured to pull him up, once in my student days. "What, Sir? Don't talk to me of your book-fangled balderdash! Is language for the use of man, or man for the use of language?" ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... upon him that he was not figuring to great advantage in this adventure. Distinctly a humiliating sensation to one who ordinarily was by way of having a fine conceit of himself. It requires a certain amount of egotism to enable one to play the exquisite to one's personal satisfaction; Maitland had enjoyed the possession of that certain amount; theretofore his approval of self ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... blemish at all. Nay, it is an added grandeur. A nose to the whale would have been impertinent. As on your physiognomical voyage you sail round his vast head in your jolly-boat, your noble conceptions of him are never insulted by the reflection that he has a nose to be pulled. A pestilent conceit, which so often will insist upon obtruding even when beholding the mightiest royal beadle on his throne. In some particulars, perhaps, the most imposing physiognomical view to be had of the Sperm Whale, is that of the full front of his head. This aspect is sublime. In thought a fine ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... brushed me in passing, as I stood beside the gangplank trying not to stare at you; but you did not know that—did you?—although for an instant I thought you did. It was the conceit of ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... beard, Abuse o' Magistrates might weel be spar'd: To liken them to your auld-warld squad, I must needs say, comparisons are odd. In Ayr, wag-wits nae mair can have a handle To mouth 'a citizen,' a term o' scandal; Nae mair the Council waddles down the street, In all the pomp of ignorant conceit; Men wha grew wise priggin' owre hops an' raisins, Or gather'd lib'ral views in bonds and seisins, If haply Knowledge, on a random tramp, Had shor'd them with a glimmer of his lamp, And would to Common-sense ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
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