"Cocksure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... angry she called her father an "old country Jake." Even she did not know how rural he was or how he had oppressed the sophisticated travelers in the smoking-room of the sleeping-car with his cocksure criticisms of cities that he had never seen. He had condemned New York with all the mercilessness of a small-town superiority, and he had told funny stories that were as funny as the moss-bearded cypresses in a lone bayou. While he was denouncing ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Anyhow, the girl got married. And Halarkenden, he ain't been around since. Leastaways, ain't had no letters for him." There was an undue silence, it appeared to the officials inside the window. "That all?" demanded Cocksure, thirsting to get ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... sisters had seemed to him miserable travesties of their sex compared with her. (There was one exception only, to this rule.) But now, what was he to think? She had shattered his faith. If she hadn't been "so cocksure of herself," he wouldn't have minded so much; but after all she had professed, to go and marry, and marry ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... say 'hopelessly,'" replied Thorndyke, as we took our places in the carriage, "though I expect the police are pretty cocksure. When ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... the heartiness of Sydney Smith and the dainty fastidiousness of Matthew Arnold, and yet imitate neither. They have a quality, indeed, which is entirely their own and is entirely delightful. One of the things which is so charming about them is that they are authoritative without being cocksure. What could be more admirable than the passage which points out that Southey, "who lived almost entirely with domestic women, actually died in the belief that he was a poet"? The pathos of the situation, and the Olympian stroke delivered ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... should have held sway. But again it is an open question whether the man who follows the gleam, with inspiration to beckon him, does not come nearer to the truth than the man of calculating caution who sums up and weighs. Sometimes crabbed age awakes to the realisation that the cocksure aim of youth is on occasion nearer to the mark than the aim directed by cold intellect, plotted out on a diagram, and worked out correct to three places of decimals. It is perfectly possible for the cautious and orthodox pedestrian to spend so ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... daughter had arrived in the ballroom. The Senator was promptly and intensely interested in this cocksure declaration by Morrison. ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... in fact, as early as the first of October they had been cut down to two-thirds. Whether, therefore, the Government was right in ordering the withdrawal, or Nelson in his condemnation of it, may be left to the decision of those fortunate persons who can be cocksure of the true solution of other ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... the first snare set for me tripped up my heels," said Saxham. "I paid the penalty of being cocksure. And I had not the common decency to die then and release you. True, there were reasons—they are swept away now!... I sent you to Wales that I might be free of the sight of you, that I might end the sordid comedy and have done. You have come too soon! There's ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... walking boots, before she went to Hallsport, with axle grease, while the girl was 'telling novels' to him! Tave said Roman told him she knew a lot of the nobility, marchionesses and 'sich'; and now Roman struts around cocksure, high and mighty as if he'd just been made K.C.B., and there's no getting any steady work out of him. You should have seen Tave's face when ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... memories of this—and who has not felt happy at its wonderful fugue! Yet a few pages on is a marvelous Fugue in C sharp minor with five voices that slowly crawl to heaven's gate. Jump a little distance and you land in the E flat Fugue with its assertiveness, its cocksure subject, and then consider the pattering, gossiping one in E minor. If you are in the mood, has there ever been written a brighter, more amiable, graceful prelude than the eleventh in F? Its germ is perhaps the F major Invention, the eighth. A marked favorite of mine ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... live with? Keep this personal question before you, even if you are cocksure that you ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... head thoughtfully. "I've been too cocksure," he muttered presently. "I shouldn't have spent that twelve thousand for rights of way until I had settled the matter ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne |
