"Self-conceited" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... counsel as his age and experience, and his knowledge of the character and operations of Hannibal, suggested to his mind. "If you had a colleague like yourself," said he, "I would not offer you any advice; you would not need it. Or, if you were yourself like your colleague, vain, self-conceited, and presumptuous, then I would be silent; counsel would be thrown away upon you. But as it is, while you have great judgment and sagacity to guide you, you are to be placed in a situation of extreme difficulty ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... composition. They probably have not originally the high gifts of design, but they lose such powers as they originally possessed by despising, and refusing to study, the results of great power of design in others. Their knowledge, as far as it goes, being accurate, they are usually presumptuous and self-conceited, and gradually become incapable of admiring anything but what is like their own works. They see nothing in the works of great designers but the faults, and do harm almost incalculable in the European society of the present day by sneering at the compositions of the greatest men ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... and drooping as that of Mary Magdalene. The form has considerably shrunk with advanced years, but not with any disadvantage, for the face, pinched and lined though it appears, has a finer and more intellectual look than that of earlier days. Wrong-headed—perhaps very self-conceited—at all events, entirely left behind by the advancing democratic tide, the Duke of Argyll is yet always to me a sympathetic and striking figure. If he thinks badly, at least he thinks originally. His thoughts are his own, and nobody else's; and though he is a bitter controversialist, at least he ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... growing into a great and comprehensive Church. We have the opportunity of dwindling into a self-conscious, self-conceited, and unsympathetic sect. Which shall it be? With those to whom, under God, the remoulding of our organic law has been intrusted ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... that," said Jack, "if there is anything to do in China, and I fully expect there will be something, for the government are sending out troops and more ships. The Chinese are too self-conceited to give in without a sound thrashing. By-the-by, have you told Desmond anything about ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... are cases where shame is the very best possible remedy for juvenile faults. If a boy, for example, is self-conceited, bold, and mischievous, with feelings somewhat callous, and an influence extensive and bad, an opportunity will sometimes occur to hold up his conduct to the just reprobation of the school, with great advantage. By ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... the regency, so that he was nominally associated with his mother, and he considered himself, doubtless, as the more important personage of the two. In a word, while William was engaged in England, prosecuting his conquests there, Robert was growing up in Normandy a vain, self-conceited, ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... planning for each other's conquest, only the more genial side of your nature was observable, but now you are off guard, and the faults are all known the one to the other. You are aware of your imperfections, unless you are one of those self-conceited people who are quickly observant of faults in others, but oblivious to faults in yourself; and now having found out all of each others ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... Copperhead (a thing which seemed too natural to Miss Beecham to leave any room for remark), her mother thought that it might have a bad effect upon Phoebe's principles in every way, should she find out the lowly place held by the connection in such an old-fashioned, self-conceited, Tory town as Carlingford. What would Phoebe think? how would she manage to associate with the Browns and the Pigeons? Fortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Tozer had retired from the shop; but the shop was still there, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... almost the same lordly fashion as the preachers. Of a certain congregation at Norwich Wesley writes, 'I told them in plain terms that they were the most ignorant, self-conceited, self-willed, fickle, untractable, disorderly, disjointed society that I knew in the three kingdoms. And God applied to their hearts, so that many were profited, but I do not find that one was offended.'[727] At ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... worst of all, self-conceited people. These are they of whom Solomon says, "Seest thou a man who is wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him." They are the people who will not see when they are going wrong; who will not ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... say so much in its columns, without remonstrance. I was amused to hear of one of the Bishops, who, on reading an early Tract on the Apostolical Succession, could not make up his mind whether he held the doctrine or not. I was not distressed at the wonder or anger of dull and self-conceited men, at propositions which they did not understand. When a correspondent, in good faith, wrote to a newspaper, to say that the "Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist," spoken of in the Tract, was a false print for "Sacrament," I thought the mistake too pleasant to be corrected before I ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... that the dog, who figures with a certain vain, self-conceited monkey, in the fable, showed a good deal of wisdom in ...
— The Diving Bell - Or, Pearls to be Sought for • Francis C. Woodworth
... political campaign, Lincoln once replied to Colonel Richard Taylor, a self-conceited, dandified man, who wore a gold chain and ruffled shirt. His party at that time was posing as the hard-working bone and sinew of the land, while the Whigs were stigmatized as aristocrats, ruffled-shirt ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... self-conceited Duck, one day, Was waddling from her pond away: "What other race can boast," she cried, "The many gifts to ours allied? Earth—water—air—are all for us. When I am tired of walking thus, I fly, if so I take the whim, Or if it pleases me ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... who despise governments, presumptuous, self-conceited, tremble not to revile dignities, whereas the angels, who are greater in power and might, bring not a railing accusation against them before the Lord. He calls kings, princes and lords, and all civil magistracy, governments; and not the Pope and bishops, for these ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... is like her. He is a self-conceited, disagreeable young jackanapes. I wouldn't give much for his chances of honorable distinction in life. I'll tell you of a boy who will, in my opinion, beat him in the ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... bow. 'As for your friend's secret, do not be uneasy about it; I am not going to meet Pedro to-night. I shall take advantage of his absence to make a call on my lady-love. Pedro is a good fellow, but shockingly self-conceited; he fancies himself far smarter than I—perhaps he is—but somehow I fancy, this time he must be early if ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... communicating with that of the Queen, where Her Majesty could see the Baron without the exposure of passing any of the other attendants. The Baron was quite gray, and upwards of sixty years of age! But the self-conceited dotard soon caused the Queen to repent her misplaced confidence, and from his unwarrantable impudence on that occasion, when he found himself alone with the Queen, Her Majesty, though he was a constant member of the societies of the De Polignacs, ever after ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... evident that so long as incapability could shield itself under the first of these creeds, or presumption vindicate itself by the second; so long as the feeble painter could lay his faults on his palette and his panel; and the self-conceited painter, from the assumed identity of materials proceed to infer equality of power—(for we believe that in most instances those who deny the evil of our present methods will deny also the weakness of our present works)—little good ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... characters of this play are admirably designed, but not so happily finished as the author meant them to be—witness, Bob Handy, who begins a self-conceited coxcomb, ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton
... and intelligent persons, and recognize the importance of letting the librarian work out everything in his own way, when once satisfied that they have got a competent head in charge. But there are sometimes men on a board of library control who are self-conceited and pragmatical, thinking that they know everything about how a library should be managed, when in fact, they are profoundly ignorant of the first rudiments of library science. Such men will sometimes overbear their fellows, who may be ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... of telling the truth about it. Why Mr. Massey should have worked himself into a passion before he began to write is a mystery darker than any he attempts to solve, but the intemperate, bitter and self-conceited tone of the whole book is alone an immense ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... to lead our war, and we'd be as sure to whip 'em as we won the Mexican war for the Federal Government. There is three things about an Englishman, Dusenberry, which you may mark for facts. He is self-conceited, and don't want to be advised;—he thinks there is no law like the law of England, and that the old union-jack is a pass-book of nations;—and he thinks everybody's bound to obey his notions of humanity and the dictates ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... respect, and to think him a very great and wise and good man. But as regarded his own position in the School, of which he was no little proud, Tom had no idea of giving any one credit for it but himself, and, truth to tell, was a very self-conceited young gentleman on the subject. He was wont to boast that he had fought his own way fairly up the School, and had never made up to or been taken up by any big fellow or master, and that it was now quite a different place from what it was when he first came. ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... that the professor was rather self-conceited, and he hardly thought it in good taste for him to refer ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... too much led by one whom we esteem as wise. I mean an honest candid dread. I do not mean a petted, wrong-headed, pragmatical determination to let him see that you can think for yourself. You see, rny friend, I don't suppose you to be a self-conceited fool. You remember how Presumption, in the Pilgrim's Progress, on being offered some good advice, cut his kind adviser short by declaring that Every tub must stand on its own bottom. We have all known men, young and old, who, upon being advised to do something which they knew they ought to do, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... sometimes recognized my own thought in Shakespeare. But do not tell aunt Pickman of this. Not believing in an absolute source of thought, she would pronounce me either irrecoverably insane or infinitely self-conceited. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... dealings which we find therein. Through comfort of the Scriptures, but also through patience. Ah, my friends, of that too we must think; we must, as St. James says, "let patience have her perfect work," or else we shall not be perfect ourselves. If we are hasty, self-conceited, covetous, ready to help ourselves by the first means that come to hand; if we are full of hard judgments about our neighbours, and doubts about God's good purpose toward the world; in short, if we are not PATIENT, the ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... well apprised that the little intriguers, and whisperers, and self-conceited, thoughtless babblers, worse than either, run about to depreciate the fallen virtue of a great nation. But whilst they talk, we must make our choice,—they or the Jacobins. We have no other option. As to those who in the pride of a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... obstructed their way, but they have unwarily been seduced from the path of life. Having now their eyes opened, they are become wise in their own conceits, and are no longer the same simple, patient followers of the Lamb; but soon become positive, self-conceited, and gradually fall back into the ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... am very, very humble. I have put my foolish pride underfoot. I am not broken. I am still very proud and, I fear, self-conceited, in spite of my severe lesson. Enid is beautiful, and I know it, and it helps me write this letter, but I have no right to ask even friendship from you. My proved failure as a playwright robs me of every chance of meeting you on equal terms. I want ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... as the reader already knows was somewhat of a wag in his way, was not at all disposed to allow John to retain this self-conceited idea of his own valor, and determined to convince him before the belief got too strongly settled in his mind, that he was as much a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... is not all; if this self-conceited prince should take our jest seriously, if he should be imprudent enough to exhibit before others anything like delight at it, well, in that case, the king will be humiliated before the whole court; and what a delightful story it will be, too, for him to whom I am really attached, a part of my dowry ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... venture—all this powerfully excites the imagination with the splendour of an olden tale of marvels. The two scenes in which, first the Prince of Morocco, in the language of Eastern hyperbole, and then the self-conceited Prince of Arragon, make their choice among the caskets, serve merely to raise our curiosity, and give employment to our wits; but on the third, where the two lovers stand trembling before the inevitable choice, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... assertion Mr. Mill very candidly adds: "I assert this with confidence, though it was not the impression of various persons who saw me in my childhood. They, as I have since found, thought me greatly and disagreeably self-conceited; probably because I was disputatious, and did not scruple to give direct contradictions to ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb |
