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Arrogant   /ˈɛrəgənt/   Listen
Arrogant

adjective
1.
Having or showing feelings of unwarranted importance out of overbearing pride.  Synonyms: chesty, self-important.  "Arrogant claims" , "Chesty as a peacock"






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"Arrogant" Quotes from Famous Books



... case was that of an artful, deceitful, arrogant, selfish boy, always clever in excuses, who had stolen from the age of twelve, often stolen things that he threw away. Though of Protestant family, he delighted to draw Catholic insignia and embroider religious characters. ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... chestnuts, his dazzled eyes blinked at the flower-bedecked tables of Paris. He was too shrewd and too wily not to retain his advantage over the old aristocracy, which welcomed him to its bosom: the advantage of harsh caprices and arrogant refusals. Ligny knew him, and expected no favours at his hands. In this respect he was more perspicacious than his mother, who credited herself with a certain power over the dark, hairy little man, whom every Thursday she engulfed in her majestic skirts on the way from the drawing-room to ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... and sympathy for art possesses ideas which are valuable to that art. From the tiniest seeds sometimes the greatest trees are grown. Why, therefore, allow these tender germs of individualism to be smothered by that flourishing, arrogant bay tree of ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... colleagues he was a boor. Distant, haughty, quick to demand all the consideration due him, he was noted far and wide for the caustic way he attacked others for their opinions and beliefs and the respect he required for his own. The general opinion of physicians was that he was a conceited, arrogant, aristocratic man, and he was avoided except for his medical opinion, which was usually very sound. Those admitted to the sanctum of this man's real self knew him to be really modest and self-deprecatory, anxious ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... on earth. That Church has a person who stands in the place of Deity; and that Church, according to their doctrine, is infallible. That Church has persecuted to the exact extent of her power—and always will. In Spain that Church stands erect, and that Church is arrogant. In the United States that Church crawls. But the object in both countries is the same, and that is the destruction of intellectual liberty. That Church teaches us that we can make God happy by being miserable ourselves. That Church teaches you that a nun is holier in the sight ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... little blade, now vaunt Thee, and be arrogant! Tell the proud sun that he Sweated in shaping thee; Night, that she did unvest Her mooned and argent breast To suckle ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... purple of the hills; and the stars looking on. Mr. Tennyson was there, Mr. Powers, and M. Villari[25], an accomplished Sicilian, besides our young host and ourselves. How we 'set down' Faraday for his 'arrogant and insolent letter,' and what stories we told, and what miracles we swore to! Oh, we are believers here, Isa, except Robert, who persists in wearing a coat of respectable scepticism—so considered—though it is much out ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... regret, a positive dislike to the memory of the man whom she could no longer love. Horrible things to say; yet, I fear, true. A man such as Alfieri had permitted himself to become, admirable in many respects, but intolerant, hard, arrogant, selfish, self-engrossed, cannot really be loved; he may be endured as a result of long habit, he may inflict his personality without effort upon another; but in order that this be the case that other must be singularly ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... both of the belligerents. Each power forbade neutral nations to trade with its foe. But while Napoleon followed the example of Pitt in making a decree to this effect, the bearing of Great Britain towards this country, in respect to the prohibition of trade, was far more arrogant and vexatious than that of France. American ships were captured on the high seas by British men-of-war, carried into ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle

... accountant arrogant assailant assistant attendant clairvoyant combatant recreant consonant conversant defendant descendent discordant elegant exorbitant important incessant irrelevant luxuriant malignant petulant pleasant poignant ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... Hogsmouth, or, as he is sometimes called, Peter di Porca, was the first pope to change his name. He called himself Sergius II. (844-847). Some say he thought it arrogant to be ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... here placed, a short and uncertain space in which to make our peace with God, and then the last judgment, and an eternity of unspeakable happiness or misery, it is indeed an awful and an affecting spectacle, to see men thus busying themselves in these vain speculations of an arrogant curiosity, and trifling with their dearest, their everlasting interests. It is but a feeble illustration of this exquisite folly, to compare it to the conduct of some convicted rebel, who, when brought into the presence of his Sovereign, instead of seizing the occasion to sue for mercy, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... examination of the event under consideration were really his own talent. Palpable as is this deception, it is one which people may easily fall into through vanity, and one which is naturally distasteful to others. It very often happens that although the critic has no such arrogant pretensions, they are imputed to him by the reader because he has not expressly disclaimed them, and then follows immediately a charge of a want of the power of ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... support is given to the royal Audiencia, whose orders lately fail of execution; for when we or they order anything to be done, the soldiers go away and do as they please. As a result the latter have grown so arrogant, that many times when they have been summoned by their sergeants to do certain things which are their usual duty, and indispensable for the defense of this city, they have refused to obey them. On the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair

... some low brushwood and watched the approaching figure. When he came near he recognized the face, and saw, to his surprise, that it was a knight who had but the day before stopped at the armourer's shop to have two rivets put in his hauberk. He had particularly noticed him because of the arrogant manner in which he spoke. Walter had himself put in the rivets, and had thought, as he buckled on the armour again, how unpleasant a countenance was that of its wearer. He was a tall and powerful man, and would have been handsome had not his eyes been too closely set together; ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty

... be sorry if anything I have said should give the idea that their behavior was either fantastic or arrogant through their religion. It was simply a pervading influence; and I am sure that in the father and mother it dignified life, and freighted motive and action here with the significance of eternal fate. ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... goddess among the gnarled roots of the olive-tree, and they laid plots to destroy Penelope's impudent suitors. Athena told him about the trouble they had caused her; how they had established themselves in her own home, trying to win her for a wife. For three years the noble Penelope had kept these arrogant men in suspense, deluded with empty hopes, while she waited for her husband's return. When Odysseus heard these words he was greatly disturbed, and said: "Woe is me! I might have been slain in my own home but for these timely words. Now I am forearmed. Stand by me, I pray, in my great need, ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer

... admitted, that the great object of criticism is always the critic himself. A man who says that he can't see, generally proves that he is blind, not that there is no light. If only for this reason, I would not quote phrases which would sound unduly crude or even arrogant when taken as absolute judgments, instead of being, as they often are, confessions of indifference in the form of condemnations. When a great writer really appeals to him, he shows no want of enthusiasm. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... regard to God, I do not know; and therefore I am accused of being arrogant and egotistic. Religious papers say that I do know, because Webster told me. They use Webster as a witness to prove the divinity of Christ. They say that Webster was on the God side, and therefore I ought to be. I can hardly afford ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... higher aediles, they then take the vote again for the election of the others. Now as Marius was manifestly losing in the votes for the curule aedileship, he forthwith changed about and became a candidate for the other aedileship. But this was viewed as an audacious and arrogant attempt, and he failed in his election; but though he thus met with two repulses in one day, which never happened to any man before, he did not abate one tittle of his pretensions, for no long time after ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... increase their capitalization and give me a half interest—told them if they didn't I would take my process to their competitors and put them out of business. Later I managed to gain the control and after that it was easy." His voice changed to a tone of arrogant, triumphant boasting. "I may not be a representative business man in your estimation, but my work stands just the same. No man who knows anything about business will deny that I built up the Mill to ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... to you," replied Don Quixote, "what merit would you have in confessing a truth so manifest? The essential point is that without seeing her you must believe, confess, affirm, swear, and defend it; else ye have to do with me in battle, ill-conditioned, arrogant rabble that ye are; and come ye on, one by one as the order of knighthood requires, or all together as is the custom and vile usage of your breed, here do I bide and await you relying on the justice ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... citizens contributed letters of expostulation and indignation. The matter was commented on ponderously in a typical country editorial containing such phrases as "clothed in a little brief authority," "arrogant minions of the law," and so forth. Tom Carroll, riding through Durham on business, was treated to ugly looks and uglier words. Ross Fletcher, visiting the county seat, escaped a physical encounter with belligerent members of ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... dealings with Woodfall and others, to form a tolerably correct notion of his character. He was clearly a man not destitute of real patriotism and magnanimity, a man whose vices were not of a sordid kind. But he must also have been a man in the highest degree arrogant and insolent, a man prone to malevolence, and prone to the error of mistaking his malevolence for public virtue. "Doest thou well to be angry?" was the question asked in old time of the Hebrew prophet. And he answered, "I do well." This was evidently the temper of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... True, the Militarist Party there deserved the swift defeat that was coming on them; they deserved it now, just as the French Empire had deserved it in 1870, though Mrs. Otway could not believe that modern Germany was as arrogant and confident as had been the ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... had long ceased to derive any gratification from the splendid festivities of which she was one of the brightest ornaments; her ill-judged indulgence, far from exciting the gratitude of Madame de Verneuil, having rendered the insolent favourite still more arrogant and overbearing. To such an extent, indeed, did the Marquise carry her presumption, that she affected to believe herself indebted for the forbearance of the Queen to the conviction of the latter that she had a superior claim upon the monarch to her own; and while she permitted herself to comment ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... certain means of increasing our strength, and advised to wait for the remedy till the disease is removed by death or health. And now, instead of the plain and manly policy of increasing unanimity at home, by equalising rights and privileges, what is the ignorant, arrogant, and wicked system which has been pursued? Such a career of madness and of folly was, I believe, never run in so short a period. The vigour of the ministry is like the vigour of a grave- digger—the tomb becomes more ready and more wide for every effort which ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... have chuckled audibly at the thought, for their commander who was seated on a folding stool one of his men had placed for him, glanced in my direction, and, at his arrogant gesture of command, I was prodded to my feet, and with my hands still bound, as they had been from the moment I recovered consciousness, I was ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan

... commerce, but a prosperity under whose influence arts and sciences, education and charity flourished most abundantly. It was little wonder that men came to think that prosperity was the chief end of man and grew arrogant in the use of its power. It was little wonder that such a misunderstanding arose that one part of the community thought the owners and managers of our great industries were robbers, or that they thought some of the people meant to confiscate all property. It has been a costly investigation, ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge

... worthy of the public ear, nothing useful to their clients. They have succeeded in nothing but the art of making themselves ridiculous. The peculiar quality of the teacher [a], whatever it be, is sure to transfuse itself into the performance of the pupil. Is the master haughty, fierce, and arrogant; the scholar swells with confidence; his eye threatens prodigious things, and his harangue is an ostentatious display of the common-places of school oratory, dressed up with dazzling splendour, and ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... good men was sorely encumbered with the armor of Saul. Too much favorable legislation and patronizing from a foreign proprietary government, too arrogant a tone of superiority on the part of official friends, attempts to enforce conformity by imposing disabilities on other sects—these were among the chief occasions of the continual collision between the people and the colonial ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... full share of blame for the long course of proceedings which prepared the coming tragedy, and the most impassioned writers on the side of the Union during the Civil War have put that blame highest. The South became arrogant and wrong-headed, and no defence is possible for the chief acts of Southern policy which will be recorded later; but the North was abject. To its own best sons it seemed to have lost both its conscience and its manhood, and to be stifled in the coils of its own miserable political ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... not an arrogant and vulgar egotism, as it has been so often represented in western stories, and the tours of superficial travellers. It was a calm, just estimate of his own capabilities—a well-grounded confidence in his own talents—a clear, manly understanding of his own individual ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... his vague memory of the dad who had given him his adventurous spirit and his rebellion against the restraints of mere convention, which was his mother's dearest god. Unknown to Mrs. Singleton Corey, he had ardently espoused the cause of his wandering dad, and had withdrawn his love from the arrogant lady-mother, who never once spoke affectionately of the man Jack loved. He had taken what money she gave him. It was his dad's money, for his dad had suffered hardship to wrest it from the earth, in the mines that kept Mrs. Singleton Corey in soft, perfumed luxury. ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower

... been expected, the proposal to adopt the declaration submitted to the Constituent Assembly in this arrogant fashion was rejected by an enormous majority. The Bolshevik members, who had tried to make the session a farce, thereupon withdrew after submitting a statement in which they charged the Constituent Assembly with being a counter-revolutionary body, and the Revolutionary-Socialist ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... to youth, is no less prejudicial, than too much austerity.—Happy is it for those who are brought up in a due proportion between these two extremes; for as nature will be apt to fall into a dejection, if pressed down with a constant, and uninterrupted severity, so it will infallibly become arrogant and assuming, if suffered always to pursue its own dictates.—Nothing is more evident, than that most of the irregularities we see practised in the world, are owing originally to a want of the medium I have been speaking of, in forming the mind while ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... his own discoveries and inventions were so numerous that a few more or less would hardly have added to his fame, as his reputation as a philosopher was well established. Admiration for his ability and his philosophical knowledge must always be marred by the recollection of his arrogant claims to the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... knocking the balls about in some skilful fancy shots, his cigar in his mouth, and a black velvet smoking-jacket setting off to special advantage his dense, snowy hair, prematurely white, his long mustache, and his pointed imperial. His heavy white eyebrows drew frowningly together over arrogant dark eyes as he noted the man at ...
— The Crucial Moment - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... strait-laced, searching, unsparing, iron-handed, peremptory, absolute, positive, arbitrary, imperative; coercive &c 744; tyrannical, extortionate, grinding, withering, oppressive, inquisitorial; inclement &c (ruthless) 914.1; cruel &c (malevolent) 907; haughty, arrogant &c 885; precisian^. Adv. severely &c adj.; with a high hand, with a strong hand, with a tight hand, with a heavy hand. at the point of the sword, at the point of the bayonet. Phr. Delirant reges plectuntur Achivi [Lat.]; manu forti [Lat.]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... streets of Paris. They used to dine together once a week at a tavern, and it was Diderot who persuaded a bookseller to give Condillac a hundred crowns for his first manuscript. "The Paris booksellers," says Rousseau, "are very arrogant and harsh to beginners; and metaphysics, then extremely little in fashion, did not offer a very particularly attractive subject."[65] The constant intercourse between Diderot and Condillac in the interval between the two works of the great apostle of Sensationalism, may well account for ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... is the selfish and arrogant sense of possession, as betrayed by the repetition of 'my'—my fruits, my barns, my corn, and my goods. He has no thought of God, nor of his own stewardship. He recognises no claim on his wealth. If he had looked a little beyond himself, he would ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... see that car doing anything else. It stood like an immense idol in a temple; and it looked as if all its life it never had done anything else but stand in its perfection to be stared at. And by its air of self-consciousness, of majesty, of arrogant power in repose, you gathered that it knew it was there to be stared at. The thing was drawn up at the far end of the garage, where no breath could blow on it, over an open pit. You knew that Kendal, the chauffeur, went down on a ladder into the pit to examine the ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... succeeded by Gov. Felipe de Barri, who after three years was removed from office on account of infringing on the rights of the missionaries and siding with Captain Rivera Y. Moncada who was a somewhat arrogant man, who also on several occasions infringed on the rights of the missionaries; but the faults of the latter have been very exaggerated by some historians, namely, some declare that he was ex-communicated from the church ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field

... childish boast with a smile, but when Epaphos, half-brother to Apollo, had listened to it many times and beheld the child, Phaeton, grow into an arrogant lad who held himself as though he were indeed one of the Immortals, anger grew in his heart. One day he turned upon Phaeton and spoke ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... irresistible; and it is the promptness with which he sheds his pretended faith as soon as it feels in the air the breath of reality, as soon as it asks of him a proof or a sacrifice, it is this that excites her doubtless sufficiently arrogant scorn. Where is the virtue of his high interest if it has verily never been an interest to speak of and if all it has suddenly to suggest is that, in face of a serious call, it shall be unblushingly relinquished? If he and she together, and her great field and ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... furtively lifted the bark, and mumbled in it caressingly. The next moment—so suddenly and silently that it seemed as if he had taken instant shape in the moonlight—appeared a gigantic moose, standing in the meadow, his head held high, his nostrils sniffing arrogant inquiry. The broadly-palmated antlers crowning his mighty head were of a spread and symmetry such as ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... that Bertram, arrogant, wayward, and heartless, does not justify this ardent and deep devotion. But Helena does not behold him with our eyes; but as he is "sanctified in her idolatrous fancy." Dr. Johnson says he cannot reconcile himself to a man who marries Helena like a coward, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.—Gibbon. 3. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the center of each and every town or city.—Holmes. 4. The arrogant Spartan, with a French-like glorification, boasted forever of little Thermopylae.—De Quincey. 5. The purest act of knowledge is always colored by some feeling of pleasure or pain.—Hamilton. 6. The thunder of the great London journals reverberates through ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... and jostle of their fellows on this actual earth. This is not a triumphant defence, no doubt; but I think it is a defence. And further, it has yet to be proved that De Quincey set down anything in malice. He called his literary idol, Wordsworth, "inhumanly arrogant." Does anybody—not being a Wordsworthian and therefore out of reach of reason—doubt that Wordsworth's arrogance was inhuman? He, not unprovoked by scant gratitude on Coleridge's part for very solid services, and by a doubtless sincere but rather unctuous protest of his brother in opium-eating ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... oppression, the rigour with which he exacted obedience, to those laws which he so well obeyed himself. It was remarked, moreover, that, while his general bearing to those who sought to place themselves in the scale of arrogant superiority, was proud and unconciliating, his demeanour to his inferiors, was ever that of one sensible that condescension may soothe and gratify the humble spirit, without its exercise at all detracting from the independence of him who offers it. But ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... Grosart, v. 6. The whole passage runs: 'How wel or ill I haue done in it I am ignorant: (the eye that sees round about it selfe sees not into it selfe): only your Honours applauding encouragement hath power to make me arrogant. Incomprehensible is the height of your spirit both in heroical resolution and matters of conceit. Vnrepriuebly perisheth that booke whatsoeuer to wast paper, which on the diamond rocke of your ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... question the natural ally on political and religious grounds of puritan England. But a mischievous war against her in 1652-3 was caused by the arrogant restrictions of the Navigation Act of 1651. The successful English demand in 1653 that the Orange family, as connected closely with that of Stuart, should be excluded from the Stadtholdership, was in a high degree to the ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... be expected, practical rather than analytical. They are conscious of the loss that the loss of faith is to them; and more or less coherently they long for its recovery. Outwardly, indeed, they may often sneer at it; but outward signs in such matters are very deceiving. Much of the bitter and arrogant certitude to be found about us in the expression of unbelief, is really like the bitterness of a woman against her lover, which has not been the cause of her resolving to leave him, but which has been caused by his having ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... men during an intercourse that had originated not only in the warmest personal friendship, but in the similarity of their studies and pursuits. On this, as on every other topic of which he treats, Mr. Wilson is reckless and arrogant in assertion; but on this, as on every other topic, he makes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... "and would pervert the gospel of Christ," also indicate how arrogant these false apostles were. They were shameless boasters. Paul simply had to exalt his own ministry ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... were called "elect" and "holy," out of which, in the workhouse of their stomachs, they should forge for us Angels and Gods, by whom we might be cleansed. These things did I follow, and practise with my friends, deceived by me, and with me. Let the arrogant mock me, and such as have not been, to their soul's health, stricken and cast down by Thee, O my God; but I would still confess to Thee mine own shame in Thy praise. Suffer me, I beseech Thee, and give me grace to ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... difference between this attitude and the arrogant tone generally ascribed to Mr. Chamberlain. It is always advisable to refer to the documents on ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot

... from those which he at the moment held, and was always ready to express in the most open and offensive manner his contempt and dislike for those who differed from him. His eccentricities were great; he was haughty and arrogant, hasty and passionate; he denied his God, quarreled with his king, and rendered himself utterly obnoxious to every ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... circumstance which, however, is for the most part overlooked; that to the very Oedipus who solved the riddle of the Sphinx relating to human life, his own life should remain so long an inextricable riddle, to be so awfully cleared up, when all was irretrievably lost. A striking picture of the arrogant pretension of human wisdom, which is ever right enough in its general principles, but does not enable the possessor to make the proper ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... administrative class. That seems to me to be based on a pity which is largely unjustifiable and a pride that is altogether unintelligent. The pity is for the obvious wants and distresses of poverty, the pride appears in the arrogant and aggressive conception of raising one's fellows. I have no strong feeling for the horrors and discomforts of poverty as such, sensibilities can be hardened to endure the life led by the "Romans" in Dartmoor jail a hundred years ago (See "The Story of Dartmoor Prison" by Basil Thomson (Heinemann—1907).), ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... originality. But at what cost? Its people had degenerated in the process from thinking humans to dumb, driven cattle, going, going, for ever going, but non-comprehending the why or the wherefore of it all, beyond the arrogant assumption of "welt-politik." Every refining trait was subordinated to the exigencies of the gospel of force. Not only the plebeian mass, but the exclusive aristocracy, revelled in the brutish impulse that associated all appeals to reason with ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... This was rather too arrogant to pass unnoticed, and I was about replying, that whatever doubts there might be on that subject, there could be none whatever that they were the most modest, when he continued "we 'go ahead'; the Nova Scotians 'go astarn.' Our ships go ahead of the ships of other folks, our steamboats beat the ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... matter to issue to-day. One moment they had been apparently the best of comrades. The next they had been saying hateful things to each other. What he had said was unforgivable, but she had begun by accusing him of complicity in the train robbery. Knowing how arrogant he was, she might have guessed how angry criticism would ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine

... shortly after this, when the news of the arrogant demands of the allies, and the vain attempts of the King to obtain an honourable peace became known, that the Duchesse de Grammont conceived the idea of offering her plate to the King, to replenish his impoverished ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... fault, but my misfortune," replied Yourii, in a slightly arrogant tone. He thought it showed superior intelligence to be bored ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... gentleman, in his zeal as a controversialist. He is an able and skilful debater, though less logical than Mr. Barker; but he wasted his time and strength too often on personalities and irrelevant matters. His personal inuendoes and offensive epithets, his coarse witticisms and arrogant bearing, may have suited the vulgar and intolerant among his party, but they won him no respect from the calm and thinking portion of the audience; while we know that they grieved and offended some intelligent ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... a striking instance of the manner in which this divinity punishes the proud and arrogant in the history of Niobe. Apollo and Artemis were merely the instruments for avenging the insult offered to their mother; but it was Nemesis who prompted the deed, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... in their flight from the field of battle. Their fate excited neither surprise nor compassion. They had staked their lives against the chance of empire, and suffered what they would have inflicted; nor did Severus claim the arrogant superiority of suffering his rivals to live in a private station. But his unforgiving temper, stimulated by avarice, indulged a spirit of revenge, where there was no room for apprehension. The most considerable of the provincials, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... fortune in a somewhat higher family in that of some genuine, thoroughbred gentleman; for such are far more likely to treat you with proper respect and consideration than those purse-proud tradespeople and arrogant upstarts. I have known several among the higher ranks who treated their governesses quite as one of the family; though some, I allow, are as insolent and exacting as any one else can be: for there are bad and good in ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte

... sin shows its depraving tendency in that it makes men arrogant, haughty and conceited. Paul admonishes in Romans 12, 3, to think of one's self soberly, "according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith." But, original sin does not permit Ham to occupy this lowly level; hence, he ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... though it be, it is more truly liberal and free than any large community in the world. But it had bleak beginnings. The icy shore, the sombre pines, the stealthy savages, the hard soil, the unbending religious austerity, the Scriptural severity, the arrogant virtues, the angry intolerance of contradiction—they all made a narrow strip of sad civilization between the pitiless sea and the remorseless forests. The moral and physical tenacity which is wrestling with the Rebellion was ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis

... 1848, equally as regards the origin of that dispute, and as regards the Chinese mode of conducting it, will give the reader a key to the Chinese character and the Chinese policy. To begin by making the most arrogant resistance to the simplest demands of justice, to end by cringing in the lowliest fashion before the guns of a little war-brig, there we have, in a representative abstract, the Chinese system of law and gospel. The ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... way-station. There was but small opportunity to cultivate family affinities; they were forever disturbed. Somebody was always sitting in the laps of our Lares and Penates. Another class of visitors deserving notice were those who preferred to occupy the kitchen and back chambers, humbly proud and bashfully arrogant people, who kept their hats and bonnets by them, and small bundles, to delude themselves and us with the idea that they "had not come to stay, and had no occasion for any attention." These people criticised us with insinuating severity, and proposed amendments with unrelenting affability. ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... being from his external form and sense faculties, know him not; because the real Self of man is not manifested in his seeing, hearing, speaking. His real Self is that within by which he hears and speaks and sees. In the same way he knows not Brahman who thinks he knows It by name and form. The arrogant and foolish man thinks he knows everything; but the true knower is humble. He says: "How can I know Thee, who art Infinite and beyond mind and speech?" In the last portion of the text, the teacher draws an impressive contrast between the attitude ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda

... if from my own feelings, or from the less suspicious test of the observations of others, I had been made aware of any literary testiness or jealousy; I trust, that I should have been, however, neither silly nor arrogant enough to have burthened the imperfection on genius. But an experience—(and I should not need documents in abundance to prove my words, if I added)—a tried experience of twenty years, has taught me, that the original sin of my character consists in a careless indifference to public opinion, and ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... other purpose than to get embroiled or to throw away money on chance games, displaying under this delicious sky and in this garden of roses and oranges all base vanities and foolish pretensions and vile lusts, showing up the human mind such as it is, servile, ignorant, arrogant ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... drunk spirits and eaten beef. They sing incoherent songs and mingle lustfully with one another, indulging the while in the freest speeches. How then can virtue have a place amongst the Madrakas who are arrogant and notorious for all kinds of evil acts? No one should make friends with a Madraka or provoke hostilities with him. In the Madraka land there is no friendship. The Madraka is always the dirt of humanity. Amongst the Madrakas all acts of friendship are lost as purity amongst ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... no answer, but swept down the room, and out of the door ahead of her mother, with scorn and anger in every line of her arrogant young back. Mrs. Spragg tottered meekly after her, and Mr. Spragg lounged out into the marble hall to buy a cigar before taking ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... earth. The mind of Spain seemed suddenly to have brightened and developed like that of her great king, who, in his first tourney at Valladolid, wrote with proud sluggishness Nondum—not yet—on his maiden shield, and a few years later in his young maturity adopted the legend of arrogant hope and promise,—Plus Ultra. There were seen two emigrations of the young men of Spain, eastward and westward. The latter went for gold and material conquest into the American wilds; and the former, led by the sacred love of art, to that land of beauty and wonder, then, ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... July night four years later Dr. Isaac Lavinski, now an arrogant member of the staff at the Adair Hospital, paused on his last round of the wards and cocked an inquiring ear above the steps that led to the basement. Something that sounded very much like suppressed laughter came up to him, and in order to confirm his suspicions, ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... But, arrogant and with his head set high, he borrowed a whip from a packman that shouldered his way through the street, and lashed at their legs and ragged heads. The crowd slunk, one by one, back under the darkness that was beneath the roofs of reeds, and the idea of a good day that for a moment had risen in ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... said this, she turned her back with disdain upon the picture of her home, and setting herself before the picture of the palace, stared at it with wide ambitious eyes, and a heart whose every beat was a throb of arrogant self-esteem. ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald

... to the King of France, for service in his gallies. Denonville erected a fort at Niagara, became more violent and overbearing to the Indians, treated the remonstrances of the English of New York, concerning the erection of Fort Niagara, with contempt, and at last brought upon himself, as the arrogant generally do, defeat and disgrace. This fort, to which the North West Fur Company of Quebec had offered to contribute 30,000 livres annually, in consideration of a monopoly of the fur trade, was destroyed by the Iroquois, who followed the now retreating French to Cataraqui, made themselves masters ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... white cloth. It had not long arrived from Woerth, and Roger had allowed himself some jibes as to its probable cost. Daphne's "simplicity," the pose of her girlhood, was in fact breaking down in all directions. The arrogant spending instinct had gained upon the moderating and self-restraining instinct. The results often made Barnes uncomfortable. But he was inarticulate, and easily intimidated—by Daphne. With regard to Mrs. French, however, he took up the cudgels at once. Why shouldn't Elsie adore her man, ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... was satisfied, his humility, such as it was, oozed out, and he became as arrogant as ever, and stoutly claimed that he was their big cousin, though, he said, he was not particularly anxious to be acknowledged by such a pack of little dwarfish thieving creatures as they were, who would steal through the farmer's fence to purloin vegetables for ...
— Harper's Young People, May 11, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... that takes a man in Helmeted, clattering, proud. Sweet are the honors the arrogant win, Hot from the breath of a crowd. Precious the spirit that never will bend— Hot challenge for insolent stare! But—talk when you've tried it!—to win in the end, Go ahsti!* Be ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... some decorations of art glorified it, but underneath the beauty and the art the native ruthlessness remained unchanged. Might founded a throne upon the ruin of weaker nations, cemented its strength with the blood of innocence, set the crown upon its own head, and reigned in arrogant defiance ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... the twofold pretence we have cited,—the one reconciling the conscience with the cowardice of the North, and the other conceding the arrogant pretensions of the South,—the negation of the power of the central government over Slavery was carried into effect. By a legislative hocus-pocus, known as the Compromise Measures of 1850, Congress, contrary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... foreman of the new patent leather factory only because of his long term of service with the company. It was understood that he was to hold the post until a skilled and competent foreman could be found; but while he enjoyed the distinction of "boss" he made as arrogant use of his sovereignty ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett

... Barneveld did not quail. Doubtless he loved power, and the more danger he found on every side the less inclined he was to succumb. But he honestly believed that the safety and prosperity of the country he had so long and faithfully served were identified with the policy which he was pursuing. Arrogant, overbearing, self-concentrated, accustomed to lead senates and to guide the councils and share the secrets of kings, familiar with and almost an actor in every event in the political history not only of his own country but of every important state in Christendom ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... your Continent Dark My footprints are plain, and my realm's pretty spacious. I don't mean to say that a purblind content My power should palsy, my policy dominate, And Congos and Khartoums that pay cent. per cent. Are tempting, but arrogant haste I abominate. My "prancing proconsuls" not always are right, Whose first and last word for old Leo is "collar!" I'm not going to flare up like fury and fight Every time someone else wins an acre or dollar. But if you imagine I'm out of the hunt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various

... frequently you meet him the more you will feel it. The power of the man is past words and past understanding. Did you know that he once held a high office under Spain? Oh, yes, for years he controlled the arrogant, treacherous, local government of Spain as absolutely as he controls the simple family of Cedar House. He was living in Natchez then, and was apparently a very devout Catholic, too, about this time. But the church which he attended was mysteriously robbed; its altar was ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... race. They foster race-consciousness, the feeling of kinship and community of blood. It is this property which makes the historical story so good an agent for furthering a proper national pride in children. Genuine patriotism, neither arrogant nor melodramatic, is so generally recognised as having its roots in early training that I need not dwell on this possibility, further than to note its connection with the instinct of hero-worship which is quick in the healthy child. Let us feed that hunger for the heroic which ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant

... had borne himself well in several duels, and was accounted a gentleman, though arrogant and overbearing. He stood without speaking, while the surgeon bandaged up his arm. Then ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... call in a great cloud of witnesses, ... a thundercloud, ... (talking of storms!) and even seek no further than this table for a first witness; this letter, I had yesterday, which calls me ... let me see how many hard names ... 'unbending,' ... 'disdainful,' ... 'cold hearted,' ... 'arrogant,' ... yes, 'arrogant, as women always are when men grow humble' ... there's a charge against all possible and probable petticoats beyond mine and through it! Not that either they or mine deserve the charge—we do not; to the lowest hem of us! for I don't pass to the other extreme, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... chronicler, the most famous figure in the social life of the New York of the sixties, the later Petronius, or the forerunner of Mr. Ward McAllister, was Brown, the sexton of Grace Church, which, for many years, had been the fashionable centre. "Arrogant old Isaac Brown," Mrs. Burton Harrison called him in her "Recollections, Grave and Gay," "the portly sexton who transmitted invitations for the elect, protested to one of his patronesses that he really could not undertake to 'run society' beyond Fiftieth Street. ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... against laziness; ignorance, greed, and exaggeration masquerading as popular scientific economy; and against the brutal and extortionate upthrust from below. And so we shall arrive at the reverse kind of folly, an admiration and bad imitation of foreign pride and pomp, an arrogant individualism and a hardening of our human feeling. The intellectual war profiteers, who are all for radicalism to-day, will soon be wearing cornflowers[3] in ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... on its face the arrogant will of South Carolina, setting aside all constitutional rights, and denying the validity of stipulations made by the United States in her general commercial laws. She asserts her right to disregard citizenship, to make criminals of ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... boat both his hands, whereat the wary Master thrust him back, saying, "Begone there, with the other dogs!" Then with his arms he clasped my neck, kissed my face, and said, "Disdainful soul, blessed be she who bore thee! This one was an arrogant person in the world; no goodness is there that adorns his memory; therefore is his shade so furious here. How many now up there are held great kings who shall stand here like swine in mire, leaving of themselves horrible dispraises." And I, "Master, I should much like to see him ducked in this ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... handsome and jolly that no one cared a hang. For all that he did not know his parentage, he was a gentleman, something that has to be bred in the bone. Once or twice I remember seeing him angry; in anger he was arrogant, deadly, but calm. He was a god in track-linen, for he was what few big men are, quick and agile. The big fellow who is cat-like in his movements is the most formidable of athletes. One thing that invariably amused me was his inordinate love of uniforms. ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath

... take her eyes off the arrogant, elegant "Jew" who contrasted so favorably with his bandy-legged captain. She was standing with her back toward Rosario, but that did not prevent the latter from divining the object of her gaze. And did you see that? A married woman making eyes at a married ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... France sing soft as they run, But five have a song of their own, That hymns the fall of the arrogant one And the proud cast down from ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... she felt the first stirring of that pride, and satisfaction, and self-assertion which was to grow upon her so rapidly and transform her from the plain, unpretentious woman who had washed, and ironed, and baked, and mended in the small house in Langley into the arrogant, haughty lady of fashion, who courted only the rich and looked down upon her less fortunate neighbors. Now, however, she was very meek and humble, and trembled as she alighted from the carriage before the great stone house which ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... have known how to begin. It is evident to me that Mrs. What's her name would have had her atrocious way with very little trouble even if the excellent Fynes had been able to do something. She would simply have bullied de Barral in a lofty style. There's nothing more subservient than an arrogant man when his arrogance has once been ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... gobbles his food and bullies the servants; and then he says such rude things about England—perhaps it's only done on purpose to make me angry? He declares we are a wretched, rotten, played-out old country, going down the hill as hard as we can fly. He is narrow-minded, too; so arrogant—the Germans can do no wrong, the English can never do right. I am telling dreadful tales, am I not? All the same, he has an English wife, and is simply devoted to Aunt Flora; nothing is too good for her. It is really funny to see this ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... indeed dead, if I am mistaken, and if that look was not meant for me. Tell me if Fate can be so cruel as to let a man deceive himself in a manner at once so sad and so sweet. I believe that you commanded me to live. You are rich, beautiful. I know it. Your father is arrogant and miserly, and you have a right to be proud; but I love you, and the rest is a dream. Fix your charming eyes on me; think of what love can do, when I who suffer so cruelly, who must stand in fear of every thing, feel, nevertheless, an inexpressible joy in writing you ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... asked with a little scorn, but seating himself and smoothing his brow. "You're fate's child? Isn't that an arrogant speech, Simon?" ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope



Words linked to "Arrogant" :   proud, arrogance, self-important



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