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More "Supercilious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of this habit of ascending to a superlunary home, was the loss of an exact sense of how she was behaving below. At the Berkshire mansion, she wore a supercilious air, almost as icy as she accused the place of being. Emma knew she must have seen in the library a row of her literary ventures, exquisitely bound; but there was no allusion to the books. Mary Paynham's portrait ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dominion extends of just and honest liberty. As little must he offer to bind that which God hath loosened as to loosen that which He hath bound. The ignorance and mistake of this high point hath heaped up one huge half of all the misery that hath been since Adam. In the Gospel we shall read a supercilious crew of Masters, whose holiness, or rather whose evil eye, grieving that God should be so facile to man, was to set straiter limits to obedience than God had set, to enslave the dignity of Man, to put a garrison upon his neck of empty and over-dignified precepts: and we shall read our Saviour never ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... loving knights, eager to wed; but, like their predecessors, they were all sent drooping home again. The young nobility could at last bear this treatment no longer; and they, one and all, resolved either to constrain the supercilious damsel to wedlock, or to make her smart for a refusal. An embassy was dispatched, charged with notifying this resolution to the mistress of the castle. Swanhilda heard the speakers quietly to the end; but her answer was tuned as before, or indeed rang harsher and more offensive than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... we want, is to take the sure road to the defeat of our most cherished objects." These are timely words, and they reveal a state of feeling among colored people which finds all too fertile a soil in the tendency to ignore, or discriminate, or, at best, grant but a supercilious recognition, which still in great measure controls Southern sentiment. The colored people are naturally loyal and conservative. It is possible, now, so to develop these qualities, that they shall be national ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 08, August, 1885 • Various
... no mood to receive the congratulations of the supercilious Wachtmann. As far as Craig was concerned, the case was finished, although I fancied from a flicker of his eye as he made some passing reference to the outcome that when he came to send in a bill to Brixton for his services he would not ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... brilliant complexion, rich chestnut hair, delicately arched brows, and dark blue eyes. Though only eight years of age, a most unchildlike self-possession distinguished them. The expression of their countenances was haughty, disdainful, and supercilious. Their beautiful features seemed quite unimpassioned, and they moved as if they expected everything to yield to them. The girl, whose long ringlets were braided with pearls, was ushered to a seat next to her father, and, like ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... a man of thirty, at the most, with handsome features and a commanding, elegant figure. His physiognomy expressed both intelligence and wit, but often wore a mask of supercilious impertinence when addressing persons of the same stamp as ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... with the coffee, which she supplies. She thaws a little, listens to us, and even asks questions in a supercilious way: "Why do you ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... the image of the swarthy, supercilious, be-diamonded woman who sat that memorable night in the minister's box, claiming as husband the listless handsome man at her side; and as she pictured the dismay which would follow the sudden rending of the name of Laurance from the banker's ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... there are Evangelical love stories, in which the vicissitudes of the tender passion are sanctified by saving views of Regeneration and the Atonement. These novels differ from the oracular ones, as a Low Churchwoman often differs from a High Churchwoman: they are a little less supercilious and a great deal more ignorant, a little less correct in their syntax and a great ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... midshipman—who had formerly belonged to my ship and had trembled at my frown, ranged up alongside of me, and, with a supercilious air, observed— ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... haughty scornful demeanour; which was so much the more disagreeable because there was nothing in his behaviour I could actually take hold of to find fault with: although his whole conduct was insolent and supercilious to the highest degree. His mother was very much agitated at receiving him on his arrival; if he felt any such agitation he certainly did not show it. He made her a very low and formal bow when he kissed her hand; and, when I held out mine, put both ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... feeling, and I prefer to cast my destiny with my own people, however estranged they may be. Certainly, this letter is not very affectionate, nor even a courteous one from so near a relative," and she placed in my hand the cold and supercilious note of the Earl of Pomfret, containing a permission to visit ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Then Augustus had affected the man of pleasure, the learned lounger about town, the all-accomplished Pericles of the papers, gayly quoting Horace, gravely flanking a fly from the leader of Lord Dunshunner. Now a more serious yet not a less supercilious air had settled upon his features; the pretence of fashion had given way to the pretence of wisdom; and from the man of pleasure Augustus Tomlinson had grown to the philosopher. With this elevation alone, too, he was not content: ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to feel that foreigners did not eat or drink like Christians,' which is to say that the Englishman began his contempt for the foreigner which has resulted in nearly all our wars, and has made the Englishman abroad a supercilious creature, and has made the English schoolboy put his tongue out at the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... her purse and ambled out of the room after a supercilious nod to Alora, who failed to return the salutation. Jason Jones stood in his place, still frowning, until Janet's high-heeled shoes had clattered down the two flights of stairs. Alora went to the window and looking down saw ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... fur company were all-powerful at court. Groseillers then relinquished all idea of restitution, and tried to interest merchants in another expedition to Hudson Bay by way of the sea.[2] He might have spared himself the trouble. His enthusiasm only aroused the quiet smile of supercilious indifference. His plans were regarded as chimerical. Finally a merchant of Rochelle half promised to send a boat to Isle Percee at the mouth of the St. Lawrence in 1664. Groseillers had already wasted six months. Eager for action, ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... had his Audience at Vienna; and has sped as ill as could have been expected. The Answer given was of supercilious brevity; evasive, in effect null, and as good as answering, That there is no answer. Two Accounts we have, as Friedrich successively had them, of this famed passage: FIRST, Klinggraf's own, which is clear, rapid, and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... his into the drawer, and scorned to wear it at all. No—no: the so-called literary world was well rid of Minerva and her yellow ribbon. The great poets would have been indifferent, the little poets jealous, the funny men furious, the philosophers satirical, the historians supercilious, and, finally, the jobs without end. Say, ingenuity and cleverness are to be rewarded by State tokens and prizes—and take for granted the Order of Minerva is established—who shall have it? A great philosopher? no doubt we cordially salute him G.C.M. A great historian? G.C.M. of course. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had the inborn arrogance required for official "snubbing." Being without a ray of good feeling or modesty, he could allow himself to write with ceremonial rudeness of men who in his inmost heart he knew to be in every way his superiors.] He desired exceedingly to be thought supercilious, and he thus became almost necessary to the Government of India, was canonised, and caught up to Simla. The Indian papers chanted little anthems, "the Services" said "Amen," and the apotheosis was felt to be a success. On reaching Simla he was found to be familiar with the two local ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... up smart-Aleck," and sooner or later he'd get a piece of her mind that would "take him down a couple of pegs." Miss Miller, while in complete accord with Flora's views, was content to speak of him as "supercilious." ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... interrupted." She turned to look at Bob again, and with a haughty toss of her rather startling yellow curls raised her eyebrows in a supercilious glance of interrogation. ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... in their opinion of England and its institutions. Mr. Slick evidently viewed them with prejudice. Whether this arose from the supercilious manner of English tourists in America, or from the ridicule they have thrown upon Republican society, in the books of travels they have published, after their return to Europe, I could not discover; but it soon became manifest to me, that Great Britain ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... in its place there is plenty of cunning, slyness, and deceit, if there is any truth in physiognomy. The men look like women and the women like children, except that their features are so hard and forbidding. The better classes wear a supercilious expression of features that makes the toes of one's boots tingle; and yet in all the shops there is a cringing assiduity to get all the silver and pennies from the outside barbarians that is possible. In the streets there was a most unmistakable surliness exhibited that would have broken into ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... communions, and affirmed, that a considerable part of the controversy turned upon the fundamental principles, of all religion, and virtue. It is not at all surprising, that this steadiness and constancy of the Lutherans, was branded by the opposite party, with the epithets, of morose obstinacy, supercilious arrogance, and such like odious denominations. The Lutherans, were not behind hand with their adversaries, in acrimony, of style; they recriminated with vehemence, and charged their accusers with instances of ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... Yet, you, too, might possess them would you but step with him into the press of adventurous legions, and make articulate the dream of men, and make splendid their triumph. He is the prophet of to-morrow, though you deny him to-day. He is not like to you, supercilious and aloof—he would have you for a passionate brother, would raise your spirit in ecstasy, flood your mind with thought, and touch your lips with fire. Because of his sensitiveness he knows every mood and every heart and gives a voice and a song to all. You might know him for a good ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... names; teasing the boys and girls good-naturedly; tickling the pompous members of the village family with straws from time to time, and letting out the family secrets of the community without much regard for the feelings of the supercilious. ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... adequate to arouse orgiastic emotions as genuine as those of antiquity, though they are lacking in beauty and religious consecration. It is easy indeed for the narrowly austere person to view such manifestations with a supercilious smile, but in the eyes of the moralist and the philosopher these orgiastic festivals exert a salutary and preservative function. In every age of dull and monotonous routine—and all civilization involves ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... managed the house of Dinard's now by an arrangement which gave her one third of the profits; and in the last six months, since this scheme had gone into effect, the business had grown tremendously in certain directions. The millinery department, for instance, which Madame had once treated with such supercilious disdain, had become to-day the most fashionable hat shop in Fifth Avenue. The work was hard, but the returns were wonderful; and with a strange gloating, she told herself that she was making money—always more money for the children. "When Fanny ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... never known. The Norman invaders of Ireland, in the twelfth century, were struck with the easy freedom of manner and speech of the people, so different from that of the lower orders in feudal countries. They soon even came to like it; and the supercilious followers of Strongbow readily adopted the dress, the habits, the language, and the good-humor of the Celts, in the midst of whom they found ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... have received your article on Mr. Stuart Mill, for which I thank you. I read it with the greatest interest, and congratulate you on your vigorous refutation of that supercilious and hollow materialism. I am glad, too, to see that you have profited by M. Dumas's last discourse on M. de la Rive. You have done well to record these declarations of a permanent secretary of the Academy of Sciences. Unfortunately, M. Dumas's character has not ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... what for?" inquired Shirley, to whom the overlooker's somewhat pragmatical manners were familiar, and who was often at war with him; for Joe, holding supercilious theories about women in general, resented greatly, in his secret soul, the fact of his master and his master's mill being, in a manner, under petticoat government, and had felt as wormwood and gall certain business visits of the heiress ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... away with a lighter heart. From a dying man there could not be much to fear. So I hunted up Mr. Royce, and found him, finally, endeavoring to extract some information from a supercilious official in a ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... aspect of the matter which had yet occurred to Catherine. A flash of bitterness ran through her. Had they left their Murewell life to be 'near the theatres,' and kept at arm's length by supercilious great ladies? ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Lyle, "one of them, from my post of observation behind the kitchen door, and he did appear so ridiculous with his gold eye-glasses, looking as solemn as an owl, and glancing around with that expression of supercilious curiosity, as though he expected to find us all wild Indians, ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... family, that I know all about it. Do you suppose that before selecting you as your cousin's husband I had not obtained every possible information about you? And what I have learned need not make you quite so supercilious to the police. Besides, as the vulgar saying is, the best of your nose is made of it. Your uncle belonged to the police, and, thanks to that, he became the confidant, I might almost say the friend, of Louis XVIII., who took the greatest pleasure in his companionship. And you, ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... or a leading member of the opposition—to thunder forth accusations against men in power; show up the worst side of every thing that is produced; to pick holes in every coat; to be indignant, sarcastic, jocose, moral, or supercilious; to damn with faint praise, or crush with open calumny! What can be so easy as this when the critic has to be responsible for nothing? You condemn what I do; but put yourself in my position and do the reverse, and then see if I ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Shakespeare, to "poor devils." But it may be doubted if the wise and good have the right to cut the Providential bond which connects them with the foolish and the bad, and set up an aristocratic humanity of their own, ten times more supercilious than the aristocracy of blood. Divorce the loftiest qualities from humility and geniality, and they quickly contract a pharisaic taint; and if there is anything which makes the wretched more wretched, it is the insolent condescension of patronizing benevolence,—if there is anything ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... English language would enable him to employ, to deride, defame, insult, and blackguard every man who has joined the new party, or dares to act with them in politics. In the plenitude of his bitter and supercilious arrogance, Andrew Johnson has indulged in language against the entire American party, which would not be tolerated within the precincts of Billingsgate, or the lowest fish-market in London. And from Johnson to Shelby counties, during ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... known the touch of barber's razor or Delilah's shears. So that the cutting speech which quivered on her ready tongue died upon her lips, and she contented herself with receiving his stammering apology with supercilious eyelids and the gathered skirts of uncontamination. When she re-entered the schoolroom, her eyes fell upon the azaleas with a new sense of revelation. And then she laughed, and the little people all laughed, and they were all ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... after a supercilious glance.] This is quite more of an affair, my dear, than I was ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... far less hair on head, neck, and legs, is also amusing, but in a different way. His expression is haughty and supercilious in the extreme. He usually looks as though his presence near one is due to circumstances over which he really had no control. Pride of race and excessive haughtiness lead him to carry his head so high and his neck so stiffly erect that he can be corralled, ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... in danger. He looked up without meeting a single glance; all eyes were fixed on the advocate speaking. But far down in the court sat Geissler again, looking highly supercilious, as if bursting with his own superiority, his under-lip thrust forward, his face turned towards the ceiling. This enormous indifference to the solemnity of the court, and that "H'm," uttered loudly and without concealment, cheered Axel mightily; he felt himself no longer ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Simplicius of Emona, who had been a schoolmaster, but was now the assessor of Maximin. After receiving this appointment, he did not grow more proud or arrogant, but assumed a supercilious look, which gave a repulsive expression to his countenance. His language was studiously moderate, while he meditated the most rigorous proceedings against many persons. And first of all he put Rufina to death ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... had entered upon his adventure with the supercilious incredulity of a staunch unbeliever invited to a spiritualist's seance, was conscious for a moment of an absolutely new sensation. A person of acute psychological instincts, he found himself analysing that sensation almost as soon as ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... His character, and to purify themselves even as He is pure. The things they once hated, they now loved; and the things they once loved, they hated. The proud and self-assertive became meek and lowly of heart. The vain and supercilious became serious and unobtrusive. The profane became reverent, the drunken sober, and the profligate pure. The vain fashions of the world were laid aside. Christians sought not the "outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... leaps, from time to time, in manly knowledge. With what eager shrewdness they noted, discussed, reproduced, the manners and attire of their pilgrim guests, sporting what was to their liking therein in the streets of Chartres. The more cynical or supercilious pilgrim would sometimes present himself—a personage oftenest of high ecclesiastical station, like the eminent translator of Plutarch, Amyot, afterwards Bishop of Auxerre, who seemed to care little for shrine or relic, but lingered long over certain ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... profound Philosophers may think) is, to the rest, in Things; so, in Words (whatever supercilious Pedants may talk), every one's mother tongue is to all other Languages. This hath still been the Sentiment of Nature and true Wisdom. Hence, the greatest men of Antiquity never thought themselves better employed than in cultivating their own country idiom. So Lycurgus did honour ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... European country whose influence was felt in the attitude of its bishops was one whose government sent out no diplomatists. While the Austrian Chancellor regarded the issue of the Council with a profane and supercilious eye, and so much indifference prevailed at Vienna that it was said that the ambassador at Rome did not read the decrees, and that Count Beust did not read his despatches, the Catholic statesmen in Hungary were intent on effecting a revolution in the Church. The system which was about to culminate ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... girl of good manners and appearance. To her Mrs. Tudor uniformly spoke in a way that must have been felt as peculiarly disagreeable. The blandest smile; and the most winning expression of voice, would instantly change, when Lucy was addressed, to a cold, supercilious look, and an undertone of command. Several times I saw the blood mount to the girl's forehead, as a word or tone more marked and offensive than usual would be given so loudly as to be perceived by all. Once or twice, ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... stultitiae," retorted Alfred in a moment and met his offensive gaze with a point-blank look of supercilious disdain. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... His wife and daughters were more interesting, but without those attainments which grace and adorn society. They made tapestries and embroideries, and rode horseback, and danced well, and were virtuous; but were primitive, uneducated, and supercilious. Their beauty was of the ruddy sort, —physical, but genial. They were very fond of ornaments and gay dresses; and so were their lords on festive occasions, for semi-barbarism delights in what is showy and glittering,—purple, and feathers, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... strangeness of her form and color once worn off, treated her with great respect. Though she was so much smaller and lighter than they, her quickness on her feet and her extremely handy way of butting made her easily master of them all. Even the supercilious young cow who had been so disagreeable to her at first grew indifferently friendly, and all was peace around the ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... thoroughly laughed at since many will certainly sneer and jeer at you, and will say, 'He has come back to us as a philosopher all of a sudden,' and 'Where in the world did he get this superciliousness?' Now do not you be supercilious, but cling to the things which appear best to you in such a manner as though you were conscious of having been appointed by God to this position." Again in the little discourse On the Desire of Admiration, he warns the philosopher "not to walk as if ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... sphere Shine with his fair example, and though small His influence, if that influence all be spent In soothing sorrow and in quenching strife, In aiding helpless indigence, in works From which at least a grateful few derive Some taste of comfort in a world of woe, Then let the supercilious great confess He serves his country; recompenses well The state beneath the shadow of whose vine He sits secure, and in the scale of life Holds no ignoble, though a slighted place. The man whose virtues are more ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... that summer, too, when Norah and Mildred came together with Charlie Thesiger, their cousin, who was engaged to Mildred. Charlie was then a lieutenant in the South Kent Hussars. He was a large young man, correct, handsome, rather supercilious and rather stupid. He seemed to fill the house in Edwardes Square when he ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... be aware of before he knows ut. He sets me at naught in my own class, sir; he pooh-poohs my mathematical demonstrations, sir; he encourages my pupils in insubordination! And Mrs. Tootle! Bedad, if I don't invent some device for revenging myself on that supercilious woman. The very next time she presumes to address me disrespectfully at the dinner-table, sir, I'll rise in my might, sir,—see if I don't!—and I'll say to her, 'Mrs. Tootle, ma'am, you seem to forget that I'm a gentleman, and have a gentleman's susceptibilities. When I treat ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... Mr. Fairlegh's assertions, and assisting to browbeat those who may be so unfortunate as to differ from him. You must find such a friend invaluable, I should imagine," he added, turning towards me with a supercilious smile. "Umph! nameless individual, sir—nameless 446 individual, indeed! Do you know who you are talking to?" Then came the aside, "Of course he does ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... glanced involuntarily at her, and I knew it was impossible. My eyes swept over the form beside me, as she sat cold, impassive; her attitude one of quiet ease, her whole mien the essence of calm self-possession. That excess of pride and dignity and supercilious arrogance that in Lucia replaced, at times, her seductive plasticity at others, had always exercised a violent attraction over me. And now, when this pride seemed joined with a positive hostility to myself, it failed to repel; it simply raised ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... of the Universe, in a somewhat supercilious manner, not long ago informed one of our local friends that his own home was hundreds of miles to the southward. "'Deed, sir, how does you manage to live so far off?" with a scarcely perceptible twinkle of one eye, was ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... being clipped close and smooth in the style of the Empire; an exquisite, thin-featured man, high of nose and eyebrows, not large, but completely turned out as ample man and bright spirit. The slightest fragrance of scent was in his presence, and a shade of snuff on his upper lip appeared fine supercilious hairs. ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... sadder imperfections in mankind's ways, than the Scandinavian method itself! To fall into mere unreasoning deliquium of love and admiration, was not good; but such unreasoning, nay irrational supercilious no-love at all is perhaps still worse!—It is a thing forever changing, this of Hero-worship: different in each age, difficult to do well in any age. Indeed, the heart of the whole business of the age, one may say, is to do ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... three years older than the rest of them; good looking, and very well and quietly dressed, but with the drawing up of his nostril, and a drawing down of the corners of his mouth, which set Tom against him at once. The cool, supercilious half-nod, moreover, to which he treated our hero when introduced to him, was enough to spoil his digestion, and hurt his self-love a good deal more than he ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... if the host and hostess would have permitted themselves to notice the supercilious rudeness of the leader of Durford "Society," had Hepsey been able ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... could vote for governor and other State officials. The laws were so arranged as effectually to disfranchise those who had no property. In his "Reminiscenses" Dr. John W. Francis tells of the prevalence for years in New York of a supercilious class which habitually sneered at the demand for political equality of the leather-breeched mechanic with his ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... could be otherwise than handsome, fascinating, intelligent, and everything else desirable, and this consciousness actually produced, in a large majority, the pleasing illusion that she was really all these. But she was not. On the contrary, stripped of the gloss, she was censorious, supercilious, and selfish. Deprived of her dressmaker, she was gaunt and unsightly. Separated from her position, she would have been unbearable. Arabella had many offers, of course, but she was too fond of her power and too suspicious of an attempt on her purse to yield easily. She was enough of a coquette ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... peculiar smile as she went past them. A smile that promised she would not forget; a smile that told them how sure she felt of having caught them fairly. With the smile went a chilly, supercilious bow that was worse than a direct cut, and which the Happy Family returned doubtfully, not at all sure of the rules ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... nearly thirty; but after what he has gone through he may well look three or four years older than he is. He had light hair, rather small gray eyes, and a face that would have been good looking had it not been for its supercilious ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... than probable. But we also maintain that it is a great mistake to come down upon it with a sweeping denunciation, and, in Quaker fashion, avow it to be all vanity, and assert that it must be trodden out of thought and eye. Even the Quakers themselves, who affect such supercilious contempt for dress, are very particular about the cut of their headgear, about the shade of their greys and their drabs and their browns, and, in their scrupulous neatness, show that they think as much of a grease-spot or ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... little face that he held. Gone was the sullen frown, the indifferent glance, the bitter smile, and in that sudden, amazing, wild, sweet transfiguration of brow, eyes, mouth, that met his astonished eyes, he felt his whole mean, supercilious world slip out from under his feet! And just as precipitously, just as inexplainably, as ten days before he had seen a Great Light that had knocked all consciousness out of him, he experienced now a second Great Light that knocked him back into the first full consciousness ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... provincial, subtly conscious of his limitations when brought into contact with more traveled and cosmopolitan men, endures less readily than any other to be reminded of his inferiority. Who shall estimate the effect upon the proud and self-contained Washington of intercourse with supercilious British officers during the Braddock expedition? In how many unrecorded instances did a similar experience produce a similar effect? No bitterness endures like that of the provincial despised because of his provincialism. ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... Jesuits returned, and putting on a very grave supercilious air, the superior asked him, what resolution he had taken? To which Mr. Lithgow replied, that he was already resolved, unless he could show substantial reasons to make him alter his opinion. The superior, after a pedantic display of their seven sacraments, the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... The company exchanged a supercilious smile. "Do you not see, O Senor Advocate," said Don Vincente compassionately, "that this is but a conspiracy to avail themselves of our relative's weakness. Of a necessity they find him sane ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... and traditional touch of dim blue, dim gold, and glossy calf-skin. The fire was exactly correct and traditional; a small, quiet, steady fire, reflected by polished fire-irons. The oak desk was dark and old and altogether perfect; the chairs were gently supercilious. ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... her to be could journey for the first time unmoved through the valley which to him summed up the word Egypt. He allowed her to ride a few paces ahead, just behind the Sheikh. The camel's arrogant head, with its supercilious gaze, towered above them. To Margaret, Michael Amory and herself were still an offence in the valley. The camel, with the high-seated, turbaned Sheikh, seemed a part of the whole. The animal, with its prehistoric loneliness of expression, the Sheikh, with his splendid deportment and benign loftiness ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... describes at that distance which, if it does not lend enchantment, at all events unifies the scattered impressions, and furnishes a convenient critical outpost. He does not permit himself, however, like so many foreigners in the French capital, to lapse into that supercilious cosmopolitanism which deprives a man of his own country without giving him any other in exchange. No; Jonas Lie is and remains a Norseman—a fact which he demonstrated (to the gratification of his countrymen) on a recent occasion. At the funeral of the late Professor O. J. ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... said, "are frame-makers, a good many of them, with big bills in high places. Others are actresses—very great actresses off the stage. Do you see that tall girl there, with a supercilious expression which she does not know is apt to remind one of a housemaid scorning a milkman's love on the area steps? She is a great actress, who will not take small engagements, and is not offered large ones. She is an actress ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... signifies to be, to act, or to be acted upon." Or thus: "What is an assertor? Ans. 'One who affirms positively; an affirmer, supporter, or vindicator.'—WEBSTER'S DICT."—Peirce cor. "Virgil wrote the AEneid."—Kirkham cor. "Which, to a supercilious or inconsiderate native of Japan, would seem very idle and impertinent."—Locke cor. "Will not a look of disdain cast upon you throw you into a ferment?"—Say cor. "Though only the conjunction if is here set before ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... hair, not much of it, scantily thatching all smooth. Then his arms, oscillating as he walked (as if the pendulum by which that rigid man was made to go his regular routine), were much too long for symmetry: and altogether, to casual view, Mr. Jennings must acknowledge to a supercilious, yet sneaking air—which charity has ere now been kind enough to think a conscious rectitude towards man, and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of its contents," the General replied. "He smiled in a supercilious manner and said I had better do as ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... reprehensible conduct must be carried on so secretly as to elude the college authorities. Those disposed to do evil represent only a very small proportion of the great body of students, but these give occasion for some supercilious and conceited correspondent of the public press severely to criticise the college government, and to give gross caricatures and exaggerated statements of the mischief done by this small percentage of students, and then include the entire academic body in the same general ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... once being present when the merits of a book were canvassed. One person declared it to be insufferably dull, when another, who had published some novel, observed, with rather a supercilious air, "You know not how difficult it is to write ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... himself, in a measure, as others saw him, and the humility of his position in the eyes of the world asserted itself. While he felt not the slightest bend in the erectness of his own soul because of it, while it even amused him, he never forgot the supercilious courtesy of the girls' father towards him. He recognized, even while feeling himself on superior heights, the downward vision of the man who robbed him. It was true that he paid scorn for scorn, but he was forced to take ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... struggle with poverty in the tight-fitting lavender gloves, whose streaky lines bore witness to the imperfection of the cleaner's art. Elegant Parisians and the select of Brussels glanced at the military Englishman and his handsome daughter with some slight touch of supercilious surprise—one has no right to find shabbily-dressed young women in the golden temple—and it is scarcely necessary to state that it was from her own countrywomen the young person in alpaca received the most chilling glances. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... him know that she had divined this, and to meet him again with that recognition in their minds. He knew very well that he was entangling her in helpless humiliation: it was another way of smiling at her ironically, and taking the air of a supercilious mentor. Gwendolen felt the bitter tears of mortification rising and rolling down her cheeks. No one had ever before dared to treat her with irony and contempt. One thing was clear: she must carry out her resolution to quit this place at once; it was impossible for her to reappear ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... drives us to the station of the Tiflis & Baku Railway, and he loses a wheel and upsets us into the street on the way. The station is a stone building, strong enough almost for a fort. Military uniforms adorn every employee, from the supercilious station-master to the ill-paid wretch that handles our baggage. Mine is the first bicycle the Tiflis & Baku Railroad has ever carried. Having no precedent to govern themselves by, and, withal, ever eager to fleece and overcharge, the railway officials charge double rates for it; that is, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... worn and rather pale, the lines about the firm mouth were full of lassitude, the eyes rather tired. He had the air of having tasted widely, curiously, of life in his day, prosperous as he seemed now, that had left its mark upon him. His voice, which usually took an intonation that his friends found supercilious, grew very tender in addressing this little French girl, with her quaint air of ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... fair man of less than forty, with thin reddish brown hair, brows slanting downward from the base of the nose, and a profile of that curious Teuton type reminiscent of a supercilious hound if one could imagine such an animal with milk-blue eyes and a yellow mustache with ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... me fever, and the spleen! Adieu that stage which makes us yawn, Sirs, Adieu his Excellency's dancers![21] Adieu to Peter—whom no fault's in, But could not teach a colonel waltzing; Adieu, ye females fraught with graces! Adieu red coats, and redder faces! Adieu the supercilious air Of all that strut en militaire![22] 20 I go—but God knows when, or why, To smoky towns and cloudy sky, To things (the honest truth to say) As bad—but in a ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... to herd with those of our own cast; and by this means we have no opportunities of seeing or conversing with any body who could or would show us what we are; and so we conclude that we are the cleverest fellows in the world, and the only men of spirit in it; and looking down with supercilious eyes on all who gave not themselves the liberties we take, imagine the world made for ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... the train had set them down at San Bruno—nothing more than a road-house, the headquarters for duck-shooters and fishermen from the city. However, Blix and Condy were the only visitors. Everybody seemed to be especially nice to them on that wonderful morning. Even the supercilious ticket-seller at the San Francisco depot had unbent, and wished them good luck. The conductor of the train had shown himself affable. The very brakeman had gone out of his way to apprise them, quite five minutes ahead of time, that "the next stop was their place." And at San Bruno the proprietor ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... cold and fatal as a patriot's blade; a poet who dares show these bedizened courtiers they are no freer than the peasants they oppress, and tell the peasants they are entitled to the same privileges as their masters!" He paused and drew back with a supercilious smile. "But doubtless, sir," said he, "I offend you in thus arraigning your sacred caste; for unless I mistake you belong to the race of demi-gods—the Titans whose downfall is at hand?" He swept the boxes with ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... face I pull, Nor think I 'm pious when I 'm only bilious; Nor study in my sanctum supercilious, To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... hypocrisy has been worn by Caesar, by Cromwell, and by Washington?" Another patriot, also of the Democratic party, declared that the President had been false to a republican government. He said that Washington maintained the seclusion of a monk and the supercilious distance of a tyrant; and that the concealing carriage drawn by supernumerary horses expressed the will of the President, and defined the loyal duty ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... very supercilious Man: And 'tis no ways inconsistent with this Character to suppose, that he may entertain a natural Antipathy against an ugly Face, or a bad Voice; but our Author represents him as labourirg under this Distemper to such a Degree of Excess, as, I believe, has never been observ'd ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... her dress, and tied on an apron to help. But no, she sat and preened herself with the tissue-paper sort of pride of a vain milliner, or nervously shifted about, lifting up this and that, curiously supercilious, her tongue rattling on to her husband and to his mother in a shallow, foolish way. She couldn't say, however, that any thing was out of order or ill- kept about the place. The old woman's rheumatic fingers made corners clean, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not help contrasting the watchfulness of Hayoue with his own supercilious negligence. Yes indeed, it was all over with him; he was good ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... venomous and quizzing smile. The second condition of "comme il faut"-ness was long nails that were well kept and clean; the third, ability to bow, dance, and converse; the fourth—and a very important one—indifference to everything, and a constant air of refined, supercilious ennui. Moreover, there were certain general signs which, I considered, enabled me to tell, without actually speaking to a man, the class to which he belonged. Chief among these signs (the others being the fittings of his rooms, his gloves, his handwriting, his turn-out, and so forth) were his feet. ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... a little more civil to great men and a little more patronising to those below him than he would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr Butterwell that ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... attracted attention anywhere; together they were doubly striking-looking. Arnold, tall and slight, carrying his head high, fair of complexion as a peachy-cheeked girl, was a peculiarly distinguished-looking man. The delicate pince-nez he wore emphasized slightly the elusive air of supercilious courtliness he always conveyed. Now, as he spoke to Ruth, who, although a tall girl, was some inches shorter than he, he maintained a strict perpendicular from the crown of his head to his heels, only looking down with his eyes. Short women resented this trick of his, protesting that it made them ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... continuing to assure Burnes that he cared for no connection except with the English, and Burnes professed to his Government his fullest confidences in the sincerity of those declarations. But the tone of Lord Auckland's reply, addressed to the Dost, was so dictatorial and supercilious as to indicate the writer's intention that it should give offence. It had that effect, and Burnes' mission at once became hopeless. Yet, as a last resort, Dost Mahomed lowered his pride so far as to write to the Governor-General imploring him 'to remedy the grievances ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... the proud and supercilious Warburton long crouched and fawned. MALLET, at least, well knew all that passed between Warburton and Pope. In the "Familiar Epistle" he asserts that Warburton was introduced to Pope by his "nauseous flattery." A remarkable instance, besides the dedications we ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... be very inconvenient to be poor," said Fletcher, with a supercilious glance at our hero, who was ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... charming!" was his supercilious reply. "I rejoice to find that the fumier I have been forced to fling on my worn-out ancestral estate is fertilizing its barrenness. The village is probably the better for the change. But, as regards the society, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... three months, if you give away your father's gold secretly to an idle fellow who'll eat your heart out when you've nothing else to give him? You'll find out some day what your Charles is worth, with his morocco boots and supercilious airs. He has got neither heart nor soul if he dared to carry off a young girl's treasure without ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... many happy days. I crept miserably into the stuffy glass cage, where, in the folding chair, I sat as far forward as my own shape and the car's allowed; Sir Samuel's fat knees in my back, Lady Turnour's sharp voice in my ears. And for scenery, I had Bertie's aggressive shoulders and supercilious gesticulations. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... if only my supercilious critics could be trusted to tell the whole truth, that Lily is not good-looking enough for them. But that, again, is all a question of taste. Beauty is relative and not absolute. My critics may themselves ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... great thing," said Mangan, who was really a very good-natured sort of person, despite his supercilious talk. "In fact, you might do her ladyship a ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... to what do I owe the honor of this visit?" he demanded with a supercilious air, bending a card between his thumb and finger on ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Gone was the sullen frown, the indifferent glance, the bitter smile, and in that sudden, amazing, wild, sweet transfiguration of brow, eyes, mouth, that met his astonished eyes, he felt his whole mean, supercilious world slip out from under his feet! And just as precipitously, just as inexplainably, as ten days before he had seen a Great Light that had knocked all consciousness out of him, he experienced now a second Great ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... it as little less than a betise to suggest that the companion article in The Family Herald could be anything but miserable commonplace, which no one with any reputation to lose in "literary circles" would venture to read. The same arrogance of ignorance is observable in the supercilious way in which many men speak of the articles appearing in other penny miscellanies of popular literature. They richly deserve the punishment which Mr. Runciman reminds us Sir Walter Scott inflicted upon some blatant snobs who were praising ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... and his mother. I could not help observing that his manners were considerably changed: my welcome seemed less kind and hearty than I could have anticipated from the warm-hearted peasant of five years ago, and there was a stern and almost supercilious elevation in his bearing, which at first pained and offended me. I had met with him as he was returning from the fields after the labours of the day; the dusk of twilight had fallen; and, though I had calculated on passing the evening with him at the farm-house of Mossgiel, so ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... warlike covering that invited as well as preserved from danger, interposed, saying, "It was shame to put hand on ane consecreat bishop." The encounter of these two priests by evening and morning, the supercilious refusal of the mail-clad bishop to interfere, and pretence of ignorance—and, as one may imagine, the watch over him from afar of his brother of Dunkeld with the full intention of peaceful yet effective reprisals, throw a light of grim ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... man's manner aroused in me instant resentment. I was the toiler in mud-stiffened overalls, he arrogant and supercilious in broadcloth and linen. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... leathern suits; horsemen in fur coats and caps and buffalo-hide boots with the hair outside, and camping blankets behind their huge Mexican saddles; Broadway dandies in light kid gloves; rich English sporting tourists, clean, comely, and supercilious looking; and hundreds of Indians on their small ponies, the men wearing buckskin suits sewn with beads, and red blankets, with faces painted vermilion and hair hanging lank and straight, and squaws much bundled up, riding astride with furs over ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... Joseph Scaliger, who was to pronounce him totally ignorant of Latinity, was at a comfortable distance in the next century. But when was the fatal coquetry inherent in superfluous authorship ever quite contented with the ready praise of friends? That critical supercilious Politian—a fellow-browser, who was far from amiable—must be made aware that the solid secretary showed, in his leisure hours, a pleasant fertility in verses, which indicated pretty clearly how much he might do in that way if he were not ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... rigid silence, and a haughty scornful demeanour; which was so much the more disagreeable because there was nothing in his behaviour I could actually take hold of to find fault with: although his whole conduct was insolent and supercilious to the highest degree. His mother was very much agitated at receiving him on his arrival; if he felt any such agitation he certainly did not show it. He made her a very low and formal bow when he kissed her hand; and, when I held out mine, put both his hands behind his back, stared me ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gave Cosmo a round punch on the shoulder next him that made him look from his work, and then began eying him up and down in the most supercilious manner. He was a small, withered, bowed man, with a thin wizened face, crowned by a much worn fur cap. His mouth had been so long drawn down at each corner as by weights of discontent, that it formed nearly a half-circle. His eyebrows were lifted as far ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... was a slender young woman in a brown traveling suit. She was rather pretty in a supercilious way, but she showed questionable taste in a ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... magnificent; but of it they were not conscious. They but answered an instinct: the eternal brotherhood of the frontier. Far away in his well-policed, steam-heated abode urban man listens to the tale of unselfishness, and, supercilious, smiles. We believe what we have ourselves felt, we humans. First of all to come was lean-faced Crosby, one cheek swelled round with a giant quid. Close at his heels followed Trapper Conway: grizzled, parchment-faced ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... time to time, in manly knowledge. With what eager shrewdness they noted, discussed, reproduced, the manners and attire of their pilgrim guests, sporting what was to their liking therein in the streets of Chartres. The more cynical or supercilious pilgrim would sometimes present himself—a personage oftenest of high ecclesiastical station, like the eminent translator of Plutarch, Amyot, afterwards Bishop of Auxerre, who seemed to care little for shrine or relic, but lingered ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... at him. Some day he intended to take a fall out of this supercilious young Spanish aristocrat, but just now he was not equal to the task. He mumbled ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... besides being possessed of a superabundance of supercilious impudence, also possessed a set of digging tools, the handles of which were made of polished oak and walnut, with bright brass ferrules. With these he proposed to dig his fortune in a leisurely way; meanwhile, finding the weather ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... thou after here?" "Ah," I replied, "I have spent a whole month in yonder city. And what have I found? A city full of friends, enjoying every happiness in common. In vain have I tried to put a little of wickedness among them." Then the woman, with a supercilious air: "If I am to take thee for a specimen, I must have a very poor opinion of the whole tribe of demons. You seem mighty enough, but you haven't the strength of women. Stop here and keep an eye on the wash; but mind, play ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... read them, lest I should lessen my mental superiority in the eyes of my sisters. Nay, I had taken up a work of the kind now and then, when I knew my sisters were observing me, looked into it for a moment, and then laid it down, with a slight supercilious smile. On the present occasion, out of mere listlessness, I took up the volume and turned over a few of the first pages. I thought I heard some one coming, and laid it down. I was mistaken; no one ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... his eyes off the preacher, but the preacher never saw him. The reason was that he dared not let his eyes wander in the direction of Mrs. Ramshorn; he was not yet so near perfection but that the sight of her supercilious, unbelieving face, was a reviving cordial to the old Adam, whom he was so anxious to poison with love and prayer. Church over, the rector walked in silence, between the two ladies, to the Manor House. He courted no greetings from the sheep of his neglected flock as he went, and returned those offered ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... operation of natural causes, and may therefore confess the effects of Religion and morality in promoting the well being of the community; may yet, according to their humour, with a smile of complacent pity, or a sneer of supercilious contempt, read of the service which real Christians may render to their country, by conciliating the favour and calling down the blessing of Providence. It may appear in their eyes an instance of the same superstitious weakness, as that which prompts the ...
— 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
... turned his back to it, and without uttering a word, faced the stranger, who eyed him from head to foot with a cool, supercilious stare; then looked at the girl, as ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... peace, Japan proposed a union between herself and China for the purpose of restoring order in Korea and amending that country's administration. China refused. She even expressed supercilious surprise that Japan, while asserting Korea's independence, should suggest the idea of peremptorily reforming its administration. The Tokyo Cabinet now announced that the Japanese troops should not be withdrawn without "some understanding that would guarantee the future ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... outward details of a life, if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-battled, never-ending struggle of it be forgotten? 'It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' Of all acts, is not, for a man, repentance the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were the same supercilious consciousness of no sin; that is death; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact,—is dead; it is 'pure,' as dead dry ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... Stoics too, that conceive themselves next to the gods, yet show me one of them, nay the veriest bigot of the sect, and if he do not put off his beard, the badge of wisdom, though yet it be no more than what is common with him and goats; yet at least he must lay by his supercilious gravity, smooth his forehead, shake off his rigid principles, and for some time commit an act of folly and dotage. In fine, that wise man whoever he be, if he intends to have children, must have recourse to me. But tell me, I beseech you, what man is that ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... were fond of advertising each other, and he had soon told her about Mike,—so she was interested to hear the sonnet. Whatever other qualities poetry may lack, the presence of generous sincerity will always give it a certain value, to all but the merely supercilious; and this sonnet, boyish in its touches of grandiloquence, had yet a certain pathos of strong feeling ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... selfishness of man hiding behind a newspaper, with an air of unconsciousness designed to deceive, or brazening it out with an uneasy aspect of defending his rights. This is the spectacle, and not a supercilious assumption on the part of the shop-girl. Her courteous refusal to take a seat, or courteous acceptance of it, is more familiar than the ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... refined order. His head was held stiffly, and his whole bearing betrayed a desire to make the most of his defective stature. His shake of the hand was an abrupt downward jerk, like a pull at a bell-rope. In the smile with which he met Mr. Wyvern a supercilious frame of mind was not altogether concealed; he seemed anxious to have it understood that in him the clerical attire inspired nothing whatever of superstitious reverence. Reverence, in truth, ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... half-malicious way of sometimes suddenly shifting his seat, and on one important night, big with the fate of Peel's Administration, deliberately anchored down in the very centre of the disgusted Tories and at the very back of Sir Robert's bench, to the infinite annoyance of the somewhat supercilious party. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... surrounded by a band of fashionable admirers, among whom George de Croisenois was always to be found. Norbert disliked all these men, but he had a special antipathy to George de Croisenois, whom he regarded as a supercilious fool; but in this opinion he was entirely wrong, for the Marquis de Croisenois was looked upon as one of the most talented and witty men in Parisian society, and in this case the opinion of the world was a well-founded one. Many men envied him, but he had no enemies, and his honest ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... expectorating. If some millionaire would give them all a trip round the world we should have some rest—and if the plug came out of the boat midway it would be more restful still. And your vote-hunting politicians with their tail-twisting campaigns, and our editors of the supercilious weeklies with their inane tone of superiority, if they were all aboard how much clearer we should be! Once more adieu, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... artist, of course, had been any good. The sketch, to be perfect, would need to portray a tall, slim, blonde person with feminine features. But no crayon could convey an idea of the squeaky voice and the supercilious manner. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... nothing to thrill and fascinate these girls with the story of how he had been shot through the leg. It pleased him to see Helen's green eyes dilate, to see Bessy Bell shudder. Presently Lane turned to speak to the supercilious Swann. ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... a fright, Hugo decided; that's what she wanted to bring her to heel. And before very long he'd see that she got it. She shouldn't shelter herself for ever behind that supercilious beast, Ledgard. Hugo was quite ready to have been pleasant to Jan and to have met her more than half-way if she was reasonable, but since she had chosen to bring Ledgard into it, she should pay. After all, she was only a woman, and you can always frighten a woman if you go the right ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... began to stroke and caress his small, black moustache, and he viewed Bellew from his dusty boots up to the crown of his dusty hat, and down again, with supercilious eyes. ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... suffer the whims of the master, who blames you unjustly, Or who calls for this and for that, not knowing his own mind, And the mistress's violence, always so easily kindled, With the children's rough and supercilious bad manners,— This is indeed hard to bear, whilst still fulfilling your duties Promptly and actively, never becoming morose or ill-natured; Yet for such work you appear little fit, for already the father's Jokes have ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... at last believes he has really settled some moot point, and triumphantly publishes his final conclusions in a scientific journal. Ten to one, the very next number of that same journal contains a dozen supercilious letters from a dozen learned and high-salaried professors, each pointing out a dozen distinct and separate precautions which the painstaking observer neglected to take, and any one of which would be quite sufficient to vitiate the whole body of his observations. There might have ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... logic, it should be smuggled into belief by fraud and violence—that is, by the testimony of the bodily senses themselves. Taking a comprehensive view of the whole field, therefore, it seems to be divided between discreet and supercilious skepticism on one side, and, on the other, the clamorous jugglery of charlatanism. The case is not really so bad as that: nihilists are not discreet and even the Bishop of Rome is not necessarily a charlatan. Nevertheless, the outlook may fairly ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... frankfurters, and drank some coffee. He had eaten a plentiful breakfast before starting, but the keen air had created his appetite anew. Beside him at the counter sat a young workingman, also eating frankfurters and drinking coffee. Now and then he gave a sidelong and supercilious glance at James's fine clothes. James caught one of the glances, ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... Augustan age, Horace, Tibullus, and Ovid, expressed a supercilious disdain for the Jewish customs of Sabbath-keeping, etc., which were spreading even in the politest circles. As the political conflict between the Romans and their stubborn subjects became more pronounced, the Roman impatience of their obstinacy increased. Seneca, writing after Palestine had ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... spurns the olden time, and affects all the supercilious airs of a modern fine lady and an upstart. The object of the one writer is to restore us to truth and nature: the other chiefly thinks how he shall display his own power, or vent his spleen, or astonish the reader either by starting ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... significance simply because he was not accustomed to see men as men. He had no real interest in man as man. He was not a lover of his kind. Hence, when the Son of Man came out of Nazareth, the Pharisee was too careless or too supercilious to regard Him with interest. The divine wonder passed him by; all he saw was a wandering fanatic with no place to lay His head. He could not pierce the disguise of circumstance, and bow in love and awe before the soul of Jesus because he was not accustomed ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... righteousness. They are little, low, and mean in their own eyes, and they esteem each other better than themselves; whereas they who at all look to, or depend upon, their own righteousness for their clothing and justification before God, always look down with an air of supercilious contempt upon others who they think are not so righteous as themselves. Lord, hide self-righteous pride from my heart, and sink me into the depth of humility, that I may ever glory in Thee, in whom I am perfectly ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... eye-glass was her especial aversion, for Trix was no more near-sighted than herself, but pretended to be because it was the fashion, and at times used the innocent glass as a weapon with which to put down any one who presumed to set themselves up. The supercilious glance which accompanied her ironically polite speech roused Polly, who answered with sudden color and the kindling of the eyes that always betrayed a perturbed spirit, "I don't think many of us would ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... was now living in Normandy in peaceful old age. Perhaps her stormy and eventful life had made her feel weary of storms, for she rarely emerged from her retirement except in the character of a peacemaker. Certainly she had learnt wisdom by adversity. Her former supercilious sternness was gone, and a meek and quiet spirit, which earned the respect of all, had taken its place. She may have owed that change, and her quiet close of life, instrumentally, in some measure to the prayers of the good Queen Maud, that ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... 'Men began to feel that foreigners did not eat or drink like Christians,' which is to say that the Englishman began his contempt for the foreigner which has resulted in nearly all our wars, and has made the Englishman abroad a supercilious creature, and has made the English schoolboy put his tongue ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... compactly built, fair man of less than forty, with thin reddish brown hair, brows slanting downward from the base of the nose, and a profile of that curious Teuton type reminiscent of a supercilious hound if one could imagine such an animal with milk-blue eyes and a yellow ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... purpose of chorusing Mr. Fairlegh's assertions, and assisting to browbeat those who may be so unfortunate as to differ from him. You must find such a friend invaluable, I should imagine," he added, turning towards me with a supercilious smile. "Umph! nameless individual, sir—nameless 446 individual, indeed! Do you know who you are talking to?" Then came the aside, "Of course he does ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... "I pray you look through the gardens, and tell his Excellency Doctor Franklin that the King waits." The Bishop ran off, with more than youthful agility, to seek the United States' Minister. "These Republicans," he added, confidentially, and with something of a supercilious look, "are ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the words, COVENANT, KIRK, KING, KINGDOMS. The person who was honoured with this charge was followed by the commander of the party, a thin, dark, rigid-looking man, about sixty years old. The spiritual pride, which in mine host of the Candlestick mantled in a sort of supercilious hypocrisy, was in this man's face elevated and yet darkened by genuine and undoubting fanaticism. It was impossible to behold him without imagination placing him in some strange crisis, where religious ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... was an intellectual aristocrat, fastidious and over-sensitive, with very fine perceptions, but endowed with rather too hearty a scorn of fools as well as of folly.... The shyness due to a sensitive nature, was mistaken, as is so often the case, for supercilious pride, and the unwillingness to wear his heart on his sleeve, for coldness and want of sympathy. Such men have to be content with scanty appreciation from the outside."[12] Fortunately, there were those, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... science, the joys of rivers and green lanes—all these things are a closed book to them. Their interests are narrowed down to the purely human: a case of partial atrophy. For the purely human needs a corrective; it is not sufficiently humbling, and that is exactly what makes them so supercilious. We must take a little account of the Cosmos nowadays—it helps to rectify our bearings. They have their history, no doubt. But save for that one gleam of Periclean sunshine the record, though long and varied, is sufficiently inglorious and does not ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... "And if I did the same," he questioned in a drawl that was unmistakably supercilious, "should I ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... Gentleman is the frigid product of a rigid mechanical drill, with the mien of a posture master, the skin-deep graciousness of a French Marechal, the calculating adventurer who cuts unpretentious worthies to toady to society magnates, who affects the supercilious air of a shallow dandy and cherishes the heart of a frog. True, he repeatedly insists on the obligation of truthfulness in all things, and of, honor in dealing with the world. His Gentleman may; nay, he must, sail ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... was different. He realized too that her teeth were perfect, and her complexion, notwithstanding its pallor, was faultless. She would have been strikingly good-looking but for her mouth, and that—was it a discontented or a supercilious curl? At any rate it disappeared ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... when Norah and Mildred came together with Charlie Thesiger, their cousin, who was engaged to Mildred. Charlie was then a lieutenant in the South Kent Hussars. He was a large young man, correct, handsome, rather supercilious and rather stupid. He seemed to fill the house in Edwardes Square ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... feeling which plainly transpires in some of his replies, despite the forms of official respect that he scrupulously observed. Even in much later days, when his distinguished reputation might have enabled him to sustain with indifference this supercilious rudeness, he winced under it with over-sensitiveness. "Do not, my dear lord," he wrote to Earl Spencer a year after the battle of the Nile, "let the Admiralty write harshly to me—my generous soul cannot bear it, being conscious it is entirely unmerited." This freedom of censure, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... reprehend,' to lay hold of one with the intention of forcibly pulling him back; 'to exonerate,' to discharge of a burden, ships being exonerated once; that 'to be examined' means to be weighed. They would be pleased to learn that a man is called 'supercilious,' because haughtiness with contempt of others expresses itself by the raising of the eyebrows or 'supercilium'; that 'subtle' (subtilis for subtexilis) is literally 'fine-spun'; that 'astonished' (attonitus) is properly thunderstruck; that 'sincere' ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... Hub of the Universe, in a somewhat supercilious manner, not long ago informed one of our local friends that his own home was hundreds of miles to the southward. "'Deed, sir, how does you manage to live so far off?" with a scarcely perceptible twinkle of ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... He received me with the utmost politeness. I did not keep him a moment in suspense as to the purport of my visit. But I had no sooner made it known, than, with a supercilious smile, he said, 'And have you, Madam, been prevailed upon to revive that ridiculous old story?' Ridiculous, I told him, was a term which he would find no one else do him the favour to make use of, in speaking of the horrible actions belonging to the old story he made so light of; 'actions' ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... and to purify themselves even as He is pure. The things they once hated, they now loved; and the things they once loved, they hated. The proud and self-assertive became meek and lowly of heart. The vain and supercilious became serious and unobtrusive. The profane became reverent, the drunken sober, and the profligate pure. The vain fashions of the world were laid aside. Christians sought not the "outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... a digest of its contents," the General replied. "He smiled in a supercilious manner and said I had better ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... apprentices. There were students with their blue and white spotted cloaks, their kepis with the school badge, and their ungainly stride. There were modern young men in y[o]fuku (European dress), with panama hats, swagger canes and side-spring shoes, supercilious in attitude and proud of their unbelief. There were troops of variegated children, dragging at their elders' hands or kimonos, or getting lost among the legs of the multitude like little leaves in an eddy. There were excursion parties from ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... three remaining satellites. Prissie looked at her with longing and tripped awkwardly against her chair. Hammond walked past Maggie as if she did not exist to him. Maggie nodded affectionately to Priscilla and followed the back of Hammond's head and shoulders with a supercilious, ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... Streets Length after any Man in a gay Dress. You cant behold a covetous Spirit walk by a Goldsmiths Shop without casting a wistful Eye at the Heaps upon the Counter. Does not a haughty Person shew the Temper of his Soul in the supercilious Rowl of his Eye? and how frequently in the Height of Passion does that moving Picture in our Head start and stare, gather a Redness and quick Flashes of Lightning, and make all its Humours sparkle with Fire, as ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... fruitful philosophy. But in criticism this instinct can only be satisfied intelligently and soundly by a consideration of everything appealing to consideration, and not at all by heated and wilful, or superior and supercilious, exclusions. Catholicity of appreciation is the secret of critical felicity. To follow the line of least resistance, not to take into account those elements of a problem, those characteristics of a subject, to which, superficially and at first thought, one is insensitive, is to dispense ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... Languedoc and Munster, the duellist, the master of the roistering watch-beating Paunsfords. He is not visible as pictured to the vivid fancy of the author of Kenilworth, the youthful aspirant, graceful, eager, slender, dark, restless, and supercilious, with a sonnet or an epigram ever ready on his lips to ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Philip's delays as affected; and she could not conceal her vexation, that, though she brought him a kingdom as her dowry, he treated her with such neglect that he had never yet favored her with a single letter.[**] Her fondness was but the more increased by this supercilious treatment; and when she found that her subjects had entertained the greatest aversion for the event to which she directed her fondest wishes, she made the whole English nation the object of her resentment. A squadron, under ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... his Audience at Vienna; and has sped as ill as could have been expected. The Answer given was of supercilious brevity; evasive, in effect null, and as good as answering, That there is no answer. Two Accounts we have, as Friedrich successively had them, of this famed passage: FIRST, Klinggraf's own, which is clear, rapid, and stands by the essential; SECOND, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... Harry and his fiancee arrived at Rivermead Mansions in a taxi and told me that they had seen Moroni arrive at Stretton Street about half-past nine. He was admitted by a new and rather supercilious man-servant—for Horton did not now seem to be in ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... of vanity and weakness; to make them recognize the State as a multiplication of their own families, and patriotism as the broadening of their love of home; to make them see that that mother will be most respected whose son does not, when a downy beard is grown, suddenly tower above her in the supercilious enjoyment of an artificial superiority—a superiority which consists simply, as Figaro says, in his having taken the trouble to be born; to make them see, finally, that in the highest exercise of all the powers with which God has endowed her, woman can no more refuse the duties of citizenship, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... opened my eyes, so he cheerfully remarked, in a strong twang known by some supercilious English ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... contrary, they were pleased with the way lessons were done, exercises gone through, and work accomplished. The girls were so completely in league with each other, so full of delight over the new amusement which Kathleen had started in their midst, that they had no time to be supercilious or disagreeable to the paying girls, who were left in peace. They were usually a good deal tormented by the foundationers, who took their revenge by small spiteful ways—by taking the ink when they did not want it, by removing good pens and putting bad ones in their places, by ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... started. Evidently he was regarding his callers with more courtesy, for he had been a bit supercilious ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... in it as a 'demonstrable science,'" he continued, "and while there is much that, to me, seems absurdly inconsistent in what they teach, I am not so egotistical and obstinate as to utterly repudiate, with a supercilious wave of the hand, any method of healing that could do what I know was done for that suffering child last fall. And, my dear sister, I am sure I do not need to tell you that I would be willing to yield everything—go ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... thinking he was no fish for their net; the chairmen, instead of Please your honour, d—-d him; and the pumpers, who attentively marked his nod before, now denied him a glass of water. Many of the clergy, those disciples of humility, looked upon him with a supercilious brow; the ladies too, who had before strove who should be his partner at the balls, could not bear the sight of so shocking a creature: thus despised is poverty and rags, though sometimes the veil of real merit; and thus caressed and flattered is finery, though perhaps a covering for ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... might be but wanton cruelty on her ladyship's part; a gratifying of her spleen against the girl by setting her in the pillory of public sight to the end that she should experience the insult of supercilious glances and lips that smile with an ostentation of furtiveness; a desire to put down her pride and break the spirit which my lady accounted insolent ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... for its beauty nor its ugliness, but sufficiently distinguished by its expression of invincible assurance; his person, too, though neither striking for its grace nor its deformity, attracted notice from the insolence of his deportment. His manners, haughty and supercilious, marked the high opinion he cherished of his own importance; and his air and address, at once bold and negligent, announced his happy perfection in the character at which he aimed, that of an accomplished man of ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... court of Scotland. Shauchling, shuffling, slipshod. Shoo, to chase gently. Siller, money. Sinsyne, since then. Skailing, dispersing. Skelp, slap. Skirling, screaming. Skriegh-o'day, daybreak. Snash, abuse. Sneisty, supercilious. Sooth, to hum. Sough, sound, murmur. Spec, The Speculative Society, a debating Society connected with Edingburgh University. Speir, to ask. Speldering, sprawling. Splairge, to splash. Spunk, spirit, fire. Steik, to shut. Stockfish, hard, savourless. Suger-bool, suger-plum. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of a soft peal of laughter—a woman's laughter, which came from the arched entrance to the inn. I looked up quickly. A too familiar figure was standing there watching me,—Lady Delahaye, trim, elegant, a trifle supercilious. By her side stood ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fallen into a tropical afternoon doze if it had not been for Hamilton's voice raised in the dining room. He was finishing his tiffin there. The big double doors stood wide open permanently, and he could not have had any idea how near to the doorway our chairs were placed. He was heard in a loud, supercilious tone answering some statement ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... was a Whig and a friend of the Protestant succession. He was an orator, a courtier, a wit, and a man of letters. He was at the head of ton in days when, in order to be at the head of ton, it was not sufficient to be dull and supercilious. It was evident that he submitted impatiently to the ascendency of Walpole. He murmured against the Excise Bill. His brothers voted against it in the House of Commons. The Minister acted with characteristic caution and characteristic energy; ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of itself but some cheap object of use or ornament in common life; how good it was to know that such assembling in a multitude on their part, and such contribution of their several dexterities towards a civilising end, did not deteriorate them as it was the fashion of the supercilious Mayflies of humanity to pretend, but engendered among them a self-respect, and yet a modest desire to be much wiser than they were (the first evinced in their well-balanced bearing and manner of speech when he stopped to ask a question; the second, in the announcements of their ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... everything that's honourable; only, you see, the law mayn't happen to think so," says Mr. Draper, winking his eye. ("Hang the supercilious beast; I touch him there!) Your aunt says it's the most imprudent thing ever she heard of—to call it by no ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... asked him coldly a question or two and shrugged a supercilious shoulder; ranking officers of both army and navy who openly excoriated Colonel Boynton for bringing them to hear the wild tale of a half-demented man. It was this that drove Blake to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... both, however finespun they may seem to the uninstructed eye, have contributed in no small measure to the mental and moral health of the world. But while we would not make so great a mistake as to look with a supercilious smile either upon the conflict between Nominalism and Realism or on that between the Old and the New School theology, (notwithstanding we might find countenance in Dr. Pond of Bangor, who writes to Dr. Beecher, "In Maine we do not sympathize very deeply ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... la danse, to which he has adapted words that express all the characters of love. With all this he has not the least idea of cheerfulness in conversation; seldom speaks but on grave subjects, and not often on them; is a humourist, very supercilious, and wrapt up in admiration of his own country, as the only judge of his merit. His air and look are cold and forbidding; but ask him to sing, or praise his works, his eyes and smiles open and brighten up. In short, I can show him to you: the self-applauding poet in ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... not have told you what the Taj was, whether Thebes was in Egypt or India, or what was the difference, if any, between the Golden Gate and the Golden Horn. Mrs. Trent was large, sultry, well-informed and supercilious; had the lustrous eyes of a Spaniard, and spoke in a warm contralto voice. Her figure was magnificent, and she prided herself on having a masculine intellect. Her enemies said that she had a more than ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... once present when a loud-voiced person of quality, ignorant and supercilious, was inveighing against the want of taste commonly exhibited by artists when they chose their wives, saying they almost always selected inferior women. Procter, sitting next to me, put his hand on my shoulder, and, with ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... lineaments confest! I do enjoy this bounteous beauteous earth; And dote upon a jest "Within the limits of becoming mirth";— No solemn sanctimonious face I pull, Nor think I'm pious when I'm only bilious— Nor study in my sanctum supercilious To frame a Sabbath Bill or forge a Bull. I pray for grace—repent each sinful act— Peruse, but underneath the rose, my Bible; And love my neighbor far too well, in fact, To call and twit him with ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... wear it at all. No—no: the so-called literary world was well rid of Minerva and her yellow ribbon. The great poets would have been indifferent, the little poets jealous, the funny men furious, the philosophers satirical, the historians supercilious, and, finally, the jobs without end. Say, ingenuity and cleverness are to be rewarded by State tokens and prizes—and take for granted the Order of Minerva is established—who shall have it? A great philosopher? no doubt ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which being fairly admitted, he would have been ready enough to acknowledge that the other understood pike-fishing much better than himself. But it was quite too early in the discussion to make any such avowal, and the supercilious remark of the commodore's putting him on his mettle, he was ready to affirm that he had eaten 'sogdollagers' for breakfast, a month at a time, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... Tom sneered, with that supercilious air he always assumed toward those he considered his inferiors. Why, you and your grandmother can't take care of yourselves, or you couldn't if it wasn't for Uncle Arthur. Mother says so. You wouldn't have any house to live in if he hadn't ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... Frank's younger sister, was his good friend and sympathizer, and in all the family discussions had usually taken his part. His elder sister, Edith, was like her mother, rather arrogant and supercilious, and considered her brother as lacking in family pride, and liable to disgrace them by some unfortunate alliance. It was to Blanch he always turned when he needed sympathy and help, and to her at Bethlehem he appeared the day after he had left the "Gypsy." ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... master in a somewhat supercilious tone; but he was not a little puzzled to make out what sort of man ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... the very first in the world. It is, indeed, only within a comparatively few years that the claims of women to superiority as violinists have been treated with anything better than sneers. And the supercilious and intolerant spirit which dictated such treatment had at least a much solider foundation than the narrow conservatism which refused to admit women into the lists with poets, novelists, sculptors, and painters: for power and force are the primal ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... between two heart-beats.—Yet he looked, in his grey flannels, with his straw-hat and his eyeglass, with his lean face, his even colour, his slightly supercilious moustaches—he looked a very embodiment ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Virgin and St. Anne and Mona Lisa! What was he trying to express? Vasari found the "smile so pleasing that it was a thing more divine than human to behold"; Ruskin thought it archaic, Muentz "sad and disillusioned," Berenson supercilious, and Freud neurotic. Reymond calls it the smile of Prometheus, Faust, Oedipus and the Sphinx; Pater saw in it "the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the Middle Ages with its spiritual ambitions and imaginary loves, the return to the pagan world, the sins of the Borgias." Though ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... only just to say that Nancy was not absolutely destitute of self-control and politeness, because at this moment she had a really vicious desire to wash Julia's supercilious face and neat nose with the dishcloth, fresh from the frying pan. She knew that she could not grasp those irritating "high thoughts" and apply the grime of daily living to them concretely and actually, but Julia's face was within her ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to a society girls' finishing school? Might have known it, though. Uncle Phil was fond of the sort of education that doesn't educate. I'm glad you fellows found me. I'll go home and collect every red cent, just to keep it out of the hands of the supercilious bunch of ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... young man, his habitually supercilious mouth looking even more supercilious than usual as he now spoke, "I beg that you will consider what you are proposing. We are your guests, we others, and you ask us to defend your gates against your own people for you! Surely, surely, sir, your first duty should have been to have ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... chestnut hair, delicately arched brows, and dark blue eyes. Though only eight years of age, a most unchildlike self-possession distinguished them. The expression of their countenances was haughty, disdainful, and supercilious. Their beautiful features seemed quite unimpassioned, and they moved as if they expected everything to yield to them. The girl, whose long ringlets were braided with pearls, was ushered to a seat next to her father, and, like her brother, who was ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... court. Groseillers then relinquished all idea of restitution, and tried to interest merchants in another expedition to Hudson Bay by way of the sea.[2] He might have spared himself the trouble. His enthusiasm only aroused the quiet smile of supercilious indifference. His plans were regarded as chimerical. Finally a merchant of Rochelle half promised to send a boat to Isle Percee at the mouth of the St. Lawrence in 1664. Groseillers had already wasted six months. Eager for action, he hurried back to ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... his direction for a moment, raised his eyebrows, glanced away, then back, in the most supercilious manner, and went ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... popularly supposed to start every dog fight in Nome; but this time he can prove a clear alibi, for he slept at the foot of my bed all night." Thus exonerated, the Peril passed by the line of chained dogs, bumping into them in a perfectly unnecessary manner, and emitting supercilious growls that in themselves would have been sufficient grounds for instant death if Pete Bernard's huskies could have acted upon ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... on such an occasion, without scruple trample upon all those forms with which wealth and dignity intrench themselves, nor shall anything but age restrain my resentment; age which always brings one privilege, that of being insolent and supercilious without punishment. But with regard, sir, to those whom I have offended, I am of opinion, that if I had acted a borrowed part I should have avoided their censure; the heat that offended them was the ardor of conviction, and that zeal ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... supercilious consciousness that he is figuring in a novel, and that it will not do for him to thwart the eccentricities of mysterious fiction by any commonplace deference to the mere meteorological weaknesses of ordinary human nature, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... from mere curiosity, so as to be able to say that they had seen a sewing-machine. I was often struck with the shallow, unmeaning questions which these butterflies of fashion propounded to us. Some of them made the supercilious, but disreputable boast, that they had never taken a stitch in the whole course of their lives. But the great throng of inquirers consisted of women who had families dependent on their needles, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... saved us from the usual exactions. It is pleasant to give a present, but that pleasure the Banyai usually deny to strangers by making it a fine, and demanding it in such a supercilious way, that only a sorely cowed trader could bear it. They often refuse to touch what is offered—throw it down and leave it—sneer at the trader's slaves, and refuse a passage until the tribute is raised to the utmost extent ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... ill wind (of Set) that blows nobody good, and animals had a gorgeous time in those days. Very few weren't sacred for some reason or other. It was death and destruction to kill a cat. And I don't think that cats have forgotten to this day the importance they had in Egypt. It's made them the most supercilious of animals. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... a denizen of earth; a sublunarian; and in respect of heaven, a mere provincial; he (Hivohitee) accounted himself full as good as seraphim from the capital; and that too at the Capricorn Solstice, or any other time of the year. Strongly bent was Hivohitee upon humbling their supercilious pretensions. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... that Lord Raa was soon very weary of this, and more than once, sitting by his side, I caught the cynical and rather supercilious responses to which, under the gloss of his gracious manners, Aunt ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... a supercilious voice, Mr. Godfrey was not there; he had left some time before; no, the speaker did not know where he was going, nor when ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... he prepared himself to act the part of the cold, abstracted, supercilious man of business, the part already too horribly familiar to him as young Mr. Rickman of Rickman's. He reflected how nearly he had wrecked his prospects in that character. He bade himself beware of woman and ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... of our departure, in the twilight of the morning, I ascended the vehicle with three men and two women, my fellow travellers. It was easy to observe the affected elevation of mien with which every one entered, and the supercilious servility with which they paid their compliments to each other. When the first ceremony was despatched, we sat silent for a long time, all employed in collecting importance into our faces, and endeavouring to strike reverence and submission ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... bare almost to the ear, so that for the rest of the duel he appears to be grinning at one half of the spectators, his other side, remaining serious; and sometimes a man's nose gets slit, which gives to him as he fights a singularly supercilious air. ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... to hear more. The supercilious merchant sprang from his desk, and obsequiously offered ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... answered the menial, with a supercilious look, "but she is at breakfast, and does not see poor people ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... readers into two classes, the indolent and the supercilious, and shall accordingly address them upon the present occasion. To the former I have nothing more to say, than to refer them back to the latter part of Chapter I., Part I. where, my dear ladies, you will find an accurate account of the character of two personages, who it seems ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... found attractions in him, the chief of which was his likeness to my father. So must my father have looked when he was this fellow's age. He returned my glance with a smile that did not improve his countenance, so contemptuously languid was it, so very supercilious. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... Saint-Herem was a man of thirty, at the most, with handsome features and a commanding, elegant figure. His physiognomy expressed both intelligence and wit, but often wore a mask of supercilious impertinence when addressing persons of the ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... faces, not so usual; for far away, in a purposely chosen obscurity, May saw Weston Marchmont and the Dean of St. Neot's. The Mildmays themselves could not be present, but these two had come over from Moors End and sat there now, the Dean beaming in anticipation of a treat, Marchmont with a rather supercilious smile and an air of weariness. May could not catch their eyes but she felt glad to have them there; it was always pleasant to her that her friends should see Quisante when he was at his best, and he was going to be at ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... a sailor, swaying along, a rope in his hand; following him, walked demurely three little girls in frocks and trousers, with their French governess; then came two eye-glassed young men, dandyfied and supercilious, who appeared to have more money than brains—and the jaundiced man went into a ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
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