Conceit Quotes - Page 10

• This is a terrible confession to make, but after I left the Army I had a number of things to try. I had a great conceit to think that if all else failed I could always go to Hollywood. So when all else did fail I really went to Hollywood. And then I found out how wrong I was.

  David Niven

  Army, Thinking, Numbers

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• Some drawings are better than others... Some are utterly spoiled... I keep them all. I find a use sometimes even for the worst drawing... But their chief use is to mortify one's conceit, to show how thoroughly incompetent it is possible to be, and to shame one into better ways.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Failure, Drawing, Use

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• In life, as on the stage, it's not who I am but what I do that's the measure of my worth and the secret of my success. All the rest is showiness, arrogance and conceit.

  Stella Adler

  Who I Am, Arrogance, Secret

  Howard Kissel, Stella Adler (2000). “Stella Adler - The Art of Acting: preface by Marlon Brando compiled & edited by Howard Kissel”, p.131, Hal Leonard Corporation

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• No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so insuperable an obstacle in a way of a right understanding of the relations which culture sustains as to wilderness, as that which declares that the world was made especially for the uses of men. Every animal, plant, and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught from century to century as something ever new and precious, and in the resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged.

  John Muir

  Nature, Men, Animal

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• Do anything in this world but monkey with somebody eles's religion. What reasoning of conceit makes anyone think theirs is right?

  Will Rogers

  Thinking, Religion, World

  Will Rogers, Bryan B. Sterling (1995). “Will Rogers Speaks: Over 1,000 Timeless Quotations for Public Speakers (writers, Politicians, Comedians, Browsers ...)”, M Evans & Company

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• History repeats the old conceits, the glib replies, the same defeats.

  Elvis Costello

  Future, Defeat, Premonition

  Song: Beyond Belief, Album: Imperial Bedroom, 1982

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• Paris was sad. One of the saddest towns: weary of its now-mechanical sensuality, weary of the tension of money, money, money, weary even of resentment and conceit, just weary to death, and still not sufficiently Americanized or Londonized to hide the weariness under a mechanical jig-jig-jig!

  D. H. Lawrence

  Paris, Towns, Resentment

  D.H. Lawrence (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)”, p.3913, Delphi Classics

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• If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mean, Conceited, Thinking

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.141, Simon and Schuster

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• Contend not in wisdom with a fool, for thy sense maketh much of his conceit; And some errors never would have thriven, had it not been for learned refutation.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Wisdom, Errors, Fool

  Martin Farquhar Tupper (1871). “Proverbial philosophy: in 4 ser., now first complete”, p.18

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• The first Degree of Folly, is to conceit one's self wise; the second to profess it; the third to despise Counsel.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Wise, Self, Firsts

  Benjamin Franklin (2013). “Poor Richard's Almanack”, p.96, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Thus when we fondly flatter our desires, Our best conceits do prove the greatest liars.

  Michael Drayton

  Liars, Desire, Prove

  'The Barrons' Wars' (1603) canto 6, st. 94

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• Conceit is a disease That the doctors got no cure They've done a lot of research on it But what it is, they're still not sure.

  Evan Esar

  Doctors, Done, Research

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• A great deal of what passes by the name of patriotism in these days consists of the merest bigotry and narrow-mindedness; exhibiting itself in national prejudice, national conceit, and national hatred. It does not show itself in deeds, but in boastings--in howlings, gesticulations, and shrieking helplessly for help--in flying flags and singing songs--and in perpetual grinding at the hurdy-gurdy of long-dead grievances and long-remedied wrongs. To be infested by such a patriotism as this is perhaps among the greatest curses that can befall any country.

  Samuel Smiles

  Country, Song, Names

  Samuel Smiles (1872). “Character”, p.27

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• Being carefree, you can fit in anywhere. If you’re not carefree you keep on bumping up against things. Your life becomes so narrow, so tight; it gets very claustrophobic. Carefree means being wide open from within, not constricted. Carefree doesn’t mean careless. It is not that you don’t care about others, not that you don’t have compassion or are unfriendly. Carefree is being really simple, from the inside. Dignity is not conceit but rather what shines forth from this carefree confidence.

  Tsoknyi Rinpoche

  Mean, Simple, Compassion

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• From my point of view, a great deal of openly expressed piety is insufferable conceit.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Views, Point Of View, Deals

  "The Past Through Tomorrow" by Robert A. Heinlein, G. P. Putnam Inc., (p. 431), 1967.

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• What mortal is there of us, who would find his satisfaction enhanced by an opportunity of comparing the picture he presents to himself of his doings, with the picture they make on the mental retina of his neighbours? We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit.

  George Eliot

  Opportunity, Air, Satisfaction

  George Eliot (1858). “Scenes of Clerical Life”, p.24

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• As children must have the hooping cough, the college youth must pass through the stage of conceit in which he holds in slight esteem the wisdom of the best.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Children, College, Youth

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• There's a whole lot of people in trouble tonight From the disease of conceit Whole lot of people seeing double tonight From the disease of conceit Give ya delusions of grandeur And a evil eye Give you the idea that You're too good to die Then they bury you from your head to your feet From the disease of conceit

  Bob Dylan

  Eye, Ideas, Feet

  Bob Dylan (2013). “Lyrics:1962-2012”, p.535, Simon and Schuster

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• Mead's anthropology had many other red, white and blue- blooded virtues. One was the common anthropological conceit, out of which she made a career, to the effect that the ultimate value of studying other cultures was the use we could make of them to reconstruct our own - a heady kind of intellectual imperialism, as if the final meaning of others' lives was their significance for us.

  Margaret Mead

  Blue, Other Cultures, Careers

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• Some people', Miss R. said,'run to conceits or wisdom but I hold to the hard, brown, nutlike word. I might point out that there is enough aesthetic excitement here to satisfy anyone but a damned fool.

  Donald Barthelme

  Running, People, Missing

  1968 Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts,'The Indian Uprising'.

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• As when on some secluded branch in forest far and wide sits perched an owl, who, full of self-conceit and self-created wisdom, explains, comments, condemns, ordains and order things not understood, yet full of importance still holds forth to stocks and stones around - so sits and scribbles Mike.

  Michael Faraday

  Self, Order, Owl

  Bence Jones, Michael Faraday (2010). “The Life and Letters of Faraday”, p.68, Cambridge University Press

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• Conceit is an insuperable obstacle to all progress. On the other hand, it is of little use to take criticism in a slavish spirit and to act on it without understanding it.

  Ellen Terry

  Hands, Understanding, Criticism

  Dame Ellen Terry (1908). “The Story of My Life: Recollections and Reflections”

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• Some to conceit alone their taste confine,
  And glittering thoughts struck out at ev'ry line;
  Pleas'd with a work where nothing's just or fit;
  One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.

  Alexander Pope

  Lines, Taste, Chaos

  Alexander Pope (1711). “An Essay on Criticism”, p.18

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• Curiously enough, while very small people have a never-failing sense of their own importance, very great ones are often easily disheartened and put out of conceit with themselves.

  Elizabeth Wordsworth

  People, Failing, Enough

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• O, when I am safe in my sylvan home,
  I mock at the pride of Greece and Rome;
  And when I am stretch'd beneath the pines
  When the evening star so holy shines,
  I laugh at the lore and pride of man,
  At the Sophist's schools, and the learned clan;
  For what are they all in their high conceit,
  When man in the bush with God may meet?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Stars, Home

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