Conceit Quotes - Page 8

• The generality of friends puts us out of conceit with friendship; just as the generality of religious people puts us out of conceit with religion.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Friends, Religious, People

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• The idea that even the brightest person or group of bright people, much less the U.S. Congress, can wisely manage an economy has to be the height of arrogance and conceit.

  Walter E. Williams

  Ideas, People, Arrogance

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• Much of the research on the Nazi era makes a science out of distancing oneself from it or conjuring its demons. The conceit is that people were monsters then - as if they were completely different from people today.

  Gotz Aly

  People, Monsters, Different

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Self-love is better than any gilding to make that seem gorgeous wherein ourselves be parties.

  Philip Sidney

  Party, Love Is, Self

  Sir Philip Sidney (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney (Illustrated)”, Delphi Classics

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• The skeptic, being a lover of his kind, desires to cure by speech, as best he can, the self-conceit and rashness of the dogmatists.

  Sextus Empiricus

  Self, Desire, Speech

  Sextus (Empiricus.) (1933). “Sextus Empiricus”, Loeb Classical Library

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• I am in no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company, yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof.

  Thomas Browne

  Dream, Laughing, Way

  Sir Thomas Browne (1844). “Religio Medici. Its sequel, Christian Morals ... With resemblant passages from Cowper's Task, and a verbal index. [Edited by John Peace.]”, p.121

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• The best of lessons, for a good many people, would be to listen at a keyhole. It is a pity for such that the practice is dishonorable.

  Sophie Swetchine

  Practice, People, Good Man

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• Oh how swiftly the glory of the world passes away! If only the lives of these men had been as admirable as their learning, their study and reading would have been to good purpose! But how many in this world care little for the service of God, and perish in their vain learning. Because they choose to be great rather than humble, they perish in their own conceit.

  Thomas a Kempis

  Reading, Humble, Men

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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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• 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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• What seems conceit, bad manners or cynicism is always a sign of things no ear have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.

  Lucinda Williams

  War, Eye, Ears

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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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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• 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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• It's not to much fun to know yourself too well or think you do - everyone needs a little conceit to carry them through & past the falls.

  Marilyn Monroe

  Fun, Fall, Past

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• Probably the only people left who think that economics deserves a Nobel Prize are economists. It confirms their conceit that they're doing 'science' rather than the less tidy task of observing the world and trying to make sense of it. This, after all, is done by mere historians, political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and (heaven forbid) even journalists. Economists are loath to admit that they belong in such raffish company.

  Robert J. Samuelson

  Thinking, People, Heaven

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• The idea that human kind can shape the world according to wish is what I call the fatal conceit

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Ideas, Wish, Shapes

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• The belief that we can manage the Earth and improve on Nature is probably the ultimate expression of human conceit, but it has deep roots in the past and is almost universal.

  Rene Dubos

  Nature, Past, Expression

  "The Wooing of the Earth". Book by René Dubos, 1980.

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