conceit is the devil's horse, and reformers generally ride it when they are in a hurry.
The opposite of humility is arrogance--the belief that we are wiser or better than others. Arrogance promotes separation rather than community. It looms like a brick wall between us and those from whom we could learn.
Confidence quickly curdles into arrogance; smarts turn to smugness, charm turns to smarm.
What I don't like are arrogant people. We're all equal. I don't like it when a person assumes to be better.
Arrogance rides triumphantly through the gates, barely glancing at the old woman about to cut the rope and spring shut the trap.
Arrogance is, as it were, a solicitation on the part of one seeking honor for followers, whom he thinks he is entitled to treat with contempt.
Superciliousness is not safe after all, because a person who forms the habit of wearing it may some day find his lower lip grown permanently projected beyond the upper, so that he can't get it back, and must go through life looking like the King of Spain.
I've known Dennis Kucinich for a long time, and I don't think I have illusions about him. Sometimes I find him pompous, male chauvinistic, intellectually unbending. But he is a good man, and a serious one.
Is it arrogance if one is truly superior?
Any pride or haughtiness, is displeasing to us, merely because it shocks our own pride, and leads us by sympathy into comparison, which causes the disagreeable passion of humility.
I just find anyone who's arrogant and pompous is always the funniest for me.
Women always think that if they tell a man not to be pompous that will shut him up, but I am an old hand at that game. I know that if a man bides his time his moment will come.
Arrogance is one of the flaws in the Erudite heart -- I know. It is often in mine.
That was Thorin's style. He was an important dwarf. If he had been allowed, he would probably have gone on like this until he was out of breath, without telling anyone there anything that was not known already. But he was rudely interrupted.
