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1 " Many men remain spoiled boys that have never grown up. Women are prepared to raise them and take pain with patience, both as a condescendant contribution to supercilious compassion and as a proof of the eminence of their sense of worth. (" Prêt-à-penser" / " Ready-to-wear thinking" ) "
2 " Such nonsense!" declared Dr Greysteel. " Whoever heard of cats doing anything useful!" " Except for staring at one in a supercilious manner," said Strange. " That has a sort of moral usefulness, I suppose, in making one feel uncomfortable and encouraging sober reflection upon one's imperfections. "
3 " You're a superCILIOUS cock SUCKER. You know that." " IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE. "
4 " Samuel Vimes dreamed about Clues. He had a jaundiced view of Clues. He instinctively distrusted them. They got in the way. And he distrusted the kind of person who’d take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, “Ah, my dear sir, I can tell you nothing except that he is a left-handed stonemason who has spent some years in the merchant navy and has recently fallen on hard times,” and then unroll a lot of supercilious commentary about calluses and stance and the state of a man’s boots, when exactly the same comments could apply to a man who was wearing his old clothes because he’d been doing a spot of home bricklaying for a new barbecue pit, and had been tattooed once when he was drunk and seventeen* and in fact got seasick on a wet pavement. What arrogance! What an insult to the rich and chaotic variety of the human experience! "
― Terry Pratchett , Feet of Clay (Discworld, #19; City Watch, #3)
5 " To expel hunger and thirst there is no necessity of sitting in a palace and submitting to the supercilious brow and contumelious favour of the rich and great there is no necessity of sailing upon the deep or of following the camp What nature wants is every where to be found and attainable without much difficulty whereas require the sweat of the brow for these we are obliged to dress anew j compelled to grow old in the field and driven to foreign mores A sufficiency is always at hand "
― Seneca , Letters from a Stoic
6 " The study of literature threatens to become a kind of paleontology of failure, and criticism a supercilious psychoanalysis of authors. "
