dynamic
toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

self-righteous
in a sentence

show 93 more with this conextual meaning
  • And over time he worked himself into a choler of self-righteous indignation that was impossible to keep bottled up.†   (source)
  • "Those arrogant, self-righteous—" He stops and clears his throat.†   (source)
  • Aringarosa glanced at the two cardinals, who seemed to be measuring him with self-righteous anticipation.†   (source)
  • That self-righteous waste.†   (source)
  • THESE SELF-RIGHTEOUS FANATICS ARE NOT 'RELIGIOUS'—THEIR HOMEY WISDOM IS NOT 'MORALITY.'†   (source)
  • "Such a self-righteous young man," she cooed, and he poked her leg.†   (source)
  • "I don't like self-righteous people," I say.†   (source)
  • When he spoke about Robbie, which wasn't often, it was with a touch of self-righteous vindication.†   (source)
  • Condescending self-righteous cow, thinks she's got all the answers.†   (source)
  • Boris blinked, a bit self-righteously.†   (source)
  • Still, it baffles me that these self-righteous, self-enthralled waddlers get such special treatment.†   (source)
  • Ullman spread his hands and looked at Jack self-righteously.†   (source)
  • I have followers who were murderers and many who were self-righteous.†   (source)
  • When mention of the NSBers no longer brought on a volley of self-righteous wrath, I knew the person's healing was not far away.†   (source)
  • "Don't come all self-righteous on me," said Anaander Mianaai.†   (source)
  • You know, Jacob, you're awfully self-righteous — considering that you're a werewolf and all.†   (source)
  • I've heard your self-righteous BS for the last time.†   (source)
  • With the O.C. Bible, C.E.T. presented the Liturgical Manual and the Commentaries — in many respects a more remarkable work, not only because of its brevity (less than half the size of the O.C. Bible), but also because of its candor and blend of self-pity and self-righteousness.†   (source)
  • Jorge got a kick out of all the people online who acted self-righteous about his family.†   (source)
  • (Sincerely, but also self-righteously) Now that's your money†   (source)
  • In retrospect, the grossest immorality of the 1980s took place not in San Francisco bathhouses, but in the corridors of power where self-righteous leaders displayed callous indifference to the spread of the disease.†   (source)
  • Somehow, the self-righteousness that blinded him to the most glaring truths didn't prevent him from reading the secrets in her eyes.†   (source)
  • Suspicious, self-righteous, spiteful, he was like a wife that must be got rid of.†   (source)
  • I'd tried to point out that this could be taken in other ways than sampling products, but she'd only waved me off, so self-righteous in her quest to spread the KaBoom message to cola drinkers everywhere.†   (source)
  • The two brothers find Bowles whiny and self-righteous.†   (source)
  • The adults sucked their teeth in disappointment, and the more envious felt self-righteousness twist the corners of their mouths.†   (source)
  • She would make the perfect vicar's wife, with that deadly combination of self-righteousness mixed with an unforgiving streak.†   (source)
  • Head erect, her mouth pursed in mock self-righteousness.†   (source)
  • These were Shiite Moslems, still glorying in the success of the revolution, clad in the self-righteous robes of fanaticism.†   (source)
  • You need them to exist so that the flames of your denial will warm you in your self-righteousness!†   (source)
  • Every word was true, but Rasmussen spoke with such unmistakable arrogance and self-righteous indignation, that several jurors actually frowned.†   (source)
  • Patsy broke in with a vindictive tone, "Oh, Mr. Perfect, Mr. Control, Mr. Self-righteous—"†   (source)
  • In the car, she started in on him, accusing him of self-righteousness.†   (source)
  • Colonel Korn demanded, emulating Colonel Cathcart's harsh, self-righteous tone.†   (source)
  • Her words had the effect she wanted: He puffed up with self-righteous pride.†   (source)
  • So don't you get all self-righteous, Willy Vekemans.†   (source)
  • But the bigger, self-righteous part of me refused to acknowledge my burning curiosity.†   (source)
  • Oh, but I'm fair," he said, his face suddenly self-righteous.†   (source)
  • It may also be worth noting some common rhetorical pitfalls: self-righteousness, prescribing for others, advertisements for self, cliche, and disguised attack.†   (source)
  • She thought suddenly of those modern college-infected parasites who assumed a sickening air of moral self-righteousness whenever they uttered the standard bromides about their concern for the welfare of others.†   (source)
  • Oh, how she would have loved to have used it to wipe that self-righteous sneer from his face.†   (source)
  • NICK: ....animals, I don't see why you don't do it when there aren't any .... GEORGE: (Laughing through his anger) Why, you smug, self-righteous little .... NICK: (A genuine threat) CAN ....IT ....MISTER!†   (source)
  • Fact is, though, Hooch didn't much care whether it was Harrison who got to be governor and put his capital in Carthage City, or whether it was that teetotaling self-righteous prig Armor-of-God Weaver up north, where Tippy-Canoe Creek flowed into the Wobbish River, who got to be governor and make Vigor Church the capital.†   (source)
  • The slack-faced, highlighted zombies stared at me, trying on different expressions of concern and self-righteousness they'd memorized from reality shows.†   (source)
  • Approaching the age of twenty-one, I was the most preachy, self-righteous, lip-worshiping, goody-goody person I have ever known.†   (source)
  • Maybe there was something behind the ego and self-righteousness after all—something surprisingly genuine.†   (source)
  • I remember your saying how smug Northerners appeared to be in their willful and self-righteous ignorance.†   (source)
  • I want you to know my position, sir, so that if you kill me it's not with that tiresome leer of self-righteousness.†   (source)
  • If you insist on saying good-by, their guilt will come out as self-justification and self-righteousness and they will find ways to take it out on you and everybody will have a bad time.†   (source)
  • ...and if some of what he later said on the subject would sound a little self-righteous, he was also being entirely honest.   (source)
    self-righteous = believing oneself morally superior to others
  • I could be so self-righteous, so inflexible when I thought that I was right or that the children had been wronged.   (source)
    self-righteous = convinced of personal moral superiority over others
  • Self-righteous smug old hypocrite.   (source)
    self-righteous = convinced of personal moral superiority
  • Shrouded in a veil of self-righteous intellectualism.†   (source)
  • She looked strange for a little girl, half sad and half self-righteous.†   (source)
  • Disinfectant, that self-righteous smell, cleaner-than-thou.†   (source)
  • For me, it'd be my perfectionism, my occasional (wishful thinking?) self-righteousness.†   (source)
  • What Huck rejects is not religion but an attitude of self-righteousness and inflexibility.†   (source)
  • I order you not to look at my daughter with those pitying, self-righteous eyes of yours.†   (source)
  • This whole thing is a problem for me and ...if that makes me self-righteous ...well, so be it.†   (source)
  • But his rational self was struggling in a torrent of anger, bitter and self-righteous.†   (source)
  • The doctor felt much too self-righteous to sneer.†   (source)
  • We are tired of being dominated by a bunch of self-righteous idiots who reject wealth and advancement, but we couldn't do this on our own.†   (source)
  • Here I am, talking about nuclear war and the usual, self-righteous, American arrogance, and Canon Mackie wants to talk about me.†   (source)
  • This assumed, of course, that any part at all of Anaander Mianaai thought any Awer was guided by a passion for justice and not by self-interest covered over with self-righteousness.†   (source)
  • Larry Lish has become particularly self-righteous, and the quality in his voice that I call "necessary" is a tone of moral indignation.†   (source)
  • Do you remember when Insley and her dancing-monkey husband made us come over to admire their baby, and we did the obligatory visit to their strangely perfect, overflowered, overmuffined house for brunch and baby-meeting and they were so self-righteous and patronizing of our childless state, and meanwhile there was their hideous boy, covered in streaks of slobber and stewed carrots and maybe some feces—naked except for a frilly bib and a pair of knitted booties—and as I sipped my orange juice, you leaned over and whispered, "That's what I'll be wearing later."†   (source)
  • He would falsify no more draft cards; he would produce no more fake identification to assist the illegal drinking and burlesque-show attendance of his peers—and he was loudly self-righteous about his decision, too.†   (source)
  • The colonel shows no signs of being converted; why are these pillars of self-righteousness wasting their breath on him?†   (source)
  • What I saw in Washington that October were a lot of Americans who were genuinely dismayed by what their country was doing in Vietnam; I also saw a lot of other Americans who were self-righteously attracted to a most childish notion of heroism—namely, their own.†   (source)
  • They want the Confederate leaders and generals hanged, they want the South to pay war reparations, and they want Lincoln's speech to be full of the same self-righteous indignation they feel so powerfully in their hearts.†   (source)
  • Others are bulgy, dumpy, with clamped self-righteous mouths, their arms festooned with shopping bags; these we associate with sales, with bargain basements.†   (source)
  • I used to think these were self-righteous eyes, piggy and smug inside their wire frames; and they are.†   (source)
  • You've never suffered, the eyes were saying with self-righteous scorn-while he remembered the sensation of proud chastity with which he had fought through those moments, refusing to surrender to pain, a sensation made of his love, of his loyalty, of his knowledge that joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment's torture.†   (source)
  • I'm not being self-righteous, Koop.†   (source)
  • He addressed Francisco once, without provocation, stopping him in the middle of the lawn to say in a tone of aggressive self-righteousness: "I think that now that you've reached college age, you ought to learn something about ideals.†   (source)
  • When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it's picked up by scoundrels-and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously uncompromising evil.†   (source)
  • I began my second letter to Piedmont in prototypical Conrack style—self-righteous, angry, undiplomatic, unapologetic, and flaming.†   (source)
  • Together we were insufferable, pontifical, self-righteous voices of the Eucharist, pipelines to the Almighty.†   (source)
  • That night I fired off a rather angry, self-righteous letter to Dr. Piedmont telling him that his cute little schoolhouse on Yamacraw was not worth a pound of cow dung.†   (source)
  • National attention was focused on Beaufort, and her white citizens smoldered in self-righteous fury as more and more statistics were made available, proving the doctor to be correct.†   (source)
  • Dressed in green, insulated boots, and a torn red sweater, eyes afire with self-righteous piety and wrath, I wrote Piedmont a letter with his epigram "I deal in truth" lighting my path.†   (source)
  • My early years, darkened by the shadows and regional superstitions of a bona fide cracker boy, act as a sobering agent during the execrable periods of self-righteousness that I inflict on those around me.†   (source)
  • Have you noticed how self-righteous a man sounds when he tells you about it?†   (source)
  • He saw the white flesh, the mouth hanging open in triumphs, the face of self-righteous evil.†   (source)
  • Order was restored, but not to the faces of the crowd: the faces remained lecherously self-righteous.†   (source)
  • It is often impossible to find out either party's real wishes; with luck, they end by doing something that neither wants, while each feels a glow of self-righteousness and harbours a secret claim to preferential treatment for the unselfishness shown and a secret grudge against the other for the ease with which the sacrifice has been accepted.†   (source)
  • It was the old school, the Norman baronial attitude, which provided the adventures at this period—for few people can hate so bitterly and so self-righteously as the members of a ruling caste which is being dispossessed.†   (source)
  • Such self-righteousness leads to a misunderstanding, not only of oneself but of the nature of both man and the cosmos.†   (source)
  • If each side had been frankly contending for its own real wish, they would all have kept within the bounds of reason and courtesy; but just because the contention is reversed and each side is fighting the other side's battle, all the bitterness which really flows from thwarted self-righteousness and obstinacy and the accumulated grudges of the last ten years is concealed from them by the nominal or official "Unselfishness" of what they are doing or, at least, held to be excused by it.†   (source)
  • Then, feeling very self-righteous, he went upstairs.†   (source)
  • Their manner and attitudes were the last expression of complacent self-righteousness.†   (source)
  • May heaven avert such self-righteousness from his heart!†   (source)
  • Not that charity only which causes us to help the needy and comfort the suffering, but that feeling of universal philanthropy which, by teaching us to love, causes us to judge with lenity all men; striking at the root of self-righteousness, and warning us to be sparing of our condemnation of others, while our own salvation is not yet secure.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)