A lot of men who have accepted - or had imposed upon them in boyhood - the old English public school styles of careful modesty in speech, with much understatement, have behind their masks an appalling and impregnable conceit of themselves.
Source: Outcries and Asides.
-- J B Priestley, (Sep 13 1894-1984), English author, dramatist; He wrote Angel Pavement, Literature and Western Man, and The Edwardians.