From the very beginning, from the first moment, I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.
– Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 34. Elizabeth tells Mr. Darcy off using sharp words in his famous first proposal scene. She is responding to his claim that she is refusing him out of hurt pride over his honest admission that he struggled against proposing to someone with inferior connections. She uses a metaphor to compare her dislike of him to a building constructed on the foundations of her unfavorable first impressions of him. From the first moment she thought him arrogant, vain and contemptuous of the feelings of others. He is the last man in the world she would wish to marry, she snaps.