"Complacency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me as I passed the doorway, and, by the half start and blush, I saw that I was plainly recognized, and with pleasure. We were formally presented by Don Pedro, and, after the old skipper had been flattered into an ecstasy of mingled admiration and self-complacency, Donna Clara turned ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... thought so highly of—the other as you think you do. After all, if you come to that, the paraphernalia of a wedding is pretty horrid; one feels awfully like a heifer at the Cattle Show. At least, I did. The complacency of the bridegroom is pretty repulsive. You feel like a really fine article. But one lives it ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... their object, without, even going so far as to desire to work the evil themselves. These passions are often held in check for a time; but, in the event of misfortune befalling the hated rival, there follows a sense of complacency and satisfaction which, if entertained, has all the malice of mortal sin. If, on the contrary, the prosperity of another inspire us with a feeling of regret and sadness, which is deliberately countenanced and consented to, there ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... would not be pleasing to bring immediately under the notice of Mrs. M'Catchley, he said hastily, "Excuse me; I'll just go and see what is the matter—pray, stay till I come back." With that he sprang forth; in a minute he was in the midst of the group, that parted aside with the most obliging complacency to make way ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... room without attracting attention, and proceeded at once to throw off his old rags, and array himself in the new clothes, including a blue silk neck-tie which he had purchased. When his toilet was complete, he surveyed himself with no little complacency. For the first time in all the years that he could remember, he was attired, from top to toe, as a ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... were often foreigners; some English noblemen, such as the Duke of Dorset and Lord Strathavon being especially favored, for a reason which, as given by Mercy, shows that that insular stiffness which, with national self-complacency, Britons sometimes confess as a not unbecoming characteristic, was not at that time attributed to them by others; since the ambassador explains the queen's preference by the self-evident fact that the English gentlemen were the best ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... of self-complacency and satisfaction is felt, and laudably earned, by being intrusted with commissions; and I flatter myself few persons ever set off for New York with such an array of them as I did on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... relieved and disturbed by the Arab's attitude. The complacency with which he accepted the death of his chief lifted a considerable burden of apprehension from the shoulders of Achmet Zek's assassin; but his demand for a share of the jewels boded ill for Werper when Mohammed Beyd should have ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... by the dead. Daddy John turned the bacon with stealthy care, the scrape of his knife on the pan sounding a rude and unseemly intrusion. Upon this scrupulously maintained quietude the man's weeping broke insistent, the stifled regular beat of sobs hammering on it as if determined to drive their complacency away and reduce them to the low ebb of ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... and fifty," he volunteered—not without a hint of complacency in his voice. "It didn't take long, but they sure made it out a big deal. Half the guys in the bank had to be called in to listen to the proposition. The account's in your name, Mr. Henderson, and ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... on first seeing men bow down to wood and stone may give way to a complacency which ceases to expect an immediate response to the quickening and convicting power of the Spirit of God, and philosophises on the gradual emergence of light from the kingdom of darkness. The deadening of that vitality which drives a man to ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... heart in such devotion bound, And with complacency so absolute Dispos'd to render up itself to God, As mine was at those words: and so entire The love for Him, that held me, it eclips'd Beatrice in oblivion. Naught displeas'd Was she, but smil'd thereat so joyously, That of her laughing ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... picture reminded me of a later scene in the Reichstag, in which the Iron Chancellor, after reviewing with complacency the profitable results of Germany's deliberately provoked wars against Denmark, Austria, and France, added ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... white garments, and eye-salve to anoint his eyes.' So obstinately unconscious are we of our ruin that even God's voice, whether uttered in definite words, or speaking in sharp sorrows and punitive acts, but too often fails to pierce the thick layer of self complacency in which we wrap ourselves, and to pierce the heart with the arrow of conviction. Indeed we may say that the whole process of divine education of a soul, conducted through many channels of providences, has for its end mainly this—to convince His wandering children that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... a pause that seemed an eternity in passing. Carson's face worked convulsively, and the seeming complacency of the Chairman of the Finance Committee gave place to nervous apprehension as he watched the color surge through the cheeks and temples of ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... seat, and her face was turned away from him. Also the exquisite tone of complacency and innocent self-appreciation with which Philip expressed this wonder helped her a little to surmount the situation. Elinor could have laughed had her heart been only a trifle less burdened. She said: "Are you sure it ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... smirk grew to a grin. He liked grandly to have the notion fathered on himself; and his complacency of course was suggestive of the hakim's trustworthiness. But the East is ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... it for granted (1) that it was worth doing, and (2) that whatever be worth doing is worth doing well, then Mr. Leonard has reason for his complacency. "It was never my intention," he says, "to gather together a complete collection of even British poems about dogs."—When will that come, I wonder?—"I have sought to secure a representative rather than an exhaustive anthology." ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... then it is to show that what he doth is of his princely will, his royal bounty, and sovereign pleasure. When it is expressed by that word 'love,' then it is to show us that his affection was and is in what he doth, and that he doth what he doth for us, with complacency and delight. But when it is set forth to us under the notion of 'mercy,' then it bespeaks us to be in a state both wretched and miserable, and that his bowels and compassions yearn over us in this our fearful plight. Now, the Holy Ghost chooseth—as ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... you that. Before this he has gone through all the transmigrations of 'Indur,' and the final metempsychosis, gave him to the world a Celestial. Yes, child; a Celestial. I fancy him at this instant, with two long plaits of hair trailing behind him, as, with all the sublime complacency of Celestials, he stalks majestically along, picking tea leaves. Confound your guardian. Mention his name to me again, at the peril of having ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Platonida Ivanovna did not know whether to rejoice at the failure of this first attempt or to regret it. She decided, at last, that Yasha's health might suffer from such expeditions, and regained her complacency. Kupfer went away directly after dinner, and did not show himself again for a whole week. And that not because he was sulking at Aratoff for the failure of his introduction,—the good-natured fellow was incapable of such a thing,—but he had, evidently, found some occupation which engrossed all ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the little wood where four months before he had parted from Kelly Woodridge to learn his fate from her father. He remembered that interview to which Nelly's wafted kiss had inspired him. He recalled to-day, as he had many times before, the singular complacency with which Mr. Woodridge had received his suit, as if it were a slight and unimportant detail of the business in hand, and how he had told him that Kelly and her mother were going to the "States" for a three months' visit, but that after ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... felt little repugnance to any revolution or any peril confined to a state whose councils it had been the object of his life to baffle, and whose power it was the manifest interest of his native city to impair. He might have looked with complacency on the intrigues which the regent was carrying on against the Spartan government, and which threatened to shake that Doric constitution to its centre. But nothing, either in the witness of history or in the character or conduct of a man profoundly patriotic, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... work would make impertinent? As if one were to begin the day with long-suffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes; and in the afternoon go forth to practise Christian meekness and charity with goodness aforethought! Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... with alacrity, and when it had been effected, surveyed himself in a mirror with considerable complacency. His temporary abstinence from liquor while at the Island had improved his appearance, and the new suit gave him quite a respectable appearance. He had no objection to appearing respectable, provided it were at ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... grove. I write of it not in self-complacency. My many blunders, some of them yet to be made, are a good insurance against that. I write because of the countless acres as good as mine, in this great, dear America, which might now be giving their owners all ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... be certain, to say nothing of the fact that the door was no doubt strongly guarded, and by a soldier who would not be so complacent as Gaston had been (having neither handled my gold nor tasted a maiden's kisses as reward for his complacency). ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... did some people harm, by inflaming, confusing, and irritating their minds; but that the experience of mankind had declared in favour of moderate drinking. JOHNSON. 'Sir, I do not say it is wrong to produce self complacency by drinking; I only deny that it improves the mind. When I drank wine, I scorned to drink it when in company.[129] I have drunk many a bottle by myself; in the first place, because I had need of it to raise my spirits; in the second place, because I would have nobody ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... of clever tricks in Berlin," said Hillyard cheerfully. He could afford to contemplate that cleverness with complacency, for it was now to serve ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... was not with ease and complacency that Aram delivered himself to the intoxication of his deepening attachment. Sometimes he was studiously cold, or evidently wrestling with the powerful passion that mastered his reason. It was not without many throes, and desperate resistance, that love at length overwhelmed ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and it should be an indispensable part of every life curriculum, just before settlement, to travel far and wide, if resources and inclination permit. But this stage should end in wisely chosen settlement where the young life can be independently developed, and that with more complacency and satisfaction because the place has been wisely chosen on the basis of a wide comparison. The chronic vagrant has simply failed to develop the ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... is a little i, and over every one of us there is a little dot of self-importance, self-will, self-interest, self-confidence, self-complacency, or something to which we cling and for which we contend, which just as surely reveals self-life as if it were ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... for my friend Transit! I shall endeavour to depict it for him. The steady looking old gentleman in the fire-shovel clerical castor, how sagaciously he leers round about him to see if he is likely to be recognised! not a countenance to whom he is known; he smiles with self-complacency at the treat he is about to enjoy; plants himself in a respectable doorway, for three reasons; first, the advantage from the rise of the step increasing his altitude; second, the security of his pockets from attacks behind; and third, the pretence, should any Goth to whom ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... for Rona, who was making her first acquaintance with the glories of English shops. Their purchases were highly satisfactory, and as Ulyth helped her friend to dress for dinner on Christmas Day she reviewed the result with the utmost complacency. ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... worth while to recall it: "The Bishop was particularly playful on the morrow at breakfast. Though his face beamed with Christian kindness, there was a twinkle in his eye which seemed not entirely superior to mundane self-complacency, even to a sense of earthly merriment. His seraphic raillery elicited sympathetic applause from the ladies, especially from the daughters of the house, who laughed occasionally even before his angelic ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... ownership of one saddle-galled donkey to the undisputed rule of an empire. The weary wayfarer may have dreamed of this, for ambition stirs imagination nearly as much as imagination excites ambition. But further he could not expect or wish to see. Nor could he anticipate as, in the complacency of a man who had done with evil days, he told the story of his rise to the submissive Slatin, that the day would come when he would lead an army of more than fifty thousand men to destruction, and that the night would follow when, almost alone, his empire shrunk again ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... brain seemed fed with the inspiration of his suffering, fed with cruel epigrams and biting words. He dragged his idol down into the dust, scoffed at the piecemeal passion which measures its gifts, the complacency of an analysed virtue, the sense of well-living and self-contentment achieved in the rubric of a dry-as-dust morality. She had failed him, offered him stones instead of bread.—He signed the letter, blotted ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the Christless nations as in the innocence of Eden, shall we, at the antipodes of fact and truth, proceed to blacken their characters? Shall we compare the worst in Canton, Benares or Zululand, with the best in London, Berlin or Philadelphia? Surely God cannot look with complacency or hear with delight much of the practical slander spoken among white folks and Anglo-Saxons of His ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... He scanned the chapters of his predecessors, found plenty of heroes and heroines already created, and was satisfied with them; he decided to introduce no more; with all the confidence that whisky inspires and all the easy complacency it gives to its servant, he then launched himself lovingly into his work: he married the coachman to the society-young-lady for the sake of the scandal; married the Duke to the blonde's stepmother, for the sake of the sensation; stopped the desperado's salary; created a misunderstanding ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... afterwards, Phrynichus made this event the subject of a tragedy which he exhibited on the stage at Athens; and after he had been for a short time listened to with complacency, when amid all its fine language the tragedy became more and more distressing, it was condemned by the indignation of the people, who thought that it was insulting to produce this as the subject of a dramatic ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... professed misogynist, and hate the sex because, I suspect, you know very little about them," Mr. Pen continued, with an air of considerable self-complacency. "If you dislike the women in the country for being too slow, surely the London women ought to be fast enough for you. The pace of London life is enormous: how do people last at it, I wonder—male and female? Take a woman of the world: follow her course through the season; one asks how she can ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... — N. pleasure, gratification, enjoyment, fruition; oblectation, delectation, delection^; relish, zest; gusto &c (physical pleasure) 377; satisfaction &c (content) 831; complacency. well-being; good &c 618; snugness, comfort, ease; cushion &c 215; sans souci [Fr.], without worry, mind at ease. joy, gladness, delight, glee, cheer, sunshine; cheerfulness &c 836. treat, refreshment; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... clever a woman as any I know!' said Mr. Bounder, with a smile of complacency. 'Sally up there can't beat you; and ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... glance of complacency with Abner Trimble, who was pleased that his agent got off so creditably. He had evidently produced a good impression on ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... humiliation and prayer for an outpouring of His spirit and a deeply needed revival of religion? In the words of Admiral Sir David Beatty, the Commander of the British Fleet, "England still remains to be taken out of her stupor of self-satisfaction and complacency and until she be stirred out of this condition, until religious revival takes place at home, just so long ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... bold man who faces the fire from our batteries, I think," said Montcalm, looking with a calm complacency upon the animated scene; and then he turned and pointed backwards behind him to Cape Diamond, fringed with its palisades and ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... materialism and vulgarity. Iron was entering into its soul. It thought extremely well of itself; when a new mill was built, or a new furnace blown in, it thought still better of itself. It prided itself upon its growth; in fact, its complacency, its ugliness and its size kept ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... at that time, of the immense income which awaited me entirely outside the Government circle. Whether it is contempt for the foreigner, as has often been stated, or that native stolidity which spells complacency, the British official of any class rarely thinks it worth his while to discover the real cause of things in France, or Germany, or Russia, but plods heavily on from one mistake to another. Take, for example, those periodical outbursts of hatred against England which appear in ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... your temper, Collet Pardue," said Mrs Tabitha, with calm complacency; "and that's a thing a woman shouldn't do who calls herself ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... into a weakness so extreme that he could not raise his hand. But he still protected his brother according to his long usage; and would say with some complacency, fifty times a day, when he saw him standing by his bed, 'My good Frederick, sit down. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... her with something like pity. This was Nina in her before-the-party mood. Her confidence and complacency would all begin to ooze away from her, presently, and the words that came so readily to Harriet would refuse to flow at all to any one else. She would come home saying that she hated parties because people were ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... the Loquacious Assistant has bowed out the Sympathetic Customer, and touched a bell. A Saturnine Assistant appears, still masticating bread-and-butter. The Second Customer removes his hat, revealing a denuded crown, and thereby causing surprise and a distinct increase of complacency in the Grizzled Gentleman, who submits himself to the Loquacious Assistant. The Bald Customer sinks resignedly into the chair indicated by the Saturnine Operator, feeling apologetic and conscious that he is not affording a fair scope for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... powerless you may be, during this period clear and calm reflection has been vouchsafed you as never before. What really plunged us into confusion regarding our position, into thoughtlessness, into a blind way of letting things go, was our sweet complacency with ourselves and our mode of existence. Things had thus gone on hitherto, and so they continued and would continue to go. If any one challenged us to reflect, we triumphantly showed him, instead of any other ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... combat with the heat and vehemence of youth, he was of necessity compelled to experience the disappointment attendant upon such precipitancy. It was in vain that Philemon and myself endeavoured to make him completely satisfied with his purchase: nothing produced a look of complacency from him. At length, upon seeing the rising ground which was within two or three miles of our respective homes, he cheered up by degrees; and a sudden thought of the treasures contained in his Clement, De Bure and Panzer, darted a gleam of satisfaction across his countenance. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... family circles its author when dead has spoken. And as his death in a foreign land forfeited the insurance by which he had somewhat provided for his family, we confess to a certain comfort in knowing that the loss was replaced by this literary legacy. But the great source of complacency is, that He to whom the work was consecrated had a favor for it, and has given it the greatest honor that a human book can have—making it extensively the means of explaining and endearing the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... She hesitated, tingling with the old desire to hurt him, flick him in the raw, make him wince in his exasperating complacency. Then, "I've said it anyhow. I'm trying to show an interest in you—as ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... case only when he read or worked, it not unfrequently happened that when he took his walk abroad he would mistake a tall post for the chief magistrate of the county, and salute it with his most respectful bow; or, with a composure born of self-complacency, it would be his misfortune to pass by Madame Barkany, his best customer, with a vacant stare, under the impression that the fair apparition was linen hung to bleach ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... indeed, go to the races, and that with a new horse; and the dashing widow did make her appearance in her curricle; but it was unfortunately driven by a strapping young Irish dragoon, with whom even Master Simon's self-complacency would not allow him to enter into competition, and to whom she was ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... affected form, and with an arch leer of expression, which, on an occasion of minor import, would have excited the risibility of Bob, but this was no laughing affair; the presentation therefore was conducted with all due solemnity, and Miss Judith Macgilligan received him with a maidenish diffidence and complacency, yet with the dignity becoming a descendant ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... in any event more than the affection which she would naturally feel for an elder brother, and this she already bestowed upon him frankly and unstintedly. Burt took the same view, and was usually complacency itself, although a week seemed a long time to him, and he sometimes felt that he ought to be making more progress. But he had no misgivings. He would be faithful for years, and Amy could not fail ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... brighter—is an element of the division: meditative young Patrick O'Donnell early in his reflections had noted that:—and it is partly a result of our daily habit of tossing the straw to the monetary world and doting on ourselves in the mirror, until our habitual doings are viewed in a bemused complacency by us, and the scum-surface of the country is flashed about as its vital being. A man of forethought using the Press to spur Parliament to fitly represent the people, and writing on his daily topics with strenuous original vigour, even though, like Rockney, he sets the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Boston, take up Alice there, and come up to the hill-country. Dear father! he was offering me a lump of sugar after the bitter medicine, and I accepted it, sure at least of a momentary sweet sensation, and very sure that my poor father felt comforted by the self-complacency flowing from the enormous sacrifice he was making in coming up to the highlands at this cold season. My sister was glad enough to get a holiday from her nursery, so, on Monday, the second of October, a mellow, beautiful day, we came into Boston to take the two o'clock cars for Portland. We had ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... proud of his nobility and the colour of his skin, had not taken the trouble of constructing even an ajoupa, or hut of palm-leaves. He invited us to have our hammocks hung near his own, between two trees; and he assured us, with an air of complacency, that, if we came up the river in the rainy season, we should find him beneath a roof (baxo techo). We soon had reason to complain of a system of philosophy which is indulgent to indolence, and renders a man indifferent to the conveniences of life. A furious wind arose ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... struggling crowds below. The crush was everywhere great, but greatest of all in the centre aisle. Here the mass of human beings, mercilessly compressed, swayed continually backwards and forwards. There was I, looking down with infinite complacency and satisfaction from this honourable vantage ground upon the floor of the church, filled and packed as one of our public meetings is, with people standing and pushing. What was my emotion, my joy, my exultation, when I espied among this humiliated mass, struggling and buffeted—whom ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... entered the kingdom of Thibet, and were honourably received by officers sent on purpose from Chaparangue, the residence of the king of Thibet. The king and queen listened to their doctrines with much complacency, and even admitted their truths without dispute, and would not allow them to return to India till they promised an oath to come back, when the king not only engaged to give them liberty to preach, but that he would build them a church, and was greatly pleased with a picture they left ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... the character of Petrarch, and such the admiration which was felt for his epistolary style, that it was with difficulty that his letters reached the place of their destination. The poet describes, with pretended regret and real complacency, the importunity of the curious, who often opened, and sometimes stole, these favourite compositions. It is a remarkable fact that, of all his epistles, the least affected are those which are addressed to the dead and the unborn. Nothing can be more absurd than his ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... harm in making Niagara a background whereon to display one's marvellous insignificance in a good strong light, but it requires a sort of superhuman self-complacency to ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... to test their poetical skill; and he also did the same at Soochow and Nanking, taking the opportunity, while at Nanking, to visit the mausoleum of the founder of the Ming dynasty, who lies buried near by, and whose descendants had been displaced by the Manchus. Happily for K'ang Hsi's complacency, the book of fate is hidden from Emperors, as ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... her silver bow, —oh it would be refreshing and recruiting to an exhausted patriot to go and replenish his soul at her fountains. The newly evacuated lands of the Cherokee, too, a sweet place now for a lover of his country to visit, to renew his self-complacency by wandering among the quenched hearths of the expatriated Indians; a land all smoking with the red man's departing curse,—a malediction that went to the centre. Yes, and Florida,— blossoming and leafy Florida, yet warm with the life-blood of Osceola and his warriors, shed gloriously under ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... these hideous images followed me without intermission. I lost my sleep; it was impossible for me to do anything; my brush fell from my hand; and, horrible to confess, I found myself sometimes gazing at the crossbeam with a sort of complacency. At last I could endure it no longer, and one evening I descended the ladder and hid myself behind the door of Fledermausse, hoping to surprise ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... quite a place for yourself in London, if you went at it carefully and consideringly, and didn't allow the wrong sort of people to accaparer you. We always count, when we want to, we American women of the good type,' said Miss Robinson, with frank complacency; 'and I don't see why, with your gifts and charm, you shouldn't have a salon, political ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... to do this, and by granting her petition for the suffrage we shall put an end to an otherwise endless disputation. I am quite sure that as long as her votes are kept separate from the men's votes, and are not counted, no possible harm can come from a little complacency in the face of ... Personally I have no objection to divorce. If a man marries a woman under the impression that she is a good cook, and after the waning of the honeymoon finds that she does not know the difference between sponge-cake ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... frayed at the bottom edges, as I could see when he came nearer to me. He wore a faded straw hat, which looked forlorn, as the month was January. His face, despite its angularity of outline and its wanness, had that expression of complacency which often relieves from pathos the countenances of harmlessly demented people. His hair was gray, but his somewhat formidable looking moustache was still dark. He carried an unadorned walking-stick and under his left arm was what a journalistic eye immediately recognized as manuscript. ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... society in his brightest and most amiable colours. To a few great personages, however, it seemed as if the new-comer carried himself with wonderful sang-froid, and contemplated himself and his position with too much complacency. To them it appeared as if he regarded all the eager admiration which was lavished upon him as being nothing more than his transcendent qualifications entitled him to look for at the hands of the ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... time it thrilled him to imagine a new mistress of the house—young, graceful, noble—moving about below them. And even—for the first time—there gleamed from out the future the dim features of a son, and he did not recoil. He caressed the whole dream with a new and strange complacency. What if after all the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... an' she's i' the right there," interrupted Mrs. Macshake, with more complacency than she had yet shown. "They may caw them what they like, but there's nae waddins noo. Wha's the better o' them but innkeepers and chise-drivers? I wud nae count mysel' married i' the hiddlins way they gang ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... founders of this august institution were not content with cultured complacency; what they believed they believed really, with their whole hearts, and they were ready to act upon it, even if it meant burning their own at the stake. Also, they knew the ceaseless impulse of the mind to grow; the terrible temptation which confronts each new generation ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... another grim smile of complacency. "Sit down here on this bed, if you can find room, and I'll tell you all ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... himself in those days the name of "Dragon-fly," or its native equivalent, and the illustration was apt, for it seemed that the Zaire would poise, buzzing angrily, then dart off in unexpected directions, and the spirit of complacency which had settled upon the land gave place to one of apprehension, which, in the old days, followed the arrival of Sanders in a mood ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... friends, the shape of this unwillingness is changed but the fact of it remains. There are two or three features of what I take to be the plain Gospel of Jesus Christ which grate very much against all self-importance and self-complacency, and operate very largely, though not always consciously, upon very many amongst us. I just run ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the campus was buzzing with the news. It jarred the college out of the self-complacency they had begun to feel over the prospects of the team. Many were the imprecations heaped upon the heads of the hard-hearted faculty, and one of the malcontents slipped up to the cupola without detection and put the college ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... boys were called in and questioned. Roswell stood by and listened with an air of complacency. He could not help thinking his chances the best. "The man can see I'm a gentleman, and will do credit ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... absolute self-possession, which nothing can disturb. His repartees are involuntary suggestions of his self-love; instinctive evasions of everything that threatens to interrupt the career of his triumphant jollity and self-complacency. His very size floats him out of all his difficulties in a sea of rich conceits; and he turns round on the pivot of his convenience, with every occasion and at a moment's warning. His natural repugnance to every unpleasant thought ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... likelihood to support it; without so much help as may be borrowed from the faintest and most fitful of traditions, it spins its own evidence spider-like out of its own inner conscience or conceit, and proffers it with confident complacency for men's acceptance. Here again I cannot but see a mere waste of fruitless learning and bootless ingenuity. That Shakespeare began by retouching and recasting the work of elder and lesser men we all know; ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... admit I conquered without heroics," upon which her ladyship, late mistress Mallett, a beauty and a fortune, smiled assent with all the complacency of a six-months' bride. "To see a man tried for an attempted abduction is a sight worth a year's income," pursued Rochester. "I would travel a hundred miles to behold that rare monster who has failed in his pursuit of one of ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... on my beat, but you can feel quite safe: no one can get in while I am gone. There is another watchman on the road: he might come while I am away, and—and raise a row. It is best to lock you up.' He nodded his head with great complacency at his good management, and prepared to leave me. I could suggest nothing better. I was at the end of my resources, and had to accept my fate. It would be interesting to know what the Pompadour or Queen Elizabeth would have done under the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... Still, if he had overcome the passion, it was so much better for him. But yet Valencia hardly wished that he should have overcome it, so self-contradictory is woman's heart; and her pity had sunk to half-ebb, and her self-complacency was rising with a flowing tide, as he chatted on quietly, but genially, about the voyage, and the scenery, and Snowdon, which he had never seen, and which he would ascend that ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... me which is my room. You remember the bathroom, next to what was my uncle John's bedroom, on the third floor; the room above that my mother has fitted up beautifully for me, and I inhabit it all day long with great complacency and a sort of comfortable, Alexander-Selkirk feeling. And this suggests a question which has seldom been out of my mind, and which I wish to recall to yours. When do you intend to come and see me? I can offer you a nest on the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... earnest desires. The grace of prayer perfected the work which mortification had begun. In a spirit of compunction he begged of his superiors that they would enjoin him some severe penance, to expiate the vain satisfaction and complacency which he said he had sometimes taken in teaching. They indeed imposed on him a penance, but not such a one as be expected. It was to write a collection of cases of conscience for the instruction and conveniency ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... committing herself, and he in his complacency was glad to hope that he was making a new customer. She had to be careful not to betray any of the real and extensive knowledge about Wall Street which she actually possessed. But the glib misrepresentations about United ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... fray on the side of civic virtue. The disturbance to the complacency of San Francisco disturbed the complacency of the State, which had calmly endured misgovernment for many years. Misgovernment procured by the railroad, the public utility corporations, the other combinations of ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... disconcerted for a moment, seeing by the faces around him that Joan had put into words what the others felt, then he pulled his complacency together and fell to fault-finding again. Joan's ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... rhododendron-plants which grew there; and these creatures they cooked in the most translucent and satisfactory manner by means of a fire lighted on the end of the Rhinoceros's back. A crowd of Kangaroos and gigantic Cranes accompanied them, from feelings of curiosity and complacency; so that they were never at a loss for company, and went onward, as it were, in a sort of profuse and ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... greedily drank in the prognostications of the weird sisters, tho he feared that the "supernatural soliciting" could not be good, because they pandered to his monstrous self-infatuation, Guiteau, having wrought himself up through many years of self-complacency, claims to have believed that the divine Being had chosen him to do a deed which has filled the earth with horror. Thus the growth of self-conceit into mammoth proportions tends to obscure the rights of others, and to darken with its gigantic shadow the light of conscience. If we are to ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... good manners shocked. She had not suspected that Pollen could be guilty of such clumsiness; she questioned if matters had reached a point where such an attitude on his part would be justifiable under any circumstances. At all events, her doubts concerning his complacency had been answered. It occurred to Mrs. Ennis that her dinner-party was composed of more inflammable material, presented more dramatic possibilities, than even she had divined. She embraced Pollen with ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Oh no! Oh no!" repeated Miss Ingate with mingled complacency, glee, passion, and sardonic tolerance of the whole panorama of worldly existence. "The police were awful, shocking. But I ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... of the place was placid. It breathed an air of repose and satisfaction, a spirit which when it refers to outward circumstances is called contentment, and when it refers to oneself is called complacency. The Samaritans, in fact, did not think ill of themselves, and of their village they thought exceeding well. There was nothing in its situation, its looks, its customs which they would have wished to alter; and when a slight change came, a new house, ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... Batten's, but would not go in till I asked whether they that opened the door was a man or a woman, and Mingo, who was there, answered a woman, which, with his tone, made me laugh; so up I went and took Mrs. Martha for my Valentine (which I do only for complacency), and Sir W. Batten he go in the same manner to my wife, and so we were very merry. About 10 o'clock we, with a great deal of company, went down by our barge to Deptford, and there only went to see how forward ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... guard against complacency. We must not underrate the enemy. He is powerful and cunning—and cruel and ruthless. He will stop at nothing that gives him a chance to kill and to destroy. He has trained his people to believe that their highest perfection ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that ask so little, do so well apart and low among the shadows. They have come far like the bees and the martins. Lilacs are old in soul, too, and their fragrance is loved untellably by many mystics, though the green of their foliage is questionable. Nothing that is old within is complacent. Complacency goes with little orbits ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... present grave obstacles to union. It was true that many of the wisest Southerners of that generation regarded the institution as a menacing misfortune; they however could not ignore the fact that it was a "misfortune" of that peculiar kind which was endured with much complacency by those afflicted by it; and it was equally certain that the great body of slave-owners would resent any effort to relieve them of their burden. Hence there were placed in the Constitution provisions in behalf of slavery which involved an admission that the institution needed ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... rain. It was altogether a bright and beautiful world he had got into, and there was in it but one woman, beautiful beyond his dreams. To doubt her was to doubt all women. When he looked at her he forgot the caution and distrust and sardonic self-complacency his southern training had given him. He believed, and the world seemed to be filled with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... the tribute with complacency. "The rooms are not bad, are they? We came over with the Woolsey Hubbards (you've heard of them, of course?—they're from Detroit), and really they do things very decently. Their motor-car met us at Boulogne, and the courier always wires ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... glance of fondest admiration. Both sisters had overheard the shrieks of ten minutes before and could still see tell-tale tear-marks, but nothing in the world would have induced them to say as much or check their darling in her newly found complacency. ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the French Consul,—the representative of the King of that nation,—and the protection which it has from time immemorial accorded to the Christians of the Latin rite in Syria. All French writers and travellers speak of this protection with delightful complacency. Consult the French books of travel on the subject, and any Frenchman whom you may meet: he says, "La France, Monsieur, de tous les temps protege les Chretiens d'Orient;" and the little fellow looks round the church with a sweep of the arm, and protects it accordingly. It is bon ton for them to ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... because it is hardly possible that the moderns should ever have such facilities as the ancients had for studying the human form. In presence of the overwhelming magnificence of the sculpture in the museums of Rome and Naples, one wonders how Canova and Co. can have looked with any complacency on their own productions. There seems reason by the way to think that these artists worked not each by himself, but in schools and brotherhoods with mutual aid and sympathy; and this is an advantage equally within the reach of modern art. Meantime, though ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... With all his artless self-complacency in his own success, Trollope took a very modest estimate of his own powers. I remember a characteristic discussion about their modes of writing between Trollope and George Eliot at a little dinner party in her house.[1] "Why!" said Anthony, "I sit down every ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... with Mr. Foster's general theological position to consider the sudden and serious development of his gout as a direct judgment on him for a diplomacy that perhaps overstepped legitimate limits, and in another man's case he might have adopted such a view with considerable complacency. When, however, he was laid up and placed hors du combat in the last three critical days, he needed all his faith to reconcile him to one of the most unfathomable instances of the workings of Providence. His grumbles were loud and long, and the directions which he sent from his sick bed were tinged ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... them Hours before they will confess the Fact; however, were they not to look upon every White Man as their Tormentor; were a slight Fault to be pardon'd now and then; were their Masters, and those adamantine-hearted Overseers, to exercise a little more Persuasion, Complacency, Tenderness and Humanity towards them, it might perhaps, improve their Tempers to a greater Degree of Tractability. Such Masters and such Overseers, Maryland may with Justice Boast; and Mr. Bull, the late Lieutenant-Governor of Carolina, is an Instance, amongst many, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... is like Amoret, most sweet, natural, and delicate; all over flowers, graces, and charms; inspiring complacency, not awe; and she seems to have good nature enough to admit a rival, which ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... on the crumbling crust of a volcano, where the volatile French court danced and fiddled and sang, unreckoning of what was soon to come, our composer and his admirers patted each other on the back with infinite complacency. ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... (passive states), but denote the power of the soul by which the former are moderated, and which is discussed later under the name fortitudo. Self-abasement or humility is a feeling of pain arising from the consideration of our weakness and impotency; its opposite is self-complacency. Either of these may be accompanied by the (erroneous) belief that we have done the saddening or gladdening act of our own free will; in this case the former affection is termed repentance. Hope and fear are inconstant pleasure and ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... not, it must be confessed, altogether an attractive one. It is somewhat wanting in dignity, and its air of over-inflated complacency is at times slightly ridiculous. But we must not judge Sterne in this matter by too severe a standard. He was by nature neither a dignified nor a self-contained man: he had a head particularly unfitted to stand sudden elevation; ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... of Sir James—a voice that had regained a little of its naturalness—a calm, even lazy English voice—confident from the experience of years of respectful listeners. Yet it somehow jarred upon her nerves with its complacency and its utter incongruousness to her feelings. Nevertheless, the impulse to know more about the sketch was ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... rehearsals of 'The Wishes' went on, Foote was noting down all the peculiarities of the Lord of Brandenburgh House, with a view to bring them to account in his play of 'The Patron.' Lord Melcombe was an aristocratic Dombey: stultified by his own self-complacency, he dared to exhibit his peculiarities before the English Aristophanes. It was an act of imprudence, for Foote had long before (in 1747) opened the little theatre of the Haymarket with a sort of monologue play, 'The Diversions of the Morning,' in which he convulsed ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... the Aufklaerung that Christianity was nothing more than a code of morals, has now long ago been given up, and the self-complacency which characterised that movement has for the most part, though not entirely, passed away. The nineteenth century is not in very many quarters regarded as the goal of things. And it will hardly now be maintained ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... himself with much complacency, as he perceived Timokles being carried, "I follow the maxim of Ptah-hotep: 'Treat well thy people, as it behooveth thee; this is the duty of those ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... tell you after awhile," he said stretching out his legs with the complacency of a rich ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... same sacred store, or having given it to their parents 'to keep,' over whose minds the remembrance of the secret hoard every now and then sends flashing across the mind of the child a sense of importance, or richness, or a general self-complacency which varies with the individuality. Boys and girls in the next stages of their growth care little and think little about money, except as a means of obtaining some trifling passing indulgence. The childish reverence for the pose has passed. The unopenable box has been long since opened, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... and myself. We found ourselves very elegantly entertained at her house in the Adelphi[313], where I have passed many a pleasing hour with him 'who gladdened life[314].' She looked well, talked of her husband with complacency, and while she cast her eyes on his portrait, which hung over the chimney-piece, said, that 'death was now the most agreeable object to her[315].' The very semblance of David Garrick was cheering. Mr. Beauclerk, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... Present, and the Future, and penetrates even to the inmost recesses of the heart. Heaven and earth are under his government: all events, all revolutions, are the consequences of his dispensation and will. He is pure, holy, and impartial; wickedness offends his sight; but he beholds with an eye of complacency the virtuous actions of men. Severe, yet just, he punishes vice in an exemplary manner, even in Princes and Rulers; and often casts down the guilty, to crown with honor the man who walks after his own heart, and whom he raises from obscurity. Good, merciful, and full of pity, he forgives ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... mind. I don't think I shall feel it cold at all,' said Hal, as he dressed himself in his new green-and-white uniform; and he viewed himself with much complacency. 'Good-morning to you, uncle. How do you do?' said he, in a voice of exultation, when he entered ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... my punishment for having succeeded so signally in incurring my grandfather’s displeasure that he had made it necessary for me to treat with Arthur Pickering in this matter of the will; and Pickering was enjoying the situation to the full. He sank back in his chair with an air of complacency that had always been insufferable in him. I was quite willing to be patronized by a man of years and experience; but Pickering was my own age, and his experience of life seemed to me preposterously inadequate. To find him settled ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... love of distinction, and a strong craving after life, action, and sympathy of some kind or other. Granted; there are all sorts of half-good, half-barbarous feelings in Dante's poem. Let justice be done to the good half; but do not let us take the ferocity for wisdom and piety; or pretend, in the complacency of our own freedom from superstition, to see no danger of harm to the less fortunate among our fellow-creatures in the support it receives from a man of genius. Bedlams have been filled with such horrors; thousands, nay millions of feeble minds are suffering ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... that disturbs the complacency of a great artist of the Halls it is the consciousness of sharing his or her triumphs with performing birds and animals, but of course Joan was not to be expected to know that. She pursued her subject with the assurance of one who has hit ...
— When William Came • Saki
... it—it is really dreadful," returned Fanny Newt. "People do say the most annoying and horrid things. But this time, I am sure, there can be nothing very vexatious." And Miss Newt fanned herself with persistent complacency, as if she were resolved to prolong the pleasure which Mrs. Dinks must undoubtedly ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... Horace, 'Homer sometimes sleeps;' We feel without him, Wordsworth sometimes wakes,— To show with what complacency he creeps, With his dear 'Waggoners,' around his lakes. He wishes for 'a boat' to sail the deeps— Of ocean?—No, of air; and then he makes Another outcry for 'a little boat,' And drivels seas ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... against their own, he willingly took for impartiality what he could not always distinguish from indifference or subdivision. He felt that sincere history was the royal road to religious union, and he specially cultivated those who saw both sides. He would cite with complacency what clever Jesuits, Raynaud and Faure, said for the Reformation, Mariana and Cordara against their society. When a Rhenish Catholic and a Genevese Calvinist drew two portraits of Calvin which were virtually the same, or when, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... mistress to those who desire no other, but she will give nothing to those who flout her in their hearts. In plain words there is no middle course between accepting the yoke or finally rejecting it; either course may be justified, but it is the silliest folly to accept with complacency a yoke which you mean to shake off the moment you have courage or opportunity to revolt. London marks such dissemblers with an angry eye, as captains mark reluctant soldiers; and if time holds no disgrace for them it will certainly bring ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... admire myself for having battled with it so sturdily. The newcomer proved to be a very genial and agreeable gentleman, an F. F. V., and, as he pleasantly acknowledged, a Southern Fire Eater, —an announcement to which I responded, with similar good-humor and self-complacency, by parading my descent from an ancient line of Massachusetts Puritans. Since our brief acquaintanceship, my fire-eating friend has had ample opportunities to banquet on his favorite diet, hot and hot, in the Confederate ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by no means true, but Lady Ogram had always been a bad sitter to the camera, and had destroyed most of its results. The oil painting in the dining-room she regarded with a moderate complacency. Many a time during the latter years of withering and enfeeblement her memory had turned to that shining head in marble, which was hidden away amid half a century's dust under the roof at Rivenoak. ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... that have even disturbed the serenity of their own nation on the mainland, have never reached them here. Left to themselves, they have created a blameless Arcadia and an ideal community within an extent of twenty square leagues. Why should we disturb their innocent complacency and tranquil enjoyment by information which cannot increase and might impair their present felicity? Why should we dwell upon a late political and international episode which, while it has been a benefit to us, ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... how to speak of this exercise of the mind. It is better felt than described. It is a calm and holy reconciliation with God and his government; a settled feeling of complacency towards everything but sin. It begets a serene and peaceful temper and disposition of the heart. But this gracious work of the Holy Spirit does not stop with these exercises of the mind. However we may seem to feel, ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... informed of his intention, were sensible of the unequal contest and endeavored to appease him by submission. He received their ambassadors with great complacency, and having exhorted them to continue steadfast in the same sentiments, in the mean time made preparations for the execution of his design. When the troops designed for the expedition were embarked he set sail for Britain about midnight, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... would have believed in the first years of the twentieth century that men and modistes on this planet were being watched by intelligences greater than woman's and yet as ambitious as her own. With infinite complacency maids and matrons went to and fro over London, serene in the assurance of their empire over man. It is possible that the mysticetus does the same. Not one of them gave a thought to Wenus as a source of danger, or thought of it only to dismiss the idea of active ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... she disdained and perhaps even disliked him and made no effort to conceal her feelings, did not in the least ruffle his bland complacency nor affront his pride. He knew that not even an Inglesby could hope to find a Mary Virginia more than once in a lifetime, and the haughtier she was the more she pleased him; it added to his innate sense of power, and this in itself ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... sullen appetites. We hear, it is true, a great deal about the softening influence of wealth, and moralists speak of luxury as if its bad effects were negative and it only enervated. But if riches and the habit of trusting to them, if the material comforts of life and complacency in them, only made men sleek and tame—if luxury did nothing but soften and emasculate—the world would have been far more stupid and far less cruel ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... on the lips of Joseph Butler, who when he was 44 produced his immortal 'Analagy,' and at the age of 26 delivered his famous Rolls 'Sermons:'—had Bishop Bull been betrayed into the language of self-complacency when, at the age of 35, he made himself famous by his 'Harmonia Apostolica:'—the proceeding would have been intelligible, however much one might have lamented such an exhibition of weakness.... But when the speaker proves to be one of the very shallowest ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... reply; 'and I have come to Nannie to be soothed. All the way upstairs I have been saying to myself, "Fret not thyself, because of him who prospereth in his way." But it is hard to see his self-complacency.' ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... to be Beau Brummell, who, except when he bade 'George ring the bell,' was as perfect a model of deportment as the great Mr. Turveydrop himself. His studied decorum possibly provoked the playfulness of the young puppy; and amongst other attempts to disturb the Beau's complacency, Master Byng ran a pin into the calf of that gentleman's leg, and then he ran away. A few days later Mr. Brummell, who had carefully dissembled his wrath, invited the unwary youth to breakfast, telling him that he was leaving town, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... into ecstasies over the gift. It was accompanied merely by a card, on which a few words were written: "For Miss Heron's birthday, with compliments and good wishes from Rupert Vivian." Kitty read the inscription; her lip curled, but she still kept silence. Hugo thought that her eye rested with some complacency upon the silver beads; but she did not express a tithe of the pleasure and surprise which flowed so readily from ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... admiral's barge, and seated between these two awful personages, there sat a civilian, smiling in all the rotundity and fat of a very pleasant countenance, and very plain clothes, and forming a striking contrast to the grim complacency, and the ironbound civility, of the two ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... and son went to war, and they actually met in battle, when the son ran the old gentleman through the arm with his lance, and dropped him out of the saddle with the utmost dexterity. This was the first time that the Conqueror was ever conquered, and perhaps it was not altogether without complacency that "the governor" saw what a clever fellow his eldest son was with his tools. At the time of William's death Robert was on bad terms with him, and is believed to have been bearing arms against him. Henry I. lost his sons before he could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... discovered a comet, or Robinson translated the Daily Gong and Gas Blower into the purest Choctaw? In a word, was such tumult of acclamation—even the President himself swinging his reverend hat, and the illustrious alumni, far and near, when the glad tidings were told, beaming with joyful complacency, like Mr. Pickwick going down the slide, while Samivel Weller adjured him and the company to keep the pot a-bilin'—ever produced by any scholastic performance or success or ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... and almost naive expression of delight at a success which both sides promised themselves to render fruitful. It is an instance of poor, naked human nature caught in the fact. But, as in other instances, she cannot play the woman with impunity. Madame des Ursins dwells with complacency upon her description of the fabulous cortege which he has in preparation. Lackeys innumerable, a legion of pages and gentlemen, fiocches and carriages, emblazoned with gold, a suite with which in the present day a sovereign would not encumber himself, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... practised eyes, he very justly regarded her as better than anything which his million had purchased hitherto. It might easily be imagined that he had added a little to the couleur de rose of the future by an extra glass of Burgundy, for he positively appeared to exude an atmosphere of affluence, complacency, and gracious intention. The quick-witted girl detected at once his King-Cophetua air, and she was more amused than embarrassed. Then the eager face of Fenton Lane arose in her fancy, and she heard his words, "I would shoulder a musket and march away ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... and gave the manager to understand what went on." In such a case as this it has usually happened that a strong boy of brutal and perverse instincts and some force of character initiates proceedings which the others either fall into with complacency or are too weak ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... too certain of being loved, not to pardon easily. With the self-complacency and factitious generosity of a woman who feels herself the object of two violent passions, she was so good as to feel pity for the lover who was left out in the cold, and offered him her hand. Trumeau kissed it with every outward mark of respect, while his lips ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... us. Isn't it, Emmy?" Mrs. Sedley said: at which speech Miss Amelia only made a smile and a blush; and looking at Mr. George Osborne's pale interesting countenance, and those beautiful black, curling, shining whiskers, which the young gentleman himself regarded with no ordinary complacency, she thought in her little heart that in His Majesty's army, or in the wide world, there never was such a face or such a hero. "I don't care about Captain Dobbin's complexion," she said, "or about his awkwardness. I shall always like him, I know," her ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mightily wi' pickin' out cotton up in th' swamp, 'n' it's openin, mighty fast; shouldn't be s'prised ef some er that swamp don't fetch er bale ter th' acre, 'n' we'll have er right purty lot o' cotton, even atter th' rent's paid out"; and Father Tyler, with much complacency, lighted his pipe with a ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... education was built, that I mean to attack; nay, warmly as I admire the genius of that able writer, whose opinions I shall often have occasion to cite, indignation always takes place of admiration, and the rigid frown of insulted virtue effaces the smile of complacency, which his eloquent periods are wont to raise, when I read his voluptuous reveries. Is this the man, who, in his ardour for virtue, would banish all the soft arts of peace, and almost carry us back to Spartan ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... ridiculous to indulge in sentiment in connection with a thief and a forger; the woman deserved no mercy, and would receive none, if he had his way; none the less was he charmed by Cornelia's emotion, by her pity, her amazing inconsistency. Gone were her airs of complacency and independence; at the first threatening of danger the pretty pretence was broken up; weak, trembling, tearful, she summoned her natural protector to her side! Guest's heart swelled with a passion of tenderness. ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... about my nature," Kolya interrupted, not without complacency. "But it's true that I am stupidly sensitive, crudely sensitive. You smiled just now, and I ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a yellow-green stare, but he sensed a change in them. Some of their complacency had ebbed; his reply had been as a stone dropped into a quiet pool, sending ripples out afar to disturb the customary mirror ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... his knee to the ground in reverence. Then he rose to go, pressing a little packet into her palm. Their eyes met, and the man saw, in that brief instant, deep in the azure depths of the girl's that which tumbled the structure of his new-found complacency about ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... York with that of Naples on the score of beauty, I shall no more be guilty of any such folly, to gratify the cockney feelings of Broadway and Bond street, than I should be guilty of the folly of comparing the commerce of the ancient Parthenope with that of old New York, in order to excite complacency in the bosom of some bottegajo in the Toledo, or on the Chiaja. Our fast-growing Manhattan is a great town in its way—a wonderful place—without a parallel, I do believe, on earth, as a proof of enterprise and of the accumulation of business; and it is not easy to make ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... pausing for breath, went on, with the greatest complacency, in a rambling manner sometimes incidental ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... obsolescent words, and close-mouthed stoves chill the spirit while they bake the flesh with their grim and undemonstrative hospitality. Already are the railroads displacing the companionable cheer of crackling walnut with the dogged self-complacency and sullen virtue of anthracite. Even where wood survives, he is too often shut in the dreary madhouse cell of an airtight, round which one can no more fancy a social mug of flip circling than round a coffin. Let us be thankful that we can sit in Mr. Whittier's chimney-corner ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... to be trusted with an affair deserving of delicate and cautious management. M. Lesueur felt obscurely that the present was an affair of that kind. The parties to it were not only well dressed, but (with the possible exception of Amelie, whose social complacency the evidence of Mr. Withershaw appeared to have established) suggestive of good breeding, or at least of normal good behaviour. It would not do, thanks to the inexperience of a subordinate, to involve the Commissariat ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... of diseases current at the same period. From the earliest times the Jews had specialized in medicine, and many royal personages insisted on employing Jewish doctors,[232] some of whom may have acquired medical knowledge of a high order. The Jewish writer Margoliouth dwells on this fact with some complacency, and goes on to contrast the scientific methods of the Hebrew doctors with ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... thus to see the swinging arms, The slow protuberant belly sheathed in a vest of scarlet, And the gold chain of Albert, the great Consort; To see the haughty head, the portly mien, The solemn gait, and the complacency with which you view ...
— Song Book of Quong Lee of Limehouse • Thomas Burke
... anywhere else, and so did Henrietta. Even Queen Bee's complacency gave way before her father, and it was only Alexander who had spirit to answer, "We thought you were ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cab began to move, and halted again. A face appeared at the apron,—Hickey's, red and moon-like and not lacking in complacency: for the man counted of profiting variously ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... publican and harlots, his attitude was of pure compassion. Toward the Pharisees it was denunciatory. Wealth of ceremony and poverty of spirit, self-complacency mixed with scorn for others and with hostility to new light and love, roused in him a wrath which broke in lightning-flashes. "Woe unto you! whited sepulchres full of dead men's ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... followed wonder, inquiry, a walk in the twilight to the river-bank, the old gentleman's story, the corresponding respect of the listening visitor, and the consequent quiet complacency and harmless satisfaction in the clergyman's bosom. That throb of pride was the one drop of peculiar advantage which the pastor distilled from the Revolution. He could not but fancy that he had a hand in so ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... The philosophy of complacency, at least, will be at an end, and the world will face with new earnestness the problem of life. This generation will be tired, perhaps exhausted, by the titanic struggle; but youth comes on, fresh and eager, with exhaustless vital energy, and the generations to come will take ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs |
