"Complacent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the best: how would it be in this new business of cotton-picking? He had a strong element of cheerful fidelity in his nature. The first day he worked steadily and as rapidly as he was able at the unfamiliar employment. When night came he reckoned he had done well. With a complacent feeling he stood waiting his turn as the great baskets, one after another, were swung on the steelyard and the weights announced. He found himself pitying some of the pickers as light weights were called, wondering if they had fallen behind last year's figures. When his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... that highly-favored personage nine chances out of ten—and grudges the tenth to the wisest man in existence. Look where you will, in every high place there sits an Ass, settled beyond the reach of all the greatest intellects in this world to pull him down. Over our whole social system, complacent Imbecility rules supreme—snuffs out the searching light of Intelligence with total impunity—and hoots, owl-like, in answer to every form of protest, See how well we all do in the dark! One of these days that audacious assertion will be practically ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... all that of favouritism. The declaration that there are people who have a special relationship to the divine heart may be so stated as to have a very ugly look, and it often has been so stated as to be nothing more than self-complacent Pharisaism, which values a privilege principally because its possession is an insult to somebody ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... perhaps nothing that the girl could have done to take her complacent relative more by surprise; Mrs. Roberts sat for a moment, echoing the last word, and staring as if not quite able to realize what Helen meant. As the truth came to ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... and your manner and countenance proclaim it yet more strongly than your words. The only genuine effect of a sincere scepticism is and must be, not the complacent and frivolous humor which too often attaches to it, but a mournful confession of the melancholy condition to which, if true, the theory reduces the sceptic himself ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... fingers at the time of her coronation; and in collar, if in nothing else, he resembled the immortal Shakespeare; and his bosom was broad and snowy as the swan's; and his pumps were glossy as the raven's wing; and he was going dinnerward, with a winsome damsel on his arm and a complacent smile of self-conceit upon his countenance, when the smooth soles of these new and shining shoes suddenly performed a rapid evolution, as though they were skates upon ice; and there was a little shriek from the winsome damsel in particular, and a large "Oh!" ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... loathe its own past grossness. "London may yet be the spiritual capital of the world, while Asia—rich in all that gold can buy and guns can give, lord of lands and bodies, builder of railways and promulgator of police regulations, glorious in all material glories—postures, complacent and obtuse, before a Europe content in the possession of all that matters,"[146] Certainly, we are not there yet, but the old Earth has seen many stranger and more revolutionary changes than this. England, as this writer reminds us, was once ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... ever beat back by the steady detestation of their imperious patronesses; and, by and by, for want of that priceless worldly grace known among the flippant as "money-sense," these two poor children, born of misfortune and the complacent badness of the times, began to ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... 29, but with no comment save that Southern prospects were less rosy than had been supposed. Then ensued a long silence, for this time there was no possibility of that editorial wiggling about the circle from excuses for misinterpretation to a complacent ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... Christianity spreading by ordinary means among Mohamadans. Their pride is a great obstacle, and is very industriously nurtured by its votaries. No new invention or increase of power on the part of Christians seems to disturb the self-complacent belief that ultimately all power and dominion in this world will fall into the hands of Moslems. Mohamad will appear at last in glory, with all his followers saved by him. When Mr. Stanley's Arab boy from Jerusalem told ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... shade down. She hated the stars. They looked complacent and distant. She pushed memories of Doris and Nancy resolutely from her. Her world was not their world—that was sure. If this desperate loneliness couldn't drive her to them, nothing could. She must make her own life! Lying on her hot bed, Joan thought and thought. ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... was now grown of an extraordinary pallor, his lips twitched as he spoke and his fingers worked in a nervous uneasy manner upon the table-cloth. Captain Plessy was in far too complacent a mood to notice such trifles. His vanity was satisfied, the world was a rosy mist with a sparkle of champagne, and he answered lightly as he unfastened another button ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... welcome from the inhabitants and submissions from fresh embassies. Report came from the fleet—keeping pace with the land army along the coasts—that nowhere had the weak squadrons of the Greeks adventured a stand. Daily the smile of the Lord of the World grew more complacent, as his "table-companions" told him: "The rumour of your Eternity's advent stupefies the miserable Hellenes. Like Atar, the Angel of Fire, your splendour glitters afar. You will enter Athens and Sparta, and no sword leave its sheath, no ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... Pierre was complacent; he admired her wild attacks. He smiled, and replied: "My dear, it was a whim of mine; but you need not tell him, all the same, when he wakes. You see this is your father's house, though the whim is mine. But look: he is waking-the pin is good. Some ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... inhabitants are speaking of things that are universally admired. Every time that I told a citizen of Rotterdam that I liked the town he made a gesture of surprise. In speaking of their commerce and institutions they never let a vain expression escape them, nor even a boastful or complacent word. They always speak of what they are going to do, and never of what they have done. One of the first questions put to me when I named my country was, "What about its finances?" As to their own country, I observed that they know all that it is useful to know, and very little that ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... some African bishops broke off communion. The Latin bishops rejected it; but the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem gave their adhesion. Justinian summoned Pope Vigilius; and a pitiable example of irresolution he presented when he came. He accepted, rejected, censured, was complacent and hostile in turns. [Sidenote: The Fifth General Council, 553.] At last he agreed to the summoning of a General Council, and Justinian ordered it to meet in May, 553. Vigilius, almost at the last moment, would have nothing to ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... authenticity of the spread. No Eastern article, as all travellers are aware, is ever even at both sides." Another burst of laughter greeted this point. The auctioneer showed her pretty white teeth in a complacent smile, her wide grey eyes roved round the room, and met Darsie's eyes raised to her ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... infatuation for plain, heavy-featured, complacent Miss Pratt was a standing mystery in the Paget family. Margaret ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... but also the male commonalty of the boiler deck. In a state of society which he, as "a type," reflected they saw themselves; saw their own spiritual image; their unqualified straightforwardness, their transparent simplicity of mind and heart, their fearlessness, their complacent rusticity, their childish notions of the uses of wealth, their personal modesty and communal vanity, their happy oblivion to world standards, their extravagance of speech, their political bigotry, their magisterial down-rightness, their inflammability, and their fine self-reliance. ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... with a message from his master, requesting to speak with Captain Waverley in another apartment. With a heart which beat; a little quicker, not indeed from fear, but from uncertainty and anxiety, Edward obeyed the summons. He found the two gentlemen standing together, an air of complacent dignity on the brow of the Baron, while something like sullenness, or shame, or both, blanked the bold visage of Balmawhapple. The former slipped his arm through that of the latter, and thus seeming to ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... and lifted one ear as Uncle Buzz climbed in the buggy and took up the lines. But being complacent and particularly indisposed to anything as much like effort as resistance, the ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... of French chalk had been successful, and she wore her blue and white silk; Katherine, in her blue muslin, with ribbons to match on her smooth braids, wished her mother had been more impressed with the importance of the occasion. Charlotte was complacent in her white dress with a large ribbon bow on top of her head, in a new fashion just received from her ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... first-class passengers, leaning on the thwartship rails close by, looked on, with complacent satisfaction or half-contemptuous pity. Among them stood Mrs. Hastings, Miss Winifred Rawlinson, and Agatha. It was noticed that Wyllard, with a pipe in his hand, sat on a hatch forward, near the head of the gangway. Agatha drew ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... society with kind and complacent survey, we are more than half tempted to imagine that men might subsist very well in clusters and congregated bodies without the coercion of law; and in truth criminal laws were only made to prevent the ill-disposed few from interrupting the regular ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... painful for me to discuss it, but if the money is not paid on the 14th, there certainly will be no marriage on the 18th." His insufferable smile was more complacent than ever. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lady, who takes her wonted place on his knee with his arm round her waist. Squalici is also a domestic spy, and in league with the mother to cheat the daughters of their patrimony. Mr. Tunskull is a respectable and complacent nonentity. ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... if you want to see the full depths of brutality latent in man, you must thoroughly frighten him first. This condition the Countess of Grillyer had exactly succeeded in fulfilling, with the consequence that the Baron, hitherto the most complacent and amiable of sons-in-law, seemed ambitious of rivalling the Turk. When he perceived that no answer to his appeals was forthcoming, dark despair for a moment overcame him. Then the fiendishly ingenious idea struck him—might not a woman's screams accomplish what his own lungs ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... reached the door he paused, afraid to open. What if it were not the remedium, what if it were some trifle? What if—but as he hesitated, his hand, half eager, half reluctant, rested on the latch, the door slid ajar, and his eyes met the complacent smirking face of his messenger. He fancied that he read success in Gentilis' looks, and his heart leapt up. "I shall be back in a moment," he babbled, speaking over his shoulder to those whom he left. "In a ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... a complacent hand, as soon as Blanquette had retired to make the necessary purchases for the evening meal, "you perceive that she is perfectly happy. You were entirely wrong. All is for the best in this best of all ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... all we love that you may loathe Intrigue and darkness, that you may disperse The ranks of ugly tyrannies and, worse, The sodden languor and complacent sloth. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... He was a stout man, with a square face, and small, beady black eyes and an aggressive manner; a man who felt sure of himself; who knew he was the centre of his own circle. There was a well-fed, complacent look about him too which left no doubt that he was satisfied with things as they were—and would be deeply resentful of change. There was still in his countenance some trace of his ancestor's belief in the Divine right of kings! It showed in his narrow, thought-proof forehead, ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... Yankee stretched out his long limbs and smoked his pipe with the complacent aspect of a man who felt proud ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... to whom we especially dedicate this work. It may be, the reader will find in our essay beauties which he had not yet observed, which have hitherto been disputed in the original, and which less sympathetic natures than ours might term complacent eulogies; but the fear of being blamed and of being unpopular shall not deter us from our intention of bringing them forth. No criticism can prevent our praising, when he deserves it, the man who never knew the weaknesses of jealousy, and who never ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... common name of father. But this was not the case with Tembinok'. Now the ice was broken the word uncle was perpetually in his mouth; he who had been so ready to confound was now careful to distinguish; and the father sank gradually into a self-complacent ordinary man, while the uncle rose to his true stature as the hero and founder ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was confined to the Lower House, the Peers, from the nature of their composition, being complacent and passive enough. The vast majority of them were in fact mere shadows gathered round the solid persons of Joseph, Lucien, Louis, and Jerome Bonaparte, and Sieyes, Carnot, and the military men of the Revolution. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... table, where Tom (who for his great love of hunting was become a great favourite of the squire) often dined. Young men of open, generous dispositions are naturally inclined to gallantry, which, if they have good understandings, as was in reality Tom's case, exerts itself in an obliging complacent behaviour to all women in general. This greatly distinguished Tom from the boisterous brutality of mere country squires on the one hand, and from the solemn and somewhat sullen deportment of Master Blifil on the other; and he began now, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... A sweet, complacent smile quivered around those old lips, as the countess settled back among her cushions. She, a petite creature, had Carset blood in her veins from both parents, and in her youth she had been distinguished among the most beautiful women of England. She was thinking of those days, when those ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... or from the society of Henrietta Temple. Both were so happy that they soon overcame any little embarrassment which their novel situation might first occasion them. In this effort, however, they were greatly encouraged by the calm demeanour of Lord Montfort and the complacent carriage of his intended bride. The world wondered and whispered, marvelled and hinted, but nothing disturbed Lord Montfort, and Katherine had the skill to silence raillery. Although it was settled that the respective marriages ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... Father Felipe, briskly turning the pages with the same lofty ignoring of the text until he came to a representation of a labor procession. "There is one of their periodic revolutions unhappily not unknown even in Mexico. Thou perceivest those complacent artisans marching with implements of their craft, accompanied by the military, in the presence of their own stricken masters. Here we see only another instance of the instability of all communities that are not founded on the principles ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... and console her. It was simply and frankly said, as one might speak of a matter fully understood and approved of by all concerned. But the words smote on Allan's heart with sharp and sudden pain, and he knew that something had come into his life, since the time when he had listened in complacent silence to Mr Elphinstone's half-expressed ideas, concerning Lilias and her future. There was pleasure in the pain, sharp and sweet while it lasted, for with the knowledge that came to him, that he loved Graeme Elliott, there came also the hope, that there was something more than ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... worker—a mixture of the mystical and the practical—was the terror of the Vienna delegates. He put spokes in everybody's wheel, behaved as the autocrat of the Congress and felt as self-complacent as a saint. Countess von Thurheim wrote of him: "He mistrusted his environment and let himself be led by others. But he was thoroughly good and high-minded and sought after the weal, not merely of his own ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... darlings, do not skip or jump or laugh. They walk sedately, in their starchy attire, holding father's arm and trying to realize that it really is Sunday, and therefore very sinful to fling oneself about. The people taking their appetite stroll before midday dinner look all so sleek and complacent that one would like to borrow money from them. The 'buses rumble with a cheeriness that belongs not to weekdays; their handrails gleam with a new brightness, and the High Street, with shops shuttered and barred, bears not the faintest resemblance ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... carried him briskly past down the avenue. From one boulevard to another he passed, keeping his eyes straight ahead, avoiding the sight of the comfortable, ugly houses, anxious to escape them and their associations, pressing on for a beyond, for something other than this vast, roaring, complacent city. The great park itself was filled with people, carriages, bicycles. A stream of carts and horse-back riders was headed for the Driving Club, where there was tennis and the new game of golf. But Sommers turned his horse into the disfigured Midway, where the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... under the name and guise of premier magistrate of the realm, a servant whose bold and complacent abilities he was not slow to recognize and to put in use. Being irritated "for that many, not having the privilege of sportsmen, do take beasts, both red and black, as hares, pheasants, partridges, and other game, thus frustrating us of our diversion and pastime that we take in the chase," Francis ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... as strong as it was unexpected, had exchanged Triboulet for herself, and the princess, at the king's request, had taken the buffoon with her, and left the girl behind. The jestress' welcome to the household of the Queen of Navarre; a subsequent bewildering shower of gifts; the complacent, although respectful, attentions of the king. How she had endured these advances until no course remained save the one she had taken. No; she could not tell ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... of being chronically unselfish; in the end people cease to give you any credit for it, and virtue has to be its own reward, for you don't get any other. I did think it was hard that even Will should misjudge her so, and be so complacent about it into the bargain, but it was hardly my place to defend her to him, of all people ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... if she should run wild as she heard Mrs. Merrifield's complacent remarks on having always thought so, and being sure that a few weeks of good air and good management would make an immense difference. The need of not alarming or prejudicing the poor little victim was all that kept Angela in any restraint; and Mrs. Merrifield went on to say that she had ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... moment Aunt Rebecca hesitated. I think she must have been petrified by my audacity. But she recovered herself and turned, and without a word went to my room and got Lilly from her 'little chair.' I was as complacent as if it had been quite the usual thing for Aunt Rebecca to fetch and carry for me. Indeed, perhaps I imagined I was instituting a new order of things, and that in future she would do my errands, ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... who could never do a right thing can now do no wrong one. Canvases beside which the vaguest of Mr. Whistler's nocturnes are clear statements of plain fact, lilac-coloured canvases void of design or tone, or quality of paint, are accepted by a complacent public, and bought by American millionaires for vast sums; and the early canvases about which Paris would not once tolerate a word of praise, are now considered old-fashioned. My personal concern in all this enthusiasm—the enthusiasm of the fashionable ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... satisfaction and feeling a certain complacent pleasure in the thought that, if the impossible happened, he could redeem himself in her eyes by an act that would condemn him in the eyes of every one else, he lay down on his bunk and went ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... But there she was, and being asked for Mr. Linden replied that he was down stairs, and without more ceremony ushered the doctor in; and entering the whole view lay before him in its freshness. Mrs. Derrick, complacent and comfortable, sat behind the no-longer-wanted tea-tray, listening and playing with a spoon. Faith's face, though considering her unfinished muffin, was brilliant with rosy pleasure; while the fire which she had for some time forgotten to mend, lay in a state of powerful inaction, ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... to awaken the conscience and to disturb the complacent self-righteousness of the young inquirer, Jesus now tested him in the light of the commandments in which God has revealed his holy will. The youth at once replied, "All these things have I observed from my youth up." Jesus now applied the deep probe which showed that ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... orders I beheld not a single one in the mansion of Yudhishthira that had not food and drink and ornaments. And eighty-eight thousands of Snataka Brahmanas leading domestic lives, all supported by Yudhishthira, with thirty serving-girls given unto each, gratified by the king, always pray with complacent hearts for the destruction of his foes. And ten thousands of other ascetics with vital seed drawn up, daily eat of golden plates in Yudhishthira's palace. And, O king, Yajnaseni, without having eaten herself, daily seeth whether ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... as being that of an interested outsider, whose interest in any precautionary measures of this kind is in part a regard for his own tranquility as a disinterested neighbour, but in greater part a humane solicitude for the well-being of civilised mankind at large. In this view, somewhat self-complacent it is to be admitted, America is conceived to come into the case as initiator and guide, about whom the pacific nations are to cluster as some ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... terrible fact of War falls across all philosophies! Complacent optimisms, so widely current recently, are put out of court by it. The pleasant interpretations mediocrity formulates of the universe are torn to tatters. There is at least the refreshment of standing face to face ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... and they were married. Her treasured conscience did not prevent her from noting the jealousy of her young friends. A generous mind, perhaps, would rather itself suffer jealousy than be quick in suspecting, or complacent in causing, or precise in setting it down. But Mrs. Hutchinson doubtless offered up the envy of her companions in homage to her Puritan lover's splendour. His austerity did not hinder him from wearing his "fine, thick-set ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... silent prayer. The door flew open, and the porter sent in my name. I had soon the honour to be invited into the park, where Mr. John was walking with a few friends. I recognised him at once by his corpulency and self-complacent air. He received me very well—just as a rich man receives a poor devil; and turning to me, took my letter. "Oh, from my brother! it is a long time since I heard from him: is he well?—Yonder," he went on,—turning to the company, and pointing to a distant hill—"Yonder is ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... reassembled, the inquisitors returning (unhappily) like giants refreshed after their holiday. But they sometimes contribute to our amusement, as when one relentless and complacent critic declared that, on the matter of conscription, he should himself "prefer to be guided—very largely—by Lord Kitchener." The concession is something. Most of the importunate questionists are ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... had, coward-like, kept in the background—he was probably little more than a complacent tool in the hands of the pontiff—he was permitted to leave Florence in the train of the young Cardinal, immediately before the reception of the Interdict. He returned to Rome and abandoned himself to a life of profligacy; his palace became a brothel and a gambling hell, and ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... organized factories have been having, since they began that work, an education for the suffrage. They are not the ignorant voters nor are wives of workingmen; at least, they know in part what they need to safeguard themselves and their homes. The ignorant vote is the complacent, blind vote of men and of the feminine 'influence' that moves them, which disregards the real problems of setting safe and wholesome standards of life and labor and education and spends its strength in looking backward, insisting upon precedents ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... one day, that he need not make his criticisms any longer in that roundabout way, but might take me squarely in hand and polish me up as speedily as possible. Sitting in the saloon at night after a game of chess, in which, perchance, I had been the victor, I felt complacent ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... consummate self-satisfaction With which the young Duke and the old dame 195 Would let her advise, and criticize, And, being a fool, instruct the wise, And, child-like, parcel out praise or blame: They bore it all in complacent guise, As though an artificer, after contriving 200 A wheel-work image as if it were living, Should find with delight it could motion to strike him! So found the Duke, and his mother like him: The lady hardly got a rebuff— That had ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... in his pockets with the complacent expression of a martyr. 'I must go to gaol a' spose; none of ourn ever went thur afore: a' spose I must go.' 'Come,' said the Clerk, 'why, you or your brother bought a piece of land and a cottage ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... for being too complacent in small things, which had encouraged Peth to insubordination. It would have been far better if the mate had been brought into place with a sharp and short encounter which would determine just who was master, than to continue strained relations which only allowed ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... cathedral, and almost coeval) of the bad and good man at the hour of death; where the ghastly apprehensions of the former,—and truly the grim phantom with his reality of a toasting-fork is not to be despised,—so finely contrast with the meek complacent kissing of the rod,—taking it in like honey and butter,—with which the latter submits to the scythe of the gentle bleeder, Time, who wields his lancet with the apprehensive finger of a popular young ladies' ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... when, at midnight, sweep Snow-muffled winds, and all is dark To hear—and sink again-to sleep Or, at an earlier call, to mark, 40 By blazing fire, the still suspense Of self-complacent innocence; ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... little things when they are engaged. Mother must have forgiven a good many things when she took father. Anyway, Mark is going away for a month on business, so I shan't have to make up my mind just yet!" Here sleep descended upon the slightly puzzled, but on the whole delightfully complacent, little creature, bringing her most ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... nearly touch thee, and thou so incline) The father of Telemachus, engaged Among the foremost Trojans. But thy speech 420 Was light as is the wind, and rashly made. When him thus moved he saw, the monarch smiled Complacent, and in gentler terms replied. Laertes' noble son, for wiles renown'd! Short reprimand and exhortation short 425 Suffice for thee, nor did I purpose more. For I have known thee long, that thou art one Of kindest nature, and so much my friend That we have both one heart. Go ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... flying, and, rushing bareheaded to the footlights, he stands a few moments amid the roars of the house, snorting with rage and choking with passion. Like Burleigh's nod, Handel's wig seemed to have been a sure guide to his temper. When things went well, it had a certain complacent vibration; but when he was out of humor, the wig indicated the fact in a very positive way. The Princess of Wales was wont to blame her ladies for talking instead of listening. "Hush, hush!" she would say. "Don't you see ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... Jew—of Da Souza's nationality it was impossible to have any doubt—was coarse and large of his type, he wore soiled linen clothes and was smoking a black cigar. On the little finger of each hand, thickly encrusted with dirt, was a diamond ring, on his thick, protruding lips a complacent smile. The concession, already soiled and dog-eared, was spread out ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... other considerations, is appalling in its concentrated stolidity. They do not intend wrong—they intend rightly: in truth, they work against the entire human race. So wedded and so confirmed is the world in its narrow groove of self, so stolid and so complacent under the immense weight of misery, so callous to its own possibilities, and so grown to its chains, that I almost despair to see it awakened. Cemeteries are often placed on hillsides, and the white stones are visible far off. If the ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... is anybody satisfied with the action of the managers of the American Institute, in the matter of awarding prizes to the competing engines exhibited at the recent fair, we have yet to meet that complacent individual. Neither the exhibitors nor the general public could be expected to accept with equanimity such a report as the managers have made, because it is inadequate to give any real idea of the relative merits ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... be said in reference to the charge of "obscurity," which, from the time when Browning's earliest poem was disposed of by a complacent critic in the single phrase, "A piece of pure bewilderment," has been hurled at each succeeding poem with re-iterate vigour of virulence. The charge of "pure bewilderment" is about as reasonable as the charge of "habitual rudeness ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... excellent match for Theo," was Lady Throckmorton's complacent comment on the subject of the attache's visit, and the comment was made to Denis himself. "M. Maurien is the very man to take good care of her; and besides that, he is, of course, desirable. Girls like Theo ought to marry young. Marriage is their forte; they are ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... occasional local "stirrings of the heart," at the beginning of the second quarter of the eighteenth century a cold, formal piety was frequently the covering of indifferent living and of a smug, complacent Christianity, wherein the letter killed and the spirit did not give life. This was true all over New England, and elsewhere. Nor was this deadness confined to the colonies alone, for the Wesleys were ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... and generous; perhaps the seemingly overwhelming strength of the enemy, and the listlessness of thousands who would hail freedom with rapture, but who now stand aloof in despair—and along with all this and intensifying it, the voice of our self-complacent practical friend, who has but sarcasm for a high impulse, and for an immutable principle the latest expedient of the hour. Through such an experience must the soldier of freedom live. But as surely as such an hour comes, there comes also a star to break the darkened sky; let ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... imagination upon the choicest of premonitory tit-bits, he knew he meant to go ahead. He was magnifying the unfathomed peril that existed in his erratic, hair-trigger old brain alone merely for the sake of the complacent pride which resulted therefrom—pride in the contemplation of ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... preach them sermons on the good of being good, and the evil of being evil; in our higher education we advance to the theory of habit and the freedom of the will; and then, when failure follows failure, ipsa experientia reclamante, we hug ourselves with a complacent self-satisfied reflection that the fault is not ours, that all which men could do we have done. The freedom of the will!—as if a blacksmith would ever teach a boy to make a horseshoe, by telling him he could make one if ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... or a little later, Pretty Tommy presented himself, and found Mr Pinsent at his desk engaged in complacent study of a sheet of manuscript, to which he had just ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... their engagements permit. Sometimes the reading is varied by mystical dances of a slow and solemn character, but all laughter, levity and exuberance are sedulously discountenanced, the aim of all present being to attain an attitude of serene and complacent ecstasy which enables them to invest utterances of the most perfect ineptitude with a portentous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... The complacent consciousness of producing a fine effect in evening-clothes had given to Mr. Stormont Thorpe habitually now a mildness of manner, after the dressing hour, which was lacking to his deportment in the day-time. The conventional attire ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... woman! I suppose it has been developed like a cat's whiskers to supply the deficiency of a natural scent. Also, like the whiskers, it is obtrusive, and a matter for much irritatingly complacent pride. Judith regarded me with a mock magisterial air, and I was put ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... It came within the scope of the senator's understanding. After all, he was not to be cast into outer darkness. His smile was complacent. He answered airily: ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... Roscorla to come home; and to come home just at this moment, when he, Trelyon, had stolen down for a couple of days to have a shy look at the sweet-heart who was so far out of his reach! She ought to have been alone. Then she ought not to have looked so calm and complacent on going away to meet Mr. Roscorla: she ought to have been afraid. She ought to have—In short, everything was wrong, and Wenna ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... a complacent smile, toying with his gold chatelaine, "I really could not have visited you sooner, under the circumstances in ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... this complacent quality is, that it naturally disposes the mind where it resides, to the practice of every other that is amiable. Meekness may be called the pioneer of all the other virtues, which levels every obstruction, and smooths every difficulty that might impede ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... between God and men which makes men who know themselves trust Him. It is the "otherness," not the sameness, which makes Him desirable and potent in the daily round of life. A purely ethical interest in God ceases to be ethical and becomes complacent; when we rule out the supraphenomenal we have shut the door on the chief strength ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... about the streets, in a deep complacent enjoyment of his new sensations, till almost daylight. He then took breakfast in a market restaurant, after which he went to a barber's shop—one of those that open in time for early-rising customers—and had his hair cut in the desired fashion. ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... depend on one thing," said he to Macleod, with a complacent wisdom in the round and jovial face. "Take my word for it. I hear of people studying the character, the compatibilities, and what not, of other people; but I never knew of a young man thinking of such things when he was in love. He plunges in, and finds out afterward. Now it all comes this—is ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... till it resembled a cord, was round his neck, and his hands were unwashed. He looked round with an air of insolent effrontery. His face, covered with pimples, was neither thoughtful nor even contemptuous; it wore an expression of complacent satisfaction in demanding his rights and in being an aggrieved party. His voice trembled, and he spoke so fast, and with such stammerings, that he might have been taken for a foreigner, though the ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... their pocket-handkerchiefs, and ma having first nodded and winked to the governess to pull the girls' frocks a little more off their shoulders, stood up to review the little troop—an inspection which appeared to terminate much to her own satisfaction, for she looked with a complacent air at pa, who was standing up at the further end of the seat. Pa returned the glance, and blew his nose very emphatically; and the poor governess peeped out from behind the pillar, and timidly tried to catch ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... affected graces of a shopwoman with insignificant features, cold and ever-smiling eyes, complacent and placid physiognomy, devoid of real elegance, but having a certain love for glitter and tinsel, no doubt caught at her father's shopwindow, making her take pleasure in many-coloured satin bows, sashes ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... M. Hodgson, that she was really an illegitimate daughter of an Irishman, Charles Oliver, of Castle Oliver (now Cloghnafoy), Co. Limerick, and a peasant girl on his estate. This is possible enough, for the period was one when squires exercised "seigneurial rights," and when colleens were complacent. If they were not, they had very ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... surrounded by a certain favored "set" of female friends, for whose benefit she displayed the incoming treasures of her wardrobe till they were ready to cry for spite and vexation, though they had to smile and hold in their wrath and outraged vanity beneath the social mask of complacent composure. And Nina loved nothing better than to torture the poor women who were stinted of pocket-money with the sight of shimmering satins, soft radiating plushes, rich velvets, embroidery studded with real gems, pieces of costly ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... mark Miss Marlowe had given her on that initial literature test; Nancy and Josephine were loud in their admiration of the way she had translated for Miss Langton in Latin class. Altogether, as Judith rolled over on to her elbows and found the place in her book, she was feeling happy and a bit too complacent. Only a page or two had been turned when a shadow blotted out the flickering tracings of the beech leaves, and a surprised ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... handful of complacent, expensively educated young people playing at reform. The poor wanting work, wanting decent housing—wanting bread—and offered ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... recollection to all the Emerys was the justly complacent and satisfied remembrance of the house grounds during the first really successful social event they had achieved. It was a lawn-fete, given for the benefit of St. Luke's church, which Mrs. Emery and Marietta had recently joined. Socially, ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... has pattered and murmured, have I heard the notes of the Robin and the Wood-Thrush; the Red-Eyed Flycatcher has pursued his game within a few feet of my window, darting with a low, complacent warble amid the dripping leaves, looking as dry and unruffled as if a drop of rain had never touched him; the Cat-Bird has flirted and attitudinized on my garden-fence; the House-Wren stopped a moment between the showers, and indulged in a short, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... that confronts us now, and the first glimpse is almost sufficient to cause us to view with a more complacent eye the mental travail of any married lady whose husband might be exposed to the battery of ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... refreshment, exchanging hot and dusty boots for slippers, and going through other preliminaries to a comfortable time of it. Rang the bell for dinner, but before ordering it, asked the waiting-maid, with a complacent idea that I had improved my walking pace, and made more than half ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... that she should not be with him, HE had come to tell her that the big, protecting arm and heart were gone forever—and now he had an early buttercup in his buttonhole, and on his lips the last of the laughter that he had just been sharing with Mary Dickey! And Mary, the picture of complacent daintiness, was sauntering on, waiting ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... a certain austere charm, a quiet dignity of its own. The sunny air came softly in through wide-open latticed windows, bringing with it the scent of mignonette. There had never been a breath of air in the house in Pembridge Square. Ole Scorpio, that friend of my youth, looked peaceful and complacent in a little recess in which his soft colouring and perfect figure showed to great advantage against a white-washed ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... deck was very striking, for human nature was there stripped of all disguise and all self-deceit before the presence of death. Pride and ambition, ostentation and avarice—the fallacies of the world, the complacent lies of society, the hopes and griefs that were of earth alone—all unrealities, in short, had passed for these shivering, helpless beings, with the life that seemed receding from them—that hour of horror revealed them to themselves ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... am I, dead tired: you self-deceiving, self complacent thing. Ha!—aren't you just the same? You haven't altered one ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... national character which had always been to him revolting, something which he knew to be extremely natural and yet which seemed to him inexplicable—their intense belief in contracts and vested rights, their complacent sense of virtue in the exaction of those rights. Here beside him in the cab was the very embodiment, the corporeal sum as it were, of the possessive instinct—his own kinsman, too! It was uncanny and intolerable! 'But there's something more in it than that!' he thought with a sick feeling. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... will it be before we feel that it will be a material help to us to have ultimissimissimate atoms? Quavers stopped at demi-semi-demi, but there is no reason to suppose that either atoms or ancestresses of the Virgin will be so complacent. ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... over. He was fully determined only to part with it with life itself. For once, the picture of Trevethick and his son-in-law (for he had heard before he left Cross Key of Harry's marriage with his rival), unsuspecting, complacent, and exposed to the full force of his revenge, failed to occupy his gloating thoughts; they were fixed as ever there, but on the means and not upon the end—his whole being was engrossed in the coming enterprise. He feared the warder should read that forbidden word "Escape" in his eager eyes, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... was sufficiently startling to impair for half an hour the staff's working efficiency. He nodded pleasantly to the two delivery drivers loading their wagons for the first trip of the morning, and cast upward the inevitable, complacent glance at the sign that ran across the front of the building—CHILDS' CASH STORE. The lettering, not too large, was of dignified black and gold, suggestive of noble spices, aristocratic condiments, and everything ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... said Enid laughing. "Much too nice for us. They choose the driest books possible for schools. Patty, why don't you grumble too? It's quite aggravating to see you looking so complacent." ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... said my Uncle Peter, settling down in his chair before the open wood-fire, with that air of complacent obstinacy which spreads over him when he is about to confess and expound his philosophy of life,—"a day off is a day that ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... its humor was to some extent original; and so perfectly was it adapted to local conditions that it may be profitably read to-day as a not untrue reflection of the manners and spirit of the time and city. Its amusing audacity and complacent superiority, the mystery hanging about its writers, its affectation of indifference to praise or profit, its fearless criticism, lively wit, and irresponsible humor, piqued, puzzled, and delighted the town. From the first it was an immense success; it had a circulation in ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... to change her trend of thought into other channels. The hostess sat nearly opposite, where she could easily overhear the young lady, whose voice was decidedly penetrating, so West made no serious attempt to be otherwise than complacent. Once the smiling Natalie appealed to him, familiarly calling him "Matt" across the table, and he responded with equal intimacy, yet her eyes avoided his, and it was plainly evident to his self-consciousness, that her remark was merely part of the play. ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... enjoying the early spring air, the virginal complexion of the April landscape. She surveyed the scene from Isabelle's motor with complacent superiority. How much better she had arranged her life than either Margaret or Isabelle! After the talk with Percy the previous evening, she felt a new sense of power and competency, with a touch of gratitude for that husband ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... complacent and apparently confident, but his feelings were not shared by his young friends. To them it seemed as if their efforts to cut down the distance by which the Varmint II was leading were vain. The speed of the two boats apparently was equal. The bows alike flung the water far from either ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... was—and is—unmistakable. There was always a purring softness in it. He used to remind me at school of a sleek, complacent cat, and I hate ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... their status, satisfied to have arrived, jealous of rivals, are the dead weight which ties Germany fast to bureaucratic government and to a policy of no change. They represent, even in educated Germany, a complacent mediocrity; indignant at rebuke, indifferent to progress, heedless of experience, impatient of criticism, haters of haste, and jealous of superiority. Even Bismarck, the creator of this bureaucracy, lamented the insolence and bad ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... lips is the praise of those we love! Fardorougha, who, a moment before, looked upon his infant's face with an unmoved countenance, felt incapable of withstanding the flattery of his own servants when uttered in favor of the child. His eye became complacent, and while Nogher held his hand, a slight pressure in return was proof sufficient that his heart beat in accordance with the hopes they expressed of all that the undeveloped future ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... a complacent sip. "It stayed with you, did it?" And the light of triumph, flushing for an instant his rugged features, showed when it waned how pale and drawn they were by the feverish tension of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the aspects of that season as Mr. Jenks's image presides; in the light of which I may perhaps again rather wonder at my imputation to the general picture of so much amenity. Clearly the good man was a civiliser—whacks and all; and by some art not now to be detected. He was a complacent classic—which was what my brother's claim for him, I dare say, mostly represented; though that passed over the head of my tenth year. It was a good note for him in this particular that, deploring the facile text-books of Doctor Anthon of Columbia College, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... a small square building of brick, one story in height—probably the porter's lodge and tool-house of former days. There is a large fruit garden attached to the house, which is in excellent condition, taking life comfortably, and having the complacent air of a well-preserved beau of the ancien regime. The Langdon mansion was owned and long occupied by the late Rev. Dr. Burroughs, for a period of forty-seven years the esteemed rector or St. ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... what books have to offer and what even relatively earnest readers take the trouble to accept from them, I am appalled (or should be appalled, did I not know that the world is moving) by the sheer inefficiency, the bland, complacent failure of the earnest reader. I am like yourself, the spectacle of inefficiency rouses ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... the mystery of their tiny slits of eyes, drawn back and up so far that the tight-drawn lids can scarcely open; the mystery of their expression, which seems to denote inner thoughts of a silly, vague, complacent absurdity, a world of ideas absolutely closed to ourselves. And I think as I gaze at them: "How far we are from this Japanese people! how ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... was indeed too solemn a thing for words, this watching from the darkness while an invisible death, let loose by our own hands, stole down upon our complacent enemies. ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... a little scream of dismay; but the Admiral, who didn't appear to be in the least disturbed by this accident, sat up and gazed about with a complacent smile. Then, getting on his feet, he took a pipe out of his pocket, and lit it with infinite relish; and having turned up his coat-collar by way of keeping the rest of his clothes dry, he started off down the ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... responses: anon, looking into his correspondence with Count a Lasco and the emperors Adolphus and Maximilian; and pronouncing himself, with the most heartfelt complacency, the greatest genius of his age![332] In the midst of these self-complacent reveries, let us imagine we see his wife and little ones intruding; beseeching him to burn his books and instruments; and reminding him that there was neither a silver spoon, nor a loaf of bread, in the cupboard. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... superfluous link or two, or it may be a superfluous stone for sale, that can answer any immediate purpose. But you may ask, fair kinsman, how you are to come by such toys as this." (He shook his chain with complacent triumph.) "They hang not on every bush—they grow not in the fields like the daffodils, with whose stalks children make knights' collars. What then?—you may get such where I got this, in the service of the good King of France, where there is always wealth to be ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... is not more often so, but the zeal of the West mars as well as mends, and in imparting Western beliefs and Western learning carelessly and needlessly destroys Eastern ideals of conduct and manner, often more reasonable and more attractive than our own. The complacent cocksureness of the Occidental attitude toward Oriental ways and standards has little to rest on. We have reviled the people of the East in the past for their unwillingness to admit that there was anything we could teach them, and they are ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... it by the entrance of some half-dozen dusky musicians swathed in white and carrying various strangely fashioned instruments, with which they squatted down in a semi-circle by the opposite wall, and began to twang, and drub, and squall with the complacent cacophony of an Eastern orchestra. Clearly Fakrash was determined that nothing should be wanting to make ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... had set my teeth on edge. My diseased consciousness was more intensely and continually occupied with his thoughts and emotions, than with those of any other person who came in my way. I was perpetually exasperated with the petty promptings of his conceit and his love of patronage, with his self-complacent belief in Bertha Grant's passion for him, with his half- pitying contempt for me—seen not in the ordinary indications of intonation and phrase and slight action, which an acute and suspicious mind is on the watch for, but in all ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... to the sweating employer, and leads unimaginative bishops, who have never missed a meal in their lives, and who know nothing of the indescribable bitterness of a handicapped entry into this world, to draw a complacent contrast with irreligious France. It is a result that must necessarily be recognized in its reality, and faced by these men who will presently emerge to rule the world; men who will have neither the plea of ignorance, nor moral stupidity, nor ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... tales. For those who, like myself, have never ceased to regard William II as a creature of unbridled pride, it is enough from time to time to note one of his actions, so as to form our judgment of the man and to be able to predict to what heights of complacent admiration for himself and of severity for others he is likely to ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... all enchanted him. His delight reveals almost Wertherian powers of "sensibility." Even the family troubles could not damp his ardour. His father had embarked on questionable speculations, which now threatened the Buonapartes with bankruptcy, unless the French Government proved to be complacent and generous. With the hope of pressing one of the family claims on the royal exchequer, the second son procured an extension of furlough and sped to Paris. There at the close of 1787 he spent several weeks, hopefully endeavouring to extract money from the bankrupt Government. It was ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... dashing figure, fine fair hair, keen cold gray eyes, a haughty nostril and upper lip: a beauty of the patrician American type. The other was shorter but also excessively thin, with dark dancing eyes, a warm color, a coquettish nose and pouting lips—which somehow invoked the complacent visage of the late Herr Graf Niebuhr—and a brilliant smile. In a moment Gisela recognized Ann Howland Prentiss and Kate Terriss, now Mrs. Tolby. This American friend of her childhood had married an American whose business kept him in London, and her path and Gisela's had never crossed since ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... dead. She dressed neatly and was vain over her hands, which were certainly very beautiful. Dunyasha made a show of great disdain for all her admirers; she listened to their compliments with a self-complacent little smile and if she answered them at all it was usually some exclamation such as: "Yes! Likely! As though I should! What next!" These exclamations were always on her lips. Dunyasha had spent about ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... was first pricked by the inexplicable disappearance of the girl on their marriage day. He had laid that disappearance to foul play. That she could have left him through any personal aversion never entered his complacent young head. ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... ascetic, about this time the two sisters saw approaching near, that steed of complacent appearance named Uchchaihsravas who was worshipped by the gods, that gem of steeds, who arose at the churning of the Ocean for nectar. Divine, graceful, perpetually young, creation's master-piece, and of irresistible vigour, it was ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... been ordered from him; and the gondoliers, meanwhile, in their splendid liveries, held converse with other gondoliers in lazily drifting barks, with hatchments of other noble houses embroidered on their sleeves; and their tones were strident and quarrelsome, or self-complacent and patronizing, as the quality of the silken sashes which displayed the color of their house was heavier ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... followed the lawyer's confession. But he was painfully conscious of what now seemed to him a monstrous situation! Here was, he believed, the actual accomplice of the road agents calmly receiving the complacent and puerile confessions of the men who were seeking to outwit them. Could he, in ordinary justice to them, to himself, or the mission he conceived he was pursuing, refrain from exposing her, or warning them privately? But ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... confirmed by generous time, but the handsome woman of considerably more than forty whose entrance had all but coincided with that of Lord John either belonged, for the eye, to no such complacent company or enjoyed a relation to it in which the odd twists and turns of history must have been more frequent than any dull avenue or easy sequence. Lady Sandgate was shiningly modern, and perhaps at no point more so than by the effect of her express repudiation of a mundane future ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... love with me! really you flatter me," said Major Harper, looking down and tapping his boot, with his own self-complacent, regretful smile. ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... dark when Dr. Lacey arrived. Happy as a bird, Fanny sprang up the steps. Everything about her seemed homelike and cheerful. Kind, dusky faces peered at her from every corner, while Aunt Dilsey, with a complacent smile, stood ready to receive her. Fanny was prepared to like everything, but there was something peculiarly pleasing to her in Aunt Dilsey's broad, good-humored face. Going up to her she took both her ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... he was allowed to leave Berlin and travel to England as a member of Sir EDWARD GOSCHEN'S party. In the later portion of this book Mr. WILE castigates us, not too unkindly, but, perhaps, a little too insistently, for not being ready, for not realising what war means and for being self-complacent. Since his criticisms are based on affection for us we can make an effort to kiss the rod, especially as he discerns signs of improvement in us. Incidentally I may add that he is, perhaps, not altogether fair to Lord HALDANE, but, per contra, he gives Lord NORTHCLIFFE ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various
... play-gowns, as she still called them, but upon reflection decided that it would be hardly respectful when she had been invited to go visiting with such kind and proper friends, and indeed Serena had given her a hasty and complacent glance from head to foot when she came down dressed in one of the prettiest of the London ginghams. Mrs. Duncan, Betty's kind friend and adviser, had been sure that these ginghams would all four be needed to clothe ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... with some fancy work in her hands, often watched his deep abstraction in wondering awe, and occasionally questioned him in regard to his thoughts and studies; but as his explanations were almost unintelligible, she settled down to the complacent belief that her father was one of the most learned ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... misrepresentation. I have seen more of this war and other wars than Miss Addams, and I know all war to be wicked, wasteful, and unintelligent, and where Miss Addams can furnish one argument in favor of peace I will furnish a hundred. But against this insult, flung by a complacent and self-satisfied woman at men who gave their lives for men, I protest. And I believe that with me are all those women and men who respect courage ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... even go further than this, Mr. Winkle,' continued Mr. Phunky, in a most smooth and complacent manner. 'Did you ever see anything in Mr. Pickwick's manner and conduct towards the opposite sex, to induce you to believe that he ever contemplated matrimony of late years, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... influences were beginning to work—the sign of the Katapunan. There was hardly a man in "B" Troop but had his querida or sweetheart among the native women. As one of the black soldiers remarked: "Ef de gem'men Filypinos had 'a' been as complacent as de ladies, der nevah would 'a' bin no insurrecshun nohow." In their off hours the men, in their grim anger, confided their troubles to these dusky females, and the crafty women began to work upon the spirit of rebellion amongst the simple ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... ariseth,' Ghatotkacha, together with all the Rakshasas, had ere this already gone away. Those magnanimous ones passed many months in the hermitage of Arshtishena, witnessing many marvels. And as the Pandavas were sporting there pleasantly, there came to see them some complacent vow-observing Munis and Charanas of high fortune, and pure souls. And those foremost of the Bharata race conversed with them on earthly topics. And it came to pass that when several days has passed, Suparna all of a sudden carried off an exceedingly powerful and mighty Naga, living in the large ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... regarded this silence as the effect of his awe- inspiring presence, became rather more complacent; but casting his eyes round the room, and perceiving the two strangers, he was visibly surprised, and looking at Cecilia for some explanation, seemed to stand suspended from the purpose of his visit till he ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... school had not taken sufficient account. Macon was right when he said that "every generation, like a single person, has opinions of its own, as much so in politics as anything else," and that 'the opinions of Jefferson and those who were with him were forgotten.' And Jefferson himself, in his complacent reflection that even the name of Federalist was "extinguished by the battle of New Orleans," did not see that the Republican party of the old school had been snuffed out by the same event. The new democracy, whose claims to rule were based, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... redoubted Corporal, who was by no means pleased with the change in his master's plans, lingered behind, whistling the most melancholy tune in his collection. No young lady, anticipative of balls or coronets, had ever felt more complacent satisfaction in a journey to London than that which had cheered the athletic breast of the veteran on finding himself, at last, within one day's gentle march of the metropolis. And no young lady, suddenly ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ceased as quickly as it had begun and in a minute they were all as complacent and jolly ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... Pryme, saw the disappointed look on the substitute's face and was half sorry for him. The whistle blew again and Don was crouching once more beside Thursby—why, no, it wasn't Thursby any longer! It was Peters, stout, complacent Peters, wearing a strangely fierce and ugly look ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... curly, as smiling as her picture. She was carrying pink, gauzy favours and a spear of flowers. Undeniably in her voice there was pleasure. Her glance was startled but already complacent. She paused on the steps, ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... wing'd accents thus exclaim'd. Prince! I am here—oh, pity me! repress Thine own, and pacify thy father's wrath, That he destroy not me, through fierce revenge Of their iniquities who have consumed 430 His wealth, and, in their folly scorn'd his son. To whom Ulysses, ever-wise, replied, Smiling complacent. Fear not; my own son Hath pleaded for thee. Therefore (taught thyself That truth) teach others the superior worth Of benefits with injuries compared. But go ye forth, thou and the sacred bard, That ye may ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... faced Ross and then shouted an order at his companion. The other spun Murdock around, bringing his hands down behind him to clamp his wrists together. Once again Ross fronted the screen and saw Baldy watching the whole scene with an expression suggesting that he had been shocked out of his complacent superiority. ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... published by John Murray on December 10, 1812, when "El Gitano," as the enthusiastic Ford dubbed the author, literally woke up to find himself famous. His experience for a season was that of "the man Sterne"; he dined with peers, Ambassadors, and Bishops, and, like Major Pendennis, was particularly complacent with Bishops. We might here for a moment compare his position to that of Johnson in 1763. He had gone down into the arena and fought his wild beasts, and had come up triumphant, as Johnson had done ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... as understood by the theologians, is distinct from desire, and also distinct from the definite intention of effecting the sexual act, although it may lead to those things. It is the voluntary and complacent dallying in imagination with voluptuous thoughts, when no effort is made to repel them. It is, as Aquinas and others point out, constituted by this act of complacent dallying, and has no reference to the duration ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... this oppressive treatment in view of its astonishing consequences, but a claim to approbation on account of its exercise. Would not such effrontery amaze us? Would not an honest indignation burn within us? Should we look with a more complacent aspect upon the bigots who kindled those fires of persecution around the Puritans, which, but for the interposition of Heaven, had consumed them ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison |
