"Self-satisfied" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... why your good deeds with such pride do you scan, And why that self-satisfied smile At the shilling you gave to the poor working man, That lifted you ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... lost an opening to make peace," said an inner voice. "You've given the yielding plan a fair trial, and it has failed," said self-justification—the swiftest pleader I know. "There are some people, with self-satisfied, arbitrary tempers, upon whom gentleness is worse than wasted, because it misleads them. They have that remnant of savage notions which drives them to mistake generosity for weakness. The only way to convince them is to hit them harder than they hit ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... spirit. But we may evade his bright glance, and close our ears to his voice, and refuse to consider his claims, and deal falsely with his arguments; we may reject his offers, and, shrinking back from his touch and his helping hand, retire into the gloom of self-satisfied pride, preferring the darkness to the light; or we may make merry with Heaven's ambassador, and mock him as they did the prophet of old; or cry out, "Away with him!" as the world cried to the Lord of light and life. And what if the second ambassador never comes again ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... people who write treatises on education to give forth their rules and theories with a self-satisfied air, as if a human being were a thing to be made up, like a batch of bread, out of a given number of materials combined by an infallible recipe. Take your child, and do thus and so for a given number of years, and he comes ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in all this is that this old system, so self-sufficient and self-satisfied, should have groped its way toward a divine sympathizer in human form, a living and helpful god among men. Hinduism had not been wanting in anthropomorphisms: it had imagined the presence of God in a thousand visible ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... Sunday, a considerable part of the inconsiderable congregation expect to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the pavement under the Dedlock displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no doubt he is surprised that I don't. For he is, by heaven, the most self-satisfied, and the shallowest, and the most coxcombical ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... intellectual life. He had no time and could command no thought for anything else. If he failed, or barely avoided failure, perpetual anxiety ate out his heart; and if he succeeded, his success usually made him a grosser and more hopelessly self-satisfied materialist than if he had failed. There was no hope for his mind or soul either way. If at the end of life his efforts had won him a little breathing space, it could be of no high use to him, for the spiritual and intellectual parts had become atrophied ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... had been spectators rather than actors in the siege. I remember being seized with strange feelings when I saw their little air of derision and their sneers as they looked down towards the Palace in pleasurable anticipation. They imagined, these self-satisfied people who had done so little to defend themselves, that a day of reckoning had at last come when they would be able to do as they liked towards this detestable Palace, which had given them so many unhappy ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... being named formally at first, and in the first two words, 'I thank thee,' but that is only formal introduction, and in all the rest of his prayer there is not a trace of praying. Such a self-satisfied gentleman had no need to ask for anything, so he brought no petitions. He uses the conventional language of thanksgiving, but his real meaning is to praise himself to God, not to thank God for himself. God is named once. All the rest is I, I, I. He had no longing for communion, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... been strange if all this dangerous flattery, together with the pleasure the dear child had in bestowing kindnesses, which, after all, cost her but little, had not so worked on her mind as to make her vain and self-satisfied. ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... to them but the contempt of pain and death whenever an extravagant enjoyment of life must finally be exchanged for them. This seal, therefore, of their former grandeur they accordingly impressed on their tragic heroes with a self-satisfied ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... of color is thrown into the red, gold-fringed scarf of the horseman, fluttering backward over his shoulder. Yet the face of the king is, as it should be, the principal point of the picture,—the small-eyed, heavy-mouthed, red-lipped, fair, self-satisfied face of these Austrian despots. It is a handsomer face than most of Velazquez, as it was probably painted from memory and lenient tradition. For Philip III. was gathered to his fathers in the Escorial before Velazquez came up from Andalusia to seek his fortune at the court. ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... to Langham, fresh from the absolute seclusion of college rooms in vacation, that everything looked flat and stale beside her, beside the flash of her white arms, the gleam of her hair, the confident grace of every movement. He thought her much too self-conscious and self-satisfied; and she certainly did not make herself agreeable to him; but for all that he could hardly take his eyes off her; and it occurred to him once or twice to envy Robert the easy childish friendliness she showed to him, and to him alone of the party. The ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... always come off so easily. Once he was made the victim of a joke which, in any one less self-satisfied, might have effectually checked his foolish propensity. It was a wet day, and the boys were all assembled in the big play-room, not knowing exactly what to do, and ready for the first bit of fun which might ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the world, with a swing in his tread, Our hero self-satisfied goes; With his cabbage-tree hat on the back of his head, And the string of it ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... regard to villages or fields, are not incapable of amendment. One presumes that the Roumanians, who have no lack of other international problems, will be wise enough to discard certain dicta of their Liberal party and of Bratiano, its self-satisfied leader, to whom all subjects seem great if they have passed through his mind. One particular dictum which the Roumanians ought to cast aside is that which insists upon the indivisibility of the Banat. Another Roumanian ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... man of the name of Boilay washes the dirty linen of Dr. Veron, and corrects his faults of grammar, of history, &c. Boilay is a small, sharp, stout, little man, self-possessed, self-satisfied, with great readiness and tact. Give him but the heads of a subject and he can make out a very readable and plausible article. Boilay is the real working editor of the Constitutionnel, and is supported by a M. Clarigny, a M. Malitourne, and others not ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... With a self-satisfied smile Britz slowly ascended the steps, intent on obtaining the documents which he had left in ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... her all he knew. Lucy's comments were very characteristic. She was equally hard on Daddy's ill-behaviour and Dora's religion, with a little self-satisfied hardness that would have provoked David but for its childish naivete. Many of the things that she said of Dora, however, showed real ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... finally released from attentions which she thought as ill-bestowed as they were certainly disagreeable. Not so, however, with David Muir; accustomed to rebuffs, and familiar with the virtue of perseverance, he saw no reason to despair, though the half-menacing, half-self-satisfied manner in which he shook his head towards the retreating girl might have betrayed designs as sinister as they were determined. While he was thus occupied, the Pathfinder approached, and got within a ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... self-satisfied prig," retorted Burns. "Hullo! Somebody's coming. Tell me what to do, Martha. Do I run to meet them and rush them up to Ellen, or do I display a studied indifference? I never 'received' at a ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... and suspicion of human nature! The self-centered and self-satisfied citizens of San Pasqual had condemned the vegetable venture from the start. It had been too radical a departure from the desert order of things, and the fact that a mere stranger had conceived the idea sufficed to damn the enterprise even with those ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... hour; and had there been any one there to see, he might have been observed to shake the contents of a little paper, a fine white powder, into the water carafe which stood filled upon the wash-stand in Seabrooke's alcove. Then, with the self-satisfied air of one who has accomplished a great feat, he stole from the room ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... I looked at him, and saw a large, self-satisfied looking man wearing an expansive smile and expensive apparel. Clothes the very best procurable, jewelry just inside the limits of good taste—he bore himself like a gentleman, yet there was an unmistakable air of ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... well-meaning, though, perhaps, a little too much self-satisfied lady concluded her remark, she glanced her eye at the perfectly unconscious subject of the close of her speech. Gertrude had, as usual, when her aunt chose to favour her governess with any of her family reminiscences, turned her head aside, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... among the branches of the tree above the well-fed, self-satisfied witch-doctor. He made no noise that the dull ears of man could hear above the soughing of the gentle jungle breeze among the undulating foliage of the upper terraces, and when he came close above the black man he halted, well concealed by ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with conflicting gusts a choppy sea, His eyes, still greedy of their visions, Fastened a swarthy town enisled in wheat, And to the ebon threshold of each house, Conjured forth the man that each was planned for: Great creatures smiling with his father's smile, Muscular, wealthy and self-satisfied, Wearing loud-coloured raiment, earrings, chains, Armlet and buckle, all of clanking gold. His spirit drank from theirs great draughts of pride And read their minds more clearly than his own; All, with one counsel like a chorus, dinned His soul that then was ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... a drawling voice, and Squire Cassilis turns to regard him with his usual supercilious smile. Indeed Squire Cassilis seems to be even more self-satisfied, and smiling than ordinary, to-night,—or at ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... harsh voice and self-satisfied demeanour, who had started them upon this adventure, was still ahead; but even she quailed when, upon laying her hand upon the panel of the door she was the first to reach, she felt it to be cold and knew it to be made not of wood but ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... struck four; M. Verduret, who was punctuality itself, appeared. He was more red-faced and self-satisfied, if possible, than ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... words must suffice to give a summary of his character, and will exhibit some singular contrarieties. He had varied but not very profound learning; was earnest, self-satisfied, overbearing in argument, or, as Sir Walter Scott styles it, despotic. As distinguished for his powers of conversation as for his writings, he always talked ex cathedra, and was exceedingly impatient of opposition. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the pink and white daughters is amazed at the absence of police. In the very heart of the noblest home of liberty which Europe has seen our astonishing nation lives and moves with as contented and self-satisfied an ignorance of the laws, the history, the character of the country or its people, as if Switzerland were Timbuctoo. Still, even sublime ignorance such as this is better than to listen to the young thing of thirty-five summers, with ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... art,—they would love a style that pleased but did not arouse them, that spoke to the senses rather than to the imagination—a school of art placid, precise, full of repose, and thoroughly material like their life—an art, in a word, realistic and self-satisfied, in which they could see themselves reflected as they were and as they ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... we call him insane. Other visionaries wakened rudely to life as it is, accept it as unchangeable fate, lose all their true ideals and become cynical, or victims of utter depression for whom life holds nothing that matters. Still others go on through the years self-satisfied and serene because they simply refuse to believe unpleasant truths; they "pretend" that their wishes are realities, and acknowledge as facts only the pleasant things of existence. The first two groups have failed to adapt self to life as it is, and the mind is lost ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... hustled about at school he would retire to his cubicle and examine his features in a looking-glass, and he would sigh and say, "It is a weak face. I shall never carve a place for myself in the world." But as years went on he became either less self-conscious or more self-satisfied. The world, he found, made a niche for him as it did for every one. Decision of character might come later—or he might have it without knowing. At all events he had got a sense of beauty and a sense of humour, two most desirable gifts. The ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... Teddy's evil genius that caused Bunk, the house cat, to come strolling past the door at just that moment. He was so sleek and lazy and self-satisfied that Teddy was strongly tempted to shake him ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... by the self-satisfied look upon the restaurant-keeper's face, that the hot-tempered man supposed that he had done a very smart thing in thus disposing of Matt's wares by throwing the bundle into the muddy gutter of ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... passages as those we have recorded were nothing uncommon between these two young men, they were very good friends on the whole, the very dissimilarity that provoked their squabbles saving them from any more serious rivalry. In reality, no two people could be less alike: Kearney being a slow, plodding, self-satisfied, dull man, of very ordinary faculties; while the other was an indolent, discursive, sharp-witted fellow, mastering whatever he addressed himself to with ease, but so enamoured of novelty that he rarely ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... supernatural, or in every way less like the typical ghost-seer, was surely never produced than the round and rubicund little person I found in conversation with the Atherleys. Mrs. Mallet was a brunette who might once have considered herself a beauty, to judge by the self-conscious and self-satisfied simper which the ghastliest recollections were unable to banish. As I entered I caught only the last ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... short-tempered youth, but there was something in the tone of this self-satisfied lawyer's clerk ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... idiom and highly expressive, contrasting the upright bearing of the self-satisfied man with the slouch of the miserable and the skirt-trailing of the woman in grief. I do not see the necessity of such ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... their civilized realms, involving an unbelievable waste in labor and time, and sapping the intelligence talk is supposed to upbuild. In a simian civilization, great halls will be erected for lectures, and great throngs will actually pay to go inside at night to hear some self-satisfied talk-maker chatter for hours. Almost any subject will do for a lecture, or talk; yet very few subjects will be counted important enough for the average man to do any thinking on them, ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... had flashed up within him, not against the system, but against that tall stooping man, worn with work, who was at once its representative and its flower. Up there the great man stood—so his thoughts ran—complacent, self-satisfied, careless of the harm which his system wrought. Down here upon the grass walked a man warped and perverted out of his natural course. He had been sent to Eton and to Oxford, and had been filled with longings and desires which could have no fruition; he had been trained to delicate ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... visiting-book. Let no minister who would be found of God clothed and canopied over with humility ever lose sight of his communion-roll and pastoral visitation- book. I defy any minister to keep those records always open before him and yet remain a proud man, a self-respecting, self-satisfied, self-righteous man. For, what secret histories of his own folly, neglect, rashness, offensiveness, hot-headedness, self-seeking, self-pleasing vanity, now puffed up over one man, now cast down and full of gloom over another, ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... bestride his hack, and, in triumph at his trick on the postmaster, rattled along the road homeward as fast as the beast could carry him. He came into the squire's presence; his face beaming with delight, and an air of self-satisfied superiority in his manner, quite unaccountable to his master, until he pulled forth his hand, which had been grubbing up his prizes from the bottom of his pocket, and, holding three letters over his head while he said: "Look at ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... and the wonder of divine grace in the conversion of one who had been so very many years considered as a self-righteous Pharisee. I believe I endeavoured to show that the term was often improperly applied to conscientious but ignorant inquirers, who are far from self-satisfied, and who, when the Gospel is set before them, find the thing which they had long been groping after. However that may be, I observed the lad who entered with Mr. Old riveted in attention with every mark and symptom of intelligence ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... once worded it) in a song so rapid, so shrill, so loud, and yet so delicately modulated, that you wonder at the amount of soul within that tiny body; and then stops suddenly, as a child who has said its lesson, or got to the end of the sermon, gives a self-satisfied flirt of his tail, and goes in ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... "the battle-field," "the battle," and "the crown"—each with an illustration, an anecdote, and a verse of poetry. Carmichael recognised the type, and already saw the new minister of Kilbogie, smug and self-satisfied, handing round cream and sugar in the Rabbi's old study, while his wife, a stout young woman in gay clothing, pours tea from a pot of florid design, and bearing a blazing marriage inscription. There would be a soiree in the kirk, where the Rabbi had opened the mysteries of ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... with His people's faults, and who has all the authority of God in doing so. This is the second group that actually has not one good thing to be commended. There is no false teaching, no compromise with evil; they are simply asleep. Rich, influential, self-satisfied, grown fat and sleek,—so they seem to their neighbours and themselves. Wretched, poor, blind, naked,—so they are. And the chastening threatened will be of the severe radical sort that ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... self-satisfied, as well he might be, for the entire countryside admitted his skill, and even in the operating rooms of the hospitals in the city not far distant. Doctor Dexter's name was well known. He had thought seriously, at times, of seeking a wider field, but he liked the country ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... sometimes on fire with indignation when Malevsky approached her, with a sly, fox-like action, leaned gracefully on the back of her chair, and began whispering in her ear with a self-satisfied and ingratiating little smile, while she folded her arms across her bosom, looked intently at him and smiled too, and shook ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... again at the paper. "Beautiful, beautiful!" exclaimed he, with a self-satisfied smile. "My pen has shot nothing less than bomb-shells and grape, and my ink has turned into whole streams of the enemy's blood. And why should I not be bold, it being perfectly safe, since the king must certainly be victorious, and the enemy has no idea of visiting Berlin? Tschernitscheff ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... no man ever lived, I suppose, easier for every little creature crawling about the earth in self-satisfied futility to criticise and ridicule. For myself, I can do nothing but admire, revere, honour, and love this extraordinary old realist, who saved so many thousands of human beings from utmost misery; who aroused all the Churches of the Christian religion throughout the ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... among his students for the caustic wit had in one of his classes, one year, a young man who was both ignorant and conceited. One morning he made a specially self-satisfied display of both these characteristics, and the professor said he would like to see him at ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... scene, in which a pretty, saucy girl, and a lazy, lordly lad were the principal actors. Down came the lawyer to the fat, sleek, clean-looking negro barber, to be shaved, and then away up to the court house, with a jaunty, swinging, self-satisfied air, that said plainly enough—'Find me a smarter man than I, will you?' A tipsy porter came staggering under a load for the down boat; a dusty miller wended his way to a flour store; a little contraband carried home a fish ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the smug, self-satisfied and formal religion of the time; had every church-door locked against him; sympathized with the American Colonies in their struggle for freedom; and founded a denomination which today is second in wealth and numbers ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... gold in the centre of it. He had clear blue eyes, brown curly hair, and an easy, offhand swagger, which last was the result of a sea-faring life and example; but he had a kindly and happy, rather than a boastful or self-satisfied, expression of face, as he bowled along with his hands in his pockets, kicking all the stones out of his way, and whistling furiously. Sometimes he burst into a song, and once or twice he laughed, smote his thigh, and cheered, but never for a moment did he slacken his pace, although ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... to education as it stands to-day, the same self-satisfied, inflexible smile of the crowd is upon it all. We see little but the massing of machinery, the crowding together of numbers of teachers and numbers of courses and numbers of students, and the practical total ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... dying—who had, in her own person, descended upon us even as snow might fall from the clouds! Though unable to walk, she had arrived borne aloft in an armchair (her mode of conveyance for the last five years), as brisk, aggressive, self-satisfied, bolt-upright, loudly imperious, and generally abusive as ever. In fact, she looked exactly as she had on the only two occasions when I had seen her since my appointment to the General's household. Naturally enough, I stood petrified with astonishment. ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... broad fronts, with solid-set feet of sidewalk ending in square-toed curbstone, with an air about them as if they had thrust their hard hands into their wealthy pockets forever, with a character of arctic reserve, and portly dignity, and a well-dressed, full-fed, self-satisfied, opulent, stony, repellant aspect to each, which says plainly: "I belong to a rich family, of ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... clerk in a tone of triumph. He had picked up something further, and, conscious that he had done so by his own ingenuity, was for a moment triumphant. But when he came to think over it all alone,—and he spent many hours just at present in thinking of this matter,—he was less inclined to be self-satisfied. He felt that a great responsibility rested with him, and that this weighed upon him peculiarly at the present moment. He was quite sure not only that a later will had been made, but that it was in existence. It ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... this question, Isabel told her little story. Observing Sharon's face while she was speaking, Moody saw that he was not paying the smallest attention to the narrative. His sharp, shameless black eyes watched the girl's face absently; his gross lips curled upwards in a sardonic and self-satisfied smile. He was evidently setting a trap for her of some kind. Without a word of warning—while Isabel was in the middle of a sentence—the trap opened, with the opening ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... whole vicinity of Hooley Hill Is smitten with a devastating chill, And the once cheerful neighbourhood of Pleck Has got the hump and got it in the neck. The residential gentry of Pont Rug No longer seem self-satisfied or smug, And the distressed inhabitants of Nantlle Are wrapped in discontent as in a mantle. Good folk who Halted once at Apsley Guise Are now afflicted with a sad surprise, While Oddington, another famous Halt, Is silent as a sad funereal vault; And the dejected denizens of Cheadle Look ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... along with an entire self-satisfaction, a vein of pitiless sense, which enabled her to see herself as others might see her, and which saved her from the follies often incident to the self-satisfied. She considered herself a beauty; she thought, and with reason, that she would be well worth looking at in her wedding-clothes, but she also told herself that it was quite possible that some remarks might ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Madonna Vittoria smiled, self-satisfied, as all women smiled when Guido so addressed them. "Why, the sacrifice of the pearl to the pig," she answered; and she still smiled as she spoke, but there was a kind of anger in her eyes. "The sacrifice of a clean child to a coarse churl, the sacrifice ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... dominated Oxford that liberalism could hardly raise its head, and was despised as well as hated. Only after Newman's secession could the regeneration of the University begin. Then indeed liberalism came in like a flood, though it was a very shallow flood in some cases. This was the day of the self-satisfied young rationalist, 'ecarte par une plaisanterie des croyances dont la raison d'un Pascal ne reussit pas a se degager,' as Renan says—an orgy of facile free thought which after a generation was ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... The charge is sometimes made by persons who consider that I desire to do right, but think that my understanding and intellectual faculties are guided and blinded by that emotion. Others are not so charitable. One very self-satisfied critic, Mr. William Lloyd Garrison, sometimes in ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... with vanity &c. n.; inflate, puff up, turn up, turn one's head. Adj. vain, vain as a peacock, proud as a peacock; conceited, overweening, pert, forward; vainglorious, high-flown; ostentatious &c. 882; puffed up, inflated, flushed. self-satisfied, self-confident, self-sufficient, self-flattering, self-admiring, self-applauding, self-glorious, self-opinionated; entente &c. (wrongheaded) 481; wise in one's own conceit, pragmatical[obs3], overwise[obs3], pretentious, priggish; egotistic, egotistical; soi-disant &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... other room. He bounced in on the balls of his feet, clapped his hands together, and dry-washed them briskly. "We're in!" he said, with businesslike glee. "Image, gentlemen! That's what does it: Image!" He was a tall, rather bony-faced man in his early forties, and his manner was that of the self-satisfied businessman who is quite certain that he knows all of the answers and all of the questions. "Create an image that the public ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... I think I liked you better before. I don't think I like you with this touch of aureole. People seem to me so horribly self-satisfied when they get a change of heart—they take such a fearful lot of credit to themselves on the ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... best lights; and all titivated and polished up and varnished on the walls, and adapted, as it were, to the situation. You may know an R. A. on the private view-day by the broad, expanding jollity of his visage, if he be a man of that stamp, or by a certain quiet, self-satisfied smile of self-complacence, if he be a man ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... noticed one young girl whose looks would have drawn attention anywhere, whispering an address from beneath an enormous feathered hat to the driver of a taxicab, while her companion, a pleasant-looking, fresh-coloured boy, for he was scarcely more, entered the vehicle, a self-satisfied air upon his face. She sprang in also, and the cab with its occupants glided away out of my ken ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... remark a round, rosy, jolly fellow, shining from top to toe, "philandering" down Regent-street, with a self-satisfied grin, that seems to say, "Match me that, demme!" and casting looks of pity—mellowed through his eye-glass—on all passers, you may fairly conclude that that happy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... encampment nearer us, the hunters on the other hand had obtained only eight seals. Gladness and want of care for the morrow at all events prevailed here also, and our skin-clad friends availed themselves of the opportunity to exhibit a self-satisfied disdain of the simple provisions from the Vega which the day before they had begged for with gestures so pitiful, and on which they must, in a day or two, again depend. The children, who had fallen off during recent ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... disappeared in regions of which I knew nothing and whither even my daring imagination presumed not to follow. And the vision never left my eyes nor her form my heart, and I went out in my turn, a burning, eager, determined man, where in a short half hour before I had entered cold and self-satisfied, without ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... the lane at headlong speed, while the dog, seeing the intruder depart, only uttered a few self-satisfied growls, and returned to his mat in the porch, conscious that he had done his duty. At the same moment, Mrs Valentine opened her window and put out a night-capped head into the moonlight, and craning it all round, to see what was the ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... was a record absolutely beyond criticism, before him a great Christian opportunity. We made the mistake, however, of ignoring the great influence upon our civic prosperity of the business impulse of the West. We in New York and Brooklyn were a self-satisfied community, unmindful of our dependence upon the rest of the American continent. My Western trips were my recreation. An occasional lecture tour accomplished for me what yachting or baseball does for others. My congregation understood this, and never complained ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... Tracy was put on. He stood up in his usual self-satisfied way, looking admiringly at his boots, and running his delicate white hand through his scented hair. Mr Paton watched him with a somewhat contemptuous expression, as though he were thinking what a pity it was that any boy should be such a little puppy. ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... as interesting," I added with a self-satisfied smirk; "for then one can guess what has gone before as well as what is ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... the afternoon in the Place de la Bastille, or the Place de la Madeleine. On Sundays, his favorite locality was the Place de la Bourse. Mangin was a well-formed, stately-looking individual, with a most self-satisfied countenance, which seemed to say: "I am master here; and all that my auditors have to do is, to listen and obey." Arriving at his destined stopping-place, his carriage halted. His servant handed him a case ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... "I trust you will never learn to gossip. It is purely a trade, carried on by a breed of fawning Judases—of self-satisfied butchers, to deal in the choicest cuts of their unsuspecting friends' characters. The shelter of my roof must also afford protection to the good name ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... humble? The power was from God, the thoughts by which the power moves were God's thoughts first. "Oh, God, I think Thy thoughts after Thee," cried John Kepler, when he caught sight of the great law of planetary motion. But mere thought, self-satisfied, seeking no unity in God, owning no dependence, boasting of itself, counting it hardship that it cannot know all where it knows so much, this is the pride of thought, and this is not of the Father, but is of the world. How arrogant it is! ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... try." Garlock grinned in frankly self-satisfied amusement. "However, the best you can do is lithium-hydride fusion missiles in the hundreds-of-megatons range. Firecrackers. Every once in a while a planet has to try a few such things on us before it will believe that we are powerful as well as friendly. ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... also a certain peculiar devil-may-care recklessness about the self-satisfied swagger of his gait, and the free and easy glance of his sharp black eye, united with a temper that nothing could ruffle, and a courage nothing could daunt. With such qualities as these, he had been the prime ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... it can re-establish liberty, set free the republic, deliver our country from shame, and drive back to his dust, to his oblivion, to his cloaca, this imperial ruffian, this prince pick-pocket, this gypsy king, this traitor, this master, this groom of Franconi's! this radiant, imperturbable, self-satisfied governor, crowned with his successful crime, who goes and comes, and peacefully parades trembling Paris, and who has everything on his side,—the Bourse, the shopkeepers, the magistracy, all influences, all guarantees, all invocations, from the Nom ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... Lydia smiled, a self-satisfied, contemptuous smile. She was not jealous of Madame Durski; she despised her. "He did not excuse it; he did not explain; he knows he has no severity to fear from me. All he needs is to induce me to acknowledge ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... seemed as if it had been closed and laid away by a tidy housewife years before, and opened and aired for my reception but yesterday. An illumined text,—a "Jonah under his Gourd," elaborately worked in colored silks,—a smirking likeness of "The Father of his Country," and an equally self-satisfied looking portrait of Mrs. W. hung in ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... little girls went slowly up stairs to bed. Dotty, in her lofty pride, tried to make her little friend feel herself a sinner; while Jennie, ready to hide herself in the potato-bin for shame, was, at the same time, very angry with the self-satisfied Miss Dimple. She was awed by her superior goodness, but did not love her any the better for it. Why should she? Dotty's ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... Hercules—"bringing her up to service, I presume. Leave that to me: as soon as she is old enough, the thing is done, you need say no more about it." Here her ladyship fell back in the large easy chair on which she was seated, with a self-satisfied air of patronage, and looking even ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... commercial lines—and he had seen that look on many men, in the fields and mines, in the spaceports, in the quickly-tarnished prefab towns that sprang up almost overnight when a planetfall was made. He could recognize it on Manning despite the man's casual, self-satisfied expression. ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... brilliance that would have been conspicuous in the rue de la Paix. Heavy sable furs and muffs almost bowed their shoulders; each finger had two or three rings that flashed in the light; round their necks were gold chains hung with pendants, and yet, instead of the air of self-satisfied ostentation that might well have gone with a display so lavish, there were only two pathetically little, frightened, perplexed faces, and an uncertain gait that did not promise much further progress along that ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... had, at any rate, since the Reform Act of 1832, "done what it liked," in a style not quite so grand but excessively comfortable and self-satisfied. It had carried some great reforms on which it had set its heart. It had established, enormously to its profit, Free Trade, and it had accumulated vast wealth. Its maxim had been—"Every man for himself in business, every man for himself in religion,"—and the devil ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... feels the influence, and the son of the sinewy and susceptible European becomes the languid, self-satisfied, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... see than the calm happiness of a wedded pair, who suit each other, who have passed the youthful period of commotion, and have not reached that which so often comes when the children in their turn tempt the angry billows. But there is something in that self-satisfied and self-concentrated happiness which jars upon those who in the turmoil of existence have not much prospect of anything so peaceful. And then domestic comfort is often so sure that nothing but its own virtue could ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... and self-satisfied. Lovin Child kicked his heels against the rough table frame and gurgled unintelligible conversation whenever he was able to articulate sounds. Bud replied with a rambling monologue that implied a perfect understanding ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... the living and real presence of spirit. It came over him in a wave of realization that he, too, had been unconscious of his own higher self until his love had made him feel the need of it in her. They two, from the depths of self-satisfied power, had gone blindly in their paths of self-seeking—till each had awakened the other. ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... meat portions are about a fifth of the size of those served in an American hotel. An American staying in London said recently that he could eat two meals in succession in a London restaurant, and leave the table still minus that self-satisfied feeling that a meal in ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker
... to weaken and to deface his will; to alter it. And he chose curious means, acting under suggestion from another will or influence that was more powerful than his own, because it was utterly self-satisfied and desired only to be what it was. I don't think I will tell you what the means were. But his original dissatisfaction with his own goodness was the weapon that brought about his own destruction. His will did not change, as he believed; but what do ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of the gay, self-satisfied, good-natured, jolly Rowland. Pale and thin, with drawn face and great eyes, he held out a wasted hand to Dorothy, and looked at her, not pitifully, but despairingly. He was one of those from whom take health ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... population, and there is little doubt that these are punitive and impressive official executions, carried out under "proper judicial conditions" as conceived by Germans. But what offends one's taste so much are the photographs of German officers and men standing with self-conscious and self-satisfied expressions beside the grim gallows on which their victims hang. From the great number of these pictures we have found, it is quite clear that not only are such executions very common, but that they are also not unpleasing to the sense of the German population; otherwise they ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... the inferior considerations and motives—trouble, uncertainty, doubt, curiosity—which hang about and impede duty; which is impatient with the idleness and childishness of a life of mere amusement, or mere looking on, of continued and self-satisfied levity, of vacillation, of clever and ingenious trifling. Spenser's manliness is quite consistent with long pauses of rest, with intervals of change, with great craving for enjoyment—nay, with great lapses from its ideal, with great mixtures of selfishness, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... was respectable. He had hated the smug, self-satisfied merchants of Grand Avenue. He had writhed in torture at the sight of every shiny, purring automobile that had ever passed him with its load of well-groomed men and women. A clean, stiff collar was to Billy as a red rag to a bull. Cleanliness, success, opulence, decency, spelled but one ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... relaxation. Did he ever wriggle with merriment when he was alone? I turned suddenly at the thought. He was calmly perusing a paper through his pince-nez, with an expression of countenance at once so benign, silly, and self-satisfied, that I felt I should like to have apologised for ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... a self-satisfied air, "I knew at once by the way you looked at the angry crowd that you were innocent; but whatever I may have thought, any one who knows Issoudun must also know that the only way to protect you was to make the arrest as we did. Ah! you carried your ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... said Johannes, "unless it is when a boy is what you call conceited and self-satisfied, and thinks that he is ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... who spoke very broadly, and kept on speaking of the 'PORTIONS,' and there was another whom we called the 'Great Door,' because eight times in his speech he said that a great door had been opened for them in Italy and other places. Altogether, I thought them rather smug and self-satisfied, especially one man whose face shone on the slightest provocation, and who remarked, in broad Lincolnshire, that they had been 'aboondantly blessed.' After his speech a little short, sleek oily man got up, and talked about Providence. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... He loved sinners and welcomed them, without in the least condoning what was wrong. He looked upon the open and acknowledged sinner as a more hopeful person from the religious point of view than the person who was self-satisfied and smug. He said that He came to seek and to save those who knew themselves ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... on this earth a little New Yorker is the smallest. I've met ignorance in the South, sullen pigheadedness in New England; I've measured the boundless cheek of the West, my native heath; but for self-satisfied stupidity, for littleness in the world of morals, I have seen nothing on earth, or under it, quite so small as a well-to-do New Yorker. He has little brains, or culture, and only the rudiments of common sense, but, being from New York, he assumes everything. ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... existed or not, Lesley was not learned enough to say: it certainly did not exist in London. She looked at the woman who waited on her with keenly observant eyes. Her name was Mary Kingston, and Lesley knew that she was not one of the prosperous, self-satisfied, over-dressed type, so common amongst ladies' maids; for she had been "out of a situation" for some time, and had fallen into dire straits of poverty. It would not have been like Miss Brooke to hire a common-place, conventional ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... see a more self-satisfied or contented set of men than these that are gathered at these tables this evening? I never come to the Pilgrim dinner and see these men, who have achieved in the various departments of life such definite and satisfactory success, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... primitive tea parties, the utmost propriety and dignity prevailed,—no flirting nor coquetting; no romping of young ladies; no self-satisfied struttings of wealthy gentlemen, with their brains in their pockets, nor amusing conceits and monkey divertisements [Footnote: Divertisements: diversions, amusements.] of smart young gentlemen, with ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... you ass!" snapped he, with a short, crisp, self-satisfied laugh. "None of your blessed squirming now. Keep still. You'll get out of your coffin, you bounder, as soon as out of my grip. Got you, got you! Do ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... to think, girls, I would have you always prosaic, plodding, self-satisfied, unambitious? Oh, no! do not understand me so. Why, I believe that even dreaming about doing, and seeing, and having things is sometimes very helpful, and not at all inconsistent with the commonplace. It is almost necessary for some people to build air-castles. They get more real pleasure in them ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... with angry eyes. If only Fate had set her feet in sunnier paths. She looked at the plain furniture and cheap carpet; the wallpaper was hideous; there was a frightful oleograph of two Early Victorian women with crinolines and ringlet curls hanging over the mantlepiece. They both looked smug and self-satisfied. There was an enlarged photograph of a bald-headed man wearing a Masonic apron on another wall. He was fat and had his right hand plastered carefully along a chair-back to bring into prominence a large signet ring. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... as an honest man, downstairs, and I find you, like a thief, up here," returned the doctor, with a self-satisfied smile at the neatness of his own retort. "No," he continued, relapsing into soliloquy: "there is risk every way; but the least risk ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... conception of religion, with his doctrine of man's sinfulness and need of salvation, so far from corresponding, was in direct antagonism with that Humanistic view of life which seemed to have originated from the devotion to classical antiquity, and to revive the proud, self-satisfied, independent spirit of heathendom. Even in an Erasmus Luther had thought he perceived an inability to ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... using your own, and prefer, rather, to glance at everything unheedingly. Yes, after laughing heartily over Chichikov's misadventures, and perhaps even commending the author for his dexterity of observation and pretty turn of wit, you will look at yourselves with redoubled pride and a self-satisfied smile, and add: "Well, we agree that in certain parts of the provinces there exists strange and ridiculous individuals, as well as ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... hundreds, sometimes his thousands, a year, by prophesying smooth things to Mammon, crying in daily leaders "Peace! peace!" when there is no peace, and daubing the rotten walls of careless luxury and self-satisfied covetousness with the untempered mortar of party statistics and garbled foreign news—till "the storm shall fall, and the breaking thereof cometh suddenly in an instant." Let those of the respectable press who are without sin, cast the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Chesterton's essays, 'Browning' the best of his critical studies, 'The Ballad of the White Horse' the best of his poems, there is, I think, little doubt that this strange theological exposition, 'The Ball and the Cross,' is the best of his novels. It should be read by all rationalists, by all self-satisfied Christians, by all heretics, by those who are orthodox, and, above all, it should be read by those millions who pass St. Paul's Cathedral and seldom if ever give a thought to the 'Ball and the Cross' that has made the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... of dominant, self-satisfied good-humor became set and stern. Without taking the least notice of Carroll, he rose, and, stepping to a telegraph instrument at a side table, manipulated half a dozen ivory knobs with a sudden ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... "You can wipe that self-satisfied expression right off your face, young man," said Jerry's father. "Taking things in your own hands and deciding what I should do with my money was wrong and you know it. You do know it, ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... great sickness that is upon us no one person is responsible, and no Christian is wholly free from blame. We have all contributed, directly or indirectly, to this sad state of affairs. We have been too blind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desire anything better than the poor average diet with which others appear satisfied. To put it differently, we have accepted one another's notions, copied one another's lives and made one another's experiences the model for our own. And for a generation the trend has been downward. ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... with the fingers of one hand resting on the arm of the corpulent, self-satisfied man beside her; the other arm, bandaged from elbow to wrist, was held in a sling across her breast, the fingers nearly touching the one jewel she wore, a sleepy cat's-eye hanging ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... a notary than as belonging to the royalist society of Bordeaux, Solonet had conceived for that fine setting sun one of those passions which women like Madame Evangelista repulse, although flattered and graciously allowing them to exist upon the surface. Solonet remained therefore in a self-satisfied condition of hope and becoming respect. Being sent for, he arrived the next morning with the promptitude of a slave and was received by the coquettish widow in her bedroom, where she allowed him to find her in a very ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... curled himself up in his own proper place at my feet. He was intensely self-satisfied, and expressed his high idea of his own exploit by self-gratulatory "grumphs," as after describing many mystic circles, and scraping up the fair Marseilles quilt on some plan of his own, he brought his nose and tail together in a satisfactory position in his nest, ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... little disappointed in his remarks. They were like his first impression on me the day before, so commonplace, so laboriously undistinguished that again the conviction was forced upon me that it was a pose. Had I expected too much? Was he merely a self-satisfied egoist, clever enough to perceive our interest and impose upon it? Bill endeavoured to clear the air. The mention of "art curtains" ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... were yet beginning to bloom. They landed at a convenient spot some distance up the little lagoon, made the boat fast by dragging its prow high ashore, and were on the point of setting out across a neck of wet, grassy land to the pond, when a deep grunt, not unlike that of a self-satisfied pig, attracted them to the willows, where they discovered Long-Hair, badly wounded, weltering in some ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... disagreeable figure a 3 is; I never noticed it before. It looks so self-satisfied. And as to that fat, hollow 0 which follows it—I always did ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... head in a cheap Dutch clock? He never appears without that bundle of dirty papers which he carries under his left arm, and which are generally supposed to be the miscellaneous estimates for 1804, or some equally important documents. He is very punctual in his attendance at the House, and his self-satisfied 'He-ar-He-ar,' is not unfrequently the signal for ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the outside wall, and when he left home he carefully put it away in a safe place. The skin became famous throughout the district, and many of the younger men made special trips to Bali to examine it. Arni would beam with joy and strut around with a knowing, self-satisfied expression on his face, and would tell of the patience, the agility, and the marksmanship he had to put into killing this monstrously clever fox. It certainly wasn't hard to kill all you wanted of these devils, ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... laws;" And makes what happiness we justly call Subsist not in the good of one, but all. There's not a blessing individuals find, But some way leans and hearkens to the kind: No bandit fierce, no tyrant mad with pride, No caverned hermit, rests self-satisfied: Who most to shun or hate mankind pretend, Seek an admirer, or would fix a friend: Abstract what others feel, what others think, All pleasures sicken, and all glories sink: Each has his share; and who would more obtain, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... human; his ugly face looked uglier still. It assumed the self-satisfied expression of a man ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... the sound of this little whistle, was certain of punishment. It was as important as the words "Silence, in the king's name!" or the reading of the riot-act. To-day it worked even more effectually than usual. Boges' self-satisfied smile showed that he had noticed this; he then favored the assembly with a look expressive of his contentment with their conduct, promised in a flowery speech to exert all his influence with the king in behalf of his dear little white doves, and wound up by telling ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... you very well. But do not deny that you might have saved her. Why did you not?" Ram Lal smiled a strange smile, which I should have described as self-satisfied, had it not ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... When a man has obtained his desire he becomes careless and self-satisfied; I was watchful, however, for I knew that I was naturally a selfish man. I studied to arrange my time and save my money, to give her as much pleasure as I could. What she loved best in the world just ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... lady smiled and tried to look self-satisfied as she invited her guest to eat. "This is ham," said she with a little simper, "broiled ham, Mr. Dockwrath; and there is chicken at the other end; I think they ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... murderously on her children, had wounded them nearly to death, had then tried to woo them to her breast again. The loveliness of her, the mindless, heartless, soulless loveliness, as of a maniac tamed, mocked at their agonies, mocked with her gentle indifference, mocked with her self-satisfied placidity, mocked with her serenity and her peace. For them she was dead—dead like those whom we ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... was taking place, Jem Wimble had been banging the doors and rattling his keys as he locked up the various stores, feeling particularly proud and self-satisfied with ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... be a witness—an eye-witness, who was present, and whose evidence will be corroborated," she declared in due course with a self-satisfied air. "I have not resolved to reveal the truth without fully reviewing the situation. When the police know—as they certainly will—you will then find that I have not lied, and perhaps you will alter your opinion of the girl you now hold ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... dressing-glass placed at an angle on a toilet table against the wall. With her palms grasping her knees she stooped down suddenly and contemplated the mirror. It showed what no one but Clementina had ever seen,—and she herself only at rare intervals,—the laughing eyes and soul of a self-satisfied, material-minded, ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... Pharisees were the true Jews; the nerve and sinew of Judaism. Although this party had its centre at Jerusalem, it had adherents either established in Galilee, or who often came there.[1] They were, in general, men of a narrow mind, caring much for externals; their devoutness was haughty, formal, and self-satisfied.[2] Their manners were ridiculous, and excited the smiles of even those who respected them. The epithets which the people gave them, and which savor of caricature, prove this. There was the "bandy-legged Pharisee" (Nikfi), who walked ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan |
