"Smug" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beacons of conscience could not be kept alight A community without crime would be a community without warm and elevated sentiments—without the sense of justice, without generosity, without courage, without magnanimity—a community of small, smug souls, uninteresting to God and uncoveted by the Devil. We can have too much of crime, no doubt; what the wholesome proportion is none can say. Just now we are running a good deal to murder, but he ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... return the bill to the lady, saying, simply, that you cannot get it discounted. Leave the rest to me, and I think the bill you have indorsed to Sparkle will be paid." Comforted by this assurance, Axminster, fearfully changed from the nervous, but smug, hopeful man of the morning, departed. It now remained for me to exert what skill I possessed, to bring about the desired result. I lost no time in writing a letter to the Honorable Miss Snape, of which the following is ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... little villain exuded a smug, complacent cruelty. It was no use for the sheriff to remind himself that such things weren't done nowadays, that the times of Geronimo and the Apache Kid were past forever. Black MacQueen would go the limit in deviltry if he set his ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... deeply shocking in the idea of a woman being other than kind and good, something so antagonistic to the smug conception of Eve as the "minist'ring angel, thou,'' that leaps to extremes in ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... amiably and frankly as before, and this time he had for audience a dapper man with a thin face that might have been old or young, and which I disliked at sight. He was exceedingly well dressed; he looked very respectable, but he also looked smug and sophisticated—too sophisticated, I thought, to be really so well entertained as he seemed to be with my ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... to avoid this moment. But now that the discussion was upon him, he said to himself that he would not traffic with the insincerities, he would not be recreant to his own identity. He would not fawn, and bow, and play the smug squire of dames, full of specious flatteries, and kiss the hand ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... not make him less interesting as a figure in that amusing literarified society; and we may be glad to see him in Parma with Signor Torelli's eyes, as he "issues smug, ornate, with his well-fitting, polished shoe, his handsome leg in its neat stocking, his whole immaculate person, and his demure visage, and, gently sauntering from Casa Caprara, takes his ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... smug. It's just another worldful of people with the same old likes, dislikes and hatreds. But they are evolving a way of living together, without violence, that may some day form the key to mankind's survival. They are worth looking after. Now ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... greater world reformers of all sorts have not infrequently in times of scarcity and danger been taken by their proteges for the authors of their trials and stoned, whilst the smug Government which caused the ruin, well bolstered up in the affection of its 'taxables', chuckled, serenely confident in the unending folly of mankind. Most certainly the Jesuits struggled to do their ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... SMUG LAY. Persons who pretend to be smugglers of lace and valuable articles; these men borrow money of publicans by depositing these goods in their hands; they shortly decamp, and the publican discovers too late that he has been duped; and on opening the pretended treasure, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... the style of the "Newcastle School"—of which Landells was a member—and gave the general idea of the latest of all covers. This was not executed until January, 1849, when several changes of detail were made, including the substitution of the smug lion's head for that of Judy in the canvas—the whole so successful that it may safely be predicted that it ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... you'd be interested," she answered with smug satisfaction. "Naturally you'll want to see his note. I'll be ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... identical. They are virtually in complete agreement. Now, the strange thing is this: their conclusions are wrong in every instance" (here I nearly laughed aloud, for, as I glanced at the two experts, the expression of smug satisfaction on their countenances changed with lightning rapidity to a ludicrous spasm of consternation); "not sometimes wrong and sometimes right, as would have been the case if they had made ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... smug, and not at all disgruntled. "Try this on for size," he said. "First, Witch is known far and wide as nothing less could have ...
— Prologue to an Analogue • Leigh Richmond
... persons for three chaste generations, our flappers, bi-product of inhibition, are promptly appropriating the husbands. This one item of the flapper raid on the married men has done more than the entire twentieth century put together to change the smug structure of American society, and bring us ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... being all unlearned in the game of psycho-analysis, to explain how this thing happened. I concern myself only with facts. Suddenly the pretty veil of self-satisfaction was rent from top to bottom, and Dickson saw a figure of himself within, a smug leaden little figure which simpered and preened itself and was hollow as a rotten nut. And ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... to do with it. You must have faith. You must just believe what you're told not think at all. Thinking is wickedness—unless you think what you hear preached." Feather was even a trifle delicately smug as she rattled off her orthodoxy—but she laughed after she had done with it. "But it MUST have been funny—a Turk or a Hindoo in a turban and a thing like a tea gown and Mrs. Muir in her Edinburgh ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... no capacity for life. I could be considered foolish— Today I am not going to the restaurant. I am after all this time weary of the waiters, Who scornfully bring us, with their smug grimaces, Dark beer and make us so confused That we cannot find our home And we must Use the foolish street lights To prop ourselves up with weak hands. Today I have bigger things in mind— Ah, I shall find out the meaning of existence. And in the evening I ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... it would sound a little—smug?" Canby asked timidly. "The way we've got him now, Roderick seems to me to be always seeing himself as a splendid man and sort of pointing it out ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... all. We did not know what to-morrow might bring. Occasionally a visitor came over through curiosity to see the theatre of the accident, shrug his shoulders, wonder at the folly of young men, and depart with an air of smug self-satisfaction. There were a few letters from the factory at Loughboro', complaining and then threatening, and at last came a bill for L96.0.0, due on the twelve machines, and an additional bill for L30.0.0, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... thought so!" said Falloden wrathfully. "He is an impossible person. He wears a frilled shirt, scents himself, and recites his own poems when he hasn't been asked. And he curries favour—abominably—with the dons. He is a smug—of the first water. There is a movement going on in college to suppress him. I warn you I may not be able to ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... teeming in his brain, only waiting to know the fate of this one. And it had come back! It was the best he had to offer, and his best was not good enough! He looked at the shabby, dog-eared sheet, and the folded enclosure that doubtless set forth the editor's smug regrets, then with an impatient gesture he flung the envelope and its contents into the scrap-basket, cursing himself and his conceit in thinking he could write, and editors and their conceit in thinking they ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... of Edmonton, 1631, there is a comical story of how Smug the miller was singing a catch with the merry Parson in an alehouse, and how they 'tost' the words "I'll ty my mare in thy ground," 'so long to and fro,' that Smug forgot he was singing a catch, and began to quarrel with the Parson, 'thinking verily, ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... do gallop for sufficient reason, namely—they are to gallop bidden being ridden, bestridden and chidden by whip and spur applied by certain trusty men o' my company, which men go habited, decked, dressed, clad, guised and disguised as smug, sleek citizens, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... which perhaps might be the case, he certainly possessed no other claim upon the confidence of his fellow-creatures, sick or well. Yet even before the Dop Doctor brought his great unhealed sorrow and his quenchless thirst to Gueldersdorp, the smug, plump, grey-haired, pink-faced, neatly-dressed little humbug possessed ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Despite these smug reasonings the bare facts were these: East St. Louis, a great industrial center, lost 5,000 laborers,—good, honest, hard-working laborers. It was not the criminals, either black or white, who were driven from East St. Louis. They are ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... she scuttled to her appointed place. Once More in smothered giggle and unprotesting acquiescence she sensed the resumption of eternal discipline. Already in just this trice of time she felt her rampant young mouth resettle tamely into lines of smug, determinate serenity. Already across her idle lap she felt her clasped fingers begin to frost and tingle again like a cheerfully non-concerned bunch of live wires waiting the one authoritative signal to connect somebody,—anybody,—with ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... with the smug complacency of a man about to relate the big things he has done, "it was late summer of many summers back, with much such weather as this promises to be, when I went away. You all remember the day, when the gulls flew low, and the wind blew strong ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... spark in his black eyes. Vandeman fronted him with the flamboyant embroidered monogram on his shirt sleeve, the carefully careless tie, the utterly good clothes, and, most of all, at the moment, the smug satisfaction in his face of social and human security. I thought of what that Frenchman says about there being nothing so enjoyable to us as the troubles of our friends. "Needn't think you can put it all over the boy when ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... bestowed in the way of making labor and its surroundings clean and comfortable, healthful and attractive, was to be provided; all that the ignorance and the shortsighted greediness of employers, bent only on immediate profits and keeping their philanthropy for the smug penuriousness and degrading stupidity of charity, deny to their own self-respect and to justice for their brothers in their power. Arthur and he had wrought it all out, had discovered as a crowning vindication that the result would be profitable in dollars, that their sane and shrewd ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... life was sadder, it was infinitely richer for it. His winter fireside should be not so lonely for her sake; and losing her, he lost not everything, for he had the rare blessing of having known her. And what man could wish to be healed of such a hurt? Far better to have had it than to trot a smug pace unscathed. ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... its forms had inspired Average Jones with a profound contempt and dislike for the cruelest of all forms of swindling medical quackery. And this swollen, smug-faced intruder looked a particularly offensive specimen of his kind. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... are his passport. He cannot seem smug, nor colourless, nor over-prosperous: he is too vivid and too vigorous. His childish vanity is nobly discounted by his childlike simplicity in facing big issues. The blue and gold which he wore so magnificently can never to us be the mere trappings of rank: they carry on them the shadows ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... faith a reasonable thing, yet did not rob it of a sense of high adventure; cleansed it of the taints of thrift and selfish concern. In this reaffirmation of vitalism there might be a future, yes, an individual future, yet it was far from the smug conception of salvation. Here was a faith conferred by the freedom of truth; a faith that lost and regained itself in life; it was dynamic in its operation; for, as Lessing said, the searching after truth, and not its possession, gives happiness to man. In ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... him, and the dust was blinding, and the dreariness of the street increased his misery. The row of common shops, full of common things, the blatant public-houses, the Independent chapel, a horrible stucco parody of a Greek temple with a facade of hideous columns that was a nightmare, villas like smug Pharisees, shops again, a church in cheap Gothic, an old garden blasted and riven by the builder, these were the pictures of the way. When he got home again he flung himself on the bed, and lay there stupidly till sheer hunger roused him. He ate a hunch of bread and drank some water, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... opponent, to picture him as a noble, disinterested character, ready to sacrifice himself for the public weal. Into his pictures of this man, attired in the long black coat of conventional respectability, with the smug face of pharisaism, he could get nothing but cant and hypocrisy; but in his caricatures of Clayton there was that which pained him worse—disloyalty, untruth, and now and then, to the discerning few who knew the tragedy of Kittrell's soul, there was pity. And thus his work declined in value; lacking ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... spite of its magnificent surroundings, looks like a portion of a transplanted London suburb, but there is a certain piquancy in reflecting that it is only fifteen miles from the borders of Tibet. The trim, smug villas of Dalhousie and Auckland Roads may have electric light, and neat gardens full of primroses; fifteen miles away civilisation, as we understand the term, ends. There are neither roads, post-offices, telegraphs nor policemen; these tidy commonplace "Belle Vues," "Claremonts" ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... a garland of red roses Had fallen about the hood of some smug nun When irresponsibly dropped as from the sun, In fulth of numbers freaked with musical closes, Upon Victoria's formal middle time His ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... ready to admit. Yet rash as it was, I do not find it in my heart to be severely critical of him. I rather join with Dr. Peck in my admiration. You know what is the matter with a great many of us smug church members? We are so prudent. We have such admirable possession of all our faculties. We are in danger of dying of self-control. This man in the white heat of his enthusiasm made a solemn pledge to the Lord of that which was destined to be infinitely the most ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... everything that 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, ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... never supposed there could be anything like that battle. He never talked like this, until to-day. Oh, he's told me a little, from time to time. But to- day, to-day, he just poured out his heart to me—ME!—and there are so many who need just that message to stir them from their smug complacency—men who could fight, and win: men who WOULD fight, and win, if only they could see and hear and know, as I saw and heard and knew this afternoon. And there it was, wasted, ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... under a grave suspicion. Lingard, who wrote, after all, one of the best histories of the English nation, certainly more readable than Freeman and less prejudiced than Froude, is neither studied nor mentioned in our schools. Even poor Acton, whose smug Whig bias is apparent to the stupidest, who nourished himself on Lutheran learning, "mostly," as he says, pathetically "in octavo volumes," is thought of darkly by the uninstructed as an emissary of the Jesuits. But who can either suffer from ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... drolatiques;' although, like 'Don Juan,' they contain a great deal of what was best in their author, of his frank, ebullient, sensuous nature, lighted up here at least by a genuine if scarcely delicate humor. Of direct suggestion of vice Balzac was, naturally, as incapable as he was of smug puritanism; but it must be confessed that as a raconteur his proper audience, now that the monastic orders have passed away, would be a group ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... some time, perhaps, approach her again? Some time! after she had forgotten him, after his unworthiness had been proved to her, and some other fellow, some happier man who had never been exposed to such a fate as had fallen upon him, some smug Pharisee (this fling at the supposed rival of the future was very natural and harmed nobody) had cut him out of all place in her heart! It was so likely that Chatty would go on waiting for him, thinking of him, for years perhaps, the coxcomb ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... called the king, it became more impossible for him to bear any other name all his days. Therefore Sapt let Mr. Rassendyll doubt and struggle, while he himself wrote his story and laid his long-headed plans. And now and then James, the little servant, came in and went out, sedate and smug, but with a quiet satisfaction gleaming in his eyes. He had made a story for a pastime, and it was being translated into history. He at least would bear his ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... suited the grim mood of the overlord. It pleased him to see the smug villagers stand by while the Fool mounted his steed. Side by side from the parapet he and the Bishop looked ...
— The Truce of God • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... very different personality which shone forth from those sharp black eyes now, than the smug, quasi-religious ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... would feel the change more sharply than I. This was, in all probability, the only hat he had. I turned it over and scrutinized it. It was a genteel old beaver, with an air of respectability that was quite convincing. There was nothing smug about it, either. It suggested amiability in the man who had recently possessed it. It suggested also a mild contempt for public opinion, which is always a sign of superior mentality and advanced years. I began to draw a mental portrait of the old man. He was ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... that he deigned to lie for two nights in Judas, and at a grand refection in Hall "was gracious and merrie." Perhaps it was in lingering gratitude for such patronage that Judas remained so pious to his memory even after smug Herrenhausen had been dumped down on us for ever. Certainly, of all the Colleges none was more ardent than Judas for James Stuart. Thither it was that young Sir Harry Esson led, under cover of night, three-score recruits whom he had enlisted in the surrounding ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... remarked George when Buster made such a remark; "but I don't believe it, judging from the smug way your belt hugs you just now. I rather think you are fond of ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... almost bare, except a few fluttering rags of shirt that still remain about him. The other day I saw Tama at the township, elaborately attired in black broadcloth and white linen and all the rest of it, looking a perfect picture of smug respectability and aged innocence. Now here he is, grasping a tomahawk in his sinewy hand, with a knife held between his teeth, and—albeit 'tis only a boar he is attacking—with a fire dancing in his ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... it always has been and always will be free. If you chain love down under smug rules you only kill it or distort it. I am not arguing against marriage, but against hypocrisy. We may as well recognize that sex desire is so strong ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... freshman," not as tall, as heavy nor as old as Bert, catch the assailant's hard-driven fist in the palm of an instantly extended hand and then let drive with his own right a neat, short-arm uppercut that got Bert just where he had meant to get Gus, was a needed lesson to the smug conceit that too often goes with added school years. Bert, from a seat on the floor, which he had taken without choice of the spot, regarded his opponent through half-closed eyes with a certain nonchalance, his anger ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... imposing business, but the far greater advantages lie with the High School senior. He is four years younger. He has lost no illusions. He has developed no sense of values. He is not conscious of the world outside his vision. But in spite of a smug conviction of superiority, the college senior has heard life knocking at the door of his young illusions. He has moments of wistful uncertainty. No, it is the High School ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... and restraint; of lust and license; of brutal horse-play passing for "wit," and of candour marching with cant. The working classes scarcely called their souls their own; women and children mercilessly exploited by smug profiteers; the "Song of the Shirt"; Gradgrind and Boanerges holding high festival; Tom and Jerry (on their last legs) and Corinthians wrenching off door knockers and upsetting policemen; and Exeter Hall and the Cider Cellars both in full swing. Altogether, an ill place of sojourn ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... now, de Montors had been in the right. The pity and mystery and beauty of that world wherein High God had— scornfully?—placed a smug Perion, seemed to the Comte de la Foret, I think, unbearable. I think a new and finer love smote Perion as ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... he had written with a sense both of journalistic and of democratic satisfaction. In it he had sketched off the lofty obsequiousness of the flunkey who had ministered to his needs. "He seemed to take a smug satisfaction in his own degradation," said he. "Surely the last spark of manhood must have gone from the man who has so entirely lost his own individuality. He revelled in humility. He was ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... attentive. The chartered rascals packed in the hall took this for irresolution, and howled at him to their hearts' content. Once more Prosper held to his motto—bided the time. The time came with the coming of Master Porges —that smug and solemn man—into the assembly. The seneschal looked round him with a benignant air, as who should say, "My children all!" The listening man in the ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... one of astounding ebb of spiritual interest. Men turned with all energy to the political and economic interests of a wholly modern civilisation. They retained, after a short period of friction, a smug and latitudinarian orthodoxy, which Methodism did little to change. In France not only was the Huguenot Church annihilated, but the Jansenist movement was savagely suppressed. The tyranny of the Bourbon State and the corruption ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... "Salt," said he, "is what makes potatoes taste bad when you don't put any on." According to that sort of definition, morality in business would be defined as that quality which makes the grocer good and respectable when he resists temptation and does not put sand in the sugar. The smug maxim that honesty is the best policy, while doubtless true enough as a verdict of human experience under normal conditions, is not fitted to arouse much enthusiasm as a statement of ultimate ethical ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw
... changed instantly, as if a mask had fallen from his smug features. He became alert and vigorous. He was no longer patron of the arts, a wide-minded philanthropist, the man who devotes himself to the good of humanity. The blue eyes were cold and cruel, there was a hungry ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... that shall ever stand Till another shall tear it down; Here is the work of my brain and hand, Towering above the town. And the idlers gay in their smug content, Have nothing to ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... moved from the Earth freighters, and Duke swore again. Five billion Earthmen would read of their "generosity" to Meloa, and any guilt they felt for their desertion would vanish in a smug satisfaction at their charity. Smugness was easy in a world without dust or carrion smell or craters that ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... was generated from the contradictions between Rodale's self-righteous and sometimes scientifically vague positions and the amused defenses of the smug scientific community. Donald Hopkins' Chemicals, Humus and the Soil is the best, most humane, and emotionally generous defense against the extremism of Rodale. Hopkins makes hash of many organic principles while still upholding the vital role of humus. ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... girl checked herself, aware of something almost ludicrously pitiful in the smug tearful countenance and stumpy would-be fashionable figure. Hit a man your own size, or bigger, by all means if you are game to take the consequences. But to smite a creature conspicuously your inferior in fortune—past, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... driving. Had there been nothing worse in the Old Bachelor and Double Dealer, Congreve might pass for as pure a writer as Cowper himself, who, in poems revised by so austere a censor as John Newton, calls a fox-hunting squire Nimrod, and gives to a chaplain the disrespectful name of Smug. Congreve might with good effect have appealed to the public whether it might not be fairly presumed that, when such frivolous charges were made, there were no very serious charges to make. Instead of doing this, he pretended that he meant no allusion to the Bible ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... especially if there was a young lord in company to drink it. In these cases there was not a harder drinker in the University than Mr. Tusher could be; and it was edifying to behold him, fresh shaved and with smug face, singing out "Amen!" at early chapel in the morning. In his reading, poor Harry permitted himself to go a-gadding after all the Nine Muses, and so very likely had but little favour from any ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... an one, in scented sheets a-loll! Rich fare and rosy wine have lapped his soul In a bon-vivant's slumbers. His pen lies there, the ink is scarcely dry With which he sketched the smug philosophy Of Cant and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... What grim and ghostly revelations might pass between this dead scion of the Dorntons lying on the trestles before them and the obscure, nameless ticket of leave man awaiting his entrance in the vault below! The incongruity of this thought, with the smug complacency of the worldly minded congregation sitting around him, and the probable smiling carelessness of the reckless rover—the cause of all—even now idly pacing the deck on the distant sea, touched him with horror. And when added ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... in Nature to avoid feeling a little envious. Beevor had work to do in the world: even if it chiefly consisted in profaning sylvan retreats by smug or pretentious villas, it was still work which entitled him to consideration and respect in the eyes of all ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... in its mother's womb, could be baptized and its soul saved before the mother and child were left to die together. But nothing was done to save their lives. No greater crimes were ever committed in the name of civilization, religious faith, and smug ignorance than the sacrifice of the lives of countless mothers and children in the first fifteen centuries after Christ ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... this man very much, and treated him with the greatest harshness and scorn. He would thrust him, like a cur, over his threshold, and would even spit on him. Shylock submitted to all these indignities with a patient shrug; but deep in his heart he cherished a desire for revenge on the rich, smug merchant. For Antonio both hurt his pride and injured his business. "But for him," thought Shylock, "I should be richer by half a million ducats. On the market place, and wherever he can, he denounces the rate of interest I charge, ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... the end of the week he means Saturday, which is a very long way off. Saturdays used to seem to come rushing on to the very heels of Mondays in Berlin when I was busy working. Little mother, you can take it from me, from your wise, smug daughter, that work is the key to every happiness. Without it happiness won't come unlocked. What do people do who don't ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... against it. The kennels had, therefore, to be either on wheels or floating. Furthermore, not being able to replenish its gas, a Zeppelin had always to return to its base for supplies. But the gas balloon suited the smug character of the German. Unlike the aviator who threw himself into the air on a bundle of steel rods and rubber, a propeller and a petrol engine, the phlegmatic German took no risks with a balloon. He found, however, that Zeppelins were expensive freaks. They had a habit of catching fire in the ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... answered. "I was head of the school and Ward thought a friend of his ought to have seen. He thinks I am a smug because I have to work, and I suppose I think he is a fool because he thinks I am a smug. He is a queer sort, and it is hopeless for me to try to be friends with him, even if I wanted to be, ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... any less ugly. I quite understand that people can't always have nice things, but at least they needn't have things that are merely grotesque. What do you say? I can think of nothing more devastating, more utterly smug than that hideous style—cabinets covered all over with ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... and squeak! Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week, Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough, Stinking and savoury, smug and gruff, Take the church-road, for the bell's due chime Gives us the ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... promised to go to church with that smug cousin of hers, and she's busy all the rest of the day. But she's promised to give me next Saturday if I can get off!" His face ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... 'pontificals,' and yet brought the fire from heaven, henceforward 'pontificals' are humbug, and the wearer thereof but charlatan, despite—'the master yonder in the isle.' Pegasus must pack in favour of a British hunter, and even the poet at last wear the smug regimentals of mediocrity and mammon. Ye younger choir especially have a care, for, though you sing with the tongues of men and angels, and wear not a silk hat, it shall avail you nothing. Neither Time, which is Mudie, nor Eternity, which is Fame, will know you, and your ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... the whole; but his subsequent ambitions appeared even worse. For the first time, he perceived his own consummate selfishness set over against the shining renunciations of his mother. Then, step by step, he followed his career in Brookville: his smug satisfaction in his own good looks; his shallow pride and vanity over the vapid insincerities he had perpetrated Sunday after Sunday in the shabby pulpit of the Brookville church; his Pharisaical relations with his ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... Japanese within the solid red walls. The Embassy itself is the house of a prosperous city gentleman and might be transplanted to Bromley or Wimbledon. The smaller houses of the secretaries and the interpreters also wear a smug, suburban appearance, with their red brick and their black-and-white gabling. Only the broad verandas betray the intrusion of a warmer sun ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... in the Valley of Virginia were growing more smug and prosperous. They wanted to invest part of their earnings. They wanted to set up other undertakings. So they began sending out expeditions into the wilderness with the intention of trading with the Indians and possibly of ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... in comparison with the cold bow which the two colleagues exchanged at the Chamber, an "I was expecting you" in which perhaps an intention showed itself, the lawyer pointed the Nabob into a seat near his desk, told the smug domestic in black not to come till he was summoned, arranged a few papers, after which, sinking into his arm-chair with the attitude of a man ready to listen, who becomes all ears, his legs crossed, he rested his chin on his hand, with his eyes fixed on a great rep curtain falling ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Marian Fancourt's, it denoted the happy human being; but also it represented to Paul Overt that the author of "Shadowmere" had now definitely ceased to count—ceased to count as a writer. As he smiled a welcome across the place he was almost banal, was almost smug. Paul fancied that for a moment he hesitated to make a movement, as if for all the world he had his bad conscience; then they had already met in the middle of the room and had shaken hands—expressively, cordially on St. George's ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... several clergymen in the room; one, rather fat, with a smug look and a smartly dressed wife, Jean decided must have married an heiress; another, with very prominent teeth and kind eyes, was accompanied by an extremely aged mother and two ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... the world knows, but his oddity is far more amusing than repulsive, far more playful than bearish. Yates's picture of him last year was not bad; neither was it good—it wanted the raciness of the original. Let the reader imagine a smug, elderly, sleek, and venerable-looking man, approaching seventy years of age, rather (as novel-writers say) below than above the middle height, somewhat inclined to corpulency, and upright in his carriage withal; with his hair most primly powdered, and nicely curled ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... one slowly between her teeth again; it had an extraordinary bitter taste which remained in the mouth. She hated the packet of sweets for its smug, silly mission of comfort. ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... had passed the Red Lily lagoons, and ridden across the salt-bush plain, and through a deep belt of tall, newly sprung green grass, that hugged the river there just then, and having been greeted by smug, smiling old black fellows, were saluting Jack across two or three hundred feet of water, as we stood among ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... world of his own, and forming the sole orbit of that little world. For the most part they were plantation owners escaping the seasonal heat for the cool breezes of a vacation in Japan, boastful of their possessions, smug in their Dutch self-complacency, and somewhat gluttonous in ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... on his vacation when the coal cases first came up.... Besides, it would have made no difference. I think I see in it the fine hand of our good friend the Senator,—smug-faced ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... setting him on fire. And the fire was burning away the smug complacency which had come to him during his long life in ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... bead of sweat from his forehead. His lips were working nervously. All suavity and polish were gone now; there were only viciousness and fear, each struggling with the other for the mastery in the man's smug face. ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... talking with pleasure with my wife, and so up and to the Office with Tom, who looks mighty smug upon his marriage, as Jane also do, both of whom I did give joy, and so Tom and I at work at the Office all the morning, till dinner, and then dined, W. Batelier with us; and so after dinner to work again, and sent for Gibson, and kept him also till eight at night, doing much business. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... man who can make the best guess on to-morrow. The cross has gone by; at least, the cross is being pushed farther along. A prophet in business or politics gets a large salary now; he is a recognized force. Being a prophet is getting to be almost smug and respectable. ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... fine which was laid upon the city, but which never was exacted. And then he summarily dismissed the Sirdars, three only, the Mustaphi, Yahuja Khan the Ameer's father-in-law, and Zakariah Khan his brother, being desired to remain. Their smug complacency was suddenly changed into dismay when they were abruptly told that ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... among his fellows their constraint and silence were far from reassuring. Nor, when the sitting had begun, did he like the enigmatic smile with which the well-dressed Paige stood and swung his watch-chain. How he distrusted and feared this smug, self-complacent young man! Yet the state's attorney's first words brought ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... necessary, without suffering severely by their liability to make mistakes. To this we reply—first, that we should have liked to see any person attempting to pass a bad note or a light guinea upon Ellish after nine or ten years' experience; we should like to have seen a smug clerk taking his pen from behind his ear, and after making his calculation, on inquiring from Ellish if she had reckoned up the amount, compelled to ascertain the error which she pointed out to him. ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... his table, and visited the shops of Salon in the interests of the Maison Hieropath. The day's work over, he returned to inquire for his supposititious offspring. The landlady, all smiles, presented him with a transmogrified Jean, cleansed and powdered, arrayed in the smug panoply of bourgeois babyhood. Shoes with a pompon adorned his feet, and a rakish cap decorated with white satin ribbons crowned his head. He also wore an embroidered frock and a pelisse trimmed with rabbit-fur. Jean grinned and dribbled self-consciously, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... exceedingly busy in calculating the chances of a huge fight—indeed they spend a good part of each year in that pleasing employment. Smug diplomatists talk glibly about "war clearing the air;" and the crowd—the rank and file—chatter as though war were a pageant quite divorced from wounds and death, or a mere harmless hurly-burly where certain battalions receive thrashings of a trifling nature. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... the credit of having brought about this happy consummation. Some misgivings were excited, to be sure, by the report of a new order in council which substituted a blockade of Holland, France, and Italy for the order of November, 1807; yet weeks of smug satisfaction were enjoyed by the Administration before it was bewildered by the tidings that Canning had recalled Erskine and repudiated all his acts. Madison had to submit to "the mortifying necessity" of issuing another proclamation reviving the ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... suffered these dreadful words, these horrible caresses. Then exerting the strength of frenzy, she pushed him from her and bounded to the other side of the room, entrenching herself behind the big rosewood table with its smug mats and vases ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... right to warm his hands with smug self-laudation at the smoking ruins of his Fatherland, and comfort himself by saying, "I have never lied"; this is the monkish type of virtue.—H. v. TREITSCHKE, P., Vol i., ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... contrasts—of gray women of the night hugging gratings for warmth and accosting passers-by with loathsome gestures, of smug civilians hiding sensuous mouths under great mustaches, of dapper soldiers to whom the young girl unattended was potential prey, into this night city of terror, this day city of frightful contrasts, ermine rubbing elbows with frost-nipped flesh, destitution sauntering along the fashionable ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... degree of wilderness knowledge. Both Virginia and Lounsbury had been on horseback before. Virginia had ridden in the parks of her native city: long ago and far away a barefoot, ragged boy—much to be preferred to the smug and petulant man who now tried to hard to forget those humble days—had bestrode an old plow horse nightly on the way to a watering trough. But this riding had qualities all its own. There was no open road winding before them. Nor was there any trail,—in ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... throughout her term of service there had been without real intimates, so that now none was ready to mourn over her fate. Even the two room-mates had felt some slight offense, since they sensed the superiority of her, though vaguely. Now, they found a smug satisfaction in the fact of her disaster as emphasizing very pleasurably their own continuance ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... a cigar-case," said Dick, bursting into a guffaw. "I wonder whether—yes—five!" he added, as he opened the case and saw five cigars tucked in side by side and kept in their places by a leather band. "What a game! I'll smug it and keep it for ever so long. He ought ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... shack by the air lock. On the way, thinking about Sattell, he suddenly recovered a completely new memory. On their first wedding anniversary, so long ago, he and his wife had gone out to dinner to celebrate. He remembered how she looked: the almost-smug joy they shared that they would be together for always, with one complete ...
— Scrimshaw • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... muslin curtain alone intervene between us and the broad asphalt of the Boulevard. A morocco book, a sheet of vellum, and a pencil, are before us. We write a dozen lines, and hand them to our companion; he reads, nods approval, and transfers the precious document to the smug and expectant waiter. The sharp eye of that Ganymede of the Gilt House had at once detected our Britannic origin, conspicuous in our sober garb and shaven chins; and doubtless he anticipated one of those uncouth bills of fare, infamous by their gastronomical solecisms, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... and of others. Men of the world, who know the World like Men, Scott, Rogers, Moore, and all the better brothers, Who think of something else besides the pen; But for the children of the "Mighty Mother's," The would-be wits, and can't-be gentlemen, I leave them to their daily "tea is ready,"[230] Smug coterie, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... faw, fum! bubble and squeak! Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week. Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough, Stinking and savory, smug and gruff, Take the church-road, for the bell's due chime ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... to his custom, Reed laughed bitterly. "As for you, Brenton, I wonder you're not as bad as Baalam's ass. If they could have their way, they would strip you of your clerical broadcloth and robe you in a full suit of angelic eider down. Still, you needn't look smug, while you deny it; it's nothing to be proud about. It's not your preaching does it, man; it's chiefly on account of your voice, and the way your hair sprouts from your scalp. For pure purposes of religion, a hairy baritone is a long way more potent than ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... the great Petrarca himself. A man who had less the air of a poet it would not be easy to conceive. He was of middle height and of a habit of body inclining to portliness, and his age may have been forty. His face was bearded, ruddy, and small-featured, and there was about him an air of smug prosperity; he was dressed with care, but he had none of the splendour of the Cardinal or my cousin. Let me add that he was secretary to the Duke Pier Luigi Farnese, and that he was here in Piacenza on a mission to the Governor in which ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... the little storekeepers, with their smug pretensions to homely honesty, were profiting by some of the vilest, basest forms of fraud, such as robbing the poor by the light-weight and short-weight trick, [Footnote: These forms of cheating exist at present to a ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... "I do not know why, but London is getting on my nerves. It is so hatefully, stubbornly, obstinately imperturbable. I would find another word, but it eludes me. I think you would call it smug. And it is so noisy. Can we not go somewhere for lunch where it is tranquil, where one can rest and get away ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this is quite comprehensible. It is a discourse against all those who confound virtue with tameness and smug ease, and who regard as virtuous only that which promotes security and ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... (c) the three men are not brothers. They are given the magic objects as a reward for kindness. The sentimental denouement reads somewhat smug and strained after all three men have been represented as equally kind-hearted. The shooting-contest with arrows to decide the question, however, may be reminiscent of the "1001 Nights" version. For the resuscitating flute in droll stories, see Bolte-Polivka's notes to Grimm, No. ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... are perhaps, in the queer webwork of human relations, due to some calousness of our own. Who knows? Some man may have robbed a bank in Nashville or fired a gun in Louvain because we looked so intolerably smug in Philadelphia! ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... Milky Way. The clouds are as soft as a fleecy rug, And as cool as cool can be. The skies fit into my figure snug, And they make me feel so blithe and smug That I am glad Fate made me Me. Oh Me! Ah Me! 'Tis a lovely fate And a mission great To be Like me And to love the skies, And the clouds to prize, And to hate the turbulent sea, He—he— So I lift my voice And I loud rejoice That the Fates have ...
— Andiron Tales • John Kendrick Bangs
... complaint against the bondage of her people, for some agonizing cry about her native land. In two poems she refers definitely to Africa as her home, but in each instance there seems to be under the sentiment of the lines a feeling of almost smug contentment at her own escape therefrom. In the poem, "On Being Brought from Africa to America," ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... gave him an unmistakable air of prosperity. He stood now, the silk hat cocked a little to one side, one hand under the tail of his broadcloth coat, a pudgy finger of the other pointing to some new feature of the mechanism of the new carts, and he looked the personification of self-satisfaction and smug content. ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... one. Nepenthe had done him good all round. And he knew exactly what he wanted. A return to the Church, for example, was out of the question. His sympathies had outgrown the ideals of that establishment; a wave of pantheistic benevolence had drowned its smug little teachings. The Church of England! What was it still good for? A stepping-stone, possibly towards something more respectable and humane; a warning to all concerned of the folly of idolizing dead men and their delusions. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... with determination. "I 'm not a calling man. And I 've come down here for rest and recreation. I 'll pay no calls. Let that be understood. Calls, quotha! And in the country, at that. Oh, don't I know them? Oh, consecrated British dulness! The smug faces, the vacuous grins; the lifeless, limping attempts at conversation; the stares of suspicious incomprehension if you chance to say a thing that has a point; and then, the thick, sensible, slightly muddy boots. I 'll pay no calls. And as for making acquaintances—save me from those ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... very much larger than he had imagined; the starlight had illuminated only a small portion of its white facade, tricking him; for this was almost a palace—one of those fine vigorously designed mansions, so imposing in simplicity, nicknamed by smug humility—a "cottage," or "villa." ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... servant that officiated at these orgies. The visitors, indeed, were by no means of the turbulent stamp of their predecessors; but quiet, mysterious traders, full of nods, and winks, and hieroglyphic signs, with whom, to use their cant phrase, "every thing was smug." Their ships came to anchor at night in the lower bay; and, on a private signal, Vanderscamp would launch his boat, and accompanied solely by his man Pluto, would make them mysterious visits. Sometimes boats pulled in at night, in front of the Wild Goose, and various ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... at the smug young medical politicians and the tired old general practitioners filing in and out. One of the latter halted, fumbled in his pocket and ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... Psalms (Ps. vii. 17); as little was 'noddle', which occurs in one of the few poetical passages in Hawes. The same may be said of 'sconce', in this sense at least; of 'nowl' or 'noll', which Wiclif uses; of 'slops' for trousers (Marlowe's Lucan); of 'cocksure' (Rogers), of 'smug', which once meant no more than adorned ("the smug bridegroom", Shakespeare). 'To nap' is now a word without dignity; while yet in Wiclif's Bible it is said, "Lo he schall not nappe, nether slepe that kepeth Israel" (Ps. cxxi. ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... we were building our smug little house of Social Security, the whole world was crashing around us. Instead of achieving local security we find ourselves now in the midst of world-wide insecurity. Far from having eliminated the ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... smug grin on the face of Gabe Werner when he dropped in his vote. It seemed to show that he felt sure of ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... whilst the aching in his bones grew to madness, and hunger gnawed at his life strings. One night, with twitching fingers and face drawn white with pain, he turned away from the crowded streets towards Westminster, sank into a seat, and, picking up the half of a newspaper, read the smug little account of a journalist who had spent a few hours a day perhaps in the slums. As he read he laughed softly to himself, and then, clutching the paper in his hands, he walked away to the Embankment, up Northumberland Avenue, and into the Strand. After a few inquiries he found ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... in the fire and supper heat. While their hats and caps and wrappers, hanging up, a few small bundles on the ground in a corner, and in another corner three or four old walking-sticks, worn down at the end to mere fringe, linked this smug interior with the bleak outside ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens
... lordly pleasure-house stands four thousand feet above the sea level. On this commanding height, in this savage Alpine loneliness, in the midst of a scenery once wildly beautiful, but now shorn and shaven into a smug likeness of a French garden, Philip passed all the later years of ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... carefully. Her wise soul knew that the Emptiness must come first—the awful world-old Emptiness which for an endless-seeming time nothing can fill— And all smug preachers of the claims of life and duty must be chary of approaching those who stand desolate ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... something of the same sort in his Miscellanies. L'Epinois, Galilee, p. 22 et seq., stretches this as far as possible to save the reputation of the Church in the Galileo matter. As to the various branches of the Protestant Church in England and the United States, it is a matter of notoriety that the smug, well-to-do laymen, whether elders, deacons, or vestrymen, are, as a rule, far more prone to heresy-hunting than are their better educated pastors. As to the cases of Messrs. Winchell, Woodrow, Toy, and all the professors at Beyrout, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... de la bataille...." The good Cardinal would have made a good lawyer. He had as little to say about God and the general righteousness of things as the Bishop of London. But he got in some smug reminders of the severance of diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Perhaps now France will be wiser. He pointed out that the Holy See in its Consistorial Allocution of January 22nd, 1915, invited the belligerents to observe the rules of war. ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... That's where you theorists do your mischief. You can't make laws for the people in your study. You can't tell the status of the workingman from the figures you read in your study. You're like half the smug people in the world who discuss this question in the railway carriages and in their clubs. I've heard 'em till I'd like to shove their self-opinionated arguments down their throats, strip their clothes off their backs, and send them down to live with my pals, or starve with them. Any little idiot ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... getting on," he said in a satisfied way—"only got to smug a couple of krises, and there we are. I say, my leg smarts, and I should like to have a look at it; but I won't light a match, because it would be risky in amongst these leaves—and I ain't got one. Well, that will do for ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... nude not a dozen feet away, Doree grasped Mike's arm. He glanced across and saw that her eyes were sweeping past Katal'halee to the small cabin. Its door had again opened. Two men emerged and moved forward. They seemed entirely at home and wore smug smiles. ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... act fantastically, and now he simultaneously begins battle against commonplace reality. He opposes everything which we are accustomed to understand under the name Philistinism—musty pedantry, provincialism, petty etiquette, narrow criticism, false prudery, smug complacency, arrogant dignity, and whatever names may be applied to all these unclean spirits, whose ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... artist in these days is a prince without a title —he has glory and fortune, the two chief social advantages—next to virtue," he added, in a smug tone. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... they were children. Yet, all the time, he had a feeling that, since he alone knew all the circumstances of his case, he alone was entitled to blame or to excuse himself. The glib judgments that moralists would pass upon his conduct could be nothing but the imbecilities of smug and pharisaic fools—of those not under this drugging spell—of such as had not blood enough, perhaps, ever ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
