"Complacent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in my own way. I have lost two years. I am going to put in big strokes of work now. In the next two years I intend to take my proper place in my own country. I will find standing room for George Waldeaux," with a complacent smile. "And in the meantime, of course, I must make money enough to support you and the boy handsomely. So you see, mother," he ended, laughing, "I have no time ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... disappointed look on the substitute's face and was half sorry for him. The whistle blew again and Don was crouching once more beside Thursby—why, no, it wasn't Thursby any longer! It was Peters, stout, complacent Peters, wearing a strangely fierce and ugly look on ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... was fast approaching the western horizon, and despite the combined skill of Suzel and Frantz, there had not been a bite. The barbels had not shown themselves complacent, and seemed to scoff at the two young people, who were too ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... a complacent triumph, "Mrs. Quarles's identical honey-pot, full of her clean bright gold, and many pieces still encased in those tidy leather bags;" and his round eyes glistened again; but all at once, with a hurried ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... head (in proposing the Lady Mayoress), and derived some faint consolation from the company's response to the reference. O! no man will ever know under what provocation to contradiction and a savage yell of repudiation I suffered at the hands of ——, feebly complacent in the uniform of Madame Tussaud's own military waxers, and almost the worst speaker I ever heard in my life! Mary and Georgina, sitting on either side of me, urged me to "look pleasant." I replied in expressions not to be repeated. Shea (the judge) was just ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... drive them into the circumstances which produce the adventures. It expects nothing else from them, and is satisfied. But dull, ordinary folk have no right to out-of-the-way experiences, and the world having been led to expect otherwise, is disappointed with them, not to say shocked. Its complacent judgment ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... no means innocent,—are more or less inexperienced,—and who have fluttered hither to the snare of Lady Winsleigh's "at home," half expecting to be allowed to make love to their hostess, and so have something to boast of afterwards,—others are of the middle-aged complacent type, who, though infinitely bored, have condescended to "look in" for ten minutes or so, to see if there are any pretty women worth the honor of their criticism—others again (and these are the most unfortunate) are the "nobodies"—or husbands, fathers, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... there she was, and being asked for Mr. Linden replied that he was down stairs, and without more ceremony ushered the doctor in; and entering the whole view lay before him in its freshness. Mrs. Derrick, complacent and comfortable, sat behind the no-longer-wanted tea-tray, listening and playing with a spoon. Faith's face, though considering her unfinished muffin, was brilliant with rosy pleasure; while the fire which she had for some time forgotten to mend, lay in a state of powerful inaction, a mass ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... moments amid the roars of the house, snorting with rage and choking with passion. Like Burleigh's nod, Handel's wig seemed to have been a sure guide to his temper. When things went well, it had a certain complacent vibration; but when he was out of humor, the wig indicated the fact in a very positive way. The Princess of Wales was wont to blame her ladies for talking instead of listening. "Hush, hush!" she would say. "Don't you ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... time with the carpet-bag in his hand, had an opportunity of making any further revelation as to Mrs Moss, or any more enquiries as to his unknown travelling companion, the coachman had mounted the box, and, after asserting in a very complacent tone that it was all right, had driven off, and left him in the same state of ignorance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... His glassy black eyes, blank and soulless, swept over us. His mouth curled in that smug, complacent smile. He had us with our shoulders to the floor. He knew it—and he knew we knew it. There was no possible way we could escape. We were two thousand feet above the earth. Our plane wouldn't get a quarter of a mile ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... tongues. It is the difference between God and men which makes men who know themselves trust Him. It is the "otherness," not the sameness, which makes Him desirable and potent in the daily round of life. A purely ethical interest in God ceases to be ethical and becomes complacent; when we rule out the supraphenomenal we have shut the door on the chief strength of ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... surrounds the story of the First. But even in the First Part, the happy issue is involved in the terms of Faust's compact with the devil. Only on the condition that Mephistopheles shall be able to satisfy Faust and cheat him "into self-complacent ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... a little better, though, after getting rid of this touch of spite, and he smiled with satisfaction, too, for the lead had descended some distance off in the water, and with a self-complacent smile Arthur Temple sat down on the edge of the boat ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... complacent and apparently confident, but his feelings were not shared by his young friends. To them it seemed as if their efforts to cut down the distance by which the Varmint II was leading were vain. The speed of the two boats apparently was equal. The bows ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... with some fear and much respect, but with little or nothing of that softer emotion which it had been his hope and his ambition to inspire. And thus her heart lay readily open, and her fancy became easily captivated by the noble exterior and graceful deportment and complacent flattery of Leicester, even before he was known to her as the dazzling minion ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... she had given a complacent glance to the long shelves of fiction, with which she expected to while away the rest of the summer. There would be other pleasant things, she knew, drives with Mrs. Sherman, long tramps with the girls, and many good times with Elise Walton; but there would still be left hours and hours for her ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the midst of the milky water, as though the vastness were pressing in upon him with overwhelming force, brutally crushing him with its complacent awfulness. He began to shake as with an ague-fit, till the gun fell from his hand with a splash. This served to rouse him. He fought with his fear and pulled himself together, groping in the water and recovering the weapon. He hitched his pack farther over on his left shoulder, ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... known all, or had he even at that moment been granted a vision of the camp by the great deadfall, he would scarcely have been so complacent of mind. For at the very time when he was congratulating himself on the opportunity opening out before him, Helen Yardely was seated on a log by the side of the man whom he hated. There was a high colour in her face and she was laughing a little nervously as she looked at the astonished ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... at him one might fancy that Neptune having found a deserted ship, had clambered upon deck and sat him down to take a complacent view of his wide domains, ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... and frivolity of the old era were being introduced anew at the Tuileries, and while M. de Blacas was governing in complacent recklessness, time was progressing, notwithstanding his endeavors to turn it ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... laugh; at the scandalous tale that supplied the details, on the strength of which she analyzed the love that she had never known, and marked the subtle distinctions of modern passion, not with comment on the part of complacent hypocrites. For women know how to say everything among themselves, and more of them are ruined by each other than ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... was really an illegitimate daughter of an Irishman, Charles Oliver, of Castle Oliver (now Cloghnafoy), Co. Limerick, and a peasant girl on his estate. This is possible enough, for the period was one when squires exercised "seigneurial rights," and when colleens were complacent. If they were not, they had ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... setting confirmed by generous time, but the handsome woman of considerably more than forty whose entrance had all but coincided with that of Lord John either belonged, for the eye, to no such complacent company or enjoyed a relation to it in which the odd twists and turns of history must have been more frequent than any dull avenue or easy sequence. Lady Sandgate was shiningly modern, and perhaps ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... he cried, and gave a wringing motion of his hands, for the self-esteem of a complacent man is not torn away without agony. "Who else but you? I had thought myself brave enough to be silent, but still I must play the coward's part! That woman I told you of—that woman I loved—was you! Yes, you, you!" he cried, again and again, in ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... anything? What do you mean by having children growing up about you and not being enough interested in their spiritual welfare to even have a family altar? How is it that amidst the tremendous issues of moral life and moral death that you can be as complacent and as undisturbed as the dead? Why in the name of all that is reasonable will you continue to 'lie like huge stones across the mouth of the sepulcher where God is trying to raise some ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... been ready to put on one of her old play-gowns, as she still called them, but upon reflection decided that it would be hardly respectful when she had been invited to go visiting with such kind and proper friends, and indeed Serena had given her a hasty and complacent glance from head to foot when she came down dressed in one of the prettiest of the London ginghams. Mrs. Duncan, Betty's kind friend and adviser, had been sure that these ginghams would all four be needed to clothe our heroine comfortably through the summer, that is to ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... to exact social observances, would ridicule the idea at first, if their wives should announce the intention of leaving their husband's cards for them. But, however much a man might demur, a lurking vanity would develop into complacent satisfaction, as he became aware of the increasing geniality of the social atmosphere about him; and the pleasing glow would take the ultimate form ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... know of the character of Shakespeare indicates that he was neither meek and complacent, nor quick and eager in forgiving; but that his character in those aspects was quite the reverse of the character of the author of ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... and again examined it, but not as a lover. Had she really grown stouter and more self-complacent? Was the spirituality and delicacy he had worshiped in her purely his own idiotic fancy? Had she always been like this? Yes. There was the girl who could weakly strive, weakly revenge herself, and weakly forget. There was the figure that ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... disguised, alas, in the solemn and majestic robe of sonorous language. The angels timidly decline, and the Saviour volunteers, which saves the shameful situation. The character of God, as displayed by Milton, is that of a commercial, complacent, irritable Puritan. There is no largeness or graciousness about it, no wistful love. He keeps his purposes to himself, and when his arrangements break down, as indeed they deserve to do, some one has got to be punished. If the guilty ones ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of Thornby was not quite so self-complacent. My questions, concerning the receipt and disbursement of my grandfather's property, were sometimes answered with the affectation of open honesty; and at others with petulant ambiguity, so that I knew not whether he meant to shun or to provoke inquiry. 'Executorship was a very thankless ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... These complacent words are still upon his lips, he has had time to lean back in his chair with the languid air of one who has given to the world views not admitting of contradiction, when a sharp whirring noise is heard, followed ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... obvious that the fact is an absolutely unmixed blessing; perhaps the very familiarity which it undoubtedly enjoys subjects it more than any other art to the fitful temper of fashion—to rash and hastily-formed judgments—as well as to the humors of self-complacent guides whose dicta all too frequently prove the dangerous possession of a very ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... subsequent to his accession, always had a supply of ready money with which to dazzle European guests. During his entire reign Egypt swarmed with financiers and schemers of every description, to whom the complacent Ismail lent an ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... discovered the lank person of Hiram, drawn up under the cover of a high stump; and all that was complacent in his manner instantly gave way to marked distrust and dissatisfaction. He placed his head within the door of his hut, and said a few words in an undertone, when he again appeared, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... reckless gambling-field in the country. Card-playing was the recreation the diggers most indulged in here, if we except a decided penchant for Chow-baiting. Done found that already the gambling propensity had impressed itself on the lead, and the luckiest man on Simpson's was a short, fat, complacent Yankee, who refused to handle pick or shovel because, as he said to Done, it might spoil his hand. Jim did not doubt that hands so slick in the manipulation of cards were worth all the care Mr. Levi Long devoted to them. Jim ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... perception of all that he had missed. He had been pitiably, grotesquely stupid; and there was irony in the thought that, but for the crisis through which he was passing, he might have lived on in complacent ignorance of his loss. It was as though she had ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... rule—(but for after-sadness that came) To hear the consummate self-satisfaction With which the young Duke and the old dame 195 Would let her advise, and criticize, And, being a fool, instruct the wise, And, child-like, parcel out praise or blame: They bore it all in complacent guise, As though an artificer, after contriving 200 A wheel-work image as if it were living, Should find with delight it could motion to strike him! So found the Duke, and his mother like him: The lady hardly got a rebuff— That had not ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... materialism to the dust. I wrote on rapidly, warmly. I defined the properties and meted the limits of natural laws, which I would not admit that a Deity himself could alter. I clamped and soldered dogma to dogma in the links of my tinkered logic, till out from my page, to my own complacent eye, grew Intellectual Man, as the pure formation of his material senses; mind, or what is called soul, born from and nurtured by them alone; through them to act, and to perish with the machine they moved. Strange, that at the very time my love for Lilian might have taught me that there are mysteries ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as in his utter self-delusion he did, to the Deity: "Give me my dues,"—instead of breathing the prayer: "Forgive me my debts." Christianity elevates the standard and raises the ideal of moral excellence, and thereby disturbs the self-complacent feeling of the stoic, and the moralist. If the law and rule of right is merely an outward one, it is possible for a man sincerely to suppose that he has kept the law, and his sincerity will be his ruin. For, in this case, he can maintain a self-reliant and a self-satisfied spirit, the spirit ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... ascribed it to that affection for 'pets' which a human female at every age shares with a human child. I now became painfully aware that the feeling with which Zee deigned to regard me was different from that which I had inspired in Taee. But this conviction gave me none of that complacent gratification which the vanity of man ordinarily conceives from a flattering appreciation of his personal merits on the part of the fair sex; on the contrary, it inspired me with fear. Yet of all the Gy-ei in the community, if Zee were perhaps the wisest and the strongest, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... My hair, usually complacent, rose with fear and astonishment. What I read was this:—"You will blow up the British Albert Memorial at your earliest convenience. Telegraph ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... have forgiven a good many things when she took father. Anyway, Mark is going away for a month on business, so I shan't have to make up my mind just yet!" Here sleep descended upon the slightly puzzled, but on the whole delightfully complacent, little creature, bringing her most ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... adolescence, the individual's growing demand for independence is often balked by the continued domination of his elders, and he rebelliously plans quite a career of crime for himself. He'll show them! They won't be so pig-headedly complacent when they know they have driven him to the bad. You can tell by the looks of {496} a person whose feelings are hurt that he is imagining something; usually he is imagining himself either a martyr or a desperado, or some other kind of suffering hero, often working up into a conquering hero in ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... too, was going more quietly through the water; and a broad stream of sunshine shot through the small window of my berth, penetrated my breast, and went down into the centre of my heart, filling it with a calm, complacent pleasure quite indescribable. Sounds, however, of an attack upon the trout roused me, and with a mighty effort I tumbled out of bed, donned my clothes, and seated myself for the first time at ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... Doctor, gravely, 'you must not look back to what you were, or thought you were. Be sure you are in danger when you feel complacent about yourself.' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "Don't I?" she said, wiping her face into its previous complacent determination. "Well, young man, I reckon that's just what I WANT to do! Now, wait a moment; let's see what he said," she went on, taking up and reperusing the "Personal" paragraph. "Well, then," she went on, after a moment's silent composition with moving lips, "you ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... inspire anyone," returned her companion gallantly, while he twirled his mustache with a complacent delight in it which convinced Louise that it ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... was indeed too solemn a thing for words, this watching from the darkness while an invisible death, let loose by our own hands, stole down upon our complacent enemies. ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... garden does begin to yield. I know of nothing that makes one feel more complacent, in these July days, than to have his vegetables from his own garden. What an effect it has on the market-man and the butcher! It is a kind of declaration of independence. The market-man shows me his peas and beets and tomatoes, and supposes he shall send me out some with ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... her distress she put on a complacent smirk, straightened her emaciated form, and sat there, looking like the very ghost of pride, wrapped ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... our halcyon days. It seemed to crew and captain a time for the putting off of armor, and the donning of the garlands of complacent respite from struggle. The work we had undertaken seemed accomplished—our village was a city. The great wheel we had set whirling went spinning on with power. Long ago we had ceased to treat the matter jocularly; and to regard our operations as applied psychology only, or as a piratical reunion, ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... from the outside, and not to care a bit because you knew firmly that there was something else there that made all the difference. All the same, it was a very good thing to have had the scaring thought that you were like that . . . "there but for the grace of God. . . ." Was it complacent to say that? Oh, what did it matter what you called it,—complacent or not, if you knew! It all came back to not caring so much about what things could be called, if you ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... in the rush of the car down the hill. His wife had leaned back snugly under the fur rug and her profile in the moonlight was serene, neither happy nor unhappy, but absolutely complacent. He seemed to get a glimpse of their future, with her figure travelling away into a far ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... use for robins and trees and spring and sunshine and such like intolerable ironies, a white little wisp of a nurse left them all to their complacent riot and went ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... head it is!" cried the young enthusiast, gazing rapt upon the complacent marble whisker so delightfully curled and bristling with ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... dignity of its own. The sunny air came softly in through wide-open latticed windows, bringing with it the scent of mignonette. There had never been a breath of air in the house in Pembridge Square. Ole Scorpio, that friend of my youth, looked peaceful and complacent in a little recess in which his soft colouring and perfect figure showed to great advantage against a white-washed wall ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... storms as the Spanish Sea, and I early received my shock of that kind for life, of which I do not intend to speak, but the weather is of a nature that I have never before observed in this country, with small seas, rare and moderate storms, and on this first Yule-day a peace on the earth and such a complacent calm on the sea that you might row out in a trough. The wreckage that came in on the 8th and 9th December last was the only extravagance, so to speak, of the sea this year, for there was too much in some ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... history on such points must not depend on sundry battle steeds of historical critics, on their wise dicta and self-complacent terminology, but look at facts with his own eyes. There is, for instance, a certain day in the campaign in Silesia, 1761, which, in this respect, has attained a kind of notoriety. It is the 22nd July, on which Frederick the Great gained on Laudon the march to Nossen, ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... to care for some one a great deal more than for himself," answered Polly, with sudden color in her cheeks, and a sudden softening of the voice, as her eyes turned away from Tom, who was the picture of a complacent dandy, from the topmost curl of his auburn head to the tips of ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... a group of first-class passengers leaning on the thwart-ship rails close by looked on, with complacent satisfaction with the fact that they were born in a different station, or half-contemptuous pity, as their temperament varied. Among them stood Mrs. Hastings, Miss Winifred Rawlinson, and Agatha. The latter noticed that Wyllard sat on a hatch ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... down facing them, and I suppose I must have looked supremely foolish, for Viola began to laugh and Jevons went on twinkling, not in the least as if he saw a joke, but with a thoughtful and complacent air, as if he were turning over the result of some private speculation that had come off ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... religion while fleecing his neighbors by crafty schemes of finance or artful legalized robberies; which allows the love of gain to triumph over truth and honor and brotherly kindness; which sits serene and complacent while social classes make war on each other, and children's lives are consumed by grinding toil, and women are forced by want into the ways of shame, and the enemies of society are set free to make gain by the ruin of human souls, is a religion which is not worth having. It will ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... had a knee on the floor, and one hand full of bread and cheese. They looked up at her with broad, complacent, unctuous faces, smiling, yet resolute. And one, with his unoccupied hand, laid hold of the handle of the basket, while the other detained the pail. "You will tell us where ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... Even when, passing beyond the bounds of what she considered decency, she became nearly as outspoken as Miss Buckston, that lady maintained her air of cheerful yet impatient tolerance. She continued to tell them that the American wife and mother was the most narrow, the most selfish, the most complacent of all wives and mothers; and, indeed, to Miss Buckston's vigorous virginity, all wives and mothers, though sociologically necessary, belonged to a slightly inferior, more rudimentary species. The American variety, ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... deplorable ignorance of our forefathers; yet life is much the same now as then, the devil goeth up and down in the world, spirits, daemons, and the thousand powers of darkness abide with us still, though to-day they go by different names, for there is no man in this smug, complacent age of ours, but carries within him a power of evil greater or less, according to his intellect. Scratch off the social veneer, lift but a corner of the very decent cloak of our civilization, and behold! there stands the Primal Man in all his old, wild savagery, and ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... dark when Dr. Lacey arrived. Happy as a bird, Fanny sprang up the steps. Everything about her seemed homelike and cheerful. Kind, dusky faces peered at her from every corner, while Aunt Dilsey, with a complacent smile, stood ready to receive her. Fanny was prepared to like everything, but there was something peculiarly pleasing to her in Aunt Dilsey's broad, good-humored face. Going up to her she took both her hands, and said, "I know we shall be good friends. I shall like you and you shall love me a little, ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... smooth shaven; his complexion of the fairest white and pink; his hair yellow almost to whiteness; his eyes gray, clear, and kindly. For the rest, he was about six-and-thirty; of stoutish build; and he generally wore a pleasant and complacent smile, as if the world had treated him kindly, despite his experiences in that poor parish in the south-east of London, and as if, whatever might happen to him, anxiety was not likely to put a premature end to ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... something singularly pleasing, both in the amusement of execution-seeing, and in the results. You are not only delightfully excited at the time, but most pleasingly relaxed afterwards; the mind, which has been wound up painfully until now, becomes quite complacent and easy. There is something agreeable in the misfortunes of others, as the philosopher has told us. Remark what a good breakfast you eat after an execution; how pleasant it is to cut jokes after it, and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... complacent right up at the front, craned round her neck, and thought that Cally was ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... accustomed to pass the house at that hour. Sinclair stayed on simply because he suspected that his wife wished him indoors. He read aloud inane items of village news from the weekly paper, and only the veiled mockery of his eyes betrayed the fact that he was not the most devoted and the most complacent of husbands. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... still in spirits at the thought that his worst trials were over, and the pleasure of his indulgences to come, he felt very complacent; and he thought he would gratify himself with one more reading of the theme which he had written in the holidays,—the theme which he really believed Mr Tooke might fairly praise,—so great had been the pains he had taken with ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... as I love Him! My desire for martyrdom is as nothing; it is not to that I owe the boundless confidence that fills my heart. Such desires might be described as spiritual riches, which are the unjust mammon,[5] when one is complacent in them as in something great. . . . These aspirations are a consolation Jesus sometimes grants to weak souls like mine—and there are many such! But when He withholds this consolation, it is a special grace. Remember these words of a holy monk: "The martyrs suffered with joy, ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... chorus girls, while you discuss lazily with your friends just how many points it is going to run up on the neighboring schools. I never expect to be a Captain of Industry, but it couldn't make me feel any more contented or powerful or complacent than to be a busted-up scrub in Siwash, with a team like that to watch. I'm pretty ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... made in nonconformist pulpits which are bald and offensive to the ear of scholarly accomplishment. But the complaint of secularization is singularly inept. Nothing could be more secular in the way of complacent acceptance of the worldly reasons for leaving awkward questions alone than the attitude of ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... of affable omnipotence about the wise youth After five years of marriage, and twelve of friendship Among boys there are laws of honour and chivalrous codes An edge to his smile that cuts much like a sneer Complacent languor of the wise youth Huntress with few scruples and the game unguarded It is no use trying to conceal anything from him It was his ill luck to have strong appetites and a weak stomach Minutes taken up by the grey puffs from their mouths No! Gentlemen don't ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... crimes become more rare, the manners of men are more polished, the sciences are cultivated, and the religion which they have coolly and carefully examined loses sensibly its credit. It is thus that we see so many incredulous people in the bosom of society become more agreeable and complacent now than formerly, when it depended on the caprice of a priest to involve them in troubles, and to invite the people to crimes in the ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... epistle he read it over with a complacent countenance, put it up and stamped it. Then he looked ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... such association. Northern sentiment toward slavery was complacent enough, even servilely so, but it might change. The South thought it had too much at stake to take the chances when the opportunity for absolute safety and permanent rule was within its reach. It resolved to make the whole country, not ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... with Hamilton and De Rosen. But the true answer of the brave townsmen, when the King advanced too near their walls, was a cannon shot which killed one of his staff, and the cry of "No Surrender" thundered from the walls. James, awakened from his self-complacent dream by this unexpected reception, returned to Dublin, to open his Parliament, leaving General Hamilton to continue the siege. Colonel Lundy, distrusted, overruled, and menaced, escaped over the walls by night, disguised ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... issues were simple, and can be easily expressed. On the one side was the complacent body of practitioners following to the best of their ability the practice of painting as handed down to them in a variety of different forms, just as the Byzantine craftsmen earned their living when they were ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... knowledge of the country or of what had been written of it, so that he did not know how to spell Manorbier or recognise it as the birthplace of Gerald of Wales. He remembered his youth, when he translated the bards, with complacent melancholy. He sunned himself in the admiration of his inferiors, talking at great length on subjects with which he was acquainted and repeating his own execrable verse translations. "Nice man"—"civil man"—"clever man . . . has been everywhere," the people said. In the South, too, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... was then erected, for it bore the date 1698, and the initials "W. M." for William and Mary. There it was, on a beam, above the chancel arch, and the lion and unicorn on either side, the first with a huge tongue hanging out at the corner of his mouth, looking very complacent, as though he were displaying the royal arms, the unicorn slim and dapper with a chain hanging ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... two tiny yelpers? Not a bit of it! But you, my complacent canine Colossus—come on if you dare!" And he does dare, evidently. Whether he'll regret his daring remains ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... abnormal molecular formation, which strictly speaking amounted to brain-deformity. He assured me, that to the properly balanced, healthily organized brain of the human animal, genius was an impossibility—it was a malady as unnatural as rare. 'And it is singular, very singular,' he added with a complacent smile, 'that the world should owe all its finest art and literature merely to a few varieties of molecular disease!' I thought it singular enough, too,—however, I did not care to argue with him; I only felt that if the illness of genius ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... sharp glance at his host as he got up, but Carrados's expression was merely benignly complacent. Then he strolled across ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... with the added "punch" of the law behind it; so that when it is at all well done it should have the more lasting results. Probation officers and other social workers agree, however, that for certain deserters of the complacent type, an unexpected prison sentence is sometimes a very ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... uncomfortable state of mind to be in, and Kate's state of mind was not much more complacent. She also had broken a promise and betrayed a trust, and she also believed she had done it for the good of the betrayed. To their discomforting sense of guilt was added Marion's disappointment at not ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... submitting of himself to the analysis-gymnast would ever have been possible, and with the students of Shakespeare (as students go and if they are caught young enough) the habit of analysis is not only a possibility but a sleek, industrious, and complacent certainty. ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... state occasions. The son of that monarch purchased this jewel in 1625 for about half its value and successfully deferred payment for even that reduced sum! Sir Paul, indeed, appears to have been a complacent lender of his wealth to royalty and the nobility, so that it is not surprising many "desperate debts" were owing him on his death. A century and a quarter after that event, that is in 1787, the splendid mansion of the wealthy merchant and diplomat had become ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... in securing this important post, which, if in the hands of the enemy, must cut the continent in twain, and render it almost impossible for the northern and southern colonies to support each other. This crisis, when every thing is at stake, is not a time to be over complacent to the timidity of the inhabitants of any particular spot. I have now under my command a respectable force adequate to the purpose of securing the place, and purging all its environs of traitors, on which subject I shall ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... I had dared to hope. When I saw him standing there so complacent and serene, I felt certain that a storm was brewing, or rather had brewed, and burst over my garden, and blighted its fair prospects. I was confident that he had gone and planted every square inch of the soil with some hideous absurdity which would spring up a hundred-fold in perpetual ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... the raft in tow and steamed off down river to the headquarters Free State post of the Upper River. He was feeling almost complacent at the time. He had shown Commandant Balliot what he was pleased to term a quick way ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... their hands; for we have not made so many sacrifices for the preservation of peace, to break forth into war, if, after all, so great an evil can be avoided. Thou wilt receive, therefore, with a candid and complacent mind, such apologies as they may incline to bring forward; and, be assured, that the sight of this puppet-show of a single combat, will be enough of itself to banish every other consideration from the reflection of these ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... happily, but when she was made to fairly acknowledge the need of it, she showed no resentment. She laid the upper crust back on the board and sweetened the pie. Ann Mary watched her gravely, but she was inwardly complacent. After she had rescued the pudding from being baked without the plums, and it was nearly dinner-time, her grandfather came home. He had been over to the village to buy the Thanksgiving turkey. Ann Mary looked out with delight ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... fish and the coffee-pot stood keeping each other cheerful on one side the hearth; and Mrs. Nettley was just, with some trouble, hanging a large round griddle over the blazing fire. Her brother stood by, with his hands on his sides, and a rather complacent face. ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... must study the ways and means of pleasing; which makes her an agreeable voisine at table. As she never doubts either her own powers to persuade, or yours to appreciate them, her language is at once self-complacent, and full of good-will to her neighbour; whilst the vanity of a Frenchman thus leads him to seek popularity, it seems enough to an Englishman that he is one entitled to justify himself, in his own eyes, for being ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... of the West mars as well as mends, and in imparting Western beliefs and Western learning carelessly and needlessly destroys Eastern ideals of conduct and manner, often more reasonable and more attractive than our own. The complacent cocksureness of the Occidental attitude toward Oriental ways and standards has little to rest on. We have reviled the people of the East in the past for their unwillingness to admit that there was anything we could teach them, and they are amending their ways, but we have shown and show still ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... Anymoon, a highly popular Cockney plebeian, as President. Follows an era of feminist control and a Bolshevist revolution contrived by one Cohen (with the authentic properties, "Crimson Guards" and purple morality), and finally the Restoration through the loyalist Navy, the complacent Anymoon consoling himself with the reflection that if he was a failure as CROMWELL he can at least be a success as General MONK. Perhaps the wilder critics of the present order have no reason to complain if their impatient generalisations are marshalled, however ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... coronation; and in collar, if in nothing else, he resembled the immortal Shakespeare; and his bosom was broad and snowy as the swan's; and his pumps were glossy as the raven's wing; and he was going dinnerward, with a winsome damsel on his arm and a complacent smile of self-conceit upon his countenance, when the smooth soles of these new and shining shoes suddenly performed a rapid evolution, as though they were skates upon ice; and there was a little shriek from the winsome damsel in particular, and ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... purpose of the facetious writers we have just dispraised, of making game of the subject of his book, no more than he has the wit and cleverness which half redeem their naughtinesses. The absence of these latter qualities is supplied in his case by the self-complacent good faith in which he puts forth his monstrous assumptions and the stolid assurance with which he maintains them. But the effect of his labors, as of theirs, is to throw an atmosphere of ludicrous ideas around the memory of a great ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... egoistic infallible 'Brain Town'—that self-complacent and pretentious 'Hub,' can show a more ambitious covey ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... 1860, soon after the publication of Darwin's epoch-making book, and while people in general were wagging their heads at it, that the subject came up before a hostile and fashionable audience. Samuel Wilberforce, the plausible and self-complacent Bishop of Oxford, commonly known as 'Soapy Sam,' launched out in a rash speech, conspicuous for its ignorant mis-statements, and highly seasoned with appeals to the prejudices of the audience, upon whose lack of intelligence the ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... Sitting in complacent control of these overall complexities that must be met with automatic accuracy was the Starrett Analogue/Digital Computer, Optical Wave type 44-63, irreverently referred to by the acronymically-minded as Sad Cow, though more frequently as the Sacred ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... found her in the presence of deities, and in the company of her son, Caesarion, her face, which is in profile, should have nothing of Hathor's sad impressiveness. This, no doubt, is not the real Cleopatra. Nevertheless, this face suggests a certain self-complacent cruelty and sensuality essentially human, and utterly detached from all divinity, whereas in the face of the goddess there is a something remote, and even distantly intellectual, which calls the imagination ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... forward meekly to the prodigious feats of posterity; but, having too little faith and too much conceit, they were content to look behind and make comparisons with the past. They did not foresee the miraculous generation which is us. A poor, blind, complacent people! The ludicrous horse-car was typical of them. The driver rang a huge bell, five minutes before starting, that could he heard from the Wesleyan Chapel to the Cock Yard, and then after deliberations and hesitations the vehicle rolled off on its rails into unknown dangers while passengers shouted ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... was by no means pleased with the change in his master's plans, lingered behind, whistling the most melancholy tune in his collection. No young lady, anticipative of balls or coronets, had ever felt more complacent satisfaction in a journey to London than that which had cheered the athletic breast of the veteran on finding himself, at last, within one day's gentle march of the metropolis. And no young lady, suddenly summoned back in the first flush of her debut, by an unseasonable ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... see miracles of healing, for they would attribute them to the human mentality, to suggestion, hypnotism, hallucination, and the like. Even the mighty deeds of Christ were attributed to Beelzebub." The complacent Father settled back into his chair with an air of having disposed for all time of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... melody. The younger part of the company formed themselves into groups, which at intervals glanced through the woods, and were again unseen. Julia seemed the magic queen of the place. Her heart dilated with pleasure, and diffused over her features an expression of pure and complacent delight. A generous, frank, and exalted sentiment sparkled in her eyes, and animated her manner. Her bosom glowed with benevolent affections; and she seemed anxious to impart to all around her, a happiness as unmixed as that ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... I did not come oftener to him. Trusting that I was now in his good graces, I answered, that he had not given me much encouragement, and reminded him of the check I had received from him at our first interview. 'Poh, poh! (said he, with a complacent smile,) never mind these things. Come to me as often as you can. I shall be glad to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... obliging readiness. This phantom wore many faces, but it always had golden hair, was enveloped in a diaphanous cloud, and floated airily before his mind's eye in a pleasing chaos of roses, peacocks, white ponies, and blue ribbons. He did not give the complacent wraith any name, but he took her for his heroine and grew quite fond of her, as well he might, for he gifted her with every gift and grace under the sun, and escorted her, unscathed, through trials which would have annihilated any ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... full-bodied peasant, and as she pressed forward to have her look at the now frantic Archibald, she held the nursing infant—the only serene and complacent member of the assemblage—to her open breast. Archibald caught sight of her, and immediately reached toward her, arms, mouth and all, accompanying the action by an outcry so eager, impatient, and gluttonous ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... coquetting with himself; and that was the funniest thing of all, for he turned his head up, down, from side to side, and drew in his chin with prinky little jerks and tilts. He would stretch his neck, throw up his head, turn it to one side and smirk—actually smirk, the most complacent and self-satisfied smirk that anyone ever saw on the face of a bird. It was so comical that Freckles and the Angel told the Bird Woman ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... he said, in a complacent tone. "Of course we have to keep everything as secret as possible, and I ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... comfortably together. It has assumed all my wrinkles, does not hurt me anywhere, has moulded itself on my deformities, and is complacent to all my movements, and I only feel its presence because it keeps me warm. Old coats and old friends ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... the station-agent had a shock which jarred him quite out of his complacent security. Denny, the operator at Stanwood, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to rest their satin shoes upon, they had admirers and panegyrists to their heart's content, and above all they possessed that peculiar complacency in which (with a few notable exceptions) our age is singularly deficient. We are earnest, we are audacious, we are original, but we are not complacent. THEY were dolls perhaps, and lived in dolls' houses; WE are ghosts without houses at all; we come and go wrapped in sheets of newspaper, holding flickering lights in our hands, paraffin lamps, by the light of which we are seeking our proper sphere. Poor vexed spirits! We do not ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... unanimous in their praise of the Russian officers and soldiers, who have shown nothing but kindness and delicacy of feeling since their entrance into the fortress. This consideration strikes me as being utterly wasted on the captured officers, who treat the situation superciliously and are quite complacent in ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... baroness was surprised at her husband counseling certain economies, or telling with a degree of pleasure of ten louis d'or won last evening at cards. She was at first a little afraid that he had become in some way embarrassed; but, as he assured her, with a complacent smile, that this was far from being the case, she soon learned to treat these little attempts at saving as an innocent whim, especially as they only extended to trifling details, the baron insisting as much as ever ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... Downing Street. To be calm and good-natured, even playful, down to the last, is my policy; to hint at my resources without bullying and menace will be good taste. The Ante-Room, the Abomination of Desolation. Enter Mr Howe at last, Earl Grey and Mr Hawes looking very grim and self-complacent. Two to one is long odds. But here goes at you: "Ye cogging Greeks, have at ye both." The interview lasted two hours. What passed may be guessed by the result. When I entered the room, my all trembled in the balance. When I came out, Hawes had his letter of the 28th in his pocket, ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... Tucker to himself as he took up a measure of grain from a bin in the corner of the feed-room and scattered some in front of a row of half-barrel nests upon which brooded a dozen complacent setting hens, "well, if the Lord has to pester with the affairs of Sweetbriar to the extent Stonie and the sisters, Rose Mary, too, are a-giving Him the credit of doing looks like we might be a-getting more'n ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the street lets in upon me the light and air through a heavy crimson curtain, near which I sit and scribble. I was just enlarging upon the necessity of resignation, while the frown yet lingered on my brow, and was writing myself into a more calm and complacent mood, when—another knock at the door. As I opened it, I heard Peter's voice asserting sturdily that I had "gone out." Never dreaming of my old enemy, I betrayed too much of my person to withdraw, and I was recognized and pounced upon by the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... have hurt any one's feelings. Moreover, I cannot bear to be at ill-will with my fellows, and am ever the first to give in after having quarrelled. It is easier than sulking, and it always makes the other party so self-complacent that it is amusing as well as convenient, and—and—and—I found I was very, very fond ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... them), and with limiting the fees which were to be taken by the officers of the courts.[347] It could hardly be said that in this parliament there was any bitter spirit against the church. This act showed only mild forbearance and complacent endurance of ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... indiscretions at the Shinjuku pleasure quarter. Besides, their interviews took place in the darkness of night. In the daytime O'Naka usually was present, who, lacking other company, sought that of her daughter, and moreover was unwilling to be too complacent in the intrigue she saw going on. As soon as the sound of Densuke's steps was heard, O'Mino called him. There was a sharpness in her tone, a note of alarmed decision, that frightened and chilled him. Humbly he sought her presence. A glance showed ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... went about his preparations for breakfast in strange, complacent silence, making his coffee twice as strong as he had made it for a year, the way Red Reckless ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... leaned over the sleeping child, a rosy child with thick blonde curls. A keen sense of the emptiness of her own arms stirred in her an envy of the complacent young matron standing at the foot of the little white bed. Perhaps Fred would've been different if they'd had ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... mind of the modest and loving Jesus, who, when the disciples wished to call down fire from heaven to consume his opponents, rebuked them in words still condemning all their imitators, "Ye know not what spirit ye are of." Many a bigoted and complacent dogmatist, wrapt in that same ignorance to day, fails to read his own heart, and obstinately shuts his eyes to the truth, foolishly fancying himself better and safer, on account of his blind conservatism, than he ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... to such international ignorance as this that much, if not most, of the British want of appreciation of the United States may be traced; just as the acute critic may see in the complacent and persistent misspelling of English names by the leading journals of Paris an index of that French attitude of indifference towards foreigners that involved the possibility of a Sedan. It is not, perhaps, easy to adduce exactly parallel instances of American ignorance ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... entered his shop, he thrust his prentice boy out of it, and, unlocking his desk, took out, with an air of grave and complacent importance, a dirty and crumpled piece of printed paper; he observed, "This is new corn—it's no every body could show you the like o' this. It's the duke's speech about the Porteous mob, just promulgated by the hawkers. Ye shall hear what Ian Roy ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... wonder how consistent he would be in case his principles should happen to clash with his predilections. How would he behave in a tight place? He was a fashionable young man with the tastes of his class, and she thought she had detected in him once or twice a touch of that complacent egotism which is liable to make fish of one foible and flesh of another, as the saying is, to suit convention. In short, were his moral ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... mate. "Dog of a Roman! Carest thou so little for life?" he cried, putting forth all his strength. The two horses reared, and drew the others round; the tilting of the pole tilted the chariot; Messala barely escaped a fall, while his complacent Myrtilus rolled back like a clod to the ground. Seeing the peril past, all the bystanders burst ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... harbors agreeable. Jack was envied, thanks to Henderson. He was lucky in whatever he touched. Without any change in his idle habits, and with no more attention to business than formerly, money came to him so freely that he not only had a complacent notion that he was a favorite of fortune, but the idea of his own importance in the financial world increased enormously, much to the amusement of Mavick, when he was occasionally in the city, to whom he talked somewhat largely of his operations, and who knew that he had no more comprehension ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... after all—even in the nineteenth century—not to expose the exotic flower of men's belief to the rude winds of fair criticism. Picciola! it might be blighted, poor thing, which would be a pity. Perhaps one does more harm than good by exposing antiquated errors." And with a complacent shrug of the shoulders, and a slight smile of self-admiration, Bruce leant back in ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... the gale. All the vigour of the morning seemed to have gone out of his blood; he felt lonely and apprehensive and puzzled. He wished he had Dickson beside him, for that little man's cheerful voice and complacent triviality would be a comfort.... Also, he was abominably cold. He put on his waterproof, and turned his attention to the fire. It needed re-kindling, and he hunted in his pockets for paper, finding only the slim volume ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... after proceedings when the heckling began. This, during his chairmanship, was often severe enough, for owing to unavoidably increased expenditure, dividends were diminishing and shareholders, in consequence, were in anything but complacent mood. Question time always put him on his mettle. Then his mother-wit came out, his lively humour and practical common sense—all unstudied and natural. The effect was striking. Rarely did he fail in disarming criticism, producing harmony, and sending away dissentients ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... particularly in cases where the conspiracy has economic ends, to be applying its doctrines with increasing severity. While I consider criminal conspiracy a dragnet device capable of perversion into an instrument of injustice in the hands of a partisan or complacent judiciary, it has an established place in our system of law, and no reason appears for applying it only to concerted action claimed to disturb interstate commerce and withholding it from those claimed to undermine our whole Government. * ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... would I avail myself of its acknowledged inappropriateness to the purposes of physiology, in order to cast a self-complacent sneer on the soul itself, and on all who believe in its existence. First, because in my opinion it would be impertinent; secondly, because it would be imprudent and injurious to the character of my profession; and, lastly, because it would argue an irreverence to the feelings of mankind, ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... in a more complacent tone, "the boy takes me for Miss Bertha Eden, I perceive"; and, flattered to be taken in the dark by a chimney-sweeper for a young and handsome lady, Mrs. Theresa laughed, and informed him "that they had mistaken ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth |
