"Self-satisfaction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reached her twentieth birthday it was borne in upon her with the nature of a shock that she was not beautiful. Hitherto a buoyant and innocent self-satisfaction, coupled with the atmosphere of love and admiration by which she was surrounded in the family circle, had succeeded in blinding her eyes to the very obvious defects of feature which the mirror portrayed. But suddenly, sharply, her ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... returned with the purse and piece of brocade, which, by Zobeide's order, she delivered to Nouzhatoul-aouadat, who threw herself again at the princess's feet, and thanked her with great self-satisfaction at finding she had succeeded so well. "Go," said Zobeide, "use that brocade to cover the corpse of your husband, and with the money bury him handsomely, as he deserves. Moderate the transport of your afflictions: I ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... after-dinner light. Not a gross or a selfish man, for he was as good-natured as he was contented, and gave very freely of his substance; it was simply his part in the world to enjoy the product of other men's labour and to set an example of glorious self-satisfaction. Egremont, in certain moods, had tried to despise Mr. Tyrrell, but he never quite succeeded. Nor indeed was the man contemptible. Had you told him with frank conviction that you deemed him a poor sort of phenomenon, ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... to listen to Mr. Pope's strained but not unhappy tenor. She had heard him before, and she had heard his like endlessly. He was the larger moiety of every public meeting she had ever attended. She had ceased even to marvel at the dull self-satisfaction that possessed him. To-day her capacity for marvelling was entirely taken up by the details of this extraordinary reality which had sprung from her dream of simple, kindly, beautiful homes for distressed and overworked young women; nothing ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... their hearts begun to entertain the best hopes for her. Charlotte was convinced that she would one day begin to speak again. She had latterly seen signs about her which implied that she was engaged in secret about something; a look of cheerful self-satisfaction, a smile like that which hangs about the face of persons who have something pleasant and delightful which they are keeping concealed from those whom they love. No one knew that she spent many hours in extreme exhaustion, and that only at rare intervals, when she appeared ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... through with many sorrows. If we have performed any extraordinary acts of self-denial, or of Christian beneficence, he stirs up in our hearts a vain-glorious spirit. If we have overcome any of the corruptions of our hearts, or any temptation, he excites a secret feeling of self-satisfaction and self-complacency. He puts on the mask of religion. Often, during the solemn hours of public worship, he beguiles our hearts with some scheme for doing good; taking care, however, that self be uppermost in it. When we are in a bad frame, he stirs up the unholy tempers of our ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... studies and in the production of new works. How he leisurely whiled away the mornings at his lodgings, and passed the rest of the day abroad and in society, he himself has explicitly described. That this was his usual mode of life at Vienna, receives further support from the self-satisfaction with which he on one occasion mentions that he had practised from early morning till two o'clock in the afternoon. In his letters we read only twice of his having finished some new compositions. On December 21, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... of garrulity, which, like the ceaseless droppings of water, will eat into the toughest rock of patience and self-satisfaction, I have spoken at considerable length elsewhere. Its evils are so evident that they hardly call for further illustration. The garrulous man, paradoxical as it may seem to say it, is a kind of pickpocket ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Ben's decent, well-controlled self-satisfaction, which almost amounts to dignity, is gone like a puff of smoke, at the word "Shanghai." Poor fellow! He once had the hen-fever badly, and he don't ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... caves underground, very dark, damp, dreary, ugly, funereal—with winding ways and huge holes, water with eyeless fish, and certain drippings called stalagmites and stalactites. The enthusiasts, who always possess that priceless treasure self-satisfaction, and a boundless capacity for wonder (which is always ready to exercise itself with anything that is big, however ugly), and the "Palaces," and "Halls," and "Cascades," and "Altars," and "Bridal Wreaths" they see there are not only finer than real ones (if you would believe them!) but so ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... wrath and by Satan as a joke and for the purpose of ridicule. On the contrary, they seemed to be not a little impressed with the theological learning and dogmatical science of these two so-called Doctors, who, in rare self-satisfaction, found life and complete happiness in Reinhard's supernaturalism. In short, these open counterfeiters, Calvinists, Methodists, and Unionists, these base traitors and destroyers of the Lutheran Church, were and always remained the dear brethren, who contributed not a little to the prosperity and welfare ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... evening, Adolphe's self-satisfaction was completed by an ovation from the ladies, who bestowed upon him the most flattering epithets. From the prettiest lips I heard, "What! this Parisian! this pale and slender young man, with such delicate hands and rose-coloured nails, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... voice and manner as he put his demand. He was leaning forward in his chair. A hot light had suddenly leapt into his eyes, which left them shining unwholesomely. Nancy was startled at his words. And his attitude shocked her not a little out of her self-satisfaction. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... their riches, their happiness, their good name, health, and youth?—Another thought for Lent. "Charity boasts not herself." Alas! alas! my friends, are not the best of us apt to make much of the little good we do,—to pride ourselves on the petty kindnesses we shew,—to be puffed up with easy self-satisfaction, just as charity is NOT puffed up?— Another Lenten thought. "Charity does not behave herself unseemly;" is never proud, noisy, conceited; gives every man's opinion a fair, kindly hearing; making allowances for all mistakes. Have ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... glasses dancing), "not only was it the noblest and most legitimate, but it was the most profitable; and where was the man of high and honourable principle who did not feel when breathing the pure atmosphere of that Heath, a lofty self-satisfaction at the thought, that though he might have left those who were near and dear to him in a less genial atmosphere, still he was not selfishly enjoying himself, without a thought for their welfare; for racing, while it ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... cheering up, losing a few pots and growing more interested and determined on that account. At last the fascinating game took a strong hold on him. He enjoyed its risks and ventured, on a trifling hand, to bluff the company and secure a fair stake. To his self-satisfaction intense and strong, ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... Customer (to the Other Customer, as his natural self-satisfaction overcomes his reserve). 'Shtonishing how fast one's hair does grow. It's not three weeks since I had a close ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... in great degree a result of the mood we are in at the moment: anger forbids the emotion. On the other hand, it is easiest taken on when we are in a state of most absolute self-satisfaction. Ben-Hur walked with a quicker step, holding his head higher; and, while not less sensitive to the delightfulness of all about him, he made his survey with calmer spirit, though sometimes with curling lip; that is to say, he could not so soon forget how nearly ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... no human articulate voice to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude of their valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with cutaneous eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive hiccough of self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two sorrowfullest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, taking the deep inner significance of them, are the English mobs in the valley of Chamouni, amusing themselves with firing rusty howitzers; and the Swiss vintagers of ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... self-satisfaction. As he probably conceived it, he had succeeded in praising, in a perfectly casual way, the supreme excellence of his paint, and his own sagacity and benevolence; and here he was sitting face to face with Bromfield Corey, praising his son to him, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was something of a coax, and all her life long she had managed to get her own way; she was an only child, and had been not a little spoiled; but in spite of many faults she was lovable, and beneath her outer shell of vanity and self-satisfaction there lay a ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Next to him is Sir H. Selwin-Ibbetson, Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, and whom I have heard genially described as "one of the prosiest speakers in the House." Next to him, with a paper in his hand and a smirk of supreme self-satisfaction on his face, is Mr. ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... necklace which she wore, the same which she had just received as a true-love token from her husband, were excelled in purity by her teeth, and by the colour of her skin, saving where the blush of pleasure and self-satisfaction had somewhat stained the neck with a shade of light crimson.—"Now, have done with these busy fingers, Janet," she said to her handmaiden, who was still officiously employed in bringing her hair and her dress into order—"have ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... 50. 217 (1908).] 'to measure his influence in the way of causing men of political and commercial power to realize that the support of scientific research, and the diffusion of knowledge thereby gained, depend largely on them.' In other natural scientists he was prone to discover too much self-satisfaction, and too much personal curiosity, against which he hardly knew how to protect himself. But with the group of younger scientists he himself developed, though now and then one or another grew mutinous, he was, during most of the time, on the best of terms. His own ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... to her former state of self-satisfaction. There were certain things to be done. For instance, that first chapter of John should receive more close attention at her next reading; and there were various other duties which should be taken up and carefully observed. But, on the whole, Ester ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... light heart may bear anything. A light heart! I smile to find such a word proceeding from my pen. A little more lightheartedness would render me the happiest being under the sun. But must I despair of my talents and faculties, whilst others of far inferior abilities parade before me with the utmost self-satisfaction? Gracious Providence, to whom I owe all my powers, why didst thou not withhold some of those blessings I possess, and substitute in their place a feeling of self-confidence ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... (called here fretting-notes) of other birds, for although this is generally the case, it is not invariably so. For instance, in addition to the alarm-note of the Swallow, chizzic, chizzic, it also had the whit, whit, which the Swallow uses when flying about, and the chatter of self-satisfaction (not the song) which one often hears in a barn when two Swallows are arranging their plan of operations in the spring. Again, in addition to the shriek of the Martin, there was the note which it utters when on the wing in pursuit of its food. There was ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... except himself—and plumes himself upon the variety of 'Its Thought' as an instance of creative Power. Let us leave this God of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can rescue him from his self-satisfaction." ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... of self-satisfaction do almost seem to smack of a heavenly origin—they have no blood-kin in the earth. It is more than human to be so placidly certain about things, and so finely superior, and so airily content with one's performance. Without ever presenting anything ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... there might be something in it. Certainly something, the three years or the discipline and training and suffering, or all combined, had changed him. He was not as he used to be. Things he liked very much he no longer liked at all. And where, oh where, was the serene self-satisfaction ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... to the surprise of Morton and Sims, and his other shipmates, who had not overheard the conversation, was seen standing up to dance with an air of conscious superiority and perfect self-satisfaction. Sims was rather jealous. Morton was highly amused. Glover flew up and down the room, enjoying the dance to the full. What cared he for the heat. What mattered to him that he trod on the toes of innumerable rajahs and nabobs, who would gladly have stuck their jewel-hilted daggers into him, or given ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... waistcoat, and in the endeavour to do so, thought that he had been indiscreet, Hjalmar Olsen felt ashamed of himself, and danced on with his eyes staring straight before him, like a sleep-walker. He danced on in a dream of self-satisfaction and transport. Ella tried now and then to touch the floor; she wished to have at least some certainty that she was keeping time. Impossible! He took charge at once, of himself, her dance and his, her time and his, she never got near ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... the consternation of the whole party, he scrambled in between Uncle John and his master, dropped the apple upon the floor, distributed a copious supply of Thames water amongst the affrighted beholders, squeezed his way through them as best he could, and, with an air of infinite self-satisfaction, resumed his place ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... of the limited income on which existence went on at Villa Elsa. It was characteristic. Though limited, the income was secure. Despite the economies practiced, the prevailing confidence and self-satisfaction did not suffer, as a result, the slightest impairment. It was ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... a thing not to be thought of, I sat for two hours in the balcony, watching the people, who were as thick as bees in swarming time. Nine-tenths of them were pure black. You rarely saw a white face, but still less would you see a discontented one, imperturbable good humour and self-satisfaction being written on the features of every one. The women struck me especially. They were smartly dressed in white calico, scrupulously clean, and tricked out with ribands and feathers; but their figures were so good, and they carried themselves so [43] well and ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... cause of the misery of others. Envy of those who are fortunate, and commiseration of those who are in trouble, are alike rooted in emulation. Man is by nature inclined to envy and malevolence. Hate easily leads to underestimation, love to overestimation, of the object, and self-love to pride or self-satisfaction, which are much more frequently met with than unfeigned humility. Immoderate desire for honor is termed ambition; if the desire to please others is kept within due bounds it is praised as unpretentiousness, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... man," was the landlord's smiling answer; his fair, round face, unwrinkled by a line of care or trouble, beaming with self-satisfaction. "I have always been a happy man, and always expect to be. Simon Slade takes the world as it comes, and takes it easy. My son, sir," he added, as a boy, in his twelfth year, came in. "Speak to ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... sound, to except myself: as far as I was concerned, those blue eyes were guiltless, and calm as the sky, to whose tint theirs seemed akin. So it came to pass that I heard the others talk, wondered often at their gaiety, security, and self-satisfaction, but did not trouble myself to look up and gaze along the path they seemed so certain of treading. This then was no billet-doux; and it was in settled conviction to the contrary that I quietly opened it. Thus ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... gold and blue kind. She had long been a vain little thing, approving of her own looks in the glass, and taking much interest in setting them off, but so simple as to make no attempt at concealing her self-satisfaction. Her pleased contemplation of this or that portion of her person, and the frantic attempts she was sometimes espied making to get a sight of her back, especially when she wore a new frock, were indeed more ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... to enjoy greatly this theory of his own final extinction, and he exclaims with infinite self-satisfaction, "this pure and ennobling sense of truth he would scorn to barter for the selfish and illusory hope of an eternity of personal existence." This is quite ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... as this in his household Monceux felt that he would soon lay Robin Hood by the heels. So he strutted to his horse, and was lifted thereon in fine self-satisfaction. His daughter mounted her palfrey, and Carfax led the beast gently, whilst the maids had to hurry over the rough stones ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... Protestants (for I will call you what you are, in spite of your own denials, a truly consistent and logical Protestant—and therefore a Materialist)—easy for you, I say, to sit on the shore, in cold, cruel self-satisfaction, and tell the poor wretch buffeting with the waves what he ought to do while he is choking and drowning. . . . Thank Heaven, the storm has stranded me upon the everlasting Rock of Peter;—but it has been a sore trouble ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... of humor, I think you would be amused if you could see his smile of placid self-satisfaction as he listens to our discussion of questions and problems which no more enter his daily life than they enter the daily life of an Eskimo; but I do not find it altogether amusing myself, and I could not ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... merge into conceit and blind self-satisfaction. The superior, patronizing air of many Americans, their insufferable boasting and dogmatism, does more, perhaps, to prejudice foreigners against us than any other thing. We must teach international good ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... This exactly suited Mr. Bodery and his sub-editor. There was very little of the slave in the composition of either. They delighted in an easy, luxurious life, with just enough work to impart a pleasant feeling of self-satisfaction. It suited Christian Vellacott also. In a few weeks he found his level—in a few months he began rising to ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... drunken prince and dyke-warden, whose carelessness lets in the inundation, is by far Peacock's most original creation (for Scythrop, as has been said, is rather a humorous distortion of the actual than a creation). His complete self-satisfaction, his utter fearlessness of consequences, his ready adaptation to whatever part, be it prince or butler, presents itself to him, and above all, the splendid topsy-turviness of his fashion of argument, make Seithenyn one of the ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... been delighted to, but I've got one of these war-committees at six o'clock." Again he spoke with careful unconcern, masking a considerable self-satisfaction. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... perhaps learnt more of life in some respects than they generally do, he was inclined to be rather surprised at his own cleverness. In a quiet way he had a high opinion of himself. He had been disposed to be a superior young man at twenty, and now, at thirty, he was not without a tinge of self-satisfaction, even pompousness. That his quickly discerning, subtle little wife should like and appreciate his good qualities; that she should, being of an affectionate nature, value him, was not surprising; but that, with her sense of humour and remarkable quickness, even depth of intellect, she ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... of the Second Company beamed with a self-satisfaction that added splendor to his ruddy and somewhat chubby face. The halo of glory that a fortune made in business gives to a retired tradesman sat on his brow, and stamped him as one of the elect of Paris—at least a retired deputy-mayor of his quarter of the town. And you may ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... on different people. Some it puffs up with self-satisfaction. To others it is a source of mortifying regret. I belonged to the latter class. I was continually crying out, 'O God, how little I am, and how little I know! Give me a chance of acquiring information, and of ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... was oily with that smile of complete self-satisfaction which is only found when foolishness and fervour ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... and was staying with Cranmer at Lambeth, expecting an arrest, received, instead of it, a safe-conduct, of which he instantly availed himself. The movements of others were quickened with indirect menaces; while Gardiner told Renard, with much self-satisfaction, that a few messages desiring some of them to call upon him at his house had given ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... Dreamers are our strictly unpaid torch-bearers. They light the path for us; and we murmur 'Poor fools!' with a kind of sneaking self-satisfaction, when ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... not careful to be his brother's keeper, then the voice of their brother's blood would cry unto God against them. There was scarcely a person present who could listen to their rector's sermon with feelings of self-satisfaction. ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... on fait connaitre, sur preuves incontestables, a qui le celebre infortune dut le jour, quand et ou il naquit'. The wording of the title will give an idea of the bizarre and barbarous jargon in which the whole book is written. It would be difficult to imagine the vanity and self-satisfaction which inspire this new reader of riddles. If he had found the philosopher's stone, or made a discovery which would transform the world, he could not exhibit more pride and pleasure. All things considered, the "incontestable proofs" of his theory do not decide the question definitely, or ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... much opportunity for conversation and for study of the Mahometan arguments, so as to be very useful to himself; though he could not succeed in convincing the impracticable moonshee, who had all that self-satisfaction belonging to Mahometanism. "I told him that he ought to pray that God would teach him what the truth really is. He said he had no occasion to pray on this subject, as the word of God is express." ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... destined to a perfect fulfillment, for poor Santron, who lay motionless and unconscious up to that moment, suddenly gave signs of life by moving his features, and jerking his limbs to this side and that. The doctor's self-satisfaction took the very proudest form. He expatiated on the grandeur of medical science, the wonderful advancement it was making, and the astonishing progress the curative art had made, even within his own time. I must own that I should have lent ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... joined before. My Utopia seems real to me, very real, I can believe in it, until the metal chair-back gives to my shoulder blades, and Utopian sparrows twitter and hop before my feet. I have a pleasant moment of unhesitating self-satisfaction; I feel a shameless exultation to be there. For a moment I forget the consideration the botanist demands; the mere pleasure of completeness, of holding and controlling all the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... beatific be anything more or less than a perpetual re-presentment to each individual angel of his own present attainments and future capabilities, somehow in the manner of mortal looking-glasses, reflecting a perpetual complacency and self-satisfaction? ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... twenty-three he says that his "late spring no bud or blossom shew'th." Yet he had already written the Ode on the Nativity, a performance sufficient, one would have {92} thought, to give a young poet reasonable self-satisfaction in what he had done, as well as confidence in what he would be able to do. Nor was Milton in the ordinary sense, or perhaps in any, a humble man. Of that false kind of humility, too often recommended from the pulpit, which consists in a beautiful woman trying to suppose herself plain, or an able ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... going to prove it?" Hamilton repeated, with immense self-satisfaction. "Why, I'm going to sell out ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should be, in the spirit of those who question their own wisdom and seek counsel and knowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the excitement of excursions whither they can not tell. Justice, and only justice, shall ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... property and everything in the effort to win praise and honor. All the holy Fathers have complained of this vice and with one mind conclude that it is the very last vice to be overcome, St, Augustine says: "All other vices are practised in evil works; only honor and self-satisfaction are practised in and by means ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... a cry of delight. He had reason to feel relief. In dragging the will from its hiding-place he had put behind him the most difficult part of his adventure; the final ceremony of replacing it in the safe was a matter only of minutes. With self-satisfaction Jimmie smiled; in self-pity he sighed miserably. For, when those same minutes had passed, again he would be an exile. As soon as he had set his house in order, he must leave it, and once more upon the earth become a ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... which Gunzelin, with the smiling self-satisfaction of an old roue, and decked out to give himself all the appearance of young manhood, was to lead the fairest maiden in the Rhineland to his stately castle. Gerda who possessed the mild disposition of her deceased mother had submitted to the inevitable. On a bright summer morning the bridal procession ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... that to our praise Good God not only reckons The moments when we tread his ways, But when the spirit beckons,— That some slight good is also wrought Beyond self-satisfaction, When we are simply good in thought, Howe'er we ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... is something worth fifty times its weight in gold," said M. Roussillon when he presented the necklace to his foster daughter with pardonable self-satisfaction. "It is a sacred charm-string given me by an old heathen who would sell his soul for a pint of cheap rum. He solemnly informed me that whoever wore it could not by any possibility be ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... of his face and in every movement of his person. To be complete, he should have been ignorant, gourmand, and cowardly. But, far from this, he was very learned, temperate, and madly courageous. He had all the great qualities of the soul, joined to an insufferable disposition, and a self-satisfaction which amounted almost to delirium. But what devotion, what zeal, what ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... modesty, that devils were subject unto them, and that they could exorcize them at their pleasure. While they acknowledged that their power was due to the influence of His name, they evidently thought more of themselves than of Him. They were given to unseemly glorifying and self-satisfaction, and were met by the Master's words—half warning, half rebuke—"I beheld Satan, as lightning, fall from heaven." He thus identifies their pride with that evil spirit which led to angelic ruin, and seeks to banish it from their hearts: "Rejoice not that the demons ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... voice was heard calling out their names from a distant corridor in the body of the building. They retraced their steps, and found him with his coat buttoned up and his hat on, awaiting their advent in a mood of self-satisfaction at having brought his search to a successful close. The carriage was brought round, and without further delay the trio drove away from the mansion, under the echoing gateway arch, and along by the leafless sycamores, as the stars began to kindle their trembling lights behind the maze of branches ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... with an entire self-satisfaction, a vein of pitiless sense, which enabled her to see herself as others might see her, and which saved her from the follies often incident to the self-satisfied. She considered herself a beauty; she thought, and with reason, that she would be well worth looking at in her wedding-clothes, ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... concerning the doings of the world at large. Of their civilization, which goes back beyond the reputed date of the Deluge, they are intensely proud, their ancient literature, in their conception, is far superior to the literatures of all other nations, and their self-satisfaction is so ingrained that they still stand aloof in mental isolation from the world, only the most progressive among them seeing anything to be gained from foreign arts. These differences in character have given rise ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... good to be in such company, and to feel that he was equal with the best. He had not always been the peer of such men. There had been an era of obscurity out of which he had slowly emerged, and therefore he had the larger pride and self-satisfaction in the position ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... sent for the documents that had been prepared at Parker Chandler's, and inside of three hours these had been substituted and the several agreements entered into with Rogers formally renounced. I retired to bed that night with a chuckle of self-satisfaction, and a convincing appreciation of the truth of the axiom I have ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... for a little while dazed. Hers was not the fine nature that would stay cruelly stunned after such a scene. Her immediate terror being past, the strongest resultant emotion was one of self-satisfaction at having spoken ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... who do not feel more confidence in themselves, perhaps more self-respect, for the consciousness of being well-dressed, or, rather, when the knowledge that they are well-dressed relieves them of all consciousness upon the subject. To decide upon the costume which can secure this serene self-satisfaction is impossible. For to excellence in dress there are positive and relative conditions. A man cannot be positively well-dressed, whose costume does not suit the peculiarities of his person and position,—or relatively, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... had been silently contemplating her beautiful oval profile and silky auburn curls. Certainly Antoinette Dupres was beautiful, but it was such a beauty as one sees in wax dolls—blank, soulless, expressionless, if I may except the predominating expression of self-satisfaction. Beulah's quiet dignity failed to repel the continued stare fixed upon her, and, gathering up the folds of ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... indignation. That is why so many people oppose holiness. Just as soon as Paul saw Christ and the higher and better things for which Christ stood, he suddenly lost his satisfaction and became an earnest seeker for those better things. Sometimes it takes a rude shock to break through our self-satisfaction and to show us our true needs; but when it comes and arouses a dissatisfaction, it ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... to my thought at the beginning—the necessity for 'Sureness' in regard to religion, and especially in the experience of Holiness—let me ask, Where are we found? Have the testings confirmed that certainty of heart, or have my words disturbed self-satisfaction? Do not be afraid of facing the direct issue. If you have the evidences referred to, then be sure to go about proclaiming what God has done. But if not, then this unsatisfied and unsatisfactory condition cannot be persisted ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... needs only to be careful—and lucky—to live a long time in the Solomons; but he must also be of the right sort. He must have the hall-mark of the inevitable white man stamped upon his soul. He must be inevitable. He must have a certain grand carelessness of odds, a certain colossal self-satisfaction, and a racial egotism that convinces him that one white is better than a thousand niggers every day in the week, and that on Sunday he is able to clean out two thousand niggers. For such are the things that have made the white man inevitable. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... self-esteem, germs in a strong character of worthy self— respect, seemed crushed out of him. Patient, humble, silent, one could hardly recognize in this Teddy Ginniss that other Teddy, whose cheery voice, frequent laugh, positive opinions and wishes, and good-humored self-satisfaction, had been the leading ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... his name with a certain self-satisfaction in having so readily recalled it, and we shook each ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... looking after her, until she had crossed the street, calling out a cheerful "Goodnight" that had in it something of a benediction. She avoided the dining-room and went straight to bed, in a strange medley of feelings. The self-sacrifice had brought a certain self-satisfaction not wholly unpleasant. She had been equal to the situation, and a part of her being approved of this,—a part which had been suppressed in another mood wherein she had become convinced that self-realization lay elsewhere. Life was indeed a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... thought and done in the world, is his panacea for all ills.... In almost all of his prose writing he attacks some form of 'Philistinism,' by which word he characterized the narrow-mindedness and self-satisfaction of the British ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... deemed he had a chance. Being a Sophomore, he believed that he was thoroughly acquainted with the co-educated sex and all their wiles and guiles; but a feeling of repulsion toward this frank readiness to throw down another man, one of his own, too, drowned his sense of self-satisfaction at ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... would last night." Dick laughed again, with a tinge of self-satisfaction. "I've an idea he wants to see ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... Evil One but the heart of the beloved is never its own reward. The thought of Jean's aching loneliness oppressed Olive far more than her own. She believed that she had done right in leaving him, but no consciousness of her own rectitude sustained her, and she was pitifully far from any sense of self-satisfaction. Her head hung dejectedly in the cold light of its aureole. Sometimes she hated herself for being one of the dull ninety-and-nine who never stray and who need no forgiveness, and yet she clung to her dear ideal of love ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... was more devotional temper, and a greater desire after a religious way of life. It might be that her fretfulness was the effect of an uneasiness of mind, which was more hopeful than her previous fierce self-satisfaction, and that her aberrations were the last efforts of old evil habits to re-establish their grasp by custom, when her heart was becoming ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Lettice, who came to announce a warm friend of the Doctor's, one Master Eccleston. On being admitted, the latter brought with him a low, ferret-eyed personage, whose leering aspect betrayed an inward consciousness of great cunning and self-satisfaction therewith. Dee received his guests with becoming dignity, inquiring to what good fortune he was indebted for ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... thought of self at the back of it. He had risked his life to save that of a stranger. The fact astonished him, while it pleased him hugely. The sensation was at once novel and thrilling. Since it was so agreeable, he meant to prolong the glow of self-satisfaction by continuing to care for this waif of the river. He must make his rescue complete. It did not occur to him to question his fitness for the work. His introspection did not reach to a point of suspecting that he, an ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... insistence that would not be denied, to that one of us who deserved it most. He who was left leaning against the soft side of a pillar hesitated whether to make some young priests spreading over undue space on one of the benches push up, and he enjoyed a rich moment of self-satisfaction in his forbearance. He was there, to be sure, an alien and a heretic, out of mere curiosity, and they were there probably so rapt in their devout attention that they did not notice their errant step-brother, and so did not think to offer ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... emotions were at work. The young master of the house was full of abstraction and dreams, wrapped in some pursuit, some hope, some absorbing preoccupation of his own. His mother was straining at her bonds like a greyhound in a leash. Minnie, who had been the chief example of absolute self-satisfaction and certainty that everything was right, had developed a keenness of curiosity and censure which betrayed her conviction that something had gone wrong. These three were all, as it were, on tiptoe, on the boundary line, the thinnest ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Holland House, and the 'Edinburgh Review' is its prophet. There is something in the absolute confidence of Macaulay's political dogmatism which varies between the sublime and the ridiculous. We can hardly avoid laughing at this superlative self-satisfaction, and yet we must admit that it is indicative of a real political force not to be treated with simple contempt. Belief is power, even ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... she could never love Louis again with any degree of happiness or self-satisfaction. That much Kraill had shown her. She and Louis had no part in each other's spiritual nights and days; the typhoon of physical passion that had swept her up for a few minutes she saw now as a very cheap ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... was even more effulgent than usual. There was upon his face a smile of supreme self-satisfaction. He had reason to believe that he had achieved a good stroke, and he was resolved to make the most of it. He had dreamed dreams and seen visions—one vision in particular which included within the same circumference himself and a certain frail fairy of the Robiniere ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... lovely girl plainly did, and live like her in perfect fearlessness of whatever might be going to happen to you. Religion would be better than endurable in the company of such an embodiment of it! He might even qualify for some distinction in it with such a teacher!—Second, in the way of self-satisfaction; for clearly she was not disinclined to be on terms of closer intimacy with him. And as she made the advance why should he not accept, if not the help, yet the offer of the help she had almost made? That would and could bind ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... and without apparent emotion, with all the calmness of despair. What she had never guessed before had come clearly and fully upon her now, and without apparent novelty, or, perhaps, there had been misgivings in the midst of her complacent self-satisfaction. She did not even seem to perceive how dreadfully she was shocking her father, whose sole comfort was in believing her language the effect of exaggerated self- reproach. His profession had rendered him not new to the sight of despondency, and, dismayed as he was, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... you such self-satisfaction, one by one, and ask yourself at what sacrifice, labor, or cost, above all, with what care you have managed to acquire them.... Alas! you will find that all that patience, affability, generosity, and piety are but as naught, springing from ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... words, but by kindly counsel. When he eventually doffed his uniform he had nothing with which to reproach himself; no neglect and no overstepping of duty, no injustice and no improper leniency; he had good cause for self-satisfaction. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... slumbered, under the appearance of sullen despondency, a sense of oppression, and a disposition to resistance. The looks of Wamba, on the other hand, indicated, as usual with his class, a sort of vacant curiosity, and fidgetty impatience of any posture of repose, together with the utmost self-satisfaction respecting his own situation, and the appearance which he made. The dialogue which they maintained between them, was carried on in Anglo-Saxon, which, as we said before, was universally spoken by the inferior classes, excepting the Norman soldiers, and the immediate personal dependants ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... ex-author of pious stories for the young, skilled dealer in truisms, in wordy platitudes couched largely in plagiarized language from the poets and essayists, in all the pseudo-religious slickeries wherewith men's souls are so easily lulled into self-satisfaction. The Good, the True, the Beautiful; these were his texts, but the real god of his worship was Success. This, under the guise of Duty ("man's God-inspired ambition to be true to his best possibilities"), he preached day in and day out through his "Daily Help" in The Patriot: Be ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... people ignore their responsibilities, or allow strangers to assume them, would be an occasion for humour, if it were not an opportunity for indignation: though indeed it would take a very exceptionally sober-minded spectator not to get some fun out of the blissful self-satisfaction and unconsciousness which characterize the most negligent ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... thereof. Manu indicates the various bases very significantly: "The whole Ve[d.]a is the source of the Sacred Law [Revelation], next the tradition [Conscience] and the virtuous conduct of those who know [Utility], also the customs of holy men [Evolution] and self-satisfaction [Mysticism]" (ii, 6.). It is true that happiness can result only by harmony with law, harmony with the Divine Will which is embodied in law—we need not quarrel over names—and the Science of Right Conduct, "by establishing righteousness brings about Happiness". It may therefore be truly ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... His self-satisfaction lasted him till he was fairly out in the streets, walking side by side with Henry Lennox. Here he suddenly remembered Margaret's little look of entreaty as she urged him to stay longer, and he also recollected a few hints given him long ago by an acquaintance ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... self-satisfaction. "I contrived it all," he said; "neat, I call it, too." His old eyes brightened with reminiscent enjoyment. "Inspiration!" he crowed softly. "Inspiration, pure and simple. I'd been worrying my wits for fully five minutes before Wotton settled the matter by ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Glamis Castle through the beautiful domain of park and wood, Grimond was aghast at his pinched and drawn face and the gleam in his eye. "May the Lord hae mercy, but I doot sairly that he is aff his head, and that there will be wild work at Dudhope." And while Grimond had all the imperturbable self-satisfaction and unshaken dourness of the Lowland Scot, and never on any occasion acknowledged that he could be wrong or changed his way, he almost wished that he had left this affair alone and had not meddled between his master and his master's wife. It was again a fair and sunny day, when the freshness ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... that the lovers do not dream fairy tales of their childhood. Higher culture has given them deeper passions, more intense personal relations; in dreams they but continue the life of waking. But the good weaver who lives thoroughly content in his own self-satisfaction and in the esteem of his neighbors, who has never reflected upon anything that has happened to him, but has received each day's blessings as they have come—this man sees, the moment he lays his head on the pillow, the fairies and the fairy queen. To him the ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... of pillows, would be a purely comic figure were it not for the terrible tragedy written in his face. A footman in brilliant livery is a comic figure. The splendour of this livery brings out the comic element by its contrast to, and yet its harmony with, the stupid self-satisfaction of the countenance and the curls of the ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... small-pox, in green leather slippers, and wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the chimney. His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head in its wicker ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... for the wine . . . well! all I can say is that there is none better in my lord's own cellar. I have given all that willingly. I did it because I liked it. But," he added, and once again the look of self-satisfaction and sufficiency gave way to his more habitual sinister expression, "if I pay for the feast, I decide who shall be invited to ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... please his High Mightiness to call again. Oh! and we—we women, poor things, must stand about with our mouths open, like mossy carp in a pond, and struggle and push for such crumbs of comfort as he will deign to throw us from the full larder of his self-satisfaction!" ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... perceptions are relatively coarse; our perceptions are relatively subtle. We try to make him understand, to make him see, and if he is aware of his inferiority we may have some success. But if he is not aware of his inferiority, we soon hold our tongues and leave him alone in his self-satisfaction, convinced that there is nothing to be done with him. Every one of us has been through this experience with a mental inferior, for there is always a mental inferior handy, just as there is always ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... Self-satisfaction is opposed to humility in so far as we understand by the former the joy which arises from contemplating our power of action, but in so far as we understand by it joy attended with the idea of something ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... in the service of the State, a fact of which he was not a little proud; and after his daughter's marriage with Morten Garman, who was one of the most eligible young men of the district, his somewhat sensitive feelings began to revolt against the self-satisfaction which the Garman family seemed to have inherited with their ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... was lowering to his nature. He sank more and more towards the professional Don Juan. With a leer of what the French call fatuity, he bids the belles of Mauchline beware of his seductions; and the same cheap self-satisfaction finds a yet uglier vent when he plumes himself on the scandal at the birth of his first bastard. We can well believe what we hear of his facility in striking up an acquaintance with women: he would have ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... commendations flattered is vanity, and he laid himself out for them. He was then but a "poor painted hypocrite," he says, "proud of his godliness, and doing all he did either to be seen of, or well spoken of by man." This state of self-satisfaction, he tells us, lasted "for about a twelvemonth or more." During this deceitful calm he says, "I had great peace of conscience, and should think with myself, 'God cannot choose but now be pleased with me,' yea, to relate ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... boots were russet cordovan, mid-thigh tall, and the rowels of his clinking spurs were silver stars. He was large of frame, and his curly hair was short and brown; so was his pointed beard. His eyes were singularly bright and fearless, and bluff self-satisfaction marked his stride; but his under lip was petulant, and he flicked his boot with his riding-whip as he shouldered ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... aggrandizement and enrichment of Spain, and giving up their lives in the work, unrecognized and forgotten, while their exploiters, the children and relatives of Ferdinand and Isabella, sat back in luxury and self-satisfaction. We wondered as to what was killing our shipmates, ghosts ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... the children to Sandwich by rail and then to a camp by motor lorry. It was a tiresome job loading and unloading the lorry, but after six trips I found that every child was in camp. I went off to have a wash and some tea, and then, glowing with self-satisfaction at all I had done, I lit a cigar and walked outside. ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... and caught Wulf by the collar of his tunic. Wulf struggled, but Wardo dragged him across the floor, shook him, and flung him outside the door and slammed it. He turned to Sada, demanding her applause with drunken self-satisfaction at his prowess, dropped on the nearest couch in abject prostration, and ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... enough. One of them gives us the vanity of mortal things; another the sense of sin; and the remaining one describes the fear of the universe;—and in one or other of these three ways it always is that man's original optimism and self-satisfaction get leveled with ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... from conceiving too much self-satisfaction, far from rendering his own mind the homage characteristic of pride, did not Lord Byron, looking at himself through the weaknesses of ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... then comes in this difficulty. Young men don't like to astound and exalt their fellows. And Americans, individually, are of all people the most anxious to please. That they talk overmuch is often taken as a sign of self-satisfaction. It is merely a mannerism. Rhetoric is a thing inbred in them. They are quite unconscious of it. It is as natural to them as breathing. And, while they talk on, they really do believe that they are a quick, businesslike ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... kind of characters who came knocking all hours of the day and the night at that gate. Goodwill never saw a happy face or heard a cheerful voice from one year's end to the other. And when any one so far forgot himself as to put on an untimely confidence and self-satisfaction, the gatekeeper would soon put him through such questions as quickly sobered him if he had anything at all of the root of the matter in him. Terror, horror, despair, remorse, chased men and women up to that gate. They would often fall before his threshold more dead than alive. And then, after the ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... satisfaction, and somewhat to Dick's self-satisfaction, they heard a low noise ahead, which they knew must be ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... breakfast or at your out-door business—whom you never see, except by sheer accident, as in the American hotel. She is an important and prominent personage in the English inn. She is a kind of mistress of the robes, and exercises her prerogative with much conscious dignity and self-satisfaction; and, what is better, with great satisfaction to yourself. No other subordinate official or servant trenches or poaches upon her preserves. She it is who precedes you up stairs with a candle, on a broad-bottomed brass candlestick, polished to ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... he pulled up by the porch and directed me to stand by the young mare's head, wore a look of extreme self-satisfaction. Beside him, also beaming, sat Mr. Goodfellow, with the corner cupboard ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... They were together, but without Thorn's friend Captain Beebee. Him Carleton next sought, and brought to the forward deck, where the others were enjoying their cigars; or rather, Charlton Rossitur was enjoying his with the happy self-satisfaction of a pair of epaulettes, off duty. Thorn had too busy a brain to be much of a smoker. Now, however, when it was plain that Mr. Carleton had something to say to them, Charlton's cigar gave way to his attention; it was displaced from his mouth, and held in abeyance, while Thorn puffed ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... scampered about from one place to another, simmering in perfect enjoyment. And the central figure of all was Esme Amarinth, who stood leaning upon an ebony stick with a silver knob, surveying his audience with the peculiar smile of humourous self-satisfaction that was so ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the vindication of Poor Richard. Extravagance is not the way to self-satisfaction. The man who does not keep his feet in the old, honest way of thrift will some time sell himself, and then he will be ready to sell his friends or his country. By and by nothing is so dear to him as thirty pieces ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... some moments gazing after him with a complacent smile making his fat face ridiculous. Then turning to his mill-stones, he shook his head with an air of intense self-satisfaction: ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... most pleasing expression of this self-satisfaction of the age is found in the Spectator, the first and best representative of that special style of literature—the only really popular literature of our time—which consists in talking to the public about itself. Humanity is taken as reflected in the ordinary ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... sincere; his real character was on the surface; he made no effort to restrain himself; he was perfectly at home, in his element; and one cannot disguise his delight at being in his element. There is a carelessness in his movements that betrays his self-satisfaction; he struts and spreads himself with an air of confidence; he seems to float in the air, to swim on the crest of the wave ... People can conceal their delight when they have recognised an adored being among a crowd ... can avoid showing that a piece of information casually ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... fact that being thoroughly incapable of creating their own language, they have by their talent to distort languages given to the present English people a repulsive Judeo-Carthaginian imprint through their shameless self-satisfaction, arrogance ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... to her father. Having consummated this summary divorce, for which he could show good reasons, he came back, seated himself in his usual place, and began to smoke with an air of utmost tranquillity and self-satisfaction. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... such men as these were happy; that they possessed sources of enjoyment inaccessible to less gifted minds is not to be doubted, but whether knowledge and conscious ability and superiority generally bring with them content of mind and the sunshine of self-satisfaction to the possessors is anything but certain. I wonder the inductive process has not been more systematically applied to the solution of this great philosophical problem, what is happiness, and in what it consists, for the practical purpose of directing the human mind into the right ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... my skill, 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. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... "Self-satisfaction, self-absorption, self-sufficiency, have had a sobering shock. For I find that for the full and perfect enjoyment of my city I myself am no longer enough. I need company—curiously, one specific and particular individual whom, having once named, ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... common with other great men, that, for our mistake, the public will assuredly suffer more than ourselves. Many a choice adventure, of which I was the hero, must be suppressed. I should blush myself black in the face to say what he would relate with a very quiet smile of self-satisfaction. However, as regrets are quite unavailing, unless, like the undertaker's, they are paid for, I shall exclaim, with the French soldier, who found his long military queue in the hands of a pursuing English sailor, "Chivalry of the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... air of self-satisfaction. He was pleased to have proved to himself and to the "damned butler," who had caught him napping in the library, that he was still a young man in himself, with senses and taste unimpaired. But his hand was at the small of his back as ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman |
