"Self-satisfied" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... carrier, or has otherwise been much employed around white men. From this experience he has acquired articles of apparel and points of view. He is given to ragged khaki, or cast-off garments of all sorts, but never to shoes. This hint of the conventional only serves to accent the little self-satisfied excursions he makes into barbarism. The shirt is always worn outside, the ear ornaments are as varied as ever, the head is shaved in strange patterns, a tiny tight tuft on the crown is useful as fastening for feathers or little streamers or anything else ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... lady, albeit with a self-satisfied sparkle in her dark eyes, here carelessly assured him that Zuleika had already given her refreshment, and, indeed, was at that moment preparing her own room for her. She begged he would ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... prosperity, that they have forgotten the real purpose of their existence, and, instead of becoming centres of light and attraction and active zeal for the spread of the gospel, have degenerated into self-contained units indulging a self-satisfied pride in the glorious position to which they have attained as self-supporting churches. The history of some churches on the West Coast of Africa and in South India suggests the need for such a warning, and urges us to ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... on this earth a little New Yorker is the smallest. I've met ignorance in the South, sullen pigheadedness in New England; I've measured the boundless cheek of the West, my native heath; but for self-satisfied stupidity, for littleness in the world of morals, I have seen nothing on earth, or under it, quite so small as a well-to-do New Yorker. He has little brains, or culture, and only the rudiments of common sense, but, being from New York, he assumes everything. ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... up in his own proper place at my feet. He was intensely self-satisfied, and expressed his high idea of his own exploit by self-gratulatory "grumphs," as after describing many mystic circles, and scraping up the fair Marseilles quilt on some plan of his own, he brought his nose and tail together in a satisfactory ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... with vague misgivings concerning what he had done; his smile was a bit less self-satisfied. Radnor, apparently, left the building. But the shrewd news-gatherer went no farther than the entrance, where he wheeled about and returned; and this time he sent his card to Roderick Duncan. Having "nailed the story," the proper thing now was to obtain an interview with one of the principals ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... him oftener than with Morson, or a dozen others, but he had a pleasant feeling that even when she shook her head and said, "I cannot," her soft eyes added for her, "though I really wish to." There was something almost pitiable, he told himself in the complacency with which that self-satisfied ass Morson would come and take her from him. As if he hadn't sense enough to discover that it was merely because she was his hostess that she went with him at all. But some men would never understand women, though they lived to be a thousand, and got rejected ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... self-satisfied smile, "that's true. But talking about yarns, you remember when I was with Milburn's, running to Hamburg? The old gentleman asked me to take a few overmen a trip. They belonged to some mine he was interested in. By the time ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... glittering gold specs. Perhaps it warped Norah's. I ought to have been sorry, instead of proud and superior. And I'm not clever, either—I thought I was—and it was dreadful finding out. I expect she hated it, too. Norah! Oh, Norah, I have behaved like a blind, self-satisfied bat. If you go and die now I shall be miserable all my life—bowed down with remorse! Oh, Norah, do, do open ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to haunt the dank and dreary streets of the once dazzling Ville Lumiere. I seemed to see the shabby bottle-green coat, the nankeen pantaloons, the down-at-heel shoes of this "confidant of Kings"; I could hear his unctuous, self-satisfied laugh, and sensed his furtive footstep whene'er a gendarme came into view. I saw his ruddy, shiny face beaming at me through the sleet and the rain as, like a veritable squire of dames, he minced his steps upon the boulevard, ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... grown up into an unwholesome, spotty, indeterminate young man, with a speckled necktie, and cuffs of which he was inordinately proud, and which he insisted on "flashing" every second minute. He was also evidently self-satisfied; which was odd, for I have seldom seen anyone who afforded less cause for rational satisfaction. "Hullo," he said, when I told him my name. "So it's you, is it, Cumberledge?" He glanced at my ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... thoughts, however, to himself, and with an instinctive reticence sought to disguise even from his mother the feelings that were so new, and so full of delicious pain. That he was becoming quite different from the careless, self-satisfied young fellow that he had been hitherto was apparent to all, and after his outburst on Sunday evening his mother half guessed the cause. But he misled her to some extent, and Susan altogether, by saying, "I've had ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... to think of others. Why, what tragedies, comedies, interludes, intrigues, farces, are going on under our noses in friends' drawing-rooms where we visit every day, and we remain utterly ignorant, self-satisfied, and blind! As these sisters sate and combed their flowing ringlets of nights, or talked with each other in the great bed where, according to the fashion of the day, they lay together, how should Harry know that he had so great a share ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... peculiar devil-may-care recklessness about the self-satisfied swagger of his gait, and the free and easy glance of his sharp black eye, united with a temper that nothing could ruffle, and a courage nothing could daunt. With such qualities as these, he had been the prime favourite of his mess, to which he never ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... China had a third of the human race and a tenth of the habitable globe entirely to herself, with no neighbours who had anything that she really cared for. It was inevitable, therefore, that a naturally conservative people should become a self- centred and self-satisfied people. ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... self-satisfied. Lovin Child kicked his heels against the rough table frame and gurgled unintelligible conversation whenever he was able to articulate sounds. Bud replied with a rambling monologue that implied a perfect understanding ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... He was indeed very young for a war magician, and he felt not a little pride on account of it. Assuming a self-satisfied and important air, he turned to his nephew ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... creed, that, in addition to the temptation, never easily resisted by him, of displaying his wit at the expense of his character, he was here addressing a person who, though, no doubt, well meaning, was evidently one of those officious, self-satisfied advisers, whom it was the delight of Lord Byron at all times to astonish and mystify. The tricks which, when a boy, he played upon the Nottingham quack, Lavender, were but the first of a long series with which, through life, he amused himself, at the expense of all the numerous ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... fleet of small, unarmed luggers. But a big, hulking Dutch frigate hovered in their rear, and thirty-two guns pointed their brown muzzles menacingly from her open port-holes. She was the Neptune and she lazed along like a huge whale: omnipotent and self-satisfied. ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... proceeded to explain. He had ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred, or more, pieces of ground of the kind required, at different prices and suited to different tastes. He talked just as a fountain flows, smiling, self-satisfied, wagging his ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... unheedingly. Yes, after laughing heartily over Chichikov's misadventures, and perhaps even commending the author for his dexterity of observation and pretty turn of wit, you will look at yourselves with redoubled pride and a self-satisfied smile, and add: "Well, we agree that in certain parts of the provinces there exists strange and ridiculous individuals, as ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... of the name of Boilay washes the dirty linen of Dr. Veron, and corrects his faults of grammar, of history, &c. Boilay is a small, sharp, stout, little man, self-possessed, self-satisfied, with great readiness and tact. Give him but the heads of a subject and he can make out a very readable and plausible article. Boilay is the real working editor of the Constitutionnel, and is supported by a M. Clarigny, a M. Malitourne, and others not ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... and close our ears to his voice, and refuse to consider his claims, and deal falsely with his arguments; we may reject his offers, and, shrinking back from his touch and his helping hand, retire into the gloom of self-satisfied pride, preferring the darkness to the light; or we may make merry with Heaven's ambassador, and mock him as they did the prophet of old; or cry out, "Away with him!" as the world cried to the Lord of light and life. And what if the second ambassador never comes again with such pressing earnestness, ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... blue, and it seemed to Langham, fresh from the absolute seclusion of college rooms in vacation, that everything looked flat and stale beside her, beside the flash of her white arms, the gleam of her hair, the confident grace of every movement. He thought her much too self-conscious and self-satisfied; and she certainly did not make herself agreeable to him; but for all that he could hardly take his eyes off her; and it occurred to him once or twice to envy Robert the easy childish friendliness she showed to him, and to him alone ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in some moods he admired, occasionally got on his nerves. I find this footnote on a page of "Culture and Anarchy": "This is self-satisfied swank." On another page: "Matthew Arnold himself often wanting in sweetness and light." On another: "Admirably put; here I do agree with M. A." He liked Arnold's essay on "The Function of Criticism," although ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... Pelagia danced on; and for a whole age of agony, he could see nothing in heaven or earth but the bewildering maze of those white feet, as they twinkled over their white image in the marble mirror.... At last it was over. Every limb suddenly collapsed, and she stood drooping in soft self-satisfied fatigue, awaiting the burst of applause which rang through Philammon's ears, proclaiming to heaven and earth, as with a mighty trumpet-blast, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... but that is no reason why Tabitha should. I always turn away my eyes when I see a young girl pass the window on one of those ugly, muddy, dangerous machines, with her knees working like pumps, her skirt I don't know where, and an expression of self-satisfied determination on her face. I don't think I am old-fashioned, but I am sure my own dear little girl, if she had ever come to me, would not have bicycled; and though I had no wish to put any unfair restraint on Tabitha, still I did not want her to have a bicycle. And that this ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... only a few exceptions, she did not like the people. They were, in her opinion, at the same time, extravagant and penurious, proud and mean, ignorant, yet wise "above what is written," self-satisfied and curious. The fact was, her ideas of things in general were disarranged by the state of affairs in Merleville. She never could make out "who was somebody and who was naebody;" and what made the matter more mysterious, they did not ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... be self-satisfied and self-protecting. A religious institution especially is in danger of becoming content and resentful of criticism because, by its nature, it deals with matters that seem beyond the investigation that man prescribes for ordinary ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... Zurich; yet he had felt ashamed of partaking of such a luxury as a cup of coffee even. I had to admit that I could not share his hopes of the influence of an artistic portrayal of the sufferings of the weavers upon the people of wealth. Self-satisfied virtue is hard to move. Rather did I believe that a great work of art, treating of the life of the masses, was bound to rouse their consciousness ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... with being named formally at first, and in the first two words, 'I thank thee,' but that is only formal introduction, and in all the rest of his prayer there is not a trace of praying. Such a self-satisfied gentleman had no need to ask for anything, so he brought no petitions. He uses the conventional language of thanksgiving, but his real meaning is to praise himself to God, not to thank God for himself. God is named once. All the rest is I, I, I. He had no longing for ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... entirely at ease—an expression that once seen is never forgotten. The face stamped itself instantly on my memory; and I can even now recall it with almost the original distinctness. How strongly it contrasted with that of her smiling, self-satisfied husband, who took his place at the head of his table with an air of conscious importance. I was too hungry to talk much, and so found greater enjoyment in eating than in conversation. The landlord had a more chatty guest by his side, and I left them to entertain ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... typical ghost-seer, was surely never produced than the round and rubicund little person I found in conversation with the Atherleys. Mrs. Mallet was a brunette who might once have considered herself a beauty, to judge by the self-conscious and self-satisfied simper which the ghastliest recollections were unable to banish. As I entered I caught only the ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... development of him to the reader. I saw too much of him; my memory is choked with disarranged moods and aspects. Now he is distended with megalomania, now he is deflated, now he is quarrelsome, now impenetrably self-satisfied, but always he is sudden, jerky, fragmentary, energetic, and—in some subtle fundamental way that I find difficult ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... his imprisoned playfellows, and profoundly hostile to the pink and white gentleman. His friends looked so wretched, so woebegone, so bedraggled, while their captor looked so point-device and self-satisfied that Villon felt a fierce indignation burn within him over the injustices of ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... only the young lady herself, but her whole family ought to be eternally grateful, for without such manoeuvring I doubt much whether the perfect daughter or the self-satisfied mother would obtain an establishment in all things so desirable. Enraged as she will be at first at such unexpected conduct in the child she has so ill-treated, she will thank you in the end, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... positive about the Conneelys, the priest, the prosperous self-satisfied girls, the managing capable mother, to make people feel that there had always been Conneely's Hotel in Killesky. If the old people remembered Julia Dowd's little public-house with its thatched roof, the low ceiling and the fire of turf to which you could draw a chair while you had your drink, ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... turn for guard duty last night, but this morning Jake's countenance wore a peculiar expression, which indicated that he possessed some knowledge not shared by the rest of the party. He spoke never a word, and was as serene as a Methodist minister behind four aces. My interpretation of this self-satisfied serenity is that his guard duty did not deprive him of much sleep. When it comes to considering the question of danger in this Indian country, Jake thinks that he knows more than the veteran Jim Stuart, ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... going!" he called back, beginning to roll a cigarette. "I have some reading to do to-day." Mr. Deever was tall, awkward and homely, and a lot of other things that would have discouraged a less self-satisfied "lady's man." Judge Smith said he was hopeless, but that he might do better after he ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... Though representative of a common movement, they were far from united in their beliefs or consistent in their political practices. There was always something of the inquisitor at Boston and of the monk at Plymouth, and in all the Puritan colonies there prevailed a self-satisfied sense of importance as the chosen of God. The controversies that arose over jurisdictions and boundaries and the niceties of doctrine are not edifying, however honest may have been those who entered into them. Massachusetts and Connecticut always showed a disposition ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... intellect, a fair degree of shrewd perception, an inviolable conscientiousness, a common sense frankly self-satisfied, are some of the qualifications which Mr. Purnell brings to the discussion of literature as seen in modern journalism, and in the lives of Giraldus Cambrensis and Montaigne,—of Roger Williams, the literary statesman,—of Steele, Sterne, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... A sudden and overwhelming idea took possession of me, and I looked impulsively into his face. Was it possible that for once Enriquez' ironical extravagance had been understood, met, and vanquished by a master hand? But the Rev. Mr. Mannersley's self-satisfied face betrayed no ambiguity or lurking humor. He was evidently in earnest; he had complacently accepted for himself the abandoned Enriquez' serenade to his niece. I felt a hysterical desire to laugh, but it was checked by my ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... standing two men, whom we may have seen in past years, self-satisfied in countenance, and spotless in array, sauntering down Piccadilly any July afternoon, or lounging in Haggis's stable-yard at Cambridge any autumn morning. Alas! how changed from the fast young undergraduates, with powers of enjoyment only equalled by their powers ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... entirely calm, and looks straight forward. Not one feature of her face is disturbed, or seems ever to have been subject to emotion. The Italian Aphrodite looks up, her face all quivering and burning with passion and wasting anxiety. The Greek one is quiet, self-possessed, and self-satisfied; the Italian incapable of rest, she has had no thought nor care for herself; her hair has been bound by a fillet like the Greeks; but it is now all fallen loose, and clotted with the sea, or clinging to her body; only the front tress of it is caught ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... vile system is carried on openly it is to be considered honest, then slaving is honest, and piracy, and highway robbery, for that matter. See, however, her gallant skipper is not afraid of us. Look, with what a self-satisfied air he walks the deck with his gold-lace cap, and glass under his arm. They are preparing to lower a boat, and he'll come to pay his respects as one captain does ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... flushed a deep crimson now, and her eyes were flashing with an angry light. Her heart was filled with disgust at these cool, self-satisfied schemers. Had they been less confident of their own importance they would have realized that they were treading on dangerous ground. They could not comprehend that back of Nellie's quiet, reserved demeanour ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... Elsewhere in the barn it was already half dark. On one side the hay rose up in a tremendous heap almost to the roof, where it vanished dimly in the dusky shadows. Opposite were the cow-stables, five of them in a row, each occupant munching her cud contentedly and now and then giving vent to a soft, self-satisfied low. From one of the stalls could be heard the rhythmical squirt of milk against the milking-pail, for David was engaged upon his evening work. On a rickety chair near the hay-loft sat Janet, holding a timid little barn cat in her lap ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... slight and superficial conceptions of our own evil, and that if once we saw, in so far as it is possible for humanity to-day to see, God as He is, and heard in the depths of our hearts that 'Holy! holy! holy!' from the burning seraphim, the easy-going, self-satisfied judgment of ourselves which too many of us cherish would be utterly impossible; and would disappear, shrivelled up utterly in the light of God. 'I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear,' said Job, 'but now mine eye seeth Thee; therefore I abhor myself, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... he continued presently, and with a highly self-satisfied note in his voice, "apart from the executive work it's what the Americans call a lead-pipe cinch. We can't lose. I've been fishing for this quite a while, and I put it over by getting in touch with the right people. It's ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was that women's emotions were too thoroughly instinctive to be projected in the form of first-class music, which was, in fine, emotion analyzed, compressed within the limits of fixed rules, expressed by series of arbitrary signs. In the midst of his conclusion, however, he lost his self-satisfied smile: he had caught sight of Lilla, who was looking at him blankly as though he had slammed a ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... looks straight forward. Not one feature of her face is disturbed, or seems ever to have been subject to emotion. The Italian Aphrodite looks up, her face all quivering and burning with passion and wasting anxiety. The Greek one is quiet, self-possessed, and self-satisfied: the Italian incapable of rest; she has had no thought nor care for herself; her hair has been bound by a fillet like the Greek's; but it is now all fallen loose, and clotted with the sea, or clinging to her body; ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... mistaken on love-matters in his life," said that self-satisfied sage complacently. "Now, my dear, don't be offended. I have known both you and your brother ever since you were left little orphan children together; if I cannot speak plainly to you, who can? You are in love, little Helen—and ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... the best lights; and all titivated and polished up and varnished on the walls, and adapted, as it were, to the situation. You may know an R. A. on the private view-day by the broad, expanding jollity of his visage, if he be a man of that stamp, or by a certain quiet, self-satisfied smile of self-complacence, if he ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... get it done by Laurence; half at your expense and half at mine, I think. I wish you had sent over to me some of your poems which you told me you were printing at Florence: and often I wish I was at Florence to give you some of my self-satisfied advice on what you should select. For though I do not pretend to write Poetry you know I have a high notion ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... pang, like a sharp arrow, suddenly rush into my brain. Julia had no reserve in telling me this fact. It was a subject she seemed pleased to dwell upon. She narrated with the earnest, unseeing spirit of a self-satisfied child, the sort of conversation which had taken place between them—praised Edgerton's taste, his delicacy, his subdued, persuasive manners, and showed herself as utterly unsophisticated as any Swiss mountain-girl who voluntarily ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... power dominates all his age; and in the face of such a genius, who would not follow Paganini's example, and hail him as Beethoven's only successor?[60] Who does not see what a poor figure the young Wagner cut at that time, working away in laborious and self-satisfied mediocrity? But Wagner soon made up for lost ground; for he knew what he wanted, and he wanted ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... aims. But there was one to whom the sermon was a fiery ordeal. For even Donald, well-nigh crushed with the weight of his grief and the knowledge of all he had missed, was no more torn by the old clergyman's words than the young minister who sat reviewing his past self-satisfied year in Glenoro in the light of ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious an self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... considerable part of the inconsiderable congregation expect to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the pavement under the Dedlock displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no doubt he is surprised that I don't. For he is, by heaven, the most self-satisfied, and the shallowest, and the most coxcombical ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... separated from the Churches of more civilised countries which had preserved much of the learning and art of the old Roman Empire. One of those who felt strongly the evil which would follow on such a separation was Wilfrid. He was scornful and self-satisfied, but he had travelled to Rome, and had been impressed with the ecclesiastical memories of the great city, and with the fervour and learning of its clergy. He came back resolved to bring the customs of England into conformity with those ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... as if I should go wild. It is no use saying anything, Mamma always takes her side, you know, but she does aggravate me so! Even her movements irritate me,—just the way she shakes her head and curls her lip,—she is so self-satisfied. She thinks no one else knows anything. It must be a puzzle to her how the world ever got along before she came into it, and what it will do when she leaves it is ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... contempt. And here I must tell the reader that while Poles have so high an opinion of their nation in comparison with other nations, and of their countrymen with other countrymen, they have generally a very mean opinion of each other. Indeed, I never met with a Pole who did not look down with a self-satisfied smile of pity on any of his fellow-countrymen, even on his best friend. It seems that their feeling of individual superiority is as great as that of their national superiority. Liszt's observations (see Vol. I., p. 259) and those of other writers (Polish as well as ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... scented the first whiff of the quarrel-laden atmosphere of the embassy than he expressed in his usual self-satisfied, impetuous, and defiant way his purpose to be rigidly impartial. But he was a natural fault-finder, and by no means a natural peacemaker; and his impartiality had no effect in assuaging the animosities which he found. However, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... in little nooks together over each other's immoralities, and have a moral code so elastic that it will pardon anything except innocence; who gossip over each other's dresses, and each other's passions, in the self-same, self-satisfied chirp of contentment, and who never resent anything on earth, except any eccentric suggestion that life could be anything except a perpetual fete a la Watteau in a ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... unauthenticated, he could not declare it officially. He expressed a hope, therefore, that the house would suspend their judgment; at the same time declaring, that if he had committed a fault in drawing out the plan of the expedition, he was ready to answer for it. He made this declaration in such a cold, self-satisfied tone, that it drew down upon his head the most bitter inventive from members of the opposition. Barre, Luttrell, Burke, Townshend, and Fox, all, in their turns, assailed the haughty secretary, and revelled in descriptions of the loss and disgrace which we had sustained—necessarily, from ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... conspicuous in the rue de la Paix. Heavy sable furs and muffs almost bowed their shoulders; each finger had two or three rings that flashed in the light; round their necks were gold chains hung with pendants, and yet, instead of the air of self-satisfied ostentation that might well have gone with a display so lavish, there were only two pathetically little, frightened, perplexed faces, and an uncertain gait that did not promise much further progress along that ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... know yet all I can do for you," pursued Carder, and Geraldine writhed under the self-satisfied gaze which seemed to be taking stock of her person from head to foot; "nor what I intend to do," he added. "My wife was a plain sort of woman and I've been wrapped up in business. See that little buildin' down there side o' the road? That's ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... his ugly face looked uglier still. It assumed the self-satisfied expression of a man ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... BROADBENT [hugely self-satisfied]. I think I've done the trick this time. I just gave them a bit of straight talk; and it went home. They were greatly impressed: everyone of those men believes in me and will vote for me when the question of selecting a candidate comes up. After ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... who arose to ask the prayers of Christians: one was Will Bailey, the most hopeless, so the boys thought, of all the boys in town; the other was Will Bailey's grey-haired father, the most hopeless, so the good men feared, of all the strong, self-satisfied men ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... led, and what effects it had upon the political evolution of mankind. The French Revolution stood midway between two spheres of history, the sphere of medieval barbarism and that of modern enlightenment. It exploded like a bomb in the midst of the self-satisfied aristocracy of the earlier social system and rent it into the fragments which no hand could put together again. In this sense the career of Napoleon seems providential. The era of popular government had replaced that of autocratic and aristocratic ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... cheeks and half-hidden wrinkles of Lady Longspade as she brings in at the end of the hand three winning little clubs, and sees kings and queens fall impotent at their call. Triumphant, successful Lady Longspade! Was Napoleon more triumphant, did a brighter glow of self-satisfied inward power cross his features, when at Ulm he succeeded in separating poor ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... her with lowering brows. "I hate school," she said vehemently. "I hate the teachers, and I hate Miss Thompson most of all. Every one of those teachers are common, low-bred and impertinent. As for your Miss Thompson, she is a self-satisfied prig." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... to be a man whom he knew, a former teacher of his sister's children, Peter Gerasimovitch. Nekhludoff never knew his surname, and even bragged a bit about this. This man was now a master at a public school. Nekhludoff could not stand his familiarity, his self-satisfied laughter, his ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... spoke up. "I saw him doing it, Pete. I also saw one of the other guards leave the messhall for a few minutes just before we sat down to eat. When he came back I saw him grinning mysteriously as though very self-satisfied ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... joyous countenances of all on the Betsy Allen. The worthy captain made no endeavor to check the boisterous merriment of his crew, but lighting his pipe, seated himself upon the companion-way, with a complacent smile expanding his sun-browned features, which developed itself into a self-satisfied and happy laugh as Mr. Williams appeared at the cabin-door, leading up his daughter to enjoy the pure morning air, fresh from the clear ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... the sod, with a peculiar noiseless, effortless motion that made them seem as calm, lazy, and unsubstantial as the mist through which they made their way; even the sound of passing wagons was a sort of low, well-fed, self-satisfied chuckle. ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... boy will grow into a priggish, self-satisfied do-nothing, and she into an adoring, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... That was two months ago. I don't think I am the morally self-satisfied prig I was two months ago.... I'd be easier on anything now, even a cat. But don't think I mean more than I do mean, Duane," she added hastily. "I've missed you a little. I want you to be nice to me.... After all, you're the oldest friend I ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... where there was another crack of little more than two feet across. Meetuck stretched his neck and took a steady look at this as they approached it at full gallop. Being apparently satisfied with his scrutiny, he resumed his look of self-satisfied placidity. ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... attitude suggested a bird just alighted for an instant from a flight through space. Her dark eyes were fringed by the longest of black lashes, and even her stained teeth could not detract from the curves of her pretty mouth. She had a self-satisfied consciousness of her own attractions, and was as imperious and overbearing as any American beauty, stamping her tiny foot in rage at our photographer's lack of haste in taking her picture, and once walking away from the camera with a disdainful toss of her head. When, ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... intellectual life languished, as a plant droops in a close, confined place, the people were self-satisfied—though not with a joyous or noisy self-satisfaction; for there was much sadness in their minds after the great disasters [the Sleswick-Holstein War].... They rested on their laurels and fell into a doze. And while they dozed they had dreams. The cultivated, and especially the half-cultivated, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... he would retire to his cubicle and examine his features in a looking-glass, and he would sigh and say, "It is a weak face. I shall never carve a place for myself in the world." But as years went on he became either less self-conscious or more self-satisfied. The world, he found, made a niche for him as it did for every one. Decision of character might come later—or he might have it without knowing. At all events he had got a sense of beauty and a sense of humour, two most desirable gifts. The sense of beauty developed ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... unusual hour; and had there been any one there to see, he might have been observed to shake the contents of a little paper, a fine white powder, into the water carafe which stood filled upon the wash-stand in Seabrooke's alcove. Then, with the self-satisfied air of one who has accomplished a great feat, he stole from the room ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... jocular, self-satisfied tone) I am that Amphitryon who has a servant Sosia, which same turns into Mercury on occasion, I being the Amphitryon who lodge in the upper attic (pointing heavenward) and become Jupiter at ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... that young man, and lifted his eyebrows as if to express astonished admiration, then made a wry face. Norris smiled his understanding and glanced back at the self-satisfied prosperity beneath her filmy hat. Then, suddenly, at the far end of the room, another face caught him—a profile of a girl's head, outlined against a high bench-back, her dreamy eyes fixed on the speaker. It was a cameo-like face, not animated, but delicate ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... Behind him was a record absolutely beyond criticism, before him a great Christian opportunity. We made the mistake, however, of ignoring the great influence upon our civic prosperity of the business impulse of the West. We in New York and Brooklyn were a self-satisfied community, unmindful of our dependence upon the rest of the American continent. My Western trips were my recreation. An occasional lecture tour accomplished for me what yachting or baseball does for others. ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... traitor, and after deserving the cart and pillory a dozen times for his last and most utter baseness, is rewarded by full pardon, and the honour of addressing the audience at the play's end in the most smug and self-satisfied tone, and of 'putting himself on you that are my country,' not doubting, it seems, that there were among them a fair majority who would think him a very smart ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... everything to you, that you pay your way with your beauty. If you didn't die, but married DeWitt, you would go on through life petted and babied, bridge-playing and going out to lectures, childless, incompetent, self-satisfied—and ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... they really did, because they were all very tender of her, and they wouldn't have scared her for anything, and everybody kept cheering her up and telling her how much they knew she would like it, till they got her to the pump. The little pumpkin-glory was feeling awfully proud and self-satisfied; for it had never seen any flower or any vegetable treated with half so much honor by human beings. It wasn't sure at first that it was very nice to be laughed at so much, but after a while it began to conclude that the papas and the mammas were just laughing at the joke of the whole thing. When ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells
... bed. Dotty, in her lofty pride, tried to make her little friend feel herself a sinner; while Jennie, ready to hide herself in the potato-bin for shame, was, at the same time, very angry with the self-satisfied Miss Dimple. She was awed by her superior goodness, but did not love her any the better for it. Why should she? ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... sound of his powerful breathing, General Lariviere approached with heavy state and sat between the two women, looking stubborn and self-satisfied, laughing in every ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... end of the earth to the other that I am a most cunning man," Muchini went on, stroking his muscular arm, a trick of self-satisfied men in their moments of complacence; "and whilst even the old men slept, I, Koosoogolaba-Muchini, the son of the terrible and crafty G'sombo, the brother of Eleni-N'gombi, I went abroad with my wise men and my spies and sought out devils and ghosts in places where even the bravest have never ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... and Endymion was invited to meet him. It was Adriana's first visit to Paris, and she seemed delighted with it; but Mrs. Neuchatel preferred the gay capital when it was out of season. Mr. Neuchatel himself was always in high spirits,—sanguine and self-satisfied. He was an Orleanist, had always been so, and sympathised with the apparently complete triumph of his principles—"real liberal principles, no nonsense; there was more gold in the Bank of France than in any similar establishment in Europe. After all, ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... Sundays, putting contributions in the box, and listening to the minister preach. It was a veritable hive of applied Christianity, and many a man who hitherto thought he had done his full duty by attending church regularly and contributing to its support had these ideas, so comfortable and self-satisfied, completely shattered. ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... he murmured easily, meaning the saddle. "I'm riding on your tail, just about; but I guess we can stand it the rest uh the why, all right." If he had not been so lazy and self-satisfied he would have stopped right there and reset the saddle. But if he had, he might have missed something which he liked ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... against his will, not a project that men dared to form in the most secret recesses of the heart, not a thought which did not proceed from his. Mute Europe listened to him by its representatives. From time to time he raise an imperious voice, and threw a self-satisfied word to this pompous circle, as a man who throws a copper coin among a crowd of beggars. Then might be distinguished, by the pride which lit up his looks and the joy visible in his countenance, the prince who had received ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... in his remarks. They were like his first impression on me the day before, so commonplace, so laboriously undistinguished that again the conviction was forced upon me that it was a pose. Had I expected too much? Was he merely a self-satisfied egoist, clever enough to perceive our interest and impose upon it? Bill endeavoured to clear the air. The mention of "art ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... prominence; there was Joe Parkinson, for instance, who had lunched at Oyster Bay only last Thursday, according to the Lichfield Courier-Herald. And, meanwhile, the men of her husband's generation clung to their old mansions, and were ornamental, certainly, and were, very certainly, profoundly self-satisfied; for they adhered to the customs of yesterday under the comfortable delusion that this was the only way to uphold yesterday's ideals. But what, in heaven's name, had any of these men of Rudolph Musgrave's circle ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... universities, and had devoted himself to urging a similar system in our own country. On the Eastern institutions—save, possibly, Brown—he made no impression. Each of them was as stagnant as a Spanish convent, and as self-satisfied as a Bourbon duchy; but in the West he attracted supporters, and soon his ideas began to show themselves effective in the State university over which he had ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... "pleesure," and as he said it he licked his lips in his usual self-satisfied fashion. I wondered how he would conduct himself when he saw the message I ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... continued to speak in this congratulatory vein while the old man ate and drank; but though he occasionally muttered a word or two which would seem to endorse her statements, his countenance was far from wearing the joyful self-satisfied expression ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... smoothed and combed, on the outside wall, and when he left home he carefully put it away in a safe place. The skin became famous throughout the district, and many of the younger men made special trips to Bali to examine it. Arni would beam with joy and strut around with a knowing, self-satisfied expression on his face, and would tell of the patience, the agility, and the marksmanship he had to put into killing this monstrously clever fox. It certainly wasn't hard to kill all you wanted of these devils, if you just had the powder and shot and were willing ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... overflowing. At Yinretlen, the encampment nearer us, the hunters on the other hand had obtained only eight seals. Gladness and want of care for the morrow at all events prevailed here also, and our skin-clad friends availed themselves of the opportunity to exhibit a self-satisfied disdain of the simple provisions from the Vega which the day before they had begged for with gestures so pitiful, and on which they must, in a day or two, again depend. The children, who had fallen off during recent weeks, if not in comparison ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... such it is one with the consciousness, soul or self, of the individual when the latter rids himself of the illusion of a manifold universe and realises his unity with Brahma. Moreover, Brahma is bliss—the joy of wholly perfect and self-satisfied thought and being. Since Brahma as universal Soul is really identical with each individual soul or atma, and vice versa, it follows that each individual soul contains within itself, qua Brahma, the whole of existence, nature, gods, mankind, and all other beings; ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... and self-satisfied as his demeanor may have been, Horace Dinsmore was even now regretting the step he had just taken; for remembering Elsie's conscientious scruples regarding the observance of the Sabbath—which he had for the moment forgotten—he foresaw that there would be a struggle, ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... these genial words, "As it is, there is nothing to be done but to catch Mr. Froude whenever he comes from his hiding- place at Simancas into places in which we can lie in wait for him." The sneer at original research is characteristic of Freeman. One can almost hear his self-satisfied laugh as he wrote this unlucky sentence, "The thing is too grotesque to talk about seriously; but can we trust a single uncertified detail from the hands of a man who throughout his story of the Armada always calls the Ark Royal the Ark Raleigh? ... It is the sort of blunder which so takes away ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... spring," and had been simply biding her time. The parent birds once out of sight, she had stolen slyly upon the nest, and after a very brief interval as slyly retreated, leaving her questionable compliments, presumably with a self-satisfied chuckle. The intruded egg is so like its fellow as to be hardly distinguishable except in its slightly larger size. It is doubtful whether the sparrow, in particular, owing to this similarity, ever realizes the deception. Indeed, the event is ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... self-satisfied prig," retorted Burns. "Hullo! Somebody's coming. Tell me what to do, Martha. Do I run to meet them and rush them up to Ellen, or do I display a studied indifference? I never 'received' at a reception in ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... which a clear gain of two thousand dollars was secured. He was alone in his office: or, so much alone as not to feel restrained by the presence of another. And yet, a pair of dark, sad eyes were fixed intently upon his self-satisfied countenance, with an expression, had he observed it, that would, at least, have excited a moment's wonder. The owner of this pair of eyes was a slender, rather poorly dressed lad, in his thirteenth year, whom Mr. Everett had engaged, a short time previously, to attend in his office and run upon errands. ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... He unpinned the huge cluster of violets on his coat and laid them down on the sill beside her before he went. Nan flicked them off with her fingers as she watched him cross the lawn, his own self-satisfied ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hands in a self-satisfied way. "I think we have done all that can be done," he answered; "it's a queer case though, and I knew your taste ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... branches of the tree above the well-fed, self-satisfied witch-doctor. He made no noise that the dull ears of man could hear above the soughing of the gentle jungle breeze among the undulating foliage of the upper terraces, and when he came close above the black man he halted, well concealed by ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... friend!" It is Monsieur the Viscount's voice, and at the sound of it, there is a rustle among the violets that sends the perfume high into the air. Then from the parted leaves come forth first a dirty wrinkled leg, then a dirty wrinkled head with gleaming eyes, and Monsieur Crapaud crawls with self-satisfied dignity on to Monsieur the Viscount's ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... passed (a) (3) in a self-satisfied manner through twenty years of office, letting things take their own course; to have (b) sailed with consummate sagacity, never against the tide of popular (c) judgement; to have left on record as the sole title to distinction among English ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... as he had gazed up to the Viceroy's box. A wild and unreasoning wrath had flashed up within him, not against the system, but against that tall stooping man, worn with work, who was at once its representative and its flower. Up there the great man stood—so his thoughts ran—complacent, self-satisfied, careless of the harm which his system wrought. Down here upon the grass walked a man warped and perverted out of his natural course. He had been sent to Eton and to Oxford, and had been filled with longings and desires which could have no fruition; ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... high amid the clouds. Perchance I touch the mountain whose blue summit, With the fantastic rock upon its side, Stops the eye's flight from that high chamber-window Where, when a boy, I used to sit and gaze With wondering awe upon the mighty thing, Terribly calm, alone, self-satisfied, The hitherto of my child-thoughts. Beyond, A sea might roar around its base. Beyond, Might be the depths of the unfathomed space, This the earth's bulwark over the abyss. Upon its very point I have watched a star For a few ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... received the sexual enlightenment, and has been cautioned against any kind of obscene talk, is allowed to watch all sorts of improper acts and to listen to obscenities! Such mischances may occur, not only, as self-satisfied parents are apt to imagine, through the misconduct of servants or strangers, but often the members of the child's own family may be the persons at fault. Adults believe that a child hears nothing, when in reality it is paying careful attention to that which is not intended ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... impudence, you self-satisfied little moss-weaver;" saying which the thrush gave the new-comer such a dig in the back with his hard bill, that the finch flew off in a hurry, vowing that he would pass no more ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... Oh, if that self-satisfied puppy knew what a tempest of rage he had aroused in my soul he would have squealed for fright and would have hidden himself on the bed. I—a coward! The world has crumbled upon my head, but has not crushed me, and out of its terrible fragments I have created a new world, according to ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... "Self-satisfied? Why self-satisfied?" continued Pen. "It seems to me that my scepticism is more respectful and more modest than the revolutionary ardour of other folks. Many a patriot of eighteen, many a Spouting-Club orator, would turn the Bishops out of the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for examination, and reproached him for not having concealed the bonds the previous night; at which reproachful words Russell showed no signs of dejection, as Harry had expected, but, on the contrary, to his amazement, seemed to have upon his face a slight air of triumph, regarding him with a self-satisfied smile and a cunning leer which puzzled him greatly. This strange and unexpected change in Russell, from terror and despair to peace of mind and jocularity, was a puzzle over which Harry racked his brains for some time, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... jaunty air and a self-satisfied smile, he followed Mrs. Hamilton into her "private office," as ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... ever thinks of him as a mere entomological specimen? Is he not the symbol of the self-satisfied traveler who learns nothing en route but the importance of his own personality? And the Darning-Needle? It is impossible to divorce human interest from the ambition of this little ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... man and every movement of his knife and spoon. But, indeed, I need the pencil of Granville or Tenniel to make you see the two gilt valets on the opposite side of the table putting the monster down before our friends, with a smiling, self-satisfied, benevolent obsequiousness for this ghastly monster was the flower of all comestibles—old Peter clasping both hands in pious admiration of it; Margaret wheeling round with horror-stricken eyes and her hand on Gerard's shoulder, squeaking and pinching; his face of unwise ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... approaches the woman to study her, we can imagine the fair ones getting together and nudging one another in keen amusement as to what this seer is going to say. It is often sufficiently amusing when the clumsy male approaches her with self-satisfied air, thinking he has the secret of her mysterious being. I have no intention here of entering a rival search for the secret. But we can, perhaps, startle the gay ones from merriment to gravity by stating the simple fact that every man stands in some relationship to woman, ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... them. They are not idle, notwithstanding their silence. Amid the noise and babble of the crowd they are tranquilly directing a portion of our real life; and, as they are nearer to truth than their self-satisfied sisters, they will often be far more simple, and ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... adhesion to truth it can be said that the man would be a fool who tried to add anything to the following transcendent obituary poem. There is something so innocent, so guileless, so complacent, so unearthly serene and self-satisfied about this peerless "hog-wash," that the man must be made of stone who can read it without a dulcet ecstasy creeping along his backbone and quivering in his marrow. There is no need to say that this poem ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... roll unceasingly over their civilized realms, involving an unbelievable waste in labor and time, and sapping the intelligence talk is supposed to upbuild. In a simian civilization, great halls will be erected for lectures, and great throngs will actually pay to go inside at night to hear some self-satisfied talk-maker chatter for hours. Almost any subject will do for a lecture, or talk; yet very few subjects will be counted important enough for the average man to do any thinking ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... will be the writer's aim, however, to give such warnings and advice as may assist each reader in his own best development. Many who began with a comparatively poor physical stock in trade have surpassed the self-satisfied ones who trusted too much to what nature gave them. Singers as well as others would do well to believe ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... special attention and pains on Villon, the poet-scamp); he was rather impatient with poor Thoreau, because he was a purist solitary, and had too little of vice, and, as Stevenson held, narrow in sympathy, and too self-satisfied, and bent only on self-improvement. He held a brief for the honest villain, and leaned to him brotherly. Even the anecdotes he most prizes have a fine look this way—a hunger for completion in achievement, even in the violation of fine humane feeling or morality, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... now his mien betokened appreciative anticipation of a refresher to his dusty throat. After that a wash would go rather well, perhaps a cigarette, and then lunch. But, alas, no such luck! Apparently something out of the ordinary was afoot. Even the dignity of the heavy-weight, superior, self-satisfied, alleged Swiss maitre d'hotel was for the moment disturbed. Native s'fragis, neglecting their work, were ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... must suffice to give a summary of his character, and will exhibit some singular contrarieties. He had varied but not very profound learning; was earnest, self-satisfied, overbearing in argument, or, as Sir Walter Scott styles it, despotic. As distinguished for his powers of conversation as for his writings, he always talked ex cathedra, and was exceedingly impatient of opposition. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... nothing to say," Mr. Dreux answered in a vastly self-satisfied tone. "I'm going to offer my services to Donnelly—in confidence, of course. I'm glad you introduced us, for otherwise I'd have to arrange to meet him properly. If he doesn't want me, I'll ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... truthful sinners. They were the pale, pious little boys and girls who behaved, and who graduated from the Sunday schools long ago without ever being converted to the church. And there you see them, the fat, duty-doing, self-satisfied "firsts" in this world, who shall be last and least in the world to come. Those least inclined to tattle about their neighbors, I found, were poor, pathetic sinners with damaged reputations, who could not afford to talk about others. They ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... he knew. Lucy's comments were very characteristic. She was equally hard on Daddy's ill-behaviour and Dora's religion, with a little self-satisfied hardness that would have provoked David but for its childish naivete. Many of the things that she said of Dora, however, showed real feeling, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as beyond the pale. He loved sinners and welcomed them, without in the least condoning what was wrong. He looked upon the open and acknowledged sinner as a more hopeful person from the religious point of view than the person who was self-satisfied and smug. He said that He came to seek and to save those who knew themselves ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... standing in the doorway laughing and talking with the milkman. A small child dragged a noisy cart along the pavement, eating at the same time a large piece of Yorkshire pie. Then a second woman opened the next door and joined the fun. They were all jolly together, self-satisfied. They had done well, and were relaxing after the rush of the season; but they seemed very far away from Miss Ethel as she looked out of ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... to him with other meaning than they bear to the prosaic and self-satisfied, and so he answers to the call of affection when perhaps it would have been better for his peace of mind that caution and prudence should have held sway. But again it is an open question whether the man who follows the gleam, with inspiration to beckon him, does not come nearer to the truth ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... I would put a little extra force into my pull and he would put a little extra speed into his back. Ever and anon he would glance at me with that mischievous, malicious twinkle, which seemed to say "I've got you tonight," and I would smile back a quiet, self-satisfied smile and ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... and told him the best sort of lotion to ask for, and so, as soon as afternoon school was over, our young champion sallied boldly forth on his errand. He felt very self-satisfied and forgiving to all the world as he walked along. There was no doubt about it, he was a hero. Every one seemed to take an interest in his black eye and sore cheek, from Mr Rastle downwards. Very likely that fight of his with Loman yesterday would be recorded as long as ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... his self-satisfied complacence and after listening to a recital of how he had cornered the Klamath salmon-packing, planted the first oysters on the bay and established that lucrative monopoly, and of how, after exhausting litigation and a campaign of years he had captured the water front of Williamsport ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... construction had long since been pointed out to Farron, but the man who called his attention to it, unluckily, was an officer of the new regiment, and the ranchman had merely replied, with a self-satisfied smile, that he guessed he'd lived long enough in that country to know a thing or two ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... with the customary formalities, he left Berlin, sailed from Hamburg, and on the 4th of September, 1801, arrived in the United States. During his residence in Berlin his time was devoted to official labor and intellectual improvement; yet his letters show that he was seldom, if ever, self-satisfied, being filled with aspirations after something higher and better than he could accomplish. His translations, at this period, embraced many satires of Juvenal, and Wieland's Oberon from the original, into English verse; the last he intended ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... words, Alice felt herself growing slightly embarrassed, and it filled her with dismay. "I am a poor creature," she thought, "if I cannot get this self-satisfied gentleman out of the house without breaking down. I can't stand here forever though," and so she took a seat, and as Arthur resumed his willow chair with an air of content, she could not but feel that as yet the ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... devil in his heart whispered an excellent suggestion. He grinned in self-satisfied malignity. "Yes! That's the trick! If I win we'll take a Hoboken steamer together. Any one of our smuggling stewards and agents over there will take care of us on the ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... majority. A mind like his, conscious of its powers, and only too early acquainted with his high expectations, could not brook the yoke of childish subjection in which he stood; the superior genius of the father, and the absolute authority of the autocrat, must have weighed heavily on the self-satisfied pride of such a son. The share which the former allowed him in the government of the empire was just important enough to disengage his mind from petty passions and to confirm the austere gravity of his character, but also meagre enough to kindle a fiercer longing for unlimited power. When ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... extent by the different races that contributed their quotas to the pioneer army. The early French settlements in our western States furnish a picture somewhat different from those of the emigrants of English blood: a patriarchal state of society, self-satisfied and kindly, with bright superficial features, but lacking the earnest purpose and restless aggressive energy of the Anglo-American, whose very amusements and festivals partook of ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... her. She longed to be his queen—the woman of all women he had seen. The sweet repose of the sleeping world wrought in her—not peace, but weakness. Her soul kept leaning towards Ian; she longed for his arms to start out the alien nature lying so self-satisfied all about her. To her the presence of God took shape as an emptiness—an absence. The resting world appeared to her cold, unsympathetic, heedless; its peace was but heartlessness. The soft pellucid chrysolite of passive heavenly thought, was a merest arrangement, a ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... had behaved to perfection; his horse—though he had downed him three times—had carried him well, and his lordship stood with his crownless flat hat in his hand, and one coat lap in the pocket of the other—a grinning, exulting, self-satisfied specimen of a ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... again at the paper. "Beautiful, beautiful!" exclaimed he, with a self-satisfied smile. "My pen has shot nothing less than bomb-shells and grape, and my ink has turned into whole streams of the enemy's blood. And why should I not be bold, it being perfectly safe, since the king must certainly be victorious, and the enemy has no idea of visiting Berlin? Tschernitscheff ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... one of his infirmities; thus by never arousing his evil passions, their very existence was forgotten, and the violent, capricious Ranger would have been hardly recognized (except by his very intimates), as the self-satisfied, and somewhat important manager of Sir Walter ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall |
