"Complacent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... books have to offer and what even relatively earnest readers take the trouble to accept from them, I am appalled (or should be appalled, did I not know that the world is moving) by the sheer inefficiency, the bland, complacent failure of the earnest reader. I am like yourself, the spectacle of inefficiency rouses my ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... on such points must not depend on sundry battle steeds of historical critics, on their wise dicta and self-complacent terminology, but look at facts with his own eyes. There is, for instance, a certain day in the campaign in Silesia, 1761, which, in this respect, has attained a kind of notoriety. It is the 22nd July, on which Frederick the Great gained on Laudon the march to ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... different, yet all alike; different in their degrees of beefiness, stolidity, and self-sufficiency, but plainly of the same parentage—British to the backbone; British of the wrong kind, with a sprinkling of Welshmen, Irishmen, and Jews. Not a Scotsman discoverable in that whole mob of complacent office-jacks. My countrymen were conspicuous by their absence; they were otherwise engaged, in the field, the colonies, the engine-room. I can only remember one single exception to this rule, this type; it was the head of ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Clara's apostrophe to the 'Santissinia Virgine Maria,' still treating temper as a part of policy, without any effect on Clara; and that was matter for sickly green reflections. The lover who cannot wound has indeed lost anchorage; he is woefully adrift: he stabs air, which is to stab himself. Her complacent proof-armour bids him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... my custom to do so when I eat plums,' she said, with quite an aggravating air of complacent virtue; 'my mother, good creature, brought me up in excellent habits, and with her dying breath bade me never be wasteful. Now these stones will grow into trees, the fruit of which, even if I do not live to see the day, will afford a meal to many ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
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