DICTIONARY ONE.COM • More 'Complacency' Quotes from Famous Books

... seen the expression of her face in the darkness it would have satisfied him that she did not receive that style of compliment like many of the belles of his acquaintance, who would take the small change of flattery with the smiling complacency ...

— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... from the nippers of a pair of tongs. It was not that Mac Tavish lacked the spirit of charity, but that he wanted every man to know to the full the grand and noble goodness of the Morrisons, and be properly grateful, as he himself was. Dow's complacency in his hallucination ...

— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... the big room in the Rue Royer Collard, the thirty-six trades which he had taken up one after another, and the dainties which he had cooked at the stove, dressed all in white, while Florent was dressed all in black. To such talk as this, indeed, she listened placidly, with a complacency which never wearied. ...

— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... a sudden loss of complacency at this question, but even as it was asked, relief came in the person of Brooks, the laboratory attendant, who entered by the preparation-room door, carrying a number of freshly killed guinea-pigs by their hind legs. "This is the last batch of material this session," said the youngster ...

— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... vanity, and a tongue that could not tire. She had caught the mingled cant of Enoch and her mamma, repeated the names of public people and public places much oftener than her prayers, and was ready to own, with no little self complacency, that all her acquaintance told ...

— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... character—the sort with which he had had his way all through life. He thought I would fall in his arms, and confess him master. The words I spoke to La Barre shocked and startled him out of his self complacency. Nor was that all—even before then he had begun to suspicion my relations with ...

— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish

... petition for the suffrage we shall put an end to an otherwise endless disputation. I am quite sure that as long as her votes are kept separate from the men's votes, and are not counted, no possible harm can come from a little complacency in the face of ... Personally I have no objection to divorce. If a man marries a woman under the impression that she is a good cook, and after the waning of the honeymoon finds that she does not know the difference between sponge-cake and a plain common garden sponge, why should he be forced ...

— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... that Boston had been bombarded by General Thomas Gage. Complacency ended. Congress acted with dispatch to approve the Suffolk Resolves from Massachusetts. In direct, defiant terms these Resolves restated the rights of the Americans ...

— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education

... measure, either destitution, suspension or displacement, removal to an inferior parish, or, at least, a comminatory reprimand, while the bishop, whom the prefect may denounce to the minister, does not refuse to the prefect this act of complacency. ...

— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... been culpably, well-nigh criminally, remiss as a nation in not preparing ourselves, and if, with the lessons taught the world by the dreadful tragedies of the last twelve months, we continue with soft complacency to stand helpless and naked before the world, we shall excite only contempt and derision if and when disaster ...

— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... world of his own, and forming the sole orbit of that little world. For the most part they were plantation owners escaping the seasonal heat for the cool breezes of a vacation in Japan, boastful of their possessions, smug in their Dutch self-complacency, and somewhat gluttonous ...

— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... review of the current morality, is always unpopular with the great mass of mankind. Though the conduct of their own lives is the subject which most concerns men, it is that in which they are least patient of speculation. Nothing is so wounding to the self-complacency of a man of indolent habits of mind as to call in question any of the moral principles on which he habitually acts. Praise and blame are usually apportioned, even by educated men, according to vague and general rules, with ...

— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler

... is encompassed by his own sphere of life, densely on the breast, and less densely on the back, it is manifest whence it is that husbands who are very fond of their wives, turn themselves to them, and in the day-time regard them with complacency; and on the other hand, why those who do not love their wives, turn themselves away from them, and in the day-time regard them with aversion. By the reception of the conjugial sphere by the husband only through the wife, love truly conjugial is known and distinguished from that ...

— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... a doubt that the Moon has no air. Consequently, the common expressions, "the Moon was gazing down with an air of benevolence," or with "an air of complacency," or with "an air of calm superiority," are incorrect and objectionable, the fact being that the Moon has no air ...

— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... people to be cannibals, for, during the long talks we used to have on the island, Yamba had described to me their horrid feasts after a successful war. Nevertheless, I awaited the arrival of the little flotilla with all the complacency I could muster, but at the same time I was careful to let Yamba's husband be ...

— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... can hesitate between them, for Pat is so rough in his dress, and has such red hair, and straight at that; and Mike pushes his fingers through the bright curls, and gives another look at himself in the little mirror that hangs in his room in the stable. The self-complacency melts away, as the object becomes dearer, and there is a slight fear that some obstacle may spring up between him and his hopes. He'll risk but he can overcome it, though, but it would be pleasanter ...

— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... in all his other works, the only end and aim of Goethe was to carry to perfection the art in which he was so great a master. Virtue and vice, truth and falsehood, are each portrayed with the same graceful complacency and the same exquisite skill. His immense and wide- spreading influence renders this singular indifference, which seems to confound the very sense of right and wrong, ...

— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... says that we are not an improvement on the English? An improvement in a happy combination of mental graces and Saxon force?" This sort of thing is especially entertaining in the youthful Page, for it is precisely against this kind of complacency that, as a mature man, he directed his choicest ridicule. As an editor and writer his energies were devoted to reconciling North and South, and Johns Hopkins itself had much to do with opening his eyes. Its young men and its professors were gathered ...

— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... of selfishness; and they not only drew themselves up into the miserable rags of their own selfish aggrandizements as far as all competitors were concerned, but regarded slavery with imperturbable complacency. ...

— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... of the motley," continued the other, not without complacency, observing the effect of his ...

— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... such as the foregoing—no misgivings suggested by them probably, troubled the self-complacency of most of these clever sculptors. Marble, in their view, had no such sanctity as we impute to it. It was merely a sort of white limestone from Carrara, cut into convenient blocks, and worth, in that state, about two or three dollars per pound; ...

— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... light except what appears thro' the crevices of the window shutters. This head, however, does not seem characteristic of Christ; it wants the gravity, the soft melancholy and unassuming meekness of the great Reformer: in short, from the vivid fire of the eyes and the too great self-complacency of the countenance, it ...

— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... manners in the commercial emporium, though not altogether intelligible to his fair auditor, were new and amusing, and in spite of the contagious effect of her father's contempt, and the troubled looks of poor Kelson, she could not help listening to him with complacency. It was evident to every body but Mary that the retailer of ginghams was most seriously smitten with her, as much so, that is to say, as his idolatry of himself left him capable of being with any person. And so it proved, for in less time than she ...

— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... desires, of our castles, of our dreams! The complacency with which we jog along in what we deem to be our own particular groove! I recall a girl friend of my youth who was going to be a celibate, a great reformer, and toward that end was studying for the pulpit. She is now the mother of several ...

— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath

... professed misogynist, and hate the sex because, I suspect, you know very little about them," Mr. Pen continued, with an air of considerable self-complacency. "If you dislike the women in the country for being too slow, surely the London women ought to be fast enough for you. The pace of London life is enormous: how do people last at it, I wonder—male and female? Take a woman ...

— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... a bedroom, and left there till it would be wanted. A short time afterwards a fire broke out in the room, and a heap of ashes was all that was found in the drawer, though little else in the room besides a few clothes was injured. "The McFauls appeared to accept their loss with a complacency, which could only be accounted for by the idea they entertained that the money was destroyed through spiritual intervention—that there were ghosts in the question, and that the destruction of the money was to be taken as a warning directed ...

— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour

... double operation, incessantly repeated, of replacing the handle when it is worn out, and the blade when it becomes worthless. A precisely similar operation had been going on from time immemorial in the Van Tricasse family, to which Nature had lent herself with more than usual complacency. From 1340 it had invariably happened that a Van Tricasse, when left a widower, had remarried a Van Tricasse younger than himself; who, becoming in turn a widow, had married again a Van Tricasse younger than herself; and so on, without ...

— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... laid in a box of sage and one of mixed dressing with, perhaps, some paprika and thyme, she views her foresightedness with much complacency. She ...

— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore

... were old bachelors, living by themselves in the old Whitman homestead about a mile away, and their fare was understood to be forlorn and desultory. To-day they watched with grave complacency while their ...

— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... beauty. Finding herself thus ensnared, as she was a woman of strong mind, instead of indulging in unavailing complaint, she assumed a satisfied air; and as the only way to preserve her honour, received the addresses of the treacherous master with pretended complacency, and consented to receive him as a husband at the first port at which the ship might touch. With these assurances he was contented, and behaved to her with honourable deference, and affectionate respect. At length the vessel anchored near ...

— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... by the pleasures of a gay world to forget your duties as a mother; there is nothing to supplant him in your heart; his presence endears every place; and you learn to love the spot that gave him birth, and to think with complacency upon the country, because it is his country; and in looking forward to his future welfare you naturally become doubly interested in the place that is one day ...

— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... servants. But they are pleasant, kind, intelligent people to live with, if you have plenty of money, and dress well. I know nothing of Canada; it was too insignificant to awaken either interest or curiosity. I shall regard it with more complacency ...

— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... world, with rosy face and simpering features, received me politely, nay kindly; listened with complacency to my remonstrances, though he scarcely heeded Mary's tears. I did not then suspect, that my eloquence was in my complexion, the blush of seventeen, or that, in a world where humanity to women is the characteristic of advancing civilization, the beauty ...

— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... little habit of accepting anything and everything with the most irresponsible complacency rendered the situation aggravating. It was so utterly impossible to discuss with such a being even such of the morning's developments as the relationship of mistress and ...

— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... he thus acquired of his own worth made him credit the excessive and almost idolatrous adoration that was paid to his understanding; which but for this increased self-complacency, must have necessarily recalled him from his aberrations. For the present, however, this universal voice was only a confirmation of what his complacent vanity whispered in his ear; a tribute which he felt entitled ...

— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... and on the principle of Ce n'est que la verite qui blesse, it may be worth while to recall it: "The Bishop was particularly playful on the morrow at breakfast. Though his face beamed with Christian kindness, there was a twinkle in his eye which seemed not entirely superior to mundane self-complacency, even to a sense of earthly merriment. His seraphic raillery elicited sympathetic applause from the ladies, especially from the daughters of the house, who laughed occasionally even before his angelic jokes were ...

— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... Nanking, taking the opportunity, while at Nanking, to visit the mausoleum of the founder of the Ming dynasty, who lies buried near by, and whose descendants had been displaced by the Manchus. Happily for K'ang Hsi's complacency, the book of fate is hidden from Emperors, as well as ...

— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... State as Thomas Jefferson and Hamilton Fish; possibly such as John Quincy Adams, Seward, and John Hay. In Great Britain, having been evolved in conformity with its environment, it is successful; but it is successful nowhere else. I have always looked back with great complacency upon such men as those above named in the State Department, and such as Hamilton, Gallatin, Chase, Stanton, and Gage in other departments, sitting quietly in their offices, giving calm thought to government business, and allowing ...

— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... is disposed, if one has any sense, to talk of oneself to people that inquire only out of compliment, and do not listen to the answer, the more satisfaction one feels in indulging a self-complacency, by sighing to those that really sympathise with our griefs. Do not think it is pain that makes me give this low-spirited air to my letter. No, it is the prospect of what is to come, not the sensation of what is passing, that affects me. The loss of youth is melancholy ...

— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... up all that and doesn't get caught, I'll believe he's sure a close relation of the Old Nick," Steve gave as his opinion, after this labor had been completed, and they surveyed the trap with complacency. ...

— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie

... There was a complacency in his nod which irritated her. It almost seemed to infer that she was not speaking the truth and that he was humouring her ...

— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace

... with you, sir, perfectly," replied the other, with increased complacency. "A boy learns to value his money as he should, only when he has earned it ...

— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... It was altogether a bright and beautiful world he had got into, and there was in it but one woman, beautiful beyond his dreams. To doubt her was to doubt all women. When he looked at her he forgot the caution and distrust and sardonic self-complacency his southern training had given him. He believed, and the world seemed to be filled with a ...

— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... morning shone full upon the portrait, and, as I lay awake, my eyes continued to dwell upon it with growing complacency; its beauty crept about my heart insidiously, silencing my scruples one after another; and while I knew that to love such a woman were to sign and seal one's own sentence of degeneration, I still knew ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... pieces as you and I! there the creative power, or the principle of nature, or the soul of the world, or the mundane animal, or whatever title one chooses to give the thing, can look at its product with a certain degree of complacency and satisfaction. For it has your curved lines: it starts off into noticeable angles; it is jagged like corals; it darts forward like crystals; it agglomerates like basalt; nay, there is no conceivable line that does not hop, skip, and jump about our bodies. We, coz, are the spoilt, the ...

— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... mounting all the time, and were received in the day nursery by the old Rectory nurse, much increased in dignity, but inclined to be pathetic as she inquired after 'Mr. Mark,' while Annaple, like a little insensible being, answered with provoking complacency as to his perfect health, and begged Mrs. Poole to bring Master Alwyn to play in the garden at Springfield with her Willie. In fact there was a general invitation already to Alwyn to play there, but his attendants so much preferred the society of their congeners in the parks ...

— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Outdated like a last year's almanac Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields, And yet so pinched and bare and comfortless, The veriest straggler limping on his rounds, The sun and air his sole inheritance, Laughed at a poverty that paid its taxes, And hugged his rags in self-complacency! ...

— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... to her unfinished dinner, and then Mrs. Williams hurried her through, that she might get the kitchen made "tidy." In the meantime Miss Williams departed, in all the glories of a fashionable toilet, for her afternoon promenade, her mother regarding her with much pride and complacency. It seemed the one object of her hard-working, careworn life that her daughter should look "like a lady," and a large proportion of her earnings and savings went to ...

— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar

... my nature," Kolya interrupted, not without complacency. "But it's true that I am stupidly sensitive, crudely sensitive. You smiled just now, and I fancied you ...

— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... that brought playgoers to the small Blackfriars Theatre, and how strenuously from year to year they sought the expulsion of the King's Men from the precinct.[717] They certainly would not have regarded with complacency the erection in their midst of a ...

— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... nobility and the colour of his skin, had not taken the trouble of constructing even an ajoupa, or hut of palm-leaves. He invited us to have our hammocks hung near his own, between two trees; and he assured us, with an air of complacency, that, if we came up the river in the rainy season, we should find him beneath a roof (baxo techo). We soon had reason to complain of a system of philosophy which is indulgent to indolence, and renders a man indifferent to the conveniences of life. A furious wind arose after midnight, ...

— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... which will perhaps shock some readers, but I am sure it ought not to do so, considering the motives on which I say it. No man, I suppose, employs much of his time on the phenomena of his own body without some regard for it; whereas the reader sees that, so far from looking upon mine with any complacency or regard, I hate it, and make it the object of my bitter ridicule and contempt; and I should not be displeased to know that the last indignities which the law inflicts upon the bodies of the worst malefactors might hereafter fall upon it. ...

— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... own remissions, of making an unnecessarily loud noise in drinking, of intoning a wrong antiphon as cantor, of spilling crumbs in the refectory; and then leaned back on his heels well content with the insignificance of his list, to listen with a discreet complacency to old Dom Adrian, who had overslept himself once, spilled his beer twice, criticised his superior, and talked aloud to himself four times during the Greater Silence, and who now mumbled out ...

— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... dear, for Sir Charles thereupon represented to Bella that a man with a grievance is a bore to the very eye, and asked her to receive no more visits from his scowling cousin. The lady smiled, and said, with soft complacency, "I obey." ...

— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... PLEASES THE EYE, a good woman, the heart. The one is a jewel, the other a treasure. Invincible fidelity, good humor, and complacency of temper, outlive all the charms of a fine face, and make the decay of it invisible. That is true beauty which has not only a substance, but a spirit; a beauty that we must intimately know to ...

— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... with the instruments of the Passion. Beneath him in the second frieze stands the angel of justice with the scales; and on either side of him is the vision of the last judgment. The good prepare, with infinite titillation and complacency, to ascend to the skies; while the bad are dragged, pushed, hurled, stuffed, crammed, into pits and caldrons of fire. There is a charming detail in this section. Beside the angel, on the right, where the wicked are the prey of demons, stands a little ...

— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... that seemed an eternity in passing. Carson's face worked convulsively, and the seeming complacency of the Chairman of the Finance Committee gave place to nervous apprehension as he watched the color surge through the cheeks and temples ...

— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... air!" As he spoke, he rose in the boat, and lifting his leathern sea-cap from his head, stroked back the thick clusters of black locks which shadowed his sun-burnt countenance, while he viewed his little vessel with the complacency of a seaman who was proud of her qualities. "But it's close work, Mr. Griffith, when a man rides to a single anchor in a place like this, and at such a nightfall. What are ...

— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... to admiring his own skill, or airing his own powers, or imitating the choice touches of others, or heeding the breath of conventional applause; if he yields to any strain of self-complacency, or turns to practising smiles, or to taking pleasure in his self-begotten graces and beauties and fancies;—in this giddy and vertiginous state he will be sure to fall into intellectual and artistic sin. The man, in such a case, is no ...

— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... rugged health, well to do and prosperous. They had got on for many years without so much as a shadow of difference between them. They had made the tour of Europe together, had engaged in many an outing and now as the evening of life was drawing on, they took matters with that complacency and comfort which was creditable to their good sense and which was warranted ...

— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... of the traveller during the whole time he is occupied in cooking and eating his dinner, under a tree by the roadside, assured that he shall have at least a part of the last cake thrown to him by the stranger, instead of a stick or a stone. The stranger regards him with complacency, as one that reposes a quiet confidence in his charitable disposition, and flings towards him the whole or part of his last cake, as if his meal had put him in the best possible humour with him and all ...

— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... 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

... called "The Ruined Maid," his sympathy is so close as to offer an absolute flout in the face to the system of Victorian morality. Mr. Hardy, indeed, is not concerned with sentimental morals, but with the primitive instincts of the soul, applauding them, or at least recording them with complacency, even when they outrage ethical tradition, as they do in the lyric narrative called "A Wife and Another." The stanzas "To an Unborn Pauper Child" sum up what is sinister and what is genial in Mr. Hardy's attitude to the unambitious forms of life ...

— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... fatigued little laugh, and looked around her again. The drawing-room had greatly changed since first we visited it with Admiral Buzza, and the local tradesmen regarded Mr. Goodwyn-Sandys' account with some complacency as they thought of payment after Midsummer. For the strangers were not of the class that goes to the Metropolis or to the Co-operative Stores; from the outset they had announced a warm desire to benefit the town of Troy. This pretty drawing-room ...

— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... of immortal names, or names which might be made immortal; Gibbon once contemplated with complacency, the very ideal of SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY, and we may regret that he has only left the project! "I have long revolved in my mind a volume of biographical writing; the lives or rather the characters of the most eminent ...

— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... of good men. For first, what can be a greater honour than to be chosen one of the stewards and dispensers of God's bounty to mankind? What is there, that can give a generous spirit more pleasure and complacency of mind, than to consider that he is an instrument of doing much good? that great numbers owe to him, under God, their subsistence, their safety, their health, and the good conduct of their lives? The wickedest man upon earth taketh a pleasure in doing good to those he loveth; and ...

— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... ministers of England, be they who they may, have a difficult task before them. The odd thing is that our present ministers seem totally unconscious of the difficulty and the dangers. I am told that they view the state of Ireland with great complacency. It is astonishing how ...

— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... peroxide, And heart that is hard as a flint, Blue orbs of complacency ox-eyed, That light at the mark of the mint, Ears only for jingle of joybells, A conscience as light as a cork— You are wedded to follies and foibles, My Lady ...

— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor

... advancement of art and industry in this life reaches no further than to a learned ignorance of the mysteries in the works of God, and yet there is a wonderful satisfaction to the mind in it. But how much sweet complacency hath Adam had, whose heart was so enlarged as to know both things higher and lower, their natures, properties, and virtues, and several operations! No doubt could trouble him, no difficulty vex him, no controversy ...

— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... the possible increase in the purchasing value of the dollar with entire complacency. Its selfish interests harmonized with sound theories of finance. But in the debtor West the process had so different an aspect that the financial obligations of the United States were obscured by ...

— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... a people who are daily given to understand, by their own authors, that they are the greatest, the wisest, the most virtuous nation under the sun. Let a European author be never so well disposed towards them, his partial applause contributes but little to their full-blown complacency. But, when they hear that the Republic has been traduced by a foreign, and especially a British pen, their vanity is piqued, their curiosity excited, and their conscience smitten. Every one denounces the libel ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... true in music one finds still truer in the other arts. One keeps coming on it everywhere—the egotism of cities, the self-complacency of the crowds swerving the finer and the truer artists from their functions, making them sing in hoarse crowd-voices instead of singing in their own and giving us themselves. Nearly all our acting ...

— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... he would rather lose half his lands than be separated from Agnes. Meanwhile he used pressure on his bishops to make them disregard the interdict, and vigorously intrigued with the cardinals, seeking to build up a French party in the papal curia. Innocent so far showed complacency that the legate he sent to France was the King's kinsman, Octavin, Cardinal-bishop of Ostia, who was anxious to make Philip's humiliation as light as possible. His labors were eased by the partial submission of Philip, who in September visited Ingeborg, ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... novel, as unconcerned about the imminent return of the travelers as if it were nothing more than the daily visit of the milkman. Nothing short of an earthquake would ever shake Aunt Grace out of her settled complacency. ...

— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey

... Commissioners. I have in hand and will show you the authentic proofs of this, as well as of the horror, which the Americans have, of ever returning under the iron sceptre they have broken. This confounds the falsehoods, that have been uttered and kept up with so much complacency in this country. Will they never cease to give credit to such impudent assertions? I cannot forbear to transcribe what a friend[31] has written to me. This friend does not know in detail what I ...

— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... and added praises of her own. Hildegarde's little ears would surely have burned if she could have heard the good lady. As for Roger, he listened with great complacency. ...

— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards

... had deserted their wives before this in Californian emigration, and had been heard of only after they had made their fortune. Any plausible story would be accepted by HER in the joy of his reappearance; or if, indeed, as he reflected with equal complacency, she was dead or divorced from him through his desertion—a sufficient cause in her own State—and re-married, he would at least be more secure. He began, without committing himself, by inquiry and anonymous correspondence. ...

— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... pleasure to wrest my words,' replied Philip, in his own calm manner, though he actually felt hurt, which he had never done before. His complacency was less secure, so that there was more need ...

— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... new coat,' said Mr. Tupman, as the stranger surveyed himself with great complacency in a cheval glass; 'the first that's been made with our club button,' and he called his companions' attention to the large gilt button which displayed a bust of Mr. Pickwick in the centre, and the letters 'P. C.' ...

— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... psychology have long been my hobby-horse. But to have a hobby-horse, and to be vain of it, are so commonly found together, that they pass almost for the same. I trust therefore, that there will be more good humour than contempt, in the smile with which the reader chastises my self-complacency, if I confess myself uncertain, whether the satisfaction from the perception of a truth new to myself may not have been rendered more poignant by the conceit, that it would be equally so to the public. There was a time, certainly, in which I took some little ...

— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... soon as possible. But I dared say nothing. These Dyaks had killed our enemies, and were only following their own customs by rejoicing over their dead victims. But the fact seemed to part them from us by centuries of feeling—our disgust, and their complacency. Some of them told us that afterwards, when they brought home some of the children belonging to the slain, and treated them very kindly, wishing to adopt them as their own, they were annoyed at the little ones standing looking up ...

— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... DOW a variety of casts and moulds and spread them on the table. His latest piece of work was a medal in high relief bearing the heads of the Prince and Princess of Wales surrounded with a wreath. Bob had no political convictions; with complacency he drew these royal features, the sight of which would have made his father foam at the mouth. True, he might have found subjects artistically more satisfying, but he belonged to the people, ...

— The Nether World • George Gissing

... The complacency with which we are able to state without fear of contradiction that the body of intelligent and thoughtful women do want suffrage must not obscure our perception of the equal truth of what we have just stated above. To accept this verity and turn our energies toward the emancipation ...

— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... her mother's side, a woman of wealth and social position, who owned a large country home near Oakdale, and who was by no means inclined to view with the complacency of Mr. Davis the idyllic friendship of the two young people. Mrs. Roberts, or "Aunt Polly" as she was known to the family, had plans of her own concerning the future of the beauty which she saw unfolding itself at the ...

— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... With what complacency will a young parson deduce false conclusions from misunderstood texts, and then threaten us with all the penalties of Hades if we neglect to comply with the injunctions he has given us! Yes, my too self-confident ...

— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... evidently glowed in his breast with a consuming fervor, and when Velasquez, after due observation proposed the liberation of the whole expedition, with Vaalpeor himself, as its protected companion, the now consciously imprisoned pagan, horror-stricken at first, regarded the proposition with complacency, and finally, with a degree of delight, regardless of consequences. It was, however, mutually agreed that the design should be kept secret from Huertis, until ripe for success. A serious obstacle existed in his plighted guardianship ...

— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez

... elation, born of his unexpected bit of good fortune, was still uppermost to lend complacency to his reflections, he yet found room for a compassionate underthought having for its object the man from whom he had lately parted. He was honestly sorry for Griswold; sorry, but not actually apprehensive. He had known the defeated ...

— The Price • Francis Lynde

... with something like pity. This was Nina in her before-the-party mood. Her confidence and complacency would all begin to ooze away from her, presently, and the words that came so readily to Harriet would refuse to flow at all to any one else. She would come home saying that she hated parties because people were all so ...

— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... self-contemplative and self-conscious enough to perceive his superiority of talent, and it had been the struggle of his life to abase this perception, so that it was actually a relief not to be obliged to fight with his own complacency in his powers. He had learned not to think too highly of himself—he had yet to learn to "think soberly." His aid was Ethel's chief pleasure through this somewhat trying summer, it might be her ...

— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... charming appearance, from the luxuriant vines which covered it and were beginning to get autumnal tints of red and russet. All the front of Lloyd's was covered with vines, which had grown with amazing swiftness. Mrs. Lloyd often used to look at them and reflect upon them with complacency. ...

— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... were regarding him with astonished looks. Mr. Shaw and the captain had left their tinkering, Cookie his saucepans, and Aunt Jane and Violet had come hurrying from the hut. Among us all stood Mr. Tubbs with folded arms, looking round upon the company with an extraordinary air of complacency ...

— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... degree, to all his domestics, and all his dependents. You can scarcely imagine what a moving picture my palace—and must I call it mine? presented, upon my first arrival. The old steward, and the grey-headed lacqueys endeavoured to assume a look of complacency, but their recent grief appeared through their unpractised hypocrisy. "Health to our young master! Long life," cried they, with a broken and tremulous accent, "to the marquis of Pescara!" You will readily believe, ...

— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin

... that had ever shed glory on the name of Gryce, and the nephew took as much pride in his inheritance as though it had been his own work. Indeed, he gradually came to regard it as such, and to feel a sense of personal complacency when he chanced on any reference to the Gryce Americana. Anxious as he was to avoid personal notice, he took, in the printed mention of his name, a pleasure so exquisite and excessive that it seemed a compensation for ...

— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... hand that he carried to his breast pocket dropped nervelessly to his knee again, and he did not smoke. Through his memories of disappointment pierced a self-reproach which did not permit him the perfect self-complacency of regret; and yet he could not have been sure, if he had asked himself, that this pang did not heighten the ...

— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... picture as possible, he accumulates these material images of bodily torment in order to excite the imagination to the utmost. We can conceive of his writing these sentences carefully in his comfortable study, in an easy chair, by the side of a cheerful fire, with a smile of self-complacency, as he selects each striking expression. ...

— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... the dissensions that have even disturbed the serenity of their own nation on the mainland, have never reached them here. Left to themselves, they have created a blameless Arcadia and an ideal community within an extent of twenty square leagues. Why should we disturb their innocent complacency and tranquil enjoyment by information which cannot increase and might impair their present felicity? Why should we dwell upon a late political and international episode which, while it has been a benefit to us, has been a humiliation to them ...

— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... The complacency of the Roman was superb. Mentor lecturing the young Telemachus could not have been more ...

— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... bank respectively. If either castle were attacked, arrangements were made for getting word to the other, when the men in that other would cross the Rhine and fall upon the rear of the invaders, hemming them thus between two fires. The Count therefore awaited with complacency whatever assault the ...

— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... a knowledge with which love has nothing to do, and it is a knowledge that for many people is quite sufficient. 'Knowledge puffeth up,' says the Apostle; into an unwholesome bubble of self-complacency that will one day be pricked and disappear, but 'love buildeth up'—a steadfast, slowly-rising, solid fabric. There be two kinds of knowledge: the mere rattle of notions in a man's brain, like the seeds of a withered poppy-head; ...

— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... was much in want of small cordage for many purposes, and that he wished he and others might go ashore to lay some on the strand by the town wall, I sent to ask permission from the governor, with assurance of their safely. This was immediately granted with the utmost readiness and complacency, desiring that they might use the most convenient place for their purpose, and offering the use of a house in which to secure their things during the night Yet after all these fair promises, every man who went ashore was seized, stript of their ...

— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... months before he had parted from Kelly Woodridge to learn his fate from her father. He remembered that interview to which Nelly's wafted kiss had inspired him. He recalled to-day, as he had many times before, the singular complacency with which Mr. Woodridge had received his suit, as if it were a slight and unimportant detail of the business in hand, and how he had told him that Kelly and her mother were going to the "States" for a three months' visit, but that after her return, if they were both "still agreed," he, ...

— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... Indians in the neighbourhood, by whom it is believed that the tenure of the "Scots Company" was sanctioned. The Spaniards took offence at this alleged aggression, and angry complaints were forwarded to the court of St James's. To these King William listened with something like complacency, his policy at the time being to temporize with Spain, in order to prevent the aggrandizement of the French Bourbons. The new settlement was accordingly denounced, in proclamations issued by the authorities of Jamaica, Barbadoes, and the ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... had not suspected that Pollen could be guilty of such clumsiness; she questioned if matters had reached a point where such an attitude on his part would be justifiable under any circumstances. At all events, her doubts concerning his complacency had been answered. It occurred to Mrs. Ennis that her dinner-party was composed of more inflammable material, presented more dramatic possibilities, than even she had divined. She ...

— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... by solemn appointment to meet Johnson, so long the god of his idolatry. They had first met at the shop of Davis, the actor and bookseller, and afterwards near an eating-house in Butcher Row. Boswell describes his feelings with delightful sincerity and self-complacency. "We had," he says, "a good supper and port wine, of which Johnson then sometimes drank a bottle. The orthodox High Church sound of the Mitre, the figure and manner of the celebrated Samuel Johnson, the extraordinary power of his conversation, and the pride arising ...

— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... There are operations of extreme length in which I have sometimes seen good geometricians lose themselves. Reflection, assisted by practice, gives clear ideas, and enables you to devise shorter methods, these inventions flatter our self-complacency, while their exactitude satisfies our understanding, and renders a study pleasant, which is, of itself, heavy and unentertaining. At length I became so expert as not to be puzzled by any question that was solvable by arithmetical calculation; and even now, while everything I formerly knew fades ...

— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... the Jew, with complacency. "You would find it hard to hit upon anything I do not know. Yes, I am a vain man, it is true, but I am very frank and open about it. Look at my complexion. Did you ever see anything like it? It is Trevi water that does it." I thought such excessive vanity very unbecoming in a man of his ...

— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... entertained by the magistrates toward the Orange party was so great that, preferring to submit to France rather than to a native stadtholder, they hastened to deliver up their towns to the invader; on the other hand, the friends of the house of Orange looked not without some complacency on the misfortunes which threatened the state, and which they hoped would reduce it to the necessity of raising the Prince to the dignities of his family; while in those places where the Catholics were numerous, the populace, under the guidance of the priests, forced ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... Present, and the Future, and penetrates even to the inmost recesses of the heart. Heaven and earth are under his government: all events, all revolutions, are the consequences of his dispensation and will. He is pure, holy, and impartial; wickedness offends his sight; but he beholds with an eye of complacency the virtuous actions of men. Severe, yet just, he punishes vice in an exemplary manner, even in Princes and Rulers; and often casts down the guilty, to crown with honor the man who walks after his own heart, and whom he raises from obscurity. Good, merciful, and full of pity, he forgives the wicked ...

— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... noble buildings, distinguished men and women. Boston is an old city—one must remember that it was settled almost three centuries ago—and old cities, like old people, become tenacious of their idiosyncrasies, admitting their inconsistencies and prejudices with complacency, wisely aware that age has bestowed on them a special value, which is automatically increased with the passage ...

— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... gilding. Then, as she complained of the heat, he led her through the press to the congested cafe at the foot of the stairs, where orangeades were thrust at them between the shoulders of packed consommateurs and Darrow, lighting a cigarette while she sucked her straw, knew the primitive complacency of the man at whose companion ...

— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... only constitute an entire drama betwixt them,—seems to have been a favourite with Dryden, as well as with the public. In the Essay upon Heroic Plays, as well as in the dedication, the character of Almanzor is dwelt upon with that degree of complacency which an author experiences in analyzing a successful effort of his genius. Unquestionably the gross improbability of a hero, by his single arm, turning the tide of battle as he lists, did not appear so shocking in the age of Dryden, as ...

— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... little repugnance to any revolution or any peril confined to a state whose councils it had been the object of his life to baffle, and whose power it was the manifest interest of his native city to impair. He might have looked with complacency on the intrigues which the regent was carrying on against the Spartan government, and which threatened to shake that Doric constitution to its centre. But nothing, either in the witness of history or in the character or conduct of a man profoundly ...

— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the father exacted as the ransom for the life of the son—such were the methods by which the Provveditori of the Most Serene and Christian Republic enforced its authority, and which are related, not only without reprehension, but with manifest complacency and approval, by ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... that accept with all the complacency of an ancient Buddha the devotion of more worshipers than any church or creed can claim are Fashion and Pleasure. Not sane fashion which helps make men and women attractive and clothes them with neatness and care, protects them by courtesies, and shields them by conventionalities, ...

— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery

... me; he included me in his bow—that was all. All my little day-dream of growing self-complacency was shattered, scattered; the old feeling of soreness, smallness, wounded pride, and bruised self-esteem came back again. I felt a wild, angry desire to compel some other glance from those eyes than that exasperating ...

— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... up looking at dogs, alive or china, embroidered or painted. Fortunately most of my friends have "pets," griffons that look like tropical spiders, little shiny naked shivering animals, bloated prosperous Pekineses, exuding the complacency of their mistresses and seeming to be rather the last word of a dressmaker, or a furrier, than a creation ...

— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco

... dominated by the idea that nothing of permanent value can come from medievalism, arrogantly proclaim that ours is the greatest of centuries because we have not only what all other centuries had, but something else distinctively our own—a vast contribution to the world's progress. This self-complacency makes us forget that whatever truth there may be in the great theory of evolution, certainly the validity of the theory is not confirmed by the intellectual history of the human race. As was said of the Patriarchal Age so we may say of Dante's times "there were giants in those days" which ...

— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... about an hour ago," resumed Pinkie Bonn with undisturbed complacency. "Just as I was beatin' it out of there by the cellar, I hears some whisperin' as I was passin' one of the end doors. Savvy? I hadn't made no noise, an' they hadn't heard me. I gets a peek in, 'cause ...

— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... I'll control myself,' said Festus, betrayed into self-complacency against his will. 'At least I'll do what I can, but nature will out sometimes. Well, I'm off.' He began humming 'Brighton Camp,' and, promising to come again soon, retired with assurance, each yard of his retreat adding private joyousness ...

— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... bent his knee to the ground in reverence. Then he rose to go, pressing a little packet into her palm. Their eyes met, and the man saw, in that brief instant, deep in the azure depths of the girl's that which tumbled the structure of his new-found complacency about ...

— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... changed, but he could not refuse. Hazlewood was agitated and nervous; of his ordinary complacency there was no longer a trace. Pettifer got into the car and as it moved away from the station ...

— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... for life. In that they side AGAINST appearance, and speak superciliously of "perspective," in that they rank the credibility of their own bodies about as low as the credibility of the ocular evidence that "the earth stands still," and thus, apparently, allowing with complacency their securest possession to escape (for what does one at present believe in more firmly than in one's body?),—who knows if they are not really trying to win back something which was formerly an even securer possession, something of the old ...

— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... was Dr. Le Guise, but not to be moved. In fact, the prisoner fancied that he could observe in the doctor's tone, manner, and countenance, an unusual degree of complacency, and relish for his position and authority. And the prisoner was right. The reason for the doctor's placidity of manner was ...

— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... not suspense that is troubling Harry," said Rose. "He knows quite well how it is to end. It is only a momentary vexation. And I don't say, myself, it will do Harry any harm to have his masculine self-complacency disturbed a little, by just the bare possibility of disappointment. One values what it costs one some trouble ...

— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... are in the gorge; The personators of your ancestors rest, full of complacency. The fine spirits are delicious; Your meat, roast and broiled, is fragrant. The personators of your ancestors feast and drink;—No troubles ...

— The Shih King • James Legge

... mushroom and falling down, played with a steadiness of which he was usually quite incapable. Consequently Major Flint was lame and his wound troubled him, while Puffin, in spite of his obvious reasons for complacency, was growing irritated with his companion's ill-temper, and ...

— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... comical in the extreme self-complacency with which he asserts that he is very handsome and will never become blue and no one with him is ever lonely. As before stated, white signifies peace and happiness, while blue is the emblem of ...

— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... think I shall feel it cold at all,' said Hal, as he dressed himself in his new green-and-white uniform; and he viewed himself with much complacency. 'Good-morning to you, uncle. How do you do?' said he, in a voice of exultation, when he entered ...

— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... anticipative solicitude of the boyish groom, contrasting it now and then with Ormsby's less obtrusive attentions. It was all very absurd and sentimental, she thought; and yet she was not without a curious heart-stirring of envy provoked by the self-satisfied complacency ...

— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... pleased with his conversation and demeanour, that he presented him with his picture and a golden chain. Grotius gives an account of this embassy, in the seventh book of his Annals: he abstains, with a praiseworthy modesty, from any mention of himself: but, in one of his poems, he dwells with complacency on his having seen the monarch, "who owed his kingdom ...

— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler

... consuming fervor, and when Velasquez, after due observation proposed the liberation of the whole expedition, with Vaalpeor himself, as its protected companion, the now consciously imprisoned pagan, horror-stricken at first, regarded the proposition with complacency, and finally, with a degree of delight, regardless of consequences. It was, however, mutually agreed that the design should be kept secret from Huertis, until ripe for success. A serious obstacle existed in his plighted ...

— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez

... it) differ in at least one fundamental respect from the later representatives of the generation preceding them. Thackeray and Dickens did not deliberately concern themselves about a philosophy of life. With more or less complacency, more or less cynicism, they accepted the religious and social canons which had grown to be the commonplace of the first half of this century. They pictured men and women, not as affected by questions, ...

— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... she didn't want him to know that the Proberts had cooled off. She didn't want him to dream he could have had such effects. Mixed up with this high rigour on Miss Dosson's part was the oddest secret complacency of reflexion that in consequence of what Mr. Flack HAD published the great American community was in a position to know with what fine folks Francie and she were associated. She hoped that some of the people who used ...

— The Reverberator • Henry James

... things," answered the Jew, with complacency. "You would find it hard to hit upon anything I do not know. Yes, I am a vain man, it is true, but I am very frank and open about it. Look at my complexion. Did you ever see anything like it? It is Trevi water that does it." I thought such excessive ...

— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... which were based on the perfect knowledge of "all that is in man," we may not imitate. But we may imitate him, where he with so much gentleness, patience, and pitying love, encountered the weakness, the rashness, the selfishness, the worldliness of men. When the young man came with such self-complacency to ask what more he could do, how kindly he was received, how gently convinced of his great deficiency! When fire would have been called from heaven by his angry followers, how forbearing the rebuke! When denied and forsaken with oaths and curses by one of his nearest friends, what ...

— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher

... the eldest son came in to report himself, all that inner complacency welled up and flowed over him in a volume of maternal effusion, trying enough in any case; and to Roy intolerable, almost, in view of that enforced reservation that might altogether change ...

— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... in a general tradition that she was "surrounded by every Grace and blessed with every Virtue that could allure the Affections and captivate the Soul of the most stubborn Philosopher." Says John Hawkesworth: "There was a natural musick in her Voice, and a pleasing complacency in her aspect when she spoke. As to her wit, it was confessed by all her acquaintance and particularly by the Dean, that she never failed to say the best thing that was said whenever she ...

— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington

... with her daughter's account of Miss Chancellor's interior, and the reception the girl had found there; and Verena, for the next month, took her way very often to Charles Street. "Just you be as nice to her as you know how," Mrs. Tarrant had said to her; and she reflected with some complacency that her daughter did know—she knew how to do everything of that sort. It was not that Verena had been taught; that branch of the education of young ladies which is known as "manners and deportment" had not figured, as a definite ...

— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... me by both hands and surveyed me with an air of admiring proprietorship: smoking with great complacency ...

— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... wife was able to announce that Cook had consented to stay. The burial of Dundee by a real undertaker had gratified her sense of the correct. I departed to the City filled with self-complacency. ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various

... up to his sister, put an arm round her neck, and kissed her. This was a very unusual display of affection. It was the first time Bobby had volunteered an embrace, though he had often submitted to one with dignified complacency, and Hetty, ...

— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... first. She had been taken in to luncheon by the so-called St. George, he was treating her with a sort of deference that she found quite to her mind, and she looked about her on these newly-known relatives and connections with much complacency. There was John Mortimer, with Amelia at his right hand, in the place of honour; then there were the two Miss Grants (in fresh muslin dresses), with a certain Captain Walker between them, whose twin brother, ...

— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... would be much commoner in Russia than they are. The Russian is tremendously impulsive, but not at all practical. Many hold the most extreme views, views that would shock a typical Anglo-Saxon out of his complacency; but they remain harmless and gentle theorists. Many Russians do not believe in God, or Law, or Civil Government, or Marriage, or any of the fundamental Institutions of Society; but their daily ...

— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... these young men is also introduced, by name, Rudolph, of Donnerhugel, a youth of ambitious temperament, and withal a passionate admirer of Anne of Geierstein. Arthur and he, of course, are not disposed to regard each other with much complacency, and at the commencement of their acquaintance a challenge is exchanged between them; the combat is ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various

... justification or of the future punishment of the wicked; and that it now stands declared that it is no doctrine of the Church of England that "every part of the Bible is inspired, or is the word of God." The Dean also looks with complacency upon what he declares to be a fact, and which we are startled to hear; that "the belief in endless punishment is altogether fluctuating, or else expresses itself in forms wholly untenable ... that the doctrine of endless torments, if held, ...

— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... always the same,—the colonel had his way. Had the Virginian insisted upon waiting on the offending broker in a palanquin or upon the top of a four-in-hand, Fitz would have found the vehicle somehow, and have crawled in or on top beside him with as much complacency as if he had spent his whole life with palanquins and coaches, and had had no other interests. So when the order came for the carriage, Fitz winked at me with his left eye, walked to the sidewalk, whistled ...

— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... devotion bound, And with complacency so absolute Dispos'd to render up itself to God, As mine was at those words: and so entire The love for Him, that held me, it eclips'd Beatrice in oblivion. Naught displeas'd Was she, but smil'd thereat so joyously, ...

— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... now become "plain boy." He had shed the "young gentleman" with vigor and completeness and was bent upon any sort of "lark" that would restore his usual good nature and complacency. He had observed whither disappeared the various bell-boys when off duty and meant "to stir up" one of them if nothing ...

— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond

... with the awful form of Lucifer in the extreme rear reluctantly yielding even to Omnipotence itself, while blasting lightnings played about his brow and eyes, that flashed with the fires of inextinguishable fury. On first casting his eyes over his picture, a feeling of self-complacency and pride stole over the soul of the artist. But as he continued to gaze with a kind of idolatry at the work of his own hands, his imagination became excited by degrees, and life appeared to be infused into ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various

... ethereal blue, or white with snow; vallies of ice, and forests of gloomy fir. The serenity and clearness of the air in these high regions were particularly delightful to the travellers; it seemed to inspire them with a finer spirit, and diffused an indescribable complacency over their minds. They had no words to express the sublime emotions they felt. A solemn expression characterized the feelings of St. Aubert; tears often came to his eyes, and he frequently walked away from ...

— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... message with seeming gentleness and complacency. He told Feversham, that the king of England well knew that he might always be master of the peace; but some of the towns in Flanders it seemed very hard to demand, especially Tournay, upon whose fortifications such immense sums had been ...

— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... to the parish church by daylight,' the elder woman answered with complacency. 'But you tek care, my wench, whilst thee beest throwin' all the straight sticks aside, as thee doesn't pick up a crooked 'un at the last. Thee hast a fancy for the lad, too, that's as plain to ...

— Bulldog And Butterfly - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... replaced Dante on the shelf, and joined the circle round the beautiful singer. Marionetta gave him a smile of approbation that fully restored his complacency, and they continued on the best possible terms during the remainder of the evening. The Honourable Mr Listless turned over the leaves with double alacrity, saying, 'You are severe upon invalids, Miss O'Carroll: to escape your satire, I must try to be sprightly, though the ...

— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock

... left me, and I sat down to write. Did I do right? was the motive really approved by God? Was it not rather the triumph of my natural courage, of my preference of that which pleased me, instead of obeying the call for painful sacrifices. Mingled with this was a proud complacency, in return for the esteem expressed towards me by the unknown, and a fear of appearing cowardly, if I were to adhere to silence and decline a correspondence, every way so fraught with peril. How was I to resolve these doubts? I explained them frankly to my fellow- prisoner in replying to him, stating ...

— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico

... my great satisfaction, for, after no little effort, I succeeded in obtaining a plain view of the elusive little lyrist, and, sure enough, it proved to be the lazuli finch. Metaphorically I patted myself with a great deal of self-complacency, as I muttered: "The idea of Mr. Aiken's thinking I had so little discrimination! I know that hereafter I shall be able to detect the lazuli's peculiar intonations every time." So I walked home in a very self-confident frame of mind. A few days ...

— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... "Dignity, ease, and complacency, the gentleman and the soldier look, agreeably blended in him. Modesty marks every line and feature of his face. These lines of Dryden instantly occurred ...

— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... visit in form, "je suis charme que vous trouvez l'Abri si beau; je suis au desespoir qu'il ne soit pas chez lui a present, mais je vais le chercher partout afin qu'il vous fasse ses hommages." The good man could not have spoken of a favourite son with more unsuspecting complacency. ...

— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... friend of the motley," continued the other, not without complacency, observing the effect of his announcement ...

— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... operation which had been always hitherto performed with great danger even by a number of men. Instead, however, of exhibiting his usual vicious disposition, the horse, in the present case, was looking with the greatest complacency on the little groom, who soon after, to the very great relief of his father, walked ...

— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley

... assumption, presumption, self-respect, conceit, reserve, superciliousness, disdain, self-complacency, vainglory, haughtiness, self-conceit, ...

— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... progress of the dinner. He sat at Mrs. Rathbawne's right, than which nothing in the world could have been more cheerless, unless it was sitting at Mrs. Rathbawne's left. But the good lady's habitual complacency was plainly in abeyance, her customary volubility replaced by a fidgety reserve. The dinner, as a social achievement, was a distinct failure, save in so far as Mrs. Wynyard and Colonel Broadcastle were concerned. Several months before, Mrs. Wynyard had frankly announced that she had designs upon ...

— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... hushed atmosphere it seemed that a terrible blow had fallen, and that another was about to fall. Harry and Joe were as men stunned, but they looked upon their father with a gathering complacency. They had found it demonstrated that it was possible to disobey their father without being instantly destroyed. They were taking the lesson to heart. And indeed old Bill Campbell himself seemed to be slowly admitting that ...

— Bull Hunter • Max Brand

... with extreme complacency to the Leclaire establishment, a society of house-painters doing a very successful business, which he regards as a living demonstration of his system. M. Blanc might have added to this example a multitude of similar societies, which would ...

— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... quite a place for yourself in London, if you went at it carefully and consideringly, and didn't allow the wrong sort of people to accaparer you. We always count, when we want to, we American women of the good type,' said Miss Robinson, with frank complacency; 'and I don't see why, with your gifts and charm, you shouldn't have a salon, political ...

— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... to his model: a light blush tinted her cheeks, and her eyes brightened, and her mouth smiled with delicious complacency at this genuine tribute to ...

— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... the farm; but this man, so proud of his nobility and the colour of his skin, had not taken the trouble of constructing even an ajoupa, or hut of palm-leaves. He invited us to have our hammocks hung near his own, between two trees; and he assured us, with an air of complacency, that, if we came up the river in the rainy season, we should find him beneath a roof (baxo techo). We soon had reason to complain of a system of philosophy which is indulgent to indolence, and renders a man indifferent ...

— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... with a slight return of complacency, as he butted and shoved his way castle-wards, "he can scarcely mean to have my head. For he was all day with my father at his elbow, and at the worst I shall have another chance of seeing"—he did not call the beloved by her Christian name ...

— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... glass seemed to revive their father. He smacked his lips over it with something of his old gusto, threw out his chest, frowned formidably, yet with a certain complacency, and said— ...

— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston

... who listened to these several outpourings of spirit with much complacency, "I am a man of peace and amity, according to my conscience; but if others are men of wrath and battle, according to theirs, I will not take it upon me to censure them,—nay, not even if they should feel themselves called upon by hard necessity ...

— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... friendly to the political dogmas she cherished, and to the interests and projects of the Southern States. The character and principles of Mr. Adams were not adapted to become subservient to her views, and she saw with little complacency his elevation to the office of Secretary of State, which was in popular opinion a proximate step to the President's chair. Yet it could not be doubted that his appointment had the assent, if not the approbation, of Jefferson and Madison, without whose concurrence Monroe would scarcely ...

— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... front of it whenever classes were not going on. The little boys squeezed in front; the bigger boys read over their heads; the Sixth examined it from the back of the crowd, and the Fifth Form from various positions watched with complacency the effect ...

— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... its self-satisfied complacency that de Batz, calmly ignoring the vile part which he himself had played in the last quarter of an hour of his interview with the Committee's agent, found it in him to think of Heron with loathing, and even of ...

— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... "very, very much!" And by a simultaneous impulse Henrietta and I both clapped our hands vehemently. This restored Rupert's self-complacency, and he bowed and continued the lecture. From this we learned that the drowned man should be turned over on his face to let the canal water run out of his mouth and ears, and that his wet clothes should be got off, and he should be made dry and warm as quickly as possible, and placed in a comfortable ...

— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... examination after it has been placed aside, and carefully considered when the impression of novelty has worn off. I think we may safely appeal to all critics who occupy themselves much with conjectural criticism, and ask them if TIME does not frequently impair the complacency with which they regard their efforts on their ...

— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various

... inside, which keep the fire from getting at the water. They have lost their power because they are so familiar. They are weakened by not being practised. The very organs of intelligence are, as it were, ossified. Self-complacency lays hold on the possession of these ideas and shields itself against all appeals with the fact of possessing them. Many a man mistakes, in his own case, the knowledge of the truth for obedience to the truth. ...

— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... and met it with his usual fortitude and cheerfulness. While the tellers were performing their office, he beckoned Sir Edward Baynton, the member whose return was supported by the Opposition, to sit near him., spoke to him with great complacency, animadverted on the ingratitude of several individuals who were voting against him, on whom he had conferred great favour, and declared he would never ...

— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... are not insensible that the bare mention of this truly important subject in any other than terms of contemptuous ridicule and scornful disfavor, is likely to excite against us the fury of bigotry and the folly of prejudice. A discussion of the rights of animals would be regarded with far more complacency by many of what are called the wise and the good of our land, than would be a discussion of the rights of women. It is, in their estimation, to be guilty of evil thoughts, to think that woman is entitled ...

— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... in music one finds still truer in the other arts. One keeps coming on it everywhere—the egotism of cities, the self-complacency of the crowds swerving the finer and the truer artists from their functions, making them sing in hoarse crowd-voices instead of singing in their own and giving us themselves. Nearly all our acting has been corroded by crowds. Some of us have been obliged ...

— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... upon which they were living in the Fifteenth Century. The shire of which Shrewsbury is the capital very easily headed the list in this honorable competition and thereby justified the title of 'proud Salopians,' which the more consequential of its people submit to with much complacency, even though it be not always applied in ...

— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy

... he was captivated with her beauty. Finding herself thus ensnared, as she was a woman of strong mind, instead of indulging in unavailing complaint, she assumed a satisfied air; and as the only way to preserve her honour, received the addresses of the treacherous master with pretended complacency, and consented to receive him as a husband at the first port at which the ship might touch. With these assurances he was contented, and behaved to her with honourable deference, and affectionate respect. At length the vessel anchored near a city, to which the captain went ...

— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... complacency. "The rooms are not bad, are they? We came over with the Woolsey Hubbards (you've heard of them, of course?—they're from Detroit), and really they do things very decently. Their motor-car met us at Boulogne, and the courier ...

— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... faces as a whole was toward goodness, candor, and imperturbable self-complacency rather than learning or mental astuteness; and curiously enough it wore its pleasantest aspect on the countenances of the older men. The impress of zeal and moral worth seemed to diminish by regular gradations as one passed to younger faces; and ...

— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... the least interest or pleasure in the view from the top of Coropuna, nor could my companions. No sense of satisfaction in having attained a difficult objective cheered us up. We all felt greatly depressed and said little, although Gamarra asked for his bonus and regarded the gold coins with grim complacency. ...

— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... also for the honor of the gods, whom the surrounding nations reject, and for the diffusion of their worship far and wide throughout all known regions. His wars are religious wars, at least as much as wars of conquest; his buildings, or, at any rate, those on whose construction he dwells with most complacency, are religious buildings; the whole tone of his mind is deeply and sincerely religious; besides formal acknowledgments, he is continually letting drop little expressions which show that his gods are "in all his thoughts," ...

— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... the world, and many ages subsequently second only to Imperial Rome herself, excites the astonishment and admiration of the newcomers:—and the author takes the opportunity to dilate, with pardonable complacency, on the magnitude and grandeur of the place of his birth. "When I entered the city," (says Clitophon,) "by the gates called those of the sun, its wonderful beauty flashed at once upon my sight, almost dazzling my eyes with the excess of gratification. A lofty ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... of a theological school, and the ignorance of a lawless city, were alike unqualified to bestow the ideal though immortal wreath which genius may obtain from the free applause of the public and of posterity: but the candidate dismissed this troublesome reflection; and after some moments of complacency and suspense, preferred the summons of the ...

— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... nomination would fall upon their own favorite, or upon any other person in their estimation more meritorious than the one rejected. Thus it could hardly happen, that the majority of the Senate would feel any other complacency towards the object of an appointment than such as the appearances of merit might inspire, and the proofs of ...

— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... by the picturesque; but it was while he held his camp at Snow's Island that it received its highest colors of romance. In this snug and impenetrable fortress, he reminds us very much of the ancient feudal baron of France and Germany, who, perched on a castled eminence, looked down with the complacency of an eagle from his eyrie, and marked all below him for his own. The resemblance is good in all respects but one. The plea and justification of Marion are complete. His warfare was legitimate." It is in this place the scene is laid of an interview with the British officer, ...

— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various

... table, the young girl could not refrain from furtively watching the man whom they wished to compel her to marry. Never had she seen such intense self-complacency coupled with such utter mediocrity. It was evident that he was doing his best to produce a favorable impression; but as the dinner progressed, his conversation became rather venturesome. He gradually grew ...

— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... my uncle. "But why do you try and hide your taste under these mere formalities in frames? Why do you always say 'I pass' in the game of decoration? Better a mess of green amateurs and love therewith, than the richest autotypes and dull complacency. Have what you like. There is no such thing as absolute beauty. That is the Magna Charta of the world of art. What is beautiful to me is not beautiful to another man, in art as in women. But take care to get the art that fits you. Frankly, that 'Love and Death' suits you, Bagshot, ...

— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells

... degrees, by observing their habits," the tutor said, and vexed her with a towering complacency under provocation that went some way further to melt the woman she was, while her knowledge of the softness warned her still more of the duty of playing dragon round such a young man in her house. The despot is alert at every issue, to every chance; and she was ...

— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... no fox-hunter, but still he seemed to be irresistibly taken with the lady-like propensity of wishing to wear them. "Surely, George," he said, "the general must have been a stouter man than I am"—and he contemplated his own proportions with complacency—"these what's-the-names are quite ...

— The Relics of General Chasse • Anthony Trollope

... trampled on constantly by his menials; not commercial liberty, sold for thirty pieces of silver after the Germanic Zollverein had brought great wealth to Prussia; not religious liberty, placed in grave danger by complacency with anti-Jewish preachers and by the May laws; not scientific liberty, after having persecuted every department of science—even history—and invested the state with full power to enforce the teaching of official doctrines everywhere and by everybody; not industrial ...

— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... full of excitement about his contest at Vanebury, and he received the congratulations and good wishes of his friends with much complacency. He was already the accepted Conservative candidate, being nominated from the Oligarchy Club in response to an appeal from the local leaders. He had even been recommended by name in a letter from Mr. Tourmaline, the retiring ...

— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... glaringly apparent. Not a rag to cover them from the discerning eye. And what a veil has fallen between us and the years of our offending. There is no illusion so permanent as that which enables us to look backward with complacency; there is no mental process so deceptive as the comparing of recollections with realities. How loud and shrill the voice of the girl at our elbow. How soft the voice which from the far past breathes its gentle echo in our ears. How bouncing ...

— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... and purest instincts. It called upon her to sympathize with the evil that had blighted her life. And Rowan himself!—in her anger and suffering she could think of him in no other way than as enjoying this immortal chorus of anxiety on his account; as hearing it all with complacency and self-approval. It had to her distorted imagination the effect of offering a reward to him for having sinned; he would have received no such attention had ...

— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... eyes that our complacency received was Belgium!—that heroic little country to whose people citizenship was so much dearer than life or riches, or even the safety of their loved ones, that they flung all these things away, in a frenzy of devotion, for the honor of their ...

— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung

... short, weasely man of bilious temperament; still, he sufficed; and his death at the end of two years from whooping-cough only added to Mrs. Bradford's complacency. She came back home again to the Cottage, feeling as immeasurably superior to her unmarried sister as only a woman of that generation could feel, who had found a husband while most of her female relatives remained spinsters. ...

— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose

... youthful complacency I had the audacity to print an essay on "The Policy of Protection," taking issue with most of my brother members, college men and free-traders. Later, while on a visit to California, he told me, with ...

— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... is, who going afterwards to the universities, in preponderating numbers to Oxford, make for themselves a congenial atmosphere, disturbed only by faint ripples of that vast intellectual renascence in which the new shape of civilisation is forming. With self-complacency unshaken, they assume in due course charge of Church and State, the Press, and in general the leadership of the country. As lawyers and journalists they do our talking for us, let who will do the thinking. Observe that their strength lies in the possession of a ...

— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... England" of March 25/April 4., 1623, and the fulsome letter of Robert Cushman returning thanks in behalf of the Planters (through John Pierce), to Gorges, for his prompt response to their request for a patent and for his general complacency toward them Hon. James Phinney Baxter, Gorges's able and faithful biographer, says: "We can imagine with what alacrity he [Sir Ferdinando] hastened to give to Pierce a patent in their behalf." The same biographer, clearly unconscious of the well-laid plot of Gorges and ...

— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... known great servants of God who would not on any account allow their portraits to be painted, imagining that their doing so must involve some degree of vanity and dangerous self-complacency. Our Blessed Father was not of this opinion, but, making himself all things to all men that he might win all to Jesus Christ, he made no objection to having his portrait taken when asked to do so. He gave as his reason that ...

— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... decomposition proceeds, as proceed it must, there natural gas is being made. So that with the prospect of coal becoming as rare as the dodo itself, the world, we are told by scientists, may still regard with complacency the failure of our ordinary carbon supply. The natural gases and oils of the world will provide the human race with combustible material for untold ages—such at least is the opinion of those who are best informed on the ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various

... work, did ye?" And thrusting his hands deep in the pockets of his corduroys, Twitt looked at him with a whimsical complacency. "Well, why didn't ye come down to the stoneyard an' learn 'ow to cut a hepitaph? Nice chippy, easy work in its way, an' no 'arm in yer sittin' down to ...

— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... here, but it doesn't fall to my share. It is lavished on two men. One of them is a portly man of middle age who is a retired plumber. Everybody is pleased to have that man's notice. He's full of pomp and circumstance and self complacency and bad grammar, and at table he is Sir Oracle and when he opens his mouth not any dog in the kennel barks. The other person is a policeman at the capitol-building. He represents the government. The deference paid to these two men is not so very far short of that which ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... it seemed, was on board but the crew; who in a few hours after, came off, one by one, in Whitehall boats, their chests in the bow, and themselves lying back in the stem like lords; and showing very plainly the complacency they felt in keeping the whole ...

— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... there among the wounded. The Secretary stayed a long while, and Lucia felt at times that he was watching her with an eye that read her throughout; but when she saw him looking at Helen Harley she thought she knew the reason of his complacency. ...

— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... always, and totally; but that of Moniplies precisely according to the degree of its selfishness: wholly, in the affair of the petition—("I am sure I had a' the right and a' the risk," i. 73)—partially, in that of the carcanet. This he himself at last recognizes with complacency:— ...

— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... strong as to make very miserable men take comfort that they were supreme in misery; and certain it is{, that where} we cannot distinguish ourselves by something excellent, we begin to take a complacency in some singular infirmities, follies, or defects of one kind or other." —Burke, {On The Sublime And Beautiful, (1756), Part I, ...

— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld

... bewildered understanding and a reluctant attention I listened to these intricate sublimities, my adviser closed the volume, and said with complacency, "There is the motto for your book,—the thesis for ...

— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... a woman as any I know!' said Mr. Bounder, with a smile of complacency. 'Sally up there can't beat you; and she's a smart ...

— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... happens sometimes that a man who has a habit, finds it difficult to act in accordance with the habit, and consequently feels no pleasure and complacency in the act, on account of some impediment supervening from without: thus a man who has a habit of science, finds it difficult to understand, through being sleepy or unwell. In like manner sometimes the habits of moral virtue experience difficulty ...

— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... she completed her work, from her own position of perfect security, with complacency at least. And she felt at the end of her evening (which we needn't dwell on, as it was all crotchets, minims, and F sharps and G flats) that her entrenchments had become spontaneously stronger without exertion on her part. For there were Tishy and Mr. Bradshaw, between ...

— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... our whole dependence had been centered in Bede, what would have become of us after his death? (16) Malmsbury indeed asserts, with some degree of vanity, that you will not easily find a Latin historian of English affairs between Bede and himself (17); and in the fulness of self-complacency professes his determination, "to season with Roman salt the barbarisms of his native tongue!" He affects great contempt for Ethelwerd, whose work will be considered hereafter; and he well knew how unacceptable ...

— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown

... most part a masterly presence of mind, an absolute self-possession, which nothing can disturb. His repartees are involuntary suggestions of his self-love; instinctive evasions of everything that threatens to interrupt the career of his triumphant jollity and self-complacency. His very size floats him out of all his difficulties in a sea of rich conceits; and he turns round on the pivot of his convenience, with every occasion and at a moment's warning. His natural repugnance to every unpleasant thought or circumstance, of ...

— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... enjoy the feel of my fur, you mean," I am tempted to say. But I do not say it. It doesn't do to disturb the self-complacency of people who have the control ...

— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... stepped into the room, I saw only a big frowsy woman, who had attempted to make a show with a new silk dress and a hat in the latest fashion, but who had lamentably failed, owing to the slouchiness of her figure and some misadventure by which her hat had been set awry on her head and her usual complacency destroyed. Later, I noted that her down-looking eyes had a false twinkle in them, and that, commonplace as she looked, she was one to steer clear of in times ...

— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green

... outcries, or disturbance. In other words, his plays were not bad enough to be hissed off the stage, but not good enough to hold their own upon it. Only two of them have been preserved, but as they happen to be two of the seven or eight he mentions with complacency, we may assume they are favourable specimens, and no one who reads the "Numancia" and the "Trato de Argel" will feel any surprise that they failed as acting dramas. Whatever merits they may have, whatever occasional they may show, they are, as regards construction, incurably clumsy. How completely ...

— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... imported Ashkenazim, embracing both Poles and Dutchmen in their impartial contempt. But this does not prevent the Pole and the Dutchman from despising each other. To a Dutch or Russian Jew, the "Pullack," or Polish Jew, is a poor creature; and scarce anything can exceed the complacency with which the "Pullack" looks down upon the "Litvok" or Lithuanian, the degraded being whose Shibboleth is literally Sibboleth, and who says "ee" where rightly constituted persons say "oo." To mimic the mincing ...

— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... the heroine of the scene was that of this same high assurance—her coolness, her complacency, her eagerness to go on. She had been deadly afraid of the old actress but was not a bit afraid of a cluster of femmes du monde, of Julia, of Lady Agnes, of the smart women of the embassy. It was positively these personages who were rather in fear; there ...

— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... of proportion between the operation and the habit. For an injustice may sometimes arise from a passion, for instance, anger or desire, and sometimes from choice, for instance when the injustice itself is the direct object of one's complacency. In the latter case properly speaking it arises from a habit, because whenever a man has a habit, whatever befits that habit is, of itself, pleasant to him. Accordingly, to do what is unjust intentionally and by choice is proper to the unjust man, in which sense the unjust man is one who has ...

— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... letting little Nan go with her, and have, as she said, 'the run of her teeth.' She had her admirers, too—young collier lads, who told her truly enough she was the cleanest, neatest, tidiest lass in all Botfield. So Martha Fern regarded their residence on the cinder-hill with more complacency than could have been expected. The only circumstance which in her secret heart she considered a serious drawback was her very ...

— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton

... contemptuously of Horace Walpole. The truth is, he was mortified he had not and never could obtain a literary peerage; and he never respected the commoner's seat. At these moments, too frequent in his life, he contemns authors, and returns to sink back into all the self-complacency of aristocratic indifference. ...

— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... was, the graceless son of his parents—horse-thief, sheep-thief, contrabandist, bully, trader of women—he had the look of a seraph when he sang, the complacency of an angel of the Weighing of Souls. And why not? He had no doubts; he could justify every hour of his life. If money failed him, wits did not; he had the manners of a gentleman—and a gentleman he actually was, hidalgo by birth—and the morals of a hyaena, that is to say, none at all. I ...

— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett

... Elizabeth sitting by the fireside, supported in an arm-chair by pillows, with every mark of rapid decline and approaching death. A sweet smile of friendly complacency enlightened her ...

— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond

... hundred and fifty," he volunteered—not without a hint of complacency in his voice. "It didn't take long, but they sure made it out a big deal. Half the guys in the bank had to be called in to listen to the proposition. The account's in your name, Mr. Henderson, and you'll have to make ...

— Junior Achievement • William Lee

... difference between the spirit of Christ and the spirit of Euclid." But the epigram would be as good if Tolstoy's name were put in place of mine and D'Annunzio's in place of Tolstoy. At the same time I accept the enormous compliment to my reasoning powers with sincere complacency; and I promise my flatterer that when he is sufficiently accustomed to and therefore undazzled by problem on the stage to be able to attend to the familiar factor of humanity in it as well as to the unfamiliar one of a real environment, he will both ...

— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... its famous pages, but never without being paid. It was the organic law of this publication, that gratuitous contributions should never be admitted. And in this principle there was as much wisdom as pride. Celebrated statesmen would point with complacency to the snuff-box or the picture which had been purchased by their literary labour, and there was more than one bracelet on the arm of Mrs. Ferrars, and more than one genet in her stable, which had been the reward of a profound or ...

— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... for the liberation of these captives cannot be viewed with complacency even at this late day. After some hesitation it decided to ransom the prisoners, and proceeded to negotiate—first, through Mr. John Lamb, its agent at Algiers, and secondly through the general of the Mathurins, a religious order of France instituted in early times for the redemption of Christian ...

— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... all three of them were at the station to welcome them. Lila and Doyle were wild with delight to be again with their brother and sisters, and wound their little arms about their necks in the most affectionate manner. Henry Hill looked on with complacency, for he felt that he was bestowing quite a favor upon his children in giving them ...

— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale

... out, like the peripatetic man on the Boulevards who sells them: his gloves, well-fitting, and buttoning at the wrist, were of the whitest kid, and grasped a yet whiter and highly-scented cambric: his boots shone bright with varnish, and his face with self-complacency. As the room filled, he went round, giving the girls permission to write subjects on bits of waste (wasted!) paper, which set them thinking at a great rate. Presently, a second circuit round the room, to collect the orders payable at sight—a title ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... With his customary self-complacency and patronising air James told the assembled Commons that he had brought them two gifts, the one peace abroad,(26) and the other the union of England with Scotland under the title of Great Britain,(27) and he expressed no little surprise and indignation when he found ...

— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... possession of property becomes the basis of popular esteem, therefore, it becomes also a requisite to the complacency which we call self-respect. In any community where goods are held in severalty it is necessary, in order to his own peace of mind, that an individual should possess as large a portion of goods as others with whom he is accustomed to class himself; and it is extremely gratifying to possess ...

— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... tall, stout, portly man, with a round, fair, fat face, on which sat an expression of extreme self-complacency. A fine forehead, both broad and high, though slightly too retreating, surmounted a pair of clear, bright grey eyes, a well-formed nose, and lips in which there was no weakness, but they were just a shade too smiling for sincerity. Though his age was only fifty-one, his ...

— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... ominous forebodings; for Geordie had no doubt but that the Avenger of Blood was hot upon Slavin's trail; and as the sickness grew, he became confirmed in this conviction. While he could not be said to find satisfaction in Slavin's impending affliction, he could hardly hide his complacency in the promptness of Providence in vindicating ...

— Black Rock • Ralph Connor

... heart to the throne of grace, have double need of a mother, I dare not indulge a wish, far less put up a petition for release. O, that I could get under the influence of that spirit which I have witnessed in my dear pastor—that entire confidence in God—that perfect resignation to his will—that complacency in all he has done, is doing, or will do—that rest in God, of which he seems to be put in possession even now, while his breast is laboring and heaving like a broken bellows, and he cannot fetch one full breath. O, what ...

— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... kite; it has for its tail a whimsy. Haggerty, on a certain day, received twenty-five hundred dollars from the Hindu prince and five hundred more from the hotel management. The detective bore up under the strain with stoic complacency. "The Blind Madonna of the Pagan—Chance" always had ...

— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... from?" asked Saint-Pierre. But Commines shook his head, running his fingers inside the collar of his doublet significantly. Complacency, even when it was the complacency ...

— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... admit I conquered without heroics," upon which her ladyship, late mistress Mallett, a beauty and a fortune, smiled assent with all the complacency of a six-months' bride. "To see a man tried for an attempted abduction is a sight worth a year's income," pursued Rochester. "I would travel a hundred miles to behold that rare monster who has failed in his pursuit of one of your ...

— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... richness of the accessories, all this was strange and new to him; but Lucien had learned very quickly to take luxury for granted, and he showed no surprise. His behavior was as far removed from assurance or fatuity on the one hand as from complacency and servility upon the other. His manner was good; he found favor in the eyes of all who were not prepared to be hostile, like the younger men, who resented his sudden intrusion into the great world, and felt jealous of his ...

— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... lost on Mr. Dodge, who turned over to one of his most elaborate strictures on the state of society in France, with all the self-complacency of besotted ignorance and provincial superciliousness. Searching out a place to his mind, this profound observer of men and manners, who had studied a foreign people, whose language when spoken was gibberish to him, by travelling five days in a public coach, and living four ...

— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... of her husband's drinking companions, then, dazzled by the wife's mad beauty, he began to haunt the handsome Madame Montjoie, as many other persons had haunted her before him,—with no particular results except to increase the arrogant self-complacency with which Louie bore herself among ...

— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... kompato. Compassionate, to be kompati. Compatriot samlandano. Compel devigi. Compend resumo. Compend resumo. Compensate kompensi. Compete konkuri. Competent kompetenta. Competition konkurso. Competitor konkuranto. Compile redakti. Complacency komplezo, servemo. Complainant plendanto. Complaint plendo. Complaisance komplezo. Complement plennombro. Complement (gram.) komplemento. Complete plenigi. Completely plene. Complex malsimpla. Complexion vizagxkoloro. ...

— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... fortifying trust, less in the Power that rules the universe than in the peculiar virtues of the Episcopal prayer-book when bound in black; a capacity for self-sacrifice which had made the South a nation of political martyrs; complacency, exaltation, narrowness of vision, and uncompromising devotion to an ideal—these were the qualities which had passed from the race into the individual and through the individual again back into the very blood and the ...

— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... not to remain long as they are in any business, in any enterprise, in any institution. Civilization never stands still. The most dangerous attitude of mind that a man can hold is that of complacency, that of perfect satisfaction with things as they are. The good is always a foe to ...

— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... said, "I think it's a damned good idea. If you'll bring me up to date, I'll contribute whatever I can to the Forever Project. And let's hope their complacency lasts." ...

— Forever • Robert Sheckley

... this wise and satisfactory conclusion he had also reached the end of his journey, and with much self-complacency retired to his humble cot to ...

— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick

... echoes of your English welcome still lingering in my ears, and then I am humble. Then I am properly meek, and for that little while I am only the Mary Ann, fourteen hours out, cargoed with vegetables and tinware; but during all the other twenty-three hours my vain self-complacency rides high on the white crests of your approval, and then I am a stately Indiaman, plowing the great seas under a cloud of canvas and laden with the kindest words that have ever been vouchsafed to any wandering alien in this world, I think; then my twenty-six fortunate days on this old ...

— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... capabilities, and lead to promotion. I had no knowledge, at that time, of the immense income which awaited me entirely outside the Government circle. Whether it is contempt for the foreigner, as has often been stated, or that native stolidity which spells complacency, the British official of any class rarely thinks it worth his while to discover the real cause of things in France, or Germany, or Russia, but plods heavily on from one mistake to another. Take, for example, those periodical outbursts of hatred against England ...

— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... and law that he could not render; there was the strain of effort, under conscious imperfection, in every line. But the Irish missal-painter had drawn his angel with no sense of failure, in happy complacency, and put red dots into the palm of each hand, and rounded the eyes into perfect circles, and, I regret to say, left the mouth out altogether, with perfect satisfaction ...

— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... Tom, with the complacency of one who feels himself a great man in his present surroundings. "I witnessed many pageants in which he took part; and I was of the same company at the house of my Lord Craven, and was presented to him, and had ...

— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... he lived under the shadow of the sword of Damocles for many months; on and off, for years—indeed, as long as he lived at all. It is good discipline. It rids one of much superfluous self-complacency and puts a wholesome check on our keeping too good a conceit of ourselves; it prevents us from caring too meanly about mean things—too keenly about our own infinitesimal personalities; it makes us feel quick sympathy ...

— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... 'grace,' then it is to show that what he doth is of his princely will, his royal bounty, and sovereign pleasure. When it is expressed by that word 'love,' then it is to show us that his affection was and is in what he doth, and that he doth what he doth for us, with complacency and delight. But when it is set forth to us under the notion of 'mercy,' then it bespeaks us to be in a state both wretched and miserable, and that his bowels and compassions yearn over us in this our fearful ...

— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... as much harm in Ireland as Mr. Arthur Balfour did good. Indeed, in the whole nineteenth century no other incompetent Chief Secretary misunderstood Ireland with such complete complacency, and if it had not been for the supervision which 'A.J.' undoubtedly gave, Mr. Gerald Balfour would have ...

— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... recesses of the heart. Heaven and earth are under his government: all events, all revolutions, are the consequences of his dispensation and will. He is pure, holy, and impartial; wickedness offends his sight; but he beholds with an eye of complacency the virtuous actions of men. Severe, yet just, he punishes vice in an exemplary manner, even in Princes and Rulers; and often casts down the guilty, to crown with honor the man who walks after his own heart, and whom he raises ...

— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... written about the engagement, there are sufficient evidences that his self-love was flattered at the preference accorded him by so superior a woman, and one who had been so much sought. He mentions with an air of complacency that she has employed the last two years in refusing five or six of his acquaintance; that he had no idea she loved him, admitting that it was an old attachment on his part. He dwells on her virtues with a sort of pride of ownership. There is a sort of ...

— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... "English by blood." The new English, fresh from the Imperial island, seem to have usually conducted themselves with a haughty sense of superiority; the old English, more than half Hibernicized, confronted these strangers with all the self-complacency of natives of the soil on which they stood. In their frequent visits to the Imperial capital, the old English were made sensibly to feel that their country was not there; and as often as they went, they returned with ...

— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... of the sacrifices his parents were making for him; so he thanked them lightly for the promised allowance, rattled the first payment cheerfully into his purse, and smiled on papa and mamma with almost condescending complacency. When he was equipped in his best suit, and just ready for starting, his ...

— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty

... established order of Christendom, was to terrify the Vatican court into submission by the firmness of his attitude. For the present complications, the court of Rome, not he, was responsible. The pope, with a culpable complacency for the emperor, had shrunk from discharging a duty which his office imposed upon him; and the result had been that the duty was discharged by another. Henry could not blame himself for the consequences of Clement's delinquency. He rather felt himself wronged in having ...

— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... his friend Gavin Hamilton, of Mauchline. "She is not only beautiful," he thus writes to her brother, "but lovely: her form is elegant, her features not regular, but they have the smile of sweetness, and the settled complacency of good nature in the highest degree. Her eyes are fascinating; at once expressive of good sense, tenderness and a noble mind. After the exercise of our riding to the Falls, Charlotte was exactly ...

— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... his deep nearness to his Lord as the Power of God in him, alike seem not so much to banish as utterly to preclude any thought about himself but that of his own imperfection. He writes as one whose very last feeling is that of complacency in his spiritual condition. I deliberately do not say "self-complacency"; for all Christians would repudiate that word; I say, complacency in his spiritual condition. His spiritual position, in Christ, as he is "found in Him," fills him with much more than complacency; ...

— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule

... Ptolemaic theory were gratifying to the pride and vanity of man, who could regard with complacency the paramount importance of the globe which he inhabited, and of which he was the absolute ruler, fixed in the centre of the universe, and surrounded by ten revolving spheres, that carried along with them in their circuit all other celestial ...

— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... group, he occupied half an hour in replying to the many questions put to him, relative to the prison discipline, and other matters connected with it. In answer to a question addressed to him concerning the character of those under his charge, the overseer remarked in a tone of much self-complacency: ...

— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... in a transient paroxysm, he soon settled back to his customary mental complacency and self-possession; and as he had no longer any pledge of consequence remaining to him in the soil of Kentucky—and as it was, moreover, becoming on all sides subject to the empire of the cultivator's axe and plough, he resolved to leave ...

— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint

... participated in it. Formerly, life used to happen somewhere in the distance, remote from where she was, uncertain for whom and for what. Now, many things were accomplished before her eyes, with her help. The result in her was a confused feeling, compounded of distrust of herself, complacency, perplexity, ...

— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... was disconcerted for a moment, seeing by the faces around him that Joan had put into words what the others felt, then he pulled his complacency together and fell to fault-finding again. Joan's ...

— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... metropolis as this, where guilty dissimulation and insidiousness so much abound—independent of their merit, and consequent value as works of fine art. Why do we contemplate the innocent occupations of children, and rural life, with sentiments of the purest complacency? Why, but because the soul is revived as it recognises its own nature through the disguise of society, and springs back with ardour toward a state of things on which our ideas of Paradise itself ...

— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... listening too with passionate fears or hopes, as the case might be, to the whispers not yet audible to the world which passed from lip to lip of the statesmen who were watching the course of events from the other side of the Atlantic with the sweet complacency of the looker-on of Lucretius; too often rejoicing in the storm that threatened wreck to institutions and an organization which they felt to be a standing menace to the established order of things ...

— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... are ecstacies. So sweet its stings, The nectar-cups and incense-pots of kings, Compared, are flat, insipid things. One strays all lonely in the wood— Leans silent o'er the placid flood, And there with great complacency, A certain face can see— 'Tis not one's own—but image fair, Retreating, Fleeting, Meeting, Greeting, Following everywhere. For all the rest of human kind, One is as good, in short, as blind. There is a shepherd wight, I ween, Well known ...

— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... possible. But I dared say nothing. These Dyaks had killed our enemies, and were only following their own customs by rejoicing over their dead victims. But the fact seemed to part them from us by centuries of feeling—our disgust, and their complacency. Some of them told us that afterwards, when they brought home some of the children belonging to the slain, and treated them very kindly, wishing to adopt them as their own, they were annoyed at the little ones standing looking up at their parents' heads hanging ...

— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... instances cited in the general staff reports, they deal with companies or half-battalions at most. Not withstanding the complacency with which they are cited, they must have been rare, and the exception should not be ...

— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq

... to experience the disappointment attendant upon such precipitancy. It was in vain that Philemon and myself endeavoured to make him completely satisfied with his purchase: nothing produced a look of complacency from him. At length, upon seeing the rising ground which was within two or three miles of our respective homes, he cheered up by degrees; and a sudden thought of the treasures contained in his Clement, De Bure and Panzer, darted a gleam of satisfaction across ...

— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... himself to be the greatest genius of his age:—had language like Mr. Jowett's been found on the lips of Joseph Butler, who when he was 44 produced his immortal 'Analagy,' and at the age of 26 delivered his famous Rolls 'Sermons:'—had Bishop Bull been betrayed into the language of self-complacency when, at the age of 35, he made himself famous by his 'Harmonia Apostolica:'—the proceeding would have been intelligible, however much one might have lamented such an exhibition of weakness.... But when the speaker proves to be one of the very shallowest ...

— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... understood—oh, to a degree almost abject—his point of view. Mrs. Forrester had accused her of that. And Tante had accused her of it, too. But no; it had been slowly to freeze to stillness to hear his clear cold utterance of shameful words, see the folly of his arrogance and his complacency, realise, in his glacial look and glib, ironic smile, that he was blind to what he was destroying in her. For he could not have torn her heart to shreds and then stood bland, unaware of what he had done, ...

— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick