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More "Complacency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... teller of for tunes, she was chief cook and housekeeper for the whole caravan, but she had a flirtatious disposition, and the attentions Nicholas Crips offered in his unprofessional moments were received in a spirit of frivolous appreciation that disturbed the boss showman's complacency at times. ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... as eager about this pleasure for 'his young people,' as he called them, as they could be. He came in early to drive Geraldine to the station, and looked with grandfatherly complacency at the four sisters, who had ventured on the extravagance of white pique and black ribbons, and in their freshness looked as well-dressed as any lady in ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... concerned, the Athenian felt 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 patriotic, even in his vices, favours the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... case at present: for the rigid life I have hitherto led, my race nearly run, I {now} renounce. Why so? —I have found, by experience, that there is nothing better for a man than an easy temper and complacency. That this is the truth, it is easy for any one to understand on comparing me with my brother. He has always spent his life in ease {and} gayety; mild, gentle, offensive to no one, having a smile for all, he has lived for himself, {and} has spent his money for ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... sir," Mr. Carlyle assured his client, with impenetrable complacency. "Never mind. I will remain instead. Perhaps I had better make myself known to Sir Benjamin ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... inhaling them and looking at them; and a dreamy, tender complacency crept over his heart, and softened his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... French Consul,—the representative of the King of that nation,—and the protection which it has from time immemorial accorded to the Christians of the Latin rite in Syria. All French writers and travellers speak of this protection with delightful complacency. Consult the French books of travel on the subject, and any Frenchman whom you may meet: he says, "La France, Monsieur, de tous les temps protege les Chretiens d'Orient;" and the little fellow looks round the church with a sweep of the arm, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... table than people do at other tables in England; not, of course, that we like them better, or admire them more, but that they are curiosities. Yet I would not say that the doctor may not be susceptible on the point of royal attentions; for he told us with great complacency how emphatically, on two or three occasions, Louis Napoleon had returned his bow, and the last time had turned and made some remark (evidently about the doctor) to the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... often is it that fat, plethoric, meat-eating children, their faces looking as though the blood was just ready to ooze out, are with the greatest complacency exhibited by their parents as patterns of health! But let it ever be remembered, that the condition of the system popularly called rude or full health, and which is the result of high feeding, is too often closely bordering on a state ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... But the complacency of the duchess was not so easily disturbed. "Oh, no, that is not right!" she broke in. "I have been assured that she has five hundred thousand dollars a year. Dollars! And there are five ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... would make impertinent? As if one were to begin the day with long-suffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes; and in the afternoon go forth to practise Christian meekness and charity with goodness aforethought! Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the palm of one of his hands, and gazed on her silently, in a sort of mute adoration—while Adrienne, bending over him with a happy smile "looked at the babies in his eyes," as the song says, with as much amorous complacency, as if the hateful princess had not been present. But soon, as if something were wanting to complete her happiness, Adrienne beckoned to Mother Bunch, and made her sit down by her side. Then, with her hand clasped in that of this excellent friend, Mdlle. de Cardoville smiled ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... In journalism the movement took shape in the person of Alfred Harmsworth. In literature the man of the moment was Rudyard Kipling. These three fateful embodiments of the Time-Spirit seemed to dominate England and shake her clean out of her fin-de-siecle complacency. England could never be the same again, after those three men had been at the helm, for however short a period. The course was deflected; the reckoning lost. Austere, dignified Whigs would appear again in politics, but never again would their austerity and dignity represent our political ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... him to his innocent slumbers and began dressing. Already she was busied with planning just what to say and how to say it; Gloria knew, she thought with some complacency, that her mother could be depended upon in any situation demanding the delicate touch. She would be about, cool and smiling, when the first guest appeared; it would be supposed that she and Gloria and Mr. King had been quite a ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... his day, but he departs from the custom of the time in one respect: his brethren allowed sense to intrude when it did not mar the sound, but he does not allow it to intrude at all. For example, consider this figure, which he used in the village "Address" referred to with such candid complacency in the title-page above quoted—"like the topmost topaz of an ancient tower." Please read it again; contemplate it; measure it; walk around it; climb up it; try to get at an approximate realization of the size of it. Is the fellow to that to ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... struggle for mere existence, there would be an irresistible demand for betterment. Every Christian ought to know the wrongs of our civilization, in order that he may help to right them. This glimpse beneath the surface of the city should stir us out of comfortable complacency and give birth in us to the impulse that leads to settlement and city mission work, and to civic reform movements. The young men and women of America must create a public sentiment that will demolish the slums, and erect in their ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... memory was there a Christmas breakfast during which Peter Erwin did not appear, bringing gifts. Peter Erwin, of whom we caught a glimpse doing an errand for Uncle Tom in the bank. With the complacency of the sun Honora was wont to regard this most constant of her satellites. Her awakening powers of observation had discovered him in bondage, and in bondage he had been ever since: for their acquaintance had begun on the first ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the way of work. The men, as usual, lolled about in hammocks, smoking incessantly. A few houses were in process of building, or, rather, were standing half finished. Now and then, a little is done to them; and so they take months and years to finish; and men will show you, with the greatest complacency, a half-built house on which nothing has been done for two years, telling you they are so busy with it that they cannot undertake anything else. There are no libraries, theatres, nor concert-rooms: no public meetings nor lectures. Newspapers ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... and tender to a white creditor his promissory note with a gleeful complacency. There are usually two elements contributing, in perhaps equal degree, to produce in him this complacent frame of mind: The first, that, for removing from his immediate consideration a debt, he is adopting a temporizing ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... devoutly. It was ridiculous to indulge in sentiment in connection with a thief and a forger; the woman deserved no mercy, and would receive none, if he had his way; none the less was he charmed by Cornelia's emotion, by her pity, her amazing inconsistency. Gone were her airs of complacency and independence; at the first threatening of danger the pretty pretence was broken up; weak, trembling, tearful, she summoned her natural protector to her side! Guest's heart swelled with a passion of tenderness. In his immaculate frock-coat, freshly-creased trousers, and irreproachable silk ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... (passive states), but denote the power of the soul by which the former are moderated, and which is discussed later under the name fortitudo. Self-abasement or humility is a feeling of pain arising from the consideration of our weakness and impotency; its opposite is self-complacency. Either of these may be accompanied by the (erroneous) belief that we have done the saddening or gladdening act of our own free will; in this case the former affection is termed repentance. Hope and fear are inconstant pleasure and pain, arising from the idea of something ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... 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 to a string of cabs, and the next instant we were all three whirling ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... his endless notes and records, and began to write his biography; but he did not hurry. Several biographies of Johnson appeared, in the four years after his death, without disturbing Boswell's perfect complacency. After seven years' labor he gave the world his Life of Johnson. It is an immortal work; praise is superfluous; it must be read to be appreciated. Like the Greek sculptors, the little slave produced ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... enterprise, often stopped to inquire for employment. A few days after the sham duel, Harrison determined to play a trick on another emigrant, a shrewd, tolerably well-informed young man, who had evinced a great deal of self-complacency and immodest pertinacity. He told the pertinacious emigrant, who inquired for a place, that he had not, himself, anything that could engage his attention, but that he had a friend (alluding to me) who was now in town, who was extensively engaged in milling and merchandizing on ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... expressed contempt and defiance of the world, reminds me of the bravadoes of children, who, afraid of darkness, make a noise to give themselves courage to support what they dread. It is very evident that he is partial to aristocratic friends, he dwells with complacency on the advantages of rank and station, and has more than once boasted that people of family are always to be recognised by a certain air, and the smallness and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... laudation, he brought forth 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
... 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 Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... doorway, and, by the half start and blush, I saw that I was plainly recognized, and with pleasure. We were formally presented by Don Pedro, and, after the old skipper had been flattered into an ecstasy of mingled admiration and self-complacency, Donna ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... thing, 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 ship waiting ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... there is nothing to interfere with your little nursling. You are not tempted 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 to ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... that going to church for the first time in state with her bridegroom she had professed to dread, but had really anticipated with complacency; for though Julius had bidden the bells to be rung for afternoon service, Raymond was obliged to go back to Wil'sbro' to make arrangements for the burnt-out families, and she had to go ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for an outpouring of His spirit and a deeply needed revival of religion? In the words of Admiral Sir David Beatty, the Commander of the British Fleet, "England still remains to be taken out of her stupor of self-satisfaction and complacency and until she be stirred out of this condition, until religious revival takes place at home, just so ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... 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 for ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... 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
... years. But, though these arrangements suited the patrons and the members of the House of Commons, it was not strange that the constituencies, whose power over their representatives was almost extinguished by them, regarded them with less complacency, and, at the general election which was the consequence of the accession of George III., pledges were very generally exacted from the candidates that, if elected, they would endeavor to procure the passing of a septennial act like that which had been the law in England ever since the ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... pursued by Congress 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, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... of self-defense. Such was one of the results of nineteenth-century evolutionism, and the generation that saw the last years of the nineteenth century and the first part of the new, basking in its day dreams of self-complacency, made no move to avert the dangers that threatened it then and ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... quite safe: no one can get in while I am gone. There is another watchman on the road: he might come while I am away, and—and raise a row. It is best to lock you up.' He nodded his head with great complacency at his good management, and prepared to leave me. I could suggest nothing better. I was at the end of my resources, and had to accept my fate. It would be interesting to know what the Pompadour or Queen Elizabeth would have done under ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... The Bonita continued her voyage. The captain obligingly made a landing at Elizabeth City, where Brant lodged his prisoner, and where the gratified Zeke stowed in his wallet ten times as much money as he had ever before possessed at one time. Naturally, he was in a mood of much self-complacency, for, in addition to the money gain, his adventure had notably increased his prestige aboard ship, where Brant's praise for his prompt and efficient action was respectfully accepted. Yet, despite his contentment, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... time. He felt himself to be strangely out of place; and he was almost afraid to tread upon the thick soft carpets, or to sit upon the luxurious chairs. And yet he smiled to himself, as he contrasted his own uneasiness with the complacency with which his sister was fitting herself into her place in their ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... going from our ship to one near us, I jumped into her, and learned the death of Lord Nelson, which I communicated to the captain, who, after paying a tribute to the memory of that great man, looked at me with much complacency. I was the only youngster that had been particularly active, and he immediately despatched me with a message to a ship at a short distance. The first lieutenant asked if he should not send an officer of more experience. "No," said the captain, "he shall ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Jemima was by no means cool and level-headed. All her pretty married complacency had gone. She was more excited than her mother had ever seen her. She jumped up and began to walk around the room, muttering rather ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... observing the signature of Delta affixed to these productions, he smiled, and said, with much complacency, "My name is David Moir." This, upon inquiry, we found was really the case, and the mad poet considered that the coincidence gave him a right to enjoy the world-wide fame of his celebrated namesake. The poems which he gave us, and ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... had sprung from a principle into a passion; a 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 fibre of ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... polite and attentive to them all; he talks with them, smiles with them, and treats them with every gentle complacency; but they do not live one instant in his memory. I mean they do not occupy his particular wishes; for with regard to every respectful sentiment towards the sex in general, and esteem to some amiable individuals, he is as awake as in the other case he is still asleep. The fact is, he has no ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... others this said Parson S——, are possessed with the notion that something had better be done to supply the want created by the cessation of these dangerous exhortations, to which the negroes have listened, it seems, with complacency. Parson S—— seems to think that, having driven out two preachers, it might be well to build one church where, at any rate, the negroes might be exhorted in a safe and salutary manner, 'qui ne leur donnerait point d'idees,' as the French would ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... of your charm," I said, Expounding with complacency my guess. Alas! the charm, even as I named it, fled, For ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... found you out? In this temptation to mutual indulgence lies the particular peril to morality in married life. Daily they drop a little lower from the first ideal, and for a while continue to accept these changelings with a gross complacency. At last Love wakes and looks about him; finds his hero sunk into a stout old brute, intent on brandy pawnee; finds his heroine divested of her angel brightness; and in the flash of that first disenchantment, flees ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... infinite loveliness and beauty in Him, apart from anything I expect or hope. But even then how deceitful is the human heart! how insensibly might a mere selfish love take the place of that disinterested complacency which regards Him for what He is in Himself, apart from what He is to us! Say, my dear friend, does not this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... a little i, and over every one of us there is a little dot of self-importance, self-will, self-interest, self-confidence, self-complacency, or something to which we cling and for which we contend, which just as surely reveals self-life as if it were a mountain of ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... never coveted our neighbor's goods, that we can outthink and outwork and outgame and outinvent every nation under heaven, and yet haven't brains enough to do our own thinking in world-affairs. It is discouraging to contemplate the smug complacency, whether it be due to ignorance or apathy, which permits aliens to reside in our midst and set up agencies for our destruction and their benefit. If I— Why, you're in riding-costume, ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... 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
... carry on our own trade and sell our own goods if we please? who shall hinder us? This is now the language of those who had before seen the ax laid at the very root of all our Rights with apparent complacency,—And pray gentlemen, Have you not a right if you please, to set fire to your own houses, because they are your own, tho' in all probability it will destroy a whole neighbourhood, perhaps a whole city! Where did you learn that in a state or society you had a right ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... 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 ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... 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 Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... In my 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 twinkle in ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... instead of Ridicule and Invective about his Irregularities, War was all the Subject of Discourse, and every one according to the Fertility of his Invention, laid magnificent Schemes to raise their King to an unparallell'd Glory. This general Complacency and Zeal were duly reported to the King, who was not wanting to encourage so good a Disposition; prompted by the Importance of answering their endearing Idea of him, and verifying their Wishes, he shewed himself such as really he was, but hitherto restrained and seduced by his crafty Visier. ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... to put up with all this discomfort, loss, and privation if thereby their country marches triumphantly out of this great struggle. [Cheers.] We have every reason for confidence; we have none for complacency. Hope is the mainspring of efficiency; complacency is ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... prophet of the new age which was to transcend the old rationalist movement. Men had come to harp in complacency upon reason. They had never inquired into the nature and laws of action of the reason itself. Kant, though in fullest sympathy with its fundamental principles, was yet aware of the excesses and weaknesses in which the rationalist movement was running out. No ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... excellent cavalier Don Quixote de la Mancha. By us ordinary mortals of a mediocre animus that is only too anxious to pass by wicked giants for so many honest windmills, adventures are entertained like visiting angels. They come upon our complacency unawares. As unbidden guests are apt to do, they often come at inconvenient times. And we are glad to let them go unrecognised, without any acknowledgment of so high a favour. After many years, on looking back from the middle turn of life's way at the events of the ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... her the next day, with a cigarette between his yellow-stained finger tips, which made her sneeze in a silent pantomimic way, and certain blandishments of speech which she received with more complacency. But I don't think she ever even looked at him. In vain he protested that she was the "dearest" and "littlest" of his "little loves"—in vain he asserted that she was his patron saint, and that it was ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... 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 ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... of benign or malicious fairies. Not a woman in this room or in any room she entered could look at Rachael Breckenridge without a pang; her supremacy was beyond all argument or dispute. And yet there was neither complacency nor content in the lovely face; it wore its usual expression of arrogant amusement at a ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... entering the room, he presented Mrs Tabitha as his sister, and Liddy as his niece. The old gentleman saluted them very cordially, and seemed struck with the appearance of my sister, whom he could not help surveying with a mixture of complacency and surprize — 'Sister (said my uncle), there is a poor relation that recommends himself to your good graces — The quondam Humphry Clinker is metamorphosed into Matthew Loyd; and claims the honour of being your ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... in his uniform even after the custom of several years—emerges f rom those passages; or, more rarely, a black gentleman, stricken in years, and cased in shining broadcloth, walks solidly down the brick sidewalk, cane in hand—a vision of serene self-complacency and so plainly the expression of virtuous public sentiment that the great colored louts, innocent enough till then in their idleness, are taken with a sudden sense of depravity, and loaf guiltily up against the house-walls. At the same moment, perhaps, a young damsel, amorously ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... feeling rather spry and pleased with herself, until presently, clinketty clank, round the bend of the road came the quick, staccato beat of horses' hoofs. Mr and Mrs Maplestone cantering past in hunting kit, which at one glimpse killed complacency and substituted disgust for ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... an air of virtuous complacency, "I believe you are right. I can't deny it, though it may help ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... to her emissaries, and hireling presses and scribblers, we are indebted for a dastardly generation of traitors, who would barter the liberties of their country for the applause of faction, and the complacency of kings. ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... into your cup of happiness. Because she was afraid that if you knew I loved her, you would think I had tried to help you from that motive, and so, refuse the help. Because the dear girl would not wound even your self complacency. Do not think I am ashamed of her, or ashamed of loving her. I told my father, I told the only female relative I have, how dear she was to me. My father asked me to test my love by two years' travel and absence. I did so to convince him, not because ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... no actual harm in making Niagara a background whereon to display one's marvellous insignificance in a good strong light, but it requires a sort of superhuman self-complacency to enable one ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... bed and stepped off to survey it, and even the despondent Mary took heart, and as she surveyed her image in the mirror at the conclusion of her toilet for the important evening, she felt a degree of complacency toward ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... fearfully tired?" Polly would reiterate, and "Not a bit!" Miss Sterling would lie with complacency, while Mrs. Albright grew wondrously jolly in her effort to keep ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... in most men to feeling rather than to reason. They shrink from the notion of such an origin just because they see in the ape organism a caricature of man, a distorted and unattractive image of themselves, because it hurts man's aesthetic complacency and self-ennoblement. It is more flattering to think we have descended from some lofty and god-like being; and so, from the earliest times, human vanity has been pleased to believe in our origin from gods or demi-gods. The Church, with that ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... have been compared with all the charms of all her fair forerunners, and they have endured that stringent testing. The winning of an often-bartered heart is in reality the only conquest which entitles a woman to complacency, for she has received a real compliment; whereas to be selected as the target of a lad's first declaration is a tribute of no more value than a man's opinion upon vintages who ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... spite of her remorse, at his not being as miserable as she had expected. Still, if he had overcome the passion, it was so much better for him. But yet Valencia hardly wished that he should have overcome it, so self-contradictory is woman's heart; and her pity had sunk to half-ebb, and her self-complacency was rising with a flowing tide, as he chatted on quietly, but genially, about the voyage, and the scenery, and Snowdon, which he had never seen, and which he ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... with a queer mixture of awkwardness and complacency, "no, not exactly. Tweddle, my good fellow, circumstances have recently assumed a shape that renders a search unnecessary, as perhaps you ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... 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. ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... Woman Suffrage Association from year to year with entire complacency, apart from any political prejudice, without any sense of partisanship and in a spirit of keen interest in the great propaganda which is being thus conducted. There was a time, not so very long ago, when the plea for suffrage was ridiculed ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... that the sun or the moon does not seem to be permanently injured by the attacks of its celestial enemy, although a half or nearly the whole appeared to have been swallowed up. This happy result is doubtless viewed with much complacency by the parties engaged to bring it about. The lower classes generally leave the saving of the sun or the moon, when eclipsed, to their mandarins, as it is a part of their official business. Some of the people occasionally beat in their houses a winnowing instrument, made of bamboo splints, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... charming away his sternness by her grace; refining his coarseness by her elegance and purity; and offering in her smiles a reward sufficient to compensate for the hazards of any enterprise. But while the self-complacency and vanity of many of our sex have been nourished by such idle praise, how few have been awakened to a just sense of the deep responsibility which rests upon us, for the faithful improvement of this talent, and our consequent accountability for ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... without. There is a field for consecration. The eye that looks upon evil, and by the look has rebellious, lustful, sensuous, foul desires excited in the heart, breaks this solemn law. The eye that among the things seen dwells with complacency on the pure, and turns from the impure as if a hot iron had been thrust into its pupil; that in the things seen discerns shimmering behind them, and manifested through them, the things unseen and eternal, is the consecrated ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Nelson. His Majesty, in tickling the Admiral's susceptible spot by associating his name with that of the Deity, doubtless made a good shot, and had Nelson's sense of humour been equal to his vanity, he might not have received the oily compliment with such delightful complacency. ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... 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 near neighbourhood to ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... stepped into the splendid coach, a more popular couple was never united in matrimony. It was a great day for all concerned, and none was more happy nor more radiant than Peggy as she sat back in the coach and looked into the face of her husband and sighed with that contentment and complacency which one experiences in the possession ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... employment. He would not be "bribed to be unjust," he says, though he was "not so squeamish as to refuse a present after," suppose the king to have received no wrong. His new arrangement for the victualling of Tangier he tells us with honest complacency, will save the king a thousand and gain Pepys three hundred pounds a year, - a statement which exactly fixes the degree of the age's enlightenment. But for his industry and capacity no praise can be too high. It was an unending struggle for the man to stick to his business in such a garden of Armida ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sat down to rest. He reviewed his own conduct with perfect complacency. "Not one man in a hundred could have managed that she-devil as I have done," he thought. "How shall ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... above words, Jack leaned back, and surveyed me with the stern complacency of despair. After staring at me for some time, and evidently taking some sort of grim comfort out of the speechlessness to which he had reduced me by his unparalleled narrative, he continued ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... had found opportunity to make to the Lady Longueville, these hopes were duly fed; for the old Lancastrian detested the Lady Bonville, as Lord Warwick's sister, and she would have reconciled her pride to view with complacency his alliance with the alchemist's daughter, if it led to his estrangement from the memory of his first love; and, therefore, when her quick eye penetrated the secret of Sibyll's heart, and when she witnessed—for ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... good tobacco in his pipe purred like a sleeping kitten, and his novel was interesting and well written. He felt calm and soothed and perfectly content, and took in the pleasure of the occasion with the lazy complacency of a ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... the cabinet took a survey of the general field they felt little complacency in the prospect of a struggle which sooner or later must interest the maritime powers. France, compelled by the peace of Vienna to withdraw from what even Lafayette considered as her natural frontier, was restive, and there was a large party in Russia who would ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... replied; "I'm going to try to sell some. Will you have one?—as a present, I mean." Mr. Codlin stuck it in his buttonhole with an air of ineffable complacency, ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... 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; very many, very dry, very hard; that will make a noise when you ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... him at 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 extremely ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... heart in such 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, That of her laughing ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... this conversation, which had helped to give another shake to the easy-going complacency with which Lancelot had been used to contemplate the world below him, and look on its evils as necessaries, ancient and fixed as the universe, he entered the village fair, and was a little disappointed at his first glimpse of the village-green. Certainly ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... feel such passionate love for the other. And there came over him a passing feeling of jealous anger, together with a natural indignation at the baseness of these two—the one his love, the other his friend—who had both betrayed him. So he looked with cold complacency upon their woes, and thought that they were both receiving such severe retribution that he had no need ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... vile! if she had seen her in one of her passions. But she was no better, for all that, and was quite as ugly in the eyes of the wise woman, who could not only see but read her face. What is there to choose between a face distorted to hideousness by anger, and one distorted to silliness by self-complacency? True, there is more hope of helping the angry child out of her form of selfishness than the conceited child out of hers; but on the other hand, the conceited child was not so terrible or dangerous as the wrathful ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... glad you like it. I know the piece you mention, but am far from being convinced by it. A great misgiving is upon me, that in many things (this thing among the rest) too many are martyrs to our complacency and satisfaction, and that we must give up something thereof ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... rumors circulated 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
... disasters, there were some real dangers to encounter, and in the midst of our merry talk and laughter we had ever to keep a careful watch on the conduct of the boat, and to look out for the safest channels and the sunken rocks. Hilda, who regarded the approach of an imagined iceberg with complacency, became really timid when she noticed a heavy squall coming towards us from the outer sea; and until the sail had been lowered, and our bow hove round to meet the breeze and let it pass, I believe she was not quite confident ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... days of his leanness, had beautiful hands, and he displayed them with a certain coquetry. As he grew stouter his hands became superb; he took the utmost care of them, and looked at them when talking, with much complacency. He felt the same satisfaction in his teeth, which were handsome, though not with the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... high art, rescue from the gallows and turn loose upon the world the wretch whose hands are reeking with the blood of father, mother, wife, and brother, and you may see Mr. Chaffanbrass, elated with conscious worth, rub his happy hands with infinite complacency. Then will his ambition be satisfied, and he will feel that in the verdict of the jury he has received the honour due to his genius. He will have succeeded in turning black into white, in washing the blackamoor, in dressing in the fair robe of innocence the foulest, filthiest ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... were all supreme. On Sundays and feast days they all proceed to the Vicar Apostolic's own northern cathedral, and witness the Elevation of the Host to the discordant and strange sound of Chinese firecrackers, a curious accompaniment, indeed, permitted only by Catholic complacency. This they ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... meanwhile, that there was not even time to crimp the little frill that bordered his shirt-collar; he looked so delicate and handsome, despite that important personal advantage, that she went so far as to say: looking at him with great complacency from head to foot, that she really didn't think it would have been possible, on the longest notice, to have made much difference in ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... words: [50]"Messieurs, dans l'univers il n'ya qu'un soleil; dans le royaume de France il n'ya qu'un Roi; dans la medicine il n'ya que Charini." With this he placed his hand on his heart, bowed, and drew himself up with a look of the most glorious complacency. This exordium was received with the most rapturous applause by the crowd, who, from having often seen him in his progress through the kingdom, had known before that this was Charini himself, the celebrated itinerant worm doctor. "Gentlemen," he then proceeded, "it has ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... ashamed of Charity Coe, too, for squandering her prime and her pride. He was enraged at her blindness to Pete Cheever's duplicity or her complacency with it. He hated Charity for a while—nearly. At any rate he was ashamed of her, ashamed of the world, in ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... on her his scorn of the provincial. She had to share it. She had a vision of the Five Towns as a smoky blotch on the remote horizon,—negligible, crass, ridiculous in its heavy self-complacency. The very Orgreaves themselves were tinged with ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... weakness of the consul's that his sense of the ludicrous was too often reached before his more serious perceptions. The absurd combination of the bleak, inhospitable desolation before him, and the sepulchral complacency of his self-elected monitor, quite ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... dignity, that, although she came to the hotel in the attitude of one who, if it may be so expressed, sought a favour, the impetuous eagerness of the younger woman had so changed the situation that the elder lady now left with the gratifying self complacency of a generous person who has conferred a boon. Nor was her condescension without its reward, both material and intellectual, for not only did Jennie pay her way with some lavishness, but her immediate social success was flattering to Lady Willow as the introducer ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... think all of us like the plan," remarked the old gentleman, in extreme complacency at achieving the visit, "for she's a very nice girl, Rachel is, ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... it—it is really dreadful," returned Fanny Newt. "People do say the most annoying and horrid things. But this time, I am sure, there can be nothing very vexatious." And Miss Newt fanned herself with persistent complacency, as if she were resolved to prolong the pleasure which Mrs. Dinks must undoubtedly ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... had found courage enough to give utterance to his wish to speak with the senator, and the young woman, who looked with complacency on his strong and youthful frame, offered ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... owners; but no revolutionary scheme of any sort, great or small, was ever yet carried into effect without inflicting loss and hardship upon somebody. It would pass the wit of man to devise one that did not, and we are therefore prepared to regard that phase of the question with perfect complacency." ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... in steadily for the study of constitutional developments, and so are led to admit the reasonableness of tackling history from a lighter and more entertaining point of view. Again, as to the River Thames, one must really grant that a considerable amount of self-complacency and internal sunniness would result from the ability to contradict your friends as to the length in miles of some of its minor tributaries. In science, too, you are no Kepler or Linnaeus, and there is something satisfactory when pedants ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... are a little scratched, and my body is rather knocked about; but there's not a single rent either in my jacket or breeches," added he, looking with complacency at the leathern garments which had given him ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... the other hand, does this woman aspire, and what are her hopes? I censure her for the care she takes of her hands, for regarding her beauty, perhaps, with complacency; I almost censure her for her neatness, for the attention she bestows on her dress; for a certain indefinable coquetry there is in the very modesty and simplicity of her attire. But what! must virtue be slovenly? Must holiness be unclean? Can not a pure and clean soul rejoice ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... desperate, hand-to-hand struggles, in which the two flag-officers had ever been engaged; and, as it afforded them the means of exhibiting their personal gallantry, when quite young men, both usually looked back upon the exploit with great self-complacency; Sir Gervaise, in particular, his friend having often declared since, that they ought to have been laid on the shelf for life, as a punishment for risking their men in so mad an enterprise, though it did prove to be ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... knows of. Now he is chiefly known as poet; but when I went to New York-people thought most about him as editor of the "Evening Post," and that with little enough complacency in the circles where I moved. How many a fight I had for him with my Whig friends! For he was my parishioner, and it was known that we were much together. The "Evening Post" was a thorn in their sides, and ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... unbuckled his revolver and handed it abstractedly to the young girl. But the sheath of the bowie-knife was a fixture in his body-belt, and he was obliged to withdraw the glittering blade by itself, and to hand it to her in all its naked terrors. The young girl received the weapons with a smiling complacency. Upon such altars as these the skeptical reader will remember that Mars had once hung his "battered shield," his lance, and ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... was busy with his sharp Spanish clasp knife, whittling and fitting together two peeled twigs. A cross was the ultimate result. Then he placed Clinch's hands palm to palm upon his chest, laid the cross on his breast, and shined the result with complacency. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... A happy complacency was the chief attribute of Peter's mother, and this spoke from every smile of her amiable face and every movement of her plump ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... wife at work 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. She, too, ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... at all hours, particularly when sitting up late, and of which his able defence against Mr. Jonas Hanway[49] should have obtained him a magnificent reward from the East-India Company. He shewed much complacency upon finding that the mistress of the house was so attentive to his singular habit; and as no man could be more polite when he chose to be so, his address to her was most courteous and engaging; and his conversation soon charmed her into a ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... pronounced—the head of 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 the chroniclers of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... me what she had discovered and I candidly confessed, telling her of the coldness with which I had always met his advances. The far-sighted woman remarked that it would be necessary for us to use our wits. It turned out that her advice was sound, for I soon found out that complacency to the one meant possession of the other. Giton, in the meantime, was recruiting his exhausted strength, and Tryphaena turned her attention to me, but, meeting with a repulse, she flounced out in a rage. The next thing this burning harlot did was to discover my commerce with both husband ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... asserted, by his enemies no doubt, that by implicit obedience to his general's orders, by an unresisting complacency, and by executing, without hesitation, the most cruel mandates of his superior, he has fixed himself so firmly in his good opinion that he is irremovable. It has also been stated that it was Duroc who commanded ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... he was when we first made his acquaintance. He had learned to respect himself, and perceived with great satisfaction that he was generally respected by the boys. He no longer attempted to shirk his work in the shop, and his father now spoke of him with complacency, ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... of Mr. Turner's station in life should view the plan with anything but pride and complacency was evidently a new thought ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... squeeze of this orange; or the lemon, perhaps, may have more zest." "Sir, sir, I am obliged to you, sir," cried Johnson, bowing, and turning his head to him with a look for some time of "surly virtue," but in a short while of complacency. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... house at home. "She'd show 'em what was what," she thought. "She'd Let 'em know that she had traveled and had been invited out among the gentry," for such she believed Daisy to be, and she anticipated with a great deal of complacency the sensation which that airy, graceful, woman would create in Ridgeville, the little place a mile or more from Allington, where her husband's farm was situated, and where stood the once old-fashioned house, but now very ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... his innocent slumbers and began dressing. Already she was busied with planning just what to say and how to say it; Gloria knew, she thought with some complacency, that her mother could be depended upon in any situation demanding the delicate touch. She would be about, cool and smiling, when the first guest appeared; it would be supposed that she and Gloria and Mr. King ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... of the explanation of a prophecy given by Lilly, and related by him with much complacency, will be sufficient to show the sort of trash by which he imposed upon the million. "In the year 1588," says he, "there was a prophecy printed in Greek characters, exactly deciphering the long troubles of the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... usually interesting. Exclamations of delight at the bride's beauty, politely wrapped in whispers, arose on all sides as we penetrated the throng: it was a proud thing to be a part of a procession so distinguished. My good Joliet beamed with complacency, and drove his little herd up and down and across and about till the greater part of the garden was explored. The zoological garden of Brussels has the beauty of not showing too obviously the character of a prison. It ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... those which are trifling, and are sensible to small or secret injuries, it is evident that we have not attained to true purity of intention in our patience; that we are not dead to ourselves, and love not to disappear to the eyes of creatures, but court them, and take a secret complacency in things which appear great. We profess ourselves ready to die for Christ; yet cannot bear the least cross or humiliation. How agreeable to our divine spouse is the sacrifice of a soul which suffers in silence, desiring to have no other witness of her ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... that the man animal long ago knocked Young Gratitude on the head, heaved him overboard into a leaky gig, and left him behind to ogle the seagulls. He is a healthy pirate, this man animal, accustomed with great complacency to maroon the trustful stowaway when he comes to nose about the cargo of his brig, or thrusts his pleading in between the ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... and on the numberless evils that befall the sex from this light fantastical disposition. I myself remember a young lady that was very warmly solicited by a couple of importunate rivals, who, for several months together, did all they could to recommend themselves, by complacency of behaviour and agreeableness of conversation. At length, when the competition was doubtful, and the lady undetermined in her choice, one of the young lovers very luckily bethought himself of adding a supernumerary lace ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... mental agility he gave me. He came to me one day beaming with an unusual complacency, and announced that he had made a discovery. He had an absolutely hairless, shining dome of head, and he confided to me the fact that the boys in Rotherham seventeen years ago had nicknamed him "bladder o' lard." "I ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... his supporters surveyed the approach of the furious Mr. Luce with great complacency. If Mr. Luce had emerged with a shot-gun in his fist and a knife in his teeth he might have presented some semblance of an outlaw. But this bow-legged man with a sack certainly did not seem savage. Hiram offered the humorous suggestion that perhaps Mr. Luce proposed ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... sprang to her feet in despair. In general it was to her a matter for fond complacency that her husband had no memory for gossip, and was in such matters as innocent and as dangerous as a child. But this was too much. At the same ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... every impartial reader whether this faithful detail of his frankness, complacency, and kindness to a young man, a stranger and a Scotchman, does not refute the unjust opinion of the harshness of his general demeanour. His occasional reproofs of folly, impudence, or impiety, and even the sudden sallies ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... those laws beyond their existing limits. It is probable that there were some who conceived that this measure would tend to render the minister very unpopular; and it must be confessed that the step was a very hazardous one for him to take. Englishmen had never looked with complacency upon the intrusions and interference of excisemen, and there was still a strong national feeling against any extension of the excise laws. When Sir Robert Walpole, indeed, brought in a bill which had a tendency to extend these laws, although he was at the time he ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... prayer for an outpouring of His spirit and a deeply needed revival of religion? In the words of Admiral Sir David Beatty, the Commander of the British Fleet, "England still remains to be taken out of her stupor of self-satisfaction and complacency and until she be stirred out of this condition, until religious revival takes place at home, just so long will ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... intention, were sensible of the unequal contest and endeavored to appease him by submission. He received their ambassadors with great complacency, and having exhorted them to continue steadfast in the same sentiments, in the mean time made preparations for the execution of his design. When the troops designed for the expedition were embarked he set sail for Britain about ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... sort of a fool, Roque," said Gomez Arias, as he leisurely twirled round his curling jet-black mustachios, and with much complacency eyed his fine figure ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... thousand years since. This renders me less sanguine of united effort through geological time ahead, unless some idea can be formed to give a stronger impulse even than selfishness, or unless the selfishness can be utilised. The complacency with which the mass of people go about their daily task, absolutely indifferent to all other considerations, is appalling in its concentrated stolidity. They do not intend wrong—they intend rightly: in truth, they work against the entire human race. So wedded and ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... gilding, the breadth of decorative style, the subdued 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 good looks and ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... than half of the old gentleman's opinion, I did not gainsay him. After a pause, he continued, with a self-complacency that amused me: ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... from Horace, 'Homer sometimes sleeps;' We feel without him, Wordsworth sometimes wakes,— To show with what complacency he creeps, With his dear 'Waggoners,' around his lakes. He wishes for 'a boat' to sail the deeps— Of ocean?—No, of air; and then he makes Another outcry for 'a little boat,' And drivels seas ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... engaged one of the principal Chinese merchants of the place, to interest himself in our favour, and to solicit the business with the viceroy. This person came to visit the president, whilst we were talking on the subject, and with great satisfaction and complacency in his countenance acquainted him, that he had at last succeeded in his applications, and that a passport for one of the officers of the Ladrone ship (or pirate) would be ready in a few days. The president immediately ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... I must have looked quite miserable, from the efforts he made to restore my self-complacency. He took the basket from my arm and placed it on the table, moved a chair forward for me, and another for himself, as if preparing for a ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... vault and van Heerden stood regarding the scene of mental activity with something approaching complacency. ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... this was full of so much bitterness and indignation, that we do not think proper to record the speech at length, in which having vented her passion, she all at once put on a serene countenance, and with an air of great complacency said, "Well, Mr. Booth, I think I have now a right to satisfy my curiosity at the expense of your breath. I may say it is not altogether a vain curiosity, for perhaps I have had inclination enough to interest myself in whatever concerns you; but no matter for ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... strongest appeal that can be made. We are still near enough to the men who fought through the Civil War, in which each, side held passionately to what it believed to be the moral right, for us to believe without too much complacency that moral forces are the forces that rule us as a nation. Mr. Bryan and Mr. Roosevelt have both been called preachers, and the hold they have had on great, though differing, parts of the American people is incontestable. If any ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... what to do with himself. The helpless desolation came over him. He fumbled nervously as he dressed himself, in a state almost of childishness. He disliked the Scotch accent in Bertie's speech, and the slight response it found on Isabel's tongue. He disliked the slight purr of complacency in the Scottish speech. He disliked intensely the glib way in which Isabel spoke of their happiness and nearness. It made him recoil. He was fretful and beside himself like a child, he had almost a childish nostalgia to be ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... stupidity: the one shrinks from originality lest it should be regarded as impertinent; the other lest, being new, it should be wrong. We detect the one in the sensitive discreetness of the style. We detect the other in the complacency of its platitudes and the stereotyped commonness of its metaphors. The writer who is afraid of originality feels himself in deep water when he launches into a commonplace. For him who is timid because weak, there is no advice, ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... don't think I shall feel it cold at all," said Hal, as he dressed himself in his new white and green uniform: and he viewed himself with much complacency. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... and that is that he encounters no opposition from Buckingham. Even the King, I am told, has expressed his surprise that the jealous Marquis should view one who may turn out a rival with so much apparent complacency." ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... and even almost haughty belief in the greatness of his own poetic mission, he was accustomed to speak of Wordsworth. A witness, to be more fully cited hereafter, and whose testimony is especially valuable as that of one who was by no means blind to Coleridge's early foible of self- complacency, has testified to this unbounded admiration of his brother- poet. "When," records this gentleman, "we have sometimes spoken complimentarily to Coleridge of himself he has said that he was nothing in comparison with Wordsworth." ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... obedience to her caprices. She seemed to have some chronic disease of the humane feelings which induced her to declare that not one of her subjects should during her reign be doomed to death, while at the same time, with the most gentle self complacency, she could order the tongues of thousands to be torn out by the roots, could cut off the nostrils with red hot pincers, could lop off ears, lips and noses, and could twist the arms of her victims behind them, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... along Princes Street, I had leisure to survey my fellow-travellers. Immediately opposite to me sat two dandies of the first water, dressed in white greatcoats and Belcher handkerchiefs, and each with a cigar in his mouth, which he puffed away with marvellous self-complacency. Beside me sat a modest and comely young woman in a widow's dress, and with an infant about nine months old in her arms. The appearance of this youthful mourner and her baby indicated that they belonged to the working class of society; and though the dandies occasionally cast a ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... Mrs. Farnham withdrew, one might have fancied she had done a meritorious thing in concealing, and at last destroying her husband's will. Indeed she had convinced herself of this, and went out with an air of great self-complacency. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... to dig in the soft soil with the point of his sheath-knife. The ground was easily enough worked, and in less than half an hour he had excavated a hole of close on to three feet in depth. He deepened it another six inches or so, and then stood up with a smile of the utmost complacency on his face. ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... 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
... disfigured by the euphuism which was the fashion among writers of the last century. When she is enthusiastic, her pen "darts rapidly along" and her "heart bounds;" if she grows indignant at Rousseau's ideal of feminine perfection, "the rigid frown of insulted virtue effaces the smile of complacency which his eloquent periods are wont to raise, when I read his voluptuous reveries." When she wants to prove that men of genius, as a rule, have ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... communities. With the constant and increasing accessions to our society from more enlightened regions, it would be a wonder did we not attain in time to a level with many other and older-settled countries, who are apt to look abroad with serene complacency gathering motes in open eyes, We have had our castles in the air, and some of them are now underground; but we have read of South Sea bubbles, rise and fall in stocks, 'On to Richmonds,' McClellans, and Congress; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Something had to be righted. Gradually his mind cleared. The thing that was wrong was that the man who had killed his father was now under the same roof with him, had shaken his hand, had sat in bland complacency and looked in his face and told ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... dwelling I have provided for thee?" inquired the Jinnee, glancing around the stately hall with perceptible complacency. ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... awake, and intelligently awake, to her destinies; so much one perceives even in the reiterated complaints that she is asleep. Discontent is the condition of progress, and Chicago is not in the slightest danger of relapsing into a condition of inert self-complacency. Her sons love her, but they chasten her. They are never tired of urging her on, sometimes (it must be owned) with most unfilial objurgations; and she, a quite unwearied Titan, is bracing up her sinews for the great task of the coming century. I have given ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... he looked Lark up and down with his usual rotund complacency, Carol only gritted her teeth and reminded her heaving soul that he ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... and misunderstanding, From the loss of our glory in Thee, From self-complacency, From untimely projects, From needless perplexity, From the murdering spirit and devices of Satan, From the influence of the spirit of this world, From hypocrisy and fanaticism, From the deceitfulness of sin, From all sin, Preserve us, gracious ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... 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
... 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 renewed ardour to the land of their ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... in the modest browns of Blackwood and Fraser, and the majesty of the quarterlies being above the range of the properly so-called "public" mind, the simple family circle looked forward with chief complacency to their New Year's gift of the Annual—a delicately printed, lustrously bound, and elaborately illustrated small octavo volume, representing, after its manner, the poetical and artistic inspiration ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... things, he was not clever enough to take in the full value 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
... crowd in Chicago eight years before, in defense of the compromise measures. To his mind the events of those eight years had amply vindicated the great principle of popular sovereignty. Knowing that he was in a Republican stronghold, he dwelt with particular complacency upon the manful way in which the Republican party had come to the support of that principle, in the recent anti-Lecompton fight. It was this fundamental right of self-government that he had championed ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... Mr. Foster's general theological position to consider the sudden and serious development of his gout as a direct judgment on him for a diplomacy that perhaps overstepped legitimate limits, and in another man's case he might have adopted such a view with considerable complacency. When, however, he was laid up and placed hors du combat in the last three critical days, he needed all his faith to reconcile him to one of the most unfathomable instances of the workings of Providence. ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... Ireland religious divisions were subordinate to national divisions; and the Presbyterian, while, as a theologian, he could not but condemn the established hierarchy, yet looked on that hierarchy with a sort of complacency when he considered it as a sumptuous and ostentatious trophy of the victory achieved by the great race ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Mr. Timson, with ineffable complacency, "I hain't give myself no worry; I hain't lost no sleep. I've allowed all along that Dave Harum'd find out that he wa'n't the unly man that needed my kind o' work, an' I ain't meanin' any disrispect to you ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... 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 his ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... moved her head appreciatively. The purring of the cat had a loud complacency in the empty hall. No sound of voices came from upstairs. Miss Haldin ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... soon afterwards entered the kingdom of Thibet, and were honourably received by officers sent on purpose from Chaparangue, the residence of the king of Thibet. The king and queen listened to their doctrines with much complacency, and even admitted their truths without dispute, and would not allow them to return to India till they promised an oath to come back, when the king not only engaged to give them liberty to preach, but ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... 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, but as affected by one another. The morality and immorality of their personages ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... widow, where I had before lodged. I did my utmost to ingratiate myself with her, for I knew that if any one could obtain the information I required she would do so. Old women, I have found, nearly always are ready to listen with complacency and attention to the love tales of young men or young women, and so my kind hostess not only listened to as much of mine as I thought it necessary to tell her, but gladly promised to assist me to the ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... Culture and its prestige has nothing of a material kind to gain from the increase of renown that comes to his sovereign, his language, his countrymen's art or science, his dietary, or his God. There are no sordid motives in all this. These spiritual assets of self-complacency are indeed to be rated as grounds of high-minded patriotism without afterthought." (The Nature of ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... board to return our visits, they by no means disdain to fasten their great round spectacles on their flat noses in order to inspect the profane drawings in our illustrated papers, the 'Vie Parisienne' for instance. And it is even with a certain complacency that they let their fingers linger upon the pictures ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... voice of Sir James—a voice that had regained a little of its naturalness—a calm, even lazy English voice—confident from the experience of years of respectful listeners. Yet it somehow jarred upon her nerves with its complacency and its utter incongruousness to her feelings. Nevertheless, the impulse to know more about the ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... esse, my captain and the port-admiral in the admiral's barge, and seated between these two awful personages, there sat a civilian, smiling in all the rotundity and fat of a very pleasant countenance, and very plain clothes, and forming a striking contrast to the grim complacency, and the ironbound civility, of the two men ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... very far or fast. I've got only smatterings." But the boy spoke with a subdued complacency not wholly lost ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... red leaves and green and yellowing sprays of fern which Kitty arranged in a tumbler were hailed with rapture, but presently flung far away with fierce disdain because they had ants on them. Kitty witnessed this outburst with her usual complacency, and then went on making the coffee. With such blissful pain as none but lovers know, Mr. Arbuton saw her break the egg upon the edge of the coffee-pot, and let it drop therein, and then, with a charming frenzy, stir it round and round. It was a picture of domestic ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... the reward of patience. George Flack was aware that he exposed his friends to considerable fatigue: he brought them back pale and taciturn from suburban excursions and from wanderings often rather aimless and casual among the boulevards and avenues of the town. He regarded them at such times with complacency however, for these were hours of diminished resistance: he had an idea that he should be able eventually to circumvent Delia if he only could catch her some day sufficiently, that is physically, prostrate. ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... 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 the chroniclers ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... of complacency of mind or quietness of character—This trait confirmed by circumstances in their education, discipline, and public worship, which are productive of quiet personal habits—and by their disuse of the diversions ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... on first seeing men bow down to wood and stone may give way to a complacency which ceases to expect an immediate response to the quickening and convicting power of the Spirit of God, and philosophises on the gradual emergence of light from the kingdom of darkness. The deadening ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... a good deal of a fellow already, but at the sight of her welcoming smile his self-esteem almost caused him to explode. What magic there is in a girl's smile! It is the raisin which, dropped in the yeast of male complacency, induces fermentation. ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... enraptur'd with the view. And thus to me Beatrice: "Thank, oh thank, The Sun of angels, him, who by his grace To this perceptible hath lifted thee." Never was heart in such 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, That of her laughing eyes the radiance brake And scatter'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... her. "She's a'most white, and, unfortunately, took a liking to a young man down town. Marston owned her then, and, being a friend of hers, wouldn't allow it, and it took away her senses; he thought her malady incurable, and sold her to me for a little or nothing," he continues, with great complacency. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... pointing at the ground ahead of him and still urging his horse to the draw. "Ef they suspicion 't we're shyin' off from the ridge, they'll draw a fine bead 'n' cut loose. I knowed it," he added with a lugubrious complacency. "I told ye all day that I could smell trouble a-comin'; I knowed dang well 't we'd stir up a mess uh fightin' over here. I never come onto this dang res'vation yit, that I didn't have t' kill off a mess uh Navvies before I got offen ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... 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 a self-complacency that convinced me that he had studied this address, by way of making reprisals for my conduct at the ball; I therefore bowed slightly, but made ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... experienced so many hardships, to me my temporary return was not in the least irksome. As I had penetrated and conquered the mysteries of that dark side of life, it no longer held any terrors for me. Nor does it to this day. I can contemplate the future with a greater degree of complacency than can some of those whose lot in life has been uniformly fortunate. In fact, I said at that time that, should my condition ever demand it, I would again enter a hospital for the insane, quite as willingly as ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... The eye accustomed to see the face to which it appertains enveloped in a chapeau more or less large or small, is shocked at the first attempt to wear one of a different size; and turns from the contemplation of the image presented in the glass with any thing but self-complacency, listening incredulously to the flattering encomiums of the not disinterested marchand de modes, who avers that "Ce chapeau sied parfaitement a Madame la Comtesse, et ce bonnet lui ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... of its own uprightness, and humbly trusting in the goodness of God, has the best ground to look forward with complacency towards another life. The following lines of Addison are sweetly expressive of the peace and pleasure which he enjoyed in contemplating his future existence:—"The prospect of a future state is the secret comfort and refreshment of my soul. It is that ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... should advise us to make our distressed woman Marianne's housekeeper, and to send South for three or four contrabands for her to train, and, with great apparent complacency, seems to think that course will solve ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... smirk grew to a grin. He liked grandly to have the notion fathered on himself; and his complacency of course was suggestive of the hakim's trustworthiness. But ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... Falstaff's wit is for the 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, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... be," was the widow's reply; not that Mr. Pen ever doubted that he was; and a feeling of indefinable pleasure and self-complacency came over him as he thought over this proposal, and imaged Laura to himself, as his memory remembered her for years past, always fair and open, kindly and pious, cheerful, tender and true. He looked at her with brightening eyes ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... collaboration. In this collaboration, as in so many others, it is conflict that brings life. Only by a surrender of their functions, one to the other, could the three apparently dissonant yet essentially harmonious factors be brought into a state of complacency; but such complacency would mean stagnation. If the published judgment on compositions and performances could always be that of the exploiting musicians, that class, at least, would read the newspapers with ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... with him: he hadn't slept: the room was not hot enough ... these were a few of the complaints he showered at me as soon as I appeared. He was in his most impish and malicious mood. He sent me running hither and thither: he gave me an order and withdrew it in the same breath: my complacency seemed to irritate him, to ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... 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 of the Kaana children, whom he could abandon only with his ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... With all his artless self-complacency in his own success, Trollope took a very modest estimate of his own powers. I remember a characteristic discussion about their modes of writing between Trollope and George Eliot at a little dinner party in her house.[1] "Why!" said Anthony, "I sit down every morning at 5.30 with my watch on ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... than Geoffrey and was, in fact, five. The campaign in Flanders which had destroyed his right arm had set and hardened a frame and face by nature solid enough. That face was long and angular, with a heavy chin and an expression of sardonic complacency oddly increased by the jauntiness of its shabby ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... we had thoroughly looked over the Lapp lady and her companions, a process to which they submitted with the greatest complacency, we proceeded to inspect the other lions of the town; the church, the lazar-house,— principally occupied by Lapps,—the stock fish establishment, and the hotel. But a very few hours were sufficient to exhaust ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... just as easy!" Penrod remarked, probably prompted to this odious bit of complacency by Sam's withholding the praise that might naturally have been expected. And he was moved to add, "I guess it'd of been a pretty long while if we'd had to wait for you to think of something as good ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... experience is eased. The grind of ordinary intercourse is dimmed. The rawness of Family and Business is refined or removed. But now once more the world comes in to him, in the form of the Critic. Here again, in a sharp concentrated sense, the world moves on him: its complacency, its hysteria, its down-tending appetites and fond illusions, its pathetic worship of yesterdays and hatred of tomorrows, its ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... 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 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... your Ladyship's Conduct, I might have defy'd the whole British Fair to have outshone my southern Gawry: For if, to a majestic Form and extensive Capacity, I had been qualified to have copied that natural Sweetness of Disposition, that maternal Tenderness, that Cheerfulness, that Complacency, Condescension, Affability, and unaffected Benevolence, which so apparently distinguish the Countess of Northumberland; I had exhibited in my Youwarkee a Standard for ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... returned Fielding with unruffled complacency, 'that I aimed at an allegory rather than a pedantic narrative of facts. I was endeavouring to explain Clarice Le Mesurier on ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... home with a young priest just ordained. Both were extremely dissatisfied with the later portions of Sir Wilfrid's speech, which had seemed to them tainted in several passages with Erastian complacency toward the State. Parliament especially, and a possible intervention of Parliament, ought never to have been so much as mentioned—even for ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... smile of self-complacency, he took the pipe from his mouth and gave it to me, pulled up his moustaches, and ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... the little wood where four 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, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the sensation of pleasure always precedes the judgment, and is its determining cause. We find it agreeable. But when we declare an object beautiful, the contemplation or intuition of its beauty precedes the feeling of complacency, in order of nature at least: nay in great depression of spirits may even exist without sensibly producing it.' Lines 76-93 are quoted in a letter to Southey of July 29, 1802; lines 76-83 are quoted ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... in Helen, who proceeded to expound her views of the human race, as she regarded with complacency the pyramid of variegated fruits in the centre of the table. It wasn't that they were cruel, or meant to hurt, or even stupid exactly; but she had always found that the ordinary person had so little emotion ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... rain drumming on the window, I began "The Sea Cook," for that was the original title. I have begun (and finished) a number of other books, but I cannot remember to have sat down to one of them with more complacency. It is not to be wondered at, for stolen waters are proverbially sweet. I am now upon a painful chapter. No doubt the parrot once belonged to Robinson Crusoe. No doubt the skeleton is conveyed from Poe. I think little of these, they are trifles and details; and no man can ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thing that disturbs the complacency of a great artist of the Halls it is the consciousness of sharing his or her triumphs with performing birds and animals, but of course Joan was not to be expected to know that. She pursued her subject with the assurance of one who has hit on a ...
— When William Came • Saki
... 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 vol. 4 • Anon.
... 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 ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... on intimate terms at Court before the fortnight was concluded; and oh! the joy of returning home and speaking in casual tones about Princes of the Blood, Dukes and Marquises, and Cabinet Ministers, for, the edification of village hearers! Her complacency vented itself in a long postscript to the letter already written to her mother, a postscript of such characteristic nature as delighted that appreciative lady, and which was read aloud with much unction to her husband, and a friend of the family who happened to be ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... and suavity of manner, with archness and sagacity of thought, his sarcasms assumed a garb at once so courtly and so careless, that they often diverted almost as much as they could mortify even their immediate objects. His humorous reproof to a gentleman vaunting with self-complacency the extreme beauty of his mother, and apparently implying that it might account for advantages in person in her descendants, is well known: 'Cetait donc,' said he, 'Monsieur votre pere qui n'etait pas si bien.' The following is more recent, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... kompaso. Compassion 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. Compliant ceda—ema. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Heathcock and to her grace, and not less agreeable, at this instant, to Lady Langdale, who, the moment she was disembarrassed of the duchess, pressed through the crowd to Lady Clonbrony, and, addressing her with smiles and complacency, was 'charmed to have a little moment to speak to her—could NOT sooner get through the crowd—would certainly do herself the honour to be at her ladyship's gala on Wednesday.' While Lady Langdale spoke, she never seemed to see or think of anybody ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... the object of his most earnest desires. The grace of prayer perfected the work which mortification had begun. In a spirit of compunction he begged of his superiors that they would enjoin him some severe penance, to expiate the vain satisfaction and complacency which he said he had sometimes taken in teaching. They indeed imposed on him a penance, but not such a one as be expected. It was to write a collection of cases of conscience for the instruction and conveniency of confessors and moralists. This produced his Sum, the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... with long-suffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes; and in the afternoon go forth to practise Christian meekness and charity with goodness aforethought! Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... a man who could, with any complacency, consent to have conditions enforced upon him by the family of the lady whom he selected as his wife; his pride was quite as great as theirs; but before he had obtained Madeleine's consent to his suit, it was politic to preserve the favor of those who could ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... 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 ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... and took their seats against the wall in the waiting- room. Mitchell stared at them half drowsily, betraying the usual complacency of old age in regard to ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... to feel the slightest surprise, or indignation, or mental disturbance at it. My capacity for wonder is entirely absorbed, not by the miners' demand, but by the gentleman in the silk hat and white waistcoat who has the composure and the complacency to deny that demand and ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... peculiar look but on three or four occasions similar to the one I am narrating, when I knew he was pondering upon the fatal curse that had cast its withering blight upon all around, until the manhood and humanity were crushed out of the people, and outrages such as the above were looked upon with complacency, and the perpetrators treated as respected and worthy citizens, and that he was realizing the great truth, that, however man might endeavor to guide this war to the advantage of a favorite idea or a sagacious policy, the Almighty was directing it surely and steadily for the ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... the slightest degree. But they found a formidable ally in the Duchesse de Berry, who proved as full of wickedness and ambition as any among them. The Duc d'Orleans often called his Duchess Madame Lucifer, at which she used to smile with complacency. He was right, for she would have been a prodigy of pride had she not, had a daughter who far surpassed her. This is not yet the time to paint their portraits; but I must give a word or two of explanation ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... human experience. Might not any one of us who had endured it turn upon the pagan and sentimentalist, crying in the mood of a Swift or a Voltaire, "Ca vous amuse, la vie"? The abstract natural rights of the eighteenth century smack of academic complacency before this. The indignation we feel against the insolent individualism of a Louis XIV who cried "L'etat c'est moi!" or against the industrial overlord who spills the tears of women for his ambition, the sweat of the children for his greed, is as nothing beside the indignation ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... Crown, they take precedence, during assize-time, of the highest military men in the kingdom, of the Lord-Lieutenant of the county, of the Archbishops, of the royal Dukes, and even of the Prince of Wales. For the nonce, they are the greatest men in England. With a glow of professional complacency that amounted to enthusiasm, my friend assured me, that, in case of a royal dinner, a judge, if actually holding an assize, would be expected to offer his arm and take the Queen herself to the table. Happening to be in company ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... that he was his master? A man's wife labours under no such naive folly. She may envy her husband, true enough, certain of his more soothing prerogatives and sentimentalities. She may envy him his masculine liberty of movement and occupation, his impenetrable complacency, his peasant-like delight in petty vices, his capacity for hiding the harsh face of reality behind the cloak of romanticism, his general innocence and childishness. But she never envies him his puerile ego; she never envies him his shoddy ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... delicious fresh butter. Beside the table, with its fore-legs thereon and its hind-legs on the floor, stood a large nanny-goat, which was either looking in vain for something suited to its own particular taste, or admiring with disinterested complacency the energy with which two hens and a bantam cock pecked out the crumb of a wheaten loaf. If the latter were the goat's occupation, it must have been charmed beyond expression; for the half of the loaf had been devoured by the audacious trio, and, just at the ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... not with complacency that the landlord saw his house given over to the destructive caprices of a drunken and uncontrollable mob. He had no means of freeing himself of his guests. When his slatternly wife had complained: "Them miners an' loggers jest louzes up a body's house," ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... manner has not tact enough to prevent these defects from being felt to the full. On the contrary, in his constant desire frugally to extract, as it were, its full teaching from the minutest event which has befallen him, he supplements the self-complacency of the autobiographer with the conscientious exactness of the moralist, and is apt to insist on trifles such as lodge in the corners of every man's memory, as if they were unique ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... culminate in that great civil triumph which earned for him the proud title of Pater Patriae—the Father of his Country. It was a phrase which the orator himself had invented; and it is possible that, with all his natural self-complacency, he might have felt a little uncomfortable under the compliment, when he remembered on whom he had originally bestowed it—upon that Caius Marius, whose death in his bed at a good old age, after being seven times consul, he afterwards uses as an argument, ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... the lapse of time as at all calculated to impair the attractions of her physiognomy, however prejudicial its effect might be upon the faces of the rest of the female part of the creation. In her countenance there was such an expression of blended affectation and self-complacency, that it was impossible to look upon it without feeling an inclination to smile. She was sitting near a prettily ornamented writing-desk, surmounted by a mirror (in which, by the way, she always found her ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... to say that this languid complacency is the general attitude of cultivated people towards the arts: of course if they were ever to think seriously of them, they would be startled into discomfort by the thought that civilisation as it now is brings inevitable ugliness with it: surely if they thought this, they would ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... she was glad to see me again; for she expressed herself so, that I could not doubt of her being in earnest. What a great key-stone of kindness, my dear Sir, were you that morning! for we were all held together by our common attachment to you. I cannot say that I ever passed two hours with more self-complacency than I did those two at Lichfield. Let me not entertain any suspicion that this is idle vanity. Will not you confirm me in my persuasion, that he who finds himself so regarded has just reason ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... in a voice of far more complacency, "it is not on the side of the young woman that the ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... beauty, and with the deepest desire to be reverent towards all that had a right to reverence, would find himself in the most irritating state of opposition and impatience with much that passed as religion round him. Principles not attempted to be understood and carried into practice, smooth self-complacency among those who looked down on a blind and unspiritual world, the continual provocation of worthless reasoning and ignorant platitudes, the dull unconscious stupidity of people who could not see that the times were critical—that truth had to be defended, ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... originally with good abilities, he had so accustomed himself to petty intrigues that he was now incapable of taking a straightforward step in any direction. While he boasted himself the Son of Fortune and listened with complacency to a foolish rhyme that ran: God only and the Moor foreknow the future safe and sure, he never acted without blundering, and lived to end his days in the intolerable tedium of imprisonment at Loches. He was a thoughtful and painstaking ruler; yet he so far failed to win the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... contends of the hamper to the best advantage on the open-air banqueting-table, an enormous veal-and-ham pie, their chief dish, in the centre, Mrs Gilmour and Nellie surveyed their handiwork with much complacency. ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... prevailing strain of the story is the strength of weakness—ex dulci fortitudo, to invert the old enigma. "O God, O my God, hear me also, a widow. Break down their stateliness by the hand of a woman!" It is the refrain that runs through the whole history of Israel, that reasonable complacency of a little people in their God-fraught destiny. And, withal, a streak of savage spite: that the audacious oppressor shall be done scornfully to death. There is the motive of Jael and Sisera too. So "she ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... Sympathetic Customer, and touched a bell. A Saturnine Assistant appears, still masticating bread-and-butter. The Second Customer removes his hat, revealing a denuded crown, and thereby causing surprise and a distinct increase of complacency in the Grizzled Gentleman, who submits himself to the Loquacious Assistant. The Bald Customer sinks resignedly into the chair indicated by the Saturnine Operator, feeling apologetic and conscious that he ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... no means, by no means; the volume is not so large, it won't encumber me much; I believe I shall find it small enough to put in my pocket,' pursued the little great man, grinning at the shrewdness of his own observations, and stalking out with as much self-complacency as he had stalked in. I knew the man well, and could not help laughing at the lofty airs he assumed, at the manner in which he affected to decry all his countrymen without mercy, at his unwillingness to acknowledge any talent amongst them, though he himself ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... you have confirmed me in duty; you have ended my struggles — and by so cheerfully offering to forsake all and follow me, you have displayed a love, dear Louisa, which will, I trust, render you next to my God, the eternal complacency and delight ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... when Mr Chucks pulled on the captain's jacket, and sank down in the stern-sheets of the cutter, with great complacency of countenance. One of the men in the boat that we were in thought proper, however, to continue his laugh a little longer than Mr Chucks considered necessary, who, leaning forward, thus addressed him: "I say, Mr Webber, I beg leave to observe to you, in the most delicate ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... trying day. Once having broken down the Chancellor's barrier of silence, the King had insisted on full knowledge; with the result that he had sat, aghast, amid the ruins of his former complacency. The country and the smaller cities were comparatively quiet, so far as demonstrations against the Government were concerned. But unquestionably they plotted. As for the capital, it was a seething riot ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... commodore chuckled hugely to himself, and thrusting a double quid of tobacco in his cheek, directed Master Juet to have it carefully recorded, for the satisfaction of all the natural philosophers of the University of Leyden—which done, he proceeded on his voyage with great self-complacency. After sailing, however, above a hundred miles up the river, he found the watery world around him began to grow more shallow and confined, the current more rapid and perfectly fresh—phenomena not uncommon in the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... so; in other parts the effect will be the reverse of this. In a word, by the introduction of a third attractive body, the greatest complication will succeed to a simple regular movement upon which the mind reposed with complacency. ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... that they are not really blessings, when they are in the hands 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 ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... at the hands of those who were not sorry for it, and who repeated with glib complacency every terrible belief of the system in which they had been trained. The most scathing of his Satires, under which head fall many of his minor and frequent passages in his major pieces, are directed against the false pride of birth, and what he conceived to be the false pretences ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... and mirth—provoking nose, which, by an unaccountable control over some muscle, present in the visage of no other human being, he made to describe a small circle round the centre of his face, and slewing his head on one side, he was warbling, ore Yotundo, some melodious ditty, with infinite complacency, and, to all appearance, to the great delight of his auditory, when his eyes lighted on me,—he was petrified in a moment, I seemed to have blasted him,——his warbling ceased instantaneously, the colour faded ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... modestly installed than I had been there. He was quite prepared to take pot-luck, however, and cheerfully slept on an improvised bed, promising to keep the world in touch with me upon his return to Paris. I was suddenly startled from my state of complacency by the news that my wife had come to Paris to look me up. I had an hour's painful struggle with myself to settle the course I should pursue, and decided not to allow the step I had taken in regard to her to be looked upon as an ill-considered and excusable vagary. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... days these hideous images followed me without intermission. I lost my sleep; it was impossible for me to do anything; my brush fell from my hand; and, horrible to confess, I found myself sometimes gazing at the crossbeam with a sort of complacency. At last I could endure it no longer, and one evening I descended the ladder and hid myself behind the door of Fledermausse, hoping to surprise ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— 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
... the principle of natural selection will make it clear that alcohol is acting as an instrument of racial purification through the elimination of weak stocks. It is a drastic sort of purification, which one can hardly view with complacency; but the effect, nevertheless, ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... all right, and you're all wrong!' I shouted up at him; and as he hugged me, and I laughed and shook in his incredulous clutch, I had for a minute the sense of self-complacency that is supposed to attend the footsteps of the just. Hang it all, making people ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... 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 that, if she were alive, I should love her. Day after day the double knowledge of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... martinet until his amiable opinions and easy-going personality were manifested. The old man was not vain; he knew that a world very different from his own extended round about him. But he was puzzle-headed, and had never been shaken from his life-long complacency by circumstances. He had been disappointed in love as a young man, and only married late in life. He had no son, and was a widower—facts that, to his mind, quite dwarfed his good fortune in every other respect. He held the comfortable doctrine that things are always levelled up, ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... man need be ashamed to follow feminine leadership when it means advancement in every good word and work," and he offered congratulations to little children of the future generations of this and all lands. "When our anti-suffrage sisters throw aside their complacency and selfish ease," he said, "to strive side by side with men to formulate and pass necessary laws to protect and develop the bodies, minds and souls of our present little children and all that are to come through the passing ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... his life in 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
... vision 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
... listen to another word!" exclaimed Frances, looking up to Hamilton in evident wonder at his complacency. ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... might do would stifle his complacency, and he talked on, seeking to be entertaining, no doubt, and pointing out the things of interest on every hand. And I enjoyed the scene, finding enough to view to make me indifferent to his posturing. Scarcely did I even note what he said, although ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
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