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More "Self-satisfaction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that this was for the moment an exceedingly unpleasant shock to his self-satisfaction is to state a sufficiently obvious fact; but Mark's character must have been very imperfectly indicated if it surprises anyone to hear that it did not take him long to recover from ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... cry against them from the ground:—Ay, Woe!"—I went on, carried away by feelings for which I shall make no apology; for, however confused, there was, and is, and ever will be, a God's truth in them, as this generation will find out at the moment when its own serene self-satisfaction crumbles underneath it—"Woe unto those that grind the faces of the poor! Woe unto those who add house to house, and field to field, till they stand alone in the land, and there is no room left for the poor man! The ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... facie strength of much of the Roman case, in its fearless attempt, in defiance of the deepest prejudices, to face the facts and conditions of the question. Mr. Newman dared to know and to acknowledge much that our insular self-satisfaction did not know, and did not care to know, of real Christian life in the Church of Rome. He dared to admit that much that was popularly held to be Popish was ancient, Catholic, edifying; he dared to warn Churchmen that the loose unsifted ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... their responsibilities, or allow strangers to assume them, would be an occasion for humour, if it were not an opportunity for indignation: though indeed it would take a very exceptionally sober-minded spectator not to get some fun out of the blissful self-satisfaction and unconsciousness which characterize the ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... he pulled up by the porch and directed me to stand by the young mare's head, wore a look of extreme self-satisfaction. Beside him, also beaming, sat Mr. Goodfellow, with the corner ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... "Well, yes," she answered, gazing down at her fawn-coloured dress with a half-suppressed smile of self-satisfaction, "I flatter myself I CAN get through about as much work in a day as anybody!" Her eye wandered round her rooms with a modest air of placid self-approval which was almost comic. Everything in them was as well-kept and as well-polished ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... your man of business to prepare a regular deed to carry this into effect, which I will sign with the greatest self-satisfaction, as soon as ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... centuries been lost to the world by reason of her great exclusion, her self-satisfaction and blind reliance upon the ways marked out for her by sages of other days. These young men, with the West in their eyes, are coming back to shock their fathers' land into new channels. The process may not be pleasant for us of the old school, ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... (when he was not riding out on a blood-horse) in serving the house, and relieving the perplexities of his fellow-travellers. No one but a Londoner would volunteer his assistance in this way. Amiable land of Cockayne, happy in itself, and in making others happy! Blest exuberance of self-satisfaction, that overflows upon others! Delightful impertinence, that is forward ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... tavern, he would in the mean time not only make preparations and procure assistants, but perhaps bring me further intelligence. As the fellow's brain seemed busy, I did not wish to rob him of the self-satisfaction of invention, and we accordingly parted, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... His self-satisfaction lasted him till he was fairly out in the streets, walking side by side with Henry Lennox. Here he suddenly remembered Margaret's little look of entreaty as she urged him to stay longer, and he also recollected a few hints given ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... this dancing rout. He envied these boys and girls their passion and facility. They were, the most ignorant of them, of another stripe from arid New Englanders encased in their temperamental calm, the women, in a laughable self-satisfaction, leading the intellectual life and their men set on "making good". The poorest child of the East and South had an inheritance that made him responsive, fluent, even while it left him hot-headed and even froward. There was something, he ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... culture and knowledge, much of what should make the world a better place for us all. But somehow this doesn't apply to the mass, and particularly not to the circles we invaded in Granville. With here and there a solitary exception that class is hopeless in its smug self-satisfaction—its narrowness of outlook, and unblushing exploitation of the less fortunate, ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... subside; which it did as soon as I got over my first excitement. Meanwhile I let him talk—he was a boastful, egotistical oaf, as might have been expected—and I flattered and admired him until he fairly purred with self-satisfaction. It was very necessary to get ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... Vengeance will precipitate a Man to chuse the Receipt of half his Demands from one whom he has undone, rather than the whole from one to whom he has shewn Mercy. This Benignity is essential to the Character of a fair Trader, and any Man who designs to enjoy his Wealth with Honour and Self-Satisfaction: Nay, it would not be hard to maintain, that the Practice of supporting good and industrious Men, would carry a Man further even to his Profit, than indulging the Propensity of serving and obliging the Fortunate. My Author argues on this Subject, in order to incline ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... distinguished themselves in anything, if we are not to take into consideration the fact that being thoroughly incapable of creating their own language, they have by their talent to distort languages given to the present English people a repulsive Judeo-Carthaginian imprint through their shameless self-satisfaction, arrogance and treacherous inclinations." ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... Sophomore, he believed that he was thoroughly acquainted with the co-educated sex and all their wiles and guiles; but a feeling of repulsion toward this frank readiness to throw down another man, one of his own, too, drowned his sense of self-satisfaction at ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... attain anything difficult, he cannot afford to indulge in vanity or self-satisfaction; for action can be kept true to its end only when the least obliquity is marked and corrected. Hence the strong man does not attribute his failure to fortune or to his amiable virtues, but to his folly; for he knows that to be the crucial fault which it lies within ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... voice was heard calling out their names from a distant corridor in the body of the building. They retraced their steps, and found him with his coat buttoned up and his hat on, awaiting their advent in a mood of self-satisfaction at having brought his search to a successful close. The carriage was brought round, and without further delay the trio drove away from the mansion, under the echoing gateway arch, and along by the leafless sycamores, as the stars began to kindle their trembling lights ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... child tell was one of those which seemed to hold comfort and cheer for herself or for humble little souls like her. It was a story of the closed gentian, the title of which she announced, as she always did, loudly, and with an amusing little air of self-satisfaction. ...
— Story-Tell Lib • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... first Willoughby had tried to educate her, and had gone hopefully to the task. It is so natural to think you may make what you will of the woman who loves you. But Esther had no wish to improve. She evinced all the self-satisfaction of an illiterate mind. To her husband's gentle admonitions she replied with brevity that she thought her way quite as good as his; or, if he didn't approve of her pronunciation, he might do the other thing, she was ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... may as well be said at once that the younger colonists do not relish being denied all native individuality, and depicted with a complaisant condescension as mere imitators of English life. It is well to be a Briton, they say, but better to be an Australian. And who shall say that their self-satisfaction is not healthy ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... the two young West Point officers. They were together, but without Thorn's friend Captain Beebee. Him Carleton next sought, and brought to the forward deck, where the others were enjoying their cigars; or rather, Charlton Rossitur was enjoying his with the happy self-satisfaction of a pair of epaulettes, off duty. Thorn had too busy a brain to be much of a smoker. Now, however, when it was plain that Mr. Carleton had something to say to them, Charlton's cigar gave way to his attention; it was displaced from his mouth, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... uncertainty came back, crowding out the minor matter of his memory of the date. He stared at the richness of even this poor section of an Earth that huddled here as if afraid of its own shadows, yet reeked with self-satisfaction. He thought of Meloa and Throm, and the gallant try at Federation that had been made on the Outer Worlds. Strength had to lie in union and action; yet all the evidence seemed to say that it lay in ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... which must tend much, I think, to sober the mind as to the value of applause. Above all, the constant consciousness of the immeasurable distance between a fine conception and the best execution of it, must in acting, as in all art, be a powerful check to vanity and self-satisfaction. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Lettice, who came to announce a warm friend of the Doctor's, one Master Eccleston. On being admitted, the latter brought with him a low, ferret-eyed personage, whose leering aspect betrayed an inward consciousness of great cunning and self-satisfaction therewith. Dee received his guests with becoming dignity, inquiring to what good fortune he was indebted for ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... care about that," said Reitzei, contemptuously, though he was not speaking the truth: his self-satisfaction had been grievously hurt. "You put too great a value on your opinion, Beratinsky; it is not everything that you know about: we will let that pass. But when one goes into a society as a guest, one expects to be treated as a guest. No matter; I was among my own countrymen: ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... the way to the dusty pit. Mr. Mellor had very properly attempted to stop the disorderly discussion of the closure; but Mr. Chamberlain was not in the mood to respect the authority of the chair or the traditions of the House of Commons, and audaciously, shamelessly—with a perky self-satisfaction painful to witness—he proceeded to violate the ruling of the chair—to trample on the order of Parliament, and to flout the Chairman. And then the waters of the great deep were loosed. A hurricane of ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... sense of humor, I think you would be amused if you could see his smile of placid self-satisfaction as he listens to our discussion of questions and problems which no more enter his daily life than they enter the daily life of an Eskimo; but I do not find it altogether amusing myself, and I could not well ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... his mother's favour, by the good deed of carrying her home some acorns. So, when he came into the house, he took off his hat carefully, with the acorns in it, and holding it in both hands, marched up to his mother with a smiling face, and look of great self-satisfaction, and said, 'Here, mother, I have got ...
— Caleb in the Country • Jacob Abbott
... as soon as they were again settled in the study. "If you did not . . . like my sermon, tell me at once. You know that I am one of your boys, and you ought to . . . help me." Perhaps it was inseparable from his youth, with its buoyancy and self-satisfaction, and his training in a college whose members only knew by rumour of the existence of other places of theological learning, that Carmichael had at that moment a pleasing sense of humility and charity. Had it been a ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... upon every thing: contradict him in what he says, and down come the two pocket-books under your nose. 'I know better,' he will say, 'don't I? What will you bet—five, ten, fifty, hundred? Tush! you dare not bet, you know you are wrong:' and with an air of superiority and self-satisfaction, he will take long strides over his well-washed floor, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... evasion and he could not resist a smile of self-satisfaction, but to avoid further interrogation on Biblical derivations he hastened to lead the conversation into safer alleys and ones more relative to the object ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... no sign of life about the place. My thoughts went back to Joyce, and I wondered how the dinner party at the Savoy had gone off. I could almost see George sitting at one side of the table with that insufferable air of gallantry and self-satisfaction that he always assumed in the presence of a pretty girl. Poor, brave little Joyce! If the pluck and loyalty of one's friends counted for anything, I was certainly as well off as any ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... become His own. In this case it is not the position of the bride that is wrong; if it were, His word as before would be, "Arise, and come away"; whereas now His word is, "Open to Me, My sister, My love." It was her condition of self-satisfaction and love of ease that ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor
... at the blame expressed by so many in common, so that it happens to him as it is written: It is enough that the same therefore be punished by many [II Cor. 2:6].{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} There are still other dangers which we say accompany the solitary life, the first and greatest is that of self-satisfaction. For he who has no one to test his work easily believes that he has completely fulfilled ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... party, for she professed to be quite a female Maecenas; and whether it was a mathematician or a romance-writer, a naturalist or a poet, she held open house for all, and conversed with each with equal fluency and self-satisfaction. ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and obedient; both of them were kind to the poor; and yet, a very keen observer might have discerned, that in Harriet's visits, or gifts of charity, she was actuated by a vain-glorious feeling of pride and self-satisfaction at the benefits she was conferring, which, in the sight of the All-wise Judge, must have cancelled the merit of her good action; while, on the contrary, Mary's heart turned in humble thankfulness to God for ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... was left alone the cardinal looked at himself in the glass with a feeling of self-satisfaction. Still young—for he was scarcely forty-six years of age—he possessed great elegance of form and was above the middle height; his complexion was brilliant and beautiful; his glance full of expression; his nose, though large, was well proportioned; his forehead broad and majestic; his hair, of a ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with herself as she was; she would have liked to possess a great talent like Gora, or be an intellectual power in the world of some sort. She was far from stultification by the national gift of complacence, careless self-satisfaction—racial rather than individual...qualities that have made the United States lag far behind the greater European nations in all but material development and a certain inventiveness; both of which in some cases are ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... deaf, or crippled, why should there not be others who are specially predisposed to experience a certain series of sensations? Moreover, even an ordinary observer will constantly discover faces which bear the unmistakable imprint of a ruling passion—such as superciliousness, self-satisfaction, misanthropy, sensuality, and many others. Sometimes, no doubt, we meet with a face that expresses nothing; but when the physiognomy has a marked stamp it is almost always a true index. The passions act upon the muscles, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... reader put himself into the position of a German subject in his own station of life, a town dweller, informed as is the English reader by a daily press, which has come to be his sole source of opinion, enjoying or suffering that almost physical self-satisfaction and trust in the future which is, unfortunately, not peculiar to the North German, but common in varying degree to a whole school of morals to-day. Let him remember that this man has been specially tutored and coached into a complete ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... apparently, not with modesty, that devils were subject unto them, and that they could exorcize them at their pleasure. While they acknowledged that their power was due to the influence of His name, they evidently thought more of themselves than of Him. They were given to unseemly glorifying and self-satisfaction, and were met by the Master's words—half warning, half rebuke—"I beheld Satan, as lightning, fall from heaven." He thus identifies their pride with that evil spirit which led to angelic ruin, and seeks to banish it from their ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... evil sought not only to counteract the effect of the advent message, but to destroy the messenger himself. Miller made a practical application of Scripture truth to the hearts of his hearers, reproving their sins and disturbing their self-satisfaction, and his plain and cutting words aroused their enmity. The opposition manifested by church-members toward his message, emboldened the baser classes to go to greater lengths; and enemies plotted to take his life ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... assumes control it easily degenerates into a mania. Acts are regarded as meritorious in proportion as they are painful, and they are pushed to greater and greater extravagances because what becomes familiar loses the subjective force from which the ascetic person wins self-satisfaction. Asceticism then becomes a mental aberration and a practical negation of the instinct of self-preservation. It leads to insanity.[2153] If it takes a course against other persons, it explains the conduct of great inquisitors like Conrad ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... and again, each time in a fresh place, until the rain came through beautifully all over the bed of Weary. Then he lay down, cuddled the blankets up to his ears, closed his eyes and composed himself to sleep, at peace with his conscience and the world—and it did not disturb his self-satisfaction when Weary presently awoke, moved sleepily away from one drip and directly under another, shifted again, swore a little in an undertone and at last was forced to take refuge under his tarpaulin. After that Pink ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... like Emerson found to their disappointment, was interested chiefly in himself and his own work. For was he not engaged in the greatest of all projects, an immense poem (The Recluse) which should reflect the universe in the life of one man, and that man William Wordsworth? Such self-satisfaction invited attack; even Lamb, the gentlest of critics, could hardly refrain from ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... from dangerous follies and their inevitable punishment, not by rough words, but by kindly counsel. When he eventually doffed his uniform he had nothing with which to reproach himself; no neglect and no overstepping of duty, no injustice and no improper leniency; he had good cause for self-satisfaction. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... and somewhat to Dick's self-satisfaction, they heard a low noise ahead, which they knew ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... Sir H. Selwin-Ibbetson, Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, and whom I have heard genially described as "one of the prosiest speakers in the House." Next to him, with a paper in his hand and a smirk of supreme self-satisfaction on his face, is ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... he wishes to conceive that point of view, he will scarcely reach it by persistently revelling in the fact that he is not a beetle. The most brilliant exponent of the egoistic school, Nietszche, with deadly and honourable logic, admitted that the philosophy of self-satisfaction led to looking down upon the weak, the cowardly, and the ignorant. Looking down on things may be a delightful experience, only there is nothing, from a mountain to a cabbage, that is really seen when it is seen from a balloon. ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... his career, and usually, I am glad to recall, with a note of satisfaction and approval. In his delirious phases he would most often exaggerate this self-satisfaction, and talk of his splendours. He would pluck at the sheet and stare before him, and whisper ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... originally and continuously; we are utterly dependent. All rights have been forfeited by our wilful conduct; we retain nothing in our own right. And all we have now has been secured for us at the cost of blood; we are being carried at enormous expense. Not much room there for self-satisfaction, is there? ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... justice; and a prison-house, indeed, the convent looks with its high walls, bars, and bolts. I had a little talk with the sister in charge of the porter's lodge, and she took me into the church, pointing to the high iron rails barring off the cloistered nuns, with that imbecile self-satisfaction as much inseparable from her calling ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... so touching that no one but a hardened monster could have withstood it; but the look, with the feelings which it implied, was short-lived. It passed like a summer cloud, and was replaced by an expression of supreme contentment and self-satisfaction when it became apparent that Master Jim was not going to awake, and that Mrs Langley's despair was vanishing. Indeed, that lady's despair was at all times remarkably short-lived. She had been trained in a school of dire adversity ever since the arrival of the coal-black one from ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... to get him in, could enter the kingdom. That would be too absurd. The money- confident Jew might hope that, as his riches were a sign of the favour of God, that favour would not fail him at the last; or their possession might so enlarge his self-satisfaction that he could not entertain the idea of being lost; but trust in his riches!—no. It is the last refuge of the riches-lover, the riches-worshipper, the man to whom their possession is essential for his peace, to say he does not trust in them to take him ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... hopeless causes I have, come from that class of people who give each other bits of their mind—very objectionable bits, consisting of vulgar abuse for the most part, and the calling of names that rankle. The operators seem to derive a solemn kind of self-satisfaction from the treatment themselves, but it does ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Self-satisfaction, at least in some degree, is an advantage, which equally attends the fool and the wise man: But it is the only one; nor is there any other circumstance in the conduct of life, where they are upon an equal footing. Business, books, conversation; for all of these, a fool ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... In the evening, Adolphe's self-satisfaction was completed by an ovation from the ladies, who bestowed upon him the most flattering epithets. From the prettiest lips I heard, "What! this Parisian! this pale and slender young man, with such delicate hands and rose-coloured nails, fought ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... and lessened her pride; there was more devotional temper, and a greater desire after a religious way of life. It might be that her fretfulness was the effect of an uneasiness of mind, which was more hopeful than her previous fierce self-satisfaction, and that her aberrations were the last efforts of old evil habits to re-establish their grasp by custom, when her heart was ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the dominion of chance, which blew together the atoms of Epicurus. But supposing that, devoid of any higher ambition to approve himself to judicious critics and posterity, and wanting in that love of art which longs for self-satisfaction in the perfection of its works, he had merely laboured to please the unlettered crowd; still this very object alone and the pursuit of theatrical effect, would have led him to bestow attention to the structure and adherence of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Without this control, every stimulation intensifies the emotion, since every natural expression adds to its vividness. The irritability taken in itself is at this stage less dominant, inasmuch as the drinker is at the same time satisfied with himself, and the self-satisfaction makes the irritability endurable. Only some accidental circumstance can intensify and spread this irritability. Such circumstances intensify the drunkard s liveliness and lead to the outbreak of merriment approximating ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... the greatest of the masks. So in the sonnet on reaching the age of twenty-three he says that his "late spring no bud or blossom shew'th." Yet he had already written the Ode on the Nativity, a performance sufficient, one would have {92} thought, to give a young poet reasonable self-satisfaction in what he had done, as well as confidence in what he would be able to do. Nor was Milton in the ordinary sense, or perhaps in any, a humble man. Of that false kind of humility, too often recommended from the pulpit, which consists ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... on, in that sober tone of decided self-satisfaction. "And I said a heap more. And didn't the boys jest laff. Will went red as a beet, and the boys laffed more. And I was real glad. I hate Will! Say, he was up here last night. Wot for? He was up here from six to nigh nine. Say, sis, I wish you ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... in trouble, are alike rooted in emulation. Man is by nature inclined to envy and malevolence. Hate easily leads to underestimation, love to overestimation, of the object, and self-love to pride or self-satisfaction, which are much more frequently met with than unfeigned humility. Immoderate desire for honor is termed ambition; if the desire to please others is kept within due bounds it is praised as unpretentiousness, courtesy, modesty (modestia). ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... and revolutionary periodicals been introduced into the reading-room. From time to time the Mercury uttered a note of warning, of protest, but with no echo from the respectable middle-class abodes where Polterham Conservatism dozed in self-satisfaction. It needed another five years of Liberal activity throughout the borough to awaken the good people whose influence had seemed unassailable, and to set them uttering sleepy snorts of indignation But the Mercury had a new editor, a man ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... But I had, at all events, told him that. In spite of my chagrin I could not help chuckling as I thought of it. To tell Big Jim Colton to go to the devil was, in its way, I imagined, a privilege enjoyed by few. It must have shaken his self-satisfaction a trifle. Well, after all, what did I care? He, and his whole family—including Victor—had my permission to migrate in that direction and I wished Old Nick joy ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... antagonists suffered much more severely, even absolutely, than ourselves. At the same time we might have learned, for the Americans did their best to teach us, that over-confidence in numerical strength and narrow professional self-satisfaction are nearly sure to lead to reverses in war, and not unlikely to end in grave disasters. We had now to meet the elite of one of the finest communities of seamen ever known. Even in 1776 the Americans had a great maritime commerce, which, as Mahan informs us, 'had come to be ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... characteristic of the Anglican Church ever since. It has always been restless in the presence of a divided Christendom; the sin of the broken unity has always haunted it. It never has taken the smug attitude of sectarianism, a placid self-satisfaction with its own perfection. It has felt the constant pull of the Catholic ideal and has been inspired by it to make effort after effort for the union of Christendom. It has never lost the sense that it was in itself not complete ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... superiority was, never wanting in Nickie the Kid; the shabbiest clothes, a deplorable hat, fragmentary boots, shirtlessness, the most distressing situations all failed to wholly eliminate a touch of impudent dignity, a trace of rakish self-satisfaction which as a rule escaped the attention of his clients; but, here and there, a student of human nature found it delightfully whimsical. Sometimes it appeared that this spice of egotism sprang from a blackguardly sense of ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... and thumps on the table, that set all the glasses dancing), "not only was it the noblest and most legitimate, but it was the most profitable; and where was the man of high and honourable principle who did not feel when breathing the pure atmosphere of that Heath, a lofty self-satisfaction at the thought, that though he might have left those who were near and dear to him in a less genial atmosphere, still he was not selfishly enjoying himself, without a thought for their welfare; for racing, while it brought health and vigour to the ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... daughter perhaps; a delicate birdlike girl and a plump middle-aged woman with an air of extreme self-satisfaction. ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... middle class, and we were especially well content to belong to this noble class; and as we lived from our rents, and had no rank in the state, we called ourselves, not without some self-satisfaction, people of condition. We exhibited a certain genteel indifference towards the haute volee in the citizen society, not only in words but sometimes also in action; yet, nevertheless, in secret we were extremely wounded or flattered by all those ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... critics) for being rather too pale. The milk-white pearls of the necklace which she wore, the same which she had just received as a true-love token from her husband, were excelled in purity by her teeth, and by the colour of her skin, saving where the blush of pleasure and self-satisfaction had somewhat stained the neck with a shade of light crimson.—"Now, have done with these busy fingers, Janet," she said to her handmaiden, who was still officiously employed in bringing her hair ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... accident, as in the American hotel. She is an important and prominent personage in the English inn. She is a kind of mistress of the robes, and exercises her prerogative with much conscious dignity and self-satisfaction; and, what is better, with great satisfaction to yourself. No other subordinate official or servant trenches or poaches upon her preserves. She it is who precedes you up stairs with a candle, on a broad-bottomed brass ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... one that was beside her, and, resting one elbow on the table, peered inquiringly into the girl's flushed face, more beautiful than ever in her excitement. That strange feeling of exhilaration was still upon her, and there was undoubted triumph and self-satisfaction depicted in her ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... Unionists. But a few birds of passage I have seen have vexed me with their confident ignorance, and caused me to believe that English Gladstonians are the densest donkeys under the sun. They are so self-opiniated, and so full of self-satisfaction, that it is hard to be patient with them. Not a few say simply that they are content to leave the matter in the hands of Mr. Gladstone, and that as they followed him so far, they will follow him to the end. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... present situation with the state of misery and wretchedness from which they had been taken; —or whether it was the joy and exultation which were expressed in the countenances of the poor parents in contemplating their children all busily employed about them;—or the air of self-satisfaction which these little urchins put on, at the consciousness of their own dexterity, while they pursued their work with redoubled diligence upon being observed, that rendered the scene so singularly interesting,— I know not; but certain it is, that few strangers ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... on fait connaitre, sur preuves incontestables, a qui le celebre infortune dut le jour, quand et ou il naquit'. The wording of the title will give an idea of the bizarre and barbarous jargon in which the whole book is written. It would be difficult to imagine the vanity and self-satisfaction which inspire this new reader of riddles. If he had found the philosopher's stone, or made a discovery which would transform the world, he could not exhibit more pride and pleasure. All things considered, the "incontestable proofs" of his ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... product of the creative mind of General Smuts, was a novelty in international relations which appealed strongly to those who preferred to adopt unusual and untried methods rather than to accept those which had been tested by experience and found practical of operation. The self-satisfaction of inventing something new or of evolving a new theory is inherent with not a few men. They are determined to try out their ideas and are impatient of opposition which seeks to prevent the experiment. ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... retort, had nevertheless suffered considerable loss of equilibrium. His speeches were more than ever confused, and it was remarked that his eyes danced about hazily, with a most ineffectual expression. He looked about, however, with a stupid gaze of self-satisfaction; but his laugh and language, forming a strange and most unseemly coalition, degenerated at last into a dolorous sniffle, indicating the rapid departure of the few mental and animal holdfasts which had lingered with him so long. While thus reduced, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... broken by this last cruel disappointment, he had to fold, put into an envelope and direct this most misleading letter under the Doctor's superintending eye, which of course allowed him no chance of introducing a line or even a word to counteract the tone of self-satisfaction and contentment which breathed ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... and slender; Gorby was short and stout. Kilsip looked clever; Gorby wore a smile of self-satisfaction; which alone was sufficient to prevent his doing so. Yet, singularly enough, it was this very smile that proved most useful to Gorby in the pursuit of his calling. It enabled him to come at information ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... The glorious army of Frederick the Great had gone to sleep on its laurels, ossified in pipeclay details, led by old, incapable generals, its officers shy of work, sunk in luxury, good living, and foolish self-satisfaction. In a word, the army was no longer not only not equal to its task, but had forgotten it. Heavy was the punishment of Heaven, which overtook it and our folk. They were flung into the dust, Frederick's glory faded, the standards were cast down. In seven years of painful servitude God ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... law-book seemed a great victory. Yet sometimes victories are more dangerous than defeats. They lead to self-satisfaction. This was certainly the case with this victory of the authors of Deuteronomy. The people were careful to offer up their sacrifices at the temple in Jerusalem, and very few offerings were brought to the old village ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... as I warnt to see," returned the traveller, with an emphasis on, and a pronunciation of, the word we have italicised, that cannot be committed to paper, but which were eloquence itself on the subject of self-satisfaction ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... a cry of delight. He had reason to feel relief. In dragging the will from its hiding-place he had put behind him the most difficult part of his adventure; the final ceremony of replacing it in the safe was a matter only of minutes. With self-satisfaction Jimmie smiled; in self-pity he sighed miserably. For, when those same minutes had passed, again he would be an exile. As soon as he had set his house in order, he must leave it, and once more upon the earth become a wanderer ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... to happen to you. Religion would be better than endurable in the company of such an embodiment of it! He might even qualify for some distinction in it with such a teacher!—Second, in the way of self-satisfaction; for clearly she was not disinclined to be on terms of closer intimacy with him. And as she made the advance why should he not accept, if not the help, yet the offer of the help she had almost made? That would and could ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Peter Martyr, who had left Oxford, and was staying with Cranmer at Lambeth, expecting an arrest, received, instead of it, a safe-conduct, of which he instantly availed himself. The movements of others were quickened with indirect menaces; while Gardiner told Renard, with much self-satisfaction, that a few messages desiring some of them to call upon him at his house ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... state in the Union and every civilized country as well. It is greatly to the credit of the Western State that it is one of the first officially to recognize the primary importance of this problem and to realize that facts, no matter how fatal to self-satisfaction, must be faced. This survey, authorized by the state legislature, and carried out by the University of Oregon, in collaboration with Dr. C. L. Carlisle of the Public Health service, aided by a large number of volunteers, shows ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... betrayal by an Oriental woman of the narrowness, the shallowness, the dishonesty which ages of false education have fastened upon her race. The lady in question is—and evidently knows herself to be—an exception among her countrywomen for ability and acumen: an extreme self-satisfaction and vanity are revealed in the recital of her most disreputable tricks. She passes for a white blackbird, a woman of intellect caught in the harem; and it needs but little ingenuity to guess the torment she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... of the little complacencies of unselfishness? You see, my dear Sir, either you are to feel smug all over, or I am. Now, if I take the salt—so—I perform a true act of courtesy; but, if I postpone the salt, saying 'After you,' I at once enter into the lists, jousting with you for the prize of self-satisfaction. With my two friends it was, if I remember, a matter of Lancashire relish. It appears to me one of the ironies of Fate that they should have starved to death for want of a sauce. I am reminded of an epicure who starved to death for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... felt inclined for swagger at this moment, could not avoid showing his triumph, especially just after such humiliating remarks as those of Hippolyte. A smile of self-satisfaction beamed on his face, and Varia too ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... wondering look. For the first time his words implied a sense of possible limitation; but his easy tone seemed to retract what they conceded. What he really wanted was fresh food for his self-satisfaction: he was like an army that moves on after exhausting the resources of ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... warmly, extending both hands to her in sincere sympathy; but she did not heed the movement, and her tone of calm self-satisfaction surprised him as she answered: "So you seek me in misfortune? Even the blind man knows how to find ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... about Souris, asking a thousand minute and intimate questions about him, and seeking for information as to all his habits and personal characteristics. And he pursued him with railleries even into the depths of the tomb, recalling with self-satisfaction his oddities, emphasizing his absurdities, and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... stage-effect. Gertrude White was at all times and in all seasons a precise and accurate house-mistress. Harassed, as an actress must often be, by other cares; sometimes exhausted with hard work; perhaps tempted now and again by the self-satisfaction of a splendid triumph to let meaner concerns go unheeded; all the same, she allowed nothing to interfere with her ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... certainly was sincere; his real character was on the surface; he made no effort to restrain himself; he was perfectly at home, in his element; and one cannot disguise his delight at being in his element. There is a carelessness in his movements that betrays his self-satisfaction; he struts and spreads himself with an air of confidence; he seems to float in the air, to swim on the crest of the wave ... People can conceal their delight when they have recognised an adored being among a crowd ... can ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... for the documents that had been prepared at Parker Chandler's, and inside of three hours these had been substituted and the several agreements entered into with Rogers formally renounced. I retired to bed that night with a chuckle of self-satisfaction, and a convincing appreciation of the truth of the axiom I ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... until they almost become new acquaintance: some of their columns point to current events, and thus by a little aid of memory, make an outline chronology of the half-year; and, above all, if we have pleased the reader, we, at the same time, enjoy the self-satisfaction of having been employed to so gratifying an end. We like too the spirit of acquaintanceship which these prefacings, meetings, and greetings tend to keep up, although there may be persons who impatiently turn over a preface as the majority of an audience at the ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... expression of this self-satisfaction of the age is found in the Spectator, the first and best representative of that special style of literature—the only really popular literature of our time—which consists in talking to the public about itself. Humanity is taken as reflected in the ordinary life of men; and, as thus reflected, ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... second floor he found the proprietor of the rooming-house and engaged a room in the rear of the building, overlooking the yard. The layout was eminently satisfactory to Captain Byrne and it was with a feeling of great self-satisfaction that he descended and ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a tall cypress-tree, and the sunlight touches the stem of it until it shines like fire against the green darkness of its boughs. On the worn old stone pavement white pigeons strut and preen themselves, puffing out their chests with the most absurd air of self-satisfaction. There are steps down from the terrace, and at the bottom there is a great bed of carnations, red and white and yellow, and their fragrance meets you like a wall ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... obtained only by members banded together for just such emergencies. It is very badly acted by actors and actresses who have not been able to spare sufficient time from their daily work to learn their parts as well as they should have done. The audience comes full of a smug self-satisfaction at the thought that it is excessively intellectual and select, and that it alone can appreciate blasphemy or the vagaries of neurotic young women. It sits intellectually in the theatre, and watches the play. The author sits intellectually ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... was in the motor car did she distinguish the three people who were to accompany them. The owner, now at the wheel, was the essence of decent self-satisfaction; a baldish, largish, level-eyed man, rugged of neck but sleek and round of face—face like the back of a spoon bowl. He was chuckling at her, "Have you got us all ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... her with the self-satisfaction of a successful operator, is a young man of thirty or thereabouts. He does not give the impression of being much of a workman: his professional manner evidently strikes him as being a joke, and is underlain by a thoughtless pleasantry which betrays the young gentleman still unsettled and ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... so earnestly,—what a transformation he could have brought upon this light-hearted and joyous scene! The scales had so nearly balanced; at the bottom of his heart he was conscious of a certain faint contempt for the almost bovine self-satisfaction of a nation without eyes. Literature and painting, art in all its far-flung branches, even science, were suffering in these days from a general and paralysing inertia. Life which demanded no sacrifice of anybody was destructive of everything in ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... met a few years before in a dresscoat in a parlor, or because he was suddenly raised in his own opinion by the fact of being recognized,—at all events it seemed to me that his face and even his motions completely changed: they now expressed lively intelligence, a childish self-satisfaction in the consciousness of such intelligence, and a certain contemptuous indifference; so that I confess, notwithstanding the pitiable position in which he found himself, my old acquaintance did not so much excite sympathy in me as it did a sort ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... plain,' said I, leaning back in my chair, and regarding the puzzled Hale with that cherubic expression of self-satisfaction which I know ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... flattered is vanity, and he laid himself out for them. He was then but a "poor painted hypocrite," he says, "proud of his godliness, and doing all he did either to be seen of, or well spoken of by man." This state of self-satisfaction, he tells us, lasted "for about a twelvemonth or more." During this deceitful calm he says, "I had great peace of conscience, and should think with myself, 'God cannot choose but now be pleased with me,' yea, to relate it in mine own way, I thought no ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... "Less through self-satisfaction than in contempt for a pack of murderous mongrels—impatience that I have to consider such creatures as Popinot, Wertheimer, De ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... myself: as far as I was concerned, those blue eyes were guiltless, and calm as the sky, to whose tint theirs seemed akin. So it came to pass that I heard the others talk, wondered often at their gaiety, security, and self-satisfaction, but did not trouble myself to look up and gaze along the path they seemed so certain of treading. This then was no billet-doux; and it was in settled conviction to the contrary that I quietly opened it. Thus it ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... straightway forgets till it shall please his High Mightiness to call again. Oh! and we—we women, poor things, must stand about with our mouths open, like mossy carp in a pond, and struggle and push for such crumbs of comfort as he will deign to throw us from the full larder of his self-satisfaction!" ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... but perhaps I shall go back to London at once. This has been an interesting time here, but only because it is so different from what one would expect. It reads like a burlesque to note the expressions of condolence from all over the world, and to mark the self-satisfaction of the French at attracting so much sympathy, and their absolute indifference to the death of Carnot. It is most curious. We have an ideal time. Never before have I had such jolly dinners, with such good talk and ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... her that Sandy's departure had been taken, she emerged with her bundle and spread it out on the table for the third time. She was all smiles. She was not a bit angry with the foolish widower. This dogmatic attitude of mind, this wonderful self-satisfaction, were peculiar to the creature; he couldn't help it. But it had roused a mischievous spirit in her, and the temptation was too great to resist. The only thing she regretted was having let him kiss her, ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... The sting of life could do no more to his complacent soul than the scratch of a pin to the smooth face of a rock. This was enviable. As I looked at him, flanking on one side the unassuming pale-faced magistrate who presided at the inquiry, his self-satisfaction presented to me and to the world a surface as hard as granite. He ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... nothing for the reluctant Mr. Swinton but to obey, and I could not help smiling at his evident discomfiture. All his precise and matter-of-fact self-satisfaction was gone in a moment,—he was nothing but a very timorous creature, afraid to examine into what he could not at once understand. No such terrors, however, were displayed by the sailors who undertook to row him over to the yacht. They, ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... along with an entire self-satisfaction, a vein of pitiless sense, which enabled her to see herself as others might see her, and which saved her from the follies often incident to the self-satisfied. She considered herself a beauty; she thought, and with ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the American's, his British pertinacity, his wounded vanity (perhaps they are the same thing), would not allow him to give up the struggle. Hayward seemed to take a delight in displaying his ignorance, self-satisfaction, and wrongheadedness. Whenever Hayward said something which was illogical, Weeks in a few words would show the falseness of his reasoning, pause for a moment to enjoy his triumph, and then hurry on to another subject as though Christian ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... despondency, a sense of oppression, and a disposition to resistance. The looks of Wamba, on the other hand, indicated, as usual with his class, a sort of vacant curiosity, and fidgetty impatience of any posture of repose, together with the utmost self-satisfaction respecting his own situation, and the appearance which he made. The dialogue which they maintained between them, was carried on in Anglo-Saxon, which, as we said before, was universally spoken by the inferior classes, excepting the Norman soldiers, and the immediate personal ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... infinitude of his own faculties. Man learns about himself through what is objective to him, but the object only serves to bring out what is in him; his own nature becomes the absolute to him. Consciousness marks the self-satisfaction, self-perfection of man, that all truth is in him. As feeling is the cause of the outward world, or of that notion of it man has, it becomes the organ of religion. The nature of God is nothing else than an expression of the nature of feeling. As man lives ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... "Self-satisfaction, self-absorption, self-sufficiency, have had a sobering shock. For I find that for the full and perfect enjoyment of my city I myself am no longer enough. I need company—curiously, one specific and particular individual whom, having once named, I ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... at what period of his life Arago composed the autobiography, but it bears throughout the characteristic stamp of his ardent and energetic disposition. The reader will, perhaps, hardly suppress a smile at the indications of self-satisfaction with which several of the incidents are brought forward, while the air of romance which invests some of the adventures may possibly give rise to some suspicion of occasional embellishment; on these points, however, ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... During perhaps one hour in the twenty-four —not more than that—I stop and reflect. Then I am humble, then I am properly meek, and for that little time I am 'only the Mary Ann' —fourteen hours out, and cargoed with vegetables and tin-ware; but all the other twenty-three my self-satisfaction rides high, and I am the stately Indiaman, ploughing the great seas under a cloud of sail, and laden with a rich freightage of the kindest words that were ever spoken to a wandering alien, I think; my twenty-six crowded and fortunate days multiplied by five; and I am the Begum of Bengal, ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... herself much more for keeping back her knowledge till it was wanted, than for having it; but this self-satisfaction looked out in another loop-hole. She avoided pedantry, but she was too much elated not to let her spirits get the better of her; and when Lady de la Poer and the elder girls came up, they found her in a suppressed state of capering, more like a puppy on its hind logs, than like ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of a brunette tone. A hint has been given as to Mr. Larcher's conceit—which, by the way, had suffered a marvellous change to humility in the presence of his admired—but it was a small and superficial thing compared with the self-satisfaction of Miss Edna, and yet hers sat upon her with a serenity which, taking her sex also into consideration, made it much ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... some close reckoning, Dent, but the cleverest part of the business was letting old Parrish think he'd got away from me. I knew he'd telephone Lucille. You know, I always had the brains of the outfit, Dent," he continued, with a smirk of self-satisfaction. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... expression of his face as he sat up beside her in the car, looking noble. She put it down partly to that everlasting self-satisfaction that made his inward happiness, and partly to sheer physical exhilaration induced by speed. She felt something like it herself as they tore switchbacking up and down the hills: an excitement whipped up on the top of the deep happiness that came from thinking about Ralph. ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... always welcome. His manner was that of a future kinsman, for he had obtained the father's promise and the daughter's consent, although that consent was only tacitly given. However, notwithstanding his self-satisfaction, and his confidence in the future, the Senator could not fail to remark the grave reserve of Don Augustin's manner. He thought himself at liberty to ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... us now appears the narrowest and worst form of parochialism, a certainty that English beef, English beer, English morals, and English standards, were the ultimate excellence towards which a world of misguided foreigners might ultimately aspire, that self-satisfaction, different from pride, that glorying in prejudice, and wilful blindness to all features of national life which do not bear out the theory of an earthly paradise. "Tell me one thing, Lord Saltire; you have travelled in many countries. Is there any land, east or west, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Adolphe's self-satisfaction was completed by an ovation from the ladies, who bestowed upon him the most flattering epithets. From the prettiest lips I heard, "What! this Parisian! this pale and slender young man, with such delicate hands and rose-coloured nails, fought face to face with this terrible beast? ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... learn this further thing, humility—to put a seal upon your lips and forget what you have done. After you have been kind, after love has stolen forth into the world and done its beautiful work, go back into the shade again and say nothing about it. Love hides even from itself. Love waives even self-satisfaction. "Love vaunteth not ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... prince and dyke-warden, whose carelessness lets in the inundation, is by far Peacock's most original creation (for Scythrop, as has been said, is rather a humorous distortion of the actual than a creation). His complete self-satisfaction, his utter fearlessness of consequences, his ready adaptation to whatever part, be it prince or butler, presents itself to him, and above all, the splendid topsy-turviness of his fashion of argument, make Seithenyn ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... with its high walls, bars, and bolts. I had a little talk with the sister in charge of the porter's lodge, and she took me into the church, pointing to the high iron rails barring off the cloistered nuns, with that imbecile self-satisfaction as much inseparable from her calling ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... little coldly. He had not really been moved to help him by any personal liking, but rather from a conscientious conviction that the young man had a decided vocation for theology. In fact, there had always been a tinge of self-satisfaction about David which he seriously disliked, and for which very reason he had once sent him back to the boats to learn humility. Though honestly pleased at his progress, he did not think it well to praise him too much; especially as he observed that David boasted in ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... many of his children when in cold blood he scrutinizes his offspring. The letter in its entirety (it is unpublished) is proof, were any needed, that he had a high artistic ideal which kept him nobly dissatisfied with his endeavor. There is in him neither pose nor complacent self-satisfaction. To an American, whom he was bidding good-by at his own gate, he said: "If I had my books to do over again, I should try harder to make sure their influence was good." His aims, ethical and artistic, throughout his work, can be relied upon as high and noble. His ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... fees, and remembering that he had heard that the Scotch were passionate about affairs of education. "I offered her a situation as typist here, as my typist had just left," said Mr. Mactavish James, with an ineffable air of self-satisfaction. Yaverland had been about to burst into angry laughter, when the old man had gone on, "Ay, and I thought I had found a nest for the wee lassie. But a face as bonnie as hers brings its troubles with it! Ay, ay! I'm sorry to ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... effects on different people. Some it puffs up with self-satisfaction. To others it is a source of mortifying regret. I belonged to the latter class. I was continually crying out, 'O God, how little I am, and how little I know! Give me a chance of acquiring information, and of learning how more successfully ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... with "shrieks of delight." When you are past shrieking, having no human articulate voice to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude of their valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with cutaneous eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive hiccough of self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two sorrowfullest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, taking the deep inner significance of them, are the English mobs in the valley of Chamouni, amusing themselves with firing rusty howitzers; and the Swiss vintagers of Zurich expressing ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... least hurt by such uncomplimentary threats, McCoy smiled as he filled the cup held by his comrade. The spirit was beginning to tell on him, and the smile was of that imbecile character which denotes perfect self-satisfaction and good-will. Having poured the remainder into his own cup, he refixed the bottle to the tube of the "still," and while more of the liquid was being extracted, the cronies sat down on low stools before the stove, to spend a ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... the philosopher, with his quiet smile, glad, apparently, to divert the conversation from the topic of last night's alarm, and recollections which humbled his self-love and self-satisfaction,—"yes; and when Master Fibbet and Master Bibbet do speak, their affirmations are as much in a common mould of mutual attestation, as their names would accord in the verses of a poet. If Master Fibbet happens to tell a fiction, Master Bibbet swears it as truth. If Master Bibbet ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... summer villa had risen over the waters of the bay. Owing to this stroke of clever policy, a poor and discontented town was transformed into the most fashionable watering place of Spain, and surely if slowly disaffection merged into prosperous self-satisfaction. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... has her minute critics) for being rather too pale. The milk-white pearls of the necklace which she wore, the same which she had just received as a true-love token from her husband, were excelled in purity by her teeth, and by the colour of her skin, saving where the blush of pleasure and self-satisfaction had somewhat stained the neck with a shade of light crimson.—"Now, have done with these busy fingers, Janet," she said to her handmaiden, who was still officiously employed in bringing her hair and her dress into order—"have done, I say. I must see your ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... into consideration the fact that being thoroughly incapable of creating their own language, they have by their talent to distort languages given to the present English people a repulsive Judeo-Carthaginian imprint through their shameless self-satisfaction, arrogance and treacherous inclinations." ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... the latter ventured to refer to a work of his, called An Essay on the Principles of Human Action, which has not a single ornament in it, as a specimen of his original studies and the proper bias of his mind, the learned critic, with a shrug of great self-satisfaction, said, "It was amusing to see this person, sitting like one of Brouwer's Dutch boors over his gin and tobacco-pipes, and fancying himself a Leibnitz!" The question was, whether the subject of Mr. Gifford's censure had ever written such a work or not; for if he had, he had amused himself ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... came to announce a warm friend of the Doctor's, one Master Eccleston. On being admitted, the latter brought with him a low, ferret-eyed personage, whose leering aspect betrayed an inward consciousness of great cunning and self-satisfaction therewith. Dee received his guests with becoming dignity, inquiring to what good fortune he was indebted for ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... domestic and straightforward condition, and the windmiller no longer hesitated to come in. But he was less disposed to a hard and triumphant self-satisfaction than was common with him when his will ended well. A poor and unsuccessful career had, indeed, something to do with the hardness of his nature, and in this flush of prosperity he felt softened, and resolved ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... time in the service of the State, a fact of which he was not a little proud; and after his daughter's marriage with Morten Garman, who was one of the most eligible young men of the district, his somewhat sensitive feelings began to revolt against the self-satisfaction which the Garman family seemed to have inherited with ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... whatever might be going to happen to you. Religion would be better than endurable in the company of such an embodiment of it! He might even qualify for some distinction in it with such a teacher!—Second, in the way of self-satisfaction; for clearly she was not disinclined to be on terms of closer intimacy with him. And as she made the advance why should he not accept, if not the help, yet the offer of the help she had almost made? That would and could bind him to nothing. He understood her well ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... which such people ignore their responsibilities, or allow strangers to assume them, would be an occasion for humour, if it were not an opportunity for indignation: though indeed it would take a very exceptionally sober-minded spectator not to get some fun out of the blissful self-satisfaction and unconsciousness which characterize the most negligent ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... been lost to the world by reason of her great exclusion, her self-satisfaction and blind reliance upon the ways marked out for her by sages of other days. These young men, with the West in their eyes, are coming back to shock their fathers' land into new channels. The process may not be pleasant for us of the old school, but quite likely it is necessary. Yet, I feel deep within ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... desired it to be read to him, and said with great earnestness, "The applause of a single human being is of great consequence." Father Payne added that it was one of Johnson's finest sayings, and had no touch of vanity or self-satisfaction in it, but the vital stuff of humanity. That I believe to be profoundly true: and that is the spirit in which I have ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... attainments were beside the American's, his British pertinacity, his wounded vanity (perhaps they are the same thing), would not allow him to give up the struggle. Hayward seemed to take a delight in displaying his ignorance, self-satisfaction, and wrongheadedness. Whenever Hayward said something which was illogical, Weeks in a few words would show the falseness of his reasoning, pause for a moment to enjoy his triumph, and then hurry on to another subject as though Christian charity ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... American friend of Emerson's, said, "There are so many things in the universe more interesting than my individual faults, that I really cannot stay to dwell on them." There is one form of conceit—or rather of self-satisfaction—to which schoolgirls are liable: they know they are living up to the average standard imposed by public opinion and esprit de corps, and they are satisfied with this, instead of trying to live up to their ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... as a necessity, the sale of every foot of the property her mother had brought him. Nothing less would serve to keep up his credit, and gain time to disguise more than one failing scheme. Everything had of late been going so badly, that he had lost a good deal of his confidence and self-satisfaction; but he had gained no humility instead. It had not dawned upon him yet that he was not unfortunate, but unworthy. The gain of such a conviction is to a man enough to outweigh infinitely any loss that even his unworthiness ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... was a mirror in which I saw myself. She said little, but I understood, and my self-satisfaction was in ribbons—and something deeper than self-satisfaction. I saw now that I loved her as I had not dreamed myself ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... soon as they were again settled in the study. "If you did not . . . like my sermon, tell me at once. You know that I am one of your boys, and you ought to . . . help me." Perhaps it was inseparable from his youth, with its buoyancy and self-satisfaction, and his training in a college whose members only knew by rumour of the existence of other places of theological learning, that Carmichael had at that moment a pleasing sense of humility and charity. Had it been a matter ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... knowledge or imagination, whichever it may be, to the perpetual repetition of some half-dozen conceptions by Claude and Poussin, I have been met by the formidable objection, enunciated with much dignity and self-satisfaction on the part of my antagonist—"That is not painting general truths, that is painting particular truths." Now there must be something wrong in that application of a principle which would make the variety and abundance which we look for as the greatest sign of intellect in the ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... to whom the order was addressed, complied; and, in another minute, the "Dart" was also beginning to move a-head, though in a direction directly opposite to that taken by the "Dolphin." The old man highly enjoyed his own decision, manifesting his self-satisfaction by the infinite glee and deep chuckling of his manner. He was too much occupied with the step he had just taken, to revert immediately to the subject that had so recently been uppermost in his mind; nor did the thought of pursuing the discourse occur to him, until ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... place to another, simmering in perfect enjoyment. And the central figure of all was Esme Amarinth, who stood leaning upon an ebony stick with a silver knob, surveying his audience with the peculiar smile of humourous self-satisfaction that was so characteristic of his ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... peopled native city; and he made a show of that marvelous facility of the Triestines in languages, by taking me down French books, Spanish books, German books, and reading from them all with the properest accent. Yet with this boyish pride and self-satisfaction there was mixed a tone of bitter and worldly cynicism, a belief in fortune as the sole providence. As nearly as I could make out, he was a Johnson man in American politics; upon the Mexican question he was independent, disdaining French and Mexicans ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Elia went on, in that sober tone of decided self-satisfaction. "And I said a heap more. And didn't the boys jest laff. Will went red as a beet, and the boys laffed more. And I was real glad. I hate Will! Say, he was up here last night. Wot for? He was up here from six to nigh nine. Say, sis, I wish ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... sense discontent is a good thing. It is the opposite of self-satisfaction. [Laughter.] It is a good thing to appreciate that we have not done our best, and then try to do it. It is a good thing to understand that we have not made the most of our opportunities. In this sense, discontent is the spur of ambition, the incentive to better work, the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... wall raised by different manners and customs. This we might try to scale oftener than we do. Again, there are separating walls, harder than these either to surmount or to lay low, walls of provincial arrogance and crass self-satisfaction, and the racial pride that is mostly another name ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... the purse and piece of brocade, which, by Zobeide's order, she delivered to Nouzhatoul-aouadat, who threw herself again at the princess's feet, and thanked her with great self-satisfaction at finding she had succeeded so well. "Go," said Zobeide, "use that brocade to cover the corpse of your husband, and with the money bury him handsomely, as he deserves. Moderate the transport of your afflictions: I will take ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... she made by accident—destroyed such remnants of self-satisfaction as her life might yet possess. She broke down utterly and sobbed and cried in Perfetta's arms. Perfetta was kind and even sympathetic, but cautioned her on no account to speak to Gino, who would be furious if he was suspected. And Lilia agreed, partly because ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... his flirtation with Amy with jubilant self-satisfaction. And he kept drifting about to find Becky and lacerate her with the performance. At last he spied her, but there was a sudden falling of his mercury. She was sitting cosily on a little bench behind the schoolhouse ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... looked down on Bedford as a trivial, incidental thing with which I chanced to be connected," Bedford, unfortunately for my moral, was a poor creature who got no benefit from his privilege, who flouted it indeed and regretted his inability "to recover the full-bodied self-satisfaction of his early days." Possibly the fact that in his case the knowledge was thrust upon him may account for his failure. It is only the knowledge we seek that ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... doorstep, had followed with his bulging eyes the receding figure. He stood still regarding the gateway, mentally summarizing the events of the day, after the other had vanished. At last, nestling his chin comfortably into the fur of his collar, he smiled with self-satisfaction. "After all," he said to himself, "there are always ways of making a cad feel that he is a cad, in the presence ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... her guests, and confronting from her sofa Mr. Bemis, who still remains sunken in his armchair, has apparently closed an exhaustive recital of the events which have ended in his presence there. She looks round with a mixed air of self-denial and self-satisfaction to read the admiration of her ...
— The Garotters • William D. Howells
... United States of America, which have not yet acquired the serene sense of conservative self-satisfaction and repose which centuries of age may bestow, the spirit of life itself is the aspiration for change. Ambition itself only means the insistence on change. Each day is to be better than yesterday fuller of plans, of briskness, of initiative. Each to-day demands of to-morrow ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in Tamul. While working at his translations with his moonshee, or interpreter, a Mussulman, he had much opportunity for conversation and for study of the Mahometan arguments, so as to be very useful to himself; though he could not succeed in convincing the impracticable moonshee, who had all that self-satisfaction belonging to Mahometanism. "I told him that he ought to pray that God would teach him what the truth really is. He said he had no occasion to pray on this subject, as the word of God is express." With the Hindoos at Dinapore, he found, to his surprise, that there was apparently ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... a fellow as this in his household Monceux felt that he would soon lay Robin Hood by the heels. So he strutted to his horse, and was lifted thereon in fine self-satisfaction. His daughter mounted her palfrey, and Carfax led the beast gently, whilst the maids had to hurry over the rough stones as ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... What was the state of our army at the beginning of the century? The glorious army of Frederick the Great had gone to sleep on its laurels, ossified in pipeclay details, led by old, incapable generals, its officers shy of work, sunk in luxury, good living, and foolish self-satisfaction. In a word, the army was no longer not only not equal to its task, but had forgotten it. Heavy was the punishment of Heaven, which overtook it and our folk. They were flung into the dust, Frederick's glory faded, the standards were cast down. In seven years of painful servitude ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... age of twenty-three he says that his "late spring no bud or blossom shew'th." Yet he had already written the Ode on the Nativity, a performance sufficient, one would have {92} thought, to give a young poet reasonable self-satisfaction in what he had done, as well as confidence in what he would be able to do. Nor was Milton in the ordinary sense, or perhaps in any, a humble man. Of that false kind of humility, too often recommended from the pulpit, ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... way, her good humor having suddenly returned; and he looked up with a smile, pleased with himself. They sat for a time, talking of other matters, and he went to bed humming the defineless tune of self-satisfaction. But late in the night Mrs. McElwin awoke and found him standing at the ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... of the limited income on which existence went on at Villa Elsa. It was characteristic. Though limited, the income was secure. Despite the economies practiced, the prevailing confidence and self-satisfaction did not suffer, as a result, the slightest impairment. It was ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... Mammon. Hercules holding the distaff was but a faint type of Peter bearing the roses. He must have thought this himself, for he seemed amazed at what he had done. He backed without a word; he was going away with a husky chuckle of self-satisfaction; then he bethought himself to stop and turn, to ascertain by ocular testimony that he really had presented a bouquet. Yes, there were the six red cabbages on the purple satin lap, a very white hand, with some gold rings on the fingers, slightly holding them together, and streaming ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... any rate, the new era of German unity has brought a symbol of greatness not before known, and that they worship in Bismarck the hero who has given them a country to love, who has delivered them from the pettiness and self-satisfaction ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... in her self-satisfaction was too much for him. "I'm afraid I'm not in the mood either for comedy ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... for your man of business to prepare a regular deed to carry this into effect, which I will sign with the greatest self-satisfaction, as soon as I ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... forget the astonishment of stage manager, scene-painter, and staff! It was never safe to indulge in too much self-satisfaction beforehand with Henry. He was always liable ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... my ailing," wheezed the other; "but you're lamer than me," he added with a forlorn sort of self-satisfaction, critically eyeing Israel's limp as once, more he stumped on his way, not liking to ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... cypress-tree, and the sunlight touches the stem of it until it shines like fire against the green darkness of its boughs. On the worn old stone pavement white pigeons strut and preen themselves, puffing out their chests with the most absurd air of self-satisfaction. There are steps down from the terrace, and at the bottom there is a great bed of carnations, red and white and yellow, and their fragrance meets you like a wall of ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... risked his life to save that of a stranger. The fact astonished him, while it pleased him hugely. The sensation was at once novel and thrilling. Since it was so agreeable, he meant to prolong the glow of self-satisfaction by continuing to care for this waif of the river. He must make his rescue complete. It did not occur to him to question his fitness for the work. His introspection did not reach to a point of suspecting ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... to a perfect fulfillment, for poor Santron, who lay motionless and unconscious up to that moment, suddenly gave signs of life by moving his features, and jerking his limbs to this side and that. The doctor's self-satisfaction took the very proudest form. He expatiated on the grandeur of medical science, the wonderful advancement it was making, and the astonishing progress the curative art had made, even within his own time. I must own that I should have lent a more implicit ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... the first Napoleon, he would have made himself sure personally as to "the last gaiter button" and all other details, but with sublime self-satisfaction and inane blindness the Second Napoleon put himself at the head of this unready army, inspired apparently with the "on to Berlin" confidence of the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... scrutinized Beulah, who had been silently contemplating her beautiful oval profile and silky auburn curls. Certainly Antoinette Dupres was beautiful, but it was such a beauty as one sees in wax dolls—blank, soulless, expressionless, if I may except the predominating expression of self-satisfaction. Beulah's quiet dignity failed to repel the continued stare fixed upon her, and, gathering up the folds of her shawl, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... green diorite, with long irregular yellowish veins, and of such hardness that it is difficult to determine the tool with which they were worked. The Pharaoh sits squarely on his royal throne, his hands on his lap, his body firm and upright, and his head thrown back with a look of self-satisfaction. A sparrow-hawk perched on the back of his seat covers his head with its wings—an image of the god Horus protecting his son. The modelling of the torso and legs of the largest of these statues, the dignity of its pose, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... them, must inspire a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the real canting person of the scene—for the hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends, but his brother's professions of a good heart centre in down right self-satisfaction) must be loved and Joseph hated. To balance one disagreeable reality with another, Sir Peter Teazle must be no longer the comic idea of a fretful old bachelor bridegroom, whose teasings (while King acted it) were evidently as ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... approached on which Gunzelin, with the smiling self-satisfaction of an old roue, and decked out to give himself all the appearance of young manhood, was to lead the fairest maiden in the Rhineland to his stately castle. Gerda who possessed the mild disposition of her deceased mother had ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... on Mr. Vane may be imagined. Who but she could have done this? This was as if a painter should so paint a man as to deceive his species. This was acting, but not like the acting of the stage. He was in transports, and self-satisfaction at his own judgment ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... played by the love of the elder and the parent, by the carefulness, the fussy care, of good men and women. He had wandered in wildernesses of unbelief, in dangerous places of doubt and questioning, but he had left his wife and children safe and secure in the self-satisfaction of orthodoxy. To none of them except to Eleanor had he ever talked with any freedom of his new apprehensions of religious reality. And that had been at Eleanor's initiative. There was, he saw now, something of insolence and something of treachery in this concealment. ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... as she noticed, was free alike from the complacent self-satisfaction which occasionally characterises the philanthropist, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... incurious, and contemptuous. Dayson, however, ignored George Cannon's attitude, perhaps did not even perceive what it was. He gloried in his performance. Accustomed to dictate extempore speeches on any subject whatever to his shorthand pupils, he was quite at his ease, quite master of his faculties, and self-satisfaction seemed to stand out on his brow like genial sweat while the banal phrases poured glibly from the cavern behind his jagged teeth; and each phrase was a perfect model of provincial journalese. George ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... in a burst of raucous laughter which added the final horror to this amazing adventure. Then he went out, and in the last glimpse I had of him before the door shut he wore the same look of easy self-satisfaction with which he had entered this place of death some ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... to be damn careful who I'm seen goin' into barracks with," he said to himself. "That damn kike may be a German spy or a secret-service officer." A cold chill of terror went over him, shattering his mood of joyous self-satisfaction. His feet slopped in the puddles, breaking through the thin ice, as he walked up the road towards the barracks. He felt as if people were watching him from everywhere out of the darkness, as if some gigantic figure were driving him forward through the darkness, ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... at home. You wear out at least a shilling's worth of boot leather, pay twopence for a roll and fourpence for a more villainous compound called coffee; come home in a state of inanition, cram down a quartern loaf and a quarter of a pound of rancid butter, washed down with weak tea; and if self-satisfaction and exhaustion combined are soporific, it is only to leave you a prey to nightmare. Then, to say nothing of poorness of blood producing paucity of ideas, it is fearful to think of the doctor's bill you are ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all that folly," said Mr. World with a feeling of self-satisfaction, "I see a long line of separate buildings just below us—there along the King's Highway. What ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... Minoret and his wife was sure not to end without a long and angry strife. So at the moment of his self-satisfaction the foolish robber found his inward struggle against himself and against Ursula revived by his own fault, and complicated with a new and terrible adversary. The next day, when he left the house early to find Goupil and ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... cellar, closed by painted iron shutters fantastically cut in open-work. Everything was new. In this repaired and restored house, the fresh-colored look of which contrasted with the time-worn exteriors of all the other houses, an observer would instantly perceive the paltry taste and perfect self-satisfaction of ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... sense inquisitive concerning the doings of the world at large. Of their civilization, which goes back beyond the reputed date of the Deluge, they are intensely proud, their ancient literature, in their conception, is far superior to the literatures of all other nations, and their self-satisfaction is so ingrained that they still stand aloof in mental isolation from the world, only the most progressive among them seeing anything to be gained from foreign arts. These differences in character have given rise to a remarkable difference in results. The Japanese have been alert in availing themselves ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the evident note of astonishment and appreciation in his tones did not tend to increase Mortlake's self-satisfaction. ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... pat them, listen to them, plunge in their scoops and remove a long pink stick which they roll in their fingers, smell or taste and then neatly replace. Meanwhile, the seller stands by with an air part self-satisfaction, part contempt, part pity, part detachment, as who should say "It matters nothing to me whether this fussy fellow thinks the cheese good or not, buys it or not; but whether he thinks it good or bad, or whether he buys, or leaves it, it is still the best cheese ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... call again. Oh! and we—we women, poor things, must stand about with our mouths open, like mossy carp in a pond, and struggle and push for such crumbs of comfort as he will deign to throw us from the full larder of his self-satisfaction!" ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... her former state of self-satisfaction. There were certain things to be done. For instance, that first chapter of John should receive more close attention at her next reading; and there were various other duties which should be taken up ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... along the street. How I cursed him as he stepped jauntily on—how I hated his debonair grace and easy manner! I watched the even poise of his handsome head and shoulders, I noted the assured tread, the air of conscious vanity—the whole demeanor of the man bespoke his perfect self-satisfaction and his absolute confidence in the brightness of the future that awaited him when that stipulated six months of pretended mourning for my untimely death should have expired. Once, as he walked on his way, he turned and paused—looking back—he raised his hat to enjoy the coolness of the breeze ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... get angry: I can see Mrs. Grove as though she were in the room—the utmost New York self-satisfaction. And I won't have ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... describes the visits of enthusiastic persons to big caves underground, very dark, damp, dreary, ugly, funereal—with winding ways and huge holes, water with eyeless fish, and certain drippings called stalagmites and stalactites. The enthusiasts, who always possess that priceless treasure self-satisfaction, and a boundless capacity for wonder (which is always ready to exercise itself with anything that is big, however ugly), and the "Palaces," and "Halls," and "Cascades," and "Altars," and "Bridal Wreaths" they see there are not only finer than real ones (if you would ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... the habit of respect and affection had softened her and lessened her pride; there was more devotional temper, and a greater desire after a religious way of life. It might be that her fretfulness was the effect of an uneasiness of mind, which was more hopeful than her previous fierce self-satisfaction, and that her aberrations were the last efforts of old evil habits to re-establish their grasp by custom, when her heart was becoming detached ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... more prominent place than Dennis in the list of men whom Pope selected for attack. He could not have chosen one more impervious to assault. The poet's anger excited Cibber's mirth, his satire contributed to his content. The comedian's unbounded self-satisfaction and good humour, his vivacity and spirits, were proof against Pope's malice. Graceless he may have been, but a dullard the mercurial 'King Colley' ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very coxcombry of charity, school-boy-like, I made him a present of—the whole cake! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction; but before I had got to the end of the bridge, my better feelings returned, and I burst into tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to go and give her good gift away to a stranger, that I ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... my mind to have a disputed point settled—and I filled my glass with an air of triumph, whilst M'Leod never contradicted my assertions, nor controverted Mr. Hardcastle's arguments. There was still an air of content and quiet self-satisfaction in M'Leod's very silence, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... in human life anything better than justice, truth, temperance, fortitude, and, in a word, anything better than thy own mind's self-satisfaction in the things which it enables thee to do according to right reason, and in the condition that is assigned to thee without thy own choice; if, I say, thou seest anything better than is, turn to it with all thy soul, ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... to my thought at the beginning—the necessity for 'Sureness' in regard to religion, and especially in the experience of Holiness—let me ask, Where are we found? Have the testings confirmed that certainty of heart, or have my words disturbed self-satisfaction? Do not be afraid of facing the direct issue. If you have the evidences referred to, then be sure to go about proclaiming what God has done. But if not, then this unsatisfied and unsatisfactory condition cannot be persisted in when the Fountain which cleanses ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... forward from that mountain of pillows, would be a purely comic figure were it not for the terrible tragedy written in his face. A footman in brilliant livery is a comic figure. The splendour of this livery brings out the comic element by its contrast to, and yet its harmony with, the stupid self-satisfaction of the countenance and the curls ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... them all, and turned toward the door, congratulating myself on escaping thus easily, when a new voice broke suddenly in upon my self-satisfaction: ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... damsel of the nursery array her doll with more delighted looks, and gaze upon her handiwork with more self-satisfaction, than did old Tronchon survey me, as, with the aid of a little gum, he decorated my lip with a stiff line of his iron ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... put his demand. He was leaning forward in his chair. A hot light had suddenly leapt into his eyes, which left them shining unwholesomely. Nancy was startled at his words. And his attitude shocked her not a little out of her self-satisfaction. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... contenting myself with playing more cautiously than I had done in my self-satisfaction of a moment before. Out of the corners of my eyes, I could see a portion of the circle of white faces about us, but they made no sound, and what their expression was I could not tell. The night air and ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... When the cup of human life is so overflowing with woe and pain and misery, it seems to me a narrow dilettanteism or downright charlatanism to devote one's self to petty or bizarre problems which can have no relation to human happiness, and to prate of self-satisfaction and self-expression. One can have all the self-expression one wants ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... shades.[14] The queer old scholastic logic still prevails remarkably in our modern world; you find Mr. Mallock, for example, going about arranging his syllogisms, extracting his opponent's "self-contradictions," and disposing of Socialism with stupendous self-satisfaction in all the magazines. He disposes of Socialism quite in the spirit of the young mediaeval scholar returning home to prove beyond dispute that "my cat has ten tails" and, given a yard's start, that a tortoise can always keep ahead of a running man. The essential fallacy is always to declare that ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... ex-revivalist, ex-author of pious stories for the young, skilled dealer in truisms, in wordy platitudes couched largely in plagiarized language from the poets and essayists, in all the pseudo-religious slickeries wherewith men's souls are so easily lulled into self-satisfaction. The Good, the True, the Beautiful; these were his texts, but the real god of his worship was Success. This, under the guise of Duty ("man's God-inspired ambition to be true to his best possibilities"), ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... documents that had been prepared at Parker Chandler's, and inside of three hours these had been substituted and the several agreements entered into with Rogers formally renounced. I retired to bed that night with a chuckle of self-satisfaction, and a convincing appreciation of the truth of the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Mr. Wheaton, "I left it out on purpose. I thought may be we could get him for less than fifteen hundred dollars. What do you think? Wouldn't he come on twelve hundred, and the parsonage?" And Mr. Wheaton smiled on me with an air of self-satisfaction which seemed to say, 'Jim Wheaton is the man ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... life as it comes. And so he had joined the party at the gaming-table, where one of the winners was just then standing treat for a battery of Veuve Clicquot, and as he slowly sipped the delicious beverage, the bubbles rising like rosy pearls from the depths of his chalice, he smiled with self-satisfaction. ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... diamonds displayed to have done excellent service if the proper background had been provided. Claire was further annoyed to discover that her mother was regarding the situation with a certain ruffling self-satisfaction which she took no pains to conceal. Mrs. Robson bowed and smirked, and even called gaily to every one within easy range. There was something distasteful in her mother's sudden and almost ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... useful office of Vice-Chamberlain. Next to him is Sir H. Selwin-Ibbetson, Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, and whom I have heard genially described as "one of the prosiest speakers in the House." Next to him, with a paper in his hand and a smirk of supreme self-satisfaction on his face, is Mr. ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... Patricia's chair. Then, he dropped down upon a vacant one that was beside her, and, resting one elbow on the table, peered inquiringly into the girl's flushed face, more beautiful than ever in her excitement. That strange feeling of exhilaration was still upon her, and there was undoubted triumph and self-satisfaction depicted in ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... result of experience and observation. M—— told me, after dining with Dickens immediately on his return, that one thing that had disgusted him was the almost universal want of conscience upon money matters in America; and the levity, occasionally approaching to something like self-satisfaction, for their "sharpness," which he had repeated occasions of observing, in your people when speaking of the present disgraceful condition of their finances and deservedly degraded state of their national credit.... But I do hope (because I have a friend's and not a "foe's" heart towards your ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... after-dinner light. Not a gross or a selfish man, for he was as good-natured as he was contented, and gave very freely of his substance; it was simply his part in the world to enjoy the product of other men's labour and to set an example of glorious self-satisfaction. Egremont, in certain moods, had tried to despise Mr. Tyrrell, but he never quite succeeded. Nor indeed was the man contemptible. Had you told him with frank conviction that you deemed him a poor sort of phenomenon, he would have shaken the ceiling ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... early, and preferred to wait outside until I had finished eating my supper. Then, with that deep self-satisfaction which predominated in my soul, even over its appreciation of the novel and amusing, I donned my seal-brown cloak, and stepping out of the door, gathered up my skirts, and smiled at Mr. Lovell with a pair of seal-brown ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... sometimes comes over a vigorous and wilful child. Suddenly it seems to have grown up, to have begun to weigh its powers and consider its possible deficiencies. There was a time when American confidence and self-satisfaction seemed impregnable; at the slightest qualm of doubt America took to violent rhetoric as a drunkard resorts to drink. Now the indictment I have drawn up harshly, bluntly and unflatteringly in Sec. 4 would receive the endorsement of American after American. The falling birth-rate of all the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... angels, for they have wings and are seated in the clouds; but there is nothing ethereal in their whole nature. We have no love for asceticism; but a few hours on the column of St. Simon Stylites, or a temporary diet of locusts and wild honey, might have purified Sir Charles's exuberant self-satisfaction. For all this, he is not without a certain solid merit, and the persons by whom he is surrounded—on whom we have not space to dwell—have a large share of the vivacity which amuses us in the real men and women of their time. Their talk may not be equal to that in Boswell's 'Johnson;' but ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... hef peen in London myself," said Mackenzie in somewhat of an injured tone; and then he added with a touch of self-satisfaction, "and I hef been in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... was getting low as the Rat sculled gently homewards in a dreamy mood, murmuring poetry-things over to himself, and not paying much attention to Mole. But the Mole was very full of lunch, and self-satisfaction, and pride, and already quite at home in a boat (so he thought), and was getting a bit restless besides: and presently he said, "Ratty! Please, I ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... excellent example and should be followed by every state in the Union and every civilized country as well. It is greatly to the credit of the Western State that it is one of the first officially to recognize the primary importance of this problem and to realize that facts, no matter how fatal to self-satisfaction, must be faced. This survey, authorized by the state legislature, and carried out by the University of Oregon, in collaboration with Dr. C. L. Carlisle of the Public Health service, aided by a large number of volunteers, shows that only a small percentage of mental defectives and morons are ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... finished, and his childish delight seemed to know no bounds. He danced and shouted, ran in and out, walked round the hut, and then strutted up to us full of self-satisfaction, his tongue going all the while, and evidently feeling highly delighted at our smiles ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... found the proprietor of the rooming-house and engaged a room in the rear of the building, overlooking the yard. The layout was eminently satisfactory to Captain Byrne and it was with a feeling of great self-satisfaction that he descended ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the appearance of Madame La Tour, the outer door again clanked, and Klussman stepped into the hall. His big presence had instant effect on Le Rossignol. Her music tinkled louder and faster. The playing sprite, sitting half on air, gamboled and made droll faces to catch his eye. Her vanity and self-satisfaction, her pliant gesture and skillful wild music, made her appear some soulless little being from the woods who ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... to expect has lost the crowning grace of nature. The men who walked in Cornelius Agrippa's visionary gardens had probably no more pleasurable emotion than that of a shallow wonder, or an equally shallow self-satisfaction in thinking they had hit upon the secret of the thaumaturgy; but to a tree that has grown as God willed we come without a theory and with no botanical predilections, enjoying it simply and thankfully; or the Imagination recreates for us its past summers and winters, the ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... honor rarely accorded at the assembly. In the evening a delightful reception was given to the three ladies in the Hall of Philosophy. Dr. Buckley made his reply the next day to an audience so cold that even his supreme self-satisfaction was disturbed. If any one thing ever has been demonstrated at Chautauqua, by those speeches and all preceding and following them on the same question, it is that the sentiment of the vast majority of the people ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... whatever we can here gain by labours and watchings and fastings and prayers, let us commend it all with Christ to the Father; let us pour it back again into the fountain, whence it flowed forth for us; and let nothing be left in us of empty self-satisfaction, no seeking after human praise or honour or reward. But whatever our God hath been willing to do in us, let us return it back into His own hands and say, "We are nothing of ourselves. It is He who made us, and not we ourselves. All ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... as if he were tracking some one. There was a smug expression about the mouth—he looked like a merchant who has just done a good stroke of business, or a bachelor emerging from a boudoir in the best of humors with himself; and in Paris this is the highest degree of self-satisfaction ever ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... health, and youth?—Another thought for Lent. "Charity boasts not herself." Alas! alas! my friends, are not the best of us apt to make much of the little good we do,—to pride ourselves on the petty kindnesses we shew,—to be puffed up with easy self-satisfaction, just as charity is NOT puffed up?— Another Lenten thought. "Charity does not behave herself unseemly;" is never proud, noisy, conceited; gives every man's opinion a fair, kindly hearing; making allowances for all mistakes. Have we done so?—Then there is another thought ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... a black cat sunning herself on the top of the gatepost there was no sign of life about the place. My thoughts went back to Joyce, and I wondered how the dinner party at the Savoy had gone off. I could almost see George sitting at one side of the table with that insufferable air of gallantry and self-satisfaction that he always assumed in the presence of a pretty girl. Poor, brave little Joyce! If the pluck and loyalty of one's friends counted for anything, I was certainly as well off as any one ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... men and women have asked themselves the same question when they have been unexpectedly stirred by a great love. The sense of unworthiness comes with a shock of surprise that seems violently to tear open the comfortable cloak of self-satisfaction. I had been content with my life, even a little vain of my achievement, until that last conversation with Anne; now I loathed the thought of my own inefficiency and all my prospects of success appeared unendurably tame. I was in the spiritual ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... inevitable punishment, not by rough words, but by kindly counsel. When he eventually doffed his uniform he had nothing with which to reproach himself; no neglect and no overstepping of duty, no injustice and no improper leniency; he had good cause for self-satisfaction. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... the appearance of sullen despondency, a sense of oppression, and a disposition to resistance. The looks of Wamba, on the other hand, indicated, as usual with his class, a sort of vacant curiosity, and fidgetty impatience of any posture of repose, together with the utmost self-satisfaction respecting his own situation, and the appearance which he made. The dialogue which they maintained between them, was carried on in Anglo-Saxon, which, as we said before, was universally spoken by the inferior classes, excepting the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... you never see, except by sheer accident, as in the American hotel. She is an important and prominent personage in the English inn. She is a kind of mistress of the robes, and exercises her prerogative with much conscious dignity and self-satisfaction; and, what is better, with great satisfaction to yourself. No other subordinate official or servant trenches or poaches upon her preserves. She it is who precedes you up stairs with a candle, on a ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... into conceit and blind self-satisfaction. The superior, patronizing air of many Americans, their insufferable boasting and dogmatism, does more, perhaps, to prejudice foreigners against us than any other thing. We must teach international good manners, a becoming modesty, a generosity toward the prejudices of others, and ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... trusting in his riches to get him in, could enter the kingdom. That would be too absurd. The money- confident Jew might hope that, as his riches were a sign of the favour of God, that favour would not fail him at the last; or their possession might so enlarge his self-satisfaction that he could not entertain the idea of being lost; but trust in his riches!—no. It is the last refuge of the riches-lover, the riches-worshipper, the man to whom their possession is essential for his peace, to say he does not trust in them to take him into life. Doubtless the man ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... Ben's decent, well-controlled self-satisfaction, which almost amounts to dignity, is gone like a puff of smoke, at the word "Shanghai." Poor fellow! He once had the hen-fever badly, and he don't like to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... in the city, who controlled immense organizations, and held the threads of multifarious interests, he was very human at bottom, and Smith liked him all the better for the glow of self-satisfaction that shone upon his face at this ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... and they may want us to go whether we're ready or not. They sent off a regiment that had neither arms nor uniforms and couldn't even keep step, the other day. I've an idea we are going pretty soon." He took Ailsa's offered hand, looked at her a little earnestly, smiled in self-satisfaction, and went ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... self-consciousness, and expresses man's sense of the infinitude of his own faculties. Man learns about himself through what is objective to him, but the object only serves to bring out what is in him; his own nature becomes the absolute to him. Consciousness marks the self-satisfaction, self-perfection of man, that all truth is in him. As feeling is the cause of the outward world, or of that notion of it man has, it becomes the organ of religion. The nature of God is nothing else than an expression of the nature of feeling. As man lives mainly in feeling, finds there the sources ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... as he felt inclined for swagger at this moment, could not avoid showing his triumph, especially just after such humiliating remarks as those of Hippolyte. A smile of self-satisfaction beamed on his face, and Varia too ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... thrown back to his knees with a loud noise. And he stared at us with such a pleasantly surprised look, as though he really could not understand why he was so lucky in his affairs with women. His stout, red face was radiant with happiness and self-satisfaction, and he kept on licking his lips ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... And though it is true He said once that He had not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance, He did not thereby mean to suggest that there really are some righteous persons who have no need of repentance; rather was He seeking by the keenness of His Divine irony to pierce the hard self-satisfaction of men whose need was greater ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... one may succeed in dulling the pain as by some drug or anodyne; but the lesson of life is thereby deferred. Why should one so faint-heartedly persist in making choice of experiences, in welcoming what is pleasant, what feeds our vanity and self-satisfaction, what gives one, like the rich fool, the sense of false security of goods stored up for the years? We are set in life to feel insecure, or at all events to gain stability and security of soul, not to prop up our failing ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... terrible if not more merciless. Such women almost always find material to torment close at hand. Sometimes in the form of a dependent relative, sometimes a servant-girl, sometimes a weakly daughter, and this constant wreaking of a contemptuous spite upon one object produces a self-satisfaction which is mistaken for cheerfulness, an inward pleasure in hatred, which appears outwardly ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... writing-table with pens, ink, and blotting-paper, and the bar with all sorts of eatables, magnificent urns, coloured glass, etcetera. About one o'clock William, our barman, tasted the coffee. His usual expression of self-satisfaction gave place to one of horror. He tasted the coffee again. The look of horror deepened. He ran to the boiler, and the mystery was cleared up. The boiler had been filled with salt-water! Our Arab, Ibraim, who carries up seawater daily to ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... just what I mean,' said Mr. Whiston with self-satisfaction. 'My dear Rose, if I had been alone, I might perhaps have talked a little, but with you it was impossible. One cannot be too careful. A man like that will take all sorts of liberties. One has to keep such people ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... early period of the settlements upon the Atlantic seaboard will find in this journal much of suggestive and pertinent contribution. Danckaerts viewed his surroundings through the eyes of a fanatical self-satisfaction. For this reason his criticisms or strictures upon persons and conditions are to be received with much discount. But he was an intelligent man, and a keen-eyed and assiduous note-taker; and the variety and fecundity ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... to come of them, must inspire a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the real canting person of the scene—for the hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends, but his brother's professions of a good heart centre in down-right self-satisfaction) must be loved, and Joseph hated. To balance one disagreeable reality with another, Sir Peter Teazle must be no longer the comic idea of a fretful old bachelor bridegroom, whose teazings (while King acted it) were evidently as much played off at you, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
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