"Complacent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a little later, Pretty Tommy presented himself, and found Mr Pinsent at his desk engaged in complacent study of a sheet of manuscript, to which he had ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... at a table in a restaurant. Dinner was over, and from all around them came the murmur of complacent and well-fed London. A string band of just sufficient strength gave forth a ragtime effort; a supreme being hovered near to ensure that the '65 brandy was all it should be. Of the men themselves little need be ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... going in. And in libraries, where reading was free, I always read to excess. The people around me glorified the habit (just as old songs praise drinking). I never had the slightest suspicion that it might be a vice. I was as complacent over my book totals as six bottle ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... the priest? Were all these Americano husbands as sensitive and as gloomily self-sacrificing and expiating? It did not appear so from the manners and customs of the others,—from those easy matrons whose complacent husbands had abandoned them to the long companionship of youthful cavaliers on adventurous voyages; from those audacious virgins, who had the freedom of married women. Surely, this was not a pious and sensitive race, passionately devoted to their domestic ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... be—great," said Knight, and flicked some ash from his sleeve with the complacent air of a man who has accomplished ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... very noble in the elevated manner in which the self-complacent triumph of genius, expressed by so many poets from Ennius downwards, is at once justified and chastened by the reflection in these lines. We see in them that the poet alludes to himself in the third person, and he repeats this style in the 'Elegy,' where, ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... the steward had plugged his spare coffee-pot and filled it; that the harpooneers had headed the sockets of their irons and filled them; that indeed everything was filled with sperm, except the captain's pantaloons pockets, and those he reserved to thrust his hands into, in self-complacent testimony of his ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... and they were married. Her treasured conscience did not prevent her from noting the jealousy of her young friends. A generous mind, perhaps, would rather itself suffer jealousy than be quick in suspecting, or complacent in causing, or precise in setting it down. But Mrs. Hutchinson doubtless offered up the envy of her companions in homage to her Puritan lover's splendour. His austerity did not hinder him from wearing his "fine, thick-set head of hair" in long locks ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... person fixed his eyes on Fanny Dover, and sung her an Italian love song in the artificial passionate style of that nation; and the English girl received it pointblank with complacent composure. But Zoe started and thrilled at the first note, and crept up to the piano as if drawn by an irresistible cord. She gazed on the singer with amazement and admiration. His voice was a low tenor, round, and sweet as honey. It was a ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... about the gayest and prettiest of the outpost villages in which old Dublin took a complacent pride. The poplars which stood, in military rows, here and there, just showed a glimpse of formality among the orchards and old timber that lined the banks of the river and the valley of the Liffey, with a lively sort of richness. The broad old ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Congressional and official dinners were served in a plain way, without any extravagant displays of plate, ornament, or variety of dishes. Mrs. Washington's levees always closed at nine o'clock. When the great clock in the hall struck that hour, she would say to those present, with a complacent smile, "The general always retires at nine, and I usually precede him." In a few minutes the drawing-room would be closed, the lights extinguished, and the presidential mansion would be as dark and quiet before ten o'clock as the house of ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... number of dances from Teddy—in fact the big fanciful "T" which Jane remembered so well in the spook letter, was scribbled all over her dancing card, while Judith accepted Ray Mann, a chum of Ted's, in complacent substitution. Ray was a capital fellow, with such a stock of chestnut hair he might have matched up pretty well with Bobbie, if her spare time had not been so filled in with Dave Jordan, also ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... rush of anthropological lore into her brain, a flare of indecorous humor. It was one of the secret troubles of her mind, this grotesque twist her ideas would sometimes take, as though they rebelled and rioted. After all, she found herself reflecting, behind her aunt's complacent visage there was a past as lurid as any one's—not, of course, her aunt's own personal past, which was apparently just that curate and almost incredibly jejune, but an ancestral past with all sorts of scandalous things in it: fire and slaughterings, exogamy, marriage by capture, corroborees, ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... response to a plaintive inquiry where to go, were severely told, "We don't know, but go down from here immediately." So they came down, crimson but giggling, and saw me (they said) roaming about with an expression at once wistful and complacent. ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... existence of such power in this twentieth century in the hands of single individuals, not selected from the mass for their special wisdom or humanity, is a stupendous fact which must give pause to any one who is inclined to feel complacent about modern industrial progress. In days gone by political power was as irresponsible as the economic power wielded to-day by Lord Rhondda; and it descended from father to son by hereditary right in the same way as the control over the lives of ...
— Progress and History • Various
... that this odd fish seemed from the very first to imagine she had accepted him as a follower. And he was quite prepared to follow. Nay, from the very first moment he was smiling on her with a sort of complacent delight—compassionate, one might almost say—as if there was a full understanding between them. If only she could have got into the right state of mind, she would really rather have liked him. He smiled at her, and said really interesting things between his big teeth. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... impossible to describe the timid yet triumphant, the half-appealing yet complacent, conviction of the girl's utterance. A moment before, Paul would have believed it impossible for him to have kept his gravity and his respect for his companion under this egregious illusion. But he kept both. For a sudden conviction that she suspected ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... was fine to see the faces light up with the pleased wonder & surprise of it. No one was indifferent any more; & when the singers finished the camp was theirs. It was a triumph. It reminded me of Lancelot riding in Sir Kay's armor, astonishing complacent knights who thought they had struck a soft thing. The jubilees sang a lot of pieces. Arduous & painstaking cultivation has not diminished or artificialized their music, but on the contrary—to my surprise—has mightily reinforced its eloquence and beauty. Away back in the beginning—to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... gratified himself with a few complacent thoughts. But when he stopped to think what a great haystack New York was, and how elusive was the needle which had escaped them now these three times, his spirits sank a trifle, and by the time he had ridden a half-block on his way back to Headquarters, he was at that low ebb of disheartenment ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... these huge, slow-moving creatures as warriors ... but warriors they had been, for thousands of their years, gradually building their culture and science until, apparently almost overnight, the wars had ceased. Since then the Hirlaji moved in their slow way through their world, growing more complacent with the passage of ancient generations, growing passive, and, eventually, decadent. Now there were only some two dozen of ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... lets in upon me the light and air through a heavy crimson curtain, near which I sit and scribble. I was just enlarging upon the necessity of resignation, while the frown yet lingered on my brow, and was writing myself into a more calm and complacent mood, when—another knock at the door. As I opened it, I heard Peter's voice asserting sturdily that I had "gone out." Never dreaming of my old enemy, I betrayed too much of my person to withdraw, and ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... brother of a youthful officer of mine in the china-closet and the grey old age of my pretty young bride, with a flower in her bodice, in the breakfast-room. As substitutes, I had four angels, of Queen Anne's reign, taking a complacent gentleman to heaven, in festoons, with some difficulty; and a composition in needlework representing fruit, a kettle, and an alphabet. All the movables, from the wardrobes to the chairs and tables, hangings, glasses, even to the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... inexplicable resentment against this complacent historical outrage suddenly took possession of Peter. He knew that his rage was inconsistent with his usual calm, but he could not help it! His swarthy cheek glowed, his dark eyes flashed, he almost trembled with excitement as he hurriedly pointed out to ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... such association. Northern sentiment toward slavery was complacent enough, even servilely so, but it might change. The South thought it had too much at stake to take the chances when the opportunity for absolute safety and permanent rule was within its reach. It resolved to make the whole country, ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... honeymoon wanes, you will find that you have aroused in her a sentiment of pleasure which you have not satisfied; you have opened to her the book of life; and she has derived an excellent idea from the prosaic dullness which distinguishes your complacent love, of the poetry which is the natural result when souls and pleasures are in accord. Like a timid bird, just startled by the report of a gun which has ceased, she puts her head out of her nest, looks round her, and sees the world; and knowing the word of a charade ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... Garry had begun to follow. When Joe drew down one corner of his mouth and puffed aloft an imaginary cloud of smoke by way of added vividness, his own laughter mingled with Steve's quieter appreciation. But his contribution to the conversation was not as complacent ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... Mr Welles, with a complacent smile, toying with his gold chatelaine, "I really could not have visited you sooner, under the circumstances in which ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... a grim laugh. "Everyone is well and complacent. I had been riding rapidly before I met you. My horse has been idle for some days, and I had to run the spirit out of him. Amy wishes to have a chestnutting party to-morrow. Won't ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... old gentleman had waked time enough to hear the last part of this discourse; at least (whether from that cause, or that he too was a physiognomist) he wore a look remarkably complacent to Harley, who, on his part, shewed a particular observance of him. Indeed, they had soon a better opportunity of making their acquaintance, as the coach arrived that night at the town where the officer's regiment lay, and the places of destination of their other fellow-travellers, it ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... a girl alive, certainly not an American girl, who is wholly lacking in some sort of ability. The parasite type (who is growing rare in these days, by the way, for it is now the fashion to "do things") either fastens herself upon complacent relatives or friends when deserted by fortune, or drifts naturally into the half-world, always abundantly recruited from ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... consummate self-satisfaction With which the young Duke and the old dame 195 Would let her advise, and criticize, And, being a fool, instruct the wise, And, child-like, parcel out praise or blame: They bore it all in complacent guise, As though an artificer, after contriving 200 A wheel-work image as if it were living, Should find with delight it could motion to strike him! So found the Duke, and his mother like him: The lady hardly got a rebuff— That had not been contemptuous enough, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... her trials began. The determinate and consistent form which her renewed character had assumed, was far from exciting any complacent feelings in the minds of her parents; and it became the more obnoxious to them from the preference she manifested for the preaching of Mr. Davis. They had brought up their family to the established church, and it distressed them ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... year more, thou shalt find me a husband. Many novios have I had already! Four serenades were made to me the night before I left Guadalajara, and on the boat—" She turned to the elderly gentleman with a complacent and pitying smile. "But"—she took account for the first time of Michael Daragh—"quien es el hombron?" (Who is the ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... hay that was the staple of the cow's diet. The cat was old now, and objected to the baby so strenuously that Dely regarded her as partly insane from age; and though she was kind to her of course, and fed her faithfully, still a cat that could growl at George's baby was not regarded with the same complacent kindness that had always blessed her before; and whenever the baby was asleep at milking-time, Pussy was locked into the closet,—a proceeding she resented. Biddy, on the contrary, seemed to admire the child,—she certainly did not object to her,—and necessarily obtained thereby ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... might fancy that Neptune having found a deserted ship, had clambered upon deck and sat him down to take a complacent view of his wide domains, ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... damned cautious to commit yourself. And you've congratulated yourself on your marvellous discretion ever since, I'll lay a wager. You hide-bound, self-righteous prigs always do. Nothing would ever make you see that it's just your beastly discretion that does the mischief,—your infernal, complacent virtue that breeds the vice you so deplore!" He broke into a harsh laugh that ended in a sharp catch of the breath ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... coarse hard beard; and his complexion was one of that kind which never looks clean or wholesome. But what added most to the grotesque expression of his face was a ghastly smile, which, appearing to be the mere result of habit and to have no connection with any mirthful or complacent feeling, constantly revealed the few discoloured fangs that were yet scattered in his mouth, and gave him the aspect of a panting dog. His dress consisted of a large high-crowned hat, a worn dark suit, a pair of capacious shoes, and a dirty white neckerchief ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... affairs were taking, as the Commissioners had always accommodated themselves to his plans. He found, however, that in this instance humanity had been aroused, and as it would not suit his purpose to run against his hitherto complacent friends, he thinks to appease their anxiety in the ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... retain a portion of his own lands. Lowther, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, got four shillings in the pound of the first year's rent raised under the Commission of "Defective Titles." The juries of Mayo and Sligo were equally complacent; but there was stern resistance made in Galway, and stern reprisals were made for the resistance. The jurors were fined L4,000 each and were imprisoned, and their estates seized until that sum was paid. The sheriff was fined L1,000, and, being unable to pay that sum, he died in prison. ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... and contemptuous. Was this smooth-spoken, oracular prince of the market-place a predetermined hypocrite, shaping his words to fit the money-gathering end without regard to their demoralizing effect? Or was he only a subconscious Pharisee, self-deceived and complacent? Tom's thought ran lightning-like over the long list of the Vancourt Hennikers: men of the business world successful to the Croesus mark, large and liberal benefactors, founders of colleges, libraries and hospitals, ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... complication of all these causes led us in our romantic moments to indulge in visions of a snug little fireside, garnished with an intelligent household cat, and a bright copper tea-kettle, with ourselves seated one in each corner, regarding the scene with the complacent gaze of proprietors; and we were only waiting till my father should fulfil his promise of taking me into partnership, to broach the said scheme to the old people, and endeavour to get it realised. But lately there has been a ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Thus the complacent, musing upper thought in the mind and on the lips of the proletary as he wended his way through the quiet and well-nigh deserted streets to the older part of the town. How much it might have been modified if he had known that ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... union of these two avocations—which to our narrow eyes seem incompatible—was needed to fulfil his ideal of complete and wholesome human activity. That young Polynesian chief had in him the secret to regenerate a world which has only a self-complacent smile for ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... blew it over into a field. Betty had been ready to put on one of her old play-gowns, as she still called them, but upon reflection decided that it would be hardly respectful when she had been invited to go visiting with such kind and proper friends, and indeed Serena had given her a hasty and complacent glance from head to foot when she came down dressed in one of the prettiest of the London ginghams. Mrs. Duncan, Betty's kind friend and adviser, had been sure that these ginghams would all four be needed to clothe ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... help it if girls will be silly,' was the complacent reply. 'Clara is all very well as a cousin, but I'd like more ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... I look on with a complacent eye at the sad spectacle of your young clerical friend, the Reverend Mr. Uttermost Farthing, abandoning himself to such gambols and appearing in the role of life and soul of the evening. Such a degradation of his holy ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... as soon as the complacent rogue gave him the opportunity to break in, "I want you to tell Joey and me just how it happened. ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... become wonderfully conceited as to its own progressive excellences, and the individuals who form the concrete entertain the same complacent opinion of themselves. There are, of course, even in my brief and imperfect experience, many exceptions to what appear to me the prevalent characteristics of the rising generation in "society." ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... retorts the critic, settling himself in his seat, with sullen but self-complacent immovableness. "And, as for my own pleasure, I shall best consult it by ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have beaten his wife and put a stop to it all. All they wanted was for him to insist on respect for his family. Mon Dieu! If she, Madame Lorilleux, had acted like that, Coupeau wouldn't be so complacent. He would have stabbed her ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... touching, when, at midnight, sweep Snow-muffled winds, and all is dark To hear—and sink again-to sleep Or, at an earlier call, to mark, 40 By blazing fire, the still suspense Of self-complacent innocence; ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... quiet complacency, though, which passes for peace, and is like the remarkably clear red-and-white complexion which indicates disease. It will be noticed that the sufferers from this complacent spirit of so-called peace shrink from openness of any sort, from others or to others. They will put a disagreeable feeling out of sight with a rapidity which would seem to come from sheer fright lest they should see and acknowledge themselves ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... game and scant! The Season's show Of Birds, in bunches big, adjacent, Will hardly take JOHN's eye, although The Poulterer appears complacent, Seeing, good easy man, quite clearly That rival shops show yet ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... or having been woken up by Sophie in her ungoverned ill-temper, de Feucheres acted with considerable dignity. He begged to resign his position as aide to the Prince, and returned his wife's dowry. The departure of Sophie's hitherto complacent husband rather embarrassed the Prince. He needed Sophie but felt he could not keep her unattached under his roof and he sent her away—but only for a few days. Sophie soon was back again ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... of expression. Satisfied, he smiled; dissatisfied, he smiled again. He smiled at good news and evil tidings; with slight modifications the smile did duty on all occasions. If he was positively obliged to express his personal approval, a complacent laugh reinforced the smile; but he never vouchsafed a word until driven to the last extremity. A tete-a-tete put him in the one embarrassment of his vegetative existence, for then he was obliged to look for something to say in the vast blank of his vacant interior. He usually ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... girls awaited Nan's return with some anxiety, but, to their amazement, she came bounding upstairs two steps at a time, all abeam with complacent delight. What a comfort it was that she had so ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... far-flung into the sphere that surrounds the story of the First. But even in the First Part, the happy issue is involved in the terms of Faust's compact with the devil. Only on the condition that Mephistopheles shall be able to satisfy Faust and cheat him "into self-complacent pride, or sweet ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... part of the morning," answered Abe, with an old man's freedom of tone and a complacent look backward at the patch of turned soil. "And 'might have been workin' yet but the children singin' their hymn yonder"—with a jerk of his thumb towards the wall that hid the school building—"warned me 'twas time to knock ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... at the scandalous tale that supplied the details, on the strength of which she analyzed the love that she had never known, and marked the subtle distinctions of modern passion, not with comment on the part of complacent hypocrites. For women know how to say everything among themselves, and more of them are ruined by each other than ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... tells us that moral progress cannot come in comfortable and in complacent times, but out of trial and out of confusion. Tom Paine aroused the troubled Americans of 1776 to stand up to the times that try men's souls because the harder the conflict, the more glorious ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Gerald R. Ford • Gerald R. Ford
... moment Jack felt like wrestling with him, shoulder to shoulder, to distance him, to defeat him, to lower his complacent pride. His half-patronizing manner had stung keenly. Then the real nobility of his nature cropped out, and he laughed at his ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... their praise of the Russian officers and soldiers, who have shown nothing but kindness and delicacy of feeling since their entrance into the fortress. This consideration strikes me as being utterly wasted on the captured officers, who treat the situation superciliously and are quite complacent in their ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... girl of wealth. She could only think how typical this was of Uncle Chris. There was a sort of boyish impishness about him. She could see him at the telephone, suave and important. He would have hung up the receiver with a complacent smirk, thoroughly satisfied that he had done her an ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... complacent tone it may be presumed that you see in it proof both of moral and intellectual improvement. Montesinos, I must disturb that comfortable opinion, and call upon you to examine how much of this refinement which passes for ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... type of public worker—a mixture of the mystical and the practical—was the terror of the Vienna delegates. He put spokes in everybody's wheel, behaved as the autocrat of the Congress and felt as self-complacent as a saint. Countess von Thurheim wrote of him: "He mistrusted his environment and let himself be led by others. But he was thoroughly good and high-minded and sought after the weal, not merely of his own country, but of the whole world. Son ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... we have hitherto enjoyed[131]. Men of the world, indeed, however they may admit the natural operation of natural causes, and may therefore confess the effects of Religion and morality in promoting the well being of the community; may yet, according to their humour, with a smile of complacent pity, or a sneer of supercilious contempt, read of the service which real Christians may render to their country, by conciliating the favour and calling down the blessing of Providence. It may appear in their eyes an instance of the same superstitious ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... clearly visible. It was they who moved the country, shaking its torpor like successive earthquakes. Risen against the conceit of riches, and the hypocrisies of Society, against unimpassioned and unimaginative religion, against ignoble success and the complacent economics that hewed mankind into statistics to fit their abstractions—one and all, in spite of their variety or mutual hostility, they were rebels, and their personality expressed itself in rebellion. That was the common characteristic ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... more and more every age," said Mr. World with a complacent smile. "The church and the world ought to be one and, according to the teaching of the Bible, how could this be better accomplished than by having the church come down to the level of the world, and ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... of woman! I suppose it has been developed like a cat's whiskers to supply the deficiency of a natural scent. Also, like the whiskers, it is obtrusive, and a matter for much irritatingly complacent pride. Judith regarded me with a mock magisterial air, and I was put ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... rest of this extract is an expression—which will be followed later by many like it—of the sense that people in the North were getting too complacent a notion of what had been done and what could be done for the ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... this is opposed the notorious fact of the remarkable propensity which children have to lying. This is readily admitted; but it does not meet us, unless it can be shown that they have not in the act of lying an eye to its reward,—setting aside any outward advantage,—in the shape of self-complacent thought at their superior wit or ingenuity. Now it is equally notorious, that such secret triumph will often betray itself by a smile, or wink, or some other sign from the chuckling urchin, which proves any thing but that the lie was gratuitous. No, not even a child can love a lie purely ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... But he thought of Mliss, and the evening of their first meeting; and perhaps with a pardonable superstition that it was not chance alone that had guided her willful feet to the schoolhouse, and perhaps with a complacent consciousness of the rare magnanimity of the act, he choked back his dislike and went ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... I had got rid of him at last, but I did not know my man. He returned a short time after, and addressing himself in a complacent manner to the ladies, as if I was of no more account, he told them that he had given the prince such a description of their charms that he had made up his ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and more extensive library of Dr. Priestley was left unnoticed and unlamented by the orthodox poet, who probably felt a complacent satisfaction at the destruction of heterodox books, the ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... this standing of yours; and all the more if you wish to believe that text, which clergymen so much dislike preaching on, "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God"? You do not believe it now, or you would be less complacent in your state; and you cannot believe it at all, until you know that the Kingdom of God means,—"not meat and drink, but justice, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost," nor until you know also that such joy is not by ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... have I done and said worse than other men?" Again Master Harold Lee Carter's complacent sentiment came to her. Men were all alike, only their women folk ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... grace and vivacity. They all have a charming young teacher, with whom they carry on a most romantic flirtation, that of course means nothing; and each one of these fair students, (who conscientiously puts a "g" to every termination possible, and who says monseer,) will tell you, with a complacent smile, that Professor —— considers her pronunciation unusually excellent. They are all studying in the blissful anticipation of a trip to Paris, where they will be presented to the Empress in yellow satin gowns, and then, when they return, how eagerly will ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... object of her search, Mistress Pauncefort settled herself before the glass, elevating the taper above her head, that she might observe what indeed she had been examining the whole day, the effect of her new cap. With a complacent simper, Mistress Pauncefort then turned from pleasure to business, and, approaching the couch, gave a faint shriek, half genuine, half affected, as she recognised the recumbent form of her young mistress. 'Well to be sure,' exclaimed ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... the outposts while the great field of influencing the reading of American children remains unconquered. Until we affect production to the extent that the book stores circulate as good books as the best libraries we cannot be too complacent about our position as a force ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... given a complacent glance to the long shelves of fiction, with which she expected to while away the rest of the summer. There would be other pleasant things, she knew, drives with Mrs. Sherman, long tramps with the ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Geer betook himself to the depths of his arm-chair, with the complacent consciousness of having faithfully discharged his parental duties. "She should not go to school. She would not be married. She had said she would not, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ivory tower and let the world go; live in one's ivory tower while brutal and detestable people tyrannise over the gentle and sensitive; live in one's ivory tower while the heavy hand of popular ignorance lies like a dead weight upon all that is fine and rare; live in one's ivory tower while complacent well-paid optimism whispers acquiescence in the "best ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... two or three complacent whiffs, gazed off over the moonlit river and then removing the wisp of tobacco from between his lips, smiled, and looking into the face before him, ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... after ring to her fingers. All were too small, however; most of them refused to pass even the first joint, and Gray realized now what Gus Briskow had meant when he wrote for rings "of large sises." Eventually the girl found one that slipped into place, and this she regarded with complacent admiration. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... German porter appeared to whom Winn felt an instant simple antagonism. He was a self-complacent man, and he brought Winn the ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... up his report, Narcisse Borel, rubbing his hands, cast a complacent look on the important capture he had just made, which delivered Paris from a band of dangerous criminals; but feeling of what utility Bras-Rouge had been in this expedition, he could not help expressing to him ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... their whole harvest on the stubbly plains, Gerb after gerb the bearded shock expands, Shocks, ranged in rows, hill high the burden'd lands; The joyous master numbers all the piles, And o'er his well-earn'd crop complacent smiles: Such growing heaps this iron harvest yield, So tread the victors this ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... consult history on such points must not depend on sundry battle steeds of historical critics, on their wise dicta and self-complacent terminology, but look at facts with his own eyes. There is, for instance, a certain day in the campaign in Silesia, 1761, which, in this respect, has attained a kind of notoriety. It is the 22nd July, on which Frederick the Great gained on Laudon the march ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... impossible," said Emerson, whom he loved and admired, "for a man not to be always praying." The relations of such men with the unseen are an inseparable part of their daily lives. Froude had no more sympathy with the self-complacent "agnosticism" of modern thought than he had with Catholic authority or ecstatic revivalism. To fear God and to keep His commandments was with him the whole duty of man. The materialistic hypothesis he rejected ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... fins of a sea-turtle. Small eyes, of no particular color, twinkled far back in his head. His nose remained buried in the mass of flesh which enveloped his round, full, and purple face; and his thick upper-lip rested upon the still thicker one beneath with an air of complacent self-satisfaction, much heightened by the owner's habit of licking them at intervals. He evidently regarded his tall shipmate with a feeling half-wondrous, half-quizzical; and stared up occasionally ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... half-dozen dusky musicians swathed in white and carrying various strangely fashioned instruments, with which they squatted down in a semi-circle by the opposite wall, and began to twang, and drub, and squall with the complacent cacophony of an Eastern orchestra. Clearly Fakrash was determined that nothing should be wanting to make the entertainment ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... Hollanders they were, and that is all. Scarcely the fact seemed worth the mention, so shortly it is told in a passing paragraph. For them no Europe was agitated, no courts were ordered into mourning, no papal hearts trembled with indignation. At their deaths the world looked on complacent, indifferent, or exulting. Yet here, too, out of twenty-five common men and women were found fourteen who, by no terror of stake or torture, could be tempted to say that they believed what they did not believe. History for them has no word of praise; yet they, too, were not giving their ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... left and then to right! Parry of quarte! In pronation by a turn of supple wrist! Parry in tierce! All elegant and smart; But the lethal thrust no parry can resist Comes not in this preliminary play. The defender, so complacent and erect, Will show another ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... however, once satisfied that a ceremony of some kind had been enacted, never regarded her as anything but his wife. The day after Fox, inspired by the Prince, had formally denied that any ceremony had taken place, 'the knocker of her door,' to quote her own complacent phrase, 'was never still.' The Duchesses of Portland, Devonshire and Cumber-land ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... would it be in this new business of cotton-picking? He had a strong element of cheerful fidelity in his nature. The first day he worked steadily and as rapidly as he was able at the unfamiliar employment. When night came he reckoned he had done well. With a complacent feeling he stood waiting his turn as the great baskets, one after another, were swung on the steelyard and the weights announced. He found himself pitying some of the pickers as light weights were called, wondering if they had fallen behind last year's figures. When ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... The jealous little—cats! No, it wasn't Eugenia Frazer who said it, it was Eunice Brice—but I'm certain she was at the bottom of it, for she sat with her nice smug little painted face as sweet and complacent as an angel, all the time it was going on, and she seconded the motion! Just like that! With a SMILE, too! She said she fully agreed with what Miss Brice had said. Agreed! H'm! As if every one didn't know she had started it, and got it all fixed up with enough girls to carry the motion ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... of all merely human justice? I had met with men whose whole life had been spent in constant warfare against society, and who had no other intention on regaining their liberty than to continue the struggle to the bitter end—the murderer; cheerful and complacent over the verdict of manslaughter; the professional garotter, in whose estimation human life is of no value, troubled only at being so foolish as to be caught; the polished thief and the skilled housebreaker, ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... look brought a blush to her cheeks; but she only laughed a little constrainedly, and murmured that she would try to be as complacent as the occasion demanded. Events were certainly in league to lend her wedding night a remarkably close semblance to the real thing. And as Curtis descended to the foyer to summon their waiting guests he decided then and there not to mar the festivities ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... on their legs; a rug was found and spread down before the fireplace; the colonel's sofa was got at, and unboxed, and brought into position; and finally a fire was made. Esther stood still to take a moment's complacent review of ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... they had boldly proclaimed their intention to capture Philadelphia, New York, and the National Capital, and had made several attempts to do so, and once or twice had come fearfully near making their boast good—too near for complacent contemplation by the loyal North. They had also come near losing their own capital on at least one occasion. So here was a stand-off. The campaign now begun was destined to result in heavier losses, to both armies, in a given time, than any ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... amusement of execution-seeing, and in the results. You are not only delightfully excited at the time, but most pleasingly relaxed afterwards; the mind, which has been wound up painfully until now, becomes quite complacent and easy. There is something agreeable in the misfortunes of others, as the philosopher has told us. Remark what a good breakfast you eat after an execution; how pleasant it is to cut jokes after it, and upon it. This merry, pleasant mood is brought ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Ermengard had no complaint whatever to make about her own trade fortunes. All her concern and conversation were for the numbers of women cloak makers who lacked her own wonderful strength. Successful without education, she was astonishingly destitute of the wearisome fallacy of complacent self-reference characteristic of many people of uncommon ability. During the past year she had twice been discharged for organizing the workers in cloak factories where she was employed. In the first establishment subcontracting had made conditions too hard for most ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... secure and sufficient answer. We are to respect our responsibilities, not ourselves. We are to respect the duties of which we are capable, but not our capabilities simply considered. There is to be no complacent self-contemplation, beruminating upon self. When self is viewed, it must always be in the most intimate connection with its purposes. How well were it if persons would be more careful, or rather, more ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... said that lady, sitting in state with the complacent consciousness of a new and more stunning head-dress than usual, "I'll tell you what it is, Isabel, I think Albert makes altogether too much fuss over Katy's affairs. He'll break the girl's heart. He's got notions. His father had. Deliver me from notions! Just let Katy take ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... the Leopard's heart Is filled with angry passion, Because his spots are out of date, And Zebra stripes in fashion! But other years, when fashion-books Say spots are all the style, The Leopard proudly stalks abroad With most complacent smile. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... approving things of them; to note individual excellences; to familiarise myself with their distinguishing traits; to listen to them in their petulance and anger, and in that sobbing subsidence to even temper; to their complacent gurglings and sleepy murmurs. One—and the most Infantile of all—not of the Family, has a distinctive note, a copyright tone which none imitates, and which becomes at times a sonorous swelling boom, a lofty recitative, for even an island has ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... alternate curves and graceful sallies, they pursue and circumvent each other. First one hops a few feet, then the other, each one standing erect in true military style while his fellow passes him and describes the segment of an ellipse about him, both uttering the while a fine complacent warble in a high but suppressed key. Are they lovers or enemies? the beholder wonders, until they make a spring and are beak to beak in the twinkling of an eye, and perhaps mount a few feet into the air, but rarely actually deliver blows upon each other. ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... charters, which contained positive prohibitions of slavery, and where liberty had been granted as a privilege; and the history of Paris furnishes but little support for the boast that she was a "sacro sancta civitas," where liberty always had an asylum, or for the "self-complacent rhapsodies" of the French advocates in the case of Verdelin, which amused the grave lawyers who argued the case of Somersett. The case of Verdelin was decided upon a special ordinance, which prescribed the conditions on which West India ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... by God's minister, and as a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God. A little later, seeing that, when such voluntary gifts came direct from the givers personally, there was a danger that some might feel self-complacent over the largeness of the amount given by them, and others equally humbled by the smallness of their offerings, with consequent damage to both classes, of givers, he took a step further: he had a box ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... on the butt of the revolver. It was an ultimatum. That which from other lips would have been resented as complacent insolence had to be endured with apparent calmness. Threatening him with all the consequences of a visit from the "big fella government," I hurriedly left, for I was not too ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... little villain exuded a smug, complacent cruelty. It was no use for the sheriff to remind himself that such things weren't done nowadays, that the times of Geronimo and the Apache Kid were past forever. Black MacQueen would go the limit in deviltry if he ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... did that," said Mr. Hoopdriver simultaneously, and speaking with a certain complacent concern. "I hope he ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... have. In one's own estimation, there may seem to be a knowledge of what is right, and a self-satisfied doing of it. There may be a painstaking attention to the forms of obedience, and a self-righteous content in doing the required things. Is this the underlying thought in Peter's self-complacent remark, "Lo, we have left all and followed Thee.[102] We're so much better than this rich young ruler who couldn't stand the test you put to him. We——"? Poor, self-confident Peter! When the fire test did come, and come so hot, how ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... Hamilton and De Rosen. But the true answer of the brave townsmen, when the King advanced too near their walls, was a cannon shot which killed one of his staff, and the cry of "No Surrender" thundered from the walls. James, awakened from his self-complacent dream by this unexpected reception, returned to Dublin, to open his Parliament, leaving General Hamilton to continue the siege. Colonel Lundy, distrusted, overruled, and menaced, escaped over the walls by night, disguised ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... however, the victory of Pinkie was a personal triumph. He returned to England in a halo of military glory and popularity, to receive new compliments and honours, and to assume the role of beneficent dictator with self-complacent confidence when Parliament met for the first time in ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... the space of two or three hours, when their engagements permit. Sometimes the reading is varied by mystical dances of a slow and solemn character, but all laughter, levity and exuberance are sedulously discountenanced, the aim of all present being to attain an attitude of serene and complacent ecstasy which enables them to invest utterances of the most perfect ineptitude with a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... unkind, With candour owns the bias of her mind, And asks of Fortune the severe decree T' enrich the happy Skew,[17] to ruin me. The fickle Goddess heard one-half the prayer, The rest was melted into empty air; For while she smiled complacent on the Skew,[18] On me she shed some trifling favours too. Sure Granville's luck exceeds all other men's Led through a sad variety of tens;[19] The rest have sometimes eights and nines, but he Is always followed by 'the jolly three;'[20] But the great Skew some guardian ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... questioning it appeared that Mopsey had been on a pilgrimage to the next neighbor's, the Brundages, to inspect their thanksgiving pumpkin, and institute a comparison with the Peabody growth of that kind, with a highly satisfactory and complacent result as regarded the home production. Nobody was otherwise than pleased at Mopsey's innocent rejoicing, and when she had been duly complimented on her success, she went away with a broad black guffaw to ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... obviously satisfied and in a way enjoyed all that a woman could wish for. The house was pretty; Farnam was indulgent and showed his wife a deference that Agatha liked. He owned a large orchard and had sufficient capital to cultivate it properly. George Strange was marked by a complacent, self-confident manner that his urbanity somewhat toned down. He dealt in artificial fertilizers and farming implements, and it was said that he never lost a customer and ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... with temporary and partial alleviations, until the overthrow of private capitalism. The popular discontent resulting from this experience was the provoking cause of the Revolution. It awoke Americans from their self-complacent dream that the social problem had been solved or could be solved by a system of democracy limited to merely political forms, and set them to seeking the ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... fellow-Indian, I cannot speak with confidence; of the malign operation upon myself of the same instinct, I can speak with somewhat more exactness, and with somewhat saddening recollections. The cases, indeed, where I have been exposed to the play of his humor exhibit him in so superlatively complacent an aspect, and myself in so painfully inglorious a one, that I refrain, nay shrink, from rehearsing the discomposing circumstances. I should be pleased if I could call to mind any instance which would convey some notion of the Indian's aptness ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... supposed to like, to be addressed. Macklin, who was not asy to please, was pleased. The lines, or as Quin insisted upon their being called, the cordage of his face relaxed. He raised, turned, and settled his wig, in sign of satisfaction; then with a complacent smile gave me a little nod, and suffered Lord Mowbray to draw him out by degrees into a repetition of the history of his first attempt to play the character of Shylock. A play altered from Shakespeare's, and called "The Jew of Venice," had been for ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Junction had its place in the world, and, perhaps, it was a more important one than that of many a complacent and opulent suburb. The heart of this little community did not center, as a thoughtless person might suppose, in the church, or the commandery, or the grocery store, or the school, but in the signal tower. It was the pulse of the section. ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... of her mother's pregnancy enraged the eldest girl. Mrs. Brangwen was so complacent, so utterly fulfilled in her breeding. She would not have the existence at all of anything but the immediate, physical, common things. Ursula inflamed in soul, was suffering all the anguish of youth's reaching ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... and probabilities, adducing proofs which other amateur detectives were equally ready to refute. The attitude of that timid man in the corner, therefore, was peculiarly exasperating, and she retorted with sarcasm destined to completely annihilate her self-complacent interlocutor. ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... the steps and skimmed undauntedly up them. She did indeed look angry and disturbed. Without any preliminary greeting she burst out into a tirade that simply took away her complacent foe's breath. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... had blue eyes, rather a fair complexion, prominent features, and a high, capacious forehead. His aspect was severe and forbidding; his voice clear and powerful; his action dignified, but neither graceful nor engaging; his tone and manners, although urbane and complacent in society, were lofty, and even arrogant, in the senate. On entering the house, it was his custom to stalk sternly to his place, without honouring even his most favoured adherents with a word, a nod, or even ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... treasures, and a lady in high, powdered hair, and no visible clothing, gazes astonished from the background. The contents of the report are not such as we are in the habit of expecting in financial documents, but are rhetorical and self-complacent. The ordinary revenues of the country are said to exceed the expenditures by ten million livres. As a matter of fact, no such surplus existed, but Necker was an optimist by temperament, and was moreover anxious to bolster credit. The ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... is—unmistakable. There was always a purring softness in it. He used to remind me at school of a sleek, complacent cat, and I hate ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... the hand at parting, and asked me why I did not come oftener to him. Trusting that I was now in his good graces, I answered, that he had not given me much encouragement, and reminded him of the check I had received from him at our first interview. 'Poh, poh! (said he, with a complacent smile,) never mind these things. Come to me as often as you can. I shall ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... a sombre resignation, a sad heart, patient bearing of the burden of a sad heart:—Yes! this belonged doubtless to the situation of an honest thinker upon the world. Only, in this case there seemed to be too much of a complacent acquiescence in the world as it is. And there could be no true Theodice in that; no real accommodation of the world as it is, to the divine pattern of the Logos, the eternal reason, over against it. It amounted ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... match for Theo," was Lady Throckmorton's complacent comment on the subject of the attache's visit, and the comment was made to Denis himself. "M. Maurien is the very man to take good care of her; and besides that, he is, of course, desirable. Girls like Theo ought to marry young. Marriage is their forte; they ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... complacent triumph, "Mrs. Quarles's identical honey-pot, full of her clean bright gold, and many pieces still encased in those tidy leather bags;" and his round eyes glistened again; but all at once, with a hurried look over his left shoulder, he exclaimed, involuntarily, in a very ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Sitting in complacent control of these overall complexities that must be met with automatic accuracy was the Starrett Analogue/Digital Computer, Optical Wave type 44-63, irreverently referred to by the acronymically-minded as Sad Cow, though more frequently as the ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... the hearty, imperious old fellow. The boys felt first class as they finished a repast that sent them on their way complacent and delighted. ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... unconscious justification for a low standard of Christian living. It were almost better for one to overstate the possibilities of sanctification in his eager grasp after holiness, than to understate them in his complacent satisfaction with a traditional unholiness. Certainly it is not an edifying spectacle to see a Christian worldling throwing stones at a ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... he said, with a boyish, complacent laugh, rising up to his full height. A young man nearly six feet high, with a scholarship in his pocket, how is he to be expected to take the law from his old grandmother as to what he is ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... irreproachably conscientious!... And complacent in the sense of his own conscientiousness, he crushed every one with it, his family, his friends ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... best black silk dress in an attitude subtly combining, with a kind tolerance for all who were so unfortunate as not to be Sarrions, a complacent determination to do ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... as if she should run wild as she heard Mrs. Merrifield's complacent remarks on having always thought so, and being sure that a few weeks of good air and good management would make an immense difference. The need of not alarming or prejudicing the poor little victim was all that kept Angela in any restraint; and ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... off to have her hair re-washed and rinsed, and came back ten minutes later, proudly complacent, to seat herself in the most comfortable stool and eat roast apple with elegant enjoyment. She was evidently quite ready to enlarge upon her latest feat, but the sisters had exhausted the subject during her absence, and had, moreover, ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... French chalk had been successful, and she wore her blue and white silk; Katherine, in her blue muslin, with ribbons to match on her smooth braids, wished her mother had been more impressed with the importance of the occasion. Charlotte was complacent in her white dress with a large ribbon bow on top of her head, in a new fashion just received ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... "militarism" we attach an opprobrious meaning; militarism is the more infamous in exact proportion to its efficiency. We have been at little pains to define it, and as to certain of its aspects are curiously complacent. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... brows came together in a terrible frown; the scar across his cheek and chin turned very white; and he glared under his eyebrows dangerously at the complacent Third Vice-President. His lips parted, showing his white teeth clenched tight together. He started to speak through his clenched teeth, and leveled his pistol straight at the Third Vice-President's breast; but at that moment a ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... unpleasant remembrance of similar plans on a previous occasion, which had resulted in many garments being unpicked, and then left in a dismembered condition until Marie and she had laboriously sewed them up again! This particular afternoon Mademoiselle Therese was in a very complacent mood, having just retrimmed her hat for the second time since its immersion, and feeling that ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... on me, sir—I will not fail you," madam responded, as, with a complacent look, she neatly folded the check and deposited ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... oddly. This blind and complacent husband, who had closed his eyes to all that was going on at home, was filled with virtuous indignation at Lantier's indifference. Then Coupeau went so far as to tease Gervaise in regard to this desertion of her lovers. She had had bad ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... motley of night-moths. Above all, the mystery of their tiny slits of eyes, drawn back and up so far that the tight-drawn lids can scarcely open; the mystery of their expression, which seems to denote inner thoughts of a silly, vague, complacent absurdity, a world of ideas absolutely closed to ourselves. And I think as I gaze at them: "How far we are from this Japanese people! how ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... artist who had laid bare with such subtle skill the flatulence of his sitter. It was a pretty revenge, very assuaging just now to Iglesias. For the real man, as he reflected, was not the man who sat heavily self-complacent in a library chair, exuding platitudes and pride of patronage; but the man who hung upon the wall forever ridiculous while paint and canvas should last. Thus would he go down to posterity! And to Dominic ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... was innocent, don't you know," he said, with a complacent smile "Fitzgerald's too jolly good-looking a fellow, and all that sort ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume |
