"Complacence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... girl seemed to have completely upset his equilibrium as a gambler—certainly it made him bet with the recklessness of a madman. And Frederic Fernand, glancing in from time to time, watched the demolition of Ronicky's pile of chips, with growing complacence. ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... Such complacence earned for M. de Lorraine the indignation of the King and his minister, the Cardinal. They waged against him a war of revenge, or rather of spoliation, and as the prince, being unable then to offer ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... Boswell rather gratuitously suspected his venerable teacher of having an eye to Taylor's will. It seems fairer to regard the acquaintance as an illustration of that curious adhesiveness which made Johnson cling to less attractive persons. At any rate, he did not show the complacence of the proper will-hunter. Taylor was rector of Bosworth and squire of Ashbourne. He was a fine specimen of the squire-parson; a justice of the peace, a warm politician, and what was worse, a warm Whig. He raised gigantic ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... spot. As he heard Jeff Saxton murmur, "Ah. Mr. Daggett!" Milt felt the luxury in the room—the fleecy robe over Claire's shoulders, the silver box of candy by her elbow, the smell of expensive cigars, and the portly complacence ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... passage, and Hanway, with his instinct to cut him off, had made a motion to draw the door after him; "this mountain air is so bland, even when it is damp." He paused on the dripping threshold, with his hands in the pockets of his red jacket, and surveyed with smiling complacence the forlorn, weeping day, and the mountains cowering under their misty veil, and the sodden dooryard, and the wild rocks and chasms of the gorge, adown the trough of which a stream unknown to the dry weather was tumbling with a suggestion ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... he saw. And to Henry's dismay, and to the Mayor's chagrin, and to Miss Mirabelle Starkweather's exceeding complacence, ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... Robert Herrick were nothing else they would still be indispensable documents upon that first and second decade of the twentieth century in America, when a minority unconvinced by either romance or Roosevelt set out to scrutinize the exuberant complacence which was becoming a more and more ominous element in the national character. Imperialism, running a cheerful career in the Caribbean and in the Pacific, had set the mode for average opinion; the world ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... his room, A scurvy traitor picture, And he smiled —Merely a fat complacence of men who know fine women— And thus I divided with him A ...
— War is Kind • Stephen Crane
... every one, in just this limited group. There was little malice in her pleasure at getting this glimpse behind the scenes in Rachael's life; she would repeat her friend's confidence, later, with the calm of a person doing the accepted and expected thing, with the complacence of one who proves her right to other revelations from her listeners in turn. It was by such proof judiciously displayed that Elinor held her place in the front ranks of her own select little group of gossips and ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... as Peltonville Center. There was a grimly commonplace and universal goodness everywhere, and the village was only saved from unconsciousness of its own perfection by the individual shortcomings of one of its citizens. Fortunately for the general self-complacence, however, the necessary revealing contrast was ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... swayed with some stateliness as his proud hands and legs performed their grand functions. But withal he bowed and smiled—with much condescension—and lifted his hat high from his handsome head, and when women passed he doffed it like a flag in a formal salute, and while his body spelled complacence, his face never lost the charm and grace and courtesy that drew men to him, and held them ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... regularity diffused a general complacence through the whole court, and the emperour imagined that he had at last found the secret of obtaining an interval of felicity. But as he was roving in this careless assembly with equal carelessness, he overheard one of his courtiers in a close arbour murmuring ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... library, also where you so suddenly called out my daughter's name, I yet know not. But now I could wish to convince myself of your ability to execute this task appointed to you, in the way I wish it and need it." The student here gathered full courage; and not without internal self-complacence in the certainty of highly gratifying Archivarius Lindhorst through his extraordinary talents, pulled out his drawings and specimens of penmanship from his pocket. But no sooner had the Archivarius cast his ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... 24, 1897, at the Waldorf Hotel, New York, there was held a political banquet intended as a most impressive function, but which has passed into history as a very ridiculous one. Big with self-complacence and puffed with pride, as it appeared in the brilliant lights and gorgeous appointments of the palatial supper-hall, within twenty-four hours the lacerating indignation of Mr. Watterson and the trenchant raillery of Mr. Bryan had let the tumid pretentiousness all out of it, and ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... warfare, until at last every root of pride, or self-complacence, or self-excuse, was utterly cast out. Yet did not Satan despair. Oh, he meant to have this poor sick, weak lamb, if he could get her; no effort should be left unmade. And when he found that she could be no ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... which stands for the highest human ideals, and for the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, we all are, or ought to be, members of the Church. "With charity for all and with malice toward none," we see no ground for self-complacence on the part of any branch of the Church, and no part of it which deserves sweeping condemnation from the rest. Doubtless it will seem to many that it is unwise to confess our faults, but the men at the front are ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... behind on the stairs; but hearing the door barred, he now came up on tiptoe, and Foster, winking to him, pointed with self-complacence to a piece of concealed machinery in the wall, which, playing with much ease and little noise, dropped a part of the wooden gallery, after the manner of a drawbridge, so as to cut off all communication between the door of the bedroom, which he usually inhabited, and the landing-place ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... I put in memory Theym for to kepe doynge my dylygence With dame Sapyence I dyd longe tary Whiche dyd me teche with partynge influence Of her delycate and doulcete complacence Than spake dyscrecyon anone to me In the presens of ...
— The Example of Vertu - The Example of Virtue • Stephen Hawes
... hear David thus commended by other women increased his value. If it did not make her love him more, it made her feel the pride of ownership in a desirable possession. There was complacence in her voice as she ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... nodded. "There's more in it than that," she said with a touch of complacence; "and there's no reason why there shouldn't be. It's good Mendelism that you should take after an aunt rather ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... for the German choice. There was safety enough for the moment in France and Flanders, and events justified Germany's confidence that no Entente attack in 1915 could seriously disturb the German lines. No such grounds for complacence existed on her Eastern frontiers. East Prussia was not yet free, and graver danger threatened the Hungarian ally on which the Prussian relied only less than he did on himself. Galicia was in Russian hands, and Russian man-power was thought to be inexhaustible. The menace on both ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... is the will of God, the way he has made things to be and to act, the way he wishes free beings to exist and to act. He has ordained the gradual discovery of truth. And despite the struggles of selfish tyranny, and the complacence of luxurious ease, and the terror of ignorant cowardice, truth will be more and more brought to universal acceptance. Some men have fancied their bodies composed of butter or of glass; but when compelled to move out into the sunlight or the crowd they did not ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... thought to himself. "She has succeeded in making all these beggars laugh at me." He mused that if he had another chance he would show her how disagreeable or detestable or scampish he was under some circumstances. He reflected ruefully that the complacence with which he had accepted the comradeship of the belle of the voyage might have been somewhat overdone. Perhaps he had got a little out of proportion. He was annoyed at the stares of the other men in the smoking room, who seemed now to be reading his discomfiture. ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... in his manner of preaching. He spoke fearlessly, without any apprehension of what critics might say, because he had acted before teaching, and he felt and had experienced all he said. The zealous preacher knew not how to flatter. Far from sparing sinners by complacence, he reproached their vices in forcible language, and attacked their disorderly conduct with great vehemence. The presence of the great of the world did not intimidate him; he spoke to them as plainly and forcibly as he had done to the common people; and, as all souls ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... by the choicest Latin—we are strongly disposed to try the effect of giving it full swing for once; and in idle mood, too idle to oppose ourselves to its tyranny, letting it carry us whither it will, in the hope that, in return for our complacence, it may in future suffer us to conduct our meditations according to our own pleasure, and give that sad and serious thought, which their merits demand, to the gravities of this life—to corn-laws and poor-laws, (of all sorts!) and the Irish ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... complacence. There was nothing now to cause me uneasiness. The prospect of being cooped up for six months might have been very unpleasant under other circumstances, but after the far more terrible dread of horrid death from which I had just been delivered, it appeared as nothing; ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... it were, in waxe. When Nature first framed him, she took a secret complacence in her worke. He is even her master-peece in irracionall things, borrowing somewhat of all things to set him forth. For example, his slicke bay coat hee tooke from the chesnut; his necke from the rainbow, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... upon the rail in an attitude of supreme complacence. "I may be the villain of the piece," he observed, "but I have no desire to be melodramatic. I have come over here to talk to you quietly and sensibly about the ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... little annoying habit, or weakness, or fault, they draw on the tank without being careful to keep the supply open, till they awake one morning to find the pump dry, and, instead of love, at best, nothing but a cold habit of complacence. On the contrary, the more intimate friends become, whether married or unmarried, the more scrupulously should they strive to repress in themselves everything annoying, and to cherish both in themselves and each other everything pleasing. While each should ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... streams, and that of the feathered songsters, to enliven their souls with its melody. The voices of spring, of summer, of autumn, were cheerful in their ears as the voices of friends, and even winter, with all his wildness and desolation, was not without a grim complacence which they loved. They were a poor, harmless, little community, so very humble and inoffensive, as to be absolutely beneath the reach of human resentment or injustice. ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... seen triumphantly telling his mates of his success; then, I would find myself feeling acutely conscious of the fact that everyone was despising me for my complacence Yes, grown sick beyond endurance with a yearning for some thing which it could not descry, my fifteen-year-old heart would dissolve in a flood of mortified tears, and there would pass through my ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... occur to him to doubt that her happiness fully equalled his. Stella was a woman and reserved; but she was happy enough, oh, she was happy enough. With complacence he reflected that if every man in the mess envied him, probably every woman in the station would have gladly changed places with her. Was he not Fortune's favourite? What happier fate could any woman desire than to ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell |
