"Complacently" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... After watching complacently as poor Ponto gnawed away with somewhat languid jaws, till the bone was scraped almost clean, he again set out in search of another. After he had brought in several, he lay down as before by his friend's ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... upon the house where he proposed to dwell that he seemed to know every crimson eave of it, every flower in the trim garden, the settle by the porch where he should sit and smoke his pipe and drain his can and listen to the booming of the bees, while he complacently savored the after-taste of discreditable adventures. He knew it so well in his mind that he had half come to believe that it really existed, that he had always owned it, that it truly awaited his home-coming, and his feeling as he ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... shabby emotions, sneaking vanities, contemptible ambitions. All of us must often feel with regret that he allowed himself to be made too unhappy by the spectacle of failings so common in the world he knew best, that he dwelt on them too long and lashed them too complacently. One hopes never to read "Lovel the Widower" again, and one gladly skips some of the speeches of the Old Campaigner in "The Newcomes." They are terrible, but not more terrible than life. Yet it is hard to understand how Mr. Ruskin, for example, can let such scenes and characters ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... apparently possessed a combination of business shrewdness and brusque frankness that strongly impressed his landlord. "You see, Rosey," said Nott, complacently describing the interview to his daughter, "when I sorter intimated in a keerless kind o' way that sugar kettles and hair dye was about played out ez securities, he just planked down the money for two months in advance. 'There,' sez he, 'that's your security—now ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... along rapidly to the chicken-yard where grossly self-satisfied hens scratched in trash and filth undiscriminatingly, and complacently called their families to share what they had found there, or indeed at times apparently to admire them for having found nothing. Marise stood regarding them with a composed, ironic eye. It was good, she ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... morrow, Dame Lyngern," complacently remarked the lady whose heart lay bleeding. "Be that your ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... have ventured under her daughter's observant eyes. Like many people who defy public opinion in large matters, she was acutely sensitive to criticism over trifles. Aspersions of her character she accepted philosophically, almost complacently indeed, because of her inward conviction that they were indirectly a tribute paid by jealousy to her superior fascinations. But a suggestion that a dress was unbecoming would make ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... fair healthful creatures clinging to him, thoughtless of their past loss, unconscious of that which impended. Little Owen, after one good stare, evidently recognized a friend in Miss Charlecote, and let her seat him upon her knee, listening to her very complacently, but gazing very hard all the time at her, till at last, with an experimental air, he stretched one hand and stroked the broad golden ringlet that hung near him, evidently to satisfy himself whether it really was hair. Then he found his way to her watch, a pretty ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... prudent one," Maggie added, complacently. "I've made my currant jelly, and it jellied beautifully: it always does if I make it before the Fourth and the showers that come about this time. It's queer, but a rain on the currants after they are fairly ripe almost ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... artists whose main work was, or is still, done for the time-honoured miscellany of Mr. Punch. So familiar an object is "Punch" upon our tables, that one is sometimes apt to forget how unfailing, and how good on the whole, is the work we take so complacently as a matter of course. And of this good work, in the earlier days, a large proportion was done by Mr. Doyle. He is still living, although he has long ceased to gladden those sprightly pages. But it was to "Punch" that he contributed his masterpiece, the "Manners and Customs of ye Englyshe," ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... fortune by wild speculation, extravagance of living, or lack of energy, and you will find that he vindicates his wonderful self-love by confounding the steps which he took indiscreetly with those to which he was forced by 'circumstances,' and complacently regarding himself as the victim of ill-luck. Go visit the incarcerated criminal, who has imbued his hands in the blood of his fellow-man, or who is guilty of less heinous crimes, and you will find that, joining the temptations which ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... "Whitefellow brother belong it to blackfellow."* Neither had the piece of tobacco, which he had put in the stranger's mouth, any effect in bringing intelligible words out of it, although the poor fellow complacently chewed the bitter weed. He readily ate some bread which was given him, and on presenting him with a halfpenny he signified by gesture that he should wear it at his breast, a fashion of the natives nearer the colony. I placed in his hand a small tomahawk, the most valuable of gifts to his tribe; ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... vapours," and there is "the exquisite depth and palpitating tenderness of the blue with which they are islanded." Thus islanded in tenderness, what wonder is it if Ixion embraced a cloud? Let not the modern lover of nature entertain such a thought; "Bright Ph[oe]bus" is no minor canon to smile complacently on the matter; he has a jealousy in him, and won't let any be in a melting mood with the clouds but himself; he tears aside your curtains, and steam-like rags of capricious vapour—"the mouldering sun, seeming not far away, but burning like a red-hot ball beside you, and as if you could reach it, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... execution, it could not be surpassed. Yet hardly elsewhere has the great master approached so near to positive vulgarity as here in the conception of the fair Europa as a strapping wench who, with ample limbs outstretched, complacently allows herself to be carried off by the Bull, making her appeal for succour merely pour la forme. What gulfs divide this conception from that of the Antiope, from Titian's earlier renderings of female loveliness, ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... made you any other answer. I do feel injured—at your having been willing. If you were to go to papa, my dear, you would have to stop coming to me." Marian put it thus, indefinably, as a picture of privation from which her companion might shrink. Such were the threats she could complacently make, could think herself masterful for making. "But if he won't take you," she continued, "he shows ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... lighted by a ghostly lantern in the hands of a man who, ten hours before, had been a prisoner within these very walls, came up to the narrow grating that served as a door and gazed complacently upon the ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... replied complacently, "and the moon'll rise earlier to-night than he did last night. Ef 'tes clear moonlight we c'n zee. Ef tes'n, we must be up as zoon as ther's any light and find et afore anybody ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... they had," she complacently assured him. "I want you to meet some friends of mine, Johnny." And, with vast pride in her acquaintanceship with all parties concerned, she introduced him to Constance and ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... Strain, complacently stroking his moustache, and seeming in no wise disconcerted by his rejection, "I had heard of your little difficulty, and it was with that in view that I called to offer you my protection. I thought if you were once ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... just laid yesterday," said Mrs. Sater complacently. "And I said to myself, 'Nice fresh eggs like these are too good for anybody less than a preacher.' So I brought them. There's just half a dozen,—he ought to eat that ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... stood me ma tea, includin' twa hot pies, an' she gi'ed me a packet o' fags—guid quality, mind ye!—an' she peyed for first-class sates in a pictur' hoose! That's hoo to dae it, ma lad!' he concluded complacently. ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... ashes out of his pipe, shared out the remainder of the wine between his host and himself, and, raising his glass, said, in a somewhat solemn tone, "To our youth, Hermann!" After emptying his glass at one draught, be replaced it on the table, and said complacently, "It is long since I have drunk with so much pleasure; for this time I have not drunk ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... The superior Anglo-Saxon who speaks complacently of "the native" forgets that during that same "once upon a time" when civilization was old in India, his ancestors, clad in deer skin and blue paint, were stalking the forests of Europe ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... whom I longed to be, shooting, or fishing, or riding. And I looked at the cat again. I remember it began to purr when I went near to it. It sat quite still, with its blue eyes fixed upon the fire, but when I approached it I heard it purr complacently. I longed to kick it. The limitations of its ridiculous life satisfied it completely. It seemed to reproduce in an absurd, diminished way my grandmother in her white lace cap, with her white face and hands. She ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... sported their dashed dresses with impunity. Competition between them, indeed, was about an end. Amelia claimed Mr. Sponge, should he be worth having, and should the Scamperdale scheme fail; while Emily, having her mamma's assurance that he would not do for either of them, resigned herself complacently to ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... child ever refused to be comforted by that glorious sense of being seized strongly and swung upward? I don't believe Ganymede cried when the eagle carried him away, and perhaps deposited him on Jove's shoulder at the end. Totty smiled down complacently from her secure height, and pleasant was the sight to the mother's eyes, as she stood at the house door and saw Adam coming with ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... ask your advice when the time comes," went on Anne, complacently. "You must assist me in selecting the most worthy ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... can afford to sleep till half-past three in the morning once in a while," Mrs. Stilwell said complacently. "Why, Mr. Morgan, that man didn't sleep under a roof once a month the first five or six years we were on this range! He just laid out like a coyote anywhere night overtook him, watchin' them cattle like they were children. Now, what's come ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... Trade, property, business, respectability, good form; these were the shibboleth they worshipped. It was just because she did not want to believe this of James Farnum that she had taken him with her to call on Marchant. It was in a sense a test, and he was answering it by showing himself complacently callous ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... seems? The vulpine intellect knows where the geese live, it is elsewhere said; but among Reineke's victims we do not remember one goose, in the literal sense of goose; and as to geese metaphorical, at least the whole visible world lies down complacently at his feet. Nor does Mr. Carlyle's expressed language on this very poem serve any better to help us—nay, it seems as if he feels uneasy in the neighbourhood of so strong a rascal, so briefly he dismisses him. "Worldly prudence is the only virtue which is certain of its reward." Nay, but there ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... his bushy breath. As the irons sank into his blubber, he raised himself a little, and exposed a back like a big ship bottom up. Verily, the skipper's words were justified, for we had seen nothing bigger of the whale-kind that voyage. His manner puzzled us not a little. He had not a kick in him. Complacently, as though only anxious to oblige, he laid quietly while we cleared for action, nor did he show any signs of resentment or pain while he was being lanced with all the vigour we possessed. He just took all our assaults with perfect quietude and exemplary patience, so that we could hardly help regarding ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... Empire a reaction against cosmopolitanism took place and a romantic enthusiasm for nationality spread over Europe like an epidemic. Blind, enthusiastic patriotism became the fashionable sentiment of the time. Each nation took to admiring itself complacently, to praising its own character and achievements, and to idealising its historical and mythical past. National peculiarities, "local colour," ancient customs, traditional superstitions—in short, everything that a nation believed to be specially and exclusively its own, now raised an enthusiasm ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... world. Things which puzzled my brain in waking hours were made clear to me in sleep, and I frequently felt myself blindly impelled to do or to avoid doing certain things. The members of my family, who found it impossible to understand my motives of action,—because, in fact, there were no motives,—complacently solved the difficulty by calling me "queer." I presume there are few persons who are not occasionally visited by the instinct, or impulse, or faculty, or whatever it may be called, to which I refer. I possessed it in a more than ordinary degree, and was generally able ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... supporting a prettily rounded chin on her hands, as she laid her elbows complacently on the wall,—"well, what did you expect? Did you want me to stand here all night, while you skulked moonstruck under a tree? Or did you look for me to call you by name? did you expect me to shout out, ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... look slightly Japanese. The child held a toy, and had a regular shock head of hair. The frizzed hair of many foreign children appeared very odd to Yoshi-san. He thought their mothers must be very unkind not to take the little "western men" more often to the barber's. He complacently compared the neatness of his own shaven crown and tidily-clipped and ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... Bill to go in an' fetch Neuman out," replied Jake, complacently, as he made as if ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... Mexican's nature. This hatred was after his own heart. Lablache was aware that such would be the case. That is why he made it. He was accustomed to play upon the feelings of people with whom he dealt—as well as their pocket. Pedro Mancha grinned complacently. He ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the doctor will find out," said Miss Custer complacently; and Hugh flung away his apple-core and walked on around ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... later, at the unusually early hour of nine in the morning, Victor Nevill was enjoying his sponge bath. There appeared to be something of a pleasing nature on his mind, for as he dressed he smiled complacently at his own reflection in the glass. Having finished his toilet, he did not ring immediately for his breakfast. He sat down to his desk, and drew pen, ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... mine and the two hectares (four acres four hundred and odd feet), aye," he added self-complacently, "and I have ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Fido! although your master seems evidently out of humor, he would not have kicked your beautiful spotted coat had he seen you! There, he caresses you—so fold back your long ears, and wag your tail complacently, while we hear what this impatient youth has to say, as he strides so ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... laureate of twenty, and is jesting with difficulty. Every man, says Johnson, has at one time or other of his life an ambition to set up for a wag, but that a man who had completed the Life of Johnson should in after years complacently refer to this character of himself and 'traits in it which time has not yet altered, that egotism and self-applause which he is still displaying, yet it would seem with a conscious smile,' is scarcely credible were it ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... to himself, as he smiled complacently; "she has never seen an officer in uniform before, and I frightened her with ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... absence of his grave monitor than he had been for a long time. It would be delightful, he thought, to go on living in this careless manner, alone with Arsinoe and the children, and now and again he rubbed his hands and grinned complacently. When the old slave-woman brought a large dish full of cakes which he had desired her to buy, and set it down by the side of the children's porridge, he chuckled so heartily that his fat person shook and swayed; and he had very good reason to be happy ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... woman myself, and having no husband to wait upon until it became natural, I used to feel somewhat vexed that he never served her, instead of receiving the best of everything so complacently. He never seemed to realize that she might be tired or needed a change of routine. That household revolved around him. Of course it was partly Nellie's fault that he had fallen into the habit of receiving everything and making no return. ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... Hood has done, which he calls Very Deaf Indeed? It is of a good naturd stupid looking old gentleman, whom a footpad has stopt, but for his extreme deafness cannot make him understand what he wants; the unconscious old gentleman is extending his ear-trumpet very complacently, and the fellow is firing a pistol into it to make him hear, but the ball will pierce his skull sooner than the report reach his sensorium. I chuse a very little bit of paper, for my ear hisses when I bend down to write. I can hardly read a book, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... looked down at those members complacently. They were encased in brown velveteens much the worse for wear, and in shape resembled a couple of sticks with a ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... announced on December 30th, that the committee would soon report a bill for three Territories on the basis of New Mexico and Utah; that is, without excluding or admitting slavery. "Climate and nature and the necessary pursuits of the people who are to occupy the territories," added the writer complacently, "will settle the question—and these will ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... subterfuge, and downright dishonesty an integral part of the game and entitled to absolution, had divorced Harlan's straightforward sympathies when the question came to issue between his own relative, complacently unscrupulous, and General Waymouth, heroically casting off bonds of friendship and political affiliations, and standing for what was obviously the right. It was chivalrous. It appealed to the youth in Harlan. His manhandling of ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... I had given him hints that I was afraid of being too late for dinner at my lodgings; and when the sight-seeing was at last ended, he very coolly and complacently said, "Now, if you really think you are too late for dinner at your place, I shall be under the necessity of asking you to go and take a plate with me." Those were the ipsissima verba. I could scarcely keep my gravity; but I replied, "Thank ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... of ordinary firmness and common sense one could make sure of doing exactly the same thing every day at the same hour. These doctrines, reverentially imbibed with his mother's milk, Tillotson (a model son who had never given his parents an hour's anxiety) complacently expounded to his wife, testifying to his sense of their importance by the regularity with which he wore goloshes on damp days, his punctuality at meals, and his elaborate precautions against burglars and contagious ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... Mrs. Caldwell smiled complacently, and went to bed in high good humour. She told Bernadine, as they undressed, that she thought Beth ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the effect of melancholy; but here appeared to have been contracted by his commerce with the Spaniards, who are remarkable for that severity of countenance. Understanding from Don Antonio that we were his countrymen, he saluted us all round very complacently, and fixing his eyes attentively on me, uttered a deep sigh. I had been struck with a profound veneration for him at his first coming into the room; and no sooner observed this expression of his sorrow, directed, as it were, in a particular manner to me, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... not enough of fighting. Of punishment I am a glutton, or so my friends are pleased to say. A brace of oxen, a drove of sheep or two, are enough for me," the Giant went on complacently, but forgetting to mention that the sheep and the oxen were the property of other people. "Where am I to put you till your friends come and pay your ransom?" the Giant asked again, and stared at Jaqueline in a perplexed way. "I can't take you home with me, that is out of the question. I have ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... assumed more the airs of a courtier—humoured the king. Perhaps like Sir Pertinax he had a theory upon the successful results of 'booing and booing.' He never contradicted; always smiled acquiescence; listened complacently to the most absurd opinions upon art of his royal master. Reynolds was bent upon asserting the dignity of his profession. He did not stoop to conceal his appreciation of the fact that as a painter at any rate he was the sovereign's superior—he would be, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... the beadle into a small parlour with a brick floor; placed a seat for him; and officiously deposited his cocked hat and cane on the table before him. Mr. Bumble wiped from his forehead the perspiration which his walk had engendered, glanced complacently at the cocked hat, and smiled. Yes, he smiled. Beadles are but men: ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... and daughter were almost wild with joy when he brought home this news. Never, surely, did so rich a capture swim so complacently into ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... has come into Brisbille's, and he does it complacently, for he is not above mixing with the people of the neighborhood. Here, too, are Monsieur Pocard, and Crillon, new shaved, his polished skin taut and shiny, and several other people. Prominent among them one marks the wavering head of Monsieur Mielvaque, who, in his timidity ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... shall never cost you any more," she would say, complacently; and revert to that question of absorbing interest, her trousseau, an extremely handsome one, provided liberally by Mr. Ascott. Sorely had this arrangement jarred upon the pride of the Leaf family; yet it was inevitable. But no personal favors would the other ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... with instant and delighted appreciation. The tiger gathered up the rest of himself upon his pedestal, wiped his face with his paw, like a cat, and settled down complacently with a pleased assurance that he had done ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... where they live," went on Baker, complacently, without attention to this. "You don't catch Little Willie scattering shekels when he can just as well keep kopecks. They've left a little joker in the pack." He produced a paper-covered copy of the new regulations, later called the Use Book. "They've swiped about everything in sight ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... and yielded. He carried the child away, murmuring to her, "Naughty, naughty 'ittie girl!"—a remark which Beatty, tucked under his ear, and complacently sucking her thumb, received with ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her bucket and kneeler. "Those steps do pay for a bit of extra doing," she remarked, complacently. "Since I've been able to give more time to them, they've improved ever so. You've no ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... with such vigour that the raw country troops, smitten with panic, threw down their arms and ran, 'carrying so infectious a fear with them, that the whole body of troops was seized by it and fled.' Colonel Digby followed, with all the horse at his disposal, 'till,' says Clarendon complacently, 'their swords were blunted with slaughter.' Perhaps the Royalists were more anxious to impress a salutary warning against the sin of rebellion than to kill the fugitives, for Clarendon finishes the account by saying that the rebels 'were scattered and dispersed all over the country, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... Fremin, who accompanied him to the door; and, when seated in his carriage, he read again the paragraph of Puck—that Puck, who, in the course of the same article, referred many times to the brilliancy of "our colleague Jacquemin," and complacently cited the witticisms of ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... aerie upon the surrounding hills the Confederates complacently viewed the magnificent pageant, mistaking it for a grand review. So secure were they in their apparently impregnable positions that we carried Orchard Knob and captured nearly the whole picket line before they realized that we were not ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... to be able to help yourself," remarked Lottie complacently. "There! mine's done; what do you ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... cares of a large family I might, in time, like too many women, have become wholly absorbed in a narrow family selfishness, had not my friend been continually exploring new fields for missionary labors. Her description of a body of men on any platform, complacently deciding questions in which woman had an equal interest, without an equal voice, readily roused me to a determination to throw a firebrand into ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... complacently, "was my final argument, my crowning effort, or peroratio, as the orators have it. For, coz, since all thoughts are things, you have but to think a pair of herrings, and then conjure up a pottle of milk wherewith ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... from which it would be in danger of sliding off, if its houses were not mortised into the solid rock. This makes the house-foundations secure, but the labor of blasting out streets is considerable. We note these things complacently as we toil in the sun up the hill to the Victoria Hotel, which stands well up on the backbone of the ridge, and from the upper windows of which we have a fine view of the harbor, and of the hill opposite, above Carleton, where there is the brokenly truncated ruin of a round stone ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... watch one another suspiciously, after the manner of Britons. The first, who is elderly, removes his hat and displays an abundance of strong grizzled hair, which he surveys complacently in a mirror. The second, a younger man, seems reluctant to uncover until absolutely ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... to disturb nobody; Bunn, self-centred, cropped his salad complacently; the Vandyck beards wagged; another critic or two left, stern slaves to ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... dinner to strengthen us for the labors of the field," said Silas Wilson complacently, as he rose from the table. "Come, Bert, now let us get to work to make ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... drink I shall ever want," he told Rod complacently, "but I rejoice to know I have lived to see the day when a French army has made the German beast turn tail and run. My father died before Paris many years ago, and I have prayed for this glorious day to come. I am satisfied. I have done ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... "Old wiseheads, complacently smoothing the brim, May jeer at my velvet, and call it a whim; They may think in a cap little wisdom there dwells; They may say he who wears it should wear it with bells; But when Broadbrim lies flat, I will answer him pat, Oh! who but ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... from him. If he has a profession, he is to be driven from it. He is cut by the higher orders, and hissed by the lower. He is, in truth, a sort of whipping-boy, by whose vicarious agonies all the other transgressors of the same class are, it is supposed, sufficiently chastised. We reflect very complacently on our own severity, and compare with great pride the high standard of morals established in England, with the Parisian laxity. At length our anger is satiated. Our victim is ruined and heart-broken. And our virtue goes quietly to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... fire, she stood upon the rug and looked about her with evident satisfaction; then glancing at the three who were watching her, she nodded complacently, and said, ''ess, 'ess, 'ess,' while she held her little cold ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... to Britt with growing pain and indignation—pain at thought of Viola's undoing, indignation that the mother and her physician could so complacently join in the dark proceedings. "Of course, you took hold ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... Vanity. She is smiling complacently as she looks into a mirror in her lap. Her robe is embroidered with roses, and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... did say something to that effect, but my memory fails me so often; it is a great affliction. Well, it's a good thing your poor father has you left to comfort him. My darling Maud is my one comfort, I'm sure, while her father is away in those dreadful foreign places. Perhaps I spoil her a little," complacently; "but then I dare say," playfully, "that your ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... new milk will take that out!" complacently said the owner of the nose, watching Nattie's efforts to remove the ink from her ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... little textbooks, intended to teach and to popularize science, he complacently enumerates the happy modifications effected by that "sublime magician," selection as understood by Darwin. He evokes the metamorphoses of the potato, which, on the mountains of Chili, is merely a wretched venomous tubercle, and those of the ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... fellow, by Gad!" he thought, complacently, as if Sanine in a way belonged to him, also. Then he opened the gate, and went across the moonlit ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... which a woman can be guilty. This, as usual, is the result of envy and malevolence which never offered truce to the family of Augustus as long as any of its members lived. Many of the infamies which are attributed to her are evidently fables, complacently repeated by Tacitus and Suetonius, and easily believed by posterity. But it is certain that if Messalina was not a monster, she was a beautiful woman, capricious, gay, powerful, reckless, avid ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... most ears would have found harsh and discordant sounded pleasantly enough to the listening Timothy, who nodded his head complacently, wishing ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... the very air of the place, beaming from the trim white villas with their smart green jalousies, the tall hotels with crudely tinted flags flying from their roofs, the cheery little shops with their cheerier dames de comptoir smiling complacently on the tourists who unwarily bought their goods. Ladies in gay toilets, with scarlet parasols or floating feathers, made vivid patches of color against the green background of the gardens, and the streets were now and then touched ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... said Tammas complacently, "there's truth in what ye say, but the women can be managed if ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... about the middle of the afternoon, she was still smiling complacently at this good idea, and wondering how she might ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... a tale of Mr. Byars as would lead to a split in the kirk. When the town-house was locked on the club Tammas spoke out, but though the scandal ran from door to door, as I have seen a pig in a fluster do, the minister did not lose his place. Tammas preserved the Bible, and showed it complacently to visitors as the present he got from Mr. Byars. The minister knew this, and it turned his temper sour. Tammas' proud moments, after that, were ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... oak's broad shade, Lost in delightful talk, We rested from our walk. Beyond the shadow, large and staid, Cows chewed with drowsy eye Their cud complacently: Elegant deer walked o'er the glade, Or stood with wide bright eyes Gazing a short surprise; And up the fern slope ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... wrong-doing on the part of England it would probably have been cured long ago. But each generation, while freely confessing the sins of its fathers, has protested its own innocence and boasted of its own achievements, and then, with a pharisaic sense of rectitude, has complacently pointed to some inscrutable flaw in the Irish character as the key to the Irish problem. The generation which passed the Act of Union, oblivious of British pledges solemnly given and lightly broken, wondered what had become ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... to get on and—" Miss Hawtry was agreeing complacently, when she was quickly snapped off ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... tune of "Paddle your own canoe," was not sufficiently disengaged to remark her mother's companion. His eyes followed her with a keen, comprehensive glance, which Mrs. Rolleston observed complacently. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... The Davidsons hired a chair, and got that deaf and obstinate dependent of theirs, Widgery, to attend to it. Widgery's ideas of healthy expeditions were peculiar. My sister, who had been to the Dogs' Home, met them in Camden Town, towards King's Cross, Widgery trotting along complacently, and Davidson evidently most distressed, trying in his feeble, blind way to attract ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... virtuous living; his appeal to conscience was primarily the pressing on the heart of the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. When the heart is melted, the conscience will not long continue indurated. We cannot look lovingly and believingly at Jesus and then turn to look complacently on ourselves. Not to believe on Him is the sin of sins, and to be taught that it is so is the first step in the work of Him who never merits the name of the Comforter more truly than when He convicts the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Bainton complacently; "But if one of the names of a man 'appens to be Putwood an' the man 'imself is as fat as a pig scored for roastin' 'ole, what more natrul than the pet name of 'Putty' for 'im? No 'arm meant, I'm sure, Passon!—Putty's as ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... disregarded heaps; if he could always have in clear phantasm before his eyes the ignorant monk trampling on the manuscript, the village mason striking down the monument, the court painter daubing the despised and priceless masterpiece into freshness of fatuity, he would not always smile so complacently in the thoughts of the little learnings and petty preservations of his own immediate sphere. And if every man, who has the interest of Art and of History at heart, would at once devote himself earnestly—not to enrich his own collection—not even ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... lady took down the receiver and discovered that the telephone was in use. "I just put on a pan of beans for dinner," she heard one woman complacently informing another. ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... they had been getting under the former regime. This he managed by the common and fraudulent expedient of issuing bonds, and paying dividends out of proceeds. So long as the profits of these small stockholders were slightly better than they had been getting before, they were complacently satisfied to let Gould continue his frauds. This acquiescence in theft has been one of the most pronounced characteristics of the capitalistic investors, both large and small. Numberless instances have shown that they raise no objections to plundering management ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... was quick to see the wisdom of treating the proposition diplomatically. He tried to make it plain to the sheik that Miss Gray could not accept the honor he wished to confer upon her, but it was not Mohammed's custom to be denied anything he asked for—especially anything feminine. He complacently announced that he would come aboard that afternoon and ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... disreputable characters; they will be seen in the surf, attired in the most scanty and clinging drapery, and kindly aided to preserve their balance by the devoted attentions of the same companions. Mrs. Blank, meanwhile, will look complacently on, with the other matrons: they are not supposed to know the current reputation of those whom their daughters meet "in society;" and, so long as there is no actual harm done, why should they care? Very well; but why, then, ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... turned back complacently to the translation of her German novel, without giving another thought to the deep strong child-nature with which she came daily in contact. The persistence of her small adversary had, indeed, ruffled her serenity ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave
... Humor holds the glass, and we become the sport of our own reflections. But is it otherwise at home? Do not our personal presentments mock each of us individually our lives long? Who but is the daily dupe of his dressing-glass, and complacently conceives himself to be a very different appearing person from what he is, forgetting that his right side has become his left, and vice versa? Yet who, when by chance he catches sight in like manner of the face of a friend, ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... I swear to you there is not," said Anne—"I have trifled with the gallants of Francis's court, and have listened, perhaps too complacently, to the love-vows of Percy and Wyat, but when your majesty deigned to cast eyes upon me, all others vanished as the stars of night before the rising of the god of day. Henry, I love you deeply, devotedly—but Catherine's terrible imprecations make me feel more keenly than I have ever done ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... make a little speech of his own, in which he showers congratulations and prophecies of happiness upon the bride and groom, proceeding to particulars which greatly delight the young men, but which cause Ona to blush more furiously than ever. Jokubas possesses what his wife complacently describes ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... said Mrs. Harrison, complacently; "Totty's just a year old, but she's much larger than ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... must look complacently on this land. Politics have been a fruitful source of quarrels, misrepresentation, alienation, and division. The opposition parties are locally designated "snatchers" and "snarlers," and no love is ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... too high an office to give his language all the precision and exactness which science requires when monopoly is in question. What he so complacently calls a MODIFICATION OF ECONOMIC FORMULAS is but a long and odious violation of the fundamental laws of labor and exchange. It is in consequence of monopoly that in society, net product being figured ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... leaders to reconsider their action. He might have quoted the nursery rhyme, "Let them alone and they'll come home"; it would have been like him and in tune with a frivolous side of his nature. He was quite as irresponsible when he complacently assured the North that the trouble would all blow over within ninety days. He also believed that any display of force would convert these hypothetical Unionists of the South from friends to enemies and ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... accompaniments of an easy, prosperous home; for Tom had very clear, prosaic eyes, not apt to be dimmed by mists of feeling or imagination. Poor Mrs. Tulliver, it seemed, would never recover her old self, her placid household activity; how could she? The objects among which her mind had moved complacently were all gone,—all the little hopes and schemes and speculations, all the pleasant little cares about her treasures which had made the world quite comprehensible to her for a quarter of a century, since she had made her first purchase of the sugar-tongs, had been suddenly snatched ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... few in my time," assented the old gentleman, complacently. "And I hope to catch a few more yet. You folk who don't get up till the morning's half over ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... can afford to pay such salaries during the Fiesta," he answered complacently, taking a fresh sip ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... flesh-and-blood damsel. And Peggy did not like it; she did not like it at all, for, in her own quiet way, she was accustomed to queen it among her associates, and could ill brook the idea of a rival. She had not been happy at school, but she had been complacently conscious that of all the thirty girls she was the most discussed, the most observed, and also, among the pupils themselves, the most beloved. At the vicarage she was an easy first. When the three girls went out walking, she was always in the middle, with ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... Duchess trees always bear well," said Marilla complacently. "That tree'll be loaded this year. I'm real glad. . . ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... grace grew more and more in the sons of the Elect, and the young man had already professed "conviction," and voluntarily been received into the church. There he assumed, like an heir-apparent, the vicarship of the congregation, and it rather delighted his father that his son so promptly and complacently took direction of things, made his quasi pastoral rounds, led prayer-meetings, and exhorted Sunday-schools and missions. A priest knows the heart of his son no more than a king, and is less suspicious of him. The king's son may rebel from deferred ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... one of his buckets, and speaking with excusable pride. To TWEENY). Nor mine for nearly three months. It was only last week, Tweeny, that he said to me, 'Ernest, the water cure has worked marvels in you, and I question whether I shall require to dip you any more.' (Complacently.) Of course that sort of thing encourages ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... the 'Alexander and Diana' affectations, they were the language of the time: and certainly this generation has no reason to find fault with them, or with a good deal more of the 'affectations' and 'flattery' of Elizabethan times, while it listens complacently night after night 'to honourable members' complimenting not Queen Elizabeth, but Sir Jabesh Windbag, Fiddle, Faddle, Red-tape, and party with protestations of deepest respect and fullest confidence in the very speeches in which they bring accusations of every ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... said, complacently, "to be wife and mother to two such fine specimens of humanity! She grows more and more like you ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... preposterous matter at all damns a person, in my thinking, as a supreme fool. And yet this is, par excellence, the sort of tediousness in which devotees of culture complacently wallow. As if it mattered where Byron slips in "the great Renaissance of Wonder"; or where Rossetti drifts by, ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... end up,' observed Alfred complacently. 'No doubt he'll drink himself to death, or something of that kind, and then we shall have the pleasure of seeing a new tablet in the church, inscribed with manifold virtues; or even a stained-glass window: the last of the Eldons ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... Elspeth's things, rale guid furthy claes," said Mrs. Morran complacently. "And the shoon are what she used to gang about the byres wi' when she was in the Castlewham dairy. The leddy was tellin' me she was for trampin' the hills, and thae things will keep her dry and warm.... I ken the ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... "And now, Uncle St. Bernard, I'm going to drink to you. May you always have lots to laugh at! And may your prayers always come true! That rhymes, doesn't it?" she added complacently. "Do I drink all my wine now, or only ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... in the least as if we were miles away from any town or habitation," said Lady Runnybroke, complacently seating herself on a stump, "and I shouldn't be surprised to see a church tower through those trees. It's very like the hazel copse at Longworth, you know. Not ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... stand open on rusty hinges, and the court-yard has that look of placid cheerfulness which goes with the varied peaceful activities of farm labour and farm life. Chickens and ducks wander about it chattering complacently, an aged goat of a melancholy humour stands usually in one corner lost in misanthropic thought, and a great flock of extraordinarily tame pigeons flutters back and forth between the stone dove-cote rising in a square tower above the ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... I always do," said Molly, complacently. "I never remember stories or anything the right way, my ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... Usually Mrs Ffolliot accompanied him on his rare walks, but this afternoon he only decided to go out after she had left for Marlehouse. Like Buz, he sought the highest point of his estate, in his case that he might complacently survey ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... she complacently, "that is the truth. I am not stern enough. But fancy"—and here she went all over her calculations again, winding up with the assertion that we were a set ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... The next one evidently has the remnants of a harp in his raised hands. The third or central figure is supposed merely to have held a hawk upon his wrist; whilst the fourth seeks to extract harmony from a dilapidated bagpipe; and the fifth, with crossed legs, strums complacently away upon the fiddle. The ground floor of the quaint old tenement is to-day an oil and colour shop, the front of which is covered with chequers in all the tints of ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... had a very special reason for wanting to come here," Graemer explained. He had to be a bit wary of the starchy things too, though he still had a figure in spite of his weight. He was complacently vain of his prematurely gray hair, his fresh youthful skin and his dark eyes. He reminded one somehow of a husky widow, he was so feminine in spite of his size. He looked leisurely enough for a busy man. You wondered how he had time to manage so many player folk, write so many plays ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... at first a hairy brute, walking on all fours, has risen on his hind-legs and shed his fur; and you complacently demonstrate how the elimination of the hairy pelt was effected. Instead of bolstering up a theory with a handful of fluff gained or lost, it would perhaps be better to settle how the original brute ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... smiled complacently, with the knowledge of that thousand pounds backing him. "Want ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton |
