"Self-satisfied" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have the currycomb," said Amabel, who was very hot, and perfectly self-satisfied. Lady Louisa was in despair, but the Squire laughed. The ladies of his family had ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... second generation inevitably feels the influence, and the son of the sinewy and susceptible European becomes the languid, self-satisfied, and voluptuous Oriental. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... that. The opposite of loathsomeness is delightsomeness; and the opposite of wretchedness is happiness. Yes! but you will search all the Book of God and all its promises, and you will not find one single letter of them all addressed to the abounding and the gladsome and the self-satisfied. It is the poor man's market; and this market goes best when the poor man is not only poor, but poor beyond all ordinary poverty: poor, as Samuel Rutherford always was, to 'absolute and loathsome wretchedness.' Let him here, ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... good-tempered charity; for he was a priest of much learning, deep reflection, and rebuked opinions. The community over which he presided was so far worldly in its object as to keep the canons in constant communion with men, and he would not now have met for the first time one of those self-satisfied, authoritative, boisterous, well-meaning beings, of whose class Peterchen formed so conspicuous a member, had this been the first of the bailiff's visits to the Col. As it was, however, the Prior not only ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... self-righteousness and intolerance and the stern, self-satisfied militarism that arises naturally out of these things is to be made in a number of ways. The first is a sedulous propaganda of the truth about war, a steadfast resolve to keep the pain of warfare alive in the nerves of the careless, to ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... "the attraction of large bodies for small ones" takes on a new and heart-felt meaning. The beauty of devotion to truth in the face of opposition hardly stirs an emotion in many of us, as we regard it from the safe distance of our own self-satisfied liberty; but when we see the lonely martyr walk with head erect through the raging mob, and kiss the stake to which he is soon to be bound; when we watch him burn until the kindly powder explodes about his neck, and sends him to exchange his shirt of flame for the robe he has washed ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... be those women, expecting things of her. They would be so affable at first. She had been through it a million times—all her life—all eternity. They would smile those hateful women's smiles—smirks—self-satisfied smiles as if everybody were agreed about everything. She loathed women. They always smiled. All the teachers had at school, all the girls, but Lilla. Eve did... maddeningly sometimes... Mother... it was the only funny horrid thing about her. Harriett didn't.... Harriett laughed. She ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... And, self-satisfied, he passed to the triclinium, where he sat down to supper with Eunice. During the meal a lector read to them the Idyls of Theocritus. Out of doors the wind brought clouds from the direction of Soracte, and a sudden storm broke the silence ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... that of Squire Pettijohn, hitherto complacent, self-satisfied village magnate. Now suddenly grown haggard and old, confronting that other face so curiously like his own. His son! Whose scant intelligence had always been a shame to him and because of which he had given neglect where care should have been. Whom he had been secretly thankful to lose and ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... a quick glance around, and was a trifle upset by seeing Mr. Marrin coming straight toward her. He came with his easy, tripping stride, self-satisfied, red-faced, tastefully dressed, an orchid in his ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... to that self-satisfied remark of his father, and it also stuck in his memory. Back of the proud words lay envy and deference, and a suggestion of hopeless separation. In Keith's mind it became tied up with his memories from Loth's party, and all of ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... pretending to know, and turned it off with a kiss. Now what she said set him on edge. The talk he had been living amongst had spoilt him for silly criticisms. Moreover, for the first time he detected in her a slight tone of the 'schoolmarm'—didactic and self-satisfied, without knowledge. The measure Madame de Pastourelles had dealt out to him, he in some sort ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of letter-obedience, a formal obedience to the vision you 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] ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... as these. Possibly the smug and self-satisfied do not care to; but men in distress—those who are worn, or old, or misunderstood—children, outcasts, those far from home and who long to get back, silently slip weak hands in theirs and ask, "May ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... alcove closed in by deep red curtains, and containing a lofty four-post bedstead with a kind of grand baldacchino covering it in. The sight of this reminded me that I had been six hours on horseback, and undressing with a self-satisfied smirk on my face all ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... realms, involving an unbelievable waste in labor and time, and sapping the intelligence talk is supposed to upbuild. In a simian civilization, great halls will be erected for lectures, and great throngs will actually pay to go inside at night to hear some self-satisfied talk-maker chatter for hours. Almost any subject will do for a lecture, or talk; yet very few subjects will be counted important enough for the average man to do any /thinking/ on them, off ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... calm, and looks straight forward. Not one feature of her face is disturbed, or seems ever to have been subject to emotion. The Italian Aphrodite looks up, her face all quivering and burning with passion and wasting anxiety. The Greek one is quiet, self-possessed, and self-satisfied: the Italian incapable of rest; she has had no thought nor care for herself; her hair has been bound by a fillet like the Greek's; but it is now all fallen loose, and clotted with the sea, or clinging to her body; only the front tress of it is caught by the ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... recognise the photograph, but when it was explained by the pointed allusion to a living Maltese-cross spider close at hand, a gleam of intelligence brightened his bewildered face, and he delivered a self-satisfied dissertation on the order Arachnida that is ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... freshness of trees, and the glory of gorse and broom was over. It was the season of full summer when the midlands, clothed with their rich but sheenless mantle of green, wear a self-satisfied air, as of dull people conscious of deserved prosperity. But just as the sea or a mountain or an adventurous soul will always lend an element of the surprising and romantic to the commonest corner of earth, so the sky will perpetually transfigure ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... can—no one can be alone in this world, dear. No one should. The laws of God and man, of Nature, forbid it." His old, self-satisfied eyes took in the long rounded lines of her figure and the virgin freshness of her throat and face with assuring calculation. "Especially, my dear, is it a crime to attempt to remain alone when nature has so abundantly endowed one for the purpose of—not remaining alone. ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... I understand you very well. But do not deny that you might have saved her. Why did you not?" Ram Lal smiled a strange smile, which I should have described as self-satisfied, had it not been ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... rock which Flint, in his self-satisfied musings, had failed to keep a lookout for. It had struck "The Aquidneck" full (or vice versa, which amounts to the same thing); and here was a pretty pickle. Navigation is like flirtation: all goes smoothly ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... contemplated without deep anxiety. The anxiety is keen because it arises out of uncertainty. It is the gnawing anxiety of suspense. What is the destiny of our country to be? Nothing is settled either for or against us. We have no reason to despair; still less have we any reason to be self-satisfied. All is still in our hands for good or for ill. We have the power to-day to choose our fortune, and I believe there is no nation in the world, perhaps there never has been in history, any nation which at one and the same moment was confronted with such opposite possibilities, ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... professed a profound contempt for administrative work. A book rummager and a great reader, with a nature continually in revolt against everything, a seeker of truth and a despiser of popular prejudices, he had a clear and paradoxical manner of expressing his opinions which closed the mouths of self-satisfied fools and of those that were discontented without knowing why. People said: "That old fool of a Rade," or else: "That harebrained Rade"; and the slowness, of his promotion seemed to indicate the reason, according to commonplace minds. His freedom of speech often ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... cut off from the rest of Scotland. In spite of the invasion of its fertile valleys by Ayrshire dairy farmers it has remained the old Free Province, a little anti-Scottish, a good deal anti-Irish, excessively anti-English, self-centred, self-satisfied, quarrel-some and frondeur, yet in ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... always devote himself to the study of the law and to the practice of good deeds, even if he does not do so for their own sake, as self-satisfied performance may follow in due course. Thus, in recompense for the forty-two sacrifices he offered, Balak was accounted worthy to become the ancestor of Ruth. Rav Yossi bar Hunna has said, Ruth was the daughter of Eglon, the grandson of Balak, king ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... he probably understood the people with whom he had to deal. Presently this functionary—a lantern-jawed, nimble old man, with a dirty nightcap on his head—made his appearance to take a final look at his work. After strutting round the very shallow hole he had dug, in an airy, self-satisfied manner, he concluded that everything was as it should be, and retired for the priest ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... is punished; and the greatest rascal of all, who, when escape is impossible, turns traitor, and after deserving the cart and pillory a dozen times for his last and most utter baseness, is rewarded by full pardon, and the honour of addressing the audience at the play's end in the most smug and self-satisfied tone, and of 'putting himself on you that are my country,' not doubting, it seems, that there were among them a fair majority who would think him a very smart ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... self-satisfied. Lovin Child kicked his heels against the rough table frame and gurgled unintelligible conversation whenever he was able to articulate sounds. Bud replied with a rambling monologue that implied a perfect understanding of Lovin Child's talk—and incidentally doled out information ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... off the sufferings were fearful. The boys thought he would surely relent the next day, but they did not know their man. He was not suffering any, why should he relax his severity? He strolled leisurely out from his dinner table, picking his teeth with his penknife in the comfortable, self-satisfied way of a coarse man who has just filled his stomach to his entire content—an attitude and an air that was simply maddening to the famishing wretches, of ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... grin was infuriating. Dantor cast a warning look in the Earth man's direction. It wouldn't do to lock horns with this self-satisfied despot; at any rate, not now. Blaine's mien was expressionless ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... works and obedience to God as the spirit is inclined and faith directs. Even with the utmost efforts the Spirit scarce can compel our old man. What would be the result if we were no more urged and admonished but could go our way thinking, as many self-satisfied persons do: I am well acquainted with my duties, having learned them many years ago and having heard frequent explanations of them; yea, I have taught others? It might be that one year's intermission of preaching ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... not afford to dismiss it. It was all very well to throw down the books of these men which contained their mature conclusions and careful investigations, and to say "Well, he has one weak spot in his brain," but a man has to be very self-satisfied if the day does not come when he wonders if the weak spot is not in his own brain. For some time I was sustained in my scepticism by the consideration that many famous men, such as Darwin himself, Huxley, Tyndall and Herbert Spencer, derided ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... suppressed it from motives of delicacy—that America is by comparison more pro-Ally than pro-British. The fact is, the American is on the side of right and justice in this War, and earnestly desires to see the Allied cause prevail; but he has a sub-conscious aversion to seeing slow-witted, self-satisfied John Bull collect yet another scalp. American relations with France, too, have always been of the most cordial nature; while America's very existence as a separate nation to-day is the fruit of a quarrel ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... dominant, self-satisfied good-humor became set and stern. Without taking the least notice of Carroll, he rose, and, stepping to a telegraph instrument at a side table, manipulated half a dozen ivory knobs with a sudden energy. ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... tremendous gunpowder, were as perfectly convinced that they themselves were the wisest, the most virtuous, powerful, and perfect of created beings, as are at this present moment the lordly inhabitants of old England, the volatile populace of France, or even the self-satisfied citizens of this ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... going!" he called back, beginning to roll a cigarette. "I have some reading to do to-day." Mr. Deever was tall, awkward and homely, and a lot of other things that would have discouraged a less self-satisfied "lady's man." Judge Smith said he was hopeless, but that he might do better after ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... representative of a common movement, they were far from united in their beliefs or consistent in their political practices. There was always something of the inquisitor at Boston and of the monk at Plymouth, and in all the Puritan colonies there prevailed a self-satisfied sense of importance as the chosen of God. The controversies that arose over jurisdictions and boundaries and the niceties of doctrine are not edifying, however honest may have been those who entered into them. Massachusetts and Connecticut always showed a disposition ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... sailing, and of the amusements boys take to, and he doesn't feel at home, and comfortable here, as he did with you when you were a little girl at his mother's. But mind, Aggie, James is true as steel. He is an honourable and upright young fellow. He is worth fifty of this self-satisfied, ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... educated man would be inclined to maintain that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were, as contrasted with the nineteenth, ages of intellectual torpor, what startles me in these paragraphs is the self-satisfied assumption of the finality of my conclusions. I posit, as a fact not to be controverted, that our universe is an expression of an universal law, which the nineteenth century had discovered and ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... sometimes on fire with indignation when Malevsky approached her, with a sly, fox-like action, leaned gracefully on the back of her chair, and began whispering in her ear with a self-satisfied and ingratiating little smile, while she folded her arms across her bosom, looked intently at him and smiled too, and ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... A self-satisfied smile drew apart Mrs. Champney's thin lips; evidently the girl's lesson was a final and salutary one. She would know her place after this. She determined not to touch on this subject again with Aileen; ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... well as in. Erskine began by thinking it a ridiculous waste of work, but his friends are so enthusiastic about the result, that he is now complacently convinced that it was entirely his own idea. That's a man, my dear! Illogical, self-satisfied, the best of 'em, and you'll never change them till the end of time... What's your opinion ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... beneficial effect, but after a time it becomes wearisome. Pictures painted in shades of green are passive and tend to be wearisome; this contrasts with the active warmth of yellow or the active coolness of blue. In the hierarchy of colours green is the "bourgeoisie"-self-satisfied, immovable, narrow. It is the colour of summer, the period when nature is resting from the storms of winter and the productive energy of spring (cf. ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... company, which had bought extensive tracts of land in Georgia, and the younger, Colonel Courtland, was the consulting surveyor and engineer for the company. Drummond's opinions were a good deal affected by sectional prejudice, and a self-satisfied and righteous ignorance of the actual conditions and limitations of the people with whom he was to deal; while the younger man, who had served through the war with distinction, retained a soldier's respect and esteem ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... with others. But China had a third of the human race and a tenth of the habitable globe entirely to herself, with no neighbours who had anything that she really cared for. It was inevitable, therefore, that a naturally conservative people should become a self- centred and self-satisfied people. ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... wipe that self-satisfied expression right off your face, young man," said Jerry's father. "Taking things in your own hands and deciding what I should do with my money was wrong and you know it. You do know it, ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... she had to do, and did it admirably. But all through she was to his fancy absent and distraite, pursuing through the tumult of which she was often the central figure some inner meditations of which neither he nor any one else knew anything. Some eclipse had passed over the girl's light self-satisfied temper; some searching thrill of experience had gone through the whole nature. She had suffered, and she was quietly fighting down her suffering without a ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... something he had so sorely missed was the living and real presence of spirit. It came over him in a wave of realization that he, too, had been unconscious of his own higher self until his love had made him feel the need of it in her. They two, from the depths of self-satisfied power, had gone blindly in their paths of self-seeking—till each had awakened the other. A ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... once—not oftener Polite hotel waiter who isn't an idiot Relic matter a little overdone? Room to turn around in, but not to swing a cat Saviour, who seems to be of little importance any where in Rome Self-satisfied monarch, the railroad conductor of America Sentimental praises of the Arab's idolatry of his horse She assumes a crushing dignity Shepherd's Hotel, which is the worst on earth Smell about them which is peculiar but not entertaining ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Mark Twain • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... little difference as to the effect to stunt and wither his intellectual life. He had no time and could command no thought for anything else. If he failed, or barely avoided failure, perpetual anxiety ate out his heart; and if he succeeded, his success usually made him a grosser and more hopelessly self-satisfied materialist than if he had failed. There was no hope for his mind or soul either way. If at the end of life his efforts had won him a little breathing space, it could be of no high use to him, for the spiritual and intellectual parts had become atrophied from disuse, and were ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... and innovations of his own, which, if intricate and neatly executed, were greeted with great applause. So it happened that after Jerry the Swell, the recognised champion of the Doyles, had gone off with an extremely self-satisfied air, some adherents of young Red Mick, the opposition champion, took occasion to criticise Jerry's performance. "Darnce!" they said. "Jerry the Swell, darnce! Why, we've got an old poley cow would darnce him blind! ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... she daily went to the cathedral. She took classes at school, helped to train the St. Jude's choir, played Handel for Dr. Prendergast, and felt absolutely without heart or inclination to show that self-satisfied young curate that a governess was not a subject for such distant perplexed courtesy. Sad at heart, and glad to distract her mind by what was new yet innocent, she took up the duties of her vocation zealously; and quickly found that all her zeal was needed. Her pupil ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a comparatively stupid man, an amazingly self-satisfied toiler who had chanced to specialize on crime. And even as he became more and more assured of his personal ability, more and more entrenched in his tradition of greatness, he was becoming less and less elastic, less receptive, less ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... see, I did expect to see you," he replied in his self-satisfied little way. "I'm here to represent Mr. Morland for the ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... twisted his mouth. "It will be many a day ere sleep makes contest with my eyes . . . unless it be cold and sinister sleep. Sleep? You are laughing! Only the fatuous and the self-satisfied sleep . . . and the dead. So be it." He took the tongs and stirred the log, from which flames suddenly darted. "I wonder what they are doing at Voisin's to-night?" irrelevantly. "There will be some from the ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... been spent, I felt a pang, like a sharp arrow, suddenly rush into my brain. Julia had no reserve in telling me this fact. It was a subject she seemed pleased to dwell upon. She narrated with the earnest, unseeing spirit of a self-satisfied child, the sort of conversation which had taken place between them—praised Edgerton's taste, his delicacy, his subdued, persuasive manners, and showed herself as utterly unsophisticated as any Swiss mountain-girl who voluntarily yields the traveller ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... condescending enough to laugh at as pleasant extravagances, serving merely to relieve and set off the main stream of debate, they were often enough, it may be guessed, connected with the theme in hand by links not the less apt that they might be too subtle to catch their bedazzled and self-satisfied optics. There might be keener knowledge of human nature than was "dreamt of in their philosophy"—which passed with them for commonplace, only because it was clothed in plain familiar household words, not dressed up in some pedantic masquerade of antithesis. "There are people," says Landor, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... true, faithful witness in dealing with His people's faults, and who has all the authority of God in doing so. This is the second group that actually has not one good thing to be commended. There is no false teaching, no compromise with evil; they are simply asleep. Rich, influential, self-satisfied, grown fat and sleek,—so they seem to their neighbours and themselves. Wretched, poor, blind, naked,—so they are. And the chastening threatened will be of the severe radical sort that ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... by way of relaxation. Did he ever wriggle with merriment when he was alone? I turned suddenly at the thought. He was calmly perusing a paper through his pince-nez, with an expression of countenance at once so benign, silly, and self-satisfied, that I felt I should like to have apologised for ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... bullied or hustled about at school he would retire to his cubicle and examine his features in a looking-glass, and he would sigh and say, "It is a weak face. I shall never carve a place for myself in the world." But as years went on he became either less self-conscious or more self-satisfied. The world, he found, made a niche for him as it did for every one. Decision of character might come later—or he might have it without knowing. At all events he had got a sense of beauty and a sense of humour, ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... genius might be, it almost made me sick—it almost made me kick, to see the humorous and masculine Barty prostrate in admiration before these inspired epicenes, these gifted epileptoids, these anaemic little self-satisfied nincompoops, whose proper place, it seemed to me, was either Earlswood, or Colney Hatch, or Broadmoor. That is, if their madness was genuine, which I doubt. He and I had many a quarrel about them, till he found them out and cut ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... hid herself in the water, under the roots of a tree, close to a ford where the Jackal always came to drink. By and by, sure enough, he came lilting along in a self-satisfied way, and went right into the water for a good long draft. Whereupon Miss Crocodile seized him by the right legs and held on. He guessed at once what had happened, and called out, "Oh! my heart's adored! I'm drowning! I'm drowning! If you love me, leave hold of that old ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... self-satisfied prig," retorted Burns. "Hullo! Somebody's coming. Tell me what to do, Martha. Do I run to meet them and rush them up to Ellen, or do I display a studied indifference? I never 'received' at a reception in ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... but the ghost of the gay, self-satisfied, good-natured, jolly Rowland. Pale and thin, with drawn face and great eyes, he held out a wasted hand to Dorothy, and looked at her, not pitifully, but despairingly. He was one of those from whom take health and animal spirits, and they feel to themselves as if they ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... prevented by the entrance of Mr. Blaisdell, with a fine lot of ore samples with their assay values attached, which he arranged on his desk, his thin lips drawn back meanwhile in his accustomed self-satisfied smile. When this was done, he turned to ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... were not yet bound for Amsterdam. Twisting northward as the details of the city were sketched upon the sky, we turned into the canal which leads to Zaandam of the self-satisfied, painted houses. There was just time for a swift run down the river, and a call at one of that famous battalion of windmills whose whirling sails fill the air with a ceaseless whirr, like the flight of birds at sunset; then ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... his empiricism and his wanton appeals to popular ignorance, I say when this man (for I take it he was a man, and a wicked one) was passing through France he launched among the French one of his pestiferous phrases, 'Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute' and this in a rolling-in-the-mouth self-satisfied kind of a manner has been repeated since his day at least seventeen million three hundred and sixty-two thousand five hundred and four times by a great mass of Ushers, Parents, Company Officers, Elder Brothers, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... good figure and did not lack freshness, but her expression and her dress displeased Germain the instant he saw her. She had a bold, self-satisfied look, and her cap, edged with three lace flounces, her silk apron, and her fichu of fine black lace were little in accord with the staid and sober widow he had ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... woke, there was the little girl, heedless, ugly, miserable, staring at her own toes. All at once, the creature began to smile, but with such an odious, self-satisfied expression, that Agnes felt ashamed of seeing her. Then she began to pat her own cheeks, to stroke her own body, and examine her finger-ends, nodding her head with satisfaction. Agnes felt that there could not be such another hateful, ape-like ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... already expressive, was further enhanced by a small moustache twirled up into points, and as black as jet, by a full imperial, by whiskers carefully combed, and a forest of black hair in some disorder. He was whisking a riding whip with an air of ease and freedom which suited his self-satisfied expression and the elegance of his dress; the ribbons attached to his button-hole were carelessly tied, and he seemed to pride himself much more on his smart appearance than on his courage. Augustine looked at the Duchesse ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... content, and increasingly self-satisfied. He could be an intelligent and mildly amusing companion, when it served his turn; and he was beginning to lose sight of Desmond in keen enjoyment of the oldest pastime in the world. They fell into ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... of the suit signs of Southern Europe, we take a card from a Portuguese pack of 1610, the "Cavalier de Batons" (Clubs); the other suit signs are Swords, Coins, and Cups. The anatomy of the charger and the self-satisfied aspect of the Cavalier are striking; and as to the former, we are reminded of the bizarre examples of hippic adornment which, on a summer Bank Holiday, may be seen on the road to ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Rigby, who was half Scotch and correspondingly self-satisfied, rejoined stubbornly: "I know what I know. They haven't met since she came up from ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... parties, the utmost propriety and dignity prevailed,—no flirting nor coquetting; no romping of young ladies; no self-satisfied struttings of wealthy gentlemen, with their brains in their pockets, nor amusing conceits and monkey divertisements [Footnote: Divertisements: diversions, amusements.] of smart young gentlemen, with ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... the rue de la Paix. Heavy sable furs and muffs almost bowed their shoulders; each finger had two or three rings that flashed in the light; round their necks were gold chains hung with pendants, and yet, instead of the air of self-satisfied ostentation that might well have gone with a display so lavish, there were only two pathetically little, frightened, perplexed faces, and an uncertain gait that did not promise much further progress ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... doctors of Protestantism think that however learned they might be, still they are foolish and ignorant enough to be self-satisfied. It is doubtful whether the most elaborate sermon of a Protestant doctor smells more beautifully than incense. The most learned theologians in Germany and elsewhere have whole-heartedly supported the criminal ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... wife of his own blood, I tell you. The husband died broken-hearted. The wife, my mother, struggled in poverty, under the shadow of a proud name, to give me an education, and died while I was still a girl. To-day this cousin,—this more than murderer of my parents,—old, rich, self-satisfied, REFORMED, invites me, by virtue of that kinship he violated and despised, to his home, his wealth, his—his family roof-tree! The man you saw ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... if that self-satisfied puppy knew what a tempest of rage he had aroused in my soul he would have squealed for fright and would have hidden himself on the bed. I—a coward! The world has crumbled upon my head, but has not crushed me, and out of its terrible fragments I have created a new world, according ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... boldly. He made me feel ashamed of my easy acquiescences as I walked in my sleek tall neatness beside his rather old coat, his rather battered hat, his sturdier shorter shape, and listened to his denunciations of our self-satisfied ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... closed in on him again, he left the stone-breaker behind, and his face soon assumed its usual self-satisfied expression. But during that morning's ride, again and again returned to him the picture he had seen in the green hollow, of the man who had thanked God for bread and water, and the thought of his own great riches did not give him ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... an honest man, downstairs, and I find you, like a thief, up here," returned the doctor, with a self-satisfied smile at the neatness of his own retort. "No," he continued, relapsing into soliloquy: "there is risk every way; but the least risk perhaps is ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... Guerin was well made, and did not lack freshness. But the expression of her face and her costume repelled Germain at the first glance. She had a forward, self-satisfied air, and her mob-cap trimmed with a triple row of lace, her silk apron, and her black lace fichu were decidedly not in harmony with the idea he had conceived of a sedate, ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... landowner in Hartford, having received a grant of fifty acres for his services in the Pequot war. He owes his enrollment in the hall of fame to Cotton Mather, who was so self-satisfied with his efforts in "Relating the wonders of the invisible world in preternatural occurrences" that in his pedantic exuberance he put in a learned sub-title: "Miranda cano, sed sunt credenda" (The themes I ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious an self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... an ignoramus, Mumble was for learning famous. Mumble said one day to Dumble: "Ignorance should be more humble. Not a spark have you of knowledge That was got in any college." Dumble said to Mumble: "Truly You're self-satisfied unduly. Of things in college I'm denied A knowledge—you of ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... rejected by her, and condemned by the world, was betaking himself to an exile which had not even the dignity of appearing voluntary, as the excommunicating voice of society seemed to leave him no other resource. Had he been of that class of unfeeling and self-satisfied natures from whose hard surface the reproaches of others fall pointless, he might have found in insensibility a sure refuge against reproach; but, on the contrary, the same sensitiveness that kept him so awake to the applauses of mankind rendered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... united to kindness. Strength of mind and rigid attendance to duty dominated the kindness, however. If crossed in what she considered best for her patient, possibly for herself, she could be severe, if not biting, in her speech and manner. So much Sweetwater read in the cold, clear eye and firm, self-satisfied mouth of the woman awaiting his response to the curt demand ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... said Hull, "that I don't like a lot of things about the—the forces I find I've got to use in order to carry through my plans. I admit that even the sincere young fellows I've grouped together to head this movement are narrow—supercilious—self-satisfied—that they irritate me and are not trustworthy. But I feel that, if I once get the office, I'll be strong enough to put my plans through." Nervously, "I'm giving you my full confidence—as I've given ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... magistrate called again, looking very important and self-satisfied, and never doubting but that the answer would be favourable. But when Guta told him plainly that she would not marry him his rage was unbounded, and he left the house vowing vengeance on father ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... the clouds. Perchance I touch the mountain whose blue summit, With the fantastic rock upon its side, Stops the eye's flight from that high chamber-window Where, when a boy, I used to sit and gaze With wondering awe upon the mighty thing, Terribly calm, alone, self-satisfied, The hitherto of my child-thoughts. Beyond, A sea might roar around its base. Beyond, Might be the depths of the unfathomed space, This the earth's bulwark over the abyss. Upon its very point I have watched a star For a few moments crown it with a fire, As of an ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... time poor little Phosy was left to the care of Alice, a clever, careless, good-hearted, self-satisfied damsel, who, although seldom so rough in her behaviour as we have just seen her, abandoned the child almost entirely to her own resources. It was often she sat alone in the nursery, wishing the Lord would chasten her—because ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... "I gave them until to-morrow. If I don't hear then, I shall start suit at once." Then the lawyer's manner became unusually bland and self-satisfied as he opened a drawer of the desk and brought forth a rather formidable-appearing document, bearing a most impressive seal. "You will be glad to know," he went on unctuously, "that I was entirely successful in carrying out that idea of yours as to the injunction. My dear Miss Turner," ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... my dear," he remarked. "Selfishness, with a big S. That's the trouble with Ruth. Society too. Big S. And a pinch of stubbornness also. She never would take any advice from any one—self-satisfied little Ruth wouldn't—and poor Bob is the salt of the earth too. It's a shame. Whoever would have thought fine old Bob would have fallen into ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... by the threshold to take a look at the weather. A great soft feather of snow came sailing slowly down and nestled in his shaggy beard, and another fluttered on to the back of his hand. He looked up through the darkness and saw that it was already beginning to fall thickly, and then, with a self-satisfied glance of approval at his provident woodpile, went into the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... later a self-satisfied looking man came into the camp and asked to see the boy who had found a watch, and had advertised the ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... of Tacitus, is cold-blooded and self-satisfied. There is no agitation, no fever; to me ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... himself unable, however, try as hard as he might, to be sure of anything, he became weary of the effort, and sank back into the old, self-satisfied, blind sleep. ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... instance, the matter of modesty, of the balance between mere pride and mere prostration. The average pagan, like the average agnostic, would merely say that he was content with himself, but not insolently self-satisfied, that there were many better and many worse, that his deserts were limited, but he would see that he got them. In short, he would walk with his head in the air; but not necessarily with his nose in ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... on't, I gave a good account," continued the overseer, in a self-satisfied way. "In the first place, I told 'em, the captain had a lieutenant with him that had sarved out the whull French war; then I put the men up to fifty at once, seein' it was just as easy to say that, as thirty or thirty-three. ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... herself not to be so "beastly supercilious." She had insisted that in the belated quest of these work-stained women was an aspiration which ought to stir her tears. "But they're so self-satisfied. They think they're doing Burns a favor. They don't believe they have a 'belated quest.' They're sure that they have culture salted and hung up." It was out of this stupor of doubt that Mrs. Dawson's summons roused her. She was in a panic. How could ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the lady, with a self-satisfied air: 'here, at least, one can forget one has the misfortune to ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... hack, and, in triumph at his trick on the postmaster, rattled along the road homeward as fast as the beast could carry him. He came into the squire's presence; his face beaming with delight, and an air of self-satisfied superiority in his manner, quite unaccountable to his master, until he pulled forth his hand, which had been grubbing up his prizes from the bottom of his pocket, and, holding three letters over his head while he said: "Look ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... national songs, so well suited to the voice, and in their most beautiful language, our northern voices, which are obliged to contend with the great difficulties of the German language, are sacrificed in the most cold-blooded and self-satisfied manner in the schools and singing societies, while all artistic preparation, by which alone the voice may be preserved and cultivated, ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... had conceived for that fine setting sun one of those passions which women like Madame Evangelista repulse, although flattered and graciously allowing them to exist upon the surface. Solonet remained therefore in a self-satisfied condition of hope and becoming respect. Being sent for, he arrived the next morning with the promptitude of a slave and was received by the coquettish widow in her bedroom, where she allowed him to find her in ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... criticism from them; can bear to have it pointed out to him that all his misfortunes are the direct and inevitable result of his own folly; can listen with equanimity when failure is prophesied of some stroke he is attempting, and can note unmoved the self-satisfied smile with which the fulfilment of the prophecy is accentuated; but ignorant and stupid indifference is intolerable to him. The caddie, in the statesman's opinion, is not, and ought not, to be regarded as a machine for carrying clubs at a shilling a round, but rather occupies, ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... into the position which was appropriate for him—he was used by Luther. And in the Leipzig disputation against Eck the favorable impression which the self-possessed, honest, and sturdy nature of Luther produced was the best counterpoise to the self-satisfied assurance of his ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... third objection is formulated in the question, "What is the use?" Whether it be grounded in self-satisfied indifference, hostility, or a sense of hopelessness, it forms the most insidious opposition, because it betrays a lack of racial consciousness that cannot be supplied by argument, and exposes a weakness that cannot be remedied ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... round, rosy, jolly fellow, shining from top to toe, "philandering" down Regent-street, with a self-satisfied grin, that seems to say, "Match me that, demme!" and casting looks of pity—mellowed through his eye-glass—on all passers, you may fairly conclude that that happy dog has just ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... decidedly to a period of time anterior to that of Shakspeare, and went quite out with the age of chivalry, of which Shakspeare saw scarcely even the fag end. Your lover of Shakspeare's time was quite another animal. He had begun to take beer. He had become much more subtle and self-satisfied. He did sometimes pen sonnets to his mistress's eye-brow, and sing soft nothings to the gentle sighing of his "Lewte." He sometimes indeed looked "pale and wan;" but, rather than for love, it was more than probably from his immoderate indulgence in the "newe weede," which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... serious person goes down before the trifler. He therefore cultivates flippancy as a fine art, and becomes noted for a certain cheap cynicism, which he sprinkles like a quasi-intellectual pepper over the strong meat of risky conversation. Moreover, he is constantly self-satisfied, and self-possessed. Yet he manages to avoid giving offence by occasionally assuming a gentle humility of manner, to which he almost succeeds in imparting a natural air, and he studiously refrains from saying ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... it. And you went to sea, to stay up all night, in the cold and wet, to keep your home going for your wife, your dear Dolores! And Tonet stayed all warm and cosy at home with her, the pair of them laughing to see what a stupid, self-satisfied idiot you were! Tonet didn't sleep in this house after you sailed. And he's not here even to-night. He ran in a few moments ago, got his things and was off, saying he wouldn't be back again. And where is he, Pascualo? Over at your house of course! They are sure the ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... lord! O my friend, my beloved, answer me and tell me thy name, for indeed thou hast ravished my wit!' Still he abode drowned in sleep and answered her not a word, and she sighed and said, 'Alas! Alas! why art thou so self-satisfied?' Then she shook him and turning his hand over, saw her ring on his little finger, whereat she cried out and said, with a sigh of passion, 'Alack! Alack! By Allah, thou art my beloved and lovest me! Yet meseems thou turnest ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... shod a few of the difficult tears of age as she went over the little scene. She felt suddenly old; and for the first time in her busy, self-satisfied life she questioned ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... him a cup. I think I was a little disappointed in his remarks. They were like his first impression on me the day before, so commonplace, so laboriously undistinguished that again the conviction was forced upon me that it was a pose. Had I expected too much? Was he merely a self-satisfied egoist, clever enough to perceive our interest and impose upon it? Bill endeavoured to clear the air. The mention of "art curtains" always made ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... little child once worded it) in a song so rapid, so shrill, so loud, and yet so delicately modulated, that you wonder at the amount of soul within that tiny body; and then stops suddenly, as a child who has said its lesson, or got to the end of the sermon, gives a self-satisfied flirt of his tail, and goes in again ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... performance, feeling that he would naturally take sides in his thoughts with the woman outvied; nor had she any desire to inflict upon her rival the disparagement that must follow; but something in Miss Wildmere's self-satisfied and patronizing tone had touched her quick spirit, and the arrogant girl should receive the lesson she had invited. But, as Madge sang, the noble art soon lifted her above all lower thoughts, and she forgot everything but Graydon and the hope of her ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... been any one there to see, he might have been observed to shake the contents of a little paper, a fine white powder, into the water carafe which stood filled upon the wash-stand in Seabrooke's alcove. Then, with the self-satisfied air of one who has accomplished a great feat, he stole from the room and back to ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... who, quite unaware what her opinion is worth, expresses it with entire confidence upon many subjects of which she knows nothing whatever, and as to which she is wholly incapable of judging. And the self-satisfied and confident air with which she settles the most difficult questions, and pronounces unfavorable judgment upon people ten thousand times wiser and better than herself, is an insufferably irritating phenomenon. It is a singular fact, that the people I have in view ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... that I did not see how that could help him. It was the only answer to his good-humored but self-satisfied contempt; it ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... the figure up in a corner of her cottage, and chuckled to behold its yellow semblance of a visage, with its nobby little nose thrust into the air. It had a strangely self-satisfied aspect, and seemed to ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various |
