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More "Self-satisfaction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was the landlord's smiling answer; his fair, round face, unwrinkled by a line of care or trouble, beaming with self-satisfaction. "I have always been a happy man, and always expect to be. Simon Slade takes the world as it comes, and takes it easy. My son, sir," he added, as a boy, in his twelfth year, came in. "Speak ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... suddenly raised in his own opinion by the fact of being recognized,—at all events it seemed to me that his face and even his motions completely changed: they now expressed lively intelligence, a childish self-satisfaction in the consciousness of such intelligence, and a certain contemptuous indifference; so that I confess, notwithstanding the pitiable position in which he found himself, my old acquaintance did not so much excite sympathy in me as it did a sort of ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... grandfather to my father in 1835, when the latter was in college. They were closely written with a fine pen in a small, delicate hand, and the lines of ink, though faded, were like steel engraving. They were stilted, godly—in an ingenuous fashion—at times ponderously humorous, full of a mild self-satisfaction, and inscribed under the obvious impression that only the writer could save my father's soul from hell or his kidneys from destruction. The goodness of the Almighty, as exemplified by His personal attention to my grandfather, the efficacy of oil distilled ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... at a corner table in a quieter restaurant, Barney was eating his supper and making an inventory of his prospects. He was in a very exultant mood. The whiskey he had drunk had given broad wings to his self-satisfaction; and what he was now sipping from his tea-cup—it was not tea, for Barney was on the proper terms with his waiter here—this draught from his tea-cup tipped these broad wings at a ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... happiness, their good name, health, and youth?—Another thought for Lent. "Charity boasts not herself." Alas! alas! my friends, are not the best of us apt to make much of the little good we do,—to pride ourselves on the petty kindnesses we shew,—to be puffed up with easy self-satisfaction, just as charity is NOT puffed up?— Another Lenten thought. "Charity does not behave herself unseemly;" is never proud, noisy, conceited; gives every man's opinion a fair, kindly hearing; making allowances for all mistakes. Have we done so?—Then ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Madame La Tour, the outer door again clanked, and Klussman stepped into the hall. His big presence had instant effect on Le Rossignol. Her music tinkled louder and faster. The playing sprite, sitting half on air, gamboled and made droll faces to catch his eye. Her vanity and self-satisfaction, her pliant gesture and skillful wild music, made her appear some soulless little being from the woods who mocked ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... benefits and the pride may be common to all. True unity requires some common object, around which diverse interests may cling and crystallize. Nations, like families, need to look outside themselves, if they would escape, on the one hand, narrow self-satisfaction, or, on the other, pitiful internal dissensions. The far-reaching external activities fostered in Great Britain by her insular position have not only intensified patriotism, but have given also a certain nobility of breadth to her statesmanship ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... go home to her father. Having consummated this summary divorce, for which he could show good reasons, he came back, seated himself in his usual place, and began to smoke with an air of utmost tranquillity and self-satisfaction. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... women almost always find material to torment close at hand. Sometimes in the form of a dependent relative, sometimes a servant-girl, sometimes a weakly daughter, and this constant wreaking of a contemptuous spite upon one object produces a self-satisfaction which is mistaken for cheerfulness, an inward pleasure in hatred, ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... work in behalf of the best aspects of our inter-racial relations in no spirit of boastfulness or of self-satisfaction as Southerners. They are aware of the shadows, the back eddies, the sinister influences in the lives of both races. But they believe the good outweighs the evil, and deserves at least as wide a hearing; and that to give publicity ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... Mr. Wheaton, "I left it out on purpose. I thought may be we could get him for less than fifteen hundred dollars. What do you think? Wouldn't he come on twelve hundred, and the parsonage?" And Mr. Wheaton smiled on me with an air of self-satisfaction which seemed to say, 'Jim Wheaton is the man to manage ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... of which he here so unmercifully abuses himself. A man of self-satisfied temperament would never in similar circumstances have done so. But Hamlet was, by nature and education, far from such self-satisfaction; and there is in him besides such a strife and turmoil of opposing passions and feelings and apparent duties, as can but rarely rise in a human soul. With which he ought to side, his conscience is not sure—sides therefore now with one, now with ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... Tommy in a loose white sailor suit scampered about from one place to another, simmering in perfect enjoyment. And the central figure of all was Esme Amarinth, who stood leaning upon an ebony stick with a silver knob, surveying his audience with the peculiar smile of humourous self-satisfaction that was so characteristic ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... packed away, to give place to the cooler matting. Our winter clothing also received attention, and was deposited in chests and closets for the summer, duly provided with all needful protection from moths. After this came the calm of rest and self-satisfaction. ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... rivalry, sentiments of generosity and self-sacrifice which might redeem society and the dying world of France. And this may perhaps at this point be observed as the centre of his action, namely the discovery that a wholesome desire for fame proceeds not from our self-satisfaction, but from our profound sense of emptiness, ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... remarkably in our modern world; you find Mr. Mallock, for example, going about arranging his syllogisms, extracting his opponent's "self-contradictions," and disposing of Socialism with stupendous self-satisfaction in all the magazines. He disposes of Socialism quite in the spirit of the young mediaeval scholar returning home to prove beyond dispute that "my cat has ten tails" and, given a yard's start, that a tortoise can always keep ahead of a running ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... which is to keep man from a self-satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarising, to lead him towards perfection, by making his mind dwell upon what is excellent in itself, and the absolute beauty and fitness of things. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... shone to him in a rosy after-dinner light. Not a gross or a selfish man, for he was as good-natured as he was contented, and gave very freely of his substance; it was simply his part in the world to enjoy the product of other men's labour and to set an example of glorious self-satisfaction. Egremont, in certain moods, had tried to despise Mr. Tyrrell, but he never quite succeeded. Nor indeed was the man contemptible. Had you told him with frank conviction that you deemed him a poor sort of phenomenon, he would have shaken the ceiling with ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... thus complimented adjusted his spectacles and surveyed his acquaintances with a very well-satisfied air. In truth, Dr. Maxwell Dean had some reason for self-satisfaction, if the knowledge that he possessed one of the cleverest heads in Europe could give a man cause for pride. He was apparently the only individual in the Gezireh Palace Hotel who had come to Egypt for any serious ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... "Self-satisfaction, self-absorption, self-sufficiency, have had a sobering shock. For I find that for the full and perfect enjoyment of my city I myself am no longer enough. I need company—curiously, one specific and particular individual whom, having once named, ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... not your sin—it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto heaven; your very sparingness in sin crieth ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... themselves in anything, if we are not to take into consideration the fact that being thoroughly incapable of creating their own language, they have by their talent to distort languages given to the present English people a repulsive Judeo-Carthaginian imprint through their shameless self-satisfaction, arrogance and ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... I mean,' said Mr. Whiston with self-satisfaction. 'My dear Rose, if I had been alone, I might perhaps have talked a little, but with you it was impossible. One cannot be too careful. A man like that will take all sorts of liberties. One has to keep such ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Dreamers are our strictly unpaid torch-bearers. They light the path for us; and we murmur 'Poor fools!' with a kind of sneaking self-satisfaction, when they come ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... Rogers, as he pulled up by the porch and directed me to stand by the young mare's head, wore a look of extreme self-satisfaction. Beside him, also beaming, sat Mr. Goodfellow, with the corner ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... acts of self-denial, or of Christian beneficence, he stirs up in our hearts a vain-glorious spirit. If we have overcome any of the corruptions of our hearts, or any temptation, he excites a secret feeling of self-satisfaction and self-complacency. He puts on the mask of religion. Often, during the solemn hours of public worship, he beguiles our hearts with some scheme for doing good; taking care, however, that self be uppermost in it. When we are in a bad frame, he stirs ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... perhaps I shall go back to London at once. This has been an interesting time here, but only because it is so different from what one would expect. It reads like a burlesque to note the expressions of condolence from all over the world, and to mark the self-satisfaction of the French at attracting so much sympathy, and their absolute indifference to the death of Carnot. It is most curious. We have an ideal time. Never before have I had such jolly dinners, with such good talk and ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... till questions were over. Now he sat in Peers' Gallery and gazed through spectacles on scene of earlier triumphs. Looks hardly a day older than when he left us; the same perky manner, the same wooden visage, with its pervading air of supreme self-satisfaction and inscrutable wisdom. It is a night given up to Indian topics. PLOWDEN, in his quiet, effective way, has just carried Motion which will have substantial effect in the direction of securing fuller debate of Indian questions. GORST, standing at table replying to BUCHANAN on another Indian topic, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... announced. Husband and wife glanced at one another, both smiling with self-satisfaction, and each mentally claiming ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... every kind. When people are tearing their hair, and the welkin rings with such affrighting cries as Downfall and Crisis, the Archbishop's rather solemn and alarmed countenance breaks up into a genial smile. It is when people are immovable in otiose self-satisfaction, when the air is still and when lethargy creeps over the whole body of humanity, that the face of Dr. Davidson hardens. There is nothing he dreads more than apathy, nothing that so stimulates his policy of constant pressure as inertia. Ndengei, the supreme deity of ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... Demands from one whom he has undone, rather than the whole from one to whom he has shewn Mercy. This Benignity is essential to the Character of a fair Trader, and any Man who designs to enjoy his Wealth with Honour and Self-Satisfaction: Nay, it would not be hard to maintain, that the Practice of supporting good and industrious Men, would carry a Man further even to his Profit, than indulging the Propensity of serving and obliging the Fortunate. My Author argues on this Subject, in order to incline Mens ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... now in their hearts begun to entertain the best hopes for her. Charlotte was convinced that she would one day begin to speak again. She had latterly seen signs about her which implied that she was engaged in secret about something; a look of cheerful self-satisfaction, a smile like that which hangs about the face of persons who have something pleasant and delightful which they are keeping concealed from those whom they love. No one knew that she spent many hours in extreme exhaustion, and that only at rare intervals, when she appeared in public through ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... social regime which is every day more strongly asserting itself. All the gradations are fast disappearing; the palisades of good manners, dignity, and respect, are vanishing with the hedges; the country is positively inundated with slang and vulgarity—all from the ill-breeding, presumption, and self-satisfaction ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... come with new interpretations of human life. Rapid changes are taking place at the present time in education, in religion, and in social adjustments. The rate of progress varies in different parts of the world; there are handicaps in the form of race conservatism, local and individual self-satisfaction and independence, maladjustments and isolation; sometimes the process leads along a downward path. On the whole, however, the history is a story ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... H. Selwin-Ibbetson, Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, and whom I have heard genially described as "one of the prosiest speakers in the House." Next to him, with a paper in his hand and a smirk of supreme self-satisfaction on his face, is Mr. Cross, the ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... ariseth a second crop from the ashes of that which was destroyed. Even as 'the flax and the barley were smitten; for the barley was in the ear, and the flax was bolled: but the wheat and the rye were not smitten, for they were not grown up;' so will SELF-SATISFACTION arise, after worldly pride and vanity have been withered up. Let him who has found inward peace content himself that he is arrived at the Pillars of Hercules, beyond which there is no safe way. That self-integrity which deems itself immaculate is dangerous. Well hath it been said, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... performed, perhaps, his first action with no thought of self at the back of it. He had risked his life to save that of a stranger. The fact astonished him, while it pleased him hugely. The sensation was at once novel and thrilling. Since it was so agreeable, he meant to prolong the glow of self-satisfaction by continuing to care for this waif of the river. He must make his rescue complete. It did not occur to him to question his fitness for the work. His introspection did not reach to a point of suspecting that he, an habitual criminal, was necessarily of a sort to be most objectionable ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... while Doria spoke eagerly. But the passenger felt little disposed to gratify the Italian's curiosity. Instead he asked him a few questions respecting himself and found that the other delighted to discuss his own affairs. Doria revealed a southern levity and self-satisfaction that furnished Brendon with something to think about before the launch ran to ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... would last night." Dick laughed again, with a tinge of self-satisfaction. "I've an idea he wants to see ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... kindled no glow of pride or self-satisfaction in his meek and chastened nature. He regarded himself as being in fact the servant of all. It was his duty, like that of the bull in the herd, or the ram among the flocks, to confront every peril in his own person, to be foremost in all the hardships of war and the most deeply immersed in all ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... with small-pox, in green leather slippers, and wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the chimney. His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head in its wicker cage: this ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... and his childish delight seemed to know no bounds. He danced and shouted, ran in and out, walked round the hut, and then strutted up to us full of self-satisfaction, his tongue going all the while, and evidently feeling highly delighted at our smiles and words ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... fought and victory won, it was Grumbo's wont to indulge himself in a little brief repose, which he would take stretched out on the ground, with his shaggy head laid, lion-like, on his extended paws—betraying, in both attitude and look, a sober self-satisfaction so entire as made it seem that for him the world had nothing more to offer. But this morning, notwithstanding the successful, even brilliant, winding up of their great adventure, our war-dog, instead of unbending as usual, held grimly aloof ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... am beautiful," she murmured, not with the self-satisfaction of vanity, but with a calculating note in her voice. "Am I—am ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... it only requires dense, narrow-minded self-satisfaction. Really, Baby, if you are so good to look at, there is surely a limit even to your permissible airs and graces"; ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... infidelity—which she made by accident—destroyed such remnants of self-satisfaction as her life might yet possess. She broke down utterly and sobbed and cried in Perfetta's arms. Perfetta was kind and even sympathetic, but cautioned her on no account to speak to Gino, who would be furious if he was suspected. And Lilia agreed, partly because she was afraid of him, partly because ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... hansom cab swept round the corner, its dashing driver smoking a cigar in sublime self-satisfaction, and looking carelessly right and left for a "fare." This exquisite almost ran into the engine! There was a terrific howl from all the firemen; the cabby turned his smart horse with a bound to one side, and lost his cigar in the act—in reference to which misfortune he was ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... thirty-two pages, and was in reality an autobiography. It presented the ideal working man; the author stood as a type for ever of the noble possibilities inherent in his class. Written of course in the first person, it contained passages of monumental self-satisfaction. Adela, too, was mentioned; to her horror she found a glowing description of the work she had done among the women and children. After reading that page she threw the pamphlet aside and hid her face in her hands. She longed for the earth ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... which has become His own. In this case it is not the position of the bride that is wrong; if it were, His word as before would be, "Arise, and come away"; whereas now His word is, "Open to Me, My sister, My love." It was her condition of self-satisfaction and love of ease that closed ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor
... with its high walls, bars, and bolts. I had a little talk with the sister in charge of the porter's lodge, and she took me into the church, pointing to the high iron rails barring off the cloistered nuns, with that imbecile self-satisfaction as much inseparable from her calling as her ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... softened her and lessened her pride; there was more devotional temper, and a greater desire after a religious way of life. It might be that her fretfulness was the effect of an uneasiness of mind, which was more hopeful than her previous fierce self-satisfaction, and that her aberrations were the last efforts of old evil habits to re-establish their grasp by custom, when her heart was ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Adolphe's self-satisfaction was completed by an ovation from the ladies, who bestowed upon him the most flattering epithets. From the prettiest lips I heard, "What! this Parisian! this pale and slender young man, with such delicate hands and rose-coloured nails, fought face to face with this ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... that was beside her, and, resting one elbow on the table, peered inquiringly into the girl's flushed face, more beautiful than ever in her excitement. That strange feeling of exhilaration was still upon her, and there was undoubted triumph and self-satisfaction depicted ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... has been given as to Mr. Larcher's conceit—which, by the way, had suffered a marvellous change to humility in the presence of his admired—but it was a small and superficial thing compared with the self-satisfaction of Miss Edna, and yet hers sat upon her with a serenity which, taking her sex also into consideration, made ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... pleasant to a thirsty vanity, was lowering to his nature. He sank more and more towards the professional Don Juan. With a leer of what the French call fatuity, he bids the belles of Mauchline beware of his seductions; and the same cheap self-satisfaction finds a yet uglier vent when he plumes himself on the scandal at the birth of his first bastard. We can well believe what we hear of his facility in striking up an acquaintance with women: he would have ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and daughter perhaps; a delicate birdlike girl and a plump middle-aged woman with an air of extreme self-satisfaction. ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... great degree a result of the mood we are in at the moment: anger forbids the emotion. On the other hand, it is easiest taken on when we are in a state of most absolute self-satisfaction. Ben-Hur walked with a quicker step, holding his head higher; and, while not less sensitive to the delightfulness of all about him, he made his survey with calmer spirit, though sometimes with curling lip; that is to say, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... twenty-four —not more than that—I stop and reflect. Then I am humble, then I am properly meek, and for that little time I am 'only the Mary Ann' —fourteen hours out, and cargoed with vegetables and tin-ware; but all the other twenty-three my self-satisfaction rides high, and I am the stately Indiaman, ploughing the great seas under a cloud of sail, and laden with a rich freightage of the kindest words that were ever spoken to a wandering alien, I think; my twenty-six crowded and fortunate days multiplied by five; and I am the Begum of Bengal, a hundred ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... eyes could see. He loved this dancing rout. He envied these boys and girls their passion and facility. They were, the most ignorant of them, of another stripe from arid New Englanders encased in their temperamental calm, the women, in a laughable self-satisfaction, leading the intellectual life and their men set on "making good". The poorest child of the East and South had an inheritance that made him responsive, fluent, even while it left him hot-headed and even froward. There was something, he saw, in this idea of the melting-pot, if only the mingling ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... idea of our day that "it does not matter what you belong to," by any of these books. Very little reflection will show anyone the immeasurable distance between the sort of clergyman this book describes and the mere leader of formalities holding a similar position in these days of ease and self-satisfaction. ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... attempt such a thing; or to believe that he could carry it through successfully; or to dream that he would ever be anything better than a literary hack, a cheap edition of "C." Dickens, minus the latter's colossal self-satisfaction. ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... All rights have been forfeited by our wilful conduct; we retain nothing in our own right. And all we have now has been secured for us at the cost of blood; we are being carried at enormous expense. Not much room there for self-satisfaction, is there? ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... the same self-satisfaction which he had experienced the previous evening, and which had procured him so good a night's rest. He was luxuriously stretched in a good English calash, with double springs; he was drawn by four good horses, at full gallop; he knew the relay ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... it was a secret reluctance to meet Jack—he was so different since the Gipsy Smith revival; of course, he was perfectly lovely, and unchanged toward her, but—somehow, she felt uncomfortable in his presence—and she didn't enjoy having her self-satisfaction disturbed. ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... of highly socialized men, benefactors of society—that the average citizen will bestir himself only for material gain. And it must be admitted that competition of some sort is necessary for self-realization, that human nature demands a prize. There can be no self-sacrifice without a corresponding self-satisfaction. The answer is that in the theory of democracy, as well as in that of Christianity, individualism and co-operation are paradoxically blended. For competition, Christianity substitutes emulation. And with democracy, it declares that mankind itself can gradually ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... misrepresented him. As a matter of fact, although good-humored and not without a still surviving capacity for generous impulse, he was only less "near" than his wife. Childishly vain, he bore himself with an air of self-satisfaction not without its charm for humorous neighbors. They said that they guessed he ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... mind of General Smuts, was a novelty in international relations which appealed strongly to those who preferred to adopt unusual and untried methods rather than to accept those which had been tested by experience and found practical of operation. The self-satisfaction of inventing something new or of evolving a new theory is inherent with not a few men. They are determined to try out their ideas and are impatient of opposition which seeks to prevent the experiment. In fact opposition seems sometimes ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... In a breath was self-satisfaction banished; simultaneously the masquerader brought his gaze down from the ceiling, his thoughts to earth, his vigilance to the surface, and himself to his feet, summoning to his aid all that he possessed of ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... to Luigi, who grasped it eagerly, and, after a few incoherent words, Mansana took his leave in the same spirit of confident self-satisfaction in which he had come. The little lieutenant, who throughout this interview had felt as though he were in the presence of his executioner, was now seized with a bewildering sense of joy at his departure. He jumped about the room, and broke into a loud ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... expression of this self-satisfaction of the age is found in the Spectator, the first and best representative of that special style of literature—the only really popular literature of our time—which consists in talking to the public about itself. Humanity is taken as reflected in the ordinary life of men; ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... years these habits of life characterized the majority of our rural towns. They still exist among a class respectable in numbers and position, though perhaps not as happy in perfect self-satisfaction and a conviction of the dignity and desirableness of its lot as in former days. Human nature is above all things—lazy. Every one confesses in the abstract that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... gain by labours and watchings and fastings and prayers, let us commend it all with Christ to the Father; let us pour it back again into the fountain, whence it flowed forth for us; and let nothing be left in us of empty self-satisfaction, no seeking after human praise or honour or reward. But whatever our God hath been willing to do in us, let us return it back into His own hands and say, "We are nothing of ourselves. It is He who made us, and not we ourselves. ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... not worth reading, it is only to the most accomplished reader that it can be worth skimming. He will seek to make him discern, not merely between the good and the evil, but between the good and the not so good. And this not for the sake of sharpening the intellect, still less of generating that self-satisfaction which is the closest attendant upon criticism, but for the sake of choosing the best path and the best companions upon it. A spirit of criticism for the sake of distinguishing only, or, far worse, for the sake of having one's opinion ready upon demand, is not merely repulsive ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should be, in the spirit of those who question their own wisdom and seek counsel and knowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the excitement of excursions whither they cannot tell. Justice, and only justice, shall always ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... whom Lady Mountjoy had predicted that he would be sure to flirt with the minister's niece. At that moment Anderson himself came in, and some ceremony of introduction took place. Anderson was a fair-haired, good-looking young man, with that thorough look of self-satisfaction and conceit which attaches are much more wont to exhibit than to deserve. For the work of an attache at Brussels is not of a nature to bring forth the highest order of intellect; but the ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... by Satan as a joke and for the purpose of ridicule. On the contrary, they seemed to be not a little impressed with the theological learning and dogmatical science of these two so-called Doctors, who, in rare self-satisfaction, found life and complete happiness in Reinhard's supernaturalism. In short, these open counterfeiters, Calvinists, Methodists, and Unionists, these base traitors and destroyers of the Lutheran Church, were and always remained the ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... Everything was new. In this repaired and restored house, the fresh-colored look of which contrasted with the time-worn exteriors of all the other houses, an observer would instantly perceive the paltry taste and perfect self-satisfaction of ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... relief. In dragging the will from its hiding-place he had put behind him the most difficult part of his adventure; the final ceremony of replacing it in the safe was a matter only of minutes. With self-satisfaction Jimmie smiled; in self-pity he sighed miserably. For, when those same minutes had passed, again he would be an exile. As soon as he had set his house in order, he must leave it, and once more upon the earth become a ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... at Peter Robinson's! No, I will not go by the boat, my dear. I hate the Rhine boats, crowded with nasty selfish pigs of Germans. What I like is a first-class compartment all to myself, and no horrid foreigners. Especially Germans. They're bursting with self-satisfaction—have such an exaggerated belief in their "land" and their "folk." And when they come to England, they do nothing but find fault with us. If people aren't satisfied with the countries they travel in, they'd better stop at home—that's my opinion. ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... what you have done. After you have been kind, after love has stolen forth into the world and done its beautiful work, go back into the shade again and say nothing about it. Love hides even from itself. Love waives even self-satisfaction. "Love vaunteth not itself, is not ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... Shakespeare that the lovers do not dream fairy tales of their childhood. Higher culture has given them deeper passions, more intense personal relations; in dreams they but continue the life of waking. But the good weaver who lives thoroughly content in his own self-satisfaction and in the esteem of his neighbors, who has never reflected upon anything that has happened to him, but has received each day's blessings as they have come—this man sees, the moment he lays his head on the pillow, the fairies and the fairy queen. ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... step without, at the witching hour of twelve, he twirled his small black moustache so as to display to advantage the sparkling diamond ring which encircled the little finger of his left hand. His Semitic features wore an expression of great self-satisfaction, and his knowing air betokened intimate knowledge of the world and all that therein is. He nodded familiarly to a couple of young men who passed by, and glanced with the appreciative eye of a connoisseur at the shop-girls who were walking ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... Doubtless, when the weather moderates and people get out to tell each other all about the cold spell, there will be many true tales of intense suffering and more than the usual romancing about the terrible week. And then the Oldest Inhabitant will thaw out, and with all the self-satisfaction that superior age and experience crown him with, will tell how much colder it was in such and such a year, until we wish this little spell had sealed his memory and mouth, for we do all take a great ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... the cardinal looked at himself in the glass with a feeling of self-satisfaction. Still young—for he was scarcely forty-six years of age—he possessed great elegance of form and was above the middle height; his complexion was brilliant and beautiful; his glance full of expression; his ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... describes the visits of enthusiastic persons to big caves underground, very dark, damp, dreary, ugly, funereal—with winding ways and huge holes, water with eyeless fish, and certain drippings called stalagmites and stalactites. The enthusiasts, who always possess that priceless treasure self-satisfaction, and a boundless capacity for wonder (which is always ready to exercise itself with anything that is big, however ugly), and the "Palaces," and "Halls," and "Cascades," and "Altars," and "Bridal ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... sincerity. Unctuous implies excessive smoothness, as though one's manner were oiled. The word carries a decided suggestion of hypocrisy. Fulsome suggests such gross flattery as to be annoying or cloying. Smug suggests an effeminate self-satisfaction, usually not justified by merit ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Captain of the Second Company beamed with a self-satisfaction that added splendor to his ruddy and somewhat chubby face. The halo of glory that a fortune made in business gives to a retired tradesman sat on his brow, and stamped him as one of the elect of Paris—at least a retired deputy-mayor ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the dishonesty which ages of false education have fastened upon her race. The lady in question is—and evidently knows herself to be—an exception among her countrywomen for ability and acumen: an extreme self-satisfaction and vanity are revealed in the recital of her most disreputable tricks. She passes for a white blackbird, a woman of intellect caught in the harem; and it needs but little ingenuity to guess the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... do no wrong, the nobility may surely claim a certain immunity from criticism, and those who have allowance made to them must inevitably learn to make allowance for themselves. Lord Ferriby was, in a word, too self-satisfied to harbour any doubts respecting his own conduct. Self-satisfaction is, of ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... sentiment within appreciable limits, enthusiasm for economic, civic, national ideals,—such attributes were abundantly discoverable in each serried row. From the expanse of countenances beamed a boundless self-satisfaction. To be connected in any way with Whitelaw formed a subject of pride, seeing that here was the sturdy outcome of the most modern educational endeavour, a noteworthy instance of what Englishmen can do for themselves, unaided by bureaucratic ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... have been delighted to, but I've got one of these war-committees at six o'clock." Again he spoke with careful unconcern, masking a considerable self-satisfaction. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... readers. Seithenyn, the drunken prince and dyke-warden, whose carelessness lets in the inundation, is by far Peacock's most original creation (for Scythrop, as has been said, is rather a humorous distortion of the actual than a creation). His complete self-satisfaction, his utter fearlessness of consequences, his ready adaptation to whatever part, be it prince or butler, presents itself to him, and above all, the splendid topsy-turviness of his fashion of argument, make Seithenyn one of the happiest, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... for the reluctant Mr. Swinton but to obey, and I could not help smiling at his evident discomfiture. All his precise and matter-of-fact self-satisfaction was gone in a moment,—he was nothing but a very timorous creature, afraid to examine into what he could not at once understand. No such terrors, however, were displayed by the sailors who undertook to row him over to the yacht. They, ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... touching facts, so untouchingly narrated, and by the characteristic account of the Huguenot emigration, but it suddenly occurred to her that she was promoting gossip, and she returned to business. Lucy showed off her attainments with her usual self-satisfaction. They were what might be expected from a second-rate old-fashioned young ladies' school, where nothing was good but the French pronunciation. She was evidently considered a great proficient, and her glib mediocrity was even more disheartening than the ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and upon uncommonly good terms with himself— conscious, but with no vulgar consciousness, of possessing a fine figure and a good face: his was the air of a French coxcomb, who in unconstrained delight, was rather proud to display, than anxious to conceal, his perfect self-satisfaction. Interrupting his conversation only when he came within a few paces of the ladies, he advanced with an air of happy confidence and Parisian gallantry, begging that Mr. O'Shane would do him the honour and pleasure to present him. After a bow, that said ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... put his demand. He was leaning forward in his chair. A hot light had suddenly leapt into his eyes, which left them shining unwholesomely. Nancy was startled at his words. And his attitude shocked her not a little out of her self-satisfaction. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... unconnected chords with the greatest rapidity, with the pedal raised; and passes without pause to the F sharp minor mazourka. He accents vehemently, divides one bar and gives it two extra quarter notes, and from the next bar he omits a quarter note, and continues in this manner with extreme self-satisfaction till he reaches the close; and then, after a few desperate chords of the diminished seventh, he connects with it Liszt's Transcription of Schubert's Serenade in D minor. The second string of the ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... such difference of effect. That which one shall hide away, as it were, behind the substance of his discourse, or, if he bring it to the front, shall use merely to give an agreeable accent of individuality to what he says, another shall make an offensive challenge to the self-satisfaction of all his hearers, and an unwarranted intrusion upon each man's sense of personal importance, irritating every pore of his vanity, like a dry northeast wind, to a goose-flesh of opposition and hostility. Mr. Lincoln has never ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... and peaceful hills, in the court-room, in the plain pathos of Steve's death and Alice's heroism, and now in this suicide,—all that had given her insight and made her different from what she had been,—all that revealed the cheapness of her old ideals of freedom, intellectual development, self-satisfaction, that cult of the ego, which she had pursued in sympathy with the age. Now she wished to put it away, to remove herself and her husband, their lives together, outwardly as she had withdrawn herself inwardly. And her husband, moved in spite of himself ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... sulky sleighing party reached Luckenough they found Commodore Waugh not only up and waiting, but in the highest state of self-satisfaction, a blessing of which they received their full share of benefit, for the old man, in the overflowing of his joy, had ordered an oyster supper, which was now all ready to be served smoking hot to the chilled ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... a red spot as big as a cherry in either cheek, and her eyes scintillated with concentrated scorn and anger. Over her shoulder was visible Abe Konkapot's swarthy face, wearing a smile of great self-satisfaction. ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... Woe!"—I went on, carried away by feelings for which I shall make no apology; for, however confused, there was, and is, and ever will be, a God's truth in them, as this generation will find out at the moment when its own serene self-satisfaction crumbles underneath it—"Woe unto those that grind the faces of the poor! Woe unto those who add house to house, and field to field, till they stand alone in the land, and there is no room left for the poor man! The wages of their reapers, which ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... partridges were slaughtered, and the day of the wedding drew nigh. It was pretty to see Lord Ongar and the self-satisfaction which he enjoyed at this time. The world was becoming young with him again, and he thought that he rather liked the respectability of his present mode of life. He gave himself but scanty allowances of wine, and no allowance of anything stronger than wine, and did not dislike his temperance. ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... sitting there, on Nan's other side, was a Jew: probably something financial, connected with the Stock Exchange. Coxeter of the Treasury looked at the man he took to be a financier with considerable contempt. Coxeter prided himself on his knowledge of human beings,—or rather of men, for even his self-satisfaction did not go so far as to make him suppose that he entirely understood women; there had been a time when he had thought so, but that was a ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... of parochialism, a certainty that English beef, English beer, English morals, and English standards, were the ultimate excellence towards which a world of misguided foreigners might ultimately aspire, that self-satisfaction, different from pride, that glorying in prejudice, and wilful blindness to all features of national life which do not bear out the theory of an earthly paradise. "Tell me one thing, Lord Saltire; you have travelled in many countries. ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... soon as they were again settled in the study. "If you did not . . . like my sermon, tell me at once. You know that I am one of your boys, and you ought to . . . help me." Perhaps it was inseparable from his youth, with its buoyancy and self-satisfaction, and his training in a college whose members only knew by rumour of the existence of other places of theological learning, that Carmichael had at that moment a pleasing sense of humility and charity. Had it been a matter of scholastic lore, of course neither he nor more than six men in Scotland ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... Fuller, a clever American friend of Emerson's, said, "There are so many things in the universe more interesting than my individual faults, that I really cannot stay to dwell on them." There is one form of conceit—or rather of self-satisfaction—to which schoolgirls are liable: they know they are living up to the average standard imposed by public opinion and esprit de corps, and they are satisfied with this, instead of trying to live up to their own best self. It is quite possible for any ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... been taken; —or whether it was the joy and exultation which were expressed in the countenances of the poor parents in contemplating their children all busily employed about them;—or the air of self-satisfaction which these little urchins put on, at the consciousness of their own dexterity, while they pursued their work with redoubled diligence upon being observed, that rendered the scene so singularly interesting,— I know not; but certain it is, that few strangers who visited the ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... made his appearance duly the next day at the dinner table; a really handsome man, if regular features and fine coloring be all that is necessary to constitute good looks; but his face wore an expression of self-satisfaction and contempt for others, which was not ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... close the parenthesis, and return to my ill-humor. The little speech I have just addressed to myself has restored me my self-satisfaction, but made me more dissatisfied with others. I could now enjoy my breakfast; but the portress has forgotten my morning's milk, and the pot of preserves is empty! Anyone else would have been vexed: as for me, I affect the most supreme indifference. There remains a hard crust, which I break ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... back to the woman selling air-balloons with restored self-satisfaction, and stood there in the high wind, diving into his pockets for the amount required. The air balloons blew about—purple, pink and white—all looking almost equally colourless by the faint light as they bobbed about the woman's head, impeding her view of the purchaser. ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... may be imagined. Who but she could have done this? This was as if a painter should so paint a man as to deceive his species. This was acting, but not like the acting of the stage. He was in transports, and self-satisfaction at his own judgment mingled pleasantly ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... answered warmly, extending both hands to her in sincere sympathy; but she did not heed the movement, and her tone of calm self-satisfaction surprised him as she answered: "So you seek me in misfortune? Even the blind man knows ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... I fear, that the conventional habits of the French mind lead easily to ignorance and self-satisfaction. To be frank, the complacent aberrations of French taste, with its passion for Poe and its pathetic confidence in Kipling and Chesterton, have become a standing joke abroad. There is no great reason why the French should know anything of foreign thought and literature; but there is every reason ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... the witching hour of twelve, he twirled his small black moustache so as to display to advantage the sparkling diamond ring which encircled the little finger of his left hand. His Semitic features wore an expression of great self-satisfaction, and his knowing air betokened intimate knowledge of the world and all that therein is. He nodded familiarly to a couple of young men who passed by, and glanced with the appreciative eye of a connoisseur at the shop-girls who were walking ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... deaf, or crippled, why should there not be others who are specially predisposed to experience a certain series of sensations? Moreover, even an ordinary observer will constantly discover faces which bear the unmistakable imprint of a ruling passion—such as superciliousness, self-satisfaction, misanthropy, sensuality, and many others. Sometimes, no doubt, we meet with a face that expresses nothing; but when the physiognomy has a marked stamp it is almost always a true index. The passions act upon the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... spot as big as a cherry in either cheek, and her eyes scintillated with concentrated scorn and anger. Over her shoulder was visible Abe Konkapot's swarthy face, wearing a smile of great self-satisfaction. ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... separate personalities having each a separate and limited character and function, and animated by the separatist motives of ambition, possession, power, vainglory, superiority, patronage, self-greed, self-satisfaction, etc.—in so far as anthropomorphism is the expression of that kind of belief it is of course destined, with the illusion from which it springs, to pass away. When man arrives at the final consciousness in which the idea ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... new emotions were at work. The young master of the house was full of abstraction and dreams, wrapped in some pursuit, some hope, some absorbing preoccupation of his own. His mother was straining at her bonds like a greyhound in a leash. Minnie, who had been the chief example of absolute self-satisfaction and certainty that everything was right, had developed a keenness of curiosity and censure which betrayed her conviction that something had gone wrong. These three were all, as it were, on tiptoe, on the boundary line, the thinnest edge which divided the known from the unknown; conscious that ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... properly attempted to stop the disorderly discussion of the closure; but Mr. Chamberlain was not in the mood to respect the authority of the chair or the traditions of the House of Commons, and audaciously, shamelessly—with a perky self-satisfaction painful to witness—he proceeded to violate the ruling of the chair—to trample on the order of Parliament, and to flout the Chairman. And then the waters of the great deep were loosed. A hurricane of shouts, yells, protests arose. ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... a gesture of contempt indicative also of complete self-satisfaction and unalterable self-belief, shrugged his broad shoulders. His short fat fingers, covered with rings, beat a tattoo upon the ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... melodies to the words, "O that thou hadst hearkened to My commandments," ending up with the words, set too simply for any but a consummate artist to sing with complete effect,—"Turn ye, turn ye—why will ye die?" The marvel truly is that we are already so dead, so immured and petrified in our hard self-satisfaction, when we might so easily develop the freedom, fluidity, and delicacy of fine response to these tenuous intimations of our own spirituality and high destiny. Here we live, as some writer has aptly said, on top ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... whose plaint is an expression of pain, a cry for help; in any interval of ease which lasts long enough to relax the tension, she feels remorse, and becomes amiably anxious to atone. With the male nag it is different. He is usually sleek and smiling, a joyous creature, fond of good living, whose self-satisfaction bubbles over in artistic attempts to make everybody else uncomfortable. This was the kind of creature Uncle James Patten was. He loved to shock and jar and startle people, especially if they were powerless to retaliate. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... he had reached a high-water mark of self-satisfaction. He had found it easy to carry corruption into high places. A list of those who were in his power—willing or unwilling—would have horrified the whole nation. From O'Hagan in the West came reports that all went well with ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... chance. Being a Sophomore, he believed that he was thoroughly acquainted with the co-educated sex and all their wiles and guiles; but a feeling of repulsion toward this frank readiness to throw down another man, one of his own, too, drowned his sense of self-satisfaction at ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... most brilliant person in the world who selfishly monopolizes conversation at his own table. If guests cannot go away from a dinner-table feeling better pleased with themselves, that campaign of hospitality has been a failure. When the self-satisfaction on their faces betrays the subtle art of the host and hostess in having convinced all their guests that they have made themselves interesting, then the acme of hospitality has been achieved. One of the most good-natured but most inane of men was one day chuckling at having been royally diverted ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... mischief? or words to that effect. But I had, at all events, told him that. In spite of my chagrin I could not help chuckling as I thought of it. To tell Big Jim Colton to go to the devil was, in its way, I imagined, a privilege enjoyed by few. It must have shaken his self-satisfaction a trifle. Well, after all, what did I care? He, and his whole family—including Victor—had my permission to migrate in that direction and I wished Old ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of man or God. To-day their self-satisfaction has made them indifferent to anything that elevates. I had led them into a morass, and deeper in ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... them. "I put the dust there for safety—kalkilatin' that while these road gentry allus goes for a man's pockets and his body belt, they never thinks of his butes, or haven't time to go through 'em." He looked around him with a smile of self-satisfaction. ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... commended; which must tend much, I think, to sober the mind as to the value of applause. Above all, the constant consciousness of the immeasurable distance between a fine conception and the best execution of it, must in acting, as in all art, be a powerful check to vanity and self-satisfaction. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... he pulled up by the porch and directed me to stand by the young mare's head, wore a look of extreme self-satisfaction. Beside him, also beaming, sat Mr. Goodfellow, with the corner cupboard nursed ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the passenger felt little disposed to gratify the Italian's curiosity. Instead he asked him a few questions respecting himself and found that the other delighted to discuss his own affairs. Doria revealed a southern levity and self-satisfaction that furnished Brendon with something to think about before the launch ran to the landing-stage ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... be as well to give here the testimony of Dr. Mouat, the Inspector-General of Jails, Bengal, on the efficiency of the conservancy of this old jail, and in no spirit of self-satisfaction we quote his own words "verbatim," which are ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... felt so "riled up." Back of it was a secret reluctance to meet Jack—he was so different since the Gipsy Smith revival; of course, he was perfectly lovely, and unchanged toward her, but—somehow, she felt uncomfortable in his presence—and she didn't enjoy having her self-satisfaction disturbed. ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... shown much interest in Rose's defection. The dandy seemed to be relieved, and Millicent said, 'How stupid of her!' Milly had returned from the visit to Mr. Louis Lewis in a state of high self-satisfaction. Leonora was told that Mr. Lewis was simply the most delightful and polite man that Milly had ever met; he would be charmed to see Mrs. Stanway, and would make an appointment. Meanwhile Milly gave her mother to understand that the affair was practically settled. She knew the date ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... any their riches, their happiness, their good name, health, and youth?—Another thought for Lent. "Charity boasts not herself." Alas! alas! my friends, are not the best of us apt to make much of the little good we do,—to pride ourselves on the petty kindnesses we shew,—to be puffed up with easy self-satisfaction, just as charity is NOT puffed up?— Another Lenten thought. "Charity does not behave herself unseemly;" is never proud, noisy, conceited; gives every man's opinion a fair, kindly hearing; making allowances for all mistakes. Have we done so?—Then there is another thought for Lent. "Charity ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Brentwick nodded, twinkling self-satisfaction. "I contrived it all," he said; "neat, I call it, too." His old eyes brightened with reminiscent enjoyment. "Inspiration!" he crowed softly. "Inspiration, pure and simple. I'd been worrying my wits for fully ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... change has come over the American mind as sometimes comes over a vigorous and wilful child. Suddenly it seems to have grown up, to have begun to weigh its powers and consider its possible deficiencies. There was a time when American confidence and self-satisfaction seemed impregnable; at the slightest qualm of doubt America took to violent rhetoric as a drunkard resorts to drink. Now the indictment I have drawn up harshly, bluntly and unflatteringly in Sec. 4 would receive the endorsement of American after American. ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... is identical with self-consciousness, and expresses man's sense of the infinitude of his own faculties. Man learns about himself through what is objective to him, but the object only serves to bring out what is in him; his own nature becomes the absolute to him. Consciousness marks the self-satisfaction, self-perfection of man, that all truth is in him. As feeling is the cause of the outward world, or of that notion of it man has, it becomes the organ of religion. The nature of God is nothing else than an expression of the nature of feeling. As man lives mainly in feeling, finds there ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... gold sovereigns, as they lay with a broad smile of self-satisfaction all over their ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... out, stepped into a cab, and quite coolly Dick told the driver to go to Hammersmith. He sat himself down by her side, with a smile of self-satisfaction. ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... which money could buy. The beautiful bundle being tied up in a paper, the officer remounted, giving the nosegay into the charge of his military groom, who carried it with a grin, following his chief, who rode away in great state and self-satisfaction. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of life characterized the majority of our rural towns. They still exist among a class respectable in numbers and position, though perhaps not as happy in perfect self-satisfaction and a conviction of the dignity and desirableness of its lot as in former days. Human nature is above all things—lazy. Every one confesses in the abstract that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind is the best thing for us all; but practically most people do ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... hear of it? He is as headstrong as our young lord Josceline, though not so haughty. I shall but oppose the weight of my years and experience against him at every turn, and thou shalt see I shall prevail." So saying, Humphrey, with an air of great self-satisfaction, turned and descended the ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... whatever might be going to happen to you. Religion would be better than endurable in the company of such an embodiment of it! He might even qualify for some distinction in it with such a teacher!—Second, in the way of self-satisfaction; for clearly she was not disinclined to be on terms of closer intimacy with him. And as she made the advance why should he not accept, if not the help, yet the offer of the help she had almost made? That would and could bind him to nothing. He understood her well enough to have no slightest ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... alike disdained all that did not coincide with it, and spurned all mere common sense. Emma's bashfulness had been petted and promoted as unworldly, till now, like the holes in the philosopher's cloak, it was self-satisfaction instead of humility. This made the snare peculiarly dangerous, and her mother was so doubtful how far she would be guided, as to take no comfort from Violet's assurances that Mr. Gardner's character could be proved to be such that no woman in her senses could think, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... turn over their leaves until they almost become new acquaintance: some of their columns point to current events, and thus by a little aid of memory, make an outline chronology of the half-year; and, above all, if we have pleased the reader, we, at the same time, enjoy the self-satisfaction of having been employed to so gratifying an end. We like too the spirit of acquaintanceship which these prefacings, meetings, and greetings tend to keep up, although there may be persons who impatiently turn over a preface as the majority of an ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... pride may be common to all. True unity requires some common object, around which diverse interests may cling and crystallize. Nations, like families, need to look outside themselves, if they would escape, on the one hand, narrow self-satisfaction, or, on the other, pitiful internal dissensions. The far-reaching external activities fostered in Great Britain by her insular position have not only intensified patriotism, but have given also a certain nobility of breadth to her ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... training" mentally as well as physically at the celebration stage. Their minds and muscles turn flabby after they succeed. They are so proud of their accomplishments that they rust in self-satisfaction. Then, usually too late for remedy, they find themselves afflicted by the rheumatic twinges of deep-seated discontent ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... beautiful oval profile and silky auburn curls. Certainly Antoinette Dupres was beautiful, but it was such a beauty as one sees in wax dolls—blank, soulless, expressionless, if I may except the predominating expression of self-satisfaction. Beulah's quiet dignity failed to repel the continued stare fixed upon her, and, gathering up the folds ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... had begun early that morning, when Gordon, the town sergeant, stepped from his door and started down the street with no little self-satisfaction. He had been arraying himself for a full hour, and after a tub-bath and a shave he stepped, spic and span, into the street with his head steadily held high, except when he bent it to look at the shine of his boots, which was the work of his own hands, and of which he was proud. As ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... spurned this ignoble existence and called for higher aims and worthier exertion. He was not vicious, he never had been vicious, or, as somebody else said, his vices were all refined vices; but a life of mere self-indulgence although pursued without self-satisfaction, is constantly lowering the standard and weakening the forces of virtue,—lessening the whole man. He felt it so; and to leave his ordinary scenes and occupations and lose a morning with little Fleda was a freshening of his better ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... the children to Sandwich by rail and then to a camp by motor lorry. It was a tiresome job loading and unloading the lorry, but after six trips I found that every child was in camp. I went off to have a wash and some tea, and then, glowing with self-satisfaction at all I had done, I lit a cigar and walked outside. ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... excitement over the progress of a cricket or polo match. Their achievements were largely those of the stay-at-home warriors who fought with the quill what others faced death with the sword for. Their inertia disgusted her. Their self-satisfaction spurred her ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... appearance of Madame La Tour, the outer door again clanked, and Klussman stepped into the hall. His big presence had instant effect on Le Rossignol. Her music tinkled louder and faster. The playing sprite, sitting half on air, gamboled and made droll faces to catch his eye. Her vanity and self-satisfaction, her pliant gesture and skillful wild music, made her appear some soulless little being from the woods who mocked at ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... and by Satan as a joke and for the purpose of ridicule. On the contrary, they seemed to be not a little impressed with the theological learning and dogmatical science of these two so-called Doctors, who, in rare self-satisfaction, found life and complete happiness in Reinhard's supernaturalism. In short, these open counterfeiters, Calvinists, Methodists, and Unionists, these base traitors and destroyers of the Lutheran Church, were and always remained the dear brethren, who ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... new. In this repaired and restored house, the fresh-colored look of which contrasted with the time-worn exteriors of all the other houses, an observer would instantly perceive the paltry taste and perfect self-satisfaction of the ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... happened, Rupert was unwell next day and could not go to school. He was obviously afraid of my going alone, but I had no fears. My self-satisfaction was not undone till playtime. Then not a boy dispersed to games. They all gathered round Weston in the playground, and with a confident air I also made my way to his side. As he turned his face ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... still am, though but in thought, guilty of the thing that I hated her for, and immediately I became disgusting to myself, and pitied her and felt happy again. If only we could manage to see the beam in our own eye in time, how kind we should be." Then he wrote: "I have been to see Nathalie, and again self-satisfaction made me unkind and spiteful, and a heavy feeling remains. Well, what is to be done? Tomorrow a new life will begin. A final good-bye to the old! Many new impressions have accumulated, but I cannot yet bring ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... the man's voice and manner as he put his demand. He was leaning forward in his chair. A hot light had suddenly leapt into his eyes, which left them shining unwholesomely. Nancy was startled at his words. And his attitude shocked her not a little out of her self-satisfaction. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... ignore their responsibilities, or allow strangers to assume them, would be an occasion for humour, if it were not an opportunity for indignation: though indeed it would take a very exceptionally sober-minded spectator not to get some fun out of the blissful self-satisfaction and unconsciousness which characterize the most ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... on the table, peered inquiringly into the girl's flushed face, more beautiful than ever in her excitement. That strange feeling of exhilaration was still upon her, and there was undoubted triumph and self-satisfaction depicted in her ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... "Less through self-satisfaction than in contempt for a pack of murderous mongrels—impatience that I have to consider such creatures as Popinot, Wertheimer, De ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... which he was mounted thrilled with such a feeling of self-satisfaction, her engines hummed so merrily, and she lifted herself so lightly and easily when he asked her to climb, that he was soon wrapped in the joy of mastering so perfect a piece of mechanism. Moreover, Jimmy had grown to love flying for ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... had been taken, she emerged with her bundle and spread it out on the table for the third time. She was all smiles. She was not a bit angry with the foolish widower. This dogmatic attitude of mind, this wonderful self-satisfaction, were peculiar to the creature; he couldn't help it. But it had roused a mischievous spirit in her, and the temptation was too great to resist. The only thing she regretted was having let him kiss her, and she at once put up her hand to wipe the spot where the ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... case of noble lands in the eighteenth century, it generally was so; but nominal or real, the right to exact it was some one's property. If such a right did not put money in his purse, it yet added to his dignity and self-satisfaction. But such rights as this had come to be looked on with deep distrust by a large part of the French nation. Ideas of independence and of the abstract rights of man had struck deep root. It was felt that land should be owned absolutely,—by ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... with the scent of them. At one end is a tall cypress-tree, and the sunlight touches the stem of it until it shines like fire against the green darkness of its boughs. On the worn old stone pavement white pigeons strut and preen themselves, puffing out their chests with the most absurd air of self-satisfaction. There are steps down from the terrace, and at the bottom there is a great bed of carnations, red and white and yellow, and their fragrance meets you like a wall of perfume as ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... extra care until the tremor should subside; which it did as soon as I got over my first excitement. Meanwhile I let him talk—he was a boastful, egotistical oaf, as might have been expected—and I flattered and admired him until he fairly purred with self-satisfaction. It was very necessary to get him into a ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... predecessors. This end-of-the-century desire to shock, which was so strong and natural an impulse, still has a place of its own—especially as an antidote, a harsh corrective. Mid-Victorian propriety and self-satisfaction crumbled under the swift and energetic audacities of the sensational younger authors and artists; the old walls fell; the public, once so apathetic to belles lettres, was more than attentive to every phase of literary experimentation. ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... shaken hands with them all, and turned toward the door, congratulating myself on escaping thus easily, when a new voice broke suddenly in upon my self-satisfaction: ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... torment close at hand. Sometimes in the form of a dependent relative, sometimes a servant-girl, sometimes a weakly daughter, and this constant wreaking of a contemptuous spite upon one object produces a self-satisfaction which is mistaken for cheerfulness, an inward pleasure in hatred, which appears outwardly ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... Wheaton, "I left it out on purpose. I thought may be we could get him for less than fifteen hundred dollars. What do you think? Wouldn't he come on twelve hundred, and the parsonage?" And Mr. Wheaton smiled on me with an air of self-satisfaction which seemed to say, 'Jim Wheaton is the man to manage ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... kindly counsel. When he eventually doffed his uniform he had nothing with which to reproach himself; no neglect and no overstepping of duty, no injustice and no improper leniency; he had good cause for self-satisfaction. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... tu quoque. It is no good getting into a patriotic bad temper and refusing to answer that question. We British people are so persuaded of the purity and unselfishness with which we discharge our imperial responsibilities, we have been so trained in imperial self-satisfaction, we know so certainly that all our subject nations call us blessed, that it is a little difficult for us to see just how the fact that we are, for example, so deeply rooted in Egypt looks to an outside intelligence. Of course the German imperialist ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... institutional, or geographical conditions in the early period of the settlements upon the Atlantic seaboard will find in this journal much of suggestive and pertinent contribution. Danckaerts viewed his surroundings through the eyes of a fanatical self-satisfaction. For this reason his criticisms or strictures upon persons and conditions are to be received with much discount. But he was an intelligent man, and a keen-eyed and assiduous note-taker; and the variety and fecundity of his material ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... Venetians admired him intensely. His bright, clear complexion and rich chestnut hair had the charm of novelty for them. Though without the faintest respect for grammar or idiom, he spoke their language with perfect composure, confidence, and self-satisfaction, and his tones were so well adapted to the slow, soft, languid tongue, that his blunders sounded better than other men's correctness of speech. Mallem mehercule cum Platone errare. When he said "Si, Siora," it seemed ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... sure," Elia went on, in that sober tone of decided self-satisfaction. "And I said a heap more. And didn't the boys jest laff. Will went red as a beet, and the boys laffed more. And I was real glad. I hate Will! Say, he was up here last night. Wot for? He was up here from six to nigh nine. Say, sis, I wish ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... unsatisfactory, though by others he is said to have been an indolent student. He speaks of his "severe studies" occupying the greater part of his time, and amidst their dulness he seems to have underrated the incidents of his private life, which he afterwards related to the world with some share of self-satisfaction. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... triumph to them. And the exquisite morning, the thrushes singing to the sun, the fluting of the blackbirds, the south wind swinging the blue-bells, the mystical murmur of the sea—all these things set themselves unconsciously to his overweening self-satisfaction. ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... inexpressibly good-tempered in his countenance, that notwithstanding all his burlesques and even grotesque buffoonery, you cannot but be pleased with him. I own, I felt myself doubly interested for every character which he represented. Nothing could equal the tone and countenance of self-satisfaction with which he answered one who asked him whether he was a scholar? "Why, I was a master of scholars." A Mrs. Webb represented a cheesemonger, and played the part of a woman of the lower class so naturally as I have nowhere else ever seen ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... victory won, it was Grumbo's wont to indulge himself in a little brief repose, which he would take stretched out on the ground, with his shaggy head laid, lion-like, on his extended paws—betraying, in both attitude and look, a sober self-satisfaction so entire as made it seem that for him the world had nothing more to offer. But this morning, notwithstanding the successful, even brilliant, winding up of their great adventure, our war-dog, instead of unbending as usual, held grimly aloof from the rest of the party, still seated on his ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... driving slowly in the light buggy, that had brought him to Wardour Place, toward the residence of Jasper Lamotte. His features wore a look of complacent self-satisfaction, and he hummed softly to himself, as he drove easily over the red and brown leaves that were beginning to flutter ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... and lecture openly like this? It is enough to make one excuse the people who break up their meetings." He was a little consoled, however, by the thought that his country was so magnanimous, and in the calmer mood of self-satisfaction went so far as to subscribe L5 to a French newspaper which was being founded to propagate English opinions on the ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... honest, desirous to be sympathetic, widely read, and devoid of all sectarian obstinacy, Busken-Huet introduced into Holland the light and air of Europe. He made it his business to break down the narrow prejudices and the still narrower self-satisfaction of his countrymen, without endangering his influence by a mere effusion of paradox. He was a brilliant writer, who would have been admired in any language, but whose appearance in a literature so stiff and dead as that of Holland in the 'fifties was dazzling ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... composition with that of those who have excelled in virtue, or with that of those who have been sunk in the lowest depths of folly and vice, we are enabled to select a plan of life that will at least afford self-satisfaction, and guide us through the world in ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... was lowering to his nature. He sank more and more towards the professional Don Juan. With a leer of what the French call fatuity, he bids the belles of Mauchline beware of his seductions; and the same cheap self-satisfaction finds a yet uglier vent when he plumes himself on the scandal at the birth of his first bastard. We can well believe what we hear of his facility in striking up an acquaintance with women: he would have conquering manners; he would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one shall hide away, as it were, behind the substance of his discourse, or, if he bring it to the front, shall use merely to give an agreeable accent of individuality to what he says, another shall make an offensive challenge to the self-satisfaction of all his hearers, and an unwarranted intrusion upon each man's sense of personal importance, irritating every pore of his vanity, like a dry northeast wind, to a goose-flesh of opposition and hostility. Mr. Lincoln has never studied Quinctilian; but he has, in the ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... I had never joined before. My Utopia seems real to me, very real, I can believe in it, until the metal chair-back gives to my shoulder blades, and Utopian sparrows twitter and hop before my feet. I have a pleasant moment of unhesitating self-satisfaction; I feel a shameless exultation to be there. For a moment I forget the consideration the botanist demands; the mere pleasure of completeness, of holding and controlling all the threads ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... child of Him to whom all the gold mines belong; and great in that humility which alone recognizes greatness, and in the beginnings of that meekness which shall inherit the earth. No more would he stunt his spiritual growth by self-satisfaction. No more would he lay aside, in the cellars of his mind, poor withered bulbs of opinions, which, but for the evil ministrations of that self-satisfaction, seeking to preserve them by drying and salting, might have been already bursting ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... that any man trusting in his riches to get him in, could enter the kingdom. That would be too absurd. The money- confident Jew might hope that, as his riches were a sign of the favour of God, that favour would not fail him at the last; or their possession might so enlarge his self-satisfaction that he could not entertain the idea of being lost; but trust in his riches!—no. It is the last refuge of the riches-lover, the riches-worshipper, the man to whom their possession is essential for his peace, to ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... le jour, quand et ou il naquit'. The wording of the title will give an idea of the bizarre and barbarous jargon in which the whole book is written. It would be difficult to imagine the vanity and self-satisfaction which inspire this new reader of riddles. If he had found the philosopher's stone, or made a discovery which would transform the world, he could not exhibit more pride and pleasure. All things considered, the "incontestable proofs" ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a moment in wonder; and then, losing every mark of self-satisfaction in an expression of solemn ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... these ideas, as of every other movement of reform. And this dead-weight of prejudice, this vis inertiae of old and traditional thought, is concentrated in this phrase, uttered with tones of indifference or with tones of self-satisfaction and pride, "I think, for my part, that woman's sphere is home." This phrase you hear everywhere—in the parlors, in the streets, in conventions, and in pulpits, and read in books—"Woman's sphere is home!" (Applause). "Well, is it not?" some one asks among you, perhaps. Now, I have no desire ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... could see. He loved this dancing rout. He envied these boys and girls their passion and facility. They were, the most ignorant of them, of another stripe from arid New Englanders encased in their temperamental calm, the women, in a laughable self-satisfaction, leading the intellectual life and their men set on "making good". The poorest child of the East and South had an inheritance that made him responsive, fluent, even while it left him hot-headed and even froward. There was something, he saw, in this idea of the melting-pot, ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... convent looks with its high walls, bars, and bolts. I had a little talk with the sister in charge of the porter's lodge, and she took me into the church, pointing to the high iron rails barring off the cloistered nuns, with that imbecile self-satisfaction as much inseparable from her calling as her ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... "I am going to be ill-natured. You have shown signs of smugness, a quality which I detest. I am going to rob you of some part of your self-satisfaction. Of course I killed Jordan. I killed him in the very chair in which you ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in which I saw myself. She said little, but I understood, and my self-satisfaction was in ribbons—and something deeper than self-satisfaction. I saw now that I loved her as I had not dreamed myself ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... almost in his normal voice. "Now I know you love me." The pleased self-satisfaction in his voice made her angry. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... and to wander negligently in front of the big looking-glass between the windows, and find this compliment much easier to swallow than the Major's age. For the next half-hour they would chiefly talk about themselves in a pleasant glow of self-satisfaction. Major Flint, looking at the various implements and trophies that adorned the room, would suggest putting a ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... ignores the fact that the stolid self-satisfaction in materialistic comfort, which he defines as the essence of Philistinism, is not a predominant trait in the American class in which our English experience would lead us to look for it. The American man of business, with his restless ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... cried the old fellow. On the instant all his proud self-satisfaction disappeared. A cloud of anxiety spread itself like a veil over his beaming countenance. "Noel here," he repeated. Then he timidly added: "And ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... next interchange of devoirs between the Governor and General Deffenbaugh on Lee Avenue, His Excellency, with a comfortable air of self-satisfaction, spoke of the appointment that had ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Holland House, and the 'Edinburgh Review' is its prophet. There is something in the absolute confidence of Macaulay's political dogmatism which varies between the sublime and the ridiculous. We can hardly avoid laughing at this superlative self-satisfaction, and yet we must admit that it is indicative of a real political force not to be treated with simple contempt. Belief is power, even when belief ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... years old, Mr. Havergal was appointed to the rectory of St. Nicholas, Worcester, and thither the family removed. Soon after their arrival, a sermon by the curate upon the text, "Fear not, little flock," aroused her from the feeling of self-satisfaction into which she had drifted. Having a favourable opportunity, she unburdened her heart one evening when alone with the curate, but he did not help the young seeker after peace. He said the excitement of ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... themselves—at least, it seemed not; for we should then have ceased to be "representative," and it was as representatives that we had come. And so one would sit and listen, and watch—one person, and two characters. Lloyd George, when his imagination was not swamped in self-satisfaction, was quite evangelical to listen to— sometimes. But there he was representative—not of principles, nor of those visionary sparks which he struck so easily and threw off like matches, but of a successful election cry for "hanging the Kaiser" ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... use of all pleasures and all satisfactions—the frame of mind which made the old king say, 'Is not this great Babylon, which I have builded?'—they are nothing but the work of another class in the great school of life. A great many people are put to school with self-satisfaction, that they may know the fine joy of humiliation, the delight of learning that it is not effectiveness and applause that matters, but love and peacefulness. And the great thing is that we should feel that we are growing, not in hardness ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... chairs, and counting up their cost. He had taken the strips out of his pocket with an air of importance and complaisance; and Katherine, glancing from them to her mother, thought she perceived a fleeting shadow of a feeling very much akin to her own contempt of the man's pronounced self-satisfaction. So when supper was over, and the house duties done, she determined to speak to her. Joris was at a town meeting, and Lysbet did not interfere with the lovers. Katherine found her standing at an open window, looking thoughtfully into the ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... this miracle be wrought. He sees no one in his mirror but himself, and himself in full perfection. Should he, perchance, at any time see another, it is in a manner that only enlarges the perception of his own personal excellences, and strengthens his consciousness of self-importance and self-satisfaction. ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... relatively subtle. We try to make him understand, to make him see, and if he is aware of his inferiority we may have some success. But if he is not aware of his inferiority, we soon hold our tongues and leave him alone in his self-satisfaction, convinced that there is nothing to be done with him. Every one of us has been through this experience with a mental inferior, for there is always a mental inferior handy, just as there is always a being more unhappy than we are. In approaching ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... matter?" asked Sissy. An old look, that washed all the self-satisfaction from her round ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... His cheerful self-satisfaction was under eclipse. The boyish pride of him was wounded. He had not "made good." All over Cattleland the news would be wafted on the wings of the wind that Alan McKinstra, while acting as shotgun messenger to a gold shipment, had ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... In his fatuous, insular way, it pleased him to regard them rather as a species of aborigines benefiting by English civilization. The English Ass and the German Ass are touchingly alike. The shade of difference is that the English Ass's sublime self-satisfaction is in the German Ass self-glorification. The English Ass smirks and plumes himself; the German Ass blusters and bullies ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... These, with his gray hair, gave him a benevolence of aspect which somewhat misrepresented him. As a matter of fact, although good-humored and not without a still surviving capacity for generous impulse, he was only less "near" than his wife. Childishly vain, he bore himself with an air of self-satisfaction not without its charm for humorous neighbors. They said that they guessed he thought ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... the doings of the world at large. Of their civilization, which goes back beyond the reputed date of the Deluge, they are intensely proud, their ancient literature, in their conception, is far superior to the literatures of all other nations, and their self-satisfaction is so ingrained that they still stand aloof in mental isolation from the world, only the most progressive among them seeing anything to be gained from foreign arts. These differences in character have given rise ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... For there is not a taint of self-conceit, not even of self-satisfaction, in him. He only sees his own weakness, and want of life, of spirit, of manfulness, of power. His soul cleaveth to the dust. He is tempted, of course, again and again, to give way; to become low- minded, cowardly, time-serving, covetous, worldly. But he dares not. He feels that his only chance is ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... pieces that he had no thought to spare? This he left to the dominion of chance, which blew together the atoms of Epicurus. But supposing that, devoid of any higher ambition to approve himself to judicious critics and posterity, and wanting in that love of art which longs for self-satisfaction in the perfection of its works, he had merely laboured to please the unlettered crowd; still this very object alone and the pursuit of theatrical effect, would have led him to bestow attention to the structure and adherence of his pieces. For ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... he held it open, politely, looking after her, until she had crossed the street, calling out a cheerful "Goodnight" that had in it something of a benediction. She avoided the dining-room and went straight to bed, in a strange medley of feelings. The self-sacrifice had brought a certain self-satisfaction not wholly unpleasant. She had been equal to the situation, and a part of her being approved of this,—a part which had been suppressed in another mood wherein she had become convinced that self-realization lay elsewhere. Life was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should be, in the spirit of those who question their own wisdom and seek counsel and knowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the excitement of excursions whither they cannot tell. Justice, and only justice, shall always be ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... palettes, an inrush of fresh air and sunshine. In landscape we excel, easily leading the English painters. Of Germany I do not care to speak here: the sea of mud that passes for colour, the clumsiness of handling, and the general heavy self-satisfaction discourage the most ardent champion of the Teutonic art. In England, Burlington House still sets the fashion. At one Royal Academy I attended I found throngs before a melodramatic anecdote by John Collier, entitled The Fallen ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... translations with his moonshee, or interpreter, a Mussulman, he had much opportunity for conversation and for study of the Mahometan arguments, so as to be very useful to himself; though he could not succeed in convincing the impracticable moonshee, who had all that self-satisfaction belonging to Mahometanism. "I told him that he ought to pray that God would teach him what the truth really is. He said he had no occasion to pray on this subject, as the word of God is express." ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the proposition and Pee-wee accompanied him back to the lake, keeping up a running fire of enthusiastic encouragement and representing to him the delight and self-satisfaction of circumventing a pair of scoundrels. "They've got pistols and everything," he said as a clincher, "and if they'd steal a car they'd kill somebody, ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... she awoke next morning, she dressed and went downstairs. A woman stood in the lower hall, and from Sally's description Betty recognized Miss Trumbull. The woman's large mouth expanded in a smile, which, though correct enough, betrayed the self-satisfaction which pervaded her being. She was youngish-looking, and not as ugly as Miss Carter's ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... had come aboard from the tug, and there was the usual good-natured adjustment of the American self-satisfaction, among those who had seen them, to the ever-surprising fact that our continent is apparently of no interest to Europe. There were some meagre New York stock-market quotations in the papers; a paragraph in fine print announced the lynching of a negro in Alabama; another recorded a coal- ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... out my threat. We sent for the documents that had been prepared at Parker Chandler's, and inside of three hours these had been substituted and the several agreements entered into with Rogers formally renounced. I retired to bed that night with a chuckle of self-satisfaction, and a convincing appreciation of the truth of the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... all along," said Sam, and there was an interval caused by the maid insinuating herself between them and collecting his soup plate. He sipped sherry and felt a sombre self-satisfaction. He had, he considered, given the conversation the right tone from the start. Cool and distant. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Billie bite her lip. He turned to her again. Now that he had definitely established ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... were it not for the terrible tragedy written in his face. A footman in brilliant livery is a comic figure. The splendour of this livery brings out the comic element by its contrast to, and yet its harmony with, the stupid self-satisfaction of the countenance and the curls of ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... to his own statement it is true not only of moral activity but of every act of willing that in it "a self-conscious individual directs himself to the realisation of some idea, as to an object in which for the time he seeks self-satisfaction."[1] And he proceeds to ask the question, "How can there be any such intrinsic difference between the objects willed as justifies the distinction which 'moral sense' seems to draw between good and bad action, between virtue and vice? And if there is such a difference, in what does ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... he finished, and his childish delight seemed to know no bounds. He danced and shouted, ran in and out, walked round the hut, and then strutted up to us full of self-satisfaction, his tongue going all the while, and evidently feeling highly delighted at our smiles ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... financial, connected with the Stock Exchange. Coxeter of the Treasury looked at the man he took to be a financier with considerable contempt. Coxeter prided himself on his knowledge of human beings,—or rather of men, for even his self-satisfaction did not go so far as to make him suppose that he entirely understood women; there had been a time when he had thought so, but that ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... something in it. Certainly something, the three years or the discipline and training and suffering, or all combined, had changed him. He was not as he used to be. Things he liked very much he no longer liked at all. And where, oh where, was the serene self-satisfaction which ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Oriental woman of the narrowness, the shallowness, the dishonesty which ages of false education have fastened upon her race. The lady in question is—and evidently knows herself to be—an exception among her countrywomen for ability and acumen: an extreme self-satisfaction and vanity are revealed in the recital of her most disreputable tricks. She passes for a white blackbird, a woman of intellect caught in the harem; and it needs but little ingenuity to guess the torment she must have been to her protectors—first ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... the house, and Dr Heve too seemed gay with fine resolutions. The two met on the doorstep, each full of a justifiable self-satisfaction. The doctor explained that he had come thus early because Mr Clayhanger was one of those cases upon which he could look in casually at any time. In the sunshine they talked under the porch of early rising, as men who understood the value of that art. Edwin could see that ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... himself as a sensual fiend. He did not pose as cold and impudent, but as heartfelt and instinct with feeling. He was studying theology, and cherished no dearer wish than eventually to become a priest. He constantly alternated between contrition and self-satisfaction, arrogance and repentance, enjoyed the consciousness of being exceptionally clever, an irresistible charmer, and a true Christian. It seemed to him that, in the freshman whom he had singled out from the crowd and given a place at his side, he had found ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... plain,' said I, leaning back in my chair, and regarding the puzzled Hale with that cherubic expression of self-satisfaction which I know is ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... of them gives us the vanity of mortal things; another the sense of sin; and the remaining one describes the fear of the universe;—and in one or other of these three ways it always is that man's original optimism and self-satisfaction ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... caught Wulf by the collar of his tunic. Wulf struggled, but Wardo dragged him across the floor, shook him, and flung him outside the door and slammed it. He turned to Sada, demanding her applause with drunken self-satisfaction at his prowess, dropped on the nearest couch in abject prostration, and ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... extraordinary acts of self-denial, or of Christian beneficence, he stirs up in our hearts a vain-glorious spirit. If we have overcome any of the corruptions of our hearts, or any temptation, he excites a secret feeling of self-satisfaction and self-complacency. He puts on the mask of religion. Often, during the solemn hours of public worship, he beguiles our hearts with some scheme for doing good; taking care, however, that self be uppermost in it. When we are in a bad frame, ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... wretchedness from which they had been taken; —or whether it was the joy and exultation which were expressed in the countenances of the poor parents in contemplating their children all busily employed about them;—or the air of self-satisfaction which these little urchins put on, at the consciousness of their own dexterity, while they pursued their work with redoubled diligence upon being observed, that rendered the scene so singularly interesting,— I know not; but ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... with childish self-satisfaction. "I go into the hut to speak with my ministers," he said, grandiloquently. "Fire and Water, wait you here outside while I enter and speak with my friends from the sun, whom I have brought for the salvation of ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... Consul prided himself a good deal on his triumph, at least in appearance, over the scruples which the persons who surrounded him had manifested against the re-establishment of worship. He read with much self-satisfaction the reports made to him, in which it was stated that the churches were well frequented: Indeed, throughout the year 1802, all his attention wad directed to the reformation of manners, which had become more dissolute under the Directory ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... themselves, perhaps more self-respect, for the consciousness of being well-dressed, or, rather, when the knowledge that they are well-dressed relieves them of all consciousness upon the subject. To decide upon the costume which can secure this serene self-satisfaction is impossible. For to excellence in dress there are positive and relative conditions. A man cannot be positively well-dressed, whose costume does not suit the peculiarities of his person and position,—or relatively, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... clasps. It was perfectly evident that the more the clerk read, the less the man with the blue apron understood about the matter. When the volume was first brought down, he took off his hat, smoothed down his hair, smiled with great self-satisfaction, and looked up in the reader's face with the air of a man who had made up his mind to recollect every word he heard. The first two or three lines were intelligible enough; but then the technicalities began, and the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... In the evening, Adolphe's self-satisfaction was completed by an ovation from the ladies, who bestowed upon him the most flattering epithets. From the prettiest lips I heard, "What! this Parisian! this pale and slender young man, with such delicate hands and rose-coloured nails, fought face ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... arrived at Paris, where he demanded in marriage for his aide-de-camp Marmont, Mademoiselle Perregeaux, the sole child of the first banker in France, a well-educated and accomplished young lady, who would be much more agreeable did not her continual smiles and laughing indicate a degree of self-satisfaction and complacency which may be felt, but ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... way, her good humor having suddenly returned; and he looked up with a smile, pleased with himself. They sat for a time, talking of other matters, and he went to bed humming the defineless tune of self-satisfaction. But late in the night Mrs. McElwin awoke and found him standing ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... wanting in Nickie the Kid; the shabbiest clothes, a deplorable hat, fragmentary boots, shirtlessness, the most distressing situations all failed to wholly eliminate a touch of impudent dignity, a trace of rakish self-satisfaction which as a rule escaped the attention of his clients; but, here and there, a student of human nature found it delightfully whimsical. Sometimes it appeared that this spice of egotism sprang from a blackguardly sense of humour that found joy in the abounding weaknesses and simplicity of ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... the world of fashion. Without this control, every stimulation intensifies the emotion, since every natural expression adds to its vividness. The irritability taken in itself is at this stage less dominant, inasmuch as the drinker is at the same time satisfied with himself, and the self-satisfaction makes the irritability endurable. Only some accidental circumstance can intensify and spread this irritability. Such circumstances intensify the drunkard s liveliness and lead to the outbreak of merriment approximating upon hilarity, then to a verbal ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... while I withdrew to a distance, that I might have her brought to me in form. I was intent and uneasy, but I had room in my heart for vain self-satisfaction that I knew something of the Ottawa speech. My proficiency in Indian dialects, for which the world praised me lightly, as it might commend the cut of my doublet, had cost me much drudgery and denial, and my moments ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... not shocking, to matter-of-fact readers. Seithenyn, the drunken prince and dyke-warden, whose carelessness lets in the inundation, is by far Peacock's most original creation (for Scythrop, as has been said, is rather a humorous distortion of the actual than a creation). His complete self-satisfaction, his utter fearlessness of consequences, his ready adaptation to whatever part, be it prince or butler, presents itself to him, and above all, the splendid topsy-turviness of his fashion of argument, make Seithenyn one of the ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... that have been cited, and to discover the ultimate ends of action, about which there is no reasoning. He notices various systems that make calm self-love the one leading principle of action, and specially the system that, allowing the existence of particular disinterested affections, puts the self-satisfaction felt in yielding to the generous sentiments above all other kinds of enjoyments. But, he asks, is there not also a calm determination towards the good of others, without reference to private interest of any kind? In the case of particular desires, ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... incorporate our history. What was the state of our army at the beginning of the century? The glorious army of Frederick the Great had gone to sleep on its laurels, ossified in pipeclay details, led by old, incapable generals, its officers shy of work, sunk in luxury, good living, and foolish self-satisfaction. In a word, the army was no longer not only not equal to its task, but had forgotten it. Heavy was the punishment of Heaven, which overtook it and our folk. They were flung into the dust, Frederick's glory faded, the standards were cast down. In seven years of painful servitude God taught our ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... a Venetian characteristic; nor is it now, when Venice is only a museum and show place. All the Venetians—the men, that is,—whom one sees in the Piazza have an air of profound self-satisfaction. And this palace of the Doges is no training-place for humility; for if its walls do not bear witness, glorious and chromatic, to the greatness of a Doge, it is merely because the greatness of the Republic requires the space. In this room, for example, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
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