"Complacent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... everlasting flute. As he sat there with his wig off, the crown of his bald head was fringed with an obstinate-looking patch of hair, the colour of a badger's. My amazement at finding him here at this hour, and alone, was lost in my hatred of the man as I saw the depths of complacent knowledge in his face. I felt that I must kill him sooner or later, and the ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... twinkled far back in his head. His nose remained buried in the mass of flesh which enveloped his round, full, and purple face; and his thick upper-lip rested upon the still thicker one beneath with an air of complacent self-satisfaction, much heightened by the owner's habit of licking them at intervals. He evidently regarded his tall shipmate with a feeling half-wondrous, half-quizzical; and stared up occasionally in his face as the red setting sun stares up at ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... me, this self-complacent, condescending, qualified approval and criticism of a system to which many individuals—perhaps as highly endowed as our gorgeous Zenobia—had contributed their all of earthly endeavor, and their loftiest aspirations. I determined to make proof if there were any spell that would ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... himself. "Men would believe no more readily to-day," he added easily, "even if they should see miracles of healing, for they would attribute them to the human mentality, to suggestion, hypnotism, hallucination, and the like. Even the mighty deeds of Christ were attributed to Beelzebub." The complacent Father settled back into his chair with an air of having disposed for all time of the mooted ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... simple virtues are inculcated in Harry and Lucy; but the attitude of mind that must inevitably result from such an education is hard, complacent, and superior. The children are scolded out of superficial vanities, and their place is occupied by a satanical sort of pride—the ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... arrondissement from the twelve others. Her rivals—Suzanne Gaillard, who, in 1838, had won the advantage over her of becoming a wife married in legitimate marriage, Fanny Beaupre, Mariette, Antonia—spread calumnies that were more than droll about the beauty of those young men and the complacent good-nature with which Monsieur de Rochefide welcomed them. Madame Schontz, who could distance, as she said, by three blagues the wit of those ladies, said to them one night at a supper given by Nathan to Florine, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... the engineer echoed, with a complacent nod. "They've no minds of their own, you see. They'll do just as I ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... tell which was which." "The meat," says M. Soyer, "I consider of no more value than the other ingredients, but to give a flavour by properly blending the gelatine and the osmazome, for," he adds with complacent self-reliance, "in compounding the richest soup, the balance of it is the ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... social observances, would ridicule the idea at first, if their wives should announce the intention of leaving their husband's cards for them. But, however much a man might demur, a lurking vanity would develop into complacent satisfaction, as he became aware of the increasing geniality of the social atmosphere about him; and the pleasing glow would take the ultimate form of gratitude ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... with himself; and that was the funniest thing of all, for he turned his head up, down, from side to side, and drew in his chin with prinky little jerks and tilts. He would stretch his neck, throw up his head, turn it to one side and smirk—actually smirk, the most complacent and self-satisfied smirk that anyone ever saw on the face of a bird. It was so comical that Freckles and the Angel told the Bird Woman of ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... from the business yoke, was, if not lively himself, a willing spectator of Caroline's liveliness, a complacent listener to her talk, a ready respondent to her questions. He was something agreeable to sit near, to hover round, to address and look at. Sometimes he was better than this—almost animated, quite gentle ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... considered decency, she became nearly as outspoken as Miss Buckston, that lady maintained her air of cheerful yet impatient tolerance. She continued to tell them that the American wife and mother was the most narrow, the most selfish, the most complacent of all wives and mothers; and, indeed, to Miss Buckston's vigorous virginity, all wives and mothers, though sociologically necessary, belonged to a slightly inferior, more rudimentary species. The American variety, she said, were immersed ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... touching, when at midnight sweep Snow-muffled winds, and all is dark, To hear—and sink again in sleep! Or at an earlier call, to mark, By blazing fire, the still suspense Of self-complacent innocence; ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... stands for the mobilization of the Catholic army for manoeuvres, and does not mean a mere pageant, a complacent exhibition of our numbers, the platonic rehearsal of our past glories and great achievements. "We are here to do a work, and not to make a show," should we say with ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... he said, in a complacent tone. "Of course we have to keep everything as secret as ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Guest," repeated Mrs. Cayhill, with complacent mockery. "Do you think no one has eyes but yourself?—No, Joan, you're not sharp enough. Just look at the way he went on last night! Every one but you could see what was the matter with him. Mrs. Tully told me about ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the most ordinary, complacent, quite undisturbed tone, "I was just beginning to wonder where you'd got to. We've been back about five minutes, Sissie and I, and Sissie's gone to bed. I really don't believe ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... furnished me by the complacent and unfrightened prophets four years ago, and it has been furnished me again to-day. If conversions to new religions or to old ones were in any considerable degree achieved through the intellect, the aforesaid reason would be ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... older man than Carrick, and altogether a riper and most complacent figure. He had a large and benevolent face, which would have been common-place but for a touch of steadfastness and serenity which dignified it, and an occasional vivacity of the kindly eyes. One perceived ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... authority, but until I verified the names, dates, and places, of course I wouldn't dare print a line of it. The story goes that her husband is a hanger-on of the System, and that she's been working in their interest, too. That was why he was so complacent over the whole affair. They put her up to capturing Bruce, and after she had acquired an influence over him they worked it so that she made him make love to Mrs. Parker. It's a long story, but that isn't all of it. The point was, you see, that by this devious route ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... This self-complacent soliloquy was cut short by the appearance of her brother, who carried a case of surgical instruments in ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... with a countenance as red and round and complacent as an English butler's,—red hair and small twinkling eyes. Once he leaned over and spoke to my chance acquaintance, who, without turning his head, thrust a match over his shoulder. The man with the face ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... passengers, leaning on the thwartship rails close by, looked on, with complacent satisfaction or half-contemptuous pity. Among them stood Mrs. Hastings, Miss Winifred Rawlinson, and Agatha. It was noticed that Wyllard, with a pipe in his hand, sat on a hatch forward, near the head of the gangway. Agatha drew Mrs. ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... To be calm and good-natured, even playful, down to the last, is my policy; to hint at my resources without bullying and menace will be good taste. The Ante-Room, the Abomination of Desolation. Enter Mr Howe at last, Earl Grey and Mr Hawes looking very grim and self-complacent. Two to one is long odds. But here goes at you: "Ye cogging Greeks, have at ye both." The interview lasted two hours. What passed may be guessed by the result. When I entered the room, my all trembled in the balance. When I came out, Hawes had his letter of the 28th in his pocket, ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... Serene, complacent, satisfied, Content with things that be; The paragon of paltriness Upraised for all to see; With loving ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... tonsure, without traditions or customs, an Order with nothing but entire and whole-hearted devotion, without pride even in their most sacred privileges, without a past history in which they might take complacent refuge. They must be franc-tireurs of Christ's Army; like the Jesuits, but without their fatal reputation, which, again, was no fault of their own. ... But there must be a Founder—Who, in God's Name? —a ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James. He did not like tea; and, usually, rocking his American chair, his neat little shiny boots crossed on the foot-rest, he would talk on and on with a sort of complacent virtuosity wonderful in a man of his age, while he held the cup in his hands for a long time. His close-cropped head was ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... This complacent epoch culminated in Monroe's "Era of Good Feeling," which proved to be only the hush before the tornado. The election of 1824 was indecisive, and the House of Representatives was for a second time called upon to decide the national choice. The candidates were ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... a happy busy mother who, complacent with the knowledge that her daughter daily devoted four hours to her music, looked up from her knitting to say, "If I had had your opportunities when I was young, my dear, I should have been a very happy girl. I always had musical ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... secure and sufficient answer. We are to respect our responsibilities, not ourselves. We are to respect the duties of which we are capable, but not our capabilities simply considered. There is to be no complacent self-contemplation, beruminating upon self. When self is viewed, it must always be in the most intimate connection with its purposes. How well were it if persons would be more careful, or rather, more conscientious, in paying compliments. How often do ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... quiet pulse—with what a complacent sense of security we often meet those seemingly trivial events which may change the whole character of our lives! The ride had been taken, the dinner enjoyed, and the two friends were seated in the large cool hallway off ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... answer you. . . . How can you ask me if it be possible for you to love God as I love Him! My desire for martyrdom is as nothing; it is not to that I owe the boundless confidence that fills my heart. Such desires might be described as spiritual riches, which are the unjust mammon,[5] when one is complacent in them as in something great. . . . These aspirations are a consolation Jesus sometimes grants to weak souls like mine—and there are many such! But when He withholds this consolation, it is a special grace. Remember these words ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... on with a complacent eye at the sad spectacle of your young clerical friend, the Reverend Mr. Uttermost Farthing, abandoning himself to such gambols and appearing in the role of life and soul of the evening. Such a degradation of his holy calling grieves ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... himself as he took up a measure of grain from a bin in the corner of the feed-room and scattered some in front of a row of half-barrel nests upon which brooded a dozen complacent setting hens, "well, if the Lord has to pester with the affairs of Sweetbriar to the extent Stonie and the sisters, Rose Mary, too, are a-giving Him the credit of doing looks like we might be a-getting more'n our ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... he had a letter from Dr. Brocklesby, acquainting him of the death of Mrs. Williams, which affected him a good deal[725]. Though for several years her temper had not been complacent, she had valuable qualities, and her departure left a blank in his house[726]. Upon this occasion he, according to his habitual course of piety, composed ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... to the shortcomings of our society, or complacent about our institutions, or blind to the lingering inequities—then we ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... attention. They held up contemporary literary weaknesses to scorn, and indulged in the most merciless personalities, sparing not even his own brother, the poet Gilles Boileau. All retorts upon himself the author bore with complacent superiority which forced his adversaries to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... upright in her masterly way, smoothing her pet ponies with the curl of her whip, chatting and smiling; the princess slightly leaning back. I strode up to the country roads, proud of our land's beauty under a complacent sky. By happy chance, which in a generous mood I ascribed to Janet's good nature, I came across them at a seven miles' distance. They were talking spiritedly: what was wonderful, they gave not much heed to me: they seemed on edge for one another's conversation: each face was turned to the other's, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... love with me! really you flatter me," said Major Harper, looking down and tapping his boot, with his own self-complacent, regretful smile. ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... that actual service could illustrate and confirm. This noble warmth of disposition, seldom fails to call forth and unfold the liberal virtues of the soul. Brave above all estimation of danger, he was also generous, gentle, complacent and humane; the pattern of the officer, the darling of the soldier: there was a sublimity in his genius which soared above the pitch of ordinary minds; and had his faculties been exercised to their full extent by opportunity and action, had his judgment been fully matured ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... three, four, five, or six. The air of assurance and dignity about it all was exceedingly noticeable to the novitiate. Incandescent lights, the reflection of their glow in polished glasses, and the shine of gilt upon the walls, combined into one tone of light which it requires minutes of complacent observation to separate and take particular note of. The white shirt fronts of the gentlemen, the bright costumes of the ladies, diamonds, jewels, fine feathers—all were ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... quizzical grey eyes, it was a full moment before Claire realised that this was her acquaintance of that first eventful journey to London, none other than Mrs Fanshawe herself. There she sat, smiling, complacent, grande dame as ever, nodding with an air of mingled friendliness and patronage, laying one hand on the vacant place by her side, with an action which was obviously significant. Claire chose, however, to ignore the invitation, and after a grave bow of acknowledgment, turned back to Reginald, ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... dwell only in the soles of the feet;—there are those whose favourite haunts are in the seat of digestion;—there are those (happy worms) which will consent to dwell only in the bosoms of the fair. Even love," said he, assuming an air of most complacent softness, and casting his eye tenderly over the female part of his audience, "even love is not an exception; it is occasioned by the subtlest species of worms; which insinuate themselves into the roots of the heart, and play ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... known to those who have studied the physiognomies of 'saints,' she seemed to want only the dress of some monastic order to make her the ideal of a mediaeval abbess, watching with a half-pitying, half-complacent smile, the gambols of a group of innocent young worldlings. I saw Claude gazing at her full of admiration and surprise, which latter was certainly not decreased when, as soon as all had settled themselves comfortably on board, and the cutter was slipping quietly ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... not to leave him in the complacent enjoyment of this self-deception, I put it clearly before him that he could not be ignorant of the fact that a higher salary had been promised to me for the third year of my contract; and that, by the establishment of orchestral concerts, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... knickerbockers and waistcoat, and still retaining the beautiful lace collar on his aristocratic shoulders. His eyes have the same dreamy look as in other portraits. On his right are his sisters Mary and Elizabeth, the former demurely complacent as before, the latter timid and dainty. On the left the little Princess Anne frolics with Prince James in simple childish fashion. As a composition, the picture is somewhat stiff and artificial, but the single figures are ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... fitting ring after ring to her fingers. All were too small, however; most of them refused to pass even the first joint, and Gray realized now what Gus Briskow had meant when he wrote for rings "of large sises." Eventually the girl found one that slipped into place, and this she regarded with complacent admiration. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... alas, in the solemn and majestic robe of sonorous language. The angels timidly decline, and the Saviour volunteers, which saves the shameful situation. The character of God, as displayed by Milton, is that of a commercial, complacent, irritable Puritan. There is no largeness or graciousness about it, no wistful love. He keeps his purposes to himself, and when his arrangements break down, as indeed they deserve to do, some one has got to be punished. If the guilty ones cannot, so much the worse; an innocent victim ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... fancy and commands us to fall down and worship it, as a work of divine wisdom, an ancile or palladium fallen from heaven. By the very same argument the supporters of the Ptolemaic system might have rebuffed the Newtonian, and pointing to the sky with self-complacent grin [26] have appealed to common sense, whether the sun did not move and the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... decided him, and he cast in his lot finally with the fortunes of literature. He was at that time thirty-five years of age—an age at which most men are settled in life, with an established profession, and a complacent readiness to drift on into ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... himself. But it seems to us much more difficult for him to release his cause from complicity with the doctrines which he dislikes and fears. We have no doubt that he is not alone, and that there are numbers of his English brethren who are provoked and ashamed at the self-complacent arrogance and childish folly shown in exaggerating and caricaturing doctrines which are, in the eyes of most Englishmen, extravagant enough in themselves. But the question is whether he or the innovators represent the true character and tendencies of their ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... a complacent smile of superiority, the folly of the act; but the sentiment underneath ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... something serious was to follow, and sat on the edge of her chair, looking exactly like a naughty child convicted of a fault. She was wearing a rather faded dress of bright yellow silk and little yellow shoes, which she poked out from under her dress every now and again and regarded with a complacent air. ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... she had nothing but kind intention, as in fact the betrayal of her own secret proved; but as Jenny could not keep out of her voice the slightest tinge of complacent pity, so Emmy could not accept ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... the epistle he read it over with a complacent countenance, put it up and stamped it. Then ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Harley, who, unlike General Wood, was as much at home here as in the field, his form expanding, his face in a glow, paying assiduous attention to Mrs. Markham, who used him as she would. He watched them a little, and, though he liked Mrs. Markham, he reflected that he would not be quite so complacent if he ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... the work that had been ordered from him; and the gondoliers, meanwhile, in their splendid liveries, held converse with other gondoliers in lazily drifting barks, with hatchments of other noble houses embroidered on their sleeves; and their tones were strident and quarrelsome, or self-complacent and patronizing, as the quality of the silken sashes which displayed the color of their house was heavier ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Holroyd's—Azuma-zi would sit and watch the big machine. Now and then the brushes would sparkle and spit blue flashes, at which Holroyd would swear, but all the rest was as smooth and rhythmic as breathing. The band ran shouting over the shaft, and ever behind one as one watched was the complacent thud of the piston. So it lived all day in this big airy shed, with him and Holroyd to wait upon it; not prisoned up and slaving to drive a ship as the other engines he knew—mere captive devils of the British Solomon—had been, but a machine enthroned. ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the horror of a somnambulist who wakes up from a complacent dream of activity to find himself walking on a quagmire. A profound disgust of the ground on which he was making his way overcame him. Even the image of the charming girl was swept from his view in the flood of moral distress. Everything he had ever been or hoped to ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... priest? Were all these Americano husbands as sensitive and as gloomily self-sacrificing and expiating? It did not appear so from the manners and customs of the others,—from those easy matrons whose complacent husbands had abandoned them to the long companionship of youthful cavaliers on adventurous voyages; from those audacious virgins, who had the freedom of married women. Surely, this was not a pious and sensitive race, passionately devoted to their domestic affections! ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... along," Borne in the vast balloon of Busby's song; 40 "Shine in your farce, masque, scenery, and play" (For this last line George had a holiday). "Old Drury never, never soar'd so high," So says the Manager, and so say I. "But hold," you say, "this self-complacent boast;" Is this the Poem which the public lost? "True—true—that lowers at once our mounting pride;" But lo;—the Papers print what you deride. "'Tis ours to look on you—you hold the prize," 'Tis twenty guineas, as they advertise! 50 "A ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... no comment save that Southern prospects were less rosy than had been supposed. Then ensued a long silence, for this time there was no possibility of that editorial wiggling about the circle from excuses for misinterpretation to a complacent resumption of ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... society which he, as "a type," reflected they saw themselves; saw their own spiritual image; their unqualified straightforwardness, their transparent simplicity of mind and heart, their fearlessness, their complacent rusticity, their childish notions of the uses of wealth, their personal modesty and communal vanity, their happy oblivion to world standards, their extravagance of speech, their political bigotry, their magisterial down-rightness, their inflammability, and their fine self-reliance. ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... Count Girolamo, who had, coward-like, kept in the background—he was probably little more than a complacent tool in the hands of the pontiff—he was permitted to leave Florence in the train of the young Cardinal, immediately before the reception of the Interdict. He returned to Rome and abandoned himself to a life of profligacy; ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... the same instinct, I can speak with somewhat more exactness, and with somewhat saddening recollections. The cases, indeed, where I have been exposed to the play of his humor exhibit him in so superlatively complacent an aspect, and myself in so painfully inglorious a one, that I refrain, nay shrink, from rehearsing the discomposing circumstances. I should be pleased if I could call to mind any instance which would convey some notion of the Indian's aptness in this line, and ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... the comic papers displayed one selfsame and highly complacent person, first as "Our Grocer," then as "Our Mayor," then as "The Gentleman who elects our Mayor," "The Gentleman who disposes of our Public Trusts," "The Gentleman who benefits by our Public Trusts, "and "The Committee appointed ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... something singularly pleasing, both in the amusement of execution-seeing, and in the results. You are not only delightfully excited at the time, but most pleasingly relaxed afterwards; the mind, which has been wound up painfully until now, becomes quite complacent and easy. There is something agreeable in the misfortunes of others, as the philosopher has told us. Remark what a good breakfast you eat after an execution; how pleasant it is to cut jokes after it, and upon it. This merry, pleasant mood is brought ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had reappeared in its natal year 1682-1683. The same year saw the birth of such works as The Complete Courtier, The Complete Compting House, The Gentleman Jockey, The Accomplished Ladies' Delight. Life was being scheduled, tabulated, in readiness for the complacent century about to open. It was also being explored, not only in such works as The Ten Pleasures and The Woman's Advocate, but in others (entered as published, but in many cases not known to be now extant) like The Wonders of the ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... grain's weight. The spiritual fact remains unalterable, by many or by few particulars; as no mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere. A shrewd country-boy goes to the city for the first time, and the complacent citizen is not satisfied with his little wonder. It is not that he does not see all the fine houses and know that he never saw such before, but he disposes of them as easily as the poet finds place for the railway. The chief value of the new fact is to enhance the great and constant ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... passionately described as its brutal vulgarity. The library alone had been subjected to peine forte et dure. Mrs. Temperley said that it had been purified by suffering. By dint of tearing down and dragging out offending objects ("such a pity!" cried the neighbours) its prosperous and complacent absurdity had been humbled. Mrs. Temperley retired to this refuge after her encounter with Sophia. That perennially aggrieved young person entered almost immediately afterwards and announced a visitor, with an air ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... a little later, Pretty Tommy presented himself, and found Mr Pinsent at his desk engaged in complacent study of a sheet of manuscript, to which he had ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of the people around the fire that evening. "Sandie" in the middle, in front of the blaze; Christina on the other hand of him. She was in a glistening robe of dark blue silk, her fair hair knotted and wound gracefully about her head; a beautiful creature; looking at her lover with complacent looks of possession and smiles of welcome. Dolly never knew what sort of a figure the third was; she could not see herself, and she never thought about it. Yet she was a foil to the other two, and they were a foil to her, as she sat there at the corner of the ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... faith in the reality of Helen Burns's character; she was real enough. I have exaggerated nothing there. I abstained from recording much that I remember respecting her, lest the narrative should sound incredible. Knowing this, I could not but smile at the quiet self-complacent dogmatism with which one of the journals lays it down that "such creations as Helen Burns are ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... and self-complacent smile, another pause. The friend shook his head, raising his eyebrows as if he had heard a jest deserving only of commiseration, but not of ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... word of the philosophers—all are talked about, eulogized, or dismissed with a sarcasm. The wit of Mme. du Deffand is feared, but it fascinates. She delights in clever repartees and sparkling epigrams. A shaft of wit silences the most complacent of monologues. "What tiresome book are you reading?" she said one day to a friend who talked too earnestly and too long—saving herself from the charge of rudeness by an easy ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... and more extensive library of Dr. Priestley was left unnoticed and unlamented by the orthodox poet, who probably felt a complacent satisfaction at the destruction of heterodox books, the owner being an ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... century, and no formula of classification can confine him. His writing is of the age of enlightenment; his actions belong to romance. His clear, manly style, his sturdy commonsense, the rapier play of his epigrams, the formal, logical architecture of his thoughts, his complacent limitations, his horror of mystery and Gothic half-lights, his harsh contempt for all the sacred muddle of priestly traditions and aristocratic politics, his assurance, his intellectual courage, his humanity—all ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... of the press, in particular," put in the complacent Mr. Wenham. "I think we may more safely pride ourselves on the high character of the press, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... utmost joy and astonishment at the sudden change in the duke's manner. It was (he says) nothing less than a miracle that one who had so recently demanded a present of precious stones and 100 tuns of wine, as the price of his favour, should now appear so complacent. ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... spectacle, but that perhaps the pains and the crimes are necessary to the show, and that without a blood-and-thunder plot human life would not run, drying up of its own dullness? "All the world's a stage," and we are all cast for stock roles. Some of us have the luck to be heroes, the complacent centre of eternal plaudits, some are born for villainy and the brickbat. And while others have had to play goodness knows what—mediaeval Italian princesses, Cockney cabmen, old Greek hetairae, German ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... had opened. Uncle Edward's voice came out first, sounding with a sort of complacent finality. They must have settled it. You could hear Farmer Alderson stumping his way to the front door. His voice boomed ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... Pryme, saw the disappointed look on the substitute's face and was half sorry for him. The whistle blew again and Don was crouching once more beside Thursby—why, no, it wasn't Thursby any longer! It was Peters, stout, complacent Peters, wearing a strangely fierce and ugly look on ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... had divined the court's complacent misinterpretation ere he saw its smile; the facile theory that brooding so much over her fascinating picture had unhinged his brain. From that moment a hardness came over his heart. He shut his lips grimly. What was the use of talking? Whatever he said would be discredited on ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... sharp cry of surprise Escaped from his lips: some unknown agitation. An invincible trouble, a strange palpitation, Confused his ingenious and frivolous wit; Overtook, and entangled, and paralyzed it. That wit so complacent and docile, that ever Lightly came at the call of the lightest endeavor, Ready coin'd, and availably current as gold, Which, secure of its value, so fluently roll'd In free circulation from hand on to hand For the usage of all, at a moment's command; For once it rebell'd, it ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... called me Cherrytoe; and you must, mamma, and every one, because I dance so pretty, with my little toes. Will you call me Cherrytoe always, mamma?" asked 'Toinette, with such a complacent delight in her own accomplishments, that her mother's smile was sad as it was tender. But she felt that this was not the time or place to reprove the vanity so rankly springing in the child's heart; so she ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... betook himself to the depths of his arm-chair, with the complacent consciousness of having faithfully discharged his parental duties. "She should not go to school. She would not be married. She had said she would not, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... his castle from the road to Avignon might afford some remains of feudal splendour. Off we set accordingly, and emerging from the dirty town as quickly as possible, beheld on turning round!—a large modern front, in the full smile of complacent ugliness, with a Grecian portico, not of masonry, but of red and yellow paint a la Lyonnaise; the whole edifice quite worthy of the Hermitage du Mont d'Or. The two short round towers on the sides might ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... course at their success, and at the prospect of a baked elephant's foot for supper, and Hicks was much pleased with the tusks, which were large and valuable. He surveyed them with a complacent smile, and observed that he had much need of a little ivory like that, for the expenses of a ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... by seeing and hearing their wicked deeds;— [2:9]the Lord knows how to deliver the pious from trial, and to keep the wicked to the day of judgment to be punished, [2:10]but especially those who walk after the flesh, in corrupt desires, and despise government. Presumptuous, self-complacent, they fear not to revile glories, [2:11]where the angels who are greater in strength and power do not bring against them a reproachful judgment; [2:12]but these, like irrational animals, brutes made ...
— The New Testament • Various
... not a girl alive, certainly not an American girl, who is wholly lacking in some sort of ability. The parasite type (who is growing rare in these days, by the way, for it is now the fashion to "do things") either fastens herself upon complacent relatives or friends when deserted by fortune, or drifts naturally into the half-world, always abundantly recruited from such ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... prayer. The door flew open, and the porter sent in my name. I had soon the honour to be invited into the park, where Mr. John was walking with a few friends. I recognised him at once by his corpulency and self-complacent air. He received me very well—just as a rich man receives a poor devil; and turning to me, took my letter. "Oh, from my brother! it is a long time since I heard from him: is he well?—Yonder," he went on,—turning to the company, ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... really fond of her child's father, but as he had shown no tenderness for her, nothing but a craving for sensual gratification, she would rather have died than let him know. She soon tired of her attachments, she told me. She did not like T.D. He was not the complacent husband; he was spirited enough, but he believed everything she told him. One day he came home unexpectedly when we were together on the bare palliass in her room. It was a critical moment when his knocks were heard, and in the hurry ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... went out, feeling very complacent over his new investment, and much pleased with the handsome way he was ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... and forgot to look at the ceiling. He had been caught off his guard, and through the momentary look of recognition there flitted across his flabby features an expression that was far from ecclesiastical. But it was gone as quickly as it had come, and the Reverend Mr. Means was once more his complacent unperturbed self. ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... slim dashing figure, fine fair hair, keen cold gray eyes, a haughty nostril and upper lip: a beauty of the patrician American type. The other was shorter but also excessively thin, with dark dancing eyes, a warm color, a coquettish nose and pouting lips—which somehow invoked the complacent visage of the late Herr Graf Niebuhr—and a brilliant smile. In a moment Gisela recognized Ann Howland Prentiss and Kate Terriss, now Mrs. Tolby. This American friend of her childhood had married an American whose business kept ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... movement of the crowd—particularly of youthful male Tasajara—in that direction. It was evident that it announced the unexpected arrival of some popular resident. Attracted like the others, Grant turned and saw the company making way for the smiling, easy, half-saucy, half-complacent entry of a handsomely dressed young girl. As she turned from time to time to recognize with rallying familiarity or charming impertinence some of her admirers, there was that in her tone and gesture which instantly recalled ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... smile more touching. Meanwhile the redoubted Corporal, who was by no means pleased with the change in his master's plans, lingered behind, whistling the most melancholy tune in his collection. No young lady, anticipative of balls or coronets, had ever felt more complacent satisfaction in a journey to London than that which had cheered the athletic breast of the veteran on finding himself, at last, within one day's gentle march of the metropolis. And no young lady, suddenly summoned back in the first flush of her debut, by an unseasonable fit of gout or economy ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Full of complacent contentment, Tonza made hasty preparations for leaving Diu, and that same evening saw him a welcome guest of ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... had sensed the second coming of McGurk, Pierre would not have ridden so jauntily through the hills this day, or whistled so carelessly, or swept the hills with such a complacent, lordly eye. A man of mark cannot bear himself too modestly, and Pierre, from boots to high-peaked, broad-brimmed sombrero, was the last word in elegance for ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... mounted the high horse, and rode away complacent with the old hand laying the court butter on ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Constantinople. Short, stout, cross-eyed, with a most sinister expression of countenance, old enough to be her father, the contrast was most striking. His wife seemed very happy, however, and remarked in a complacent tone that her husband was quite European. So he was, except that he wore a red fez cap, which was, to say the least, not "becoming" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... feelings. Moreover, I cannot bear to be at ill-will with my fellows, and am ever the first to give in after having quarrelled. It is easier than sulking, and it always makes the other party so self-complacent that it is amusing as well as convenient, and—and—and—I found I was very, ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... visible. As I slowly passed the telescope over the face of Europe, I pictured to myself the fat, plodding Hollander—the patient, contemplative German—the ingenious, sensual Italian—the temperate Swiss—the haughty, superstitious Spaniard—the sprightly, self-complacent Frenchman—the sullen and reflecting Englishman —who monopolize nearly all the science and literature of the earth, to which they bear so small a proportion. As the Atlantic fell under our view, two faint circles on each side of the equator, were to be perceived by the naked eye. ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... who was admired by William, the sleek, neat waiter (who had a music-master to teach him the flageolet two hours every morning before the maids were up), for his temper in managing an argument. Mr. Kirkpatrick was one of those bland, simpering, self-complacent men, who, unshakable from the high tower of their own self-satisfaction, look down upon your arguments from their magnificent elevation. 'I will explain,' was his condescending phrase. If you corrected the intolerable magnifico, he corrected your correction; if you hinted ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... mind; he is up at his loom, weaving and weaving, to set the landscape to words. This one peers about, as he goes, among the grasses; he waits by the canal to watch the dragon-flies; he leans on the gate of the pasture, and cannot look enough upon the complacent kine. And here comes another, talking, laughing, and gesticulating to himself. His face changes from time to time, as indignation flashes from his eyes or anger clouds his forehead. He is composing articles, delivering orations, and conducting the most impassioned interviews, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... plans came back to him with dust upon them. They were dry and crumbling like forsaken habitations. The son upon whom his complacent ambition had rested had turned his back upon the mansion of his father's hopes. The break might not be final; and in any event there would be much to live for; the fortunes of the family would be secure. But the zest of it all would be gone ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke
... growing demand for independence is often balked by the continued domination of his elders, and he rebelliously plans quite a career of crime for himself. He'll show them! They won't be so pig-headedly complacent when they know they have driven him to the bad. You can tell by the looks of {496} a person whose feelings are hurt that he is imagining something; usually he is imagining himself either a martyr or ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... wig flying, and, rushing bareheaded to the footlights, he stands a few moments amid the roars of the house, snorting with rage and choking with passion. Like Burleigh's nod, Handel's wig seemed to have been a sure guide to his temper. When things went well, it had a certain complacent vibration; but when he was out of humor, the wig indicated the fact in a very positive way. The Princess of Wales was wont to blame her ladies for talking instead of listening. "Hush, hush!" she would say. "Don't ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... But I don't want you to think I'm keeping anything away from you that a sister ought to know. As my sister and as Lana's good friend, I'm sure you'll be glad to know that I love her with all my heart and I hope I haven't misunderstood her feelings in regard to me. I don't want to be too complacent, but I think she's still girl enough to welcome my kind of love and to take me ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... with a grim laugh. "Everyone is well and complacent. I had been riding rapidly before I met you. My horse has been idle for some days, and I had to run the spirit out of him. Amy wishes to have a chestnutting party to-morrow. Won't you ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... made him seem more like some wild animal or half-savage monomaniac than an ordinary young man under five-and-twenty. He had, moreover, at this moment, when all the energies of his nature suddenly burst out, a power of deliberate, complacent, and pitiless moral self-vivisection, a power of performing upon his character such cutting and ripping-open operations as he thought beneficial to himself, which makes one think of the abnormal faculty of enduring pain, the abnormal and almost cruel satisfaction ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... Steevens his helmet, his shield, his armour, his flag. That it was which made his lightest word a law, his vaguest promise a necessity in act, his most facile acceptance an engagement as fixed as the laws of motion. In old, old days I well remember how it came to be a complacent certainty with everybody associated with Steevens that if he promised an article, an occasional note, a review—whatever it might be—at two, three, four, five in the morning, at that hour the work would be ready. He never flinched; he never ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... the excitement of the adventure, had given us an excellent appetite, and even Jack Penny ate away heartily, looking self-satisfied and as complacent as ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... writers we have just dispraised, of making game of the subject of his book, no more than he has the wit and cleverness which half redeem their naughtinesses. The absence of these latter qualities is supplied in his case by the self-complacent good faith in which he puts forth his monstrous assumptions and the stolid assurance with which he maintains them. But the effect of his labors, as of theirs, is to throw an atmosphere of ludicrous ideas around the memory of a great man, painful to all persons of good taste ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... was a great diamond worth thirty-five thousand pounds, which James I used to borrow for state occasions. The son of that monarch purchased this jewel in 1625 for about half its value and successfully deferred payment for even that reduced sum! Sir Paul, indeed, appears to have been a complacent lender of his wealth to royalty and the nobility, so that it is not surprising many "desperate debts" were owing him on his death. A century and a quarter after that event, that is in 1787, the splendid mansion of the wealthy merchant and diplomat had become a tavern ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... consult history on such points must not depend on sundry battle steeds of historical critics, on their wise dicta and self-complacent terminology, but look at facts with his own eyes. There is, for instance, a certain day in the campaign in Silesia, 1761, which, in this respect, has attained a kind of notoriety. It is the 22nd July, on which Frederick the Great gained on Laudon the march to Nossen, near Neisse, by which, ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... southward of Cuba, he had so far profited by the westerly winds, as to get well to the eastward of the Mona Passage, the strait through which he intended to shape his course on making the islands. Early on that morning Mrs. Budd had taken her seat on the trunk of the cabin, with a complacent air, and arranged her netting, some slight passages of gallantry, on the part of the captain, having induced her to propose netting him a purse. Biddy was going to and fro, in quest of silks and needles, her mistress having become slightly capricious in her tastes of late, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... It came within the scope of the senator's understanding. After all, he was not to be cast into outer darkness. His smile was complacent. ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... at a table in a restaurant. Dinner was over, and from all around them came the murmur of complacent and well-fed London. A string band of just sufficient strength gave forth a ragtime effort; a supreme being hovered near to ensure that the '65 brandy was all it should be. Of the men themselves little need be said: my story is not of them. ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... entangle myself. He appeared to think me excitable, and used soothing expressions as if I were a fractious child to be calmed, rather than a sane equal to be reasoned with. On many occasions I had the facts at my finger ends, while he remained in a state of most complacent ignorance, and though this attitude of lowering himself to deal gently with one whom he evidently looked upon as an irresponsible lunatic was most exasperating, I nevertheless claim great credit for having kept ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... about this time the two sisters saw approaching near, that steed of complacent appearance named Uchchaihsravas who was worshipped by the gods, that gem of steeds, who arose at the churning of the Ocean for nectar. Divine, graceful, perpetually young, creation's master-piece, and of irresistible vigour, it was blest ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the unconvincing ring of his tone, lacking the full and complacent self-assurance usual to it, for as if groping for something to make good the lack he sought backward through his memories and unfolded bit by bit the tale of his experiences. Scotch born of drunken parents, he had been reared in the slums of American cities and the forecastles of American ships. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... emphasized the gowns, the gowns like orchids and tea-roses and the leaves of magnolias. It sparkled in the red and green and crystal jewels like exotic dew scattered over the exotic human flowers. Very occasionally there was a complacent or irritable masculine utterance, and then it was immediately lost in the dominant ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... whispered, glaring at poor Toon, who stood steering the squat little barge, with an irritatingly complacent look on ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... was pleasant enough. He was treated with manifest distinction—flattered, complimented, well-nigh caressed. In the drawing-room after dinner, Sydney, surrounded by complacent and adulating friends, really experienced some of the most agreeable sensations of his life. He was almost sorry when the group gradually melted away, and conversation was succeeded by music. He had never cultivated his taste for music; but he had ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... to our sheep" from, this little digression:— Blogg's features assumed a complacent expression As he emptied his glass, and she gave him a fresh one; Too little he heeded, How fast they succeeded. Perhaps you or I might have done, though, as he did; For when once Madam Fortune deals out her hard ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... came from whatever direction the ear sought it. Then, without dying out, it was reinforced by another sound, rhythmical, abrupt, twanging, filling the water and air with a slow measure on four notes. The water swirled beside the canoe, and a face appeared—a monstrous, complacent face, such as Bocklin would love—a face inhuman in possessing the quality of supreme contentment. Framed in the brown waters, the head of the great, grinning catfish rose, and slowly sank, leaving outlines discernible in ripples and bubbles with almost Cheshire persistency. One of my Indians, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... and sinuous and complacent oozed around the corner of the presidential mansion. The president of Eire sweated. He recognized the dark object. He'd believed it safely put away in pleasant confinement until the Dail Committee went away. But it wasn't. It was Timothy, the ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... matters, are complicated and confused matters; many a seeming Pharisee is at heart a self-condemned publican, and ought to be comforted, and not cursed; while many a publican is, in the midst of all his foul sins, a thorough exclusive and self-complacent Pharisee, and needs not the right hand of mercy, but the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... brought about by sin, than man's ignorance of it. There is no more tragical proof that a man is 'wretched, and miserable, and blind, and naked' than his vehement affirmation, 'I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing,' and his self-complacent rejection of the counsel to 'buy refined gold, and white garments, and eye-salve to anoint his eyes.' So obstinately unconscious are we of our ruin that even God's voice, whether uttered in definite words, or speaking in sharp sorrows and punitive acts, but too ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... anybody satisfied with the action of the managers of the American Institute, in the matter of awarding prizes to the competing engines exhibited at the recent fair, we have yet to meet that complacent individual. Neither the exhibitors nor the general public could be expected to accept with equanimity such a report as the managers have made, because it is inadequate to give any real idea of the relative merits of the engines tested. ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... Herr Schwarz, nodding his head in complacent recognition at the name of the already famous assistant-director of ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... big, protecting arm and heart were gone forever—and now he had an early buttercup in his buttonhole, and on his lips the last of the laughter that he had just been sharing with Mary Dickey! And Mary, the picture of complacent daintiness, was sauntering ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... tribute and criticism of his henchman with a complacent laugh, which was not, however, without a certain contempt for the speaker and the man spoken to. His bold, selfish eyes wandered round the room as if in search of some other ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... independence, which means so much to many women, was of little account to Vanessa, who came under the heading of the mere female. She made little ado about accepting Clyde's condition, and announced herself ready to follow him to the end of the world; as the world was round she nourished a complacent idea that in the ordinary course of things one would find oneself in the neighbourhood of Hyde Park Corner sooner or later no matter how ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... Paris engrossed her so wholly that she had little time for dwelling on contingent evils. The departure of the Princes had, moreover, relieved her from the annoyance of encountering discontented countenances and repellent frowns; and as she saw herself surrounded only by beaming looks and complacent smiles, her spirits rose, and she began to believe that her long-indulged vision of undisputed supremacy ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... been dispelled, once she was sure of a protecting kindness that might be relied upon, she proved a gay little body. As the blonde person said, Gracie wasn't a bad sort at all. As a matter of fact, neither was the blonde person. Vandervelde saw that, and it troubled his complacent satisfaction with things. He saw in the waste of these women an effect of that fatally unmoral energy ironically called modern civilization. He wondered how Marcia, or Peter's wife, would react to Gracie. Should he tell them about her? ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... of an extraordinary pallor, his lips twitched as he spoke and his fingers worked in a nervous uneasy manner upon the table-cloth. Captain Plessy was in far too complacent a mood to notice such trifles. His vanity was satisfied, the world was a rosy mist with a sparkle of champagne, and he answered lightly as he unfastened another button of ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... was nearly two hours before the gentleman who was with Sir John had finished his work, during which Mr. Crinkett seemed to suffer much. The gentleman was by no means so complacent as Sir John, and asked some very disagreeable questions. Had Crinkett intended to commit bigamy by marrying the last witness, knowing at the time that she was a married woman? 'I never said that I intended to marry her,' said Crinkett. 'What she wrote to Caldigate was nothing to me.' He could not ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... seem brighter than in the early days of 1306. Scotland was obedient; the French alliance was firmly cemented; the pope was complacent; the Archbishop of Canterbury was in exile and the Bishop of Durham in disgrace; the commons were grateful for the better order secured by the commissions of trailbaston, and the king had in the papal absolution a weapon in reserve, which he could always use against a renewal of baronial opposition, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... wild rush of anthropological lore into her brain, a flare of indecorous humor. It was one of the secret troubles of her mind, this grotesque twist her ideas would sometimes take, as though they rebelled and rioted. After all, she found herself reflecting, behind her aunt's complacent visage there was a past as lurid as any one's—not, of course, her aunt's own personal past, which was apparently just that curate and almost incredibly jejune, but an ancestral past with all sorts of scandalous things in it: fire and slaughterings, exogamy, marriage by capture, ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... flume. This had long been in use for the general needs of the mission; but it was reserved for Father Uria to apply some of the surplus water to the garden. Father Uria had once visited the garden at Mission San Gabriel which had been the special pride and comfort of Father Zalvidea; and it was with complacent satisfaction that, in comparing it with his own, he saw the latter suffered no disparagement. His was in fully as flourishing condition, but the element of picturesque beauty was lacking; his needs for a garden were entirely utilitarian, while Father Zalvidea required ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... censure. I had one pupil who was nine years my senior, and I did not even know that he was retarded. I recall quite distinctly that he had a luxuriant crop of chin-whiskers but even these did not disturb the procedure of that school. We accepted him as he was, whiskers included, and went on our complacent way. He was blind in one eye and somewhat deaf, but no one ever thought of him as abnormal or subnormal. Even if we had known these words we should have been too polite to apply them to him. In fact, we had no black-list, ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... his ship depended mainly upon her sailing qualities and the master's willingness to risk being dismasted or hulled by the pursuer's shot. Granted a capful of wind on his beam, a fleet keel under foot, and a complacent skipper aft, the flight direct was perhaps the means of escape the sailor loved above all others. The spice of danger it involved, the dash and frolic of the chase, the joy of seeing his leaping "barky" draw slowly away from her pursuer in the contest of speed, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... in the elevated manner in which the self-complacent triumph of genius, expressed by so many poets from Ennius downwards, is at once justified and chastened by the reflection in these lines. We see in them that the poet alludes to himself in the third person, and he repeats ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... it bore the date 1698, and the initials "W. M." for William and Mary. There it was, on a beam, above the chancel arch, and the lion and unicorn on either side, the first with a huge tongue hanging out at the corner of his mouth, looking very complacent, as though he were displaying the royal arms, the unicorn slim and dapper with a chain hanging ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was something that is supposed to be the prerogative of royalty in the lift of it. Her smile was complacent in the extreme. ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... women. I confess, however, that they failed to amuse me. I was doubtless not in a mood to enjoy them, for they seemed to me peculiarly cynical and vulgar. Their imitative felicity was revolting. As I looked askance at the complacent little artist, brandishing them between finger and thumb and caressing them with an amorous eye, he seemed to me himself little more than an exceptionally intelligent ape. I mustered an admiring grin, however, and he blew another blast. "My figures are studied from life! I have a little ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... who happened to verge somewhat toward a complacent mood upon this occasion, smiled grimly at his wife's commendation, and even unbent so far as to indulge in some ponderous attempts at wit with Laura concerning her "magnificent offer," and asserted that if she had been "like his wife, she would have jumped at the chance of getting hold of such ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... diet. The cat was old now, and objected to the baby so strenuously that Dely regarded her as partly insane from age; and though she was kind to her of course, and fed her faithfully, still a cat that could growl at George's baby was not regarded with the same complacent kindness that had always blessed her before; and whenever the baby was asleep at milking-time, Pussy was locked into the closet,—a proceeding she resented. Biddy, on the contrary, seemed to admire the child,—she certainly did not object to her,—and necessarily obtained thereby ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... exempted should not be large enough to tempt the beneficiary to give up work and settle down into a life of complacent idleness, but enough to be of decided assistance to him in bringing up a family: $50,000 might be a good maximum. Above this, the rate should advance rapidly, and should be progressive, not proportional. A 50% tax on inheritances above $250,000 seems to ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... gentleman had waked time enough to hear the last part of this discourse; at least (whether from that cause, or that he too was a physiognomist) he wore a look remarkably complacent to Harley, who, on his part, shewed a particular observance of him. Indeed, they had soon a better opportunity of making their acquaintance, as the coach arrived that night at the town where the officer's regiment lay, and the places ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... seventeenth century, though he has left us no description of the place. He crossed the whole Sila from the Ionian to the other sea. I like this amiable and loquacious creature, restlessly gadding about Europe, gloriously complacent, hopelessly, absorbed in trivialities, and credulous beyond belief. In fact (as the reader may have observed), I like all these old travellers, not so much for what they actually say, as for their implicit outlook upon life. This Pacicchelli was ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... who was about to sit down after wiping himself, gave a complacent laugh. "That young lady is my daughter," ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... admit the natural operation of natural causes, and may therefore confess the effects of Religion and morality in promoting the well being of the community; may yet, according to their humour, with a smile of complacent pity, or a sneer of supercilious contempt, read of the service which real Christians may render to their country, by conciliating the favour and calling down the blessing of Providence. It may appear in their eyes an instance of the same superstitious weakness, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... no trouble," was Hebert's quick reply. "He seems to be a well-known rogue in these parts," he continued with a complacent guffaw; "and some of his friends tried to hustle us at the corner of the Rue de Tourraine; no doubt with a view to getting the prisoner away. But we were too strong for them, and Paul Mole is now sulking in his cell and still protesting that his arrest is an outrage against the ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... I hope to be." He had found that Western people were sometimes sensitive concerning their section and were prepared to resent complacent ignorance of it. "I've always thought it must ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... for a little space; then will grief sleep In their young bosoms, where sweet hope belongs, New love will sing once more its age-old songs, And life bloom as a rose-tree blooms again After a night of rain. There are complacent widows clothed in crepe Who simulate a grief that is not real. Through paths of seeming sorrow they escape From disappointed hopes to some ideal, Or, from the penury of unloved wives Walk forth to opulent lives. ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... complained of their lords, and yet at the holding of assizes he hanged this same people on the flimsiest pretexts, and had them executed wholesale. In one of his dispatches to the home government, he makes complacent allusion to the countless executions which accompanied his triumphant progress through Munster: "I wrote not," he says, "the name of each particular varlet that has died since I arrived, as well by the ordinary course of the law, and the martial law, as flat fighting with ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... it. At least so thought one of the inmates of the manor-house as he got up from his music-stool and casually looked out of the fast-darkening window, thanking his stars that it mattered little to him, in his cosy bachelor- den, whether it went on a night or a fortnight. This complacent individual was a man at whom one would be disposed to look twice before coming to any definite conclusion respecting him. At the first glance you might put him down for twenty-five; at the second, you would wonder whether you had possibly ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... early spring air, the virginal complexion of the April landscape. She surveyed the scene from Isabelle's motor with complacent superiority. How much better she had arranged her life than either Margaret or Isabelle! After the talk with Percy the previous evening, she felt a new sense of power and competency, with a touch of gratitude for ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... ill, came back, her womb got worse, she went to a hospital, got thin and fretted, again went home, and I never heard more of her. I had great pleasure in her society, it was my greatest solace to tell her all my misery, for she was a complacent kind creature. It was wonderful to see how clean everything was in that little square room, yet with the exception of the fire-place, she cleaned everything herself. At about two o'clock in the day she was ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... I had dared to hope. When I saw him standing there so complacent and serene, I felt certain that a storm was brewing, or rather had brewed, and burst over my garden, and blighted its fair prospects. I was confident that he had gone and planted every square inch of the soil with some hideous absurdity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... he pleased. When King Ferdinand went out to ride Columbus would be seen riding on one side of him, the young Prince John riding on the other side; and everywhere, when he moved among the respectful and admiring throng, his grave face was seen to be wreathed in complacent smiles. His hair, which had turned white soon after he was thirty, gave him a dignified and almost venerable appearance, although he was only in his forty-third year; and combined with his handsome and commanding presence to excite immense enthusiasm among the Spaniards. They forgot for the moment ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... Let one become conscious of personal superiority in point of uprightness, learning, skill or natural ability, or let him become aware of his loftier station in life, and he immediately grows self-complacent, thinks himself better than his fellows, demands honor and recognition from all men, is unwilling to yield to or serve an inferior and thinks himself entitled to such right and privilege because of ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... and submissions from fresh embassies. Report came from the fleet—keeping pace with the land army along the coasts—that nowhere had the weak squadrons of the Greeks adventured a stand. Daily the smile of the Lord of the World grew more complacent, as his "table-companions" told him: "The rumour of your Eternity's advent stupefies the miserable Hellenes. Like Atar, the Angel of Fire, your splendour glitters afar. You will enter Athens and Sparta, and no sword leave its ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... developed by Gassendi. He dared to cast scorn on Homer, as rude and barbarous, poor in the faculty of invention, taxable with at least five hundred flagrant defects. How little Tassoni really comprehended Homer may be judged from his complacent assertion that the episode of Luna and Endymion (Secchia Rapita, canto viii.) was composed in the Homeric manner. In truth he could estimate the Iliad and Odyssey no better than Chiabrera could the Pythians and Olympians ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the principal merchant of Scroll-Saw City. It stood on a corner of Main Street, glancing slyly out of the tail of one eye, side-ways down the street, toward the shop and the business, but keeping a bold, complacent front toward the street-cars and the smaller houses across the way. It might well be satisfied with itself, for it had three more pinnacles than any of its neighbours, and the work of the scroll-saw was looped and festooned all around the eaves and porticoes and bay-windows ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke |
