"Self-complacency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... something of the Correggiesque in it,) is contemplating the picture of a bottle, which he is drawing from an actual bottle that hangs beside him, in the print of Beer Street,—while we smile at the enormity of the self-delusion, can we help loving the good-humor and self-complacency of the fellow? would we willingly ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... brought him a blue envelope on a tray. He read it, and a frown gathered on his face. The boy who was translating at the time went on again in his former slipshod manner (which had hitherto provoked only jovial criticism and correction) with complete self-complacency, but found himself sternly brought to book, and burdened by a heavy imposition, before he quite realised that his ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... morning the campus was buzzing with the news. It jarred the college out of the self-complacency they had begun to feel over the prospects of the team. Many were the imprecations heaped upon the heads of the hard-hearted faculty, and one of the malcontents slipped up to the cupola without detection and put the college flag at half-mast. ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... years—emerges from those passages; or, more rarely, a black gentleman, stricken in years, and cased in shining broadcloth, walks solidly down the brick sidewalk, cane in hand,—a vision of serene self-complacency, and so plainly the expression of virtuous public sentiment that the great colored louts, innocent enough till then in their idleness, are taken with a sudden sense of depravity, and loaf guiltily up against the house-walls. At the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... attacks each in his own way: Mr. Donne with a stilted self-complacency and half-sullen phlegm, the sole props of his otherwise somewhat rickety dignity; Mr. Sweeting with the indifference of a light, easy disposition, which never professed to have any dignity ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... actually "getting her own living." She knew that her independence was owing to the delicate generosity of Obed Chute, and that under any other circumstances she would probably have had no refuge from starvation; but her gratitude to her friends did not lesson at all her own self-complacency. There was a childish delight in Zillah over her new position, which was due, perhaps, to the fact that she had always looked upon herself as hopelessly and incurably dull; but now the discovery that she could actually fill the position of music-teacher brought her a strange triumph, which ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... to unmask them. These studies nevertheless are somewhat sombre;[W] and there is something much lighter and pleasanter in his presentation of some not unfamiliar phases of manners. There is the self-complacency that deals with itself like a "truant reader skipping over the harsh places"; the frank discourtesy that finds something vicious in the conventions and "circumstance" of good breeding; the patronising insolence[X] that "with much ado seems ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... from laying violent hands on it; or could I resist so favourable an opportunity of revenge? Nay, more; if we were then tamely to tie up our hands, do you think that Bulderent and his men would consent to do the same? No, no, old man," he continued, with great self-complacency, "your arguments appear plausible at first, but when closely considered, they will not stand the lest of experience. They are the fancies of a stranger—of one who knows more of theory than practice. Had you lived longer among us, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... quite sick, utterly forgetful or unconscious of the soiled condition of the splendid pina shirt which he wore at the time; although in his hours of ease it commonly attracted a large proportion of his regard and self-complacency. After many sips, apparently, the brandy produced the desired effect, as my follower ceased to project his mouth, every now and then, over the side of the banca, but had sunk into a sound sleep, caused, we imagined, by the exhaustion ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... medical and surgical knowledge is modern, though flattering to our self-complacency, is disturbed by the study of the state of knowledge in the time of Hippocrates. To him we are indebted for the classification of diseases into sporadic, epidemic, and endemic, and he also separated acute from chronic diseases. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... note in Modern Oxford, attempts to re-establish those local connections, which the wisdom of our ancestors established, and which the self-complacency of Victorian reformers ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... brethren, tell me: What doth your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency? ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... remarked that those whom she thus distinguished were often foreigners; some English noblemen, such as the Duke of Dorset and Lord Strathavon being especially favored, for a reason which, as given by Mercy, shows that that insular stiffness which, with national self-complacency, Britons sometimes confess as a not unbecoming characteristic, was not at that time attributed to them by others; since the ambassador explains the queen's preference by the self-evident fact that the English gentlemen were the best dancers, and made ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... precision. There are operations of extreme length in which I have sometimes seen good geometricians lose themselves. Reflection, assisted by practice, gives clear ideas, and enables you to devise shorter methods, these inventions flatter our self-complacency, while their exactitude satisfies our understanding, and renders a study pleasant, which is, of itself, heavy and unentertaining. At length I became so expert as not to be puzzled by any question that was solvable by arithmetical calculation; and even ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... ripened fast; he got his reward of golden guineas, and society caught him in its silken mesh. Success came faster than he was able to endure it, and he fell a victim to fatty degeneration of the cerebrum, and died of an acute attack of self-complacency. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... God in him, alike seem not so much to banish as utterly to preclude any thought about himself but that of his own imperfection. He writes as one whose very last feeling is that of complacency in his spiritual condition. I deliberately do not say "self-complacency"; for all Christians would repudiate that word; I say, complacency in his spiritual condition. His spiritual position, in Christ, as he is "found in Him," fills him with much more than complacency; it is his glory and his boast. But when he comes to speak of his spiritual ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... him, relative to the prison discipline, and other matters connected with it. In answer to a question addressed to him concerning the character of those under his charge, the overseer remarked in a tone of much self-complacency: ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... depths, one must devote a little time to the exterior of this person. Its physical basis was slender, and short, and dark; and the face, which was fine-featured and assisted by pigments, varied from an insecure self-complacency to an intelligent uneasiness. His face and head had been depilated, according to the cleanly and hygienic fashion of the time, so that the colour and contour of his hair varied with his costume. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... absolute self-possession, which nothing can disturb. His repartees are involuntary suggestions of his self-love; instinctive evasions of everything that threatens to interrupt the career of his triumphant jollity and self-complacency. His very size floats him out of all his difficulties in a sea of rich conceits; and he turns round on the pivot of his convenience, with every occasion and at a moment's warning. His natural repugnance to every unpleasant thought or circumstance of itself makes light of ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... trials. The late Judge Foster and Judge Pitman both concede—what indeed is too notorious to be denied—that there are frequent and gross miscarriages of justice; but they touch lightly on this aspect of the question. Being personally identified with the institution which they extol, their self-complacency is neither unnatural nor unpardonable. It seems not to have occurred to them, that if a reform of our judiciary is really needed, they are "a part of the thing to be reformed." But in weighing their testimony to the advantages of trial ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... they know not who; yet I do not choose that my daughter, whose family is so respectable, should be intimate with any one she would blush to know elsewhere. It is only on that account, for I never suffer her to be with any one but in my company," added she, sitting more erect; and a smile of self-complacency dressed her countenance. ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... greatest obstacle to your progress. Allow of nothing which gives sustenance to this life. Be on your guard against applause. Applaud not yourself when you have done well. Admit no reflections in regard to the good you have accomplished, so that all that nourishes self-complacency may die. ...
— Letters of Madam Guyon • P. L. Upham
... one could possibly say of her—that for her years she is the cleverest person of her time. And that is indeed saying a great deal; for how seldom do we find harmonious culture in people two years old? The strongest of the many strong proofs of her inward perfection is her serene self-complacency. After she has eaten she always spreads both her little arms out on the table, and resting her cunning head on them with amusing seriousness, she makes big eyes and casts cute glances at the family all around her. Then she straightens up and with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... thing (of humility), and manifests it to all the world. He is free from self-display, and therefore he shines; from self-assertion, and therefore he is distinguished; from self-boasting, and therefore his merit is acknowledged; from self-complacency, and therefore he acquires superiority. It is because he is thus free from striving that therefore no one in the world is able to strive ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... self-conscious, while his vis-a-vis, though smiling and apparently at ease, was yet alert and excited,—darting furtive glances, that would have startled him like flashes of sunlight reflected from a mirror, if he had not been shielded by his own self-complacency. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... himself before it, and say, 'Admire me first,' but places us in the same situation with himself, and makes us see all that he does. There is no blindman's-buff, no conscious hints, no awkward ventriloquism, no testimonies of applause, no abstract, senseless self-complacency, no smuggled admiration of his own person by proxy: it is all plain and above-board. He writes himself plain William Cobbett, strips himself quite as naked as anybody would wish—in a word, his egotism is full of individuality, and ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the extreme self-complacency with which he asserts that he is very handsome and will never become blue and no one with him is ever lonely. As before stated, white signifies peace and happiness, while blue is the emblem of ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... We need it as a corrective of the tendency to seek the good of life in what is external, as a means of helping us to overcome our vulgar self-complacency, our satisfaction with low aims and cheap accomplishments, our belief in the sovereign potency of machines and measures. We need it to make our lives less unlovely, less hard, less material; to help us to understand the idolatry of the worship of steam and electricity, the ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... comparatively recent years we have been quite confident in our assurance that antisepsis and asepsis were entirely modern developments of surgery. More knowledge, however, of the history of surgery has given a serious set-back to this self-complacency, and now we know that the later medieval surgeons understood practical antisepsis very well, and applied it successfully. They used strong wine as a dressing for their wounds, insisted on keeping them clean, and not allowing any extraneous material ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... found himself nobody in England, a mere cipher in London, Looked down upon by the fine people with whom his lady associated, and heartily weary of them, he retreated from them altogether, and sought entertainment and self-complacency in society beneath him—indeed, both in rank and education, but in which he had the satisfaction of feeling himself the first person in company. Of these associates, the first in talents, and in jovial profligacy, was Sir Terence O'Fay—a man of low extraction, who had been ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... reckless youth. Unfortunately, the older and more experienced writer was no safe guide for his brilliant but very young co-worker, still with a boy's fondness for mischief and a dangerous wit, to which the almost sublime self-complacency of the dominant Whig coteries would offer abundant opportunities of exercise. Lockhart was not a sinner above others, but in the end he was made something like the scapegoat of all the offenders, whose misdeeds, occasionally serious ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... strayed beyond the jobs of the day, and they were glad of it. Their mother was one of those shrunken, faded patterns of woman who have never done anything to keep smooth the cheek and dignify the brow. The father had a Scotch look of shrewd narrowness, and entire self-complacency. I could not endure this family, whose existence contradicted all my visions; yet I could ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Outdated like a last year's almanac Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields, And yet so pinched and bare and comfortless, The veriest straggler limping on his rounds, The sun and air his sole inheritance, Laughed at a poverty that paid its taxes, And hugged his rags in self-complacency! ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... to wish for a thing to get it becomes closed in fifty years. It mistakes desire for right. It regards opposition as sacrilege. Other minds that differ from it are wicked because they differ. The thick armor of Prince Karl's self-complacency had been pierced as it were by a tiny needle that stung, however tiny, as if its point ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... flushed with beer and self-complacency; for he thought he had drawn the line precisely; had faithfully discharged his promise to his lady and benefactress, but not so as to make mischief in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... appointment to meet Johnson, so long the god of his idolatry. They had first met at the shop of Davis, the actor and bookseller, and afterwards near an eating-house in Butcher Row. Boswell describes his feelings with delightful sincerity and self-complacency. "We had," he says, "a good supper and port wine, of which Johnson then sometimes drank a bottle. The orthodox High Church sound of the Mitre, the figure and manner of the celebrated Samuel Johnson, the extraordinary power of his conversation, and the pride arising from finding myself admitted ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... ruined by his own self-complacency, merely smiled in his superior manner, not noticing the eager look with which Doyle ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... some other sorts of believers who thought they had a special apprehension of the truth, he, had no mercy upon them if they betrayed, however innocently, any self-complacency in their possession. I went one evening to call upon him with a dear old Shaker elder, who had the misfortune to say that his people believed themselves to be living the angelic life. James fastened upon him with the suggestion that according to Swedenborg the most celestial ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... these assurances, which have so often restored the guilty and remodelled the human heart, made a salutary, if brief, impression upon her. Nor were the lives of these Dissenters (for the most part austerely moral), nor the peace and self-complacency which they evidently found in the satisfaction of conscience and fulfilment of duty, without an influence over her that for a while ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to every other grade of solid rather than to himself. Accustomed to observe what we think an unwarrantable conceit exhibiting itself in ridiculous pretensions and forwardness to play the lion's part, in obvious self-complacency and loud peremptoriness, we are not on the alert to detect the egoistic claims of a more exorbitant kind often hidden under an apparent neutrality or an acquiescence in being put ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... They were in fact enslaved by "him who had the power of death." This is a very fearful view of our natural state, and one which contradicts all the conclusions of our own vanity and self-complacency. Unconverted men believe that Christians are slaves, fettered by doubts, scruples, self-accusations; bound in the bands of moral routine, and able only to move in certain prescribed grooves; afraid to do as they list. According to their notion, true liberty consists in throwing off religious ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... Jacques, which was painted during his residence in this country by a provincial artist. Singular and displeasing as it is, yet this picture lights up for us many a word and passage in Rousseau's life here and elsewhere, which the ordinary engravings, and the trim self-complacency of the statue on the little island at Geneva, would leave very incomprehensible. It is almost as appalling in its realism as some of the dark pits that open before the reader of the Confessions. Hard ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Suesse Maedel type of Vienna has painted a large canvas and revealed a grip on the essentials of characterisation. To Ibsen's An Enemy of the People he is evidently under certain obligations; Professor Bernhardi is a variation of Doctor Stockmann, plus not a little irony and self-complacency. But the thesis of Ibsen is less academic, sounder, of more universal interest than Schnitzler's. There is no metaphysical hair-splitting in An Enemy of the People, nor sentimental talk about euphoria and going ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... transformation that follows, may well excite the pride of such a poet as Dante; though it is curious to see how he selects inventions of this kind as special grounds of self-complacency. They are the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... occupation actually existing, to the exclusion of the crowd of thoughts which are perpetually sweeping across the mind. No doubt, you cannot prevent those thoughts from arising, but you can prevent yourself from dwelling on them; you can put them aside, you can check the self-complacency, or irritation, or earthly longings which feed them, and by the practice of such control of your thoughts you will attain that spirit of inward silence which draws the soul into a close ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... in the least. Just the contrary. You gave much pleasure, and made me all the more proud of you. It will do Stella no harm to have her self-complacency jostled a little. Slight wonder that her head is somewhat giddy from the immense amount of attention she has received. I'm not perfect, Madge; why should I demand perfection? It's delightful to be talking in this way—like old times. I used to talk to you about Stella years ago. If I have ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... table, the young girl could not refrain from furtively watching the man whom they wished to compel her to marry. Never had she seen such intense self-complacency coupled with such utter mediocrity. It was evident that he was doing his best to produce a favorable impression; but as the dinner progressed, his conversation became rather venturesome. He gradually grew extremely animated; ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... new English," at another, as "English by birth" and "English by blood." The new English, fresh from the Imperial island, seem to have usually conducted themselves with a haughty sense of superiority; the old English, more than half Hibernicized, confronted these strangers with all the self-complacency of natives of the soil on which they stood. In their frequent visits to the Imperial capital, the old English were made sensibly to feel that their country was not there; and as often as they went, they returned with renewed ardour to ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... are never likely to go in steadily for the study of constitutional developments, and so are led to admit the reasonableness of tackling history from a lighter and more entertaining point of view. Again, as to the River Thames, one must really grant that a considerable amount of self-complacency and internal sunniness would result from the ability to contradict your friends as to the length in miles of some of its minor tributaries. In science, too, you are no Kepler or Linnaeus, and there is something satisfactory when pedants talk of ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... after that found Bas Rowlett at the house and the evenings found him pondering his fancied progress with a razor-edged zest of self-complacency. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... that surpasses all description, and a languishing leer upon his countenance, in which there seemed to be something arch and ironical. The ring, which he put upon her finger, he had concealed till the moment it was used. He now produced it with an air of self-complacency. It was a curious antique, set with rose diamonds: he told us afterwards, it had been in the family two hundred years and was a present from his grand-mother. These circumstances agreeably flattered the pride of our aunt Tabitha, which ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... thought he would light another cigar, but the hand that he carried to his breast pocket dropped nervelessly to his knee again, and he did not smoke. Through his memories of disappointment pierced a self-reproach which did not permit him the perfect self-complacency of regret; and yet he could not have been sure, if he had asked himself, that this pang did not heighten the luxury of ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... dipped a fine strawberry into cream and ate it. Her laugh was pleasant, and she had a general air of good humour and self-complacency about her which some people mistook ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... speaking to him. "You have shaken Professor Valeyon's confidence in his wisdom and judgment, and the value of his experience; you have made him realize that the more God has to do with education the better; you have broken down Cornelia's self-complacency, and shown her that a beautiful body cannot be safe or happy without a soul to take care of it. Abbie has learned from you that love, and generosity, and self-sacrifice, may all be worthless if they be founded only upon individual grounds, to the exclusion of humanity; ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... rejoined the major, assuming an air of great self-complacency, "we military politicians had needs keep our wits whetted, and be careful how much honey we mix with the brimstone. But I must go look up my chickens; and if the devil, as some say, regulates the future affairs of politicians, we may safely leave ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... no gods are we To sit in mid-heaven, cold and bleak, Each separate, on his painful peak, Thin-cloaked in self-complacency! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... “divine arrogance” which is sometimes a characteristic of genius. Tennyson’s case shows that not even love of Nature and intimate communings with her are of use in giving a man peace when he has not Wordsworth’s temperament. No adverse criticism could disturb Wordsworth’s sublime self-complacency. ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Mister Sufficiently-Instructed! Such No doubt was bound to be the consequence To suit your self-complacency: she liked My head enough, but loved some heart beneath Some head with plenty of brown hair a-top After my young friend's fashion! What becomes Of that fine speech you made a minute since About the man of middle age you found A formidable ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... He could not entirely cheat his astute mind into a belief of his own perfections, without the constant acclamations of society. As he grew old, this assurance became more and more essential to his self-complacency. ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... old hat—Freedom. But partly it's given to annoy the Unco Guid, as they pass to their Sabbath banquet of self-complacency. ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... from the darkness, with the awful form of Lucifer in the extreme rear reluctantly yielding even to Omnipotence itself, while blasting lightnings played about his brow and eyes, that flashed with the fires of inextinguishable fury. On first casting his eyes over his picture, a feeling of self-complacency and pride stole over the soul of the artist. But as he continued to gaze with a kind of idolatry at the work of his own hands, his imagination became excited by degrees, and life appeared to be infused into ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various
... dependence had been centered in Bede, what would have become of us after his death? (16) Malmsbury indeed asserts, with some degree of vanity, that you will not easily find a Latin historian of English affairs between Bede and himself (17); and in the fulness of self-complacency professes his determination, "to season with Roman salt the barbarisms of his native tongue!" He affects great contempt for Ethelwerd, whose work will be considered hereafter; and he well knew how unacceptable any praise of the "Saxon Annals" would be ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... Burton, the American actor, was in his "trouble," a young lawyer was examining him as to how he had spent his money. There was about three thousand pounds unaccounted for, when the attorney put on a severe scrutinizing face, and exclaimed, with much self-complacency,—"Now, sir, I want you to tell this court and jury how you used those three thousand pounds." Burton put on one of his serio-comic faces, winked at the audience, and exclaimed, "The lawyers got that!" The judge and audience were convulsed with laughter. The counsellor ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... of the regular army to speak of it as "the army." As the greatest cities are most provincial, so the self-complacency of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... fierce again, Mr. Landor. You who are so censorious of self-complacency in others, and indeed of all other people's faults, real or imagined, should endure to have your ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... Horace Walpole. The truth is, he was mortified he had not and never could obtain a literary peerage; and he never respected the commoner's seat. At these moments, too frequent in his life, he contemns authors, and returns to sink back into all the self-complacency ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... in her life, "so delightful a sight in the world as the four honors in one's own hand, unless it be the three natural aces at brag?" Can comedy be finer than this? Has not every person some Matthews and James in their acquaintance—one all passion, and the other all indifference and vapid self-complacency? James, the good-natured fellow, with passions and without principles: Bath, with his magnificent notions of throat-cutting and the Christian religion, what admirable knowledge of the world do all these characters display: what good moral may ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Or, to quote the actual question of a believer in this kind of immanence, Why ask outside for a strength which we already possess? What a naive question of this calibre reveals only too plainly is that self-complacency which is the most deadly foe of the spiritual life. One is reminded of the American story in which a bright and intelligent wife asks her cultured but indifferent husband, "Is it true that God is immanent in us all?" "I suppose so," he answers; "but it does not greatly matter." The question is, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... glorious evening added fuel to the flame of his anger. He could only procure from Ethel the promise of one unimportant dance at the close of her programme; and the American had three dances, and the mere loom-man two. And though he attempted to restore his self-complacency by devoting his whole attentions to the only titled young ladies in the room, he had throughout the evening a sense of being snubbed, and of being a person no longer of much importance at Rawdon Court. ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... and he was very proud of them; while conversing he would often look at them with an air of self-complacency. He also fancied he had fine teeth, but his pretension to that advantage was not so well founded as his vanity on the score of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... or power must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence. And not only does the evidence of wealth serve to impress one's importance on others and to keep their sense of his importance alive and alert, but it is of scarcely less use in building up and preserving one's self-complacency. In all but the lowest stages of culture the normally constituted man is comforted and upheld in his self-respect by "decent surroundings" and by exemption from "menial offices". Enforced departure from his habitual standard of decency, either in the paraphernalia ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... to you, I make myself think—and I hope I do not seem self-complacent in saying it, for you must have learned from the tone of my remarks, if from no other source, that self-complacency is not a Northern characteristic, especially in our feelings toward the South—but I make myself think, by this candid admission of what seems good in you, of a venturesome remark by Paul the Apostle ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... self-complacency received a shock next morning. If he had been a reader of London newspapers, it would have received a shock the day before. Pratt, however, was essentially parochial in his newspaper tastes—he never read anything but the Barford papers. And when he picked up the ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... charming away his sternness by her grace; refining his coarseness by her elegance and purity; and offering in her smiles a reward sufficient to compensate for the hazards of any enterprise. But while the self-complacency and vanity of many of our sex have been nourished by such idle praise, how few have been awakened to a just sense of the deep responsibility which rests upon us, for the faithful improvement of this talent, and our consequent accountability ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... both hands, thus unhappily exposing some tufts of frosty gray that had managed to creep, year after year, into her wool. After this rather abrupt toilet, she drew herself up with a grand air, and marched forward to receive the strangers in a glorious state of self-complacency. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... private chit-chat with the lady of the Hall. Into this apartment I was confidentially drawn by Mrs. Hill on the morning after my moonlight conversation with John, as with heavy eyes and hectic cheeks, but with a saucy tongue in reserve, specially sharpened, and a chin held at the extreme angle of self-complacency and no toleration of interference from others, I was sailing majestically down-stairs to put my melancholy finger as usual into the pie of the pleasures and ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... of the rank and file of the Verity family in respect of liberal ideas, it can safely be asserted of all its members, male and female, clerical and lay, alike, that they belonged to the equestrian order. Hence it added considerably to Tom's recovered self-complacency to find a smart two-wheel dog-cart awaiting him, drawn by a remarkably well-shaped and well-groomed black horse. The coachman was to match. Middle-aged, clean-shaven, his Napoleonic face set as a mask, his undress livery of pepper-and-salt mixture soberly immaculate. He touched his hat when our young ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... is most active in visiting the houses of these outcasts from the means of grace, gives me an amusing instance of self-complacency arising from performance of the duty. She was visiting in the West Port, not far from the church established by my illustrious friend the late Dr. Chalmers. Having asked a poor woman if she ever attended there for divine service—"Ou ay," she replied; ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... your kingship is plain to you, there is no more rest, no peace, no delight, except in work, in service, in utmost effort. As far as I can do it I will rule my world. I cannot abide in this smug city, I cannot endure its self-complacency, its routine, its gloss of success, its rottenness.... I shall do little, perhaps I shall do nothing, but what I can understand and what I can do I will do. Think of that wild beautiful country we saw, and the mean misery, the filth and ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... her place. When Charmolue had installed himself in a magisterial manner in his own, he seated himself, then rose and said, without exhibiting too much self-complacency at his success,—"The accused ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... pride as her daughter appeared, watched the meeting between the two girls. Mary Ann's dress was very much overtrimmed, her hair was frizzed into a spiky bush across her forehead, and her somewhat freckled face was composed into an expression of serene self-complacency. She was the only girl in the village who was at a boarding-school; not even Hunter's Marjory, with all her airs, could boast this advantage, she thought; and Mary Ann felt her ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... but as his best work was executed during his sojourn in Venice, it will be more convenient to include him in the present chapter. Like so many others of the early printers, he regarded his own performances with no little self-complacency, for in his colophons he describes himself, "Vir solertissimus, imprimendi arte nominatissimus, artis impressori magister apprim famosus, perpolitus opifex, vir sub orbe notus," and so forth. To him is attributed the credit of having invented ink of a golden colour; and he was ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... of self-complacency, he took the pipe from his mouth and gave it to me, pulled up his moustaches, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... Millbank was proud of his fruit. A bland expression of self-complacency spread over his features as he surveyed his grapes, his ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... rule here recited will never fail to make him who obeys it considerate not only of the rights, but of the feelings of other men, bodily and mental, in great matters and in small; of the ease, the accommodation, the self-complacency of all with whom he has any concern, especially of all who are in his power, or ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... cleaning a stair. She was steaming with perspiration. Eyeing her curiously for a moment, "Ho, ho!" he cried (his usual introductory exclamation), "do you bake the bread?" The woman, staring in astonishment, and, fortunately for her own self-complacency, not understanding the point of the strange question, replied, "No, your grace, that is not my department; I am in the laundry, and my business is"—"Oh, never mind," said the duke, with the look of one greatly relieved, "I am perfectly satisfied so you don't bake the bread." A decayed gentleman, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... African descent. Not a half-starved, ignorant brigand, gaining his living on the highways and byways by pilfering or assassination, that did not kneel on the church pavement and listen to orisons in an ancient tongue, of which he understood not a syllable, with a sentiment of Christian self-complacency to which Godfrey of Bouillon might have been a stranger. Especially those born towards the northern frontier, and therefore farthest removed from Moorish contamination, were proudest of the purity of their race. To be an Asturian or a Gallician, however bronzed by sun and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... matching her own. He became first known to her as one of her husband's drinking companions, then, dazzled by the wife's mad beauty, he began to haunt the handsome Madame Montjoie, as many other persons had haunted her before him,—with no particular results except to increase the arrogant self-complacency with which Louie bore ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was too happy, too certain of being loved, not to pardon easily. With the self-complacency and factitious generosity of a woman who feels herself the object of two violent passions, she was so good as to feel pity for the lover who was left out in the cold, and offered him her hand. Trumeau kissed it with every ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... deck his writing, and never uses an English word when he knows a similar French one. The employment of a foreign word or phrase to express an idea which can be equally well couched in English is the cheapest sort of a literary trick, and it is the unmistakable badge of hopeless mediocrity and self-complacency. Expressions from other languages may be judiciously and legitimately used to give local color, and they are, of course, indispensable in the speeches of certain character types; but as a rule there is no better medium for your thoughts than good ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... of several years—emerges f rom those passages; or, more rarely, a black gentleman, stricken in years, and cased in shining broadcloth, walks solidly down the brick sidewalk, cane in hand—a vision of serene self-complacency and so plainly the expression of virtuous public sentiment that the great colored louts, innocent enough till then in their idleness, are taken with a sudden sense of depravity, and loaf guiltily up against the house-walls. ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... suggested some self-complacency, which was lost before the morning was over," added Mr. ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... kingly power over liberty and virtue. Milton stood alone illuminating an age unworthy of him. At such periods the calculating principle pervades all the forms of dramatic exhibition, and poetry ceases to be expressed upon them. Comedy loses its ideal universality: wit succeeds to humour; we laugh from self-complacency and triumph, instead of pleasure; malignity, sarcasm, and contempt succeed to sympathetic merriment; we hardly laugh, but we smile. Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, becomes, from the very veil which it assumes, more active ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... liberty, and who, as Macaulay well expresses it,[23:1] "was, in truth, one of those kings whom God seems to send for the express purpose of hastening revolutions." To him had succeeded his most worthy son: a king whose perfidy and duplicity were only equalled by his self-complacency and power of self-deception, who never looked facts in the face, but placidly expected them to conform to his own petty desires, and whose dignified death failed to atone for a life devoted to ignoble personal ends, by crooked ways and treacherous means; a king ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... territorially, if not in Europe itself then in Asia or Africa, are all taken as symptoms of this success. No doubt there is a certain amount of truth in this view. The truculence of German foreign policy is to be partly attributed to that form of swollen self-consciousness and self-complacency to which all nations are subject more or less, and which is most likely, one would suppose, to be found in countries where a nationality had recently succeeded in making itself into a nation. The natural ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... Trochu has the first to win, and he apparently scorns the latter. He is a species of military doctrinaire, and he finds it difficult to avoid lecturing soldiers or civilians at least once a day. I was looking at him the other day, and I never saw calm, serene, self-complacency more clearly depicted upon the human countenance. Failure or success will find him the same—confident in himself, in his plans, and his grand thoughts. If he eventually has to surrender, he will console himself by coupling with the announcement of ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... follows the self-complacency of the last act! That was an honest attempt to redress a real wrong; this is an arbitrary determination to enforce a Brissotine or Rousseau's ideal on ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... unwillingness to commence a closer acquaintance. After the conclusion of the sermon, another psalm was sung, and the service concluded. The display of costume, as the congregation strolled homewards in groups, with the greatest self-complacency, through the beautiful broad avenue, their psalm-books under their arms, was still more strikingly ludicrous than in church. I had by this time, however, lost ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... Fish, flesh, and fowl now offered themselves to his endeavors, and these were to be supplied by land, sea, and sky. This sudden enlargement of his resources, and also of his sphere of operations, caused him to feel additional satisfaction, together with a natural self-complacency. To the ordinary mind Ile Haute appeared utterly deserted and forlorn—a place where one might starve to death, if he had to remain for any length of time; but Tom now determined to test to the utmost the actual resources of ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... Selden, who sat in committees for the last grand Masque presented to Charles the First, invented the devices; composed the procession of the Masquers and the Anti-Masquers; while one took the care of the dancing or the brawlers, and Whitelocke the music—the sage Whitelocke! who has chronicled his self-complacency on this occasion, by claiming the invention of a Coranto, which for thirty years afterwards was the delight of the nation, and was blessed by the name of "Whitelocke's Coranto," and which was always called for, two or three times over, whenever that ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Herr Carovius had a weakness for association with aristocrats. In his heart of hearts he admired the manners of the aristocracy, their indifference and self-complacency, their irrefragable traditions and their noiseless and harmonious behaviour. To the pegs of the Academy he had affixed the names of some of the best families he had known; among others, those of the Tuchers, the Hallers, the Humbsers, the Kramer-Kleets, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... a grandmother to us,' said Eugene. 'What a good thing,' with extreme self-complacency, 'I made you go in!—what a good thing I ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... Siddons, Joanna Baillie, and Maria Edgeworth. The latter, writing, May, 1813, to Miss Ruxton, says, "Lady Milbanke is very agreeable, and has a charming, well-informed daughter." With all her personal charms, virtues, and mental gifts, she shows, in many of her letters, a precision, formality, and self-complacency, which suggest the female pedant. Byron says of her that "she was governed by what she called fixed rules and principles, squared mathematically" (Medwin, p. 60); at one time he used to speak of her as his "Princess ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Christians alone neglect their Bible. And the reason is, that the Scriptures are so much more spiritual than the religious books received by others; they afford so little scope for mere amusement or self-complacency; they place the reader alone with God; they withdraw him from the things that are seen and temporal, and fix him among the things that are unseen and eternal; they disclose to his view at once the secret evils of his own condition, and the awful ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... dudelet!" mused Winifred, with a smile; "his self-complacency will be short-lived whenever he meets Isabel. She will simply annihilate him with one of those ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... money, an' I make mo dan you tink, an' a heap mo' dan I let Unc. know about. He'd be fer settin' up his kerrige ef he knew," and she again laughed in hearty self-complacency. "Why, honey, I can 'sport you an' Missus widout pinchin', an' who gwine to know ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... and the rain. It was altogether a bright and beautiful world he had got into, and there was in it but one woman, beautiful beyond his dreams. To doubt her was to doubt all women. When he looked at her he forgot the caution and distrust and sardonic self-complacency his southern training had given him. He believed, and the world seemed to be filled with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... a prodigious sentence for Wade, and he leaned back and smoked his pipe with considerable self-complacency, but it impressed none of his hearers as he expected. Parson Brush shook ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... their sad condition. We appeal to you, then, as sisters, as wives, and as mothers, to raise your voices to your fellow-citizens, and your prayers to God, for the removal of this affliction from the Christian world. We do not say these things in a spirit of self-complacency, as though our nation were free from the guilt it perceives in others. We acknowledge with grief and shame our heavy share in this great sin. We acknowledge that our forefathers introduced, nay, compelled the ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... from this secret of England's greatness, I detected a certain spontaneous self-complacency creeping over my soul, and slightly swelling my head; a certain placid cockiness not to be fully accounted for by the consciousness of birth, which naturally broadened as I approached Runnymede. I thereupon resolved myself into a committee of ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the same language, all active-minded, intelligent, and well off. They will stand, as it were, the centre of the world, between the two great oceans, with Europe on one hand and Asia on the other. With such a future before him, we must pardon the Yankee if we find a little dash of self-complacency in his composition; and bear with the surprise and annoyance which he expresses at finding that we know so little of himself or of his country. Our humble opinion is that we ought to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... face irradiated with indefatigable smiles, stood and conversed with her, with that jaunty swagger of his—his weight now on this side, now on that, squaring his elbows like a crack whip with four-in-hand, and wagging his perfumed tresses—boisterous, rollicking, beaming with immeasurable self-complacency. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the different ways that could be thought of—upside down, wrong end first, inside out, fore-and-aft, and "thort-ships,"—and then know what to do on gray nights when it hadn't any shape at all. So I set about it. In the course of time I began to get the best of this knotty lesson, and my self-complacency moved to the front once more. Mr. Bixby was all fixed and ready to start it to the rear again. He opened ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... snug room and roaring fire, and of his cold grave in the wood by Market Bosworth, lingered on my palate, amari aliquid, like an after-taste, but was not able—I say it with shame—entirely to dispel my self-complacency. After all, in this world every dog hangs by its own tail. I was a free adventurer, who had just brought to a successful end—or, at least, within view of it—an adventure very difficult and alarming; and I looked across at Mr. Dudgeon, as the port rose to his cheeks, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I felt a wonderful self-complacency at being on such excellent terms with a man whom I considered on a parallel with the sages of antiquity, and looked down with a sentiment of pity on the feebler intellects of my sisters, who could comprehend nothing of metaphysics. It is ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... Close corporations of any sort are apt to generate, not only a wholesome esprit de corps, but a hostile contempt for outsiders, and Christianity has too often been misrepresented by its professors, who have looked down upon those that are without with supercilious and unchristian self-complacency. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... consider that Elizabeth was at this time over thirty years of age, and Mary only twenty-two, and that the fame of Mary's loveliness had filled the world, it must be admitted that this question indicated a considerable degree of self-complacency. The embassador had the prudence to attempt to evade the inquiry. He said at first that they were both beautiful enough. But Elizabeth wanted to know, she said, which was most beautiful. The embassador then said that his queen was the most beautiful queen in Scotland and Elizabeth ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... grove. I write of it not in self-complacency. My many blunders, some of them yet to be made, are a good insurance against that. I write because of the countless acres as good as mine, in this great, dear America, which might now be giving their owners all the healthful pastime, private ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... such as the foregoing—no misgivings suggested by them probably, troubled the self-complacency of most of these clever sculptors. Marble, in their view, had no such sanctity as we impute to it. It was merely a sort of white limestone from Carrara, cut into convenient blocks, and worth, in that state, about two or three dollars per pound; and it was ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of what English schools of the highest class were more than sixty-five years ago cannot fail to have much to interest the present generation on both sides of the Atlantic; if only because we may now indulge in the self-complacency of being everyway wiser, better, and happier than our recent forebears. And in setting myself to write these early revelations, I wish at once to state that, although at times necessarily naming names (for the too frequent use of dashes and asterisks must otherwise destroy the verisimilitude ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... time that Philistinism met its match in Oscar Wilde, and for the first time in its history felt its self-complacency shaken. Up to that time it had been very proud of itself. With the loss of that pride it blundered, and it remained for du Maurier to show that the height of Philistinism in a Philistine is to pretend not to be ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... achievement of Browning and Whitman as it is concerning the music of Brahms and Wagner, or the painting of Turner and Whistler. Great artists who have taken liberties with traditions and precedents have done much to prevent the critics from falling into a state of self-complacency over their scientific methods ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... self-complacency, his pride and arrogance brings out the plea, the supplication, "remember not ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... this examination and mine; but when it was over, I rejoiced at the severity of my ordeal. My pride, my darling pride, was tickled at the triumph of my talents; and as I wiped away the perspiration from my forehead, I related my difficulties, my trials, and my success, with a degree of self-complacency that in any other person I should have called egregious vanity. One good effect resulted from my long examination, which continued an hour and a half—this was, that the captains passed all the other midshipmen with very few questions. They ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Augustine says on John 13:13, "You call Me Master and Lord; and you say well" (Tract. lviii in Joan.): "Self-complacency is fraught with danger of one who has to beware of pride. But He Who is above all, however much He may praise Himself, does not uplift Himself. For knowledge of God is our need, not His: nor does any man know Him unless he be taught of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... certain of this," she observed, shaking her white head slowly as she spoke, and, lifting a pinch of snuff from her tortoise-shell box (the companion of her whole married life, as she acquainted us), she inhaled it with an air of meditative self-complacency, then offered it quietly to the gentlemen, who were still sitting over their wine and peaches; passing by Marion, Alice Durand, and myself, completely, in ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... with Amy, but he was too adroit to permit any marked change to appear in his manner and action. He said to himself that he cordially liked and admired Miss Hargrove, but he believed that she had enjoyed not a few flirtations, and was not averse to the addition of another to the list. Even his self-complacency had not led him to think that she regarded him in any other light than that of a very agreeable and useful summer friend. He had seen enough of society to be aware that such temporary friendships often border closely on the sentimental, and yet with no apparent ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... against them in the indelible page. In the latter, who can bring a sanguine temperament of mind to the contemplation of the subject, the effect may be, and often is, unbounded confidence, leading to self-complacency and spiritual pride; the very natural result of believing that they are special objects of the love of God, and that their persuasion is a divine impulse, God speaking to the heart. Spiritual pride may assume the aspect of profound humility, and thus impose on its victim ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... back of the great fellow half a dozen strokes. Hereupon all the bystanders, and the officers of his Excellency, burst into a fit of tremendous laughter, and the big coward was allowed to escape, sneaking off like a dog with his tail between his legs. The Rais came up to me smiling with great self-complacency, and said—"Well, isn't that the way to administer justice?" I then astonished the hangers-on of his Excellency's Court, by relating to them some account of the expeditions to the North Pole. They asked me whether any Mussulmans were there, and how they could fast when the sun did not ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... true of its noblest women. Unrewarded by praise, unsullied by self-complacency, there is a character "of no reputation," which formed in strictest retirement, and in the patient exercise of unobserved sacrifices, is dearer and holier in the eye of Heaven, than the most illustrious name won by the most splendid ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... emblem of British female nationality. Her dainty little hat was trimmed with white ribbons, which streamed behind her in the breeze, and, altogether, she was as complete a picture as one would wish to see of youth, health, and self-complacency. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... rivers of water. Hold fast the faith which God has given you by His Holy Spirit; it is the most precious treasure in this life, and it contains in itself true happiness. Only seek by watching and prayer more and more to be delivered from all vanity and self-complacency, by which even the true believer may be ensnared when he least expects it. Let it be your chief aim to be more and more humble, faithful, and quiet. May we not belong to those who say and write continually,' Lord,' ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller |
