"Self-satisfied" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fine, manly artizan, a coach-painter, scarcely yet in middle life; lately the somewhat bitter and very self-satisfied critic of his good and devoted wife's simple faith. I have had rather discouraging talks with T.G. before to-day; but now he is very ill, and a few Sunday afternoons ago he sent across the road for the Curate, who ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... will be a witness—an eye-witness, who was present, and whose evidence will be corroborated," she declared in due course with a self-satisfied air. "I have not resolved to reveal the truth without fully reviewing the situation. When the police know—as they certainly will—you will then find that I have not lied, and perhaps you will alter your opinion of the girl you now hold ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... glorious October woods with eager anticipation. It was seldom indeed that she indulged in merry-making away from the parsonage. Yet she was fond of gaiety. Long before one o'clock on that eventful day, she was ready. And her face was so bright, and her eyes so starry, that placid self-satisfied Fairy felt a ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... services, their own progress in outward prosperity, that they have forgotten the real purpose of their existence, and, instead of becoming centres of light and attraction and active zeal for the spread of the gospel, have degenerated into self-contained units indulging a self-satisfied pride in the glorious position to which they have attained as self-supporting churches. The history of some churches on the West Coast of Africa and in South India suggests the need for such a warning, and urges us to pursue ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... can be BOUND or OBLIGED, without some power preceding to bind and oblige. If I observe a man bound hand and foot, I know that some one bound him. But if I observe him returning self-satisfied from the performance of some action, by which he has been the willing author of extensive benefit, I do not infer that the anticipation of hellish agonies, or the hope of heavenly reward, has constrained him to ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... confidence in him can we hope to do away with the dangers of the whole incident. To inculcate good habits and encourage good behaviour we must let the child build up his own reputation for these virtues. It need not make him priggish or self-satisfied if parents let him understand that they take pride in seeing him practise and develop the virtue they aim at. For example, it is desired above all that he should always speak the truth. Then they must ostentatiously ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... whom in some moods he admired, occasionally got on his nerves. I find this footnote on a page of "Culture and Anarchy": "This is self-satisfied swank." On another page: "Matthew Arnold himself often wanting in sweetness and light." On another: "Admirably put; here I do agree with M. A." He liked Arnold's essay on "The Function of Criticism," although he differed from ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... Perchance I touch the mountain whose blue summit, With the fantastic rock upon its side, Stops the eye's flight from that high chamber-window Where, when a boy, I used to sit and gaze With wondering awe upon the mighty thing, Terribly calm, alone, self-satisfied, The hitherto of my child-thoughts. Beyond, A sea might roar around its base. Beyond, Might be the depths of the unfathomed space, This the earth's bulwark over the abyss. Upon its very point I have watched a star ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... (he even bestowed special attention and pains on Villon, the poet-scamp); he was rather impatient with poor Thoreau, because he was a purist solitary, and had too little of vice, and, as Stevenson held, narrow in sympathy, and too self-satisfied, and bent only on self-improvement. He held a brief for the honest villain, and leaned to him brotherly. Even the anecdotes he most prizes have a fine look this way—a hunger for completion in achievement, even in the violation of fine humane feeling or morality, and all the time ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... evils of the almost unlimited and quite indiscriminating power wielded by such landowners as old Jervaise. And in condemning him and his family, I must condemn myself also. We were all of us so smug and self-satisfied. We had blindly believed that it was our birthright to reap where we had ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... and Orsino's face became a shade less gloomy. He had expected to find Del Ferice the arrogant, self-satisfied apostle of the modern, which he was ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... into quite a panic over the fact that we have been twice beaten in the world of sport, that a Frenchman has beaten us at golf, and that Belgians have beaten us at rowing. I suppose that the incidents are important to any people who ever believed in the self-satisfied English legend on this subject. I suppose that there are men who vaguely believe that we could never be beaten by a Frenchman, despite the fact that we have often been beaten by Frenchmen, and once ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... content, without denying the gospel, or running into the horrible abominations of the Scarlet Woman." And he sat upright in his chair, with his hands flat on his extended knees, watching with a self-satisfied air the effect of his ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... addition to the temptation—never easily resisted by him—of displaying his wit, at the expense of his character, he was here addressing a person who, though, no doubt, well meaning, was evidently one of those officious self-satisfied advisers whom it was the delight of Lord Byron, at all ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... seen more of this war and other wars than Miss Addams, and I know all war to be wicked, wasteful, and unintelligent, and where Miss Addams can furnish one argument in favor of peace I will furnish a hundred. But against this insult, flung by a complacent and self-satisfied woman at men who gave their lives for men, I protest. And I believe that with me are all those women and men ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... Brard and Saint-Omer," caligraphist[TN-110] and sworn expert in the courts of law. Joseph Prudhomme is the synthesis of bourgeois imbecility; radiant, serene, and self-satisfied; letting fall from his fat lips "one weak, washy, everlasting flood" of puerile aphorisms and inane circumlocutions. He says, "The car of the state floats on a precipice." "This sword is the proudest day of my life."—Henri Monnier, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... 'The Ballad of the White Horse' the best of his poems, there is, I think, little doubt that this strange theological exposition, 'The Ball and the Cross,' is the best of his novels. It should be read by all rationalists, by all self-satisfied Christians, by all heretics, by those who are orthodox, and, above all, it should be read by those millions who pass St. Paul's Cathedral and seldom if ever give a thought to the 'Ball and the Cross' that has made the title of Chesterton's ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... and mysterious to the outer world. Those who watch the ways of the advanced Buddhist hardly know whether the man does believe himself in his hidden god, but men perceive that he is respectable, self-satisfied, and a man of note. It is of course from the society of such that Conservative candidates are to be sought; but, alas, it is hard to indoctrinate young minds with the old belief, since new theories of life have ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... smoother than I look," he suggested dryly. "You big, fat fellows get so self-satisfied sometimes that you let lots of things ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... history of thought there is always need for an apparently disproportionate expenditure of power, in order to produce an advance in the development. And it would appear as if a certain self-satisfied narrow-mindedness within the progressing ideas of the present, as well as a great measure of inability even to understand the past and recognise its own dependence on it, must make its appearance, in order that a whole generation may be freed from the burden of the ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... her wish not to encounter Mr. Tryan: the tone and the words were so unlike what she had expected to hear. There was none of the self-satisfied unction of the teacher, quoting, or exhorting, or expounding, for the benefit of the hearer, but a simple appeal for help, a confession of weakness. Mr. Tryan had his deeply-felt troubles, then? Mr. Tryan, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... a self-satisfied expression, which seemed to say: "Of course from me nothing less could have ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... much the natural artist. It will be the writer's aim, however, to give such warnings and advice as may assist each reader in his own best development. Many who began with a comparatively poor physical stock in trade have surpassed the self-satisfied ones who trusted too much to what nature gave them. Singers as well as others would do well to believe that Labor ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... townswoman's self-satisfied arrogance came to the surface. "You needn't bother about me," I said, confident I had as much common sense as any bushman. "If ever I do get lost, I'll just catch a cow ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... feature of this physiognomy was its death-like pallor, which gave to the whole man an indescribably emaciated appearance in spite of his hard look, and at the same time a sort of passionate and suffering expression which did not harmonize with his impudent, sarcastic smile and keen, self-satisfied bearing. He wore a large fur—or rather astrachan—overcoat, which had kept him warm all night, while his neighbour had been obliged to bear the full severity of a Russian November night entirely unprepared. His ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... moaning of the suddenly displaced air, and the noise of falling stones. My uncle leaning over the abyss followed the descent of his luggage with a perfectly self-satisfied air, and did not rise until it had completely disappeared ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... the dank and dreary streets of the once dazzling Ville Lumiere. I seemed to see the shabby bottle-green coat, the nankeen pantaloons, the down-at-heel shoes of this "confidant of Kings"; I could hear his unctuous, self-satisfied laugh, and sensed his furtive footstep whene'er a gendarme came into view. I saw his ruddy, shiny face beaming at me through the sleet and the rain as, like a veritable squire of dames, he minced his steps upon the boulevard, or, like ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... his guardian came to him with a letter from his father, in which, together with some words of commendation for his present attainments, that father expressed a certain dissatisfaction with his general manner as being too abrupt and self-satisfied with those of his own sex, and much too timid and deprecatory with those of the other. Thomas felt the criticism and recognized its justice; but how had his father, proved by his letter to be no longer a myth, become acquainted with defects which ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... the young lady herself, but her whole family ought to be eternally grateful, for without such manoeuvring I doubt much whether the perfect daughter or the self-satisfied mother would obtain an establishment in all things so desirable. Enraged as she will be at first at such unexpected conduct in the child she has so ill-treated, she will thank you in the end, Miss ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... and must have their courtesy returned in fitting style. Mrs. Smith suggested a simpler entertainment, fearing contrast, and any appearance of ostentation, but the general gauged his neighbors better. They were at once too well bred, and too self-satisfied for any idea of comparison to occur to them. They would eat his fruit-cake, or make him welcome to their corn-bread with the same hearty unconcern. His wealth, and their own poverty troubled them equally little; they were abstract facts with which hospitality had nothing to do. ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... these self-satisfied, almond-eyed Celestials. They would only be too glad of an excuse to mob you or to declare that you had insulted them, ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... being a happiness, gave him cause for misgiving. A man with an unclean record cannot well be sure that all the details he would wish suppressed have been suppressed. There was a little pause, during which they both watched the self-satisfied throng moving in and out, here and there, full of a ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... sorrow the heart within the frock, and added a dangerous humidity to the glance under the sunshade. It did not occur to him that he was an object of pity, nor that a vast store of knowledge was waiting to be poured into him. The aged, self-satisfied wag-beard imagined that he had conducted his career fairly well. He knew no one with whom he would have changed places. He regarded Helen as an extremely agreeable little thing, with her absurd ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... Yet, outwardly calm and self-satisfied as his demeanor may have been, Horace Dinsmore was even now regretting the step he had just taken; for remembering Elsie's conscientious scruples regarding the observance of the Sabbath—which he had for the moment forgotten—he foresaw ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... an old town, full of intelligence and vitality, but also full of patrician pride, self-contained, and self-satisfied. There was a bourgeois aristocracy with a taste for work and the higher culture, but narrow and pietistic, who were calmly convinced of their own superiority and the superiority of their city, and quite content to live ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... car at the Junction and called the little man into his sanctum. Moore chatted with him for an hour or so, and that night his face was radiant as he smoked a pipe after supper and retold the conversation to Mrs. McVeigh. "It will mean higher pay and more responsibility," he observed, with a self-satisfied smile. ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... now returned slowly along the beach, the latter bearing a large salmon-trout, the produce of the morning's sport, together with the angling-rod, while Evan strolled forward, with an easy, self-satisfied, and important gait, towards the spot where Waverley was so agreeably employed at the breakfast-table. After morning greetings had passed on both sides, and Evan, looking at Waverley, had said something in Gaelic to Alice, which made her laugh, yet colour up to ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... like all human beings who have begun to think but do not think very profoundly, knows his failings and assumes that they are virtues. This is very natural, for our faults are the most conspicuous parts of our character, and when we are still at the self-satisfied stage it is our faults that we cherish and admire. Consequently, politeness, in that it consists in concealing our faults, is intolerable to a man who is impatient to display qualities that to him appear commendable and worthy. The usual reason ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... laugh, with his self-satisfied look, told of his being aught but angry with rumour for ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... well made, and did not lack freshness. But the expression of her face and her costume repelled Germain at the first glance. She had a forward, self-satisfied air, and her mob-cap trimmed with a triple row of lace, her silk apron, and her black lace fichu were decidedly not in harmony with the idea he had conceived of a ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... who has all the authority of God in doing so. This is the second group that actually has not one good thing to be commended. There is no false teaching, no compromise with evil; they are simply asleep. Rich, influential, self-satisfied, grown fat and sleek,—so they seem to their neighbours and themselves. Wretched, poor, blind, naked,—so they are. And the chastening threatened will be of the severe radical sort that strong love ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... greatly impressed by the large and liberal system of the German universities, and had devoted himself to urging a similar system in our own country. On the Eastern institutions—save, possibly, Brown—he made no impression. Each of them was as stagnant as a Spanish convent, and as self-satisfied as a Bourbon duchy; but in the West he attracted supporters, and soon his ideas began to show themselves effective in the State university over which he ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... the name of Boilay washes the dirty linen of Dr. Veron, and corrects his faults of grammar, of history, &c. Boilay is a small, sharp, stout, little man, self-possessed, self-satisfied, with great readiness and tact. Give him but the heads of a subject and he can make out a very readable and plausible article. Boilay is the real working editor of the Constitutionnel, and is supported by a M. Clarigny, a M. Malitourne, and others not more known or ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... near the column in the Place Vendome; but usually he was seen in the afternoon in the Place de la Bastille, or the Place de la Madeleine. On Sundays, his favorite locality was the Place de la Bourse. Mangin was a well-formed, stately-looking individual, with a most self-satisfied countenance, which seemed to say: "I am master here; and all that my auditors have to do is, to listen and obey." Arriving at his destined stopping-place, his carriage halted. His servant handed him a case from which he took several large portraits of himself, which he hung prominently ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... weather. A great soft feather of snow came sailing slowly down and nestled in his shaggy beard, and another fluttered on to the back of his hand. He looked up through the darkness and saw that it was already beginning to fall thickly, and then, with a self-satisfied glance of approval at his provident woodpile, went into the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... pay much regard to Thomas Wingfold when George Bascombe was present? There, indeed, stood a man by the corner of the mantelpiece!—tall and handsome as an Apollo, and strong as the young Hercules, dressed in the top of the plainest fashion, self-satisfied, but not offensively so, good-natured, ready to smile, as clean in conscience, apparently, and as large in sympathy, as his shirt-front. Everybody who knew him, counted George Bascombe a genuine good fellow, and George himself knew little to the contrary, ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... paint his portrait and his wife's and possibly his daughter's. The tide of the artist's happiness was at flood, now. The chat flowed pleasantly along while Tracy painted and Sellers carefully unpacked a picture which he had brought with him. It was a chromo; a new one, just out. It was the smirking, self-satisfied portrait of a man who was inundating the Union with advertisements inviting everybody to buy his specialty, which was a three-dollar shoe or a dress-suit or something of that kind. The old gentleman ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... righteousness, which He gives us in early youth! It is so easy to become more thick-skinned in conscience, more tolerant of evil, more hopeless of good, more careful of one's own comfort and one's own property, more self-satisfied in leaving high aims and great deeds to enthusiasts, and then to believe that one is growing older and wiser. And yet those high examples, those good works, those great triumphs over evil which single hands effect sometimes, we are all grateful for, when they ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... complete opposite of that. The opposite of loathsomeness is delightsomeness; and the opposite of wretchedness is happiness. Yes! but you will search all the Book of God and all its promises, and you will not find one single letter of them all addressed to the abounding and the gladsome and the self-satisfied. It is the poor man's market; and this market goes best when the poor man is not only poor, but poor beyond all ordinary poverty: poor, as Samuel Rutherford always was, to 'absolute and loathsome wretchedness.' ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... on French contemporary literature, and on current topics at home and abroad, among them articles condemning many characteristics of Russian society, both intellectual and moral, such as the absence of intellectual interests, routine, narrowness, and egotism in the middle-class merchants; self-satisfied philistinism; the patriarchal laxity of provincial morals; the lack of humanity and the Asiatic ferocity towards inferiors; the slavery of women and children under the weight of family despotism. His volume of articles on Pushkin constitutes a complete critical ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... air that would have carried comfort to the Colonel's soul—with a spring, a breeze, a lightness; a being at peace with all the world; and best of all with a self-satisfied repose that was in absolute contrast to the nervousness of the ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... audacious power dominates all his age; and in the face of such a genius, who would not follow Paganini's example, and hail him as Beethoven's only successor?[60] Who does not see what a poor figure the young Wagner cut at that time, working away in laborious and self-satisfied mediocrity? But Wagner soon made up for lost ground; for he knew what he wanted, and he ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... Fastened a swarthy town enisled in wheat, And to the ebon threshold of each house, Conjured forth the man that each was planned for: Great creatures smiling with his father's smile, Muscular, wealthy and self-satisfied, Wearing loud-coloured raiment, earrings, chains, Armlet and buckle, all of clanking gold. His spirit drank from theirs great draughts of pride And read their minds more clearly than his own; All, with one counsel ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... "expression," "tone," Perdition catch all the guides Picture which one ought to see once—not oftener Polite hotel waiter who isn't an idiot Relic matter a little overdone? Room to turn around in, but not to swing a cat Saviour, who seems to be of little importance any where in Rome Self-satisfied monarch, the railroad conductor of America Sentimental praises of the Arab's idolatry of his horse She assumes a crushing dignity Shepherd's Hotel, which is the worst on earth Smell about them which is peculiar but not entertaining Some people ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Mark Twain • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... Mrs. Octagon's friends had departed. Basil and Mr. Octagon were out, but the latter entered with a paper in his hand shortly after the last visitor took her leave. Mrs. Octagon, in a ruby-colored velvet, looking majestic and self-satisfied, was enthroned—the word is not too strong—in an arm-chair, and Juliet was seated opposite to her turning over the leaves of a new novel produced by one of The Circle. It was beautifully printed and bound, and beautifully written in "precious" ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... and had just made an "operation," by which a clear gain of two thousand dollars was secured. He was alone in his office: or, so much alone as not to feel restrained by the presence of another. And yet, a pair of dark, sad eyes were fixed intently upon his self-satisfied countenance, with an expression, had he observed it, that would, at least, have excited a moment's wonder. The owner of this pair of eyes was a slender, rather poorly dressed lad, in his thirteenth year, whom Mr. Everett ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... the meat portions are about a fifth of the size of those served in an American hotel. An American staying in London said recently that he could eat two meals in succession in a London restaurant, and leave the table still minus that self-satisfied feeling that ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker
... morning. Perkins was happy—Perkins was positively joyous, and Perkins was self-satisfied. The violinist had made a great hit. But Perkins, confiding in the white-coated dispenser who concocted his matin Martini, very dry, an hour before, said he regarded the success due as much to the management as to the artist. And Perkins believed it. Perkins usually took ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... face is disturbed, or seems ever to have been subject to emotion. The Italian Aphrodite looks up, her face all quivering and burning with passion and wasting anxiety. The Greek one is quiet, self-possessed, and self-satisfied: the Italian incapable of rest; she has had no thought nor care for herself; her hair has been bound by a fillet like the Greek's; but it is now all fallen loose, and clotted with the sea, or clinging to her body; only the front tress of it is caught ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... Grace," she said. "They are precisely two self-satisfied, silly fellows, that have got some ridiculous notions in their heads, and then begin to talk about 'superficial views of duties,' and all such nonsense. My father will set it all right, and the boys ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... the entrance of Mr. Blaisdell, with a fine lot of ore samples with their assay values attached, which he arranged on his desk, his thin lips drawn back meanwhile in his accustomed self-satisfied smile. When this was done, he ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... his self-satisfied complacence and after listening to a recital of how he had cornered the Klamath salmon-packing, planted the first oysters on the bay and established that lucrative monopoly, and of how, after exhausting litigation ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... the Eighteenth Century witnessed a weakening of both sides through compromise. The schools and colleges were pedantic, complacent, smug and self-satisfied; by giving in a few points they had absorbed the radicals, and the political protesters had been bought off with snug places in the excise. Pretended knowledge passed for wisdom, dignity paraded as worth, affectation and hypocrisy patronized virtue. And Coleridge appears ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... infuriating. Dantor cast a warning look in the Earth man's direction. It wouldn't do to lock horns with this self-satisfied despot; at any rate, not now. Blaine's mien was expressionless as he ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... to-day in a time of surprises. Turkey is reforming, China waking up, the self-satisfied complacency of the white race has received a shock, and more are feared. Most of us of the West are anxious to get over the wall, or look around it,—we are told it is there,—and see what that other man is really like. We read books written by those ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... without too minute a scruple. For if the king can do no wrong, the nobility may surely claim a certain immunity from criticism, and those who have allowance made to them must inevitably learn to make allowance for themselves. Lord Ferriby was, in a word, too self-satisfied to harbour any doubts respecting his own conduct. Self-satisfaction is, of ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... he knew. Lucy's comments were very characteristic. She was equally hard on Daddy's ill-behaviour and Dora's religion, with a little self-satisfied hardness that would have provoked David but for its childish naivete. Many of the things that she said of Dora, however, showed real feeling, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a straight course for the Channel, sir?" asked the first mate, looking at his watch as he did so in a very self-satisfied sort of ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... they are unable to endure the weight of any temporary success. When attempting Olympus—and this work of attempting is doubtless their natural condition—they scratch and scramble, diligently using both toes and fingers, with a mixture of good-humoured virulence and self-satisfied industry that is gratifying to all parties. But whenever their efforts are unexpectedly, and for themselves unfortunately successful, they are so taken aback that they lose the power of behaving themselves ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... look of pride with which the wife turns to her husband from any more brilliant personal presence or display of wit than his, in the perfect confidence that if the world knew what she knows, there would be one more popular idol. How she magnifies his small wit, and dotes upon the self-satisfied look in his face as if it were a sign of wisdom! What a councilor that man would make! What a warrior he would be! There are a great many corporals in their retired homes who did more for the safety and success of our armies in critical moments, in the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Doctor of Divinity. A bitter, grasping, cruel, unsympathetic spirit is sin, no matter who shows it. The scribe and the Pharisee are too much with us, and the religious ideal needs to be rescued from their blighting grasp to-day as much as ever it did. Of all forms of sin an arrogant, malignant, self-satisfied assumption of righteousness is the worst and the hardest to eradicate, as Jesus found to His cost. The terrible damning lie which is stifling religion to-day is the lie which crucified Jesus, the lie that spiritual ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... about the Conneelys, the priest, the prosperous self-satisfied girls, the managing capable mother, to make people feel that there had always been Conneely's Hotel in Killesky. If the old people remembered Julia Dowd's little public-house with its thatched roof, the low ceiling and the fire of turf to ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... opinion of their nation in comparison with other nations, and of their countrymen with other countrymen, they have generally a very mean opinion of each other. Indeed, I never met with a Pole who did not look down with a self-satisfied smile of pity on any of his fellow-countrymen, even on his best friend. It seems that their feeling of individual superiority is as great as that of their national superiority. Liszt's observations ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... never could. I have been to church, and always felt impelled to do something peculiar in it which would have made them turn me out. I cannot, too, endure preaching. I cannot tolerate that man up in the pulpit looking down over all the people—so wise and so self-satisfied. I want to pull him out and say. 'Here, you, sir, come here and let me see if you can tell me two or three things I want to know.' Then, Mr. Coleman, I am never well in a great building, especially in a church; I ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... his hack, and in triumph at his trick on the postmaster, rattled along the road homeward as fast as the beast could carry him. He came into the squire's presence, his face beaming with delight, and an air of self-satisfied superiority in his manner, quite unaccountable to his master, until he pulled forth his hand, which had been grubbing up his prizes from the bottom of his pocket; and holding three letters over his head, while he said, "Look at that!" he next ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... carefully put it away in a safe place. The skin became famous throughout the district, and many of the younger men made special trips to Bali to examine it. Arni would beam with joy and strut around with a knowing, self-satisfied expression on his face, and would tell of the patience, the agility, and the marksmanship he had to put into killing this monstrously clever fox. It certainly wasn't hard to kill all you wanted of these devils, if you just had the powder ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... criminal desire. Of all their ancient greatness nothing remained to them but the contempt of pain and death whenever an extravagant enjoyment of life must finally be exchanged for them. This seal, therefore, of their former grandeur they accordingly impressed on their tragic heroes with a self-satisfied and ostentatious profusion. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... there was another crack of little more than two feet across. Meetuck stretched his neck and took a steady look at this as they approached it at full gallop. Being apparently satisfied with his scrutiny, he resumed his look of self-satisfied placidity. ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Tracy was put on. He stood up in his usual self-satisfied way, looking admiringly at his boots, and running his delicate white hand through his scented hair. Mr Paton watched him with a somewhat contemptuous expression, as though he were thinking what a pity it was that any boy should be such a little puppy. Henderson, with his usual quick ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... front windows with their gossiping heads thrust out or in. She had her own chamber on the Campagna side, and there she sat the livelong day with knitting or sewing, never going out, except at early morning to hear mass. There her mother accompanied her—a large, self-satisfied woman beside a pallid little maiden who never raised her eyes. Or, if her mother could not go, Matteo stalked along by her side, and with his black looks made everybody afraid to glance her way. Nobody liked to encounter ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... conversion of one who had been so very many years considered as a self-righteous Pharisee. I believe I endeavoured to show that the term was often improperly applied to conscientious but ignorant inquirers, who are far from self-satisfied, and who, when the Gospel is set before them, find the thing which they had long been groping after. However that may be, I observed the lad who entered with Mr. Old riveted in attention with every mark and symptom ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... happy and self-satisfied. Lovin Child kicked his heels against the rough table frame and gurgled unintelligible conversation whenever he was able to articulate sounds. Bud replied with a rambling monologue that implied a perfect understanding of Lovin Child's talk—and ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... 'inclined to be exceedingly self-satisfied; we had accomplished our object with unexpected ease, we had done a record march, and we had endured record temperatures—at least, we thought so, and thought also how pleasant it would be to tell these things in front of a nice bright fire. As we approached ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... not true. There are not many things more disagreeable than a very stupid and ill-set old woman, who, quite unaware what her opinion is worth, expresses it with entire confidence upon many subjects of which she knows nothing whatever, and as to which she is wholly incapable of judging. And the self-satisfied and confident air with which she settles the most difficult questions, and pronounces unfavorable judgment upon people ten thousand times wiser and better than herself, is an insufferably irritating phenomenon. It is a singular fact, that the people I have in view invariably combine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Middle-age had passed over him like some fattening and solidifying process. He was healthy, he was corpulent, he was prosperous, conventional, and commonplace. If Gabriella had been seeking, with Hogarthian humour, to portray the evils of torpid and self-satisfied respectability, she could scarcely have found a better picture of the condition than Charley presented. And the more Charley expanded, the more bloodless and wan Jane appeared at his side. Her small, flat face with its yellowish and unhealthy tinge, its light melancholy eyes, and its look of lifeless ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... no more. But she was Mr Millwain's cousin, and Mr Millwain had naturally to stay at her house. And she came in her carriage to fetch him from the band rehearsals; and, in short, anyone might have thought from her self-satisfied demeanour (though she was a decent sort of woman at heart) that she had at least composed "Judas Maccabeus." It was at a band rehearsal that she had graciously commanded Gilbert Swann to come and dine with her and Mr Millwain between the final rehearsal and the opening ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... wondered at if some unlovely features appear in the village character? Or is it not rather a circumstance to give one pause, that these commercially unsuccessful and socially neglected people, whose large families the self-satisfied eugenist views with such solemn misgivings, should be in the main so kindly, so generous, and sometimes so lofty in their sentiments as in fact they are? With like disadvantages, where are there any other ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... good as the horses. Some people will make mistakes of that sort, you know, and never learn the truth. And I like the horses for themselves. They are so unlike. So like people. Some of them are shy, some of them nervous, some of them conceited, and others are as self-satisfied as if already they had won the blue ribbons. Funny, isn't it, that I never suspected that you had any interest ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... of mind and rigid attendance to duty dominated the kindness, however. If crossed in what she considered best for her patient, possibly for herself, she could be severe, if not biting, in her speech and manner. So much Sweetwater read in the cold, clear eye and firm, self-satisfied mouth of the woman awaiting his response to the ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... founder of the Edinburgh and one of its most aggressive reviewers, until March, 1827, Sydney Smith has been described as "most provokingly and audaciously personal in his strictures.... He was too complacent, too aboundingly self-satisfied, too buoyantly full of spirits, to hate anybody; but he burlesques them, derides them, and abuses them with the most exasperating effrontery—in a way that is great fun to the reader, but exquisite torture to the victim." At the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... should doubt whether, in the year 1919, any intelligent and educated man would be inclined to maintain that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were, as contrasted with the nineteenth, ages of intellectual torpor, what startles me in these paragraphs is the self-satisfied assumption of the finality of my conclusions. I posit, as a fact not to be controverted, that our universe is an expression of an universal law, which the nineteenth century had discovered ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... with the badge at the following Scout meeting, she made no pretense at modesty. With a self-satisfied air, she strutted forward in answer to her Captain's summons. "The first-class Scout of Pansy troop!" her manner announced, as plainly as if she had uttered ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... of immense size, enormously fat, with broad red face, and a self-satisfied smirk, dressed in some sort of flaming scarlet stuff, profusely tinseled all over, making a gorgeously ridiculous effect. She received me with a mixture of mock dignity and smiling condescension, and surveying herself admiringly, ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... other country in our time. Poetry so full of beauty and feeling, that the study of it is at once an inspiration and a despair to the artist. The Anglo-Saxon of our day has a tendency to think that a fine idea excuses slovenly workmanship. These clear-eyed Frenchmen are a reproof to our self-satisfied laziness. Before the works of Parnassians like Leconte de Lisle, and Jose-Maria de Heredia, or those of Henri de Regnier, Albert Samain, Francis Jammes, Remy de Gourmont, and Paul Fort, of the more modern school, ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... in frankly self-satisfied amusement. "However, the best you can do is lithium-hydride fusion missiles in the hundreds-of-megatons range. Firecrackers. Every once in a while a planet has to try a few such things on us before it will ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... the paper. "Beautiful, beautiful!" exclaimed he, with a self-satisfied smile. "My pen has shot nothing less than bomb-shells and grape, and my ink has turned into whole streams of the enemy's blood. And why should I not be bold, it being perfectly safe, since the king must certainly be victorious, and ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... however, that in the chase for the gilded shekel the education of experience is better than the coddling of Alma Mater. In the satisfaction—the personal satisfaction—one derives from a liberal education, I admit that the sons of Alma Mater are the better off. I never could hope to be so self-satisfied, for instance, as ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... drive back to his dust, to his oblivion, to his cloaca, this imperial ruffian, this prince pick-pocket, this gypsy king, this traitor, this master, this groom of Franconi's! this radiant, imperturbable, self-satisfied governor, crowned with his successful crime, who goes and comes, and peacefully parades trembling Paris, and who has everything on his side,—the Bourse, the shopkeepers, the magistracy, all influences, all guarantees, ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... are standing two men, whom we may have seen in past years, self-satisfied in countenance, and spotless in array, sauntering down Piccadilly any July afternoon, or lounging in Haggis's stable-yard at Cambridge any autumn morning. Alas! how changed from the fast young undergraduates, with powers of enjoyment only equalled by their ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... I took for a self-satisfied smile. There was nothing offensive in it, but it left me without anything to reply to. No embarrassment followed, however, for a rustling motion in the room the same instant attracted my attention, and I saw, to my surprise, and I must confess, a little to my confusion, Miss Oldcastle. ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... it, for he had that brooding sort of nature, that self-satisfied attitude, that is able to appropriate to its own uses whatever comes. And being an unemotional and very tolerable sailor, he was able to be as cynical at sea as on land, and as much of an oracle, in his wholly unobtrusive way. The perfect personal poise of Mavick, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... feverish haste, not, however, without a certain care of his appearance and some selection of apparel, and quickly forecast the forthcoming interview in his mind. For the pendulum had swung back; Mr. James Smith was once more the self-satisfied, self-complacent, and discreetly cautious husband that he had been at the beginning of his quest, perhaps with a certain sense of grievance superadded. He should require the fullest explanations ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... was the living and real presence of spirit. It came over him in a wave of realization that he, too, had been unconscious of his own higher self until his love had made him feel the need of it in her. They two, from the depths of self-satisfied power, had gone blindly in their paths of self-seeking—till each had awakened the other. A strange, ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... Furrel; Lewes is almost Lose, but not quite; Heathfield is Hefful. It is characteristic of a Sussex man that he always knows best; though all the masters of all the colleges should assemble about him and speak reasoningly of Selmeston he would leave the congress as incorrigible and self-satisfied a ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... Mountstuart signified that the leg was to be seen because it was a burning leg. There it is, and it will shine through! He has the leg of Rochester, Buckingham, Dorset, Suckling; the leg that smiles, that winks, is obsequious to you, yet perforce of beauty self-satisfied; that twinkles to a tender midway between imperiousness and seductiveness, audacity and discretion; between "You shall worship me", and "I am devoted to you;" is your lord, your slave, alternately and in one. It is a leg of ebb and flow and high-tide ripples. Such a leg, when it has ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Mrs. Hampton lifted her head and looked at Grimsby. There were tears in her eyes, and her face was drawn and white. The comfortable, self-satisfied man annoyed her, and a wave of indignation swept ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... how it would seem to be as complacent and self-satisfied as Randolph?" he thought. "On the whole, I would rather be as ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... think I was a little disappointed in his remarks. They were like his first impression on me the day before, so commonplace, so laboriously undistinguished that again the conviction was forced upon me that it was a pose. Had I expected too much? Was he merely a self-satisfied egoist, clever enough to perceive our interest and impose upon it? Bill endeavoured to clear the air. The mention of "art curtains" always ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... in the same room with them. But in vain. Rose still felt herself, for all her laughing outward insouciance, a poor, bruised, helpless chattel, trodden under the heel of a world which was intolerably powerful, rich, and self-satisfied, the odious product of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... against his will, not a project that men dared to form in the most secret recesses of the heart, not a thought which did not proceed from his. Mute Europe listened to him by its representatives. From time to time he raise an imperious voice, and threw a self-satisfied word to this pompous circle, as a man who throws a copper coin among a crowd of beggars. Then might be distinguished, by the pride which lit up his looks and the joy visible in his countenance, the prince who ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... arm-in-arm with a tall, thin man of thirty or forty, dressed in a black coat, with a white cravat, a dark complexion, and an insolent, self-satisfied air. Forestier said to him: "Adieu, my dear sir," and the other pressed his hand with: "Au revoir, my friend." Then he descended the stairs whistling, his cane ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... bottle to one eye and looked far into it, they roared; and when he finally took a toothpick and gravely placed it in his mouth, his auditors were delighted. Several times during the progress of each meal, Rajah would pause and benignly gaze down upon the crowd, like a self-satisfied judge on ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... his reading and looked around for approbation. James of Avondale was nodding gravely. de Retz, with a ghastly smile on his face, seemed to be weighing the phrases. Livingston was admiring, with a self-satisfied smile, the pinkish lights upon his finger-nails, and the girl was gazing as before out of the window into the green close wherein the leaves stirred and the shadows had begun to swim lazily on the grass with the coming of the wind from off ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... He has contrived that, in his picturesque and learned pages, the old "Queen of the West" shall live again, with its circling terraces, its grey stone houses and ill-paved streets, its crush of chairs and chariots, its throng of smirking, self-satisfied prom-enaders. ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... finger with an air of most self-satisfied mystery; and then drew cautiously from under her feather cloak an object at which Amyas had hard work to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... happiness we justly call Subsist not in the good of one, but all. There's not a blessing individuals find, But some way leans and hearkens to the kind: No bandit fierce, no tyrant mad with pride, No caverned hermit, rests self-satisfied: Who most to shun or hate mankind pretend, Seek an admirer, or would fix a friend: Abstract what others feel, what others think, All pleasures sicken, and all glories sink: Each has his share; and who would more obtain, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... idea to your name. And a kid of seventeen as self-satisfied as you are isn't worth ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... quickly again, and this time he kissed her lips. "Let's forget it," he said softly. "I have only got to-day and to-morrow, I don't want to remember what a self-satisfied prig I was." ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... Ferroll, who was going to dine with them that day, and Endymion was invited to meet him. It was Adriana's first visit to Paris, and she seemed delighted with it; but Mrs. Neuchatel preferred the gay capital when it was out of season. Mr. Neuchatel himself was always in high spirits,—sanguine and self-satisfied. He was an Orleanist, had always been so, and sympathised with the apparently complete triumph of his principles—"real liberal principles, no nonsense; there was more gold in the Bank of France than in any similar establishment in Europe. ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... been spent, I felt a pang, like a sharp arrow, suddenly rush into my brain. Julia had no reserve in telling me this fact. It was a subject she seemed pleased to dwell upon. She narrated with the earnest, unseeing spirit of a self-satisfied child, the sort of conversation which had taken place between them—praised Edgerton's taste, his delicacy, his subdued, persuasive manners, and showed herself as utterly unsophisticated as any Swiss mountain-girl who ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... lost in the spiritual darkness of the Middle Ages. Modern medicine looks upon these claims and teachings of the Hippocratic School as "superstition without any foundation in fact." However, the great sages of antiquity, drawing upon a source of ancient wisdom, deeply hidden from the self-satisfied scribes and wise men of the schools, after ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... poetry and romance touch the heart so much more than dry treatises. In a word, Madame de Grantmesnil's book set me thinking; and then I read other books, and talked with clever men, and educated myself. And so I became the man I am." Here, with a self-satisfied air, Monnier bowed to the Englishman, and joined a group at the other end ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... at present, nothing to do; it is only those who have begun to realize their bondage as such, or who suffer from it, that can take any steps toward freedom. The self-satisfied slaves must stay in prison until they see where they are—and it is curious and sad to see them rejoicing in bondage and miscalling it freedom. It makes one long to see them struck by an emergency, bringing a flash of inner light which is often the beginning of an entire change of state. ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... the pages to the last chapter. There was the haughty and triumphant heroine in her studio. She had been given a medal—she had plenty of orders—she had just refused a Count. Everyone had gone, and she sat alone in her fine studio, self-satisfied and triumphant. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... bullied or hustled about at school he would retire to his cubicle and examine his features in a looking-glass, and he would sigh and say, "It is a weak face. I shall never carve a place for myself in the world." But as years went on he became either less self-conscious or more self-satisfied. The world, he found, made a niche for him as it did for every one. Decision of character might come later—or he might have it without knowing. At all events he had got a sense of beauty and a sense of humour, two most desirable ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... inconsiderable congregation expect to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the pavement under the Dedlock displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no doubt he is surprised that I don't. For he is, by heaven, the most self-satisfied, and the shallowest, and the most coxcombical and utterly ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... was well content, and increasingly self-satisfied. He could be an intelligent and mildly amusing companion, when it served his turn; and he was beginning to lose sight of Desmond in keen enjoyment of the oldest pastime in the world. They fell into occasional spells of silence now as they ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... wrath had flashed up within him, not against the system, but against that tall stooping man, worn with work, who was at once its representative and its flower. Up there the great man stood—so his thoughts ran—complacent, self-satisfied, careless of the harm which his system wrought. Down here upon the grass walked a man warped and perverted out of his natural course. He had been sent to Eton and to Oxford, and had been filled with longings and desires which could have no fruition; he had been trained ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... vanity &c n.; inflate, puff up, turn up, turn one's head. Adj. vain, vain as a peacock, proud as a peacock; conceited, overweening, pert, forward; vainglorious, high-flown; ostentatious &c 882; puffed up, inflated, flushed. self-satisfied, self-confident, self-sufficient, self-flattering, self-admiring, self-applauding, self-glorious, self-opinionated; entente &c (wrongheaded) 481; wise in one's own conceit, pragmatical^, overwise^, pretentious, priggish; egotistic, egotistical; soi-disant ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... passed (a) (3) in a self-satisfied manner through twenty years of office, letting things take their own course; to have (b) sailed with consummate sagacity, never against the tide of popular (c) judgement; to have left on record as the sole title to distinction among English ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... mind to keep his place in the firing line. Some of his friends have seen him in a state of real weakness, particularly of physical weakness, and for myself I have never once found him in a truculent or self-satisfied frame of mind. I believe he is at heart a modest man, and I am quite certain he is a delicate and a suffering man. But for the devotion of his wife I think he could not have ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... are in the hands of officials who zealously study your welfare and your interest, instead of turning their talents to the invention of new methods of discommoding and snubbing you, as is very often the main employment of that exceedingly self-satisfied monarch, the railroad ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a self-satisfied way. "I think we have done all that can be done," he answered; "it's a queer case though, and I knew ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I was introduced into the lady's presence. She was, and probably is, a very stately, handsome woman, with a pale complexion, high solid forehead, regular features, thin, pinched, self-satisfied mouth. My interview was very short. I plunged into the middle of the affair, but had scarcely mentioned the word husband, when she interrupted me with, "I presume you have lent this profligate person money, and want ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... leave, and told him the best sort of lotion to ask for, and so, as soon as afternoon school was over, our young champion sallied boldly forth on his errand. He felt very self-satisfied and forgiving to all the world as he walked along. There was no doubt about it, he was a hero. Every one seemed to take an interest in his black eye and sore cheek, from Mr Rastle downwards. Very likely that fight of his with Loman yesterday would be ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... the second day was about equal to that of the first; the result of the third a good deal better, and Bill, who was fortunate enough to discover a small nugget, returned to camp with a self-satisfied swagger that indicated elation, though his visage expressed nothing but stolidity, slightly tinged with surprise. On the fourth day the cradles were made, and a very large portion of their gains thereby swept away in consequence of the unconscionable ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... and asked, "What? How? Factitious? What does that mean?" and then observed impressively: "Don't make use of words you do not understand." And the lawyer, finishing his speech, would walk away from the table, red and perspiring, while Pyotr Dmitritch; with a self-satisfied smile, would lean back in his chair triumphant. In his manner with the lawyers he imitated Count Alexey Petrovitch a little, but when the latter said, for instance, "Counsel for the defence, you keep quiet for a little!" it sounded paternally ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... distance along the Sangatte road, and I was just congratulating myself I had given him the slip, when looking up, there he was sitting on a grassy knoll just ahead, positively laughing and licking his chops with self-satisfied glee. I gave it up after that, I felt I couldn't cope with him, and yet there were those who called him stupid! I grant you he had his bad days when he was referred to as my "idiot son," but even then he was only ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... permit me, Madame," they heard him say with his strident little self-satisfied laugh. "A man of affairs is the slave of the moment. And the affairs of state are never still. A great country moves even ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... her dressing table. On it was a picture of Danvers—handsome, self-satisfied, healthy, unintellectual. She looked at it, gave a little shiver, and with the end of her comb toppled it over upon ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... generation inevitably feels the influence, and the son of the sinewy and susceptible European becomes the languid, self-satisfied, and voluptuous Oriental. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... customary, and to be prejudiced against the novel, nor is this condition of things without advantage. But we must bear our condemnation if we stick to the customary too long, and so miss our signal opportunities. In their apathy, in their self-satisfied ignorance, in their dulness of apprehension and forethought, the authorities of the University let pass the great opportunity of their time. As it usually happens, when this posture of lofty ignoring what is palpable and active, and the object ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... Etrurian (non-Aryan) civilization on which the Latins intruded, was apparently more advanced than their own. For centuries their utmost prowess scarce sufficed to maintain their independence. Thus it was not possible for them to become too self-satisfied, to stand afar off and look down on their neighbors with Grecian scorn. The ego was less prominently developed; the necessity of mutual dependence and united action was more deeply taught. Their records display less of brilliancy, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... what it does not know is not knowledge, what it cannot do must not be done. It rules India ignorantly and obstructively; it will wreck the empire rather than relinquish its ascendancy in Ireland. It is densely self-satisfied and instinctively monopolistic. It is on our backs, and with it on our backs we common English must bleed and blunder to victory.... And you make ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... his way in no very self-satisfied mood. Although he did not regret having taken the place of Cressy as the purveyor of lethal weapons between the belligerent parties, he knew he was tacitly mingling in the feud between people for whom ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... his mouth. "It will be many a day ere sleep makes contest with my eyes . . . unless it be cold and sinister sleep. Sleep? You are laughing! Only the fatuous and the self-satisfied sleep . . . and the dead. So be it." He took the tongs and stirred the log, from which flames suddenly darted. "I wonder what they are doing at Voisin's to-night?" irrelevantly. "There will be some from the guards, some from the musketeers, and some from the prince's ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath |
