"Complacence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... experience, acquires prejudices too: Day, old age has generally two faults; it is too quick-sighted into the faults of the time being, and too blind to the faults that reigned in his own youth, which, having partaken of or having admired, though injudiciously, he recollects with complacence. A key in writers for I confess, too, that there must be two distinct views of writers 4 the stage, one of which is more allowable to them than to other authors. The one is durable fame; the other, peculiar to dramatic authors, the view of writing to the present taste, (and, perhaps, as you ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... complacence and tranquillity annoyed her. She hated her mother. She adored her and hated her. Mamma had married for her own pleasure, for her passion. She had brought you into the world, without asking your leave, for her own pleasure. She had brought you ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... valour and by the means of war. No great alteration, I think, will ever be made in our rites and ceremonies—the best and most imposing that could be collected from all nations, and uniting them to us by our complacence in adopting them. The gods themselves may change names, to flatter new power: and, indeed, as we degenerate, Religion will accommodate herself to our propensities and desires. Our heaven is now popular: it will become monarchal; not without a crowded court, as befits it, of apparitors ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... made, as it were, in wax. When Nature first framed him, she took a secret complacence in her work. He is even her masterpiece in irrational things, borrowing somewhat of all things to set him forth. For example, his slick bay coat he took from the chestnut; his neck from the rainbow, which perhaps make him rain so well. His mane belike he took from Pegasus, making him a hobby ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... know whether I'm exactly the man to make the hero of a novel," Charles murmured, with complacence. And he certainly didn't ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... that great inconuenyence As losse, contempt and occasyon of pryde Hath fallyn vnto many by this lewde complacence Whiche haue nat knowen the way themself to gyde The emperour Otho had ay borne by his syde In warre and peas (a glasse) for his pleasaunce To se his colour therin; ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... about the eyes, its fine, strong jaw, and its indefinable expression of power, she began to understand more fully why those with whom she had talked had spoken of Murray O'Neil with an almost worshipful respect. She felt very insignificant and purposeless as she huddled there beside him, and her complacence at his attentions deepened into a vivid sense of satisfaction. Thus far he had spoken entirely of men; she wondered if he ever thought of women, and thrilled a bit at the intimacy that had sprung up between them so ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... was received with smiling complacence by Hussein-ul-Mulk. On this occasion he was conducted to another room of the flat, and he promptly noted that the windows looked out to the rear of the building, whereas during his previous visit he could survey ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... little malice in her pleasure at getting this glimpse behind the scenes in Rachael's life; she would repeat her friend's confidence, later, with the calm of a person doing the accepted and expected thing, with the complacence of one who proves her right to other revelations from her listeners in turn. It was by such proof judiciously displayed that Elinor held her place in the front ranks of her own select little group of gossips and intimates. She wished the Breckenridges no harm, but if there ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... we repeat, seemed to hear these accounts with pleasure, even when he was reminded of the dangerous and susceptible character of those with whom such suspicions originated. "Will any one now assert," he said, with self-complacence, "that I am so utterly negligent of the interest of friends?—You see the peril in which I place myself, and even the risk to which I have exposed the public peace, to rescue a man whom I have scarce ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Allies. This injection of peace considerations into the war situation, before the United States had really entered the lists with troops and guns, was taking time by the forelock. But it was needful to clear the air early, as one of the reasons ascribed to Germany's apparent complacence to the entrance of America as a belligerent was that she counted on the United States as a balance wheel that might restrain the Entente's war activities and hasten peace, or later operate to curtail the Entente's demands at the peace conference. On these assumptions America's participation ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... was twenty-two years old. He was happy and good-natured, and it was easy for him to smile. While his body was slim in the Asiatic way, his face was rotund. It was round, like the moon, and it irradiated a gentle complacence and a sweet kindliness of spirit that was unusual among his countrymen. Nor did his looks belie him. He never caused trouble, never took part in wrangling. He did not gamble. His soul was not harsh enough for the soul that must belong to a gambler. He was content with little things ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... lowered her voice. It was rarely that it assumed an edge when addressing her husband. She had never reproached him for being a failure, for she had recognized his limitations early and accepted her lot. But something in his tone shook her maternal complacence and roused ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... great Galees of Venice and Florence Be well laden with things of complacence, All spicery and of grossers ware: With sweete wines all maner of chaffare, Apes, and Iapes, and marmusets tayled, Nifles and trifles that little haue auayled: And things with which they fetely blere our eye: With things not ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... is more false than the overstrained forms of a feudal France. To shut out glory is not to be practical. You are not adjusting your life artistically; there is too much strain, too little warmth, too much self-complacence. I see that you are really younger than I thought. The world never censures the crimes of the spirit. You are safe from the world's tongue lashings, and in that safety is the danger against which my ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... the chase and war; and, conceiving himself to live and move only at the mercy of his multitudinous associates, he becomes a fatalist—kismet is his watchword, and he meets defeat and death with resignation, just as he goes to victory with complacence; for so ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... wall Came the cradle-rock and squall, And the goodman's voice, at strife With his shrill and tipsy wife, Luring us by stories old, With a comic unction told, More than by the eloquence Of terse birchen arguments (Doubtful gain, I fear), to look With complacence on a book!— Where the genial pedagogue Half forgot his rogues to flog, Citing tale or apologue, Wise and merry in its drift As was Phaedrus' twofold gift, Had the little rebels known it, Risum et prudentiam monet! I,—the man of middle years, In whose sable locks appears Many a warning fleck ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... author. For he carefully collects the chevalier's extravagant speculations; brings them into juxtaposition; admires the spirit, boldness, and learning which had given birth to them; and in no case refutes, but looks with complacence upon nearly every one. The impression of a candid reader of the essay must be, that the writer indorses almost all of Bunsen's opinions without having the courage to avow his assent. Of his hero he says, "Bunsen's enduring glory is neither to have faltered with his ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... and beautiful structure of self-complacence upon which he had lounged, preening his feathers and receiving social triumphs and the adulation of his "less fortunate fellows" as the due of his own personal superiority, suddenly slipped from under ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... 24, 1897, at the Waldorf Hotel, New York, there was held a political banquet intended as a most impressive function, but which has passed into history as a very ridiculous one. Big with self-complacence and puffed with pride, as it appeared in the brilliant lights and gorgeous appointments of the palatial supper-hall, within twenty-four hours the lacerating indignation of Mr. Watterson and the trenchant raillery of Mr. Bryan had let the tumid pretentiousness all out of it, and it had ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... divinely constituted organization which stands for the highest human ideals, and for the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, we all are, or ought to be, members of the Church. "With charity for all and with malice toward none," we see no ground for self-complacence on the part of any branch of the Church, and no part of it which deserves sweeping condemnation from the rest. Doubtless it will seem to many that it is unwise to confess our faults, but the men at the front are not silent, however much we may desire to be. We would do well to face the ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... to see that all was in readiness for the meal. The sheriff and his men viewed the bountifully spread table with looks of complacence, and presently every one was gathered around the table. As was natural in the daughter of the house Peggy assisted in the waiting, and was back and forth from the kitchen with tea, hot chocolate, rusks, ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... David thus commended by other women increased his value. If it did not make her love him more, it made her feel the pride of ownership in a desirable possession. There was complacence in her voice as she ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... grasp so tight around the arm of the chair that the flesh was bloodless; a little way off, a group of three, the two salesmen and the metropolitan newspaper man, seemed as though stricken into stone, stripped of all assurance, all complacence, awed, tense, palpitant, as the patched, bare-legged tatterdemalion of ten from the fields, that stood beside them, was ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard |
