"Complacent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so little for life?" he cried, putting forth all his strength. The two horses reared, and drew the others round; the tilting of the pole tilted the chariot; Messala barely escaped a fall, while his complacent Myrtilus rolled back like a clod to the ground. Seeing the peril past, all the bystanders ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... leaning on the thwartship rails close by, looked on, with complacent satisfaction or half-contemptuous pity. Among them stood Mrs. Hastings, Miss Winifred Rawlinson, and Agatha. It was noticed that Wyllard, with a pipe in his hand, sat on a hatch forward, near the head of the gangway. Agatha drew Mrs. Hastings' ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... reprove, with a complacent smile of superiority, the folly of the act; but the sentiment underneath ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... between the agreeable conversation of her companion and the pleasant spectacle of a fabulous number of pfennigs a-year bending its titled head over her daughter. In the middle of one of Mr Bunker's most amusing stories she could not forbear interrupting with a complacent "they do make a ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... yourself in the latter category, Master Pothier?" Philibert spoke doubtingly, for a more self-complacent face than his companion's he never saw—every wrinkle trembled with mirth; eyes, cheeks, chin, and brows surrounded that jolly red nose of his like a group of gay boys round ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... discipline of endurance, we must rank the complacent sentiment of Pride, which the Stoic might justly feel in his conquest of himself, and in his lofty independence and superiority to the casualties of life.[10] The pride of the Cynic, the Stoic's predecessor, was prominent and offensive, showing itself in scurrility ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... said and of his mistakes in grammar. He knew that Walker held him in small esteem, and he found a bitter satisfaction in his chief's opinion of him; it increased his own contempt for the narrow, complacent old man. And it gave him a singular pleasure to know that Walker was entirely unconscious of the hatred he felt for him. He was a fool who liked popularity, and he blandly fancied that everyone admired him. Once ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... such international ignorance as this that much, if not most, of the British want of appreciation of the United States may be traced; just as the acute critic may see in the complacent and persistent misspelling of English names by the leading journals of Paris an index of that French attitude of indifference towards foreigners that involved the possibility of a Sedan. It is not, perhaps, easy to adduce exactly parallel instances of ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... machine. Now and then the brushes would sparkle and spit blue flashes, at which Holroyd would swear, but all the rest was as smooth and rhythmic as breathing. The band ran shouting over the shaft, and ever behind one as one watched was the complacent thud of the piston. So it lived all day in this big airy shed, with him and Holroyd to wait upon it; not prisoned up and slaving to drive a ship as the other engines he knew—mere captive devils of the British Solomon—had been, but a machine enthroned. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the idea of the wood-touching superstition, that a malignant spirit dogs one's conversational footsteps, listening eagerly for the complacent word. "I have never had the mumps," you say airily. "Ha, ha!" says the spirit, "haven't you? Just you wait till next Tuesday, my boy." Unconsciously we are crediting Fate with our own human weaknesses. If a man standing ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... and he defied the "scientific palate" of his brother artiste "to tell which was which." "The meat," says M. Soyer, "I consider of no more value than the other ingredients, but to give a flavour by properly blending the gelatine and the osmazome, for," he adds with complacent self-reliance, "in compounding the richest soup, the balance of it is ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... weather-beaten, and wore a thin, threadbare coat. One could see that he was so used to being out in all sorts of weather that he didn't mind the cold. The other was well fed and well dressed, and looked like a prosperous and self-complacent farmer. ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... embassies. Report came from the fleet—keeping pace with the land army along the coasts—that nowhere had the weak squadrons of the Greeks adventured a stand. Daily the smile of the Lord of the World grew more complacent, as his "table-companions" told him: "The rumour of your Eternity's advent stupefies the miserable Hellenes. Like Atar, the Angel of Fire, your splendour glitters afar. You will enter Athens and Sparta, and no sword leave its sheath, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... of our own weakness, and tempted to think of our task as heavy, or when complacent in our own power, and tempted to regard our task as easy, let us think of His ever-present work in and for His people, till it braces us for all duty, and rebukes our easy-going idleness. Surely from that thought of the active, ascended Christ may come to many of His slothful followers ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... keeper of the museum accused of hypocrisy or fraud for showing, with Alfred's name appended, what he might or might not himself believe to have belonged to that great king; nor did I ever see any party of strangers who were looking at it with awe, regarded by any self-complacent bystander with scornful compassion. Yet the curiosity is not to a certainty Alfred's. The world pays civil honour to it on the probability; we pay religious honour to relics, if so be, on the probability. ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The King cringed to his rival that he might trample on his people, sank into a viceroy of France, and pocketed, with complacent infamy, her degrading insults and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots and the jests of buffoons regulated the policy of the State. The government had just ability enough to deceive, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... let him go a long way up the sloping meadows towards the wall with one complacent individual, and to him he promised to describe all that happened among the houses. He noted certain goings and comings, but the things that really seemed to signify to these people happened inside of or behind the windowless houses—the only things they took ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... a complacent smile broke through the grime on Woods's face, "it means, Alf, that I'm at last my own landlord. I've been paying old Welborne fifty dollars a year rent fer that little hole in a wall, away back from the square, because I couldn't get enough ahead to build on this lot or get any other shop. I ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... Delarayne herself that a man should not marry until flappers had ceased to turn round to get a second look at him in the street? And was there not something profoundly wise in this advice, although it had been pronounced in one of the old lady's most flippant moods? A smile of complacent well-being spread slowly over his features as he recalled this remark, and the last endorsement was mentally affixed ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... Sir Guy, and ere the sun has set Will hither come!" they said. He crossed his hands While o'er his face a smile complacent spread And docile as a child to their commands To sleep he yields his eyes ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... is manifest in the economic world, uniformity, order, of a similar if less majestic kind. Upon the cooperation of his fellowmen, man depends for the very means of life: yet he takes this cooperation for granted, with a complacent confidence and often with a naive unconsciousness, as he takes the rising of to-morrow's sun. The reliability of this unorganized cooperation has powerfully impressed the imagination of ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... got rid of him at last, but I did not know my man. He returned a short time after, and addressing himself in a complacent manner to the ladies, as if I was of no more account, he told them that he had given the prince such a description of their charms that he had made up his mind ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... pretentions of profundity. There were some fawning and complacent people who pretended to consider him a great man, the reservoir of learning, the encyclopedic giant of the age. Perhaps he was a well, but one at whose bottom one often could not find a ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... he's a man among men. He's honest and open hearted and human. There is not a mean hair in his head. And he stands a great deal nearer the top of his profession than I do to the top of mine. I have been a fool, Alice. I can see now what a complacent fool and a cad I must have been—when I could look at these men and see nothing but uncouthness. But, thank ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... was why Millard was so apparently complacent. One could not, under the circumstances, have expected him to display wild emotion. His attitude had been that of one who thought, "She almost broke me; let her ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... the muscular squirming of his body in some tight place about the sandbag wainscot. Like a friendly dog he trots about your dug-out by night, bumping with trustful carelessness against the fragile legs of your rustic bed. You hear him crooning to himself or a pal, in his content—a placid, complacent little sound very different from the grating squeak or squeal of the unhappy Ishmaels you used to know. Certainly he will help himself to a little cake, if such a thing is to be had, for he feels at home, as he doubtless wishes you to do. If you do not care to share your dainties, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... Each had a knee on the floor, and one hand full of bread and cheese. They looked up at her with broad, complacent, unctuous faces, smiling, yet resolute. And one, with his unoccupied hand, laid hold of the handle of the basket, while the other detained the pail. "You will tell us where is your ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... Sam was complacent and apparently confident, but his feelings were not shared by his young friends. To them it seemed as if their efforts to cut down the distance by which the Varmint II was leading were vain. The speed of the two boats apparently was equal. The bows ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... consciousness. Conversant with present life in all its outward aspects, he forgets the infinite spaces which lie around and above it. This confinement of view, which among the more intelligent appears merely as disbelief in the possibilities of man, takes a more offensive form in the complacent blindness of ordinary minds. We have no wish to disparage our own age in comparison with any that have preceded it. Young men have always been ignorant, and ignorance has always been conceited. There is, however, this difference. The ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... place mocked these other scenes and places. He came into the long, unroofed aisle, with its battered sides and floor of soft turf, broken only by some memorial brasses over graves. He looked up and saw upon the walls the carved figures of little grinning demons between complacent angels. The association of these with his own thoughts stirred him to laughter—a low, cold laugh, which shone on ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... her best black silk dress in an attitude subtly combining, with a kind tolerance for all who were so unfortunate as not to be Sarrions, a complacent ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... quite safe now," the curate was saying in the adjoining room, not without a touch of complacent self-approval such as becomes the victor in a battle of wits. "I have locked him in the cupboard. He will be quite happy there." An incorrect statement this. "You may now continue ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... and Canada's shortest road to equal prosperity lay through direct imitation. Salvation was to be found in the universal application of the elective principle, from policeman to governor. This was before the unforeseen tendencies of democracy had startled Americans out of their attitude of self-complacent belief in it, and converted them first into thoroughgoing critics, and then into determined reformers of the system that they once thought flawless. The legislation of the session of 1849-50 has still measures of value. Canada for the first time ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... which gives that highly-favored personage nine chances out of ten—and grudges the tenth to the wisest man in existence. Look where you will, in every high place there sits an Ass, settled beyond the reach of all the greatest intellects in this world to pull him down. Over our whole social system, complacent Imbecility rules supreme—snuffs out the searching light of Intelligence with total impunity—and hoots, owl-like, in answer to every form of protest, See how well we all do in the dark! One of these days that audacious assertion will be ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... civilized, cultivated; refined &c. (taste) 850; gentlemanlike &c. (fashion) 852[obs3]; gallant; on one's good behavior. fine spoken, fair spoken, soft-spoken; honey-mouthed, honey-tongued; oily, bland; obliging, conciliatory, complaisant, complacent; obsequious &c. 886. ingratiating, winning; gentle, mild; good-humored, cordial, gracious, affable, familiar; neighborly. diplomatic, tactful, politic; artful &c. 702. Adv. courteously &c. adj.; with a good grace; with open arms, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... of Infallibility. And the wholesale belief in such a system, however accurate it may be—grant even that it were infallible—is not Faith though it always gets that name. It is mere Credulity. It is a complacent and idle rest upon authority, not a hard-earned, self-obtained, personal possession. The moral responsibility here, besides, is reduced to nothing. Those who framed the Thirty-nine Articles or the ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... absence and of the circumstances of it. The Pope, however, was not at all alarmed. Explaining his son's absence in the manner so obviously suggested by Giovanni's parting words to Cesare on the previous night, he assumed that the gay young Duke was on a visit to some complacent lady and ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... English newspapers, not only a full justification of this oppressive treatment in view of its astonishing consequences, but a claim to approbation on account of its exercise. Would not such effrontery amaze us? Would not an honest indignation burn within us? Should we look with a more complacent aspect upon the bigots who kindled those fires of persecution around the Puritans, which, but for the interposition of Heaven, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... said to herself, with a complacent sigh, as she handed this to the waiting messenger. "Now if John acts promptly, he may catch those crazy boys before they have the chance to start off on any other absurd expedition. I only hope to goodness that ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... front gate. There he paused and yodelled for a time. An answering yodel came presently; Penrod Schofield appeared, and by his side walked Georgie Bassett. Georgie was always neat; but Mrs. Williams noticed that he exhibited unusual gloss and polish to-day. As for his expression, it was a shade too complacent under the circumstances, though, for that matter, perfect tact avoids an air of triumph under any circumstances. Mrs. Williams was pleased to observe that Sam and Penrod betrayed no resentment whatever; they seemed to have accepted defeat ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... across at her with a complacent smile. "You see, I'm only a man," he said coolly. "But that illustrates my point. It's not always possible to pass on all one's possessions, is it? It may answer in theory but not in practice. I think you catch my ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... her shade down. She hated the stars. They looked complacent and distant. She pushed memories of Doris and Nancy resolutely from her. Her world was not their world—that was sure. If this desperate loneliness couldn't drive her to them, nothing could. She must make her own life! Lying on her hot bed, Joan thought and thought. Of what did she ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... pistoles! a hundred pistoles! for a hundred pistoles I have discovered a secret for which Richelieu would have paid twenty thousand crowns; without reckoning the value of that diamond"—he cast a complacent look at the ring, which he had kept, instead of restoring to D'Artagnan—"which is worth, at least, ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... years of America had opened so impassable a gulf between him and them. Indeed, the very fact of that impassability may have made his intercourse with them the easier—at any rate, on his side. On their side, they regarded him with a dim but always self-complacent curiosity; had he not been a consul, they would probably not have regarded him at all. Of course they—the Rock Park sort of people—had never read his books; literary cultivation was not to be found in ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... wish to go. There was always, she had held, a way out, if you used your brains. Altogether, it was a disconcerted, bewildered, and thoroughly put-out young lady who, a week later, found herself taking the train for Highboro. The world—her familiar, complacent, agreeable world—had ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... Chesterfield saw clearly the symptoms of the coming Revolution in France. Only two other men in Europe foresaw that immense event: Goldsmith and Arthur Young. Note Gibbon's complacent attitude in re France to illustrate the general lack of vision ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... Meadowsweet, settling herself in a lazy, fat sort of a way in her easy chair, and looking full at her visitor with a complacent smile, "so I called her Beatrice. I thought under the circumstances it was the best name I could give—it seemed to fit all round, you know, and as he had no objection, being very easy-going, poor man, I ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... carpet-bag in his hand, had an opportunity of making any further revelation as to Mrs Moss, or any more enquiries as to his unknown travelling companion, the coachman had mounted the box, and, after asserting in a very complacent tone that it was all right, had driven off, and left him in the same state of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... however, the victory of Pinkie was a personal triumph. He returned to England in a halo of military glory and popularity, to receive new compliments and honours, and to assume the role of beneficent dictator with self-complacent confidence when Parliament met for the first time ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Mihailovna destined him to be the editor of a new independent provincial paper. There were also several ladies, married and single, and lastly, even Karmazinov who, though he could not be said to bustle, announced aloud with a complacent air that he would agreeably astonish every one when the literary quadrille began. An extraordinary multitude of donors and subscribers had turned up, all the select society of the town; but even the unselect were admitted, if only they ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... painful for me to discuss it; but if the money is not paid on the 14th there certainly will be no marriage on the 18th." His insufferable smile was more complacent ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... would I avail myself of its acknowledged inappropriateness to the purposes of physiology, in order to cast a self-complacent sneer on the soul itself, and on all who believe in its existence. First, because in my opinion it would be impertinent; secondly, because it would be imprudent and injurious to the character of my profession; and, lastly, because it would argue ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... offerings in town, and he found it impossible to change her trend of thought into other channels. The hostess sat nearly opposite, where she could easily overhear the young lady, whose voice was decidedly penetrating, so West made no serious attempt to be otherwise than complacent. Once the smiling Natalie appealed to him, familiarly calling him "Matt" across the table, and he responded with equal intimacy, yet her eyes avoided his, and it was plainly evident to his self-consciousness, that her remark was merely part of the play. More and more her actions mystified and perplexed; ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... curiosity in Jane's circles, she accepted a number of dances from Teddy—in fact the big fanciful "T" which Jane remembered so well in the spook letter, was scribbled all over her dancing card, while Judith accepted Ray Mann, a chum of Ted's, in complacent substitution. Ray was a capital fellow, with such a stock of chestnut hair he might have matched up pretty well with Bobbie, if her spare time had not been so filled in with Dave Jordan, ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... back a little, look round, fall. Another came by. The first evidently called out and the other gave him a hand. Both stumbled on together, the puffs of dust splashing round them. Then down they fell and were quiet. A complacent correspondent told me afterwards, with the condescending smile of higher light, that only seven men were hit. I only know that before evening twenty-five of the Light Horse alone were brought in wounded, not counting the dead, and not counting the other mounted ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... I might help, you know," was the complacent remark of Charlie, who had improved his time, and, while keeping his "ears out," had been putting his legs into his pants ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... had, coward-like, kept in the background—he was probably little more than a complacent tool in the hands of the pontiff—he was permitted to leave Florence in the train of the young Cardinal, immediately before the reception of the Interdict. He returned to Rome and abandoned himself to a life of profligacy; his palace became a brothel and a gambling hell, and ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... haunted his brain,—that he was aroused by the bare feet of a servant in the hall-way, before the latter touched his door to call him. Captain Carreras had asked for him. The glow of dawn was in the old man's quarters, and he smiled in a queer, complacent way from his bed, as if a long-looked-for solution to some grave problem had come in the night, and he wanted his friend to guess. A hand lifted from the coverlet, and Bedient's sped to it; yet he saw that something more was wanted. The ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... the individual's growing demand for independence is often balked by the continued domination of his elders, and he rebelliously plans quite a career of crime for himself. He'll show them! They won't be so pig-headedly complacent when they know they have driven him to the bad. You can tell by the looks of {496} a person whose feelings are hurt that he is imagining something; usually he is imagining himself either a martyr or a desperado, or some other kind of suffering hero, often working ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... in Van Diemen's Land (1820) was attended with the same military honors: wherever he went he was received with ceremony, and watched with jealousy and apprehension. The habits of Mr. Bigge were simple, complacent, and industrious: he labored to draw from all classes their feelings and designs—nothing escaped his curiosity. His opinions are given on every subject with equal quietness, whether they relate to the salting of beef, or the most profound questions of ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... pricked by the inexplicable disappearance of the girl on their marriage day. He had laid that disappearance to foul play. That she could have left him through any personal aversion never entered his complacent young head. ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... now grown of an extraordinary pallor, his lips twitched as he spoke and his fingers worked in a nervous uneasy manner upon the table-cloth. Captain Plessy was in far too complacent a mood to notice such trifles. His vanity was satisfied, the world was a rosy mist with a sparkle of champagne, and he answered lightly as he unfastened another button of ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... will even go further than this, Mr. Winkle,' continued Mr. Phunky, in a most smooth and complacent manner. 'Did you ever see any thing in Mr. Pickwick's manner and conduct towards the opposite sex to induce you to believe that he ever contemplated matrimony of late years, ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... lived in London as Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James. He did not like tea; and, usually, rocking his American chair, his neat little shiny boots crossed on the foot-rest, he would talk on and on with a sort of complacent virtuosity wonderful in a man of his age, while he held the cup in his hands for a long time. His close-cropped head was perfectly white; his ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... her, soon yielded, in her girlish mind, to a complacent languor; and that, in its turn, to a soft reverie. So she was going to be married! To be mistress of a house; settle in London (THAT she had quite determined long ago); be able to go out into the streets all alone, to shop, or visit; have a gentleman ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... surly and as disrespectful in his behaviour to her as usual; but she did not observe, or she did not feel his morose temper as heretofore—he seemed amiable, mild, and gentle; at least this was the happy medium through which her self-complacent mind began to see him; for good humour, like the jaundice, makes every one of ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... story, and the whole world wept At wrongs and cruelties it had not known But for this fearless woman's voice alone. She spoke to consciences that long had slept: Her message, Freedom's clear reveille, swept From heedless hovel to complacent throne. Command and prophecy were in the tone And from its sheath the sword of justice leapt. Around two peoples swelled a fiery wave, But both came forth transfigured from the flame. Blest be the hand that dared be ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... almost Wertherian powers of "sensibility." Even the family troubles could not damp his ardour. His father had embarked on questionable speculations, which now threatened the Buonapartes with bankruptcy, unless the French Government proved to be complacent and generous. With the hope of pressing one of the family claims on the royal exchequer, the second son procured an extension of furlough and sped to Paris. There at the close of 1787 he spent several weeks, hopefully endeavouring to extract money from ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... had Casanova encountered such freedom of thought in women; never had he met with anything of the kind in a girl who was certainly not yet twenty years old. It was painful to him to remember that in earlier and better days his own mind had with deliberate, self-complacent boldness moved along the paths whereon Marcolina was now advancing—although in her case there did not seem to exist any consciousness of exceptional courage. Fascinated by the uniqueness of her methods of thought ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... but the complacent lieutenant would have been disconcerted by Mademoiselle Marguerite's dry tone; but he did not even notice it. The effort that he was making in his intense desire to be eloquent and persuasive absorbed the attention ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... a little set her up, innocently, in her mind. She had not wholly got the better,—when it interfered with no good-will or generous dealing,—of a certain little instinctive reverence for imposing outsides and grand ways of daily doing; and she was somewhat complacent at the idea of having to go,—with kindly and needful information,—to Madam Mucklegrand, in ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... spring air, the virginal complexion of the April landscape. She surveyed the scene from Isabelle's motor with complacent superiority. How much better she had arranged her life than either Margaret or Isabelle! After the talk with Percy the previous evening, she felt a new sense of power and competency, with a touch of ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... uncle had returned. This, no doubt, was the main entrance, and led into some public corridor, where detection by passers-by would be certain, to say nothing of the fact that the door was no doubt strongly guarded, and by a soldier who would not be so complacent as Gaston had been (having neither handled my gold nor tasted a maiden's kisses ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... in a deep complacent enjoyment of his new sensations, till almost daylight. He then took breakfast in a market restaurant, after which he went to a barber's shop—one of those that open in time for early-rising customers—and had his hair cut in the desired fashion. From there ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... and piercing blue eye proclaiming a powerful mind well trained for the purposes of science; the Bishop short and broad of stature, with an amiable, rounded, ruddy face, and the low forehead which is typical of a complacent dogmatism. ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... Pierre was complacent; he admired her wild attacks. He smiled, and replied: "My dear, it was a whim of mine; but you need not tell him, all the same, when he wakes. You see this is your father's house, though the whim is mine. But look: he is waking-the pin is good. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... he cried, and gave a wringing motion of his hands, for the self-esteem of a complacent man is not torn away without agony. "Who else but you? I had thought myself brave enough to be silent, but still I must play the coward's part! That woman I told you of—that woman I loved—was you! Yes, you, you!" he cried, again and again, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... ourselves and the German character in the face—this unknown, problematic character, which for a century in contradiction to its own inmost being, has been flattering and lulling itself with hackneyed and complacent phrases and unproved judgments. For we can undertake nothing and claim nothing which has not its prototype in our own soul and is not founded in our ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... calamities;—Do not be so complacent. Heaven is now producing such movements;—Do not be so indifferent. If your words were harmonious, The people would become united. If your words were gentle and kind, The people ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... cow's diet. The cat was old now, and objected to the baby so strenuously that Dely regarded her as partly insane from age; and though she was kind to her of course, and fed her faithfully, still a cat that could growl at George's baby was not regarded with the same complacent kindness that had always blessed her before; and whenever the baby was asleep at milking-time, Pussy was locked into the closet,—a proceeding she resented. Biddy, on the contrary, seemed to admire the child,—she certainly did not object to her,—and necessarily obtained thereby a far higher ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... parted bosom clings to wonted home, If aught that's kindred cheer the welcome hearth; He that is lonely—hither let him roam, And gaze complacent on congenial earth. Greece is no lightsome land of social mirth: But he whom Sadness sootheth may abide, And scarce regret the region of his birth, When wandering slow by Delphi's sacred side, Or gazing o'er the plains where Greek ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... And with this complacent reflection, Ben withdrew the tobacco from his mouth, and sent it far into the water, remembering Mrs. Harrington's objections to the weed, and ready to send his life after that, if it could afford her ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... midst of her distress she put on a complacent smirk, straightened her emaciated form, and sat there, looking like the very ghost of pride, wrapped ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... With a very complacent smile I began my story. Who does not know what it is to begin a story with a triumphant confidence in its favorable reception? Who does not know that first terrible glimmer of doubt when the story seems not to be making the expected impression? Who ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... concentrated stolidity. They do not intend wrong—they intend rightly: in truth, they work against the entire human race. So wedded and so confirmed is the world in its narrow groove of self, so stolid and so complacent under the immense weight of misery, so callous to its own possibilities, and so grown to its chains, that I almost despair to see it awakened. Cemeteries are often placed on hillsides, and the white stones are visible far ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... happen to clash with his predilections. How would he behave in a tight place? He was a fashionable young man with the tastes of his class, and she thought she had detected in him once or twice a touch of that complacent egotism which is liable to make fish of one foible and flesh of another, as the saying is, to suit convention. In short, were his moral perceptions ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... secure and sufficient answer. We are to respect our responsibilities, not ourselves. We are to respect the duties of which we are capable, but not our capabilities simply considered. There is to be no complacent self-contemplation, beruminating upon self. When self is viewed, it must always be in the most intimate connection with its purposes. How well were it if persons would be more careful, or rather, more conscientious, in paying ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... carriage sat two children, a boy and a girl, hardly more than babies. They were gorgeously overdressed, after the vulgar fashion of aristocrats and apers of aristocracy. They sat stiffly, like little scions of royalty, with that expression of complacent superiority which one so often sees on the faces of the little children of the very rich—and some not so little, too. The thronging loungers, most of them either immigrant peasants from European caste countries or the un-disinfected sons of peasants, were gaping in true New York "lower class" ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... thirteenth arrondissement from the twelve others. Her rivals—Suzanne Gaillard, who, in 1838, had won the advantage over her of becoming a wife married in legitimate marriage, Fanny Beaupre, Mariette, Antonia—spread calumnies that were more than droll about the beauty of those young men and the complacent good-nature with which Monsieur de Rochefide welcomed them. Madame Schontz, who could distance, as she said, by three blagues the wit of those ladies, said to them one night at a supper given by Nathan to Florine, after recounting her fortune and her success, "Do as ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... and scant! The Season's show Of Birds, in bunches big, adjacent, Will hardly take JOHN's eye, although The Poulterer appears complacent, Seeing, good easy man, quite clearly That rival shops show ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... it has ceased to be tragedy, but is lowered into "a family picture," in the modern signification of the word. The effect attempted to be produced by the poverty of Electra is pitiful in the extreme; the poet has betrayed his secret in the complacent display which she makes of her misery. All the preparations for the crowning act are marked by levity, and a want of internal conviction: it is a gratuitous torture of our feelings to make Aegisthus display ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... reached the steps and skimmed undauntedly up them. She did indeed look angry and disturbed. Without any preliminary greeting she burst out into a tirade that simply took away her complacent foe's breath. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... excellent memory for prices. His shoulders were broad enough, his voice deep enough, his relish of hearty humor strong enough, to establish him as one of the ruling caste of Good Fellows. Yet his eventual importance to mankind was perhaps lessened by his large and complacent ignorance of all architecture save the types of houses turned out by speculative builders; all landscape gardening save the use of curving roads, grass, and six ordinary shrubs; and all the commonest axioms of economics. He serenely ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... walnut trees brought by the old Earl from England. I had on a Lowland costume with a velvet coat and buckled shoes, and one or two vanities a young fellow would naturally be set up about, and the consciousness of my trim clothing put me in a very complacent mood as I stopped and spoke with ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... endears religion and purity to the sweating employer, and leads unimaginative bishops, who have never missed a meal in their lives, and who know nothing of the indescribable bitterness of a handicapped entry into this world, to draw a complacent contrast with irreligious France. It is a result that must necessarily be recognized in its reality, and faced by these men who will presently emerge to rule the world; men who will have neither the plea of ignorance, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... tow and steamed off down river to the headquarters Free State post of the Upper River. He was feeling almost complacent at the time. He had shown Commandant Balliot what he was pleased to term ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... any longer in that roundabout way, but might take me squarely in hand and polish me up as speedily as possible. Sitting in the saloon at night after a game of chess, in which, perchance, I had been the victor, I felt complacent and ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... correcting him? I felt ashamed of my conduct; I was sorry to have hurt any one's feelings. Moreover, I cannot bear to be at ill-will with my fellows, and am ever the first to give in after having quarrelled. It is easier than sulking, and it always makes the other party so self-complacent that it is amusing as well as convenient, and—and—and—I found I was very, very ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... doesn't know how to live!" said Raymond in complacent pity. He himself, of course, had but to assemble all the bright-hued elements that awaited him a few months ahead to make his own life a ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... like frogging in person. The creature smiles. Also he appeals because he is ugly and complacent. But for the grace of God I might have looked so. He sits in supreme hideousness frozen to the end of a wet log, with his desirable hind legs spread in view, and smiles his bronze smile of confidence in his own charm and my friendship. It is more than I can do to betray ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... tribe to fraternize with the French. Their influence from their increasing western settlements was exerted antagonistically to the British colonists, by whom it was dreaded in anticipation of the war against a French and Cherokee alliance which came later. Oo-koo-koo, complacent in his own sagacity in having detected a difference in the speech of the new-comers from the English which he had been accustomed to hear in Charlestown, and animated by a wish to believe, hearkened with the more credulity to an expansive fiction detailed by ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... curiosity and a wholly new interest, as if he were tracing out a suddenly suggested resemblance which overwhelmed him with emotion. And as he gazed, his eyes began to take fire from the faded features on which they had rested so many years in mere complacent friendliness, and she instinctively ...
— A Summer Evening's Dream - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... this period the Doctor and his two men appeared on the brow of the hill, looking down in a most complacent manner upon the serio-comic scene that the little basin wherein we were encamped presented. For, indeed, despite the serious aspect of it, there was much that was comical blended with it—in a naked young man who—perfectly drunk, barely able to stand on his feet—was beating the ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... conclusion had been reached, Wally, with a complacent smile, had laid down his pen, flattering himself he had made a real good thing of the dog. He scorned commonplace language, and, mindful of the eloquent periods of certain newspapers of his acquaintance, had "let out" considerably on his favourite theme, which, if the spelling and punctuation ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... satisfied with the action of the managers of the American Institute, in the matter of awarding prizes to the competing engines exhibited at the recent fair, we have yet to meet that complacent individual. Neither the exhibitors nor the general public could be expected to accept with equanimity such a report as the managers have made, because it is inadequate to give any real idea of the relative merits of the engines tested. The exhibitors, at ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... attending, in behalf of the public, at his last rehearsal. If he can dispense with flattery, he is sure at least of sincerity, and even though the annotation be rude, he may rely upon the justness of the comment." This is calm and complacent enough, but he proceeds with some warmth: "As for the little puny critics who scatter their peevish strictures in private circles, and scribble at every author who has the eminence of being unconnected with them, as they are usually spleen-swoln from a vain idea of increasing their consequence, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... him, but he knew that Marchant, dreamer and incoherent poet, his heart aflame with zeal for humanity, was far nearer the truth of life than the smug complacent Pharisees that fattened from the toil of the helpless many who could do nothing ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... personally—largely through the accidents of circumstance—happen to be successful, "our joy is a vulgar glee, not unlike the snicker of any rogue at his success." The utter futility and evanescence of earthly goods, beauties, and achievements is sensed at least sometimes by normally complacent souls. And so patent and ubiquitous are the evidences of decay, disease, and death at our disposal, that they may easily be erected into a ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... and more extensive library of Dr. Priestley was left unnoticed and unlamented by the orthodox poet, who probably felt a complacent satisfaction at the destruction of heterodox books, the owner being an ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... was that he expected, Mr John Welton never told from that day to this, so it cannot be recorded here, but, after stating the fact, he crossed his arms on his broad chest, and, leaning against the stern of his vessel, gazed placidly along the deck, as if he were taking a complacent survey of the vast domain over ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... and everyone had a kindly word, and a hopeful prophecy of the future. There were invitations also, and promises to look her up in her London home, and a perfect shower of violets thrown into the carriage as the train steamed out of the station, and Claire laughed and waved her hand, and looked so complacent and beaming that no one looking on could have guessed the real nature of her journey. She was not pretending to be cheerful, she was cheerful, for, the dreaded parting once over, her optimistic nature had asserted itself, and painted the life ahead in its old ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... doubtless agreed that they should form a dual alliance, absolute and exclusive.[9] "I have often slept two in a bed," the suave but inelegant Napoleon was heard to say at a subsequent meeting, "but never three." Savary declared that the smiling and complacent young Czar thought the remark delightful. The meaning of the riddle, if riddle there be, was, of course, that Austria could no longer count as an equal in the Continental Olympus, the membership of which was ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... continued their planing and chopping as before, the moment came when the soft tenor accents caught and held the men's attention, as they trickled and burbled forth. Then, screwing up his bright eyes with a humorous air, and twisting his curly beard between his fingers, Ossip gave a complacent click of his tongue, and ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... averse to receive it at their hands; for we have not made so many sacrifices for the preservation of peace, to break forth into war, if, after all, so great an evil can be avoided. Thou wilt receive, therefore, with a candid and complacent mind, such apologies as they may incline to bring forward; and, be assured, that the sight of this puppet-show of a single combat, will be enough of itself to banish every other consideration from the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... his voice, and for this reason is, in the national sense, "un homme bien doux." His heart may become corrupt, his principles immoral, and his disposition ferocious—yet he shall still retain his equability of tone and complacent phraseology, and be "un ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... listened to her with a complacent smile, and when Edith sank back in her chair she sat down too, and taking out her handkerchief and a bottle of salts, began to apply the one to her eyes and the other to her nose alternately. As for Captain Mowbray, he coolly ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... without love; of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices; the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds; the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The king cringed to his rival that he might trample on his people; sank into a viceroy of France, and pocketed with complacent infamy her degrading insults and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots and the jests of buffoons regulated the policy of the state. The government had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute. ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to sight. This village had, as yet, no post-office, nor any settled name. In the small villages which we entered, the villagers gazed after us, with a complacent, almost compassionate look, as if we were just making our debut in the world at a late hour. "Nevertheless," did they seem to say, "come and study us, and learn men and manners." So is each one's world but a clearing in the forest, ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... Meanwhile the redoubted Corporal, who was by no means pleased with the change in his master's plans, lingered behind, whistling the most melancholy tune in his collection. No young lady, anticipative of balls or coronets, had ever felt more complacent satisfaction in a journey to London than that which had cheered the athletic breast of the veteran on finding himself, at last, within one day's gentle march of the metropolis. And no young lady, suddenly summoned back in the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Carmichael concluded that she was still under the glamour of an ancient superstition, and took the veil after a very commonplace and squalid Protestant fashion. This particular "fruit" against whom Carmichael in his young uncharitableness especially raged, because he was more self-complacent and more illiterate than his fellows, married the daughter of a rich self-made man, and on the father's death developed a peculiar form of throat disease, which laid him aside from the active work of the ministry—a ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... Hollanders they were, and that is all. Scarcely the fact seemed worth the mention, so shortly it is told in a passing paragraph. For them no Europe was agitated, no courts were ordered into mourning, no papal hearts trembled with indignation. At their deaths the world looked on complacent, indifferent, or exulting. Yet here, too, out of twenty-five common men and women were found fourteen who, by no terror of stake or torture, could be tempted to say that they believed what they did not believe. History for them has ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... blanched eyebrows and lashes, and small, quick eyes on hardy, reddened faces. Gilda Penny was slightly the larger, more definite; Amity Merken had a timid, almost furtive, expression in the opulence of the Penny establishment, while Gilda was complacent; but otherwise the two women were identical. Their dresses were largely similar—Amity's a dun, Gilda Penny's grey, moire silk, high with a tight lace collar, and bands of jet trimming from shoulder to waist, there spreading over crinoline ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Full of complacent contentment, Tonza made hasty preparations for leaving Diu, and that same evening saw him a ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... of first-class passengers leaning on the thwart-ship rails close by looked on, with complacent satisfaction with the fact that they were born in a different station, or half-contemptuous pity, as their temperament varied. Among them stood Mrs. Hastings, Miss Winifred Rawlinson, and Agatha. The latter noticed that Wyllard ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss |
