"Complaisant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the duke, with careless naivete and a complaisant forgetfulness, of which no words could translate the tone and the vocal expression. "Now, here is poor Raoul, who ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... betrayed into the hands of their declared enemies! If the patron is unholy, profane, how readily the candidate he prefers is too like himself! If a candidate be faithful, be holy, how readily, like Ahab in the case of Micaiah, he hates, he sends not for him! The complaisant chaplain, who almost never disturbed the family with the worship of God; who along with the children or others took off his cheerful glass; sung his wanton song; attended the licentious ball, or play-house; connived at, ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... virtue, was slow and beset with barriers. His ambition had become impatient. Now that he was a figure of local power and importance, temptation began to assail him with offers of rapid elevation if only he would be complaisant. In this situation, the father in him rose into the ascendency; he had compromised and yielded, though always managing to keep his dubious transactions secret. And now at length ambition ruled him—though as yet not undisturbed, for conscience sometimes rose in unexpected ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... make the first dash, that they may profit by her pretended fault. I know who will not be the last to come and station herself amongst the furniture of your apartment. The marechale de Mirepoix was too long the complaisant friend of madame de Pompadour not to become, and that very soon, the friend of the comtesse du Barry." "Good heaven," I exclaimed, "how delighted I should be to have the friendship of this lady, whose wit and amiable manners are so greatly talked of." "Yes," said de Maupeou, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... for anything so intensely. There are wishes the gratification whereof is fatal. There are a dozen old stories in the classics to show that; to say nothing of all those mediaeval legends in which Satan is complaisant to some ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... equal things. Moreover, when a democratic State, athirst for liberty, is controlled by unprincipled cupbearers, who give it to drink of the pure wine of liberty and allow it to drink till it is drunken, then if its rulers do not show themselves complaisant and allow it to drink its fill, they are accused and overthrown under the pretext that they are traitors aspiring to an oligarchy; for the people prides itself on and loves the equality that confuses and will ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... whole of his teachings glow with the spirit of fraternity; the strong bearing the burdens of the weak; the rich cast down and the poor exalted; brother sharing with brother, according to their needs. We are accustomed to make ourselves complaisant with the reflection that these were figurative expressions, and not meant as literal commands. But if we consider candidly, we must confess that if it is the spirit of its Master's commands which the Church means to follow, it is very far, as a body, from reaching ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... But I hate myself for it," said Lawrence. "I hate your etiolated Christian ethics. I don't believe in the forgiveness of sins. The complaisant husband, O God! If I'd had the spirit of a man, I should have shot Arthur the night—that night—. ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... the meeting, felt very awkward at the idea of entering into amicable conversation with him, and crept in at the door like a whipped dog. Moylan was too old to feel any such compunctions, and consequently made what he intended to be taken as a very complaisant bow to his future patron. He was an ill-made, ugly, stumpy man, about fifty; with a blotched face, straggling sandy hair, and grey shaggy whiskers. He wore a long brown great coat, buttoned up to his chin, and this was the only article of wearing apparel visible upon him: ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... "Consul," said he to M. Durocher, "I hope that you will not be like your predecessor, whose haughtiness displeased me exceedingly. Observe this young man (pointing to the vice-consul), he is pleasant and complaisant. He constantly endeavours to please me. I wish you to imitate him. I have desired it of you. You must write to your master, that I am satisfied with his presents. Adieu, retire a little with the slaves which I have given you.[37] Choose any of my ports ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... eyes as the train rolled away. He had said good-by to all of them—to Joey and Ruby and Casey, and they had wished him good luck with that complaisant philosophy which was theirs ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... misconstrue one's motives. And now, let us talk of something more amusing. You see that woman in old rose brocade—she is sitting with a bald-headed man at the third table on your left. Well, that is the Countess of Porthcawl, and the man with her is Roger Ducrot, the banker. Porthcawl is a most complaisant husband. He never comes within a thousand miles of Millicent. She is awfully nice; clever, and witty, and the rest of it—quite a man's woman. We are sure to meet her in the lounge after dinner ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... the rain; and except when a change of position brought his shoes in contact with my hat, he appeared to be asleep. At last, on some occasion of our stopping, this thing slowly upreared itself to the height of three feet six, and fixing its eyes on me, observed in piping accents, with a complaisant yawn, half quenched in an obliging air of friendly patronage, 'Well now, stranger, I guess you find this a'most like an English ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... been so kind and complaisant with my humble self as to grant me the use of a few words before any one else of those here present, I shall take advantage of this permission, so generously granted, and shall talk. In imagination I fancy myself ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... a difference. Fortune is blind, but the poet has his eyes open, and is besides as complaisant as fortune is capricious. He makes every thing turn out exactly as we would wish it. He gratifies us by representing those as hateful or contemptible whom we ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... enforced authority? Yet there were towns where savages lived together in thousands with a harmony which civilization might envy. This was in good measure due to peculiarities of Indian character and habits. This intractable race were, in certain external respects, the most pliant and complaisant of mankind. The early missionaries were charmed by the docile acquiescence with which their dogmas were received; but they soon discovered that their facile auditors neither believed nor understood that to which they had so promptly assented. They assented from a kind of courtesy, which, while ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... was more reassuring than when I had gone below; for although a fierce northerly gale was howling over the deep, making it heave and fret and lashing it up into wild mountainous billows, the heaven overhead was clear of all cloud, and the complaisant moon, which was at the full, but shining with a pale, peaceful light, while numerous stars were twinkling everywhere in the endless expanse of the firmament above, gazing down serenely at the riot ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... something which men feel is not quite right. It was, in fact, an indulgence. Still, perhaps it was wise not to force the new-born convert. Perhaps it did Naaman no harm. Possibly it did Elisha's soul no injury to be so far complaisant towards idolatry. But surely there was a germ of evil in the thing, and this germ found a nidus, found a nest in Gehazi's soul, in which to hatch its evil brood. It lighted on Gehazi at the psychological moment. He had seen the gorgeous equipage. ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... have been a time of rejoicing and mental ease. It should have been a time of stirring hope. A moment for complaisant contemplation of a great purpose achieved. But the man at the window regarded the thing he looked upon without any display of pleasurable feeling. The sight of it literally seemed to deepen the unease which looked out ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... most of his evenings at the Blights', who took compassion on his loneliness and were complaisant of his obvious attachment to Honor. Mrs. Bright, in her tactful way, gave him many opportunities of having Honor to himself in the drawing-room while she betook herself to her husband's own particular sanctum to indulge in confidential chat. "It is plain to see that he worships our Honey, ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... complaisant Mr. Winterblossom; "undoubtedly you know best, and your signature is completely sufficient to authenticate this transaction—however, as it is the most important which has occurred since the Spring was established, I propose we shall ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the Earl, "such suspicion were a poor return for the Chancellor's putting himself in our hands all the days we spent with him at his Castle of Crichton. To your lodgings, Sholto, and give God thanks if there be therein a pretty maid or a dame complaisant, according to the wont of ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... House of Commons is not, by its complexion, peculiarly subject to the distempers of an independent habit. Very little compulsion is necessary, on the part of the people, to render it abundantly complaisant to ministers and favorites of all descriptions. It required a great length of time, very considerable industry and perseverance, no vulgar policy, the union of many men and many tempers, and the concurrence of events which do not happen every day, to build up an independent House of Commons. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in the highest degree, and as I was besieged day and night with good company and pleasant discourse, so I had two or three old ladies that lay at me upon the subject of religion too. I was so complaisant, that though I would not completely engage, yet I made no scruple to be present at their mass, and to conform to all their gestures as they showed me the pattern, but I would not come too cheap; so that I only in the main ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... She hoped that he had, for she was quite willing that he should be happy in his own way, poor thing, so long as he secluded his divagations from the world—and she could trust him to do that! Now that she had ceased to be the complaisant bored wife with dull nerves and torpid imagination she would be the last to condemn him. Human Nature was an ever opening book to her these days, and she wondered what would happen to herself if any ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... His eyes were so small that sometimes they disappeared under his fat cheeks altogether, or only gleamed like little sharp points of light from under his heavy, shaggy eyebrows. Then, although he tried to make his voice pleasant, Jeremy felt that that complaisant friendliness was not his natural tone. Sometimes there would be a sharp, barking note that made Jeremy jump and his cheek pale. The Captain told him no more fascinating stories, and when Jeremy wanted to know about the ship with the diamonds and rubies and the little sea village ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... superb mackerel, secretly encouraged the resistance of Rouget's wife and threatened Margot with the flames of hell if she should ever allow Delphin to touch her with his finger. It was, to sum up, complete anarchy; the army in revolt against the civil power, religion making itself complaisant toward the pleasures of the bourgeoisie; a whole people, a hundred and eighty inhabitants, devouring each other in a hole, in face of the vast sea, ...
— The Fete At Coqueville - 1907 • Emile Zola
... fiction-mongers rather than to fiction-masters. Nothing is more delightful than to knock down a husky ruffian who has insulted the woman you love; but it is a desperate undertaking, and rarely crowned with success. For in real life ruffians are surprisingly unwilling to play this complaisant role. ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... difficulty lay in proposing peace after the war, to hit upon profitable reconciliations or lucrative treaties. Mademoiselle did her best; and at length, in that same year of 1657, she made her appearance in the royal camp near Sedan, having at her carriage-door the silly and complaisant Mazarin, who believed all she wished him to believe, and who presented the princess with a little Boulogne bitch, in token of good friendship; she made her excuses to the King for having been naughty, and promised to be wise in future. Louis behaved more graciously towards the fair rebel than ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... tranches s'etaient succede dans l'estomac complaisant de ce nouveau Gargantua, quand on vint lui annoncer que la cavalerie de Henri IV, emportee par sa folle audace, s'etait engagee dans un taillis inextricable. "Il faut, sans delai, lui courir sus, declarerent aussitot tous les lieutenants du duc.—Attendez ...
— French Conversation and Composition • Harry Vincent Wann
... could not sing: far from it. If a nightingale sings, then Miss Cartan does. But she left her audience a little cold. Let us face the facts. You saw it. We all saw it. And why? Because she was too happy, madam; too complaisant; too uninstructed in the emotions. Now it will be different. We will take her away; we will be patient with her while she suffers; afterward she will bless us, for she will have discovered the secret of the artist, and then when she opens her little silver ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... man was not in a particularly complaisant mood that day. He was cross and snappish at trifles; irritable and out of humour with himself. As he waded through the narrow defile, the dumb assistant behind him whistled faintly, and perhaps inadvertantly. The fisherman looked ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... great deal to hear. Dick Blaine was perfectly satisfied to let the maharajah search his cellar. He was almost suspiciously complaisant, making no objection whatever to surrendering the key and explaining at considerable length just how it would be easiest to draw the nails. He would be away from home all day, but Chamu the butler would undoubtedly admit the maharajah and his men. For the rest, he hoped they would ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... him to hasten back. It is possible that the Court had been in a haggling mood, and had given the discoverer credit for a similar phase; at all events, it was not until his person was almost out of reach that the now complaisant authorities called him back. ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... provided with eminent Performers, without Hopes of[98] an approaching Remedy. Let them take it for their Pains. Let the World learn to applaud Merit; and (not to use a more harsh Expression) be less complaisant to Faults. ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... was in a state of convalescence, I became more ardent than before, in search of an immediate opportunity of embarking. My complaisant doctor introduced me to the captain of a running felucca, and I hired his vessel for ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... London hotel, though I should have preferred to have met them here." Sir Robert and Lady Mainwaring were courteous but slightly embarrassed. Lady Canterbridge, who had come to the station in bored curiosity, raised her clear blue eyes to his. He did not look like a fool, a complaisant or fashionably-cynical husband—this well-dressed, well-mannered, but quietly and sympathetically observant man. Did he really care for his selfish wife? was it perfect trust or some absurd Transatlantic ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... the pure heart of poverty. Many venerable pastors dwell in the Church with the same heart, but the spirit of poverty is not preached sufficiently, not preached as Christ preached it. The lips of Christ's ministers are too often over-complaisant to those who seek riches. There are those among them who bow the head respectfully before the man who has much, simply because he has much; there are those who let their tongues flatter the greedy, and too many preachers of the word and of the example of Christ deem it just for them to ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... instances of physical merit among thy connexions, Master Dudley," returned the complaisant physician; "though it would seem that thy brother hath not found his companion among them. He is attended by an ill-grown, and, it may be added, an ill-favored comrade, that ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... be one thing more than another that the English working-class might afford to copy with advantage from their Continental neighbours, it is their politeness. The French and Germans, of even the humblest classes, are gracious in manner, complaisant, cordial, and well-bred. The foreign workman lifts his cap and respectfully salutes his fellow-workman in passing. There is no sacrifice of manliness in this, but grace and dignity. Even the lowest poverty ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... referred to Cissy's new hat, and to the young girl the coherence was perfectly plain. Miss Tibbs looked at "it" severely. It would not do for a protegee to be too complaisant. ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... Ellen would have much preferred to drive alone with her husband in his own car, she found herself anticipating the affair, as it was now arranged, with not a little curiosity to stimulate her interest. Mrs. Alexander King, for her son's sake, was sure to be a complaisant and agreeable companion, and Ellen was glad to feel that such a pleasure might come ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... analogy was almost perfect, he decided. For on that grimly backward world females were as close to slaves as the Brotherhood would permit; raised from birth under an iron regimen designed to produce complaisant mates for the dominant males. Probably that was the reason Sark was so backward. The men, having achieved domestic tranquillity, had no desire to do anything that would disturb the status quo. And since no ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... centripetal system about him—that is to say, desires things to centre in himself as much as possible—and neither has any great natural impulse to the amiable, nor will take the trouble to assume the complaisant. Now, it is not uncommon to observe traces of dissatisfaction in the unpopular characters, as if they felt themselves to be treated unjustly by the world. But can these persons reasonably expect to be received with the same favour as men ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... occasion at least, they keep the unhappy monks of the convent where they are staying (who do not seem to dare to begin vespers without them) waiting a whole hour while they are finishing not particularly edifying stories. The less complaisant casuists, even of the Roman Church, would certainly look askance at the piety of the distinguished person (said by tradition to have been King Francis himself) who always paid his respects to Our Lady on his way ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... his arm about her neck and drew her toward him, and as she sank down upon him, smiling and complaisant, her hair tumbling upon her shoulders and her head and throat bent back, he leaned his cheek against hers, ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... allowance for the inflated diction of the complaisant Court newswriter, let us endeavour to approach somewhat nearer to ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... conspicuous figure: the fact is, since that event, a change had come over the spirit of our intercourse. He, indeed, ignorant that the still hour, a cloudless moon, and an open lattice, had revealed to me the secret of his selfish love and false friendship, would have continued smooth and complaisant as ever; but I grew spiny as a porcupine, and inflexible as a blackthorn cudgel; I never had a smile for his raillery, never a moment for his society; his invitations to take coffee with him in his parlour were invariably rejected, ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... plight than was at first thought. The Nina also found this or that to do besides squaring her Levant sails. We stayed in Gomera almost three weeks. The place was novel, the day's task not hard, the Admiral and his captains complaisant. We had leisure and island company. To many it was happiness enough. While we stopped at Gornera we were at least not drifting upon lodestone, equator ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... silent, not knowing what to say in answer to this charge brought against her,—thinking, perhaps, that the questioner would allow his question to pass without an answer. But Vavasor was not so complaisant. "If there be any reason, Alice, I think that I have a right ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... de Leon hath been realized, and that not only one, but scores of fountains of youth have been discovered in this great valley. The people are said never to grow old. Their personal beauty is of surpassing nature, and their disposition easy and complaisant ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... they were, but almost everybody gone out of town. The French are proceeding steadily in the reconstruction of their Government, but they have evinced a strong democratical spirit. The new King, too, conducts himself in a way that gives me a bad opinion of him; he is too complaisant to the rage for equality, and stoops more than he need do; in fact, he overdoes it. It is a piece of abominably bad taste (to say no worse) to have conferred a pension on the author of the Marseillaise hymn; for what can be worse than to rake up the old ashes of Jacobinism, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... for any such great hurry," said Mr. Lind, with his complaisant smile. "You will want much direction, many letters. Come, shall we join your friend in the ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... Mrs. Kinloch. I hoped to find you in a more complaisant humor. There are topics which cannot be discussed with the square precision of legal rules,—thoughts that require sympathy before they can be expressed." And he dropped his eyes with a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... her critic—her only critic in this assembly; and he discovered various attempts to draw him into conversation. And when Lord Lackington, discomfited by Meredith, had finished discharging his literary recollections upon him, Sir Wilfrid became complaisant; Julie slipped in and ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... do, M. de Cocheforet,' I said firmly, stopping him with my hand. 'Let me beg you to be more complaisant. It is a small thing I ask, a very small thing; but I swear to you that if Mademoiselle does not grant it, she will repent ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... indeed, but of beauteous features. His smitten heart is immediately inflamed, and he gradually burns with unchaste desires. His crafty shrewdness invents a thousand pretences for seeing her more frequently. Wrought upon by daily intercourse, by degrees she became more complaisant to the stranger, and soon enthralled his heart by a closer tie. While the careful Guard is here passing his nights, a body is missed from one of the crosses. The Soldier in his alarm relates to the Woman what has happened; but the chaste Matron replies: ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... establishment, for I am exceedingly fond of fine linen," he observed, casting a complaisant glance on the embroidered folds of his shirt. "I therefore found frequent occasion to admire you god-daughter; I think ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... From his youth he was accustomed to association with royalty. Margaret of Navarre was his early friend, and at a later period had occasion to complain of his ingratitude. He was at this time fifty-five years of age, severe, stern, fond of arms, complaisant to royalty, but harsh and overbearing in his relations with inferiors. Of his personal valor there can be no doubt, and he was generally regarded as the ablest general in France—an opinion, it is true, which his subsequent ill-success contributed much to shake.[527] ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Glumdalclitch held in her lap in a kind of open sedan, after the fashion of the country, borne by four men, and attended by two others in the queen's livery. The people, who had often heard of me, were very curious to crowd about the sedan, and the girl was complaisant enough to make the bearers stop, and to take me in her hand, that I ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... strong and respectable group of Southern Senators, of whom Jefferson Davis was the strongest, were the real driving power of the administration. Convivial President Pierce and doting President Buchanan after him were complaisant to their least scrupulous suggestions in a degree hardly credible of honourable men who were ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... of what is pleasant in daily life: He that is as he should be may be called Friendly, and his mean state Friendliness: he that exceeds, if it be without any interested motive, somewhat too Complaisant, if with such motive, a Flatterer: he that is deficient and in all instances ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... "the Bureau." Their orators grew magniloquent over its tyrannical oppression; the Southern press overflowed with that marvellous exuberance of diatribe of which they are the acknowledged masters—to all of which the complaisant North gave a ready and subservient concurrence, until the very name reeked in the public mind with infamous associations and ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... and equally complaisant on the Mount of Olives. He would willingly have avoided the ascent could he have done so without displeasing his son; but George made a point of it. A donkey was therefore got for him, and ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... out the complaisant Perk, cheerfully, "on'y I wanted to let you know I was over there in the same line and had the good luck to send down a few o' you Hun pilots in a blazin' coffin. Wondered now if me'n an' you mightn't ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... latter was at that time emperor of Germany. With their assistance, it was enabled, though not without great difficulty, and much bloodshed, either to suppress altogether, or to obstruct very much, the progress of the reformation in their dominions. It was well enough inclined, too, to be complaisant to the king of England. But from the circumstances of the times, it could not be so without giving offence to a still greater sovereign, Charles V., king of Spain and emperor of Germany. Henry VIII., accordingly, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... independence. By a bold stratagem, an ambitious prelate, Hanno, archbishop of Cologne, carried off the young king, and assumed the guardianship over him. He had a rival in the person of Adalbert, archbishop of Bremen, whom Henry liked best, as being more indulgent and complaisant, and who at length became his chosen guide. But in 1066 the princes caused Adalbert to be banished from court. They obliged Henry to marry Bertha, the daughter of the margrave of Turin, to whom he had been betrothed ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... well-brought up; good-mannered, polished, 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, with ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... wrote to King Charles, who was then preparing to return, throwing himself on his mercy, and beseeching his pardon; which the king granting, Lord Chesterfield sought his majesty at Brussels. Soon afterwards Barbara Palmer and her complaisant husband, a right loyal man, joined the king's court abroad, when the intrigue begun which was continued on the night of the monarch's arrival in London. True the loyal PARLIAMENTARY INTELLIGENCER stated "his majesty was diverted from his pious intention of going to Westminster to offer up ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... world; but instead of being employed in the service of queens and princes, their exercise has been for some years confined to procuring their owner those physical and positive comforts which soldiers seek and prize—namely, a good table, comfortable quarters, and a complaisant hostess. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... very complaisant and friendly when we came to know them well, which we did in the course of an hour, and they enjoyed as much as we did the bargaining for pottery. They have for sale a great quantity of small pieces, fantastic ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... the south or wine land prevails a lighter, sprightlier, tone of intercourse; in the land of beer and schnaps with its moist air, all seems more dubious and measured; and thus the moment of enjoyment passes over. The sex is livelier in the south and more complaisant, without on that account being more wanton. In the south there is everywhere more nature, in nature herself as in man, and most of all with the sex. In the north more culture and art, in the south more natural capability, as well as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... Walters purchased the property it somehow never occurred to Dan that the new owner might not be so complaisant as his predecessor in the matter of the best trouting pond ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... beneficent, compassionate, benign, tender; graceful, elegant; courteous, debonair, complaisant, urbane, affable. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... last of their generation and without honor among the younger set which had grown up on the farthest fringe of a mining civilization. Who cared for tradition in these days, when spirits could be evoked from black bottles, and black bottles could be evoked from the complaisant white men for a few hours' sweat or a mangy fur? Of what potency the fearful rites and masked mysteries of shamanism, when daily that living wonder, the steamboat, coughed and spluttered up and down the Yukon ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... wish you would see Armstrong and tell him about Gray, so that I may know the whole situation as soon as I return. Canker evidently intended not to let us know his proofs. He probably believes that he will find a more credulous and complaisant listener in Drayton; but his insinuations pointed to Gray as at least an abettor in the theft, and he went so far as to say that if Armstrong could be brought before the court some very interesting testimony could be dragged from him, and, finally, ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... And so the complaisant but still considerate valet bowed himself out of a dilemma, that he found, as he muttered to himself, while retiring, 'tant soit ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... Too much excitement?" began Judith, the old habit of scorn of everything which was not of the city returning upon her irresistibly. But it chanced that she caught Juliet's eyes, unconsciously wearing such an expression of solicitude to see her friend complaisant in this matter which meant so much, that Judith hurriedly followed her ironic question with the more kindly supplement: "But doubtless I should have plenty, and be ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... were all eager to contribute to the pool, and Herbert, smiling with self-complaisant satisfaction, felt that he had ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... unexercised and unemployed. To get rid of these, it is said, there are who betake themselves to distilled spirits. And it is not improbable they are led gradually to the use of those poisons by a certain complaisant pharmacy, too much used in the modern practice, palsy drops, poppy cordial, plague water, and such-like, which being in truth nothing but drams disguised, yet coming from the apothecaries, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 1. A very kind and complaisant one to the lady, but very so-so to her poor kinsman—That people can give up their own flesh and blood with so much ease!—She tells her 'how proud all our family would be of an alliance with such an excellence.' She does me justice in saying how much I adore her, as ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... glad to find your lordship is so close an observer," returned the complaisant Dutton; "a certain sign, my lord, that your lordship will make a good ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of creation ought to be very complaisant, or else very much ashamed of yourselves. You send in an order: "The kind of girl that I like is a Methodist without bangs." And some nice girl begins to look up Methodist tenets and buys invisible ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... Massachusetts, but Connecticut had not; and at this time there was warm controversy between the two younger colonies as to the wisdom Of such a policy. As yet none of the colonies save Massachusetts had obtained a charter, and Connecticut was naturally anxious to obtain one. Whether through a complaisant spirit connected with this desire, or through mere accident, Connecticut had been prompt in acknowledging the restoration of Charles II.; and in August, 1661, she dispatched the younger Winthrop to England to apply for a charter. Winthrop was a ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... little inn across the river, well known to the wilder blades of Plassenburg. There they go to be outside the authority of the city magistrates, to make rendezvous with maids more complaisant than maidenly, to fight their duels, and generally to do those things without remark which otherwise bring them under the eye of the Miller's Son, as they one and all call (behind his back) the reigning Prince ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... predominant in many of the regions where the French were most active, and that the protectionist policy which France had adopted stimulated into a new life the ancient rivalry of these neighbour and sister nations. Towards the colonial ambitions of Germany, and still more of Italy, Britain was far more complaisant. ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... she soon shone, had much polished; and ornamented with knowledge of the world, and which gallantry had rendered of the most agreeable kind. The various positions she had held had rendered her flattering, insinuating, complaisant, always seeking to please. The need she had of intrigues, those she had seen of all kinds, and been mixed up in for herself and for others, had given her the taste, the ability, and the habit of them. Incomparable grace, an easy manner, and yet ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... conditions were favourable. Let the guardian be ever so considerate and civil, it would be a terrible ordeal to be literally never alone, night or day; and too often, doubtless, the guardian would be not at all complaisant. To many a man, certainly to any man of the refined mental and moral nature of St Paul, this slow fire of indescribable annoyance would be far worse to endure than a great and sudden infliction of pain, even to death. It is a noble triumph of grace when such a test is well borne, and turned by patience ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... believe, Madam," says he, "I may venture to think you were speaking of me as I came in, that you had a design to ask me something, and that Madam de Cleves is against it." "It is true," replied the Queen-Dauphin, "but I shall not be so complaisant to her on this occasion as I was used to be; I would know of you, whether a story I have been told is true, and whether you are not the person who is in love with, and beloved by a lady of the Court, who endeavours to conceal her passion from ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... come to those corpses full of fluid blood, and whose beard, hair and nails had grown again. One may dispute three parts of these prodigies, and be very complaisant if we admit the truth of a few of them. All philosophers know well enough how much the people, and even certain historians, enlarge upon things which appear but a little extraordinary. Nevertheless, it is not impossible to ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... affable and complaisant. "Which is the gentleman," he inquired of Chia Chen, "who was born with a piece of jade in his mouth? I've long had a wish to have the pleasure of seeing him, and as he's sure to be on the spot on an occasion like this, why shouldn't you invite ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... her temper was ruffled was on the back of an armchair, where she would sit with her bill in the air and her head cocked disdainfully on one side, pretending not to hear or see any one. In her affable moods, however, no one could be more complaisant ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... Eyes full and lively, with Eye-Brows and Beard pretty thick; of a dark brown Colour; and his Skin was clear, his Shoulders were strong and well set, and Limbs rather large than small, but exactly shap'd: He was perfectly good natur'd, complaisant in his Behaviour, and gallant in his Amours, his Dress was easy and genteel, his Approaches sprightly, and his Conversation the most endearing. Amaryllis was extremly fond of Sempronius and ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... is beyond its worth in the eyes of really virtuous men, and that it is necessary to stoop too low to pick it up, and become too weak to retain it. Petion was only king of the people on condition of being complaisant to its excesses. His functions as mayor of Paris, in a time of trouble, placed him constantly between the king, the Assembly, and the revolts. He bearded the king, flattered the Assembly, and pardoned crime. Inviolable as the capital which he personified in his position of first magistrate of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the King our master. I am of opinion that the troubles he was involved in in his youth, when he fled from his father and resided six years together with Philip, Duke of Burgundy, were of great service to him; for there he learned to be complaisant to such as he had occasion to use, which was no slight advantage of adversity. As soon as he found himself a powerful and crowned king, his mind was wholly bent upon revenge; but he quickly found the inconvenience of this, repented by degrees ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... must he a university of knowledges.... We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame.—The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant.—The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There is no work for any but the decorous ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... his fashion, an observer of the golden rule, for although he is constantly annoying and exasperating people by his easy-going ways, he is never afflicted if others do to him as he does to them. He goes through life with the notion that every one is as complaisant and comfortable as himself. "Easy-going-ness" (if one may coin a word for the occasion) is, many people would say, a combination of selfishness and stupidity, but I think such people judge rather too hardly of Ned and his compeers. It's all very well for ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... complaisant on paper than actually in her conduct of life. She desired male as well as female companionship; she liked the admiration and the flattery of men, and, no doubt, did her best to evoke it. It is ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... kill his daughter, no matter how guilty she was; and in all our records of that period no instance occurs. As to husbands, we have repeated complaints in the literature of the day that they had grown so complaisant towards erring wives that they could not be induced to prosecute them.[92] A typical instance is related by Pliny.[93] Pliny was summoned by the Emperor Trajan to attend a council where, among other cases, that of a certain ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... delight of the boy, who only wished that the entertainment could have been made complete by a speech from Uncle John, which was a point in which his guide, philosopher, and friend, though in every other way so complaisant, did not humour Pippo. On one occasion during the first week they had an encounter which made John's middle-aged pulses move a little quicker. When they were walking along through Hyde Park, having strolled that way in ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... Decatur. When handled just right he was wonderfully complaisant. But after a whole week of Mabel he decided that the limit had been reached. Seizing an occasion when Mabel was in the hands of the hairdresser and manicurist, he led her mother to a secluded veranda corner and boldly plunged into ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... Curiously complaisant for one of his breed, the detective bent his back and made a stirrup of his clasped hands, but no sooner had P. Sybarite fitted foot to that same than the man started and, straightening up abruptly, threw ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... that. He wondered if he would be so complaisant if his parents made a like request, ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... by the meteor flock for our earth above all the other members of the solar system?—seeing that the sea-bird theory requires that this comet, and not Newton's comet alone but all others having tails, should not only be thus complaisant with respect to our little earth, but should behave in a totally different way with respect to every other ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... my brilliant triumph and Hunt's condemnation; A compliment too to his Lordship the Judge For his Speech to the Jury—and zounds! who would grudge Turtle soup tho' it came to five guineas a bowl, To reward such a loyal and complaisant soul? We were all in high gig—Roman Punch and Tokay Travelled round till our heads travelled just the same way; And we cared not for Juries or Libels—no—damme! nor Even for the threats of last ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... had known me at Aix, and had been the Marquis de Pries croupier, took me to see the Mazzoli, formerly a dancer, and then mistress to the Chevalier Raiberti, a hardheaded but honest man, who was then secretary for foreign affairs. Although the Mazzoli was by no means pretty, she was extremely complaisant, and had several girls at her house for me to see; but I did not think any of them worthy of occupying Leah's place. I fancied I no longer loved Leah, but ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... first confinement greatly improved my appearance, and in consequence made me more vain, for although I would not have been willing to add art to Nature, yet I was very complaisant to myself. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... represented in her. She may be a very vulgar and commonplace person, but her power is nevertheless prodigious. We copy and imitate her in all things. We are pinned to her apron-string. We are obedient at her bidding. We are indolent and complaisant, and fear to provoke her ill-word. "What will Mrs. Grundy say?" quells many a noble impulse, hinders ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... to me by the name of "Mary Cranstoun," and sent me some very handsome presents of Scotch linen. He also obliged his eldest sister, Mrs. Selby,[27] and her husband, to write to me as their sister. Lady Cranstoun likewise wrote to my father in a very complaisant style, thanking him for the civilities he had shewn her son; and hinting, that she hoped it would be in her power to return them to me, when she should have the pleasure of seeing me in Scotland, which she begged might be soon. Lord Cranstoun, his brother, ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... of his bunk and never wore. He made no pretence of being a seaman. He could neither steer nor go aloft, and there fell to him, naturally, all the work of the ship that was ignominious or unpleasant or merely menial. It was the Dago, with his shrug and his feeble, complaisant smile, who scraped the boards of the pigsty and hoisted coal for the cook, and swept out the fo'c'sle while the other men lay ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... name of Cogia Houssain, and, as a newcomer, was, according to custom, extremely civil and complaisant to all the merchants his neighbors. Ali Baba's son was, from his vicinity, one of the first to converse with Cogia Houssain, who strove to cultivate his friendship more particularly. Two or three days after he was settled, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... passed out of the tent; the touch of her hand on his sleeve reminded him of a thoroughbred horse stepping on to turf, so full of life, of electric thrill, of excitement was it. But then, Karl Steinmetz was a cynic. No one else could have thought of comparing Etta's self-complaisant humor to that of a ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... The fellow's complaisant smile caused Arthur to look away with disgust. He turned to Harold, and they were conferring about Rawbon's strange proposition, when Oriana raised her head suddenly and her face assumed an expression of attention, as if her ear had caught a distant sound. She had not forgotten little Phil, and ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... relations and friends that were slain in the battle, that by this means she may give vent to her sorrow for them, and after that may betake herself to feasting and matrimony; for it is good for him that takes a woman, in order to have children by her, to be complaisant to her inclinations, and not merely to pursue his own pleasure, while he hath no regard to what is agreeable to her. But when thirty days are past, as the time of mourning, for so many are sufficient to prudent persons ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... my wits to work one morning after an evening of delight, and found the muse complaisant. My fancy spouted like a fountain, the rhymes swam in the water like gilded or silver fishes, so tame you had but to dip in your fingers and take your pick, while allusion and simile crowded so thickly about me that I should have needed an epic rather than my ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... estate, your own country or neighbourhood—Do you want to know the great secret of success?—Be honest and brave. Let your word be as good as your thought, and your deed as good as your word. Who is the man who is respected? Who is the man who has influence? The complaisant man—the cringing man—the man who cannot say No, or dare not say No? Not he. The passionate man who loses his temper when anything goes wrong, who swears and scolds, and instead of making others do right, himself does wrong, and lowers himself just when he ought to command ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the rocks, about twenty feet away, beside two friendly females. He wanted to get acquainted, that was all. But the old male, after grumbling for several minutes, got himself worked up into a rage, and came floundering over the rocks to do up the visitor. Roughly he pushed the two complaisant females off into the water, and then, with a savage lunge, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... in the mirror of loss, he caught a glimpse of things beyond him. Ah, if only that time and its hopes had remained with him! How different things would have been now! If Lucy had proved what he thought her!—remained what she seemed—the gentle, complaisant, yielding lady he imagined her, promising him a life of bliss! Alas, she would not even keep account of five pounds a week to please him! He never thought whether he, on his part, might not have, in some measure, come short of her ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... is he that is complaisant to his wife's humours; Ring and Dinn's is he whom his wife scolds; John Knox's is ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... necessary for a prince, bestowed in ridicule, an obscure lineage, and an every-day vocation. He instituted a comparison between himself and the prince. He was obliged to confess that the latter was a man of very lively aspect; that fine sparkling eyes belonged to him, a boldly-arched nose, a gentlemanly, complaisant demeanor, in a word, all the external accomplishments, which every one is wont to commend. But numerous as were the charms he found in his companion, still he was compelled to acknowledge to himself, that a Labakan would be no less acceptable to the royal father than ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... please, my lord. I am very anxious to be of service to you in this awful crisis. And I will gladly do all in my power to help you," replied this very complaisant lady. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... unaccustomed fatigue hung upon his limbs and his body was sore, as from the effect of bruises. But he went, nevertheless, well encased in protective rubber; and as he turned away from the house, Fanny hastened to the hanging basket, and fumbling nervously in its depths, found what the complaisant ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... a tulip tree flaunted its leaves. Waves boomed and broke upon the shore below. There was a growing dampness as we went on, treading very lightly. A little green snake ran coquettishly from us. A fat and glossy squirrel chattered at us from a safe height, stroking his whiskers with a complaisant air. ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... surprized when I came home and found the Cabinet, which my woman imagined I had won by its being brought thither. It was indeed a piece of gallantry I had no reason to expect from one so perfect a stranger to me; and this, joined with the many complaisant things he said to me at mrs. C—rt-f—r's, flattered my vanity enough to make me think he was no less charmed with me than I too plainly found I was with him. I slept little that night, and pretty early the next morning received a billet from him ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... Panmure? He was the son of a man of whom his own biographer has admitted that "he preserved late into the [nineteenth] century the habits and passions—scandalous and unconcealed—which had, except in his case, passed away. He was devoted to his friends so long as they remained complaisant, and violent and implacable to all who thwarted him.—His uncontrollable temper alienated him from nearly all his family in his latter years. In private life ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... nothing to do but be quiet and as complaisant as his captors wished, and await developments. And the irony of such a situation—happening in the most crowded and most popular hotel in the Capital, with hundreds of guests at hand, and scores of servants poised ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... already growing late, and people had begun to leave, when it struck him that, through no active fault of his own, other than a certain complaisant indolence, he had as yet exchanged only the briefest of greetings with Lady Garnett, while of Miss Masters only a glimpse had been vouchsafed to him, at the further end of the crowded supper-room. He wandered into the studio, where a little, intimate ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... name was mentioned with praise for his sustaining power as a pillar of finance, for his judicious benevolence, for his support of wise and prudent reform movements, for his discretion in making permanent public gifts—"the Weightman Charities," one very complaisant editor called them, as if they deserved ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... so on, until at last the brothers pluck up determination, and make choice of an employer. So our Caledonian friends begin to gather together their traps and make preparations to accompany their complaisant and well-satisfied boss to his farm on the banks of the Waikato. And an indescribable joy is in their hearts, for they are to receive six shillings and sixpence a day, and to be provided with comfortable ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... raise an alarm; that might only cost a couple of lives, perhaps," and here the speaker just opened his heavy mantle sufficiently to show the butt ends of two heavy pistols at his belt. "So, mademoiselle," he concluded, "be complaisant, and make the best of a ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... sense that he had ever consciously done wrong. He did not know what wrong was—his one conception being an act putting him within reach of the law; and of such an indiscretion he had never been guilty. Throughout his scheming he had always pictured himself as a complaisant Napoleon of finance, combining business with pleasure. His conduct toward Lois had been based on this standpoint. He was genuinely fond of her, and is there any law forbidding a man to lay firm hold upon his wife's money? Yet Stafford had called him a blackguard, and Stafford was the ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... in disguise. She had had to make herself responsible—she, Felice!—for my innocence and honor. She had also been obliged to show Gaston the piece of gold I had given her and to assure him there would be another for him if he were complaisant. I judged, also, that she had found it necessary to offer him a bribe quite as tangible as the gold piece but less mercenary, for her face was rosier and her eyes brighter and her hair a little more disheveled than when I had ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... a sinful man, of my need of pardon, of my need of cleansing, of my need of a new nature, which must be given from above, and cannot be evolved from within, leads me, and I pray it may lead you, to cast yourself down before Him, with no complaisant words of intellectual recognition upon your lips, but with the old cry, 'Lord! be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... defamation appeared to be by far the most general. Never did they hear a mallam speak of his neighbours in terms of common respect. According to his account they were all the vilest creatures under the sun, not one escaping the lash of his censure. "Avoid that man," said a complaisant and comfortable looking old Mahommedan, pointing to one of his companions, as he quitted the hut, after having just blessed him in the name of Allah, "for believe me, he will take every opportunity of deceiving you, and if you go so far as to trust him with any of your property, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... man's complaisant stomach, adapted to the largest variety of nourishment, one of his great zoological privileges? He is thus rendered independent of climates, seasons and latitudes. And the Dog: how is it that of all the ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... to appear at her best on this particular evening, for the audience, frivolous, volatile, taking its character from the loose, weak king, was unusually complaisant through the presence of the first gentleman of Europe. As the last of the Georges declared himself in good-humor, so every toady grinned and every courtly flunkey swore in the Billingsgate of that profanely eloquent period that the actress ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... on, telling the Yorkshireman all sorts of stories about the pauvre Colonel, whom she seemed ready to change for a younger piece of goods with a more moderate appetite; and finding Mr. Stubbs more complaisant than he had been in the diligence, she concluded by proposing that he should accompany the Colonel and herself to a soiree-dansante that evening at a friend of hers, another Countess, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... the proscenium box of the Calisthenic Lyceum by a notable financier on obligatory hydropathy, as accessory to the irrevocable and irreparable doctrine of evolution, which had been vehemently panegyrized by a splenetic professor of acoustics, and simultaneously denounced by a complaisant opponent as an undemonstrated romance of the last decade, amenable to no reasoning, however allopathic, outside of ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... been stiff in their demands and Papa had been more complaisant than he should have been. Altogether that marriage was ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... fame, am mainly bent on securing the medicinal virtues of his book for my young neighbors. The good people think he overpraises Goethe. There I give him up to their wrath. But I bid them mark his unsleeping moral sentiment; that every other moralist occasionally nods, becomes complaisant and traditional; but this man is without interval on the side of equity and humanity! I am grieved for you, O wise friend, that you cannot put in your own contemptuous disclaimer of such puritanical pleas as are set up for you; but each creature and Levite ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... into account. But, perhaps, it is not always safe to trust too implicitly in the genial old faith that Providence helps those who help themselves; though the complementary theory, that Providence does not help those who do not help themselves, may be pretty generally correct. Maybe I was too complaisant. (If I have a superstition to-day, it is that a jealous Nemesis keeps ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... unpleasant prospect and there is a firm resolve not to conceive a third. But such conjugal chastity is incompatible, except in the case of "married saints," with a bon mnage. The husband, scandalised and offended by the rejection and refusal of the wife, will seek a substitute more complaisant; and the spouse also may "by the decree of Destiny" happen to meet the right man, the man for whom and for whom only every woman will sweep the floor. And then adieu to prudence and virtue, honour and fair fame. For, I repeat, it is the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... these, with the silence of the forest, the heat of the southern day, the woodland fragrances of which the air was full, and the sense of being intimately alone with her, set up within him a turbulent vibration, half of delight, half of pained suspense. And the complaisant informality with which she met him played a sustaining counterpoint. 'What luck, what luck, what luck,' were the words which shaped themselves to the strong beating of his pulses. What would happen next? Whither would ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... is said, book reviews are too flattering. Professor Bliss Perry, being of this opinion, offered some time ago a statement that "Magazine writing about current books is for the most part bland, complaisant, pulpy.... The Pedagogue no longer gets a chance at the gifted young rascal who needs, first and foremost, a premonitory whipping; the youthful genius simply stays away from school and carries his ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... her native element, discussed the whole house from attic to kitchen. Mr. Harper listened with a complaisant and amused look. Beginning to discern the sterling good there was in the little woman, he passed over her harmless small-mindedness; knowing well that in the wide-built mansion of human nature there must be always a certain order ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... scarce can think it, but am told), There are, to whom my satire seems too bold: Scarce to wise Peter complaisant enough, And something said of Chartres much too rough. The lines are weak another's pleased to say, Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day. Timorous by nature, of the rich in awe, I come to counsel learned in the law: You'll give me, like a friend both ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... coming over the grim avenue of the elms yonder. They won't relent so far as to admit buds, but there is an unmistakable bloom upon them, like the promise of a smile. The rooks have known it for some weeks, and already their Jews' market is in full caw. The more complaisant chestnut dandles its sticky knobs. Soon they will be brussels-sprouts, and then they will shake open their fairy umbrellas. So says a child of my acquaintance. The water-lilies already poke their green scrolls above the surface of the pond; ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... he fled to Civey, where was the tumbledown chateau of the Marquis—the Madame's complaisant husband. Voltaire advanced the Marquis sixteen hundred pounds to put the place in order, and then on his own account fitted up two sumptuous apartments, one for himself and one for Madame. The Marquis went away with his regiment, and occasionally came ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... Peyrade, dryly. "The court is a thing essentially amiable and complaisant. 'Tiens!' it said to itself, 'here's this good Monsieur Thuillier going to be a candidate for the Chamber; how hampered he'll be by his attitude to his ex-friend Monsieur de la Peyrade, with whom he wishes now he hadn't ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... of Directors he is very little more complaisant, and not at all more satisfactory; he states merely as a supposition their inquiry concerning matters of which he positively knew that they had called for an explanation. He knew it, because he presumed to censure them ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... for the year to March, 1886, were no More than L35 19s., but as the expenditure only amounted to L27 6s. 6d., the Society had already adopted its lifelong habit of paying its way punctually, though it must be confessed that a complaisant printer and a series of lucky windfalls ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... was his aim, and he acquired it earlier than Robespierre. A barrister without talent but upright, he had imbibed no more of philosophy than the Social Contract; young, good looking and a patriot, he was destined to become one of those complaisant idols of whom the people make what they please except a man; his credit in the streets and amongst the Jacobins gave him a certain amount of authority in the Assembly, where he was listened to as the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... worked and suffered together, these reunions had enlarged gradually, until one day the rooms at the Hotel des Medicis became a 'parlotte' where preachers of ideas and of new religions, thinkers, reformers, apostles, politicians, aesthetes, and even babblers in search of ears more or less complaisant that would listen to them, met together. Any one might come who wished, and if one did not enter there exactly as one would enter an ordinary hotel, it was sufficient to be brought by an habitue in order to have the right to a pipe, some beer, and ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... ear, that he grew angry; the colour came into his face, and he rose up to remove to a greater distance from such a rude playfellow. Then the old woman, who brought him thither, gave him a look, to let him know that he was in the wrong, and that he had forgotten her advice, to be very complaisant. He owned his fault, and to make amends, went near the young lady again, pretending that he did not remove out of any ill-humour. She drew him by the arm, made him sit down by her, and gave him a thousand malicious squeezes. Her ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... presence of an Englishman by the captain's bedside was scarcely likely to accelerate the patient's recovery, while some of his ravings were of such a character that it was better for all concerned that I should not hear them. But, he added, if I would be complaisant enough to keep his watch for him, he would esteem it a very great favour. Of course I could do no less than accede to this ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... of the natural and complaisant steps of the sentry who came to relieve me brought me completely back to myself. I detached myself from the spot where I had seemed riveted and went ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... Madrid during Borrow's absence. The Carlists had actually appeared before its gates, although they had subsequently retired. Liberalism had been routed and a Moderado Cabinet, under the leadership of Count Ofalia, ruled the city and such part of the country as was sufficiently complaisant as to permit itself to be ruled. As the Moderados represented the Court faction, Borrow saw that he had little to expect from them. He was unacquainted with any of the members of the Cabinet, and, what was far more ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... White became a great deal more cheerful; and she was very complaisant to them all at luncheon. And quite by accident she asked Macleod, who had returned by this time, whether ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... can no longer venture to love them, except, perhaps, the two eldest; I no longer venture to look at them, to call them to me, to kiss them; I cannot take them onto my knee without asking myself: 'Can it be this one?' I have been correct in my behavior towards you for six years, and even kind and complaisant; tell me the truth, and I swear that I ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... complaisant to that extent. So they went into the pantry, and Leonore proceeded, apparently, to show her absolute ignorance of food matters under the pretext that she was displaying great housekeeping knowledge. She told Peter that he ought to keep his champagne on ice. "That champagne will ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... intimacy, and I believe that we pity La Bruyere more than he pitied himself. It scandalizes the biographers that the Prince, on one occasion, made La Bruyere dance a pas seul before him, twanging a tune on the guitar. I suppose De Quincey would have been complaisant if the Duke of Wellington had asked him to whistle "Home, Sweet Home" to him. There is a limit, after all, to the modern theory of the ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... Saxons, who came pouring into Britain from Schleswig-Holstein. They were uncontaminated pagans. In scorn of Roman luxury, they set the torch to the villas, and temples and baths. They came, exterminating, not assimilating. The more complaisant Frank had taken Romanized, Latinized Gaul just as he found her, and had even speedily adopted her religion. It was for Gaul a change of rulers, but not ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... the evening he was affable and complaisant and forbearing. She made no attempt to conceal her dislike of him. Concealments were not familiar to Margie's nature. She was frank and open ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... determine to play a piece of heroics and cast me for the hero—or the victim—which is very much the same. The first duty of heroics is to be of your own choosing. When they are not that, they are nothing. And I assure you, as I walked back to my own room, I was in no very complaisant humour: thought my uncle and Mr. Romaine to have played knuckle-bones with my life and prospects; cursed them for it roundly; had no wish more urgent than to avoid the pair of them; and was quite knocked ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... next day things were as bad as ever. However, when they found out that I was up to a thing or two, they insisted on making me an officer. What rank I held I never could tell. I only knew that everybody obeyed me, and that none of the officers interfered with my commands. This complaisant conduct did not arise so much from respect for me, as that they might save themselves trouble. I never met with men who seemed to hate it so much, from the captain to the youngest powder-monkey. My great difficulty ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... to his, leaned upon the back of it, and listened eagerly. It would have made a fine picture to have drawn the sage and her at this time in their several attitudes. He did not know, all the while, how much he was honored. I told him afterward. I never saw him so gentle and complaisant ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey |
