"Self-satisfied" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Teddy's evil genius that caused Bunk, the house cat, to come strolling past the door at just that moment. He was so sleek and lazy and self-satisfied that Teddy was strongly tempted to shake him ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... young man, and lifted his eyebrows as if to express astonished admiration, then made a wry face. Norris smiled his understanding and glanced back at the self-satisfied prosperity beneath her filmy hat. Then, suddenly, at the far end of the room, another face caught him—a profile of a girl's head, outlined against a high bench-back, her dreamy eyes fixed on the speaker. It was a cameo-like face, not animated, ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... on to the divan again. Was this, indeed, the frivolous and jovial Baron Trigault whom Pascal had seen at Madame d'Argeles's house—the man of self-satisfied mien and superb assurance, the good-natured cynic, the frequenter of gambling-dens? Alas, yes! But the baron whom the world knew was only a comedian; ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... dame stood the figure up in a corner of her cottage and chuckled to behold its yellow semblance of a visage, with its nobby little nose thrust into the air. It had a strangely self-satisfied aspect, and seemed to ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... be a sort of letter-obedience, a formal obedience to the vision you have. In one's own estimation, there may seem to be a knowledge of what is right, and a self-satisfied doing of it. There may be a painstaking attention to the forms of obedience, and a self-righteous content in doing the required things. Is this the underlying thought in Peter's self-complacent remark, "Lo, ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... Avenue at the height of the afternoon; a gallant and brilliant throng. Looking over the glittering array, the purple and fine linen, the sweeping robes, the exquisite equipages, the stately houses; the faces, delicate and refined, proud, self-satisfied, that gazed out from their windows on the street, or that glanced from the street to the windows, or at one another,—looking over all this, being a part of it, one might well say, "This is existence, and beside it there is ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... away, and high amid the clouds. Perchance I touch the mountain whose blue summit, With the fantastic rock upon its side, Stops the eye's flight from that high chamber-window Where, when a boy, I used to sit and gaze With wondering awe upon the mighty thing, Terribly calm, alone, self-satisfied, The hitherto of my child-thoughts. Beyond, A sea might roar around its base. Beyond, Might be the depths of the unfathomed space, This the earth's bulwark over the abyss. Upon its very point I have watched a star For a few moments crown it with a fire, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... said Hull, "that I don't like a lot of things about the—the forces I find I've got to use in order to carry through my plans. I admit that even the sincere young fellows I've grouped together to head this movement are narrow—supercilious—self-satisfied—that they irritate me and are not trustworthy. But I feel that, if I once get the office, I'll be strong enough to put my plans through." Nervously, "I'm giving you my full confidence—as I've given it to ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... with heart aglow, Self-satisfied I grew, And guag'd with ampler girt, my mind, And ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... reasoned Now little notion what it was about, but I love its memory Prejudice against certain words that I cannot overcome Rapture of the new convert could not last Responsibility of finding him all we have been told he is Secretly admires the splendors he affects to despise Self-satisfied, intolerant, and hypocritical provinciality Should probably have wasted the time if I had not read them So long as we have social inequality we shall have snobs Somewhat too studied grace Speaks it is not with words and blood, but with words and ink Spit some hapless ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... are going wrong; who will not hear reason, nor take advice, no, nor even take scorn and contempt; who will not see that they are making fools of themselves, but, while all the world is laughing at them, walk on serenely self-satisfied, certain that they, and they only, know what the world is made of, and how to manage the world. These are they of whom it is written—"He that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." Then they will learn, and with ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... nothing remained to them but the contempt of pain and death whenever an extravagant enjoyment of life must finally be exchanged for them. This seal, therefore, of their former grandeur they accordingly impressed on their tragic heroes with a self-satisfied and ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... whom he had to deal. Presently this functionary—a lantern-jawed, nimble old man, with a dirty nightcap on his head—made his appearance to take a final look at his work. After strutting round the very shallow hole he had dug, in an airy, self-satisfied manner, he concluded that everything was as it should be, and retired for the priest to perform ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... the most comfortable arm-chair, he drew it toward the doctor, then he seated himself with his hands in his pockets, lifted his feet and placed his heels on the window-sill, and looked at the doctor with the most self-satisfied ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... nor sympathy; he neither censures, nor moralizes; for the self-satisfied Middle Ages cannot conceive the possibility of a different world. Brief, quick, he despises aims and methods, his only object is to entertain his auditors. Amusing and witty, he cares only for ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... itself. Its appearance disarms suspicion. With judgment that chair might be made to serve a really useful purpose. There are mutual acquaintances of ours—I mention no names, you will know them—pompous, self-satisfied, superior persons who would be improved by that chair. If I were Willie I should disguise the mechanism with some artistic drapery, bait the thing with a couple of exceptionally inviting cushions, and employ it to ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... said, 'Come to the barnyard, and I'll show you one.' The oxen were both there, Duke with his broad face, and Bright so much sharper and more intelligent looking. Duke was drinking at the trough there, and uncle said: 'Just look at him. Isn't he a great, fat, self-satisfied creature, and doesn't he look as if he thought the world owed him a living, and he ought to get it?' Then he got the card and went up to Bright, and began scratching him. Duke lifted his head from the trough, and stared at uncle, who paid no attention to him but went ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... as Irish paupers of a different class are transmitted to Dublin by the Liverpool guardians. To this he replied by saying that there would be no peace in Ireland until the Mitchels and Dohenys were hanged, a fate which the latter was hastening to with irresistible impetus. At this self-satisfied prophecy we laughed louder than before, whereupon he waxed wrathful, and repeating his experience of the world in general, and of Irishmen in particular, demanded an explanation of the laugh. I said, "That is a straightforward question, and demands a direct answer. It shall be ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... a comparatively stupid man, an amazingly self-satisfied toiler who had chanced to specialize on crime. And even as he became more and more assured of his personal ability, more and more entrenched in his tradition of greatness, he was becoming less and less elastic, less receptive, less adaptive. ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... the inconsiderable congregation expect to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the pavement under the Dedlock displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no doubt he is surprised that I don't. For he is, by heaven, the most self-satisfied, and the shallowest, and the most coxcombical and ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... address, and had followed him here! He dressed himself with feverish haste, not, however, without a certain care of his appearance and some selection of apparel, and quickly forecast the forthcoming interview in his mind. For the pendulum had swung back; Mr. James Smith was once more the self-satisfied, self-complacent, and discreetly cautious husband that he had been at the beginning of his quest, perhaps with a certain sense of grievance superadded. He should require the fullest explanations and guarantees before committing himself,—indeed, her present call might be an ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... and blood will joyfully and gladly abound in good works and obedience to God as the spirit is inclined and faith directs. Even with the utmost efforts the Spirit scarce can compel our old man. What would be the result if we were no more urged and admonished but could go our way thinking, as many self-satisfied persons do: I am well acquainted with my duties, having learned them many years ago and having heard frequent explanations of them; yea, I have taught others? It might be that one year's intermission of preaching and admonition would place us below ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... front windows with their gossiping heads thrust out or in. She had her own chamber on the Campagna side, and there she sat the livelong day with knitting or sewing, never going out, except at early morning to hear mass. There her mother accompanied her—a large, self-satisfied woman beside a pallid little maiden who never raised her eyes. Or, if her mother could not go, Matteo stalked along by her side, and with his black looks made everybody afraid to glance her way. Nobody liked to encounter the two black eyes of Matteo Guai. It was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... visiting-book. Let no minister who would be found of God clothed and canopied over with humility ever lose sight of his communion-roll and pastoral visitation- book. I defy any minister to keep those records always open before him and yet remain a proud man, a self-respecting, self-satisfied, self-righteous man. For, what secret histories of his own folly, neglect, rashness, offensiveness, hot-headedness, self-seeking, self-pleasing vanity, now puffed up over one man, now cast down and full of gloom over another, what self-flattery here, and what resentment and ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... river or be run over. As soon as Reddy was across the bridge, he jumped off the track and turned to see what would happen to Bowser the Hound. The train was halfway across the bridge, but Bowser was nowhere to be seen. He must have jumped already. Reddy sat down and grinned in the most self-satisfied way. ...
— The Adventures of Reddy Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... keep to your left till you come to some rocks, but then turn to your right, if you don't want to break your necks. There's a bit of a stream there; and when you are over that, the left-hand road will take you straight to Cox's ferry. You can't miss it," concluded he, in a self-satisfied tone, striking his horse a blow with his riding-whip. The animal broke into a smart trot, and in ten seconds our obliging friend ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... lieutenant. "If because a vile system is carried on openly it is to be considered honest, then slaving is honest, and piracy, and highway robbery, for that matter. See, however, her gallant skipper is not afraid of us. Look, with what a self-satisfied air he walks the deck with his gold-lace cap, and glass under his arm. They are preparing to lower a boat, and he'll come to pay his respects as ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... sauntering soldiers were swarming about the porch and hall-way, and jamming in a compact mass in front of the little window whereat the postmistress behind her vitreous barrier was still at work. It was a good-natured, chaffing, laughing crowd, but still one very independent and self-satisfied, after the manner of the frontier, where every man in a mixed gathering is as good as his neighbor, and every woman is as good as she chooses to hold herself. It had made a passage for the commanding officer and afterward ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... wall, and when he left home he carefully put it away in a safe place. The skin became famous throughout the district, and many of the younger men made special trips to Bali to examine it. Arni would beam with joy and strut around with a knowing, self-satisfied expression on his face, and would tell of the patience, the agility, and the marksmanship he had to put into killing this monstrously clever fox. It certainly wasn't hard to kill all you wanted of these devils, if you just had the powder and shot and were willing to give ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... landlord. Beside which, he did not feel greatly drawn toward his fellowguests. Their high-sounding and pompously-expressed platitudes bored him, their absurd views on politics, their parrot-like and yet self-satisfied remarks on literature and art filled him with compassion. One guest in particular, who sat at the head of the table, and generally led the conversation in the loudest tones, succeeded in making him very impatient, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... use to you," he replied. "The fellow at the other end of the wire couldn't see your hands, could he?" And he broke into a peal of self-satisfied mirth in which some of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... aims. But there was one to whom the sermon was a fiery ordeal. For even Donald, well-nigh crushed with the weight of his grief and the knowledge of all he had missed, was no more torn by the old clergyman's words than the young minister who sat reviewing his past self-satisfied year in Glenoro in the ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... course—cannot win him to lower his aim to something short of the highest good conceivable by him. We may smile now in our days of so-called enlightenment at some of the measures he directs in pursuance of his great aim. His "Pyramid of Vanities" may be to our self-satisfied complacency itself a vanity. To him it represents a stern reality of reformation in character and life; and to the Florentine of his age it symbolises one form of vain self-pleasing offered up in solemn willing ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... walking beside him, her hand resting lightly on his arm, as was fitting for a girl who was tokened and would be a bride within the week: she walked with head bent, her eyes fixed upon the ground. She made no immediate reply to her fiance's self-satisfied peroration, and her silence appeared to annoy him, for he continued with ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... because they were all very tender of her, and they wouldn't have scared her for anything, and everybody kept cheering her up and telling her how much they knew she would like it, till they got her to the pump. The little pumpkin-glory was feeling awfully proud and self-satisfied; for it had never seen any flower or any vegetable treated with half so much honor by human beings. It wasn't sure at first that it was very nice to be laughed at so much, but after a while it began to conclude that the papas and the mammas were just laughing at the ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells
... sorely missed was the living and real presence of spirit. It came over him in a wave of realization that he, too, had been unconscious of his own higher self until his love had made him feel the need of it in her. They two, from the depths of self-satisfied power, had gone blindly in their paths of self-seeking—till each had awakened the other. A ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... with fierce contempt. "That's the keynote of your lives, you lazy, self-satisfied swine, who call yourselves people's men! What do you know or care about the people? how many of you have walked by day and night in the wilderness and felt your heart die away within you? How many of you have watched ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... more disagreeable than a very stupid and ill-set old woman, who, quite unaware what her opinion is worth, expresses it with entire confidence upon many subjects of which she knows nothing whatever, and as to which she is wholly incapable of judging. And the self-satisfied and confident air with which she settles the most difficult questions, and pronounces unfavorable judgment upon people ten thousand times wiser and better than herself, is an insufferably irritating phenomenon. It is a singular fact, that the people ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... the sound of his powerful breathing, General Lariviere approached with heavy state and sat between the two women, looking stubborn and self-satisfied, laughing in every wrinkle of ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... rascal of all, who, when escape is impossible, turns traitor, and after deserving the cart and pillory a dozen times for his last and most utter baseness, is rewarded by full pardon, and the honour of addressing the audience at the play's end in the most smug and self-satisfied tone, and of 'putting himself on you that are my country,' not doubting, it seems, that there were among them a fair majority who would think him a very smart fellow, worthy of ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... there is little doubt that these are punitive and impressive official executions, carried out under "proper judicial conditions" as conceived by Germans. But what offends one's taste so much are the photographs of German officers and men standing with self-conscious and self-satisfied expressions beside the grim gallows on which their victims hang. From the great number of these pictures we have found, it is quite clear that not only are such executions very common, but that they are also not unpleasing to the sense of the German population; otherwise they would ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... diameter. This certainly was a good day's work under the circumstances; at any rate, we were quite unanimous in considering it so; and towards twilight we went down to the beach for our evening bath, in an exceedingly complacent and self-satisfied state of mind, Max enlarging upon the pleasures of industry, and professing to be in the ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... Aphrodite is entirely calm, and looks straight forward. Not one feature of her face is disturbed, or seems ever to have been subject to emotion. The Italian Aphrodite looks up, her face all quivering and burning with passion and wasting anxiety. The Greek one is quiet, self-possessed, and self-satisfied; the Italian incapable of rest, she has had no thought nor care for herself; her hair has been bound by a fillet like the Greeks; but it is now all fallen loose, and clotted with the sea, or clinging to her body; only the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... grease. One of the monks takes one up and holds it so that we can see the image, about twice life-size, seated in that calm attitude of the sitting Buddha, with crossed legs and one hand on the lap, while the other hangs loosely down. There is a serene self-satisfied smirk on the marble face, which looks more like that of a woman than a man. Ramaswamy explains to us that this is a very specially holy Buddha, and that the little dabs of gold splashed here and there about him are the offerings ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... you are finding fault with the pillar, my good fellow," the stone-cutter remarked, and the little man nodded with a self-satisfied look. ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... puffing away steadily at a pipe. I watched him with a kind of bitter jealousy. I had no idea who he was, but for the moment I hated him fiercely. Why should he be able to potter around in that comfortable self-satisfied fashion, while I, Neil Lyndon, starved, soaked, and hunted like a wild beast, was ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... smiled a self-satisfied smile, as he softly caressed his imperial, and his little eyes glowed with ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... be her father, and foolish enough to attempt to make love to her. She had disliked him from the first; she had come near to hating him since she had seen and heard him at that dreadful trial. The self-satisfied judge, on the other hand, hoped to make capital out of the trial. He had been instrumental in ridding the world of a notorious highwayman, one who had made himself unpleasantly known to not a few of those who ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... flushed a deep crimson now, and her eyes were flashing with an angry light. Her heart was filled with disgust at these cool, self-satisfied schemers. Had they been less confident of their own importance they would have realized that they were treading on dangerous ground. They could not comprehend that back of Nellie's quiet, reserved demeanour there was a moral courage which would rise to any height ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... now; his engagement was in itself tacit recognition of the code of the Griersons, and he could not understand why the family should still harbour bitterness against him. Surely he had suffered enough for his revolt. But May and Ida and Walter had always been the same, obstinate, self-satisfied, regarding everything he did as necessarily wrong. In the world of men who thought, Jimmy knew that he, himself, was quickly gaining a position, and that his wife would also have a position, through him; but his family gauged position by the standard of the pass-book, the only book it considered ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... it? It was too much, gentlemen, for that hour. Enough had been done in this fourth step of conception to rest in the womb of time, until by evolution a higher step could be made at the maturity of the child. Being self-satisfied with my own baby, I watched and caressed it until it could take care of itself, and my mind was ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... reflections, and I was not sure whether this made me more or less uncomfortable. To add to my torment, I grew angry, furiously angry, with myself. I looked up and down and across the big table noted all these self-satisfied people perfectly at their ease; and I said to myself: "What's the matter with you, Matt? They're only men and women, and by no means the best specimens of the breed. You've got more brains than all of 'em ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... Etrurian (non-Aryan) civilization on which the Latins intruded, was apparently more advanced than their own. For centuries their utmost prowess scarce sufficed to maintain their independence. Thus it was not possible for them to become too self-satisfied, to stand afar off and look down on their neighbors with Grecian scorn. The ego was less prominently developed; the necessity of mutual dependence and united action was more deeply taught. Their records display less of brilliancy, but more of patient persistency, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... members honest for the greater part, but many of them men who followed old traditions, and believed that quiet things should not be moved. For many years they had lived under a system of accepting the imperfect, and never attempting to make it more perfect. Of these easy-going, self-satisfied gentlemen Councillor ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... full development of him to the reader. I saw too much of him; my memory is choked with disarranged moods and aspects. Now he is distended with megalomania, now he is deflated, now he is quarrelsome, now impenetrably self-satisfied, but always he is sudden, jerky, fragmentary, energetic, and—in some subtle fundamental way that I ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... which He gives in early youth! It is so easy to become more thick-skinned in conscience, more tolerant of evil, more hopeless of good, more careful of one's own comfort and one's own property, more self-satisfied in leaving high aims and great deeds to enthusiasts, and then to believe that one is growing older and wiser. And yet those high examples, those good works, those great triumphs over evil, which single hands effect sometimes, we are all grateful for, when they are done, whatever we may ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... burnished gold in the centre of it. He had clear blue eyes, brown curly hair, and an easy, offhand swagger, which last was the result of a sea-faring life and example; but he had a kindly and happy, rather than a boastful or self-satisfied, expression of face, as he bowled along with his hands in his pockets, kicking all the stones out of his way, and whistling furiously. Sometimes he burst into a song, and once or twice he laughed, smote his thigh, and cheered, ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... to their dank and noisome den, opening from a street trap-door and giving at the other extremity on a sort of water-rat exit underneath the pier. She handed Louise down the steps and taking her things remarked in a self-satisfied tone: "Here ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... a time of surprises. Turkey is reforming, China waking up, the self-satisfied complacency of the white race has received a shock, and more are feared. Most of us of the West are anxious to get over the wall, or look around it,—we are told it is there,—and see what that other man is really like. We read books written by those who have spent years in China, in Japan, in ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... in its self-satisfied complacency that de Batz, calmly ignoring the vile part which he himself had played in the last quarter of an hour of his interview with the Committee's agent, found it in him to think of Heron with loathing, and even of the ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... up in his own proper place at my feet. He was intensely self-satisfied, and expressed his high idea of his own exploit by self-gratulatory "grumphs," as after describing many mystic circles, and scraping up the fair Marseilles quilt on some plan of his own, he brought his nose and tail together in ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of me," the Lieutenant said, with a self-satisfied air; and went off to finish the evening with some jolly ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... seen! His hounds had behaved to perfection; his horse—though he had downed him three times—had carried him well, and his lordship stood with his crownless flat hat in his hand, and one coat lap in the pocket of the other—a grinning, exulting, self-satisfied specimen of a ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... entirely at ease—an expression that once seen is never forgotten. The face stamped itself instantly on my memory; and I can even now recall it with almost the original distinctness. How strongly it contrasted with that of her smiling, self-satisfied husband, who took his place at the head of his table with an air of conscious importance. I was too hungry to talk much, and so found greater enjoyment in eating than in conversation. The landlord had a more chatty guest by his side, and I left them to entertain each other, ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... with a blind and zealous attachment to party. The charge is sometimes made by persons who consider that I desire to do right, but think that my understanding and intellectual faculties are guided and blinded by that emotion. Others are not so charitable. One very self-satisfied critic, Mr. William Lloyd Garrison, sometimes in ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... though perhaps not entirely exempt from forced labour, had but a small part of it to bear.* These employes constituted a middle class of several grades, and enjoyed a fixed income and regular employment: they were fairly well educated, very self-satisfied, and always ready to declare loudly their superiority over any who were obliged to gain their living by manual labour. Each class of workmen recognized one or more chiefs,—the shoemakers, their master-shoemakers, the masons, their master-masons, the blacksmiths, their master-blacksmiths,—who ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious an self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... and received—who had been dying, yet not dying—who had, in her own person, descended upon us even as snow might fall from the clouds! Though unable to walk, she had arrived borne aloft in an armchair (her mode of conveyance for the last five years), as brisk, aggressive, self-satisfied, bolt-upright, loudly imperious, and generally abusive as ever. In fact, she looked exactly as she had on the only two occasions when I had seen her since my appointment to the General's household. Naturally ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... have laughed at her for pretending to know, and turned it off with a kiss. Now what she said set him on edge. The talk he had been living amongst had spoilt him for silly criticisms. Moreover, for the first time he detected in her a slight tone of the 'schoolmarm'—didactic and self-satisfied, without knowledge. The measure Madame de Pastourelles had dealt out to him, he in some sort ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... measures the musician's flabby, redundant figure sat up in bewildered semi-consciousness like an ice-cream that has been taught to beg. Groby prodded him into complete wakefulness, and then the pettish self-satisfied pianist fairly lost his temper and slapped his domineering visitant on the hand. In another moment Spabbink was being nearly stifled and very effectually gagged by a pillow-case tightly bound round his head, while his plump pyjama'd limbs were hauled out of ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... Hercules—"bringing her up to service, I presume. Leave that to me: as soon as she is old enough, the thing is done, you need say no more about it." Here her ladyship fell back in the large easy chair on which she was seated, with a self-satisfied air of patronage, and looking even more ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... lie content upon a lounge of pleasure— Then let there be of me an end! When thou with flattery canst cajole me, Till I self-satisfied shall be, When thou with pleasure canst befool me, Be that the last of days for me! I ...
— Faust • Goethe
... better than I supposed. She knew that behind your apparent kindness there lurked a cold and self-satisfied nature. She understood that she would be accounted a stranger and a sinner in your house the moment you discovered that she had a thought or a sentiment that was not subordinated ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... infuriating. Dantor cast a warning look in the Earth man's direction. It wouldn't do to lock horns with this self-satisfied despot; at any rate, not now. Blaine's mien was expressionless as he ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... intellect, a fair degree of shrewd perception, an inviolable conscientiousness, a common sense frankly self-satisfied, are some of the qualifications which Mr. Purnell brings to the discussion of literature as seen in modern journalism, and in the lives of Giraldus Cambrensis and Montaigne,—of Roger Williams, the literary statesman,—of Steele, Sterne, and Swift, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... little child once worded it) in a song so rapid, so shrill, so loud, and yet so delicately modulated, that you wonder at the amount of soul within that tiny body; and then stops suddenly, as a child who has said its lesson, or got to the end of the sermon, gives a self-satisfied flirt of his tail, and goes in again ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... laughed, and Orsino's face became a shade less gloomy. He had expected to find Del Ferice the arrogant, self-satisfied apostle of the modern, which ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... A self-satisfied smile drew apart Mrs. Champney's thin lips; evidently the girl's lesson was a final and salutary one. She would know her place after this. She determined not to touch on this subject again with Aileen; she might run the risk of ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... manner. What could it all mean? I stared and wondered, till, out of the confusion, there gradually grew shapes which bore some resemblance to human beings, and, presently, I could recognize quite distinctly, first a young man in knee breeches, smiling in a particularly self-satisfied way, and escorting a large fish, who was walking upright, with slippers on his tail, and who wore a waistcoat and necktie. Then an amiable-looking old gentleman, carrying a wand, who was followed by a curious little person, wearing a crown and ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... the Candidate, and was advancing; but the Landed-proprietor held him back, whilst he inquired with great earnestness, and with a self-satisfied smile, "Hear you, my friend: can you tell me whether Cousin Louise is in the garden? I came this moment from her parents, and would now speak with her. Can you ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... So the amiable and self-satisfied George took himself off to the mill, and all day long thought much of his mother's advice, and somehow he felt himself being impelled towards paying another visit to Bourhill. Out of that visit arose portentous issues, which were to have the strongest possible ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... "That is your point of view. From our side there is no greater glory than to be an Evangel of the New Faith. What matters the comment of the gross and self-satisfied to us who work for the happiness of those who mourn? The world in which we live despises the ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... touch the heart so much more than dry treatises. In a word, Madame de Grantmesnil's book set me thinking; and then I read other books, and talked with clever men, and educated myself. And so I became the man I am." Here, with a self-satisfied air, Monnier bowed to the Englishman, and joined a group at the other ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... temptation, never easily resisted by him, of displaying his wit at the expense of his character, he was here addressing a person who, though, no doubt, well meaning, was evidently one of those officious, self-satisfied advisers, whom it was the delight of Lord Byron at all times to astonish and mystify. The tricks which, when a boy, he played upon the Nottingham quack, Lavender, were but the first of a long series with which, through life, he ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... guess I'll be going!" he called back, beginning to roll a cigarette. "I have some reading to do to-day." Mr. Deever was tall, awkward and homely, and a lot of other things that would have discouraged a less self-satisfied "lady's man." Judge Smith said he was hopeless, but that he might do better after he ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... no vulture, or jackal, or hyena, sahiba!" he smiled. "I do not eat carrion!" He seemed to think that that was a very good retort, for he showed his wonderful white teeth until his handsome face was the epitome of self-satisfied amusement. His horse blocked the way again, and all retreat was cut off, for his escort were behind her, and three of them had ridden to the right, outside the row of trees, to cut off possible escape in that direction. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... exchanging these few words, Alice felt herself growing slightly embarrassed, and it filled her with dismay. "I am a poor creature," she thought, "if I cannot get this self-satisfied gentleman out of the house without breaking down. I can't stand here forever though," and so she took a seat, and as Arthur resumed his willow chair with an air of content, she could not but feel that as yet the skirmish was not in her favor. She called her angry spirit to her aid, and nerved ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... that of Squire Pettijohn, hitherto complacent, self-satisfied village magnate. Now suddenly grown haggard and old, confronting that other face so curiously like his own. His son! Whose scant intelligence had always been a shame to him and because of which he had given neglect where care should have been. Whom he had been secretly thankful to ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... was prevented by the entrance of Mr. Blaisdell, with a fine lot of ore samples with their assay values attached, which he arranged on his desk, his thin lips drawn back meanwhile in his accustomed self-satisfied smile. When this was done, he turned to the ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... partial, but by general laws;' And makes what happiness we justly call Subsist, not in the good of one, but all. There's not a blessing individuals find, But some way leans and hearkens to the kind: 40 No bandit fierce, no tyrant mad with pride, No cavern'd hermit, rests self-satisfied: Who most to shun or hate mankind pretend, Seek an admirer, or would fix a friend: Abstract what others feel, what others think, All pleasures sicken, and all glories sink: Each has his share; and who ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... never felt the need of a wife. The latter added that if he could find just the girl, he would think it over, but as matters stood he preferred certainty to chance and was taking no risks. Between ourselves, both these two are very self-satisfied and egotistical persons, and I don't think any woman has lost much by ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... at. And now I should like to ask, WHO taught him all this?—and me, through him, that the foolish head was not the one swinging itself from side to side and bowing and nodding over the music, but that other which was passing its shallow and self-satisfied judgment on a creature made of finer clay than the frame which carried that same head ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... 3 is; I never noticed it before. It looks so self-satisfied. And as to that fat, hollow 0 which follows it—I always did ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... eager anticipation. It was seldom indeed that she indulged in merry-making away from the parsonage. Yet she was fond of gaiety. Long before one o'clock on that eventful day, she was ready. And her face was so bright, and her eyes so starry, that placid self-satisfied Fairy felt a twinge of ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... his doctrine of man's sinfulness and need of salvation, so far from corresponding, was in direct antagonism with that Humanistic view of life which seemed to have originated from the devotion to classical antiquity, and to revive the proud, self-satisfied, independent spirit of heathendom. Even in an Erasmus Luther had thought he perceived an inability to appreciate his ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... irritated him. He reproached me boldly. He made me feel ashamed of my easy acquiescences as I walked in my sleek tall neatness beside his rather old coat, his rather battered hat, his sturdier shorter shape, and listened to his denunciations of our self-satisfied ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... ardour is not a transient phenomenon which disturbs them, like that of the Shulamite, or the lover described by Sappho or Plato, but a chief business of their life, as in the case of Dante, of Petrarch, of Francesca and Paolo, or Tristram and Yseult. Indeed, it is difficult to guess whether this self-satisfied, self-glorifying quality, which distinguishes mediaeval passion from the passion (always regarded as an interlude, harmless or hurtful, in civic concerns) of unromantic Antiquity—whether, I say, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... uncomfortable influence. I should be very unhappy to think so." Lydia stooped side-wise, away from him, to get a fresh hold of her skirt, which she was carrying in her right hand, and she hung a little more heavily upon his arm. "I hope I make you think better of yourself, —very self-satisfied, ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... denomination, sixpence will do it; and then you may have your surplice and candlesticks to your heart's content, without denying the gospel, or running into the horrible abominations of the Scarlet Woman." And he sat upright in his chair, with his hands flat on his extended knees, watching with a self-satisfied air the effect of his words ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... terror-stricken from its little cradle to the floor, "the attraction of large bodies for small ones" takes on a new and heart-felt meaning. The beauty of devotion to truth in the face of opposition hardly stirs an emotion in many of us, as we regard it from the safe distance of our own self-satisfied liberty; but when we see the lonely martyr walk with head erect through the raging mob, and kiss the stake to which he is soon to be bound; when we watch him burn until the kindly powder explodes about his neck, and sends him to exchange his shirt of flame for the robe he has washed in the ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... dialogue—where save in Clarissa shall we find all these? As for Miss Harlowe herself, all incomplete as she is she remains the Eve of fiction, the prototype of the modern heroine, the common mother of all the self-contained, self-suffering, self-satisfied young persons whose delicacies and repugnances, whose independence of mind and body, whose airs and ideas and imaginings, are the stuff of the modern novel. With her begins a new ideal of womanhood; ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... to be self-satisfied and self-protecting. A religious institution especially is in danger of becoming content and resentful of criticism because, by its nature, it deals with matters that seem beyond the investigation that man prescribes for ordinary things, and therefore secure from the scrutiny and criticism given ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... stealthily among the branches of the tree above the well-fed, self-satisfied witch-doctor. He made no noise that the dull ears of man could hear above the soughing of the gentle jungle breeze among the undulating foliage of the upper terraces, and when he came close above the black man he halted, well concealed by ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... not to be so "beastly supercilious." She had insisted that in the belated quest of these work-stained women was an aspiration which ought to stir her tears. "But they're so self-satisfied. They think they're doing Burns a favor. They don't believe they have a 'belated quest.' They're sure that they have culture salted and hung up." It was out of this stupor of doubt that Mrs. Dawson's summons roused her. She was in a panic. How could ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... and who has all the authority of God in doing so. This is the second group that actually has not one good thing to be commended. There is no false teaching, no compromise with evil; they are simply asleep. Rich, influential, self-satisfied, grown fat and sleek,—so they seem to their neighbours and themselves. Wretched, poor, blind, naked,—so they are. And the chastening threatened will be of the severe radical sort that strong ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... best to make the house just as David would have wished to have it," said Aunt Amelia at last, a self-satisfied shadow of what answered for a smile with her, passing over her ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... of his job, of the eternal fitting of two wires in place. He was a cog and nothing more—a cog that could be replaced as swiftly, as efficiently as any part of an assembly-line atomic engine could be replaced. He looked up into the blank, smiling, self-satisfied face of his wife. He thought of the stars beckoning ...
— The Odyssey of Sam Meecham • Charles E. Fritch
... Allerdyke knew that a few years previous to his death, James had taken out a life-policy with a first-rate office, and had been passed as a first-class life: he remembered, as he sat there thinking over these things, the self-satisfied grin with which James had come and told him that the examining doctor had declared him to be as sound as a bell. It was true, of course, that disease might have set in after that—still, it was only six weeks since he had seen James and James was then looking in a ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... a ball, to be given in the best possible style, was in anticipation. My old uncle, preferring a quiet sleep to such foolish pastimes, stayed in his chamber. I, however, had just finished dressing when there came a light tap at our door, and Francis entered. Smiling in his self-satisfied way, he announced to me that the manichord had just arrived from the land-steward's lady in a sledge, and had been carried into the Baroness's apartments. Lady Adelheid sent her compliments and would I go over at once. It may be conceived how my pulse ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... we have anything to learn from the French!" said the self-satisfied young Briton, by way ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... bastard. Who was Morny? We will say, "A noted wit, an intriguer, but in no way austere, a friend of Romieu, and a supporter of Guizot possessing the manners of the world, and the habits of the roulette table, self-satisfied, clever, combining a certain liberality of ideas with a readiness to accept useful crimes, finding means to wear a gracious smile with bad teeth, leading a life of pleasure, dissipated but reserved, ugly, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... scruple. For if the king can do no wrong, the nobility may surely claim a certain immunity from criticism, and those who have allowance made to them must inevitably learn to make allowance for themselves. Lord Ferriby was, in a word, too self-satisfied to harbour any doubts respecting his own conduct. Self-satisfaction is, ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... than to previous acquaintance, that Tom now owed his admittance. True, he had been to Durnmelling not unfrequently, but that was in the other world of the country, and even there Hesper had taken no interest in the self-satisfied though not ill-bred youth who went galloping about the country, showing off to rustic girls. It was merely, as I have said, that she could no longer endure a tete-a-tete with one she knew so little as herself, and whose acquaintance ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... wondered at if some unlovely features appear in the village character? Or is it not rather a circumstance to give one pause, that these commercially unsuccessful and socially neglected people, whose large families the self-satisfied eugenist views with such solemn misgivings, should be in the main so kindly, so generous, and sometimes so lofty in their sentiments as in fact they are? With like disadvantages, where are there any other people in the country who would do so bravely? If it is clear that they miss ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... his life accustomed to ride anything calling itself a horse, but making no pretenses to mastery of the equestrian science; the lawyer, understood, on his own authority, to be well informed in everything; the society young lady, erect, precise, self-satisfied; the Texan, riding with apparent laziness, his hands rather high and seldom quiet, but not to be shaken from his seat; the beauty, languid and secretly discontented because her horse was "intended for a brunette, and a ridiculous mount for ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... took for a self-satisfied smile. There was nothing offensive in it, but it left me without anything to reply to. No embarrassment followed, however, for a rustling motion in the room the same instant attracted my attention, and ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... serious person goes down before the trifler. He therefore cultivates flippancy as a fine art, and becomes noted for a certain cheap cynicism, which he sprinkles like a quasi-intellectual pepper over the strong meat of risky conversation. Moreover, he is constantly self-satisfied, and self-possessed. Yet he manages to avoid giving offence by occasionally assuming a gentle humility of manner, to which he almost succeeds in imparting a natural air, and he studiously refrains from saying or doing anything which, since it may cause other men to provoke him, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... been formed, and the jerking and straining upon the thongs showed that it was capable of considerable lift. Challenger, like a glad father in the presence of his first-born, stood smiling and stroking his beard, in silent, self-satisfied content as he gazed at the creation of his brain. It was Summerlee who first ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... abominably happy and self-satisfied. Lovin Child kicked his heels against the rough table frame and gurgled unintelligible conversation whenever he was able to articulate sounds. Bud replied with a rambling monologue that implied a perfect understanding of Lovin Child's ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... came the father on his annual visit, and the dire thing was done. The most ancient and honoured of all the idols fell with a crash. A perfect father was lost in some common, swaggering, loud-voiced, street-mannered creature, grotesquely self-satisfied, of a cheap, shabby smartness, who came flaunting those things he should not have flaunted, and proclaiming in every turn of his showy head his lack of those things without which the little boy now saw no one could ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... did not wish to annoy him by the contrast between her song and Miss Wildmere's performance, feeling that he would naturally take sides in his thoughts with the woman outvied; nor had she any desire to inflict upon her rival the disparagement that must follow; but something in Miss Wildmere's self-satisfied and patronizing tone had touched her quick spirit, and the arrogant girl should receive the lesson she had invited. But, as Madge sang, the noble art soon lifted her above all lower thoughts, and she forgot everything but Graydon and the hope of her heart. She sang for him alone, as she had ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... wanted them to send for Bill. Bill just thought the world and all of Chip, she declared, and would just love to come. She was positive that Bill was the very one they needed, and the Little Doctor, who had conceived a violent dislike for Bill, a smirky, self-satisfied youth addicted to chewing tobacco, red neckties and a perennial grin, was equally positive he was the very one they did not want. In despair she retrenched herself behind the assertion that Chip should ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... think I liked you better before. I don't think I like you with this touch of aureole. People seem to me so horribly self-satisfied when they get a change of heart—they take such a fearful lot of credit to themselves ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... a while," said Conrad, in a self-satisfied tone. "I will see the time when you will be glad enough to get the money ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger |
