"Complacently" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... summary of the infinite. There is 'an aping of the devil' in this flippant assumption of our immutability, which strangely combines the pitiful and painful. Oh! if the ne plus ultra which antique Ignorance complacently inscribes on the gates of its world should ever be worn away, let it be replaced by this owlish credo in the unchangeableness ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... devoted creature, as stedfast in her affections as she was wise in the selection of their objects. So by revolving in his mind all the beauties of the character of her who, however disqualified by law, was still of his flesh and blood, yea, of his very nature, as he complacently thought in compliment to himself, he became more and more reconciled to his intention, if the very thought of making a will, which had been horrible to him, did not become even a pleasing kind of meditation. So is it—when Nature imposes an inevitable duty, she gives man the power of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... from which it would be in danger of sliding off, if its houses were not mortised into the solid rock. This makes the house-foundations secure, but the labor of blasting out streets is considerable. We note these things complacently as we toil in the sun up the hill to the Victoria Hotel, which stands well up on the backbone of the ridge, and from the upper windows of which we have a fine view of the harbor, and of the hill opposite, above Carleton, where there is the brokenly truncated ruin of a round stone ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... left loose, looking-glasses stood uncovered, yet, thanks to the gentleness and honesty of the Finnish sailors, nothing appeared to get broken, and when we left the quay we saw the owner of these chattels standing complacently in the midst of his household gods, from which, judging by the serenity of his smile, nothing had ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Saltash complacently. "The Night Moth wanted new engines too, that's one consolation. I've just bought another," he added, suddenly touching Toby's shoulder. "Your daddy is quite pleased with her. We've just come round from London ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... out to us, for lack of a knowledge of the language, we came out again into view of Florence about half a mile nearer than when we started and proportionately far away from home. When he had got me thoroughly foot-sore, Arthur remarked complacently, "The right way to see a country is to lose yourself in it!" I didn't feel the truth of it then: but applied to other things I perceive its wisdom. Dear heart, where I have lost myself, what in all the world do I know so ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... a plow-boy, celebrated as being the best picker for miles around. Lastly, there were Aunt 'Liza and her latest conquest, Sam, whose hopes she could not have entirely quenched or he would not have beamed so complacently on the assembled company. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... Mr. Frederic Harrison in a late essay of his, in the words: "This view of life is not mine." The solemn declaration does not seem to me to be so annihilating to the said "view" (really a series of fugitive impressions which I have never tried to co-ordinate) as is complacently assumed. Surely it embodies a too human fallacy quite familiar in logic. Next, a knowing reviewer, apparently a Roman Catholic young man, speaks, with some rather gross instances of the suggestio falsi in his article, of "Mr. Hardy refusing consolation," the "dark gravity of his ideas," ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... archduke came before Oudenburg. Not a soul within that fortress nor in Ostend dreamed of an enemy within twenty miles of them, nor had it been supposed possible that a Spanish army could take the field for many weeks to come. The States-General at Ostend were complacently waiting for the first bulletin from Maurice announcing his capture of Nieuport and his advance upon Dunkirk, according to the program so succinctly drawn up for him, and meantime were holding meetings and drawing up comfortable protocols with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sat back complacently, and Miss Alan began as follows: "It was a novel—and I am afraid, from what I can gather, not a very nice novel. It is so sad when people who have abilities misuse them, and I must say they nearly always do. Anyhow, she left it almost finished in the Grotto of the Calvary ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... that Marion was deep in his confidence; that it was Marion who had told her of his changed condition and of his plans. It annoyed her so acutely that she could not remain in the room where she had seen her so complacently in possession. And after leaving a brief note for Philip, she went away. She stopped a hansom at the door, and told the man to drive along the Embankment—she wanted to be quite alone, and she felt she could see no one until she had thought ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... after day (we were doing all we could for her) with her indestructible, luminous smile. She could be tearful still on provocation, through the smile, but there was something about her curiously casual and calm, something that hinted almost complacently at a little mystery somewhere, as if she had up her sleeve resources that we were not allowing for. But we caught the gist of it, that we, affectionate and well-meaning, but thoroughly unbusiness-like young men, were not to worry. Her evident conviction ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... the stalk near the calyx very cautiously between his fore and middle fingers, and lifted the flower so that he could well inspect it. But even this gentle handling vexed the owner. Von Malapert courteously, indeed, but stiffly enough, and somewhat self-complacently, reminded him of the /Oculis, non manibus/.[Footnote: Eyes, not hands.—TRANS.] Von Reineck had already let go the flower, but at once took fire at the words, and said in his usual dry, serious manner, that it was quite consistent with an amateur to touch and ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... commandant at Michillimackinac,—the year was 1695,—and so was in control of the strategic point of western New France. The significance of all that he stood for, and all that he might accomplish, filled my thought as he swaggered toward me now, and I said to myself, somewhat complacently, that, with all his air of importance, I had a fuller conception than he of ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... Gherardi complacently, "You must formulate something out of a chaos of opinion. As for superstition, you will never get rid of that weakness out of the human composition. If the Church gives nothing for this particular mood of man to feed on, man will invent something else OUTSIDE the Church. My ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... which could only have killed one, so I waited to see what they would do. In my late combat with the bear, I had the anticipation of a meal off my foe, should. I prove the victor, but on this occasion I had not that incitement to exertion, for a man must be very hard up for food who could complacently dine of the flesh of a gaunt wolf at the end of winter; and even the cubs, though probably not quite such tough morsels as their parents, had already far too much muscular development to afford satisfactory employment ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... never realised. You might say the joints of her body thought and remembered, and were gladdened, but her essential self, in the immediate theatre of consciousness, talked feverishly of something else, like a nervous person at a fire. The image that she most complacently dwelt on was that of Miss Christina in her character of the Fair Lass of Cauldstaneslap, carrying all before her in the straw-coloured frock, the violet mantle, and the yellow cobweb stockings. Archie's image, on the other hand, when it presented ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pleasant it would be to tell these things in front of a nice bright fire. As we approached the ship, however, Hodgson came out to greet us, and his first question was, "What temperatures [Page 155] have you had?" We replied by complacently quoting our array of minus fifties, but he quickly cut us short by remarking that we were not ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... that the famous bordereau had been penned by him, and we laughed at the remembrance of his squabbles on this subject with the proprietress of another newspaper. How indignantly he had then denied having ever acknowledged the authorship of the bordereau, and how complacently he now admitted it! As for the circumstances under which he asserted the document to have been written, M. Zola could make nothing of them. 'So far, the explanations explain nothing,' said he; 'take them whichever way you will, there is no sense, no plausibility ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... is heard, and some young girl falls senseless on the floor. There is a momentary rustle, but it is only for a moment—all eyes are turned towards the preacher. He pauses, passes his handkerchief across his face, and looks complacently round. His voice resumes its natural tone, as with mock humility he offers up a thanksgiving for having been successful in his efforts, and having been permitted to rescue one sinner from the path of evil. He sinks back ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... be, Mary," I answered, much nettled by her tone, "I do not think anybody can properly regard me as a fool. As for the other qualification," I went on complacently, ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... to-day. SARAH — puts the ring on his finger. — There's the ring, holy father, to keep you minding of your oath until the end of time; for my heart's scalded with your fooling; and it'll be a long day till I go making talk of marriage or the like of that. MARY — complacently, ...
— The Tinker's Wedding • J. M. Synge
... replied Long Jim complacently. "I'm one that's always tryin' to do better than he did before. Ef I've yelled so I could be heard a mile then I want to yell the next time so I kin be heard a mile an' ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... likely to fight my battles for me," remarked Nick complacently, "seeing my own fighting days ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Pharisee added complacently: "The enthusiasm of his hangers-on will soon cool down when he who has promised them freedom is ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... know that it is, either," said the detective, he ran over to the washstand, and then uttered a grunt of satisfaction. "It's quite a simple matter, after all, you see," he said, glancing complacently at my colleague. "There's a ball of sand-soap on the washstand, and the basin is full of blood-stained water. You see, she must have washed the blood off her hands, and off the knife, too—a pretty cool customer she must be—and she used the sand-soap. ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... history through which we pass complacently is of no light portent, its happenings no casual concern, but, in point of crucial fact, a virtual "rending of the sphere"—a cosmic upheaval such as never yet before has racked the tense life sinews of the world, confounding the wisdom of the wise and wrecking in one fell climax ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... set about concoction of a moving sonnet in praise of Monna Vittoria de' Pazzi. Desperation loaned him extraordinary eloquence (as he complacently reflected) in addressing this obdurate woman, who had held out against his love-making for ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... hand-screen so as to shut the Major out. 'No sympathy. And what do we live for but sympathy! What else is so extremely charming! Without that gleam of sunshine on our cold cold earth,' said Mrs Skewton, arranging her lace tucker, and complacently observing the effect of her bare lean arm, looking upward from the wrist, 'how could we possibly bear it? In short, obdurate man!' glancing at the Major, round the screen, 'I would have my world all heart; and Faith is so ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... which seem beyond belief. That the Dardanelles Committee should complacently send me a message to say we "quite understand that you are adopting only a purely defensive attitude at present" is staggering when put side by side with the carbon of this, the very last cable I have sent them. "I think you ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... pipe and spectacles and fur cap, makes quite a picture as he holds baby upon his knee. Perched high upon their canopied platforms, the party can see all that is going on. No wonder the ladies look complacently at the glassy ice: with a stove for a footstool, one might sit cosily beside ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... in which barbarism masquerades. If somebody has already said that, I forgive him the mortification he causes me. At the beginning of the twentieth century barbarism can throw off its gentle disguise, and burn a man at the stake as complacently as ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... copiously diluted with water, down his throat; after which he held the whiskey-bottle, like a connoisseur, between himself and the light. "I hope," said he, "this whiskey is the raal crathur." He put the bottle to his mouth as he spoke, and on holding it a second time before his eye, he shook his head complacently—"Ay," said he, "if anything could bring the dead back to this world, my sowl to glory, but that would. Oh, thin, it would give the dead life, sure enough!" He put it once more to his lips, from which it was not ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... a scene, in which they fervently blessed each other, and agreed, henceforth, that each do his own cooking. A week later, Cuthfert neglected his morning ablutions, but none the less complacently ate the meal which he had cooked. Weatherbee grinned. After that the foolish custom of washing passed out ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... why it is," said Mrs. Atterson, complacently, after setting her teeth in the first radish and relishing its crispness, "but this seems a whole lot better than the radishes we used to buy in Crawberry. I 'spect what's your very own always seems better than other folks's," and she sighed and ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... want something, as if suffering from some neglect of Nature. And then he is such a splendid success, so hardy and vigorous. I think he enjoys the cold and the snow. His wings seem to rustle with more fervency in midwinter. If the snow falls very fast, and promises a heavy storm he will complacently sit down allow himself to be snowed under. Approaching him at such times, he suddenly bursts out of the snow at your feet, scattering the flakes in all directions, and goes humming away through the woods like a bombshell,—a picture of native spirit ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... neither, though he bowed courteously to the salute of the strangers. His companion at first seemed a little surprised, if not offended at the intrusion; but when Wycherly mentioned that they were relatives of the deceased, he also bowed complacently, and made ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... enough to annihilate the tramp, but the latter stood back and grinned complacently in ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... let us mark with what sentiments they inspired him, and in what way love always presented itself to his heart or his imagination. Ever dealing out toward him the same measure of justice and truth, people have gone on complacently repeating that his love sometimes became a very frenzy, or anon degenerated into a sensation rather than a sentiment. And his poetry has been asserted to contain proof of this in the actions, characters, and words of the persons ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... his security. The son of a rich man, he had also inherited a taste for business and the art of making money. Years of prosperity had confirmed his confidence, and he looked complacently around upon his family and talked of the ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... painters, sculptors, poets, and social reformers who have made of Soho a new Mecca. No movement in art was so modern that Dr. Kreener was not conversant with it; no development in Bolshevism so violent or so secret that Dr. Kreener could not speak of it complacently and with ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... Kent summat these three years," he answered complacently. "And I never forgets to pay back. I owed you summat, too, Miss Tennant. I haven't forgot how you spoke up for me when I was ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... descendants. The author of "Taxation no Tyranny" had wholesale opinions, and pretty harsh ones, about us Americans, and did not soften them in expression: "Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging." We smile complacently when we read this outburst, which Mr. Croker calls in question, but which agrees with his saying in the presence of Miss Seward, "I am willing to love all ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... tables had been cleared of the breakfast belongings, but on one of the small tables a white cloth had been laid, and at this spot of purity in the general desert of red plush sat Miss Brewster, who was complacently ordering what she wanted from a steward, who did not seem at all pleased in serving one who had disregarded the breakfast-hour, to the disarrangement of all saloon rules. The chief steward stood by a door and looked disapprovingly at the tardy guest. It was almost time to lay the tables ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... by Gad!" he thought, complacently, as if Sanine in a way belonged to him, also. Then he opened the gate, and went across the ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... nickname called him "Phay-ray-oh"—but behind his back, of course. To his face his debt slaves bespoke his favor obsequiously. Seeing that nearly every "Egyptian" with collateral owed him money, Mr. Britt had no fault to find with his apparent popularity. He did believe, complacently, that he was popular. A man who was less sure of himself would not have dared to appear out, all at once, with his beard dyed purple-black and with a scratch wig to match. Men gasped when they came into his office in Britt Block, but men held their faces ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... a bird taking a bareback ride on a cow? They were extremely fond of settling themselves on the cattle which browsed in the field and presented a truly comical picture as they complacently gathered in little groups on the backs of those huge animals. Moving slowly along munching the dewy grass, first on one side, then on the other, the cows did not seem particularly to mind their saucy bareback riders. Occasionally they would toss their heads backward, when up all the birds ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... surprised at the conduct of the government in complacently witnessing, for four years, the existence of a state of things in a portion of the United Kingdom itself, which was a "serious disgrace to the age, and to the government, and the country in which we live," without endeavouring, by the enactment of more stringent laws, to correct it, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Chinaman, who sat complacently smiling at the visitors, consisted of a loose blouse, blue trousers tucked into grey socks, and a pair of those native, thick-soled slippers which suggest to a Western critic the acme of discomfort. A raven, black as a bird ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... being up—keeping them in military service just the same. One gigantic young fellow, a Georgian, at least six feet three inches high, broad-sized in proportion, attired in the dirtiest, drab, well smear'd rags, tied with strings, his trousers at the knees all strips and streamers, was complacently standing eating some bread and meat. He appear'd contented enough. Then a few minutes after I saw him slowly walking along. It was plain he did not take ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... complacently at his drink while the headwaiter led Dorrine to a table on the far side of the room. She sat down gracefully, smiled at the waiter, and ordered a cocktail. Then she took a magazine from ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... be done," he muttered, bowing his head; then, turning towards the officer, who seemed complacently to wait until he had finished ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... in superb self-consciousness. "Well, well! I will not deny, Mamzelle, that it spoils us," he said complacently. "It certainly spoils us! 'When lovely woman stoops to folly,'—the hold, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... how to rank his friends than the recluse of Strawberry. He hurries the lingering guests through the little parlour, the chimneypiece of which was copied from the tomb of Ruthall, Bishop of Durham, in Westminster Abbey. Yet how he pauses complacently to enumerate what has been done for him by titled belles: how these dogs, modelled in terra-cotta, are the production of Anne Darner; a water-colour drawing by Agnes Berry; a landscape with gipsies by Lady Di Beauclerk;—all platonically devoted to our Horace; ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... been enacted. Our coast trade, under regulations wisely framed at the beginning of the Government and since, shows results for the past fiscal year unequaled in our records or those of any other power. We shall fail to realize our opportunities, however, if we complacently regard only matters at home and blind ourselves to the necessity of securing our share in the valuable carrying ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... and go-ahead as they felt to themselves, did not seem to Ishmael nearly as wonderful as the 'seventies, which had seen so much deeper changes. This world—in which people now moved so complacently talking of Ibsen and Wilde, of weird Yellow Books of which he heard from Judith, and many other things all designated as fin-de-siecle—he had seen it in the making. The very children growing up in his house, the plump little Ruth and the clever, impatient Lissa, they thought ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... lo! high in the air, behind a lofty chestnut tree, the figure of a Pulcinello did appear, hopping and vaulting in the unsubstantial air. Now it sent forth another shrill, piercing sound, and now, with both its hands, it patted and complacently stroked its ample paunch; dancing all the time with unremitting activity, and wagging its queer head at the ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... complacently, meanwhile refilling Mike's glass. "While we were on active service together, I've seen you go through all kinds of things and never look like this. What is it? Reaction from this afternoon's—or, pardon me—yesterday ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... comes a day when his favourite sins all forsake him, And he complacently thinks he has forsaken ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... most shady and secluded bench, an ideal seat for any gallant young Baron who had left his Baroness sufficiently far away. He glanced down complacently upon his brawny knees, displayed (he could not but think) to great advantage beneath his kilt and sporran, and then with a tenderer complacency, turned his gaze ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... another half-hour, an indulgence she would not have ventured under her daughter's observant eyes. Like many people who defy public opinion in large matters, she was acutely sensitive to criticism over trifles. Aspersions of her character she accepted philosophically, almost complacently indeed, because of her inward conviction that they were indirectly a tribute paid by jealousy to her superior fascinations. But a suggestion that a dress was unbecoming would make her unhappy ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... confessed, was the first exclamation of Rose-Pompon, though Philemon, to whom it was not addressed, had returned after a long absence; but the student far from being shocked at seeing himself thus sacrificed to his long-earned companion, smiled complacently, rejoicing at the success of his ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of yourself. You well-to-do people, for instance, who are here to-night, will go to 'Divine service' next Sunday, all nice and tidy, and your little children will have their tight little Sunday boots on, and lovely little Sunday feathers in their hats; and you'll think, complacently and piously, how lovely they look! So they do: and you love them heartily and you like sticking feathers in their hats. That's all right: that is charity; but it is charity beginning at home. Then you will come to the poor little crossing-sweeper, got up also,—it, in its Sunday dress,—the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... uneasy, watching her father anxiously after the dinner was over, until Sutphen proposed to have some music and begged the captain to sing. Then she was quite happy, sat closer to him, taking his hand, and as his cracked voice piped manfully out some ancient drinking-song she nodded complacently and beat the time softly with his hand ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... title: not enough of fighting. Of punishment I am a glutton, or so my friends are pleased to say. A brace of oxen, a drove of sheep or two, are enough for me," the Giant went on complacently, but forgetting to mention that the sheep and the oxen were the property of other people. "Where am I to put you till your friends come and pay your ransom?" the Giant asked again, and stared at Jaqueline ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... jewel's a duck in a toad's eye," misquoted Betty complacently; "at least, that is what Fanny said, and I think she ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... challenge through the French lines. A visitor knowing Arabic and Shilha, and able to discount the stories properly, might have had a faithful picture of Morocco as its own people see it, had he been admitted to join the weather-worn, hardy traders who sat complacently eyeing their diminished store towards the close of day. Truth is nowhere highly esteemed in Morocco,[52] and the colouring superimposed upon most stories must have destroyed their original hue, but it served to please the Moors ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... say in that part of the country I come from,' observed Peg, complacently, 'but I ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... with one who thinks as I do," she said complacently, and plucking a half-blown rose that hung near her, she turned its petals sharply down as if they were plaits of a hem that she was about ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... eighteenth century in France, and began about 1750, were the development of the intellectual movement of the seventeenth, which had changed the outlook of speculative thought. It was one continuous rationalistic movement. In the days of Racine and Perrault men had been complacently conscious of the enlightenment of the age in which they were living, and as time went on, this consciousness became stronger and acuter; it is a note of the age of Voltaire. In the last years of Louis XIV., and in the years which followed, the contrast between this mental enlightenment and ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... by some verses printed in the "Morning Herald" of March 12th, 1782, which attracted much attention. They were commonly attributed to Mr. (afterwards Sir W.W.) Pepys, and Madame d'Arblay, who alludes to them complacently, thought them his; but he subsequently repudiated the authorship, and the editor of her Memoirs believes that they were written by Dr. Burney. They were provoked by the proneness of the Herald to indulge in complimentary allusions to ladies ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... criticism of the kind we advocate as 'always asking people to do what they can't.' But to point out, as the philosophical critic would, that poetry itself must inevitably languish if the more comprehensive kinds are neglected, or if a non-poetic age is allowed complacently to call itself lyrical, is not to urge the real masters in the less comprehensive kinds to desert their work. Who but a fool would ask Mr De la Mare to write an epic or Miss Mansfield to give us a novel? But he might be a wise man who called upon Mr Eliot to set himself to the composition ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... earth in the incarnate state, since he came to declare to men that they were not estranged from him, but had always been, and still were, in harmony with him. Men are not craven enemies of God, which error a harsh theology would make them believe. They are his friends, for Christ regarded them complacently as such; and the atonement must not be deemed the reconciliation of sinful humanity and angry Deity, but as the first manifestation of an ever-existing unity of the two parties. We need not pass through the long ordeal of repentance to be placed in the relation of ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... five-and-thirty; he had been a student for ten years already. I can see even now his rather long pale face, his little brown eyes, his long hawk nose crooked at the end, his thin sarcastic lips, his solemn upstanding shock of hair, and his chin that lost itself complacently in the wide striped cravat of the colour of a raven's wing, the shirt front with bronze buttons, the open blue frock-coat and striped waistcoat.... I can hear his unpleasantly jarring laugh.... He went everywhere, was conspicuous at all possible kinds of 'dancing classes.' ... I remember I could ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... would have been thought the effect of melancholy; but here appeared to have been contracted by his commerce with the Spaniards, who are remarkable for that severity of countenance. Understanding from Don Antonio that we were his countrymen, he saluted us all round very complacently, and fixing his eyes attentively on me, uttered a deep sigh. I had been struck with a profound veneration for him at his first coming into the room; and no sooner observed this expression of his sorrow, directed, as it were, in a particular manner to me, that my ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... Sophy—grant that she had been loyally wooed—must not that attachment be fruitless—be fatal? If Lionel were really now adopted by Darrell, Waife knew human nature too well to believe that Darrell would complacently hear Lionel ask a wife in her whose claim to his lineage had so galled and incensed him. It was while plunged in these torturing reflections that Lady Montfort (not many minutes after Sophy's song had ceased and her form vanished) had come to visit ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... earnestly at her emaciated face. She put her fingers on the burning temples and wrist, and counted accurately the pulsations of the lava tide, then bent her queenly head, and listened to the heavily drawn breathing. A haughty smile lit her fine features as she said complacently: "A mere tempest in a teacup. Pshaw, this girl will not mar my projects long. By noon tomorrow she will be in eternity. I thought, the first time I saw her ghostly face, she would trouble me but a short season. What paradoxes men are! What on earth possessed Guy, with his fastidious taste, to bring ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... "There," said the friar, complacently, and rubbing his hands, "that is no piece of bungling, eh? As like the stout earl as ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thrilled. My common sense was thrilled, I suppose; but it was all very joyous, gripping hold of the tangible world for the first time. And when I came to you, warm with the glow of adventure, you looked blankly, then smiled indulgently and did not answer. You regarded my ardour complacently. A passing humour of adolescence, you thought; and I thought: "Dane does not read his Draper on his knees." Wordsworth was great to me; Draper was great also. You had no patience with him, and I know now, as I felt then, your consistent ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... all, it is probable that they would have informed the unfortunate prisoner of his real relations to his captor. In these circumstances, Chivers's half satirical suggestion that Collinson should be added to the sentries outside, and guard his own property, was surlily assented to by Riggs, and complacently accepted by the others. Chivers offered to post him himself,—not without an interchange of meaning glances with Riggs,—Collinson's own gun was returned to him, and the strangely assorted pair left ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... His fall-wheat was all down by the proper period, fifteenth of September; for it is found that the earlier the seed is sown, the stronger is the plant by the critical time of its existence, and the better able to withstand frost and rust. Complacently he looked over the broad brown space, variegated with charred stumps, which occupied fully a twelfth of the cleared land; and stimulated by the pleasures of hope, he calculated on thirty-five bushels an acre next summer ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... not like it; she did not like it at all, for, in her own quiet way, she was accustomed to queen it among her associates, and could ill brook the idea of a rival. She had not been happy at school, but she had been complacently conscious that of all the thirty girls she was the most discussed, the most observed, and also, among the pupils themselves, the most beloved. At the vicarage she was an easy first. When the three girls went out walking, she was always in the middle, with ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... excretions. Instead of evacuating downwards, on the superannuated principle, the Crioceris' larva evacuates upwards and receives upon its back the waste products of the intestine, materials which move from back to front as each fresh pat is dabbed upon the others. Reaumur has complacently described how the quilt moves forward from the tail to the head by wriggling along inclined planes, making so many dips in the undulating back. There is no need to return to this stercoral mechanism after the master has ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... room, which had just heard the romance of her youth, had come to have a dismantled and desolate look. The agent of this destruction, who saw in her mind's eye a new scene, altogether surpassing the old, looked complacently upon her work, and piled the abstracted articles on the top of each other, with a pleasant ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... American complacently, tapping the barrel of the old rifle he had brought ashore as his most valued possession, and spoken of as the gift of his deceased grandfather, "I guess Colonel Crockett haar ken give a sorter good account of 'em. When I draws a bead with ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... woman whose name was Dull, and her choice of companions—Simple, Sloth, Presumption, Short-mind, Slow-pace, No-heart, Linger-after-lust, and Sleepy-head. These are the natural associates of Madam Dull. The danger of dulness, whether natural or acquired, is the danger of complacently lingering among stupid and conventional ideas, and losing all the bright interchange of the larger world. The dull people are not, as a rule, the simple people—they are generally provided with a narrow ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... history into all of his work, but they appear most clearly in his Terro-Human Future History. While not everyone will agree with Piper's theories they give his work a bite that most popular fiction lacks. One cannot read Piper complacently. And one can often find a wry insight sandwiched in between the blood ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... his shoulders and obeyed in silence. Young Si was not a person to be trifled with. The catch was large and it was late before they finished. Snuffy surveyed the full barrels complacently. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... an accomplished young woman of considerable refinement and of a highly strung nervous temperament, string flies with her needle on a piece of thread, and watch complacently their flutterings. Cruelty may remain latent till, by some accident. it is aroused, and then it will break forth in a devouring flame. It is the same with the passion for blood as with the passions of love and hate; we have no conception of the violence with which they can rage till circumstances ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... and he discovers here and there a pontiff who but little in his moral character resembles Him Whose Vicar he is. He meets an apostate priest; he hears of some savagery committed in Christ's name; he talks with a convert who has returned complacently to the City of Confusion; there is gleefully related to him the history of a family who has kept the faith all through the period of persecution and lost it in the era of toleration. And he is shaken and dismayed. "How can these be in a Society that is Divine? I had trusted that it ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... apparently possessed a combination of business shrewdness and brusque frankness that strongly impressed his landlord. "You see, Rosey," said Nott, complacently describing the interview to his daughter, "when I sorter intimated in a keerless kind o' way that sugar kettles and hair dye was about played out ez securities, he just planked down the money for two months in advance. 'There,' sez he, 'that's your security—now ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... the quiet fields! But involuntarily his eyes were drawn to the hill beyond, where showed a light in a window of the Manor. To-morrow he would go there: he had much to say to Madame Chalice. The moon was lying off above the edge of hills, looking out on the world complacently, like an indulgent janitor scanning the sleepy street ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... woman's, quiet of manner yet affable, he was the most picturesque person at the cottage. But there was always something smoldering in those sleepy eyes of his that suggested to Kitty a mockery. It was not that recognizable mockery of all those visiting Englishmen who held themselves complacently superior to their generous American hosts. It was as though he were silently laughing at all he saw, at all which happened about him, as if he stood in the midst of some huge joke which he alone was capable of understanding: ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... out with clicking teeth. "Yes, I know the spawn—complacently pecking at him for his Father Damien letter, analyzing ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... dat," he said, complacently, "but dat didn't have no recose to dese solemn recasions when I rip-ripresents a gent'man in ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... vows, and her head as force forward by her brother into a sign of consent; while the favoured lover of her whole lifetime agreed to the sacrifice in order to purchase the vengeance for which he thirsted, and her mother, the corrupter of her own children, looked complacently on at her ready-dug pit of treachery ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that I had some such power," answered the king complacently; "though amid my toils and the burdens of state I have had, as you say, little ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... working-class to this day. Care has been taken to give the brutal profit-greed of the bourgeoisie a hypocritical, civilised form, to restrain the manufacturers through the arm of the law from too conspicuous villainies, and thus to give them a pretext for self-complacently parading their sham philanthropy. That is all. If a new commission were appointed to-day, it would find things pretty much as before. As to the extemporised compulsory attendance at school, it remained wholly a dead letter, since the Government failed to provide ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... and confusion in the camp. The horses were bridled, saddled, and mounted, and rapidly ridden out on the road I had taken; but by the time the pursuers reached the timber I was high up the mountain side, and complacently watched them as they hurried by. As I ran from my prison-house I fixed my eye upon Venus, the morning star, as my guide, and traveled until daylight, when I reached the summit of the mountain, where I found a sedge-grass field of about ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... power of idealization. He has merely photographed what he has seen, and his stock is exhausted. It is wonderful what a quantity of the mere lees of such writers, more and more watered down, the libraries go on complacently circulating, and the reviews go on complacently reviewing. Of course, this power of idealization is the great gift of genius. It is that which distinguishes Homer, Shakespeare, and Walter Scott, from ordinary men. But ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... those fight hardest who fight in vain," remarked Lord Ronald Prior complacently. "But I should have thought a woman of your intellect would have known better. It's such a rank waste of energy ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... courage than a woman. All the women are on the side of the good Bourgeois: he is an honest merchant—sells cheap, and cheats nobody!" Babet looked down very complacently upon her new gown, which had been purchased at a great bargain at the magazine of the Bourgeois. She felt rather the more inclined to take this view of the question inasmuch as Jean had grumbled, just a little—he would not do more—at his wife's vanity in buying a ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... proceeding. It was not so much the humiliation of owning to him such a fatal act of piracy upon his province, as because she believed him to have been the cause that the poor had all this time been cheated of the full value of the estate. He had complacently consulted the welfare of the Curtis family, by charging them with the rent of the fields as ordinary grass land, and it had never dawned on him that it would be only just to increase the rent. Rachel ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it to me. The last time he was in this room, about six months ago, he—well, let us say he borrowed, without a word to me, five or six marks that were lying loose on the writing-table. Yes, it's a fact," she repeated, complacently eyeing Maurice's dismay. "Otherwise?—oh, otherwise, he was born, I think, with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has one piece of luck after another. Zeppelin discovered him ten years ago, on a concert-tour—his father is a smith in Warsaw—and brought him to Leipzig. He was ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the event which gave to the whole of that country a unity in allegiance, and to which a misgoverned people complacently submitted, was as inevitable as it was momentous. But whatever may have been its ultimate consequences, this treacherous and violent seizure of the territory and possessions of an unsuspecting ally was no less a breach of private ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... observed Miss Darrell complacently. 'I have done my best to persuade her in public and private to amuse herself and not give way to her feelings of lassitude. "Do a little, but not much," I have often said to her; but with Gladys it ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the top floor, behind sound-proof doors," his hostess explained complacently, "and have orders to answer only when I ring, even if they should happen to hear anything. I've a passion for privacy in my own ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... skull, and putting it on his shoulders,—and all appearing greatly startled, only half awake, and at a loss what to do next. Some devils are dragging away the damned by the heels and on sledges, and above sits the Redeemer and some angelic and sainted people, looking complacently down ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the supper dishes, and then came out with the milk-pails to the corral where the cows, puffing and chewing, complacently awaited her arrival. But she had not reached the gate when the hired man was at her side and had slipped one of ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... got 'em where they live," went on Baker, complacently, without attention to this. "You don't catch Little Willie scattering shekels when he can just as well keep kopecks. They've left a little joker in the pack." He produced a paper-covered copy of the new regulations, ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... home you do not talk nonsense at dinner, you probably join in sensible talk. Well, do not alter because you are with girls, and say complacently in your heart "How silly the others are!" Your neighbours would not be silly if you did not admire it. You yourself are part of the mass you are criticizing. On which side do your words go—talk or chatter? Watch yourselves, and see how your words, each ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby |
