"Smugly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seems to me that the limitations, or rather the dangers, of the pragmatic tendency, are analogous to those which beset the unwary followers of the 'natural sciences.' Chemistry and physics are eminently pragmatic and many of their devotees, smugly content with the data that their weights and measures furnish, feel an infinite pity and disdain for all students of philosophy and meta-physics, whomsoever. And of course everything can be expressed- -after ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... I'll tell you now that your subjects of conversation always bored me. I make no pretences; I frankly do not care for what you so smugly designate as 'the things of the mind' and 'things worth while.' I am no hypocrite: I like well bred, well dressed people; I like what they do and say and think. Their characters may be negative as you say, but their poise and freedom from demonstration ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... need a few more optimists Of iron hearts and sturdy wrists; Not optimists who smugly smile And preach that in a little while The clouds will fade before the sun, But cheerful men who'll bear a gun, And hopeful men, of courage stout, Who'll see disaster round about And yet will keep their faith, and fight, And ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... could not possibly be so terrible as they are painted, otherwise the camp would be certain to reveal a high mortality. On the other hand the death-rate at Sennelager is strikingly low, and the German officials smile contentedly while the Press comforts itself smugly. ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... Augustine's thought influenced the world for centuries. Then we may take a long jump and come down to St. Thomas, the great Scholastic of the thirteenth century. To get acquainted with him, we may turn to the English versions by Rickaby, Aquinas Ethicus. Those of us who are smugly satisfied at belonging to the twentieth century must remind ourselves that there were great men in the thirteenth, and that many among our contemporaries are still listening to them. We Protestant teachers of philosophy are sometimes in danger of forgetting this. ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... it would not exist) has perhaps a dozen houses intact, looking strangely bourgeois, almost out of place, so smugly whole where all else has perished. Yet it was a comfort to see them, and wonderful to ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Montez, Memoires accompagnes de lettres intimes de S.M. le Roi de Baviere et de Lola Montez, ornes des portraits, sur originaux donnes par eux a l'auteur, purporting to be written by their subject. "I owe my readers," he makes her say smugly, "the exact truth. They must judge between my enemies and myself." But, in his character of a Peeping Tom, very little truth was expended by Papon. Thus, he declares that, during her sojourn in the land of the mountains and William Tell, she had a series of affaires ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... had tightened at Porter's tone when he began, but he had relaxed by the time the millionaire had finished, and was even managing to look smugly tolerant. Elshawe had thumbed the button on his minirecorder when the conversation had begun, and he was chuckling mentally at the thought of what was going down on the thin, magnetite-impregnated, plastic thread that was hissing ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett
... overt act that proved it....She felt something crumbling within her....It was the last of the fairy edifice of her romance...of her first, her real, youth....What was to take its place? The future smugly secure on six thousand a year and an inviolate social position...a good dull husband...not ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... his approaches, the theory that their tastes were, blissfully, just the same. He was for ever reminding her of that, rejoicing over it and being affectionate and wise about it. There were times when she wondered how in the world she could "put up with" him, how she could put up with any man so smugly unconscious of the immensity of her difference. It was just for this difference that, if she was to be liked at all, she wanted to be liked, and if that was not the source of Mr. Mudge's admiration, she asked herself what on earth could be? She was ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... lethargic, its traders were timid or slothful, its people possessed none of that audacity and adventure which had sent Frenchmen like Du Lhut and La Verendrye into the wilds intent on territory or trade. They yawned and were content with the trade which came their way. It seemed as though they smugly counted on their business virtue to attract, and their yearly gifts and patronage to allure the fur-hunting tribes. A world lay spread around them, and they remained at the doors of their posts and forts. No joy of the woods possessed them, no faith in the future drew ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... for F to rub her hands smugly and say, "We're on the right track, all right"? Weve been on the right track for months, but the train doesnt ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... visited Susan that night: sometimes she saw Gambetta's comfortable furry face, which seemed to smile smugly at her; and then it changed; and there was Sophia Jane frowning angrily, with terribly bright eyes. The first thing she saw when she woke in the morning was the collar, which she had put on a chair by her bedside, and she at ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... it often—let me now. Do you think I haven't realized all along that what you said of me is true—that I have done nothing? Done nothing but succeed smugly in keeping myself in comfort outside the modern economic treadmill! What else could I do? I'm no orator, to convince other people. I haven't any universal panacea to offer! I'm only an inarticulate countryman, a farmer's son, with the education the state gives everyone—who am I, to try to ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... The pollsters said that their samplings had shown a strong leaning toward the President at first, but that eight weeks of campaigning had started a switch toward Cannon, and that the movement seemed to be accelerating. The antipollsters, as usual, simply smiled smugly and ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... not exclusive roadhouse, with the bouncing giggles of girls inside spoiling the spring night, he studied the background as once he had studied his father's woodshed. He was not, unfortunately, shocked by wine and women. But he was bored by box-trees. There was a smugly clipped box-tree on either side of the carriage entrance, the leaves like cheap green lacquer in the glare of the arc-light, which brought out all the artificiality of the gray-and-black cinder drive. He felt that five pilgrimages to even ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... rate of taxation; this meant the reduction of the standing army. He secured new and advantageous treaties with old and historic foes, putting Graustark's financial credit upon a high footing in the European capitals. The people smugly regarded themselves as safe in the hands of the miserly but honest old financier. If he accomplished many things by way of office to enhance his own particular fortune, no one looked askance, for he made no effort to ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... panel game—much as a black paramour might work it down in the Tenderloin—on certain councilmen, led them into a trap, and then exposed them—an achievement in confused morals that has not been permitted to go unapplauded. There are those, of course, in every city who could think fondly and smugly of themselves as doing, in this way, preeminently the will of God; and such deeds not infrequently ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... say, they managed to prolong the interview until within ten minutes of Deraa, when the Syrian returned to his companions smiling smugly and Narayan Singh strode after him, to stand in the corridor and by ostentatiously watching them prevent their ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy |
