"Complacent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he cried, and gave a wringing motion of his hands, for the self-esteem of a complacent man is not torn away without agony. "Who else but you? I had thought myself brave enough to be silent, but still I must play the coward's part! That woman I told you of—that woman I loved—was you! Yes, you, you!" he ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... without reading. As I grew older, I couldn't pass a book-shop without going in. And in libraries, where reading was free, I always read to excess. The people around me glorified the habit (just as old songs praise drinking). I never had the slightest suspicion that it might be a vice. I was as complacent over my book totals as six ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... the very day after the dance—why, I could have rubbed my eyes, when I went down to a late breakfast, to find Mrs. Baker chirping with sleepy amiability, and Milly doling out complacent gossip to Ethel. The very sky had fallen for me to gather rainbow gold—and here we were living prose ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... nothing else, he resembled the immortal Shakespeare; and his bosom was broad and snowy as the swan's; and his pumps were glossy as the raven's wing; and he was going dinnerward, with a winsome damsel on his arm and a complacent smile of self-conceit upon his countenance, when the smooth soles of these new and shining shoes suddenly performed a rapid evolution, as though they were skates upon ice; and there was a little shriek from the winsome damsel in particular, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... in the latter category, Master Pothier?" Philibert spoke doubtingly, for a more self-complacent face than his companion's he never saw—every wrinkle trembled with mirth; eyes, cheeks, chin, and brows surrounded that jolly red nose of his like a group of gay boys round ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... NED. [Growing complacent.] Now my dear child, you are worrying yourself over trifles. [His second hand joins the first in holding her hands.] Women do it every day. Because you have changed your mind, or did not know you mind, because you have—to use an ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... fellow! he doesn't know how to live!" said Raymond in complacent pity. He himself, of course, had but to assemble all the bright-hued elements that awaited him a few months ahead to make his own life a ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... Report came from the fleet—keeping pace with the land army along the coasts—that nowhere had the weak squadrons of the Greeks adventured a stand. Daily the smile of the Lord of the World grew more complacent, as his "table-companions" told him: "The rumour of your Eternity's advent stupefies the miserable Hellenes. Like Atar, the Angel of Fire, your splendour glitters afar. You will enter Athens and Sparta, and no sword leave its sheath, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... perhaps the seemingly overwhelming strength of the enemy, and the listlessness of thousands who would hail freedom with rapture, but who now stand aloof in despair—and along with all this and intensifying it, the voice of our self-complacent practical friend, who has but sarcasm for a high impulse, and for an immutable principle the latest expedient of the hour. Through such an experience must the soldier of freedom live. But as surely as such an ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... the already recorded answers. They insist on scrutinising the moral world afresh; they resolve the magniloquent vocabulary of abstract ethics into the small realities from which it has come; they break the complacent repose of opinion and usage by a graphic irony. "The definitions of moral beings," said Diderot, "are always made from what such beings ought to be, and never from what they are. People incessantly confound duty with the thing as it is."[293] We shall ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... of Israel's faith was the existence of evil in its most painful form of the successful and complacent sinner, the oppressor of good men. This problem our Psalm takes, not, like other Psalms, in its cruel bearing upon the people of God, but in its mysterious growth in the character of the wicked man. Through four verses of vivid realism we follow the progress of sin. Then, when eye ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... was naturally so self-complacent as to be seldom disposed to anger, but its rarity was not due to ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... indifferent to the shortcomings of our society, or complacent about our institutions, or blind to the lingering inequities—then we would have lost ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Richard Nixon • Richard Nixon
... barrel at the complacent Buddha, where it clanked to the marble flags. And he withered like the lotus, sprawling upon his back with his eyes tightly shut, the color fast disappearing ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... this complacent remark Thad coolly walked over to the shelf where some of their cooking utensils stood, took down the battered old coffeepot, and throwing back the lid, thrust ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... distinctly, not only the amount of misery in the world, but the amount of misdirected energy, the dulness of the average intellect, and the vast deadweight of superstition and dread of the light with which all improvement must have to reckon. And yet I also feel that, if a complacent optimism be impossible, the world was never so full of interest. When we complain of the stress and strain and over-excitement of modern society we indicate, I think, a real evil; but we also tacitly admit that no one has any excuse ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the drawing, at which Zani labored with a young girl's complacent absorption in something she knows will be approved by a grown-up when it's done. With a gesture, Gail invited ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... reached the steps and skimmed undauntedly up them. She did indeed look angry and disturbed. Without any preliminary greeting she burst out into a tirade that simply took away her complacent foe's breath. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... afflict Buster?" he said, doubtfully; then—because at that moment Edith banged into the room to show her shuddering mother a garter snake she had captured—he added, with complacent subtlety, "as for food, I, personally, prefer a dinner of herbs with an interesting woman, than a stalled ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... man produced a box and at the same time brought out with it a little notebook and a playing card which happened to be in his pocket. The young man took the matches and lit his pipe, surveying the old man the while with a more complacent eye. ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... before each god, the father and mother god of the household, Dong-Yung placed her offering. She stood off a moment, surveying them in pleased satisfaction—the round, blue bowls, with the faint tracery of light; the complacent gods above, red and green and crimson, so age-long, comfortably ensconced in their warm stove corner. She made swift obeisance with her hands and body before those ancient idols. A slant of sunshine swept in from the high windows and fell over ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... like disowning so many of his children when in cold blood he scrutinizes his offspring. The letter in its entirety (it is unpublished) is proof, were any needed, that he had a high artistic ideal which kept him nobly dissatisfied with his endeavor. There is in him neither pose nor complacent self-satisfaction. To an American, whom he was bidding good-by at his own gate, he said: "If I had my books to do over again, I should try harder to make sure their influence was good." His aims, ethical and artistic, throughout his work, can be relied upon as high and noble. His ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... and in the course of a three-mile drive down Broadway, she had time, while standing in the middle of an omnibus, where were seated nine young gentlemen, for much complacent comparison of the manners of the two cities. Indeed, after twelve hours of attentive study, Miselle discovered but two points of superiority in the New Babylon over the Modern Athens, and these were chocolate-creams and policemen: the first were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... sacrificed the chief of his sovereign rights— that of dispensing with his parliament, and thus depriving liberty of its organ. An innate horror at the sight of a naked sword averted him from the most just of wars; while his favourite Buckingham practised on his weakness, and his own complacent vanity rendered him an easy dupe of Spanish artifice. While his son-in-law was ruined, and the inheritance of his grandson given to others, this weak prince was imbibing, with satisfaction, the incense which was ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... first-class passengers, leaning on the thwartship rails close by, looked on, with complacent satisfaction or half-contemptuous pity. Among them stood Mrs. Hastings, Miss Winifred Rawlinson, and Agatha. It was noticed that Wyllard, with a pipe in his hand, sat on a hatch forward, near the head of the gangway. Agatha drew ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... infinitely, by infinitude of change. (Audible murmurs of 'Worse and worse!' 'As if we could be got over that way!' &c. The LECTURER, however, observing the expression of the features to be more complacent, proceeds.) And the most curious mimicry, if not of your changes of fashion, at least of your various modes (in healthy periods) of national costume, takes place among the crystals of different countries. With a little experience, it is quite possible to say at ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... his form expanding, his face in a glow, paying assiduous attention to Mrs. Markham, who used him as she would. He watched them a little, and, though he liked Mrs. Markham, he reflected that he would not be quite so complacent if he were in ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... perhaps, a secure and sufficient answer. We are to respect our responsibilities, not ourselves. We are to respect the duties of which we are capable, but not our capabilities simply considered. There is to be no complacent self-contemplation, beruminating upon self. When self is viewed, it must always be in the most intimate connection with its purposes. How well were it if persons would be more careful, or rather, more conscientious, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... hour. Sinclair stayed on simply because he suspected that his wife wished him indoors. He read aloud inane items of village news from the weekly paper, and only the veiled mockery of his eyes betrayed the fact that he was not the most devoted and the most complacent of husbands. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... they carry on a most romantic flirtation, that of course means nothing; and each one of these fair students, (who conscientiously puts a "g" to every termination possible, and who says monseer,) will tell you, with a complacent smile, that Professor —— considers her pronunciation unusually excellent. They are all studying in the blissful anticipation of a trip to Paris, where they will be presented to the Empress in yellow ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... activities. The result of this combination and material expansion, however, was to create great corporations which began to get control of things. The same spirit of combination entered into politics and we had machines and bosses which lent their hand to, and furnished a complacent instrument for, corporations. Time was when they ordered delegates in a convention with the same degree of certainty that the order would be supplied, as they did steel rails or any other commodity. That time has passed and why? Because the danger of plutocracy forced ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... and inexplicable resentment against this complacent historical outrage suddenly took possession of Peter. He knew that his rage was inconsistent with his usual calm, but he could not help it! His swarthy cheek glowed, his dark eyes flashed, he almost trembled with ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... moreover, in Burke a Platonic idealism which made him, like later thinkers of the school, regard existing difficulties with something akin to complacent benevolence. What interested him was the idea of the English State; and whatever, as he thought, deformed it, was not of the essence of its nature. He denied, that is to say, that the degree to which ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... begin to yield. I know of nothing that makes one feel more complacent, in these July days, than to have his vegetables from his own garden. What an effect it has on the market-man and the butcher! It is a kind of declaration of independence. The market-man shows me his peas and beets and tomatoes, and supposes he shall send me out some with the meat. "No, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the churches do not understand them or sympathize with the social and industrial disabilities of the men. They feel that the ideals of life for which the Church stands are dull, dim, and altogether unnatural; its standard of comfort and complacent respectability makes no appeal to them and they have no part or lot in it. They feel that this respectability of the Church is quite in keeping with flagrant selfishness in social and industrial relationships, that the Church is largely in the possession of the privileged classes, who monopolize ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... I recall quite distinctly that he had a luxuriant crop of chin-whiskers but even these did not disturb the procedure of that school. We accepted him as he was, whiskers included, and went on our complacent way. He was blind in one eye and somewhat deaf, but no one ever thought of him as abnormal or subnormal. Even if we had known these words we should have been too polite to apply them to him. In fact, we had no black-list, of any sort, in that school. I have never been able to determine whether ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... any of them came here. Pacicchelli did, however, in the seventeenth century, though he has left us no description of the place. He crossed the whole Sila from the Ionian to the other sea. I like this amiable and loquacious creature, restlessly gadding about Europe, gloriously complacent, hopelessly, absorbed in trivialities, and credulous beyond belief. In fact (as the reader may have observed), I like all these old travellers, not so much for what they actually say, as for their implicit outlook upon life. This Pacicchelli was a fellow of our Royal Society, and ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... nor esteemed, neither laughed at nor courted; he is there universally despised. He studies to be thought a gentleman; but the native porter breaks through the veil of a ridiculously affected and outre politeness. Notwithstanding the complacent grimaces of his face, the self-sufficiency of his looks, his systematically powdered and dressed hair, his showy dress, his counted and short bows, and his presumptuous conversation, teeming with ignorance, vulgarity, and obscenity, he cannot escape ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Yudhishthira that had not food and drink and ornaments. And eighty-eight thousands of Snataka Brahmanas leading domestic lives, all supported by Yudhishthira, with thirty serving-girls given unto each, gratified by the king, always pray with complacent hearts for the destruction of his foes. And ten thousands of other ascetics with vital seed drawn up, daily eat of golden plates in Yudhishthira's palace. And, O king, Yajnaseni, without having eaten herself, daily seeth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... problem. We whose lives assume little, require little of them. Intangible objections to the desires of our hearts do not count for much against their realization; there needs the rough attrition of reality to turn back our calm, complacent acquisition of that which we see to be for our best interest in the emotional world. Claims of ancestry mean nothing. Claims of society mean not much more. Claims of wealth are considered as evanescent among a class of men who, by their ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... further than this, Mr. Winkle,' continued Mr. Phunky, in a most smooth and complacent manner. 'Did you ever see anything in Mr. Pickwick's manner and conduct towards the opposite sex, to induce you to believe that he ever contemplated matrimony of late ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... accordingly must study the ways and means of pleasing; which makes her an agreeable voisine at table. As she never doubts either her own powers to persuade, or yours to appreciate them, her language is at once self-complacent, and full of good-will to her neighbour; whilst the vanity of a Frenchman thus leads him to seek popularity, it seems enough to an Englishman that he is one entitled to justify himself, in his own eyes, for being as disagreeable ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... his hair one second, and wringing his hands the next, and seemed perfectly incapable of giving one order, or assisting his clerks in bringing the dripping goods from the basement. Very unlike the complacent, diamond-pin young man we had ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... in his eyes, is all concentrated in his own mind; he is up at his loom, weaving and weaving, to set the landscape to words. This one peers about, as he goes, among the grasses; he waits by the canal to watch the dragon-flies; he leans on the gate of the pasture, and cannot look enough upon the complacent kine. And here comes another, talking, laughing, and gesticulating to himself. His face changes from time to time, as indignation flashes from his eyes or anger clouds his forehead. He is composing articles, delivering orations, and conducting the most ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hoped to provoke an answer, it was in vain; the King deigned him no further notice. Resuming his seat, Edmund continued to talk quietly with the Earl, a half-smile playing about his complacent chin. ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... extensive library of Dr. Priestley was left unnoticed and unlamented by the orthodox poet, who probably felt a complacent satisfaction at the destruction of heterodox books, the owner being ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... curiosity to study the learned languages is not to have any vocation at all for literature: it is to be destitute of liberal curiosity and of enthusiasm; to mistake a self-sufficient and superficial dogmatism for philosophy, and that complacent indolence which is the bane of all improvement, for a proof of the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... at him one might fancy that Neptune having found a deserted ship, had clambered upon deck and sat him down to take a complacent view of his wide domains, ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... father's death. He would be quite likely to keep this hidden from the girl for a while, until he tried his luck at love. If love failed, then the disclosure might be made to drive the young woman to him; a threat to render her complacent. The negro evidently knew very little as to what had occurred, merely the floating gossip of the slave quarters, and some few things the doctor had mentioned. But there was a man living at the Landing who would be informed as to all ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... smile, a smile that lighted the eyes with the radiance of good fellowship and that crinkled the corners into tiny, genial lines. It was provocative of smiles, for she found herself smiling a silent greeting in return as she continued stating to Ware her grievance against O'Hay's too-complacent praise of Bauer. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... "sensibility." Even the family troubles could not damp his ardour. His father had embarked on questionable speculations, which now threatened the Buonapartes with bankruptcy, unless the French Government proved to be complacent and generous. With the hope of pressing one of the family claims on the royal exchequer, the second son procured an extension of furlough and sped to Paris. There at the close of 1787 he spent several weeks, hopefully endeavouring ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... more polished, the sciences are cultivated, and the religion which they have coolly and carefully examined loses sensibly its credit. It is thus that we see so many incredulous people in the bosom of society become more agreeable and complacent now than formerly, when it depended on the caprice of a priest to involve them in troubles, and to invite the people to crimes in the hope ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... against me and hates me." Why should this miserable "Wo!" enter the heart of a Christian upon the occasion of a little trouble? If he were filled with the knowledge of God as he should be, and as many secure, self-complacent spirits imagine themselves to be, he would not thus fear and make outcry. His agitation and his complaint, "O Lord God! why dost thou permit me to suffer this?" are evidence that he as yet knows not God's will, or at least has but a faint conception of it; the wo ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... Westcote it would have been hard to find in England. He stood with a hand negligently resting on his left hip— the word hip,—his right foot advanced, the toe of his polished boot tapping the floor. His smile, indulgent as it hovered over Lady Bateson, descended to this protruded leg and became complacent, as it ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the Eighteenth Century witnessed a weakening of both sides through compromise. The schools and colleges were pedantic, complacent, smug and self-satisfied; by giving in a few points they had absorbed the radicals, and the political protesters had been bought off with snug places in the excise. Pretended knowledge passed for wisdom, dignity paraded as worth, affectation ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... his right, down the old-fashioned, almost square dining table. Jack was the least changed, after his father, of the young people sitting at this table. Jack, nine years ago, had been a rather complacent boy, doing very well at school, the type of boy who is as if marked out by fate to do well in life. Yes, Jack had hardly changed at all, but Radmore, looking at Jack, felt a sudden ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... there is much wholesome truth to be told, in the midst of the complacent social cant with which we are flooded. But Diderot does not help us. Nothing can possibly be gained by reducing the attraction of the sexes to its purely physical elements, and stripping it of all the moral associations which have gradually clustered round it, and acquired such ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... she often blushed at the story that had made her laugh; at the scandalous tale that supplied the details, on the strength of which she analyzed the love that she had never known, and marked the subtle distinctions of modern passion, not with comment on the part of complacent hypocrites. For women know how to say everything among themselves, and more of them are ruined by each other than corrupted ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... First. But even in the First Part, the happy issue is involved in the terms of Faust's compact with the devil. Only on the condition that Mephistopheles shall be able to satisfy Faust and cheat him "into self-complacent pride, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... I did. They was mostly pooty 'commodatin'," said Seth, drawing the back of his brown hand across his mouth to hide a self-complacent grin at the recollection of his ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... valet to a prince and officer of the Guards long since dead. She dressed neatly and was vain over her hands, which were certainly very beautiful. Dunyasha made a show of great disdain for all her admirers; she listened to their compliments with a self-complacent little smile and if she answered them at all it was usually some exclamation such as: "Yes! Likely! As though I should! What next!" These exclamations were always on her lips. Dunyasha had spent about ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... larger life, smoothed the wrinkles out of him, and stood him upright on his feet with the breath deeper in him than it ever had gone before. He felt that he never would be content to remain amongst the visible plentitude of that fat, complacent, ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... The Major's complacent smile changed to a slight frown as a man in a black tall crowned hat stopped to rest his back against the post of ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... older man than Carrick, and altogether a riper and most complacent figure. He had a large and benevolent face, which would have been common-place but for a touch of steadfastness and serenity which dignified it, and an occasional vivacity of the kindly eyes. One perceived in ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... fault of the individual Congressman's, except when he is complacent about it. The cleverest and most industrious representative cannot hope to understand a fraction of the bills on which he votes. The best he can do is to specialize on a few bills, and take somebody's word about the rest. I have known Congressmen, when ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... rare indiscretions at the Shinjuku pleasure quarter. Besides, their interviews took place in the darkness of night. In the daytime O'Naka usually was present, who, lacking other company, sought that of her daughter, and moreover was unwilling to be too complacent in the intrigue she saw going on. As soon as the sound of Densuke's steps was heard, O'Mino called him. There was a sharpness in her tone, a note of alarmed decision, that frightened and chilled him. Humbly he sought her presence. A glance ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... With a very complacent smile I began my story. Who does not know what it is to begin a story with a triumphant confidence in its favorable reception? Who does not know that first terrible glimmer of doubt when the story seems not to be making the expected impression? Who has not endured the dull dogged despair in ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... arrayed with the righteous mob. She was sorry for those who failed in the discharge of duty to God and man, and she worked untiringly to reinstate them—in her good opinion. That was it, and it was no more! All such attempted salvation resolved itself into the mere effort to drag men up to the complacent ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Jane's circles, she accepted a number of dances from Teddy—in fact the big fanciful "T" which Jane remembered so well in the spook letter, was scribbled all over her dancing card, while Judith accepted Ray Mann, a chum of Ted's, in complacent substitution. Ray was a capital fellow, with such a stock of chestnut hair he might have matched up pretty well with Bobbie, if her spare time had not been so filled in with Dave Jordan, also a ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... by the hand at parting, and asked me why I did not come oftener to him. Trusting that I was now in his good graces, I answered, that he had not given me much encouragement, and reminded him of the check I had received from him at our first interview. 'Poh, poh! (said he, with a complacent smile,) never mind these things. Come to me as often as you can. I shall be glad ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... commissary drew up his report, Narcisse Borel, rubbing his hands, cast a complacent look on the important capture he had just made, which delivered Paris from a band of dangerous criminals; but feeling of what utility Bras-Rouge had been in this expedition, he could not help expressing to him by a glance ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... a moment dismayed as I was, I could not help laughing. "Rutli and revenge!" Impossible! And to make it the more absurd, he was still smoking gently and regarding me with soft, complacent eyes. So unchanged was his face and manner that he might have told me he was going ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... his sad and troubled story, and Eugenie wept: and from that day he came daily; and two weeks—happy, dreamlike, intoxicating to both—passed by; and as their last sun set, he was kneeling at her feet, and breathing to one to whom the homage of wit, and genius, and complacent wealth had hitherto been vainly proffered, the impetuous, agitated, delicious secrets of the First Love. He spoke, and rose to depart for ever—when the look and ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... epistle he read it over with a complacent countenance, put it up and stamped it. Then he looked ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... singles. I like to think approving things of them; to note individual excellences; to familiarise myself with their distinguishing traits; to listen to them in their petulance and anger, and in that sobbing subsidence to even temper; to their complacent gurglings and sleepy murmurs. One—and the most Infantile of all—not of the Family, has a distinctive note, a copyright tone which none imitates, and which becomes at times a sonorous swelling ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... to her with a complacent smile, and when Edith sank back in her chair she sat down too, and taking out her handkerchief and a bottle of salts, began to apply the one to her eyes and the other to her nose alternately. As for Captain Mowbray, he coolly resumed his seat, yawned, and then sat quietly ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... their dinner;" that an egg and lettuce salad, with mayonnaise dressing, is so much more toothsome and digestible than chipped beef as a "tea relish," as to repay her for the few additional minutes spent in preparing it—and her skeptical stare means disdain of your interference, and complacent determination ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... into dinner chaffed him over his sudden disposition to try his wings. He was a man riding a hobby, they said. In time, it began to dawn that he, with others, whom he had drawn to his standards, meant serious war on certain complacent evils in the world of finance and politics. Sleeping dogs of custom began to stir and growl. Political overlords, assailed as unfaithful servants, showed their teeth. From some hidden, but unfailing, source terribly sure and ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... chivalrous sympathy for him as he endured the cruel treatment prescribed by modern science contributed to his fame, and he became the leading champion of liberty in the impending conflict for freedom. Mr. Seward regarded the situation with a complacent optimism, Mr. Hale good-naturedly joked with the Southern Senators, and Mr. Chase drifted along with the current, all of them adorning but not in any way shaping the tide of events. With Mr. Sumner it was different, for he possessed that root of statesmanship —the power of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... to describe the timid yet triumphant, the half-appealing yet complacent, conviction of the girl's utterance. A moment before, Paul would have believed it impossible for him to have kept his gravity and his respect for his companion under this egregious illusion. But he kept both. For a sudden conviction that she suspected the truth, and had taken ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... was looking from an upper window down the fine avenue, and his eye ranged from left to right over the ample estate with a glance of self-complacent triumph. ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... A self-complacent smile curled her thin lips, as she quietly noted the effects of her somewhat lengthy speech. Like all efforts of an unexpected and startling nature it produced a decided sensation. The little lady in brocade and diamonds glared ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... and lifted one ear as Uncle Buzz climbed in the buggy and took up the lines. But being complacent and particularly indisposed to anything as much like effort as resistance, the ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... ride must make you feel ticklish, too," suggested Peace, looking over her shoulder with a comical, self-complacent air at the crowded rear seat of the carryall. "I 'xpected to see some of you bawling ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... of water thrown over me," laughed Piers. "Caesar will tell you all about it. He's been sniggering all the way home." He snapped his fingers in the dog's complacent face. "By Jove!" he said to him, "I couldn't grin like that if I'd had the thrashing you've had. And I couldn't kiss the hand that did it either. You're a gentleman, Caesar, and I humbly apologize. Look after him, Phipps! He's been a bit mauled. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... story that is changing the history of the world every day. The old story that is not afraid of modern philosophy, nor antique prejudice nor even the scoffing and sneering of Athens and the jeers of Vanity Fair and the complacent self ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... know," replied Roger. "But there's a possibility that you and the Dean and I have been too complacent about that engine." ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... literature test; Nancy and Josephine were loud in their admiration of the way she had translated for Miss Langton in Latin class. Altogether, as Judith rolled over on to her elbows and found the place in her book, she was feeling happy and a bit too complacent. Only a page or two had been turned when a shadow blotted out the flickering tracings of the beech leaves, and a ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... shirt and suit and to the stones in his cuff links. He looked clean, with the cleanness of a tree after the measureless drenching of a storm; he had a careless, easy air, which completely concealed his assiduous and self-complacent self-consciousness. He ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... clause drag somewhat, with two designations of the region of peace. The Incarnation brings God's 'good will' to dwell among men. In Christ, God is well pleased; and from Him incarnate, streams of divine complacent love pour out to freshen and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... shaving-shelf. A new, unforeseen Clethera, whom she had never been obliged to deal with before, gave her a desperate, stony stare out of a haggard face. She was young, her skin had not a line. But it was as if she had changed places with her wrinkled grandmother, to whom the expression of complacent maidenhood ...
— The Mothers Of Honore - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... enjoying the early spring air, the virginal complexion of the April landscape. She surveyed the scene from Isabelle's motor with complacent superiority. How much better she had arranged her life than either Margaret or Isabelle! After the talk with Percy the previous evening, she felt a new sense of power and competency, with a touch of gratitude for that husband who had so frankly and unselfishly ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... I'd lost some of my gifts if I could not talk a body to sleep," said Sally, in a satisfied and self-complacent tone. ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a complacent look upon them all, he slowly left the room by the door out of which David ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the ghost of a smile. "Yes; but they're very complacent laws. They reduce marriage to the legal permission for two persons to live together as man and wife as long as mutually agreeable; but the ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... this already gone away. Those magnanimous ones passed many months in the hermitage of Arshtishena, witnessing many marvels. And as the Pandavas were sporting there pleasantly, there came to see them some complacent vow-observing Munis and Charanas of high fortune, and pure souls. And those foremost of the Bharata race conversed with them on earthly topics. And it came to pass that when several days has passed, Suparna all of a sudden carried off an exceedingly powerful ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... who, while he looked on the expensive machine, thanked his stars that he had more wisdom than to waste his money on such idle schemes, changed the expression of his features as the boat moved from the wharf and gained her speed, and his complacent expression gradually softened into one of wonder. The jeers of the ignorant, who had neither sense nor feeling to suppress their contemptuous ridicule and rude jokes, were silenced for a moment by a vulgar ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... help him to understand Coleridge and tell him about Dryden's essays and Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," and I would assure him, too, it was not I who wrote that unfortunate review of Conrad that gets such an exemplary drubbing at his hands for its self-complacent imbecility. He ought to know that, or he will think that I speak out of malice. He says that England has need of a literary critic. I agree. And I agree that this critic must not be of that professorial breed with which he deals so faithfully, not one who will date you every line in Shakespeare ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the sky was as blue as the turquoise. Birds shrilled a fresh, gay carol; the song of the anvil had a new thrill of joy in every inspiring note; the cawing of crows travelled melodiously across the fields, roosters split their throats in vociferous acclaim to the distant sun, and hens clucked a complacent chorus. The rattle of kitchen pans was melody to the ear instead of torture; the squeaking of pigs in the sty beyond the stable yard took on the dignity of music; and the blue smoke that rose from chimneys near and far went dancing up to wed ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... me down as the most complacent egotist in two hemispheres, so to regale her with unsolicited information about myself," thought John; "but surely it would need six hemispheres to produce another pair of eyes as beautiful as hers."—"Yes," he said, "I should be 'looking up' ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland |
