"Complaisant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I was up to a thing or two, they insisted on making me an officer. What rank I held I never could tell. I only knew that everybody obeyed me, and that none of the officers interfered with my commands. This complaisant conduct did not arise so much from respect for me, as that they might save themselves trouble. I never met with men who seemed to hate it so much, from the captain to the youngest powder-monkey. My great difficulty arose from no one understanding a word I said, nor could I ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... except age, then it is surely by dress; if a woman never does a foolish thing in any other way, yet at least she errs in her habiliments; if she be fickle at all, (and speak to the fact, ye disappointed bachelors and ye complaisant husbands!) in what is she more fickle than in dress? We might waste a life in finding a suitable simile for her volatility in this matter: rainbows with changing colours, water on a windy day, the wind itself in the month of March, the much-desiderated perpetual motion; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... of all his affairs. It made him suspect that he was inconstant. The affair with the Dolciquita he had sized up as a short attack of madness like hydrophobia. His relations with Mrs Basil had not seemed to him to imply moral turpitude of a gross kind. The husband had been complaisant; they had really loved each other; his wife was very cruel to him and had long ceased to be a wife to him. He thought that Mrs Basil had been his soul-mate, separated from him by an unkind ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... Indeed, if they have the temper and prudence to make such a previous reflection, they will be more richly rewarded by their own inward triumph, at having suppressed a lively but severe remark, than they could have been with the dissembled applauses of the whole company, who, with that complaisant deceit, which good breeding too much authorises, affect openly to admire what they secretly resolve ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... sowed wheat-field we pass through, and we pause to note their graceful movements and glossy coats. I have seen no bird walk the ground with just the same air the crow does. It is not exactly pride; there is no strut or swagger in it, though perhaps just a little condescension; it is the contented, complaisant, and self-possessed gait of a lord over his domains. All these acres are mine, he says, and all these crops; men plow and sow for me, and I stay here or go there, and find life sweet and good wherever I am. The hawk looks awkward and out of place on ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... need to lose no time. You have many a weary step to tread, before you can overtake those travellers who set out for it from a less remote quarter. But you have a charming pole-star to guide you; that's your advantage. I wish you joy of it: and as I have never yet expected any highly complaisant thing from you, I make no scruple to begin first; but it is purely, I must tell you, in respect to my new cousin; whose accession into our family we most heartily congratulate and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... June 13th the 11th Manchesters arrived to relieve us, and we marched gaily back to Kantara—at any rate if not gaily—it was getting on for 130 deg. in the sun quite early in the day—still with a good heart. We were even complaisant when we found ourselves crowded into one camp area with the 7th, and with most of the tents to put up. As the afternoon wore on—(we had been up since 3 a.m. and were still hard at it in different fatigues)—a tendency ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... do not think, That I, by lying arts, and complaisant Hypocrisy, have sulked into his graces, Or with the substance of smooth professions Nourish his all-confiding friendship! No— Compelled alike by prudence, and that duty Which we all owe our country and our sovereign, To hide my genuine feelings from him, yet Ne'er have ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... stranger in my own county; I would visit my neighbours, and receive their visits; but I would not be in haste to return visits. If a gentleman comes to see me, I tell him he does me a great deal of honour. I do not go to see him perhaps for ten weeks; then we are very complaisant to each other. No, Sir, you will have much more influence by giving or lending money where it is wanted, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... I hate myself for it," said Lawrence. "I hate your etiolated Christian ethics. I don't believe in the forgiveness of sins. The complaisant husband, O God! If I'd had the spirit of a man, I should have shot Arthur the night—that night—. . ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... B—— is Dr. Burney. He adds:—'The musical scheme was the Carmen Seculare. That brought me L150 in three nights, and three times as much to Philidor. It would have benefited us both greatly more, if Philidor had not proved a scoundrel.' 'The complaisant Italian,' says the Gent Mag. (xlix. 361), 'in compliment to our island chooses "to drive destructive war and pestilence" ad Mauros, Seras et Indos, instead of ad Persas atque Britannos.' Mr. Tasker, the clergyman, went a step further. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... obsequious, lent her recitations an attentive ear, and was ever ready with the expected commendation. It is not likely that her ladyship found much, difficulty in collecting around her a crowd of critics more docile than Thomson and quite as complaisant as Shenstone. Let but ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... consciousness of their political importance, and have from time to time resisted the civil authority, and that of their bishop. The governors who reside at Angostura have struggled against them with very unequal success, according as the ministry of Madrid showed a complaisant deference for the ecclesiastical hierarchy, or sought to limit its power. In 1768 Don Manuel Centurion carried off twenty thousand head of cattle from the missionaries, in order to distribute them among the indigent inhabitants. This liberality, exerted in a manner not very legal, produced ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... all eager to contribute to the pool, and Herbert, smiling with self-complaisant satisfaction, felt that he ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... necessary. For there was good reason to believe that the Afghan commander and his force, whose strength was estimated at about 5000 men, were in the vicinity of Urgundeh, about midway between Macpherson at Karez and Baker in the Maidan valley. If Mahomed Jan would be so complaisant as to remain where he was until Macpherson could reach him, then Roberts' strategy would have a triumphant issue, and the Warduk general and his followers might be relegated to ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... temper pleasant and agreeable. For as Xenophon says, that Clearchus's rustic and morose humor in a battle, by reason of his bravery and heat, seemed pleasant and surprising; thus one that is not of a very sour nature, but grave and severe, being softened by a chirping cup becomes more pleasant and complaisant. But chiefly he should be acquainted with every one of the guests' humors, what alteration the liquor makes in him, what passion he is most subject to, and what quantity he can bear; for it is not to be supposed different sorts of water ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... he to be told? How when she and Ascott sat over the wine and desert he had ordered for them, listening to the rich man's complaisant pomposities, were they to explain that they had come a begging, asking him, as the climax to his liberalities, to advance a few pounds in order to keep the young man whom he had for years generously and sufficiently maintained out of prison? This, smooth ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... much excitement?" began Judith, the old habit of scorn of everything which was not of the city returning upon her irresistibly. But it chanced that she caught Juliet's eyes, unconsciously wearing such an expression of solicitude to see her friend complaisant in this matter which meant so much, that Judith hurriedly followed her ironic question with the more kindly supplement: "But doubtless I should have plenty, and ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... was in a state of convalescence, I became more ardent than before, in search of an immediate opportunity of embarking. My complaisant doctor introduced me to the captain of a running felucca, and I hired his ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... we find Mr. Clay ready "for a war three years longer," and anxious "to begin to play at brag" with the Englishmen. His colleagues, more complaisant or having less confidence in their own skill in that game, found it difficult to placate him; he "stalked to and fro across the chamber, repeating five or six times, 'I will never sign a treaty upon the status ante bellum with the Indian ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... had every stimulus to appear at her best on this particular evening, for the audience, frivolous, volatile, taking its character from the loose, weak king, was unusually complaisant through the presence of the first gentleman of Europe. As the last of the Georges declared himself in good-humor, so every toady grinned and every courtly flunkey swore in the Billingsgate of that profanely eloquent period that the actress was a "monstrous ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... the history of this famous abbey, the "Aberbrothock Manifesto" of 1320 must be recalled, in which it becomes manifest that the Scottish Church was never a complaisant vassal of Rome.[437] There breathes in it a spirit of freedom and natural independence, and a refusal to accept the interference of Rome in the affairs of the State. The Scottish nobles protest against the papal countenance given to the English ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... southern day, the woodland fragrances of which the air was full, and the sense of being intimately alone with her, set up within him a turbulent vibration, half of delight, half of pained suspense. And the complaisant informality with which she met him played a sustaining counterpoint. 'What luck, what luck, what luck,' were the words which shaped themselves to the strong beating of his pulses. What would happen next? Whither ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... which his pen went deep enough to enrage the adversary and force the libel case. Like all political cases of this kind it was not a suit for damages, but an indictment for criminal libel, found by a complaisant political grand jury at the other end of the state—intended to cause the greatest amount of annoyance and to die out slowly. By that means it costs the accused both time and money while the state pays all expenses ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... gentleman, encouraged in every way the intimacy of that couple. Were there any exhibitions in town? he was for Warrington conducting her to them. If Warrington had proposed to take her to Vauxhall itself, this most complaisant of men would have seen no harm,—nor would Helen, if Pendennis the elder had so ruled it,—nor would there have been any harm between two persons whose honour was entirely spotless,—between Warrington, who ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... evidently uncultured, shallow people. Their irritation with him was merely a surface vexation, which had no real foundation in a deep principle. They became complaisant and smiling at my first word, and Boy escaped with a look of great relief to another seat, where they gave him a simple luncheon of saleratus gingerbread. "Boys not allowed" to go in to dinner at the Massasoit, thought I to myself; and upon that text I sat sadly meditating all the ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... wits to work one morning after an evening of delight, and found the muse complaisant. My fancy spouted like a fountain, the rhymes swam in the water like gilded or silver fishes, so tame you had but to dip in your fingers and take your pick, while allusion and simile crowded so thickly about me that I should have needed an epic rather than my legal fourteen lines to make ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Gautama of India, the founder of Buddhism;" and the poet has admirably, if most flatteringly, succeeded. The poem has been printed in innumerable cheap editions as well as those de luxe; and while it has been criticized as too complaisant a study of even primitive Buddhism, it is beyond doubt a lyrical tract of eminent utility as well ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... an unpleasant prospect and there is a firm resolve not to conceive a third. But such conjugal chastity is incompatible, except in the case of "married saints," with a bon mnage. The husband, scandalised and offended by the rejection and refusal of the wife, will seek a substitute more complaisant; and the spouse also may "by the decree of Destiny" happen to meet the right man, the man for whom and for whom only every woman will sweep the floor. And then adieu to prudence and virtue, honour and fair fame. For, I repeat, it is the universal custom of civilised and Christian Europeans ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... that grace which was natural to him, "I believe, Madam," says he, "I may venture to think you were speaking of me as I came in, that you had a design to ask me something, and that Madam de Cleves is against it." "It is true," replied the Queen-Dauphin, "but I shall not be so complaisant to her on this occasion as I was used to be; I would know of you, whether a story I have been told is true, and whether you are not the person who is in love with, and beloved by a lady of the Court, who endeavours to conceal ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... did not let him rest. It was in September, after an unusually favorable harvest, when Lob Levy, the complaisant friend of all farmers in debt, appeared on the farm twice or thrice weekly, and had much to negotiate with the master. Frau Elsbeth trembled with fear as soon as the Jew, in his dirty caftan, appeared at the ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... know, and often more too, when, of a sudden, some accident disperses them, and they think no more of each other, unless it be to betray and laugh, at their imprudent confidence. Remember to make a great difference between companions and friends; for a very complaisant and agreeable companion may, and often does, prove a very improper and a very dangerous friend. People will, in a great degree, and not without reason, form their opinion of you, upon that which they have of your friends; and there is a Spanish proverb, which says very justly, TELL ME WHO YOU ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Curiously complaisant for one of his breed, the detective bent his back and made a stirrup of his clasped hands, but no sooner had P. Sybarite fitted foot to that same than the man started and, straightening up abruptly, threw him ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... When the complaisant judge would not acknowledge the rights of the noble Ajax, but gave to another what was due to him, the poet touched ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... Earl, "such suspicion were a poor return for the Chancellor's putting himself in our hands all the days we spent with him at his Castle of Crichton. To your lodgings, Sholto, and give God thanks if there be therein a pretty maid or a dame complaisant, according to the wont of ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... the young lord naturally addressed himself next to the old horologer's very pretty daughter, who sat upon his left hand. From her, however, there was no extracting any reply beyond the measure of a monosyllable; and when the young gallant had said the best and most complaisant things which his courtesy supplied, the smile that mantled upon her pretty mouth was so slight and evanescent, as scarce to ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... through the evening he was affable and complaisant and forbearing. She made no attempt to conceal her dislike of him. Concealments were not familiar to Margie's nature. She was frank and open ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... her native element, discussed the whole house from attic to kitchen. Mr. Harper listened with a complaisant and amused look. Beginning to discern the sterling good there was in the little woman, he passed over her harmless small-mindedness; knowing well that in the wide-built mansion of human nature there must be always a certain order of beings honourable, useful, and excellent ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... many instances of physical merit among thy connexions, Master Dudley," returned the complaisant physician; "though it would seem that thy brother hath not found his companion among them. He is attended by an ill-grown, and, it may be added, an ill-favored comrade, ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... himself is the sole evidence. And how does he prove it? Why, says he, "The reason of my writing that letter was this: she had sent a person with me as an escort, and this person was desirous of receiving some proof that he had done his duty; and therefore I wrote a complaisant letter. I meant nothing by it. It was written merely to satisfy the mind of the man." Now is that the way in which formal and solemn letters, written upon great occasions to great people, are to be ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... victim—which is very much the same. The first duty of heroics is to be of your own choosing. When they are not that, they are nothing. And I assure you, as I walked back to my own room, I was in no very complaisant humour: thought my uncle and Mr. Romaine to have played knuckle-bones with my life and prospects; cursed them for it roundly; had no wish more urgent than to avoid the pair of them; and was quite knocked out of time, as they say in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... great superiority of a republic over a monarchy, and of the elective over the hereditary principle! The Republicans, he said, had twice elected to the chief magistracy an austerely virtuous Republican whom they had finally been compelled to throw out at the window of the Elysee, as 'the complaisant and guilty witness, if not the interested accomplice, of scandals which revolted the public conscience!' And whom had the elective principle put into his place, under the pressure of irreconcilable personal rivalries, and of a threatened popular outbreak? ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... for strict principles and extensive charity. Should accident deprive her of this resource, He engaged to procure Antonia a reception in some respectable Convent: That is to say, in quality of boarder; for Elvira had declared herself no Friend to a monastic life, and the Monk was either candid or complaisant enough to allow that her disapprobation was ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... more complaisant. They recognised in Akbar the founder of a set of principles such as had never been heard before in India. In his eyes merit was merit, whether evinced by a Hindu prince or by an Uzbek Musalman. The race and creed ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... forty and seventy, for there is nothing like privations and misery to alter the looks of a man! Faced by this queer fish, with a brain like a sieve, they had christened him "Crane a jour"—and the nickname had stuck to this anonymous individual. Besides, was not Cranajour the most complaisant of fellows, the least exacting of collaborators—always content with what was given him, always willing ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... her father, the Chandel Raja, was powerful in Mahoba in the time of Akbar. It is rather an indication that he was poor and weak. If he had been rich and strong, he would probably have refused his daughter to a Gond, even though complaisant bards might invent a Rajput genealogy for the bridegroom. The story about the army of fifty thousand men cannot be readily accepted as sober fact. It looks like a courtly invention to explain a mesalliance. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... something like what he had been to her cousins: he wanted, she supposed, to cheat her of her tranquillity as he had cheated them; and whether he might not have some concern in this necklace—she could not be convinced that he had not, for Miss Crawford, complaisant as a sister, was careless as a woman and ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... a great favourite in the service, having had something uncommonly mild and complaisant in his manner; and his loss was therefore universally regretted. The circumstances of his case were also peculiarly distressing to his mother, as her husband, who was a seaman, had for three years past been confined to a French prison, and the deceased was the chief support of ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hand in hand with the blankest scepticism—he has discovered the germ of old age and is hot upon the track of another germ that shall destroy it, so that we may all live virtually as long as we like; which, of course, disposes once for all of a world to come. The Psalmist was not always complaisant or even temperate in his language, but he lived a long time ago and must be pardoned; his curt summary stands: "Dixit insipiens!" But the writer vows that if he were addicted to the pursuit of any branch of physical knowledge he would insist upon being called by the name of that branch. He would ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... for he went all the way on his knees." Pitt's terms were by no means undignified. He offered that France should keep San Domingo and her conquests in Europe except those made from Austria. The French reverses in Swabia and the check to Bonaparte at Caldiero made the French Directory complaisant for a time; but his victory at Arcola (17th November), the death of the Czarina Catharine, and the hope of revolutionizing Ireland, led it to adopt an imperious tone. Its irrevocable resolve to keep ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... you are very complaisant! but the only way that you want to take is the capture of our ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... voice in the doorway, and she had been vaguely conscious of another voice pitched in the same querulous key, which, indeed, was the dominant expression of the small ranchers of that fertile neighborhood. Possibly a too complaisant and ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... him with superb mackerel, secretly encouraged the resistance of Rouget's wife and threatened Margot with the flames of hell if she should ever allow Delphin to touch her with his finger. It was, to sum up, complete anarchy; the army in revolt against the civil power, religion making itself complaisant toward the pleasures of the bourgeoisie; a whole people, a hundred and eighty inhabitants, devouring each other in a hole, in face of the vast sea, ...
— The Fete At Coqueville - 1907 • Emile Zola
... Henry. "I am rejoiced to see a man of your character invested with these functions. But, to speak truth, I have small confidence in this systematic justice, set up by the moderates of the Convention, in this complaisant Nemesis that is considerate to conspirators and merciful to traitors, that hardly dares strike a blow at the Federalists and fears to summon the Austrian to the bar. No, it is not the Revolutionary Tribunal will save the Republic. ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... his First Satire Pope follows Horace pretty closely. Both poets complain that some persons think them too severe, and others too complaisant; both take the advice of a lawyer, Horace of C. Trebatius Testa, who gives him the pithiest replies; and Pope of Fortescue. Both complain that they cannot sleep, the prescription of a wife and cowslip wine being given by the English adviser, while Testa advises Horace to ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... White became a great deal more cheerful; and she was very complaisant to them all at luncheon. And quite by accident she asked Macleod, who had returned by this time, whether they talked ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... the year to March, 1886, were no More than L35 19s., but as the expenditure only amounted to L27 6s. 6d., the Society had already adopted its lifelong habit of paying its way punctually, though it must be confessed that a complaisant printer and a series of lucky windfalls ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... your lordship is so close an observer," returned the complaisant Dutton; "a certain sign, my lord, that your lordship will make a ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... not have been guaranteed against the effects of it! Now, the Marquise has a strong reason the more for contributing to the defeat of her friend; she has become positively ugly, and consequently obliged to be more complaisant in retaining a lover. Will she suffer another woman to keep hers at a less cost? That would be to recognize too humiliating a superiority, and I can assure you that she will do the most singular things to bring her amiable widower up ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... on the ground, and when Jet had prepared a gag he was even so complaisant as to open his ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... swimmer, and my acquired skill served well on this occasion. As soon as the voice ceased from the deck, I lay still on the water until I saw a flash from the bow of the galliot, to which I immediately made a complaisant bow by diving deeply. This operation I repeated several times, till I was lost in the distant darkness; nor can I pride myself much on my address in escaping the musket balls, as I have since had my own aim similarly eluded by many ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... some design upon the heart of Sir Ulic Mackilligut, which she feared might be frustrated by our abrupt departure from these lodgings. Her brother, eyeing her askance, 'Pardon me, sister (said he) I should be a savage, indeed, were I insensible of my own felicity, in having such a mild, complaisant, good-humoured, and considerate companion and housekeeper; but as I have got a weak head, and my sense of hearing is painfully acute, before I have recourse to plugs of wool and cotton, I'll try whether I can't find another lodging, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... streets empty of people, and very few upon the 'Change. Jealous of every door that one sees shut up, lest it should be the plague; and about us two shops in three, if not more, generally shut up. From the 'Change to Sir G. Smith's' with Mr. Fenn, to whom I am nowadays very complaisant, he being under payment of my bills to me, and some other sums at my desire, which he readily do. Mighty merry with Captain Cocke and Fenn at Sir G. Smith's, and a brave dinner, but I think Cocke is the greatest epicure that is, eats ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... in thousands with a harmony which civilization might envy. This was in good measure due to peculiarities of Indian character and habits. This intractable race were, in certain external respects, the most pliant and complaisant of mankind. The early missionaries were charmed by the docile acquiescence with which their dogmas were received; but they soon discovered that their facile auditors neither believed nor understood ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... you that all those nerves are imaginary, and that as long as there are distempers in the world, he will have one or two constantly upon his list. I don't know her; I never heard much of her understanding, but I had rather take your opinion; or at least, if I am not absolutely so complaisant, I will believe that you was determined to like them on Mr. Chute's account. I would not speak so plainly to you (and have not I been very severe?) if I were not sure that your good nature would not relax any offices of friendship ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... hand as if to curse her in his fury: "Remain in your shame and your crime; for you are more guilty than they are. You are the complaisant wife! There is nothing more for me to do here." And he went off so furious that he trembled ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the colonization scheme taken by the Times of London, of the same date, is less complaisant. "The latest commercial sensation is a proposed company for the seizure of New Guinea. Certain adventurous gentlemen are looking out for one hundred others who have money and a taste for buccaneering. When the company ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... complaisant with regard to strangers, so long as they are strangers, generally making them out to be a good deal better than they really are, and Mr. Sponge came in for his full share of stranger credit. They not only brought all the twenty horses Leather ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... preference have been shown by the meteor flock for our earth above all the other members of the solar system?—seeing that the sea-bird theory requires that this comet, and not Newton's comet alone but all others having tails, should not only be thus complaisant with respect to our little earth, but should behave in a totally different way with respect to every other member of the ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... trois school; hence we read that wives, like the much-maligned Xantippe, were borrowed and lent, and that not fulfilling the promise of a loan is punishable by heavy damages. Where the husband acts adjutor or cavaliere to his friend's "Omantwe"—female person or wife—and the friend is equally complaisant, wedlock may hardly be called permanent, and there can be no tie save children. The old immorality endures; it is as if the command were reversed by accepting that misprint which so scandalized the Star Chamber, "Thou shalt commit ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... a difference. Fortune is blind, but the poet has his eyes open, and is besides as complaisant as fortune is capricious. He makes every thing turn out exactly as we would wish it. He gratifies us by representing those as hateful or contemptible whom we ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... is my own soft speaking, in recognition of your complaisant welcome. But I bear a message of his Excellency. He directs that you march the entire force under you, without delay, by way of Bethlehem and Easton, and effect a junction ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... cold and equally complaisant on the Mount of Olives. He would willingly have avoided the ascent could he have done so without displeasing his son; but George made a point of it. A donkey was therefore got for him, ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... "We celebrate," answered the complaisant demon, "the wedding of Hermes with the Black DragonBut take thy fire that thou camest to seek, and begone! no mortal may ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... it! What was a magnificent spectacle of generosity to you was humiliation to me. You GAVE me money—gave it to your mistress, if she was complaisant, and ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... Daverill, soothing his complaisant mood, making him even more cunning than before. "I'll get it out of her, Juliar," said he, "and you shall have it to tear up, to your heart's content. It don't make one farthing's worth of difference, that I see. But have ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... looked about him in a complaisant manner, and gave some order, when half a dozen of the courtiers darted off as fast as their legs could carry them, eager to obey it. On seeing Hendricks, he desired him to approach. The hunter advanced without considering it necessary to make a salute in the style the ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... ought to be very complaisant, or else very much ashamed of yourselves. You send in an order: "The kind of girl that I like is a Methodist without bangs." And some nice girl begins to look up Methodist tenets and buys invisible hairpins and side ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... a time of rejoicing and mental ease. It should have been a time of stirring hope. A moment for complaisant contemplation of a great purpose achieved. But the man at the window regarded the thing he looked upon without any display of pleasurable feeling. The sight of it literally seemed to deepen the unease which looked out of ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... first dash, that they may profit by her pretended fault. I know who will not be the last to come and station herself amongst the furniture of your apartment. The marechale de Mirepoix was too long the complaisant friend of madame de Pompadour not to become, and that very soon, the friend of the comtesse du Barry." "Good heaven," I exclaimed, "how delighted I should be to have the friendship of this lady, whose wit and amiable manners are so greatly ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... complaisant mood: "I once hinted my mind to her on a few things, as nearly as a battered frame dared to do so to such a froward piece. You all know, neighbours, what a man I be, and how I come down with my powerful words when my pride is boiling ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... replied the duke, with careless naivete and a complaisant forgetfulness, of which no words could translate the tone and the vocal expression. "Now, here is poor Raoul, who is your son, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... malachite, and loaded her with gifts. But as the marquis, her husband, was always with her and invariably spoke of his wife as an angel, where was the harm? Now the Russian magnate was dead, and the Marchesa Amici had retired to Lucca, to enjoy the spoils along with her discreet and complaisant marquis. ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... imaginations, it was his chimera to fancy himself equal to the greatest masters in the art of government, and to feel bitterly hurt if he were not looked upon as the rival of Napoleon as well as of Milton. Prudent men did not lend themselves to this complaisant idolatry; but they forgot too much what, either as friend or enemy, he to whom they refused it was worth. They might, by paying homage to his genius and satisfying his vanity, have lulled to rest his ambitious dreams; and if they had not the means of contenting him, they ought ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... name of Cogia Houssain, and, as a new-comer, was, according to custom, extremely civil and complaisant to all the merchants his neighbours. Ali Baba's son was, from his vicinity, one of the first to converse with Cogia Houssain, who strove to cultivate his friendship more particularly. Two or three days after he was settled, Ali Baba came to see his son, and ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... tears in his eyes as the train rolled away. He had said good-by to all of them—to Joey and Ruby and Casey, and they had wished him good luck with that complaisant philosophy which was ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... obtained a little knowledge in the Latin grammar, and afterwards so much money, as not only to procure his father's discharge from prison, but also to bind himself apprentice to Mr. Draper a dancing master in Holbourn, London. Soon after, by his dexterity in his profession, and his complaisant behaviour to his master's employers, he obtained the favour of them to lend him as much money as to buy out the remaining part of his time, and set up for himself; but being afterwards appointed to dance in the duke of Buckingham's great Masque, by a false step, he strained a vein in the inside ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... out, it would be unfair to expect from them much character of their own. To make the best provisions for the transmission of produce is their office, and the people who live there are such as are suited for this,—active, complaisant, inventive, business people. There are no provisions for the student or idler; to know what the place can give, you should be at work with the rest; the mere traveller will not find it profitable to loiter there as ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the former continuing to glare vindictively upon the usurper, and the latter to all intent remaining oblivious of the ceremony of installation. Poised upon a chair, she idly thrust her fingers through the gilded bars of the cage that hung from the rafters and gently stroked the head of the now complaisant bird. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... and Fly," with the tap open to the roaring, jubilant public; a score of healths were drunk upstairs with all the honours, the bride and bridegroom being king and queen of the company: even Uncle Barnet owned that Sam Winnington was very complaisant—rather exceed in his complaisance, he supplemented scornfully; but surely Sam might mend that fault with others in the bright days to come. It is only the modern English who act Hamlet minus the Prince of Denmark; sitting at the bridal feast without bride or bridegroom. ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... respect of what is pleasant in daily life: He that is as he should be may be called Friendly, and his mean state Friendliness: he that exceeds, if it be without any interested motive, somewhat too Complaisant, if with such motive, a Flatterer: he that is deficient and in all ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... children born to wealth and position, had special favorites, almost cronies, among the lowly. Chief among them was the old sieve-maker of the Via Sacra. To his shop she made Utta lead her. Utta interposed no objection. Utta never objected to anything. But in this case she was especially complaisant, since opposite the sieve-maker's was a fascinating embroidery shop, the keeper of which was entirely willing, when he had no customers, to let Utta lounge on one of his sofas and inspect embroideries to her heart's content. So lounging, rapt in the contemplation of Egyptian appliqus, Syrian gold-thread ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... Bonbenin-bonbobbin-bonbobbinet," cried the creature, "what has led you so many thousand miles from your own kingdom? What is it you look for, and what induces you to travel into the kingdom of the Emmets?" The prince, who was excessively complaisant, told her the whole story three times over, for she was hard of hearing. "Well," says the old fairy, for such she was, "I promise to put you in possession of the white mouse with green eyes, and that immediately too, upon one condition." "One condition," replied the ...
— The Story of the White Mouse • Unknown
... futurity," says Harrison, "it is only by placing the danger before his eyes, that a savage is to be controlled. Even the gallant Tecumseh is not insensible to an argument of this kind. No courtier could be more complaisant, than he was upon his last visit. To have heard him, one would have supposed that he came here for the purpose of complimenting me. This wonderful metamorphosis in manner was entirely produced by the gleaming and clanging of arms; by the frowns of a considerable ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... how glad I was of their absence, they would not have seemed so complaisant," he thought, recalling the happy day he had spent with Dainty; while he resolved to make sure of more like it by inviting some other fellows to Ellsworth, so that Olive and Ela might be provided with escorts, and not ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... The complaisant and contented, the adjusters and compromisers, the advocates and flatters of God, those who shun anxiety and stop their ears against too blatant a truth - they had better read something else; there are plenty of pleasant and entertaining ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... much," sang out the complaisant Perk, cheerfully, "on'y I wanted to let you know I was over there in the same line and had the good luck to send down a few o' you Hun pilots in a blazin' coffin. Wondered now if me'n an' you mightn't a had a private scrap o' our own in them bully times. Allers did hanker to have a talk-fest ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... boon, good Sir Broyance?" replied the princess. "I know you for a true and loyal gentleman who has ever been welcome at my castle. Speak, then, your need, and if so be I may, you shall find me complaisant to ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... situation where you could become hurtful as an enemy. All this, and much more to the same purpose, was strenuously insisted upon by the worthy pair; and your friend was obliged to take his leave, perfectly convinced that, unless you assumed a more complaisant bearing, or gave a more decided pledge, to the new minister, it was hopeless for you to expect any thing from him, at least, for the present. The fact is, he stands too much in awe of you, and would rather keep you out of the House than contribute an iota towards obtaining ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... My complaisant host, a little man, rather advanced in years, who in many respects was extremely useful to us, accompanied us, as soon as we had arranged our dress, to the President Freire. The latter received us in the full uniform ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... father of Christendom. The princes have become very troublesome and disobedient children; they are no longer willing to recognize our paternal authority, and if the holy father does not manifest a complaisant friendliness toward these refractory princely children, and wink at their independence, they will renounce the whole connection and quit the paternal mansion. We should then, indeed, be the holy ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... a plentiful store of liquor and provisions to be put on board our canoes, and appeared to be extremely complaisant, though he was exerting every artifice which he could invent to set our Indians at variance with us, to prevent their going until after our departure; presents, rewards, and every thing which could be suggested by him or his officers. I cannot say that ever in my life I suffered so much ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... fused by the smile of La Gioconda. And our satisfaction, too, in work of this kind is best expressed by that ambiguous curve of the lip which says: I feel your charm, but I am not your dupe; I see the illusion both from within and from without; I yield to you, but I understand you; I am complaisant, but I am proud; I am open to sensations, yet not the slave of any; you have talent, I have subtlety of perception; we are quits, and we understand ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... establishment, for I am exceedingly fond of fine linen," he observed, casting a complaisant glance on the embroidered folds of his shirt. "I therefore found frequent occasion to admire you god-daughter; I think her beautiful ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... disappearing little by little all the faults which, in his infancy, caused us great misgivings as to the future," writes Madame de Maintenon. "His piety has caused such a metamorphosis that, from the passionate thing he was, he has become self-restrained, gentle, complaisant; one would say that that was his character, and that virtue was natural to him." "All his mad fits and spites yielded at the bare name of God," Fenelon used to say; "one day when he was in a very bad temper, and wanted to hide in his passion what he had done in his disobedience, I pressed him ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... her breast, she wore no ornament of any sort. Doubly distinguished by the perfect simplicity of her apparel, and by her tall, supple, commanding figure, she took rank at once as the most remarkable woman in the room. Moving nearer to her through the crowd, under the guidance of the complaisant Major, young Linwood gained a clearer view of her hair, her complexion, and the color of her eyes. In every one of these particulars she was the living image of the woman ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... last two are different in theme and effect from those which go before, and may perhaps not improperly be considered as mere exercises in poetizing. They have no connection with the others, and I would have no contention with those who regard them as suggested by Petrarch, or as complaisant imitations of the vogue or fashion of that time. Those two Sonnets I leave out of this discussion, and would have what may be here said, understood as applying only to the one ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... not a happy one. Her husband was polite, complaisant, and conventionally correct in his behaviour towards her, and that was all. And then she saw so little of him. He was frequently absent from Hidvar for weeks at a time, and when he returned he regularly brought in his train a merry company of comrades, in whose pastimes Henrietta could take ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... or the highest bidder, mix cheek by jowl, and apparently unrebuked, with the modest maidens, the virtuous matrons, the faithful lovers of the piece. Shakespere never does this. Mrs. Quickly is indeed at one time the confidante of Anne Fenton, and at another the complaisant hostess of Doll Tear-sheet, but not in the same play. We do not find Marina's master and mistress rewarded, as they would very likely have been by Fletcher or Middleton, with comfortable if not prominent ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... plain, compassionating Strangers, which we found by our own experience among them. They of the Up-lands are ill-natured, false, unkind, though outwardly fair and seemingly courteous, and of more complaisant carriage, speech and ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... cuts any conspicuous figure: the fact is, since that event, a change had come over the spirit of our intercourse. He, indeed, ignorant that the still hour, a cloudless moon, and an open lattice, had revealed to me the secret of his selfish love and false friendship, would have continued smooth and complaisant as ever; but I grew spiny as a porcupine, and inflexible as a blackthorn cudgel; I never had a smile for his raillery, never a moment for his society; his invitations to take coffee with him in his parlour were invariably rejected, and very stiffly and sternly rejected too; his jesting ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... been but a melancholy sight to her, to see her spouse cut off so in the flower of his youth, as one may say: and you ought to scorn to take exceptions at a lady's proudness when she's in so much trouble. To be sure, I can't say myself as she was over- complaisant to make us welcome; but I hope I am above being so unpitiful as for to owe her a grudge for it now she's so down in ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... mate rather drily remarking that the presence of an Englishman by the captain's bedside was scarcely likely to accelerate the patient's recovery, while some of his ravings were of such a character that it was better for all concerned that I should not hear them. But, he added, if I would be complaisant enough to keep his watch for him, he would esteem it a very great favour. Of course I could do no less than accede to this suggestion with a ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... she had," replied the duc, with careless naivete, and a complaisant forgetfulness, of which no words could translate the tone and the vocal expression. "Now, here is poor Raoul, who is your ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... held in her lap, in a kind of open sedan, after the fashion of the country, borne by four men, and attended by two others in the queen's livery. The people, who had often heard of me, were very curious to crowd about the sedan, and the girl was complaisant enough to make the bearers stop, and to take me in her hand, that I might be more ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... so on, until at last the brothers pluck up determination, and make choice of an employer. So our Caledonian friends begin to gather together their traps and make preparations to accompany their complaisant and well-satisfied boss to his farm on the banks of the Waikato. And an indescribable joy is in their hearts, for they are to receive six shillings and sixpence a day, and to be provided with comfortable lodging and lavish "tucker" withal; and ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... have preferred to have met them here." Sir Robert and Lady Mainwaring were courteous but slightly embarrassed. Lady Canterbridge, who had come to the station in bored curiosity, raised her clear blue eyes to his. He did not look like a fool, a complaisant or fashionably-cynical husband—this well-dressed, well-mannered, but quietly and sympathetically observant man. Did he really care for his selfish wife? was it perfect trust or some absurd Transatlantic ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... you will never be satisfied till I have ceased to be Babylonian," said the duchess, smiling and fondling Vittoria, to whom she said, "Am I not a complaisant German?" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pay something for the risk that's run, in case you undertook the task, but we are not rich by any means, although you may think so by our appearance," my friend said, with a complaisant glance at his person, which he imagined was dignified, forgetful that he had dismissed the uniform of an inspector, and wore nothing but a flannel shirt ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... I put, without speaking, one of my pieces into his hand. This deportment I conceived to be highly becoming, and to indicate a liberal and manly spirit. I always regarded with contempt a scrupulous maker of bargains. He received the money with a complaisant obeisance. "Right," said he. "Just the money, sir. You are on foot, sir. A pleasant way of travelling, sir. I wish you a good day, sir." So saying, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... and victims. The sign of the type in question is the determination—sometimes terrible in its quiet intensity—to accept nothing of life but its pleasures, and to secure these pleasures chiefly by the aid of your complaisant sex. Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can get other people to do for them, and it is the infatuation, the devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them going. These others in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are women. What our young friends chiefly ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... small-ware woman at the corner, who is neither young nor pretty? I salute her every time we pass, and often exchange a couple of friendly words with her; and yet it is thirty years ago since she was gracious to me. But now I swear it is not four weeks since this young lady showed herself more complaisant to me than was reasonable; and yet I will not recognize her, but insult her in return for her favors! Do I not always say, that ingratitude is the greatest of vices, and no man would be ungrateful if ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... mentally adjusting these practices to their own well-understood interest or to the general, ultimate welfare of the human race; and when they fall into ungraceful compliment, excessive smiling or other luckless efforts of complaisant behaviour, these are but the tricks or habits gradually formed under the successive promptings of a wish to be agreeable, stimulated day by day without any widening resources for gratifying the wish. ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... he a university of knowledges.... We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame.—The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant.—The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There is no work for any but the decorous ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... he retired, and the men-at-arms, less complaisant than their leaders, soon succeeded in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... friends, and bid them farewell. Some were aware of the trick that had been played upon him: others were not; but the poor little man's credulity was so great, that it was impossible to undeceive him; and he went from house to house bewailing his fate, and followed by the complaisant marshal's officer. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... close to his, leaned upon the back of it, and listened eagerly. It would have made a fine picture to have drawn the Sage and her at this time in their several attitudes. He did not know, all the while, how much he was honoured. I told him afterwards. I never saw him so gentle and complaisant as this day. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... tempting order for the hungry young man. He thoroughly enjoyed this provision for his comfort; and as he ate, he talked to his father of those things interesting to him, answering all questions with that complaisant positiveness of youth which decides everything at once, and without reservation. No one understood this better than General Hyde, but it pleased him to draw out his son's opinions; and it also pleased him to watch the pride of the ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... guards and effect his escape from confinement. Like other claimants of the Persian throne, he at once took refuge with the Ephthalites, and sought to persuade the Great Khan to embrace his cause and place an army at his disposal. The Khan showed himself more than ordinarily complaisant. He can scarcely have sympathized with the religious leanings of his suppliant; but he remembered that he had placed him upon the throne, and had found him a faithful feudatory and a quiet neighbor. He therefore received him with every mark of honor, betrothed him to one of his own daughters, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... myself)—Ver. 116. Cooke remarks here: "A complaisant father, to go to the funeral of a courtesan, merely to ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... slaves, in the court where he held his Mechoir (a kind of public audience). "Consul," said he to M. Durocher, "I hope that you will not be like your predecessor, whose haughtiness displeased me exceedingly. Observe this young man (pointing to the vice-consul), he is pleasant and complaisant. He constantly endeavours to please me. I wish you to imitate him. I have desired it of you. You must write to your master, that I am satisfied with his presents. Adieu, retire a little with the slaves which I have given you.[37] Choose any ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... the years of Lincoln's boyhood the red man was retiring sullenly before the fatal advance of the white man's frontier. Shooting, scalping, and plundering forays still occurred, and in the self-complaisant reminiscences of the old settlers of that day the merciless and mysterious savage is apt to lend to the narrative the lively coloring of mortal danger.[34] In the spring of 1832 a noted chief of the Sacs led a campaign of such importance that it lives in history under the dignified ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... other acts collaterally and accidentally affecting the See of Rome; for the repeal of which the court was no less anxious than for the repeal of the Act of Supremacy, where the parliament were not so complaisant. ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... or sisters of the would-be bridegroom to pick a suitable girl for him, as a rule, among folks of their own class, and report to him in glowing terms of her charms, social and financial advantages. If he has no mother and sisters, then a complaisant old lady friend of the family undertakes to act as middlewoman. There are also women who are professional match-makers—quite a remunerative line of business, I am told. Anyhow, when the young man has been sufficiently allured into matrimonial ideas, ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... and caught at the bough again, he watched in some distaste for the growth of the nervously complaisant air, but it did not appear. She was ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... brings it nearer to its ruin. And the day when the foolish Pius IX presumed to proclaim and define, to the great joy of free-thinkers and the enemies of Catholicism, the ridiculous dogma of the Immaculate Conception in the presence of two hundred dumb complaisant prelates, on that day he experienced profound grief. According to his ideas this was the severest blow which had been inflicted on the foundations of ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... and, as she locked the door of her laboratory, her spirits revived and her thoughts once more reverted to the ambitious dreams of the morning. When she had reached her boudoir again, and the complaisant mirror had resumed its place, she drew the flask from her bosom, removed the glass stopper, inhaled for a moment its perfume, and then, raising it to her lips, drained the contents ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... learn to parse my lesson, for the present, and be quiet. Yes, yes; she shall find me very complaisant. I must be so, for live without her I cannot. She must she shall be mine. It is a prize which I am born to bear away from all competitors. This is ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... I went and stood at the door, that I might divine as much as I could for myself: for though it was night, in London there is scarcely such a thing as darkness. While I was standing here, a gentleman of a more complaisant temper came up and fell into conversation with me, answered my inquiries, and informed me the king's palace was at no great distance. The king's palace was indeed a tempting object, and he good-naturedly offered to walk and shew it me. This very ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... not so much perhaps at the difficulty of resolving the question, as at the probability of never obtaining a knowledge of the business so long as the duenna had the free use of her tongue; to quiet therefore her anger, the complaisant old cavalier kindly soothed her apparently wounded feelings, by allowing that she by ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... Jolly Ass, or some such creature—about whom Mr. Tom was much exercised; and Frank King professed himself quite interested in hearing about this person. The grave young Lieutenant was indeed extraordinarily complaisant this evening. He was unusually talkative—when he was not a most attentive listener. You would have thought that he had acquired a sudden admiration for the brilliant social qualities of Mr. Tom, and that he had never heard ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... and rapped again. She came to the door blushing redly, and so fluttered by their leave-taking that I thanked God that Jim was not in my place. There would have been division in our ranks at once; for it seemed to me that her conduct to Cornish was too complaisant by far. ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... of what we have done lies heavy upon our shoulders. But so long as the life of our mind and character flows uninterruptedly on, so long will the past remain in suspense above us; and, as the glance may be that we send towards it, will it, complaisant as the clouds Hamlet showed to Polonius, adopt the shape of the hope or fear, the peace or disquiet, that we ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Altogether Dickey was complaisant, and David enjoyed a busy and successful day. He dined in town, came home at a late hour, and merely grinned when a servant told him that Mr. Bulmer had called twice but Miss Iris happened to be out on ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... took it up; and, as he could not reach her Seat, he toss'd it to her in the most polite Manner. A confused Murmur immediately spread thro' the Saloon, with these Words, The Handkerchief is thrown. The King was too much taken up with viewing the Person to whom he had been so complaisant, to take any Notice of such Whisperings. The Charms she display'd in taking off her Mask, and her genteel Manner of her thanking him for the Honour, fill'd him with such passionate Love, that he even there gave her some Intimations how much he was taken with her Beauty. After ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... vote wrong. They would take the money and then split. The freemen were known. Three hundred and twenty-four would take Griffenbottom's beer and half-crowns. Two hundred and seventy-two would be equally complaisant with Mr. Westmacott. But of these householders nothing was known. They could not be handled. Some thirty or forty of them would probably have the turning of the election at the last hour, must then be paid at their own prices, and after ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... should difficulties arise between us and these people. Take, for example, the matter of the four Spirits of the Winds. If we were to judiciously exhibit some knowledge of them and their doings, this king might be inclined to be a great deal more complaisant than he otherwise would be. Don't you ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... wish for anything so intensely. There are wishes the gratification whereof is fatal. There are a dozen old stories in the classics to show that; to say nothing of all those mediaeval legends in which Satan is complaisant ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... this, and, was pleased to see the happy look that Sheila wore. He talked to her with even a greater assumption than usual of fatherly fondness; and if she was a little shy, was it not because she was conscious of so great a secret? He was even unusually complaisant to Lavender, and lost no opportunity of paying him indirect compliments ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... with Chinese affairs in 1897-99 may with some confidence be prescribed as a sedative and lowering diet. It seems probable that the weakness of British diplomacy induced the belief at St. Petersburg that no opposition of any account would be forthcoming. With France acting as the complaisant treasurer, and Germany acquiescent, the Czar and his advisers might well believe that they had reached the goal of their efforts, "the domination of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Government. This was decidedly Lindsay's own view though it was clearly understood that the opportuneness of the motion lay in ministerial desire for and need of support in its Danish policy. Lindsay expected to find Palmerston more complaisant than formerly as regards American policy and was not disappointed. He wrote to ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... probably more complaisant on paper than actually in her conduct of life. She desired male as well as female companionship; she liked the admiration and the flattery of men, and, no doubt, did her best to evoke it. It is strange, however, ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... There are (I scarce can think it, but am told), There are, to whom my satire seems too bold: Scarce to wise Peter complaisant enough, And something said of Chartres much too rough. The lines are weak another's pleased to say, Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day. Timorous by nature, of the rich in awe, I come to counsel learned in the law: You'll give me, like a friend both sage ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... from the proscenium box of the Calisthenic Lyceum by a notable financier on obligatory hydropathy, as accessory to the irrevocable and irreparable doctrine of evolution, which had been vehemently panegyrized by a splenetic professor of acoustics, and simultaneously denounced by a complaisant opponent as an undemonstrated romance of the last decade, amenable to no reasoning, however allopathic, outside of its ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... confinement greatly improved my appearance, and in consequence made me more vain, for although I would not have been willing to add art to Nature, yet I was very complaisant to myself. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... [Curtsying very low.] O! Sir Pertinax, your humeelity is most sublimely complaisant:—at present, unanswerable;—but I shall intensely ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... have been so kind and complaisant with my humble self as to grant me the use of a few words before any one else of those here present, I shall take advantage of this permission, so generously granted, and shall talk. In imagination I fancy myself in the ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... attempting to pat Beauty on the head. It is to be hoped his advances to the mistress will be more favourably received, as all his overtures towards a caress are greeted by the pestilent little cur with a wary kindling of the eye, and a most venomous growl. He has, moreover, been very complaisant towards the lady's gentlewoman, the immaculate Mrs. Hannah, whom he used to speak of in a way that I do not choose to mention. Whether she has the same suspicions with Master Simon or not, I cannot say; but ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... had noted the possibility of independent negotiation with Austria. It did not intend, complaisant as it had been hitherto, to leave Bonaparte unhampered in so momentous a transaction. On the contrary, it selected a pliable and obedient agent in the person of General Clarke, offspring of an Irish refugee family, either a mild republican or a constitutional monarchist according to circumstances, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of Nationality which rendered the masses so long tolerant, if not complaisant, toward Slavery and the Slave Power. Merchants and bankers were bound to their footstool by other and ignobler ties; but the yeomanry of the land regarded slavery with a lenient if not absolutely favoring eye, because it existed in fifteen of our States, and was cherished ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... lack of courtesy from your servants, my lord," she replied; "but methinks it had been but complaisant in the Duke himself to explain to me earlier wherefore he has had the boldness to detain ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... huge success to come, cleverly betrayed the rich amateur's ignorance of charges, varying it by the occasional query: "Isn't that rather dear?" Her delight at securing an abatement of a few shillings was so undisguised that it caused much amusement to complaisant tradesmen. ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... her temper was ruffled was on the back of an armchair, where she would sit with her bill in the air and her head cocked disdainfully on one side, pretending not to hear or see any one. In her affable moods, however, no one could be more complaisant and entertaining ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... had been stiff in their demands and Papa had been more complaisant than he should have been. Altogether that marriage was ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... likewise found that the unpopular character has something too much of the centripetal system about him—that is to say, desires things to centre in himself as much as possible—and neither has any great natural impulse to the amiable, nor will take the trouble to assume the complaisant. Now, it is not uncommon to observe traces of dissatisfaction in the unpopular characters, as if they felt themselves to be treated unjustly by the world. But can these persons reasonably expect to be received with the same favour as men who are at once gentle and inoffensive ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... with as few drawbacks as possible, she had been rather perplexed to find an anxiety, if not a sorrow. She had, however, of late settled upon her own health as a source of apprehension; she had a nervous little cough whenever she thought about it; and some complaisant doctor ordered her just what she desired,—a winter in Italy. Mrs. Shaw had as strong wishes as most people, but she never liked to do anything from the open and acknowledged motive of her own good will and pleasure; ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell |
