"Self-satisfaction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... self-satisfaction than in contempt for a pack of murderous mongrels—impatience that I have to consider such creatures as Popinot, Wertheimer, De ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... incessantly talking about Souris, asking a thousand minute and intimate questions about him, and seeking for information as to all his habits and personal characteristics. And he pursued him with railleries even into the depths of the tomb, recalling with self-satisfaction his oddities, emphasizing his absurdities, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... In a breath was self-satisfaction banished; simultaneously the masquerader brought his gaze down from the ceiling, his thoughts to earth, his vigilance to the surface, and himself to his feet, summoning to his aid all that he possessed of ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... There is, over and above the natural apathy common to all, an immense barrier of accumulated merit gained by pilgrimages, austerities, and religious observances, and the soul is perfectly satisfied, and has no desire whatever after God. It is just this self-satisfaction which makes it so hopeless to try to do ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... after her, until she had crossed the street, calling out a cheerful "Goodnight" that had in it something of a benediction. She avoided the dining-room and went straight to bed, in a strange medley of feelings. The self-sacrifice had brought a certain self-satisfaction not wholly unpleasant. She had been equal to the situation, and a part of her being approved of this,—a part which had been suppressed in another mood wherein she had become convinced that self-realization lay elsewhere. Life was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Self-satisfaction is opposed to humility in so far as we understand by the former the joy which arises from contemplating our power of action, but in so far as we understand by it joy attended with the idea of something done, which we believe has been done by a free decree ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... imprinted the features of New England. Their commander was not of the prevailing type. He was fifty-three years of age, with double chin, smooth forehead, arched eyebrows, close powdered wig, and round, rubicund face, from which the weight of an odious duty had probably banished the smirk of self-satisfaction that dwelt there at other times.[276] Nevertheless, he had manly and estimable qualities. The congregation of peasants, clad in rough homespun, turned their sunburned faces upon him, anxious and intent; and Winslow "delivered them by interpreters the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... His self-satisfaction lasted him till he was fairly out in the streets, walking side by side with Henry Lennox. Here he suddenly remembered Margaret's little look of entreaty as she urged him to stay longer, and he also recollected a few hints given him long ago by an acquaintance ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... as this in his household Monceux felt that he would soon lay Robin Hood by the heels. So he strutted to his horse, and was lifted thereon in fine self-satisfaction. His daughter mounted her palfrey, and Carfax led the beast gently, whilst the maids had to hurry over the rough stones as ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... you'd only get angry: I can see Mrs. Grove as though she were in the room—the utmost New York self-satisfaction. And I won't ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... handkerch-ief wet with cologne water. She, kept her feverish glarice upon the door. Remembering well the manner of her husband when he went out she could hardly identify him when he came in. Serenity, composure, even self-satisfaction, was written upon him. He, paid no attention to her, but going to a chair sat down with ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... getting low as the Rat sculled gently homewards in a dreamy mood, murmuring poetry-things over to himself, and not paying much attention to Mole. But the Mole was very full of lunch, and self-satisfaction, and pride, and already quite at home in a boat (so he thought), and was getting a bit restless besides: and presently he said, "Ratty! Please, ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... towers; its lounging men and women. Jews, with gold chains and diamond rings, Americans with large cigars and padded shoulders, painted women, niggers, policemen, match-sellers, boot-blacks; its huge coloured advertisements; its sudden holes, leading to regions underground; its sluggish, rich self-satisfaction.... It overawed Clara a little, and as she sped along she whispered to herself, 'This is ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... had begun early that morning, when Gordon, the town sergeant, stepped from his door and started down the street with no little self-satisfaction. He had been arraying himself for a full hour, and after a tub-bath and a shave he stepped, spic and span, into the street with his head steadily held high, except when he bent it to look at the shine of his boots, which was the work of his ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... thing, upon every thing: contradict him in what he says, and down come the two pocket-books under your nose. 'I know better,' he will say, 'don't I? What will you bet—five, ten, fifty, hundred? Tush! you dare not bet, you know you are wrong:' and with an air of superiority and self-satisfaction, he will take long strides over his well-washed ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... did not show itself outside in any very active form; but the wise woman had been to the cottage, and had seen her sitting alone, with such a smile of self-satisfaction upon her face as would have been quite startling to her, if she had ever been startled at any thing; for through that smile she could see lying at the root of it the worm that made it. For some smiles are like the ruddiness of certain apples, which is owing ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... that to our praise Good God not only reckons The moments when we tread His ways, But when the spirit beckons,— That some slight good is also wrought Beyond self-satisfaction, When we are simply good in thought, ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... cheers, and thumps on the table, that set all the glasses dancing), "not only was it the noblest and most legitimate, but it was the most profitable; and where was the man of high and honourable principle who did not feel when breathing the pure atmosphere of that Heath, a lofty self-satisfaction at the thought, that though he might have left those who were near and dear to him in a less genial atmosphere, still he was not selfishly enjoying himself, without a thought for their welfare; for racing, while it brought health and ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... noticed that the expression on Mildred's face changed a little. 'He is dying for me,' she thought. 'He is dying for love of me.' And as in a ray of sunlight she basked for a moment in a little glow of self-satisfaction. Then, almost angrily, she defended herself against herself. She was not responsible for so casual a thought, the greatest saint might be the victim of a wandering thought. She was, of course, glad that he liked her, ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... between Minoret and his wife was sure not to end without a long and angry strife. So at the moment of his self-satisfaction the foolish robber found his inward struggle against himself and against Ursula revived by his own fault, and complicated with a new and terrible adversary. The next day, when he left the house early to find Goupil and try to appease ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... lost to the world by reason of her great exclusion, her self-satisfaction and blind reliance upon the ways marked out for her by sages of other days. These young men, with the West in their eyes, are coming back to shock their fathers' land into new channels. The process may not be pleasant for us of the old school, but ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... what it was. He gloried in his performance. Accustomed to dictate extempore speeches on any subject whatever to his shorthand pupils, he was quite at his ease, quite master of his faculties, and self-satisfaction seemed to stand out on his brow like genial sweat while the banal phrases poured glibly from the cavern behind his jagged teeth; and each phrase was a perfect model of provincial journalese. George Cannon had to sit and listen,—to approve, or at ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... that," said Reitzei, contemptuously, though he was not speaking the truth: his self-satisfaction had been grievously hurt. "You put too great a value on your opinion, Beratinsky; it is not everything that you know about: we will let that pass. But when one goes into a society as a guest, one expects to be treated as a guest. No matter; I was among my own countrymen: ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... have reached London with the news that the British were winning at Waterloo. Having then succeeded in making the American order a red wine when he wanted white, Monsieur Beauchamp withdrew in a state of histrionic self-satisfaction. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... of Tommy Sharpe, Kie Wicks was a guest at the Judge's table that day. Kie was beaming with self-satisfaction. He felt that he had put over a good deal and could afford ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... whom he has undone, rather than the whole from one to whom he has shewn Mercy. This Benignity is essential to the Character of a fair Trader, and any Man who designs to enjoy his Wealth with Honour and Self-Satisfaction: Nay, it would not be hard to maintain, that the Practice of supporting good and industrious Men, would carry a Man further even to his Profit, than indulging the Propensity of serving and obliging the Fortunate. My Author argues on this Subject, in order to incline ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... closed, it displayed when open a small remnant of teeth at irregular intervals, and now grown old and decayed by long service. But, whether open or shut, there was an expression of amused consciousness and cunning about that mouth, as though the owner were living in a chronic state of self-satisfaction at having fairly outwitted somebody. Such was Ruby ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... to enjoy greatly this theory of his own final extinction, and he exclaims with infinite self-satisfaction, "this pure and ennobling sense of truth he would scorn to barter for the selfish and illusory hope of an eternity of personal existence." This is quite ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... the mouth—he looked like a merchant who has just done a good stroke of business, or a bachelor emerging from a boudoir in the best of humors with himself; and in Paris this is the highest degree of self-satisfaction ever registered ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... Mr. Mellor had very properly attempted to stop the disorderly discussion of the closure; but Mr. Chamberlain was not in the mood to respect the authority of the chair or the traditions of the House of Commons, and audaciously, shamelessly—with a perky self-satisfaction painful to witness—he proceeded to violate the ruling of the chair—to trample on the order of Parliament, and to flout the Chairman. And then the waters of the great deep were loosed. A hurricane of shouts, yells, protests arose. Member ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... demand. He was leaning forward in his chair. A hot light had suddenly leapt into his eyes, which left them shining unwholesomely. Nancy was startled at his words. And his attitude shocked her not a little out of her self-satisfaction. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... be the mind of coming man; if not the final attainment of his intellectual progress, at all events a long period of self-satisfaction, assumed as finality. We talk of the "ever aspiring soul"; we take for granted that if one religion passes away, another must arise. But what if man presently find himself without spiritual needs? Such modification of his being cannot be ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... mid-thigh tall, and the rowels of his clinking spurs were silver stars. He was large of frame, and his curly hair was short and brown; so was his pointed beard. His eyes were singularly bright and fearless, and bluff self-satisfaction marked his stride; but his under lip was petulant, and he flicked his boot with his riding-whip as he shouldered his ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... His cheerful self-satisfaction was under eclipse. The boyish pride of him was wounded. He had not "made good." All over Cattleland the news would be wafted on the wings of the wind that Alan McKinstra, while acting as shotgun messenger to a gold shipment, had let ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... others who are specially predisposed to experience a certain series of sensations? Moreover, even an ordinary observer will constantly discover faces which bear the unmistakable imprint of a ruling passion—such as superciliousness, self-satisfaction, misanthropy, sensuality, and many others. Sometimes, no doubt, we meet with a face that expresses nothing; but when the physiognomy has a marked stamp it is almost always a true index. The passions act upon the muscles, and frequently, although a man says nothing, the various feelings ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... parochialism, a certainty that English beef, English beer, English morals, and English standards, were the ultimate excellence towards which a world of misguided foreigners might ultimately aspire, that self-satisfaction, different from pride, that glorying in prejudice, and wilful blindness to all features of national life which do not bear out the theory of an earthly paradise. "Tell me one thing, Lord Saltire; you have travelled in many countries. Is there any land, east ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Sandy's departure had been taken, she emerged with her bundle and spread it out on the table for the third time. She was all smiles. She was not a bit angry with the foolish widower. This dogmatic attitude of mind, this wonderful self-satisfaction, were peculiar to the creature; he couldn't help it. But it had roused a mischievous spirit in her, and the temptation was too great to resist. The only thing she regretted was having let him kiss her, and she at once put up her hand ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... forward from that mountain of pillows, would be a purely comic figure were it not for the terrible tragedy written in his face. A footman in brilliant livery is a comic figure. The splendour of this livery brings out the comic element by its contrast to, and yet its harmony with, the stupid self-satisfaction of the countenance and the curls of the ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... one elbow on the table, peered inquiringly into the girl's flushed face, more beautiful than ever in her excitement. That strange feeling of exhilaration was still upon her, and there was undoubted triumph and self-satisfaction depicted ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... himself upon the variety of 'Its Thought' as an instance of creative Power. Let us leave this God of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can rescue him from his self-satisfaction." ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... exuberant self-satisfaction, I was inclined to think he must have succeeded in following the milkman's advice; at all events, I have not seen the colonel since. His bad temper had disappeared, but his "uppishness" had, if possible, increased. Previous to his return, I had given The O'Shannon ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... may be really originative and free. What the determinists seem to forget is, as Green says, that 'character is only formed through a man's conscious presentation to himself of objects as his good, as that in which his self-satisfaction is found.'[6] {89} Desires are always for objects which have a value for the individual. A man's real character is reflected in his desires, and it is not that he is moved by some outside abstract force, which, being the strongest, he cannot resist, ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... supposed that Vilsing regarded himself as a sensual fiend. He did not pose as cold and impudent, but as heartfelt and instinct with feeling. He was studying theology, and cherished no dearer wish than eventually to become a priest. He constantly alternated between contrition and self-satisfaction, arrogance and repentance, enjoyed the consciousness of being exceptionally clever, an irresistible charmer, and a true Christian. It seemed to him that, in the freshman whom he had singled out from ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... about the streets in his red coat trimmed with gilt braid, his hat cocked upon one side of his bony head, pleasing himself with the belief that he was the object of universal admiration, and swelling with a vast and consummate self-satisfaction as he boasted, with strident voice and extravagant enunciation, of the magnificence of the ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... nominal; in the case of noble lands in the eighteenth century, it generally was so; but nominal or real, the right to exact it was some one's property. If such a right did not put money in his purse, it yet added to his dignity and self-satisfaction. But such rights as this had come to be looked on with deep distrust by a large part of the French nation. Ideas of independence and of the abstract rights of man had struck deep root. It was felt that land should be owned absolutely,—by allodial possession, as the phrase is. The feudal ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... not do it,—seeing that it was required of her by her friend. What after all did it matter? That was her argument with herself. It cannot be supposed that she looked back on the past events of her life with any self-satisfaction. There was no self-satisfaction, but in truth there was more self-reproach than she deserved. As a girl she had loved her cousin George passionately, and that love had failed her. She did not tell herself that she had been ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... their disappointment, was interested chiefly in himself and his own work. For was he not engaged in the greatest of all projects, an immense poem (The Recluse) which should reflect the universe in the life of one man, and that man William Wordsworth? Such self-satisfaction invited attack; even Lamb, the gentlest of critics, could hardly refrain from ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Rogers, as he pulled up by the porch and directed me to stand by the young mare's head, wore a look of extreme self-satisfaction. Beside him, also beaming, sat Mr. Goodfellow, with the corner cupboard nursed ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... his, called An Essay on the Principles of Human Action, which has not a single ornament in it, as a specimen of his original studies and the proper bias of his mind, the learned critic, with a shrug of great self-satisfaction, said, "It was amusing to see this person, sitting like one of Brouwer's Dutch boors over his gin and tobacco-pipes, and fancying himself a Leibnitz!" The question was, whether the subject of Mr. Gifford's censure had ever written such a work or ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... That which one shall hide away, as it were, behind the substance of his discourse, or, if he bring it to the front, shall use merely to give an agreeable accent of individuality to what he says, another shall make an offensive challenge to the self-satisfaction of all his hearers, and an unwarranted intrusion upon each man's sense of personal importance, irritating every pore of his vanity, like a dry northeast wind, to a goose-flesh of opposition and hostility. Mr. Lincoln ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... deed of carrying her home some acorns. So, when he came into the house, he took off his hat carefully, with the acorns in it, and holding it in both hands, marched up to his mother with a smiling face, and look of great self-satisfaction, and said, 'Here, mother, I ...
— Caleb in the Country • Jacob Abbott
... lacks a seriousness commensurate with its claims—that it exhibits indeed a kind of undertone of frivolity that is all the nearer to the absolutely comic for the earnestness, so to speak, of its unconsciousness. The reason is, partly no doubt, to be ascribed to its debonnaire self-satisfaction, its disposition to "lightly run amuck at an august thing," the traditions of centuries namely, to its bumptiousness, in a word. But chiefly, I think, the reason is to be found in its lack of anything properly to be called a philosophy. This is ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... Review' is its prophet. There is something in the absolute confidence of Macaulay's political dogmatism which varies between the sublime and the ridiculous. We can hardly avoid laughing at this superlative self-satisfaction, and yet we must admit that it is indicative of a real political force not to be treated with simple contempt. Belief is power, even when ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... more than that—I stop and reflect. Then I am humble, then I am properly meek, and for that little time I am 'only the Mary Ann' —fourteen hours out, and cargoed with vegetables and tin-ware; but all the other twenty-three my self-satisfaction rides high, and I am the stately Indiaman, ploughing the great seas under a cloud of sail, and laden with a rich freightage of the kindest words that were ever spoken to a wandering alien, I think; ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... condition to approach him on their feet, rather than in the more becoming attitude of unconditional prostration, I reasoned with myself whether indeed he could consistently be a person of well-established authority, or whether I was not being again led away from my self-satisfaction by another obliquity of barbarian logic. It was for this reason that I now welcomed the admitted power which he has of incriminating persons in a variety of punishable offences, and I perceived with an added ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... tried to do my dooty by him the very best I could, an' ef he does amount to anything in this world it 'll be through hard labour an' mighty careful watchin'." Miss Hester gave a sigh that was meant to be full of solemnity, but that positively reeked with self-satisfaction. ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... international relations which appealed strongly to those who preferred to adopt unusual and untried methods rather than to accept those which had been tested by experience and found practical of operation. The self-satisfaction of inventing something new or of evolving a new theory is inherent with not a few men. They are determined to try out their ideas and are impatient of opposition which seeks to prevent the experiment. In fact opposition seems sometimes to enhance the virtue of ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... reach it by persistently revelling in the fact that he is not a beetle. The most brilliant exponent of the egoistic school, Nietszche, with deadly and honourable logic, admitted that the philosophy of self-satisfaction led to looking down upon the weak, the cowardly, and the ignorant. Looking down on things may be a delightful experience, only there is nothing, from a mountain to a cabbage, that is really seen ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... them, they seem to smile; but it is as if they were heart-broken. But it is in vain for me to attempt to describe these autumnal brilliancies, or to convey the impression which they make on me. I have tried a thousand times, and always without the slightest self-satisfaction. Fortunately there is no need of such a record, for Nature renews the picture year after year; and even when we shall have passed away from the world, we can spiritually create these scenes, so that we may dispense with all efforts to put them ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... chance. Being a Sophomore, he believed that he was thoroughly acquainted with the co-educated sex and all their wiles and guiles; but a feeling of repulsion toward this frank readiness to throw down another man, one of his own, too, drowned his sense of self-satisfaction ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... domestic and straightforward condition, and the windmiller no longer hesitated to come in. But he was less disposed to a hard and triumphant self-satisfaction than was common with him when his will ended well. A poor and unsuccessful career had, indeed, something to do with the hardness of his nature, and in this flush of prosperity he felt softened, and resolved inwardly to "let the missus ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... reference to the propriety of the conduct of any given State, rests, of course, not with that State; but with its neighbours. "Securus indicat orbis terrarum." Any Power which fails in the discharge, to the best of its ability, of a generally recognised duty, is likely to find that self-satisfaction is no safeguard against unpleasant consequences. Professor de Martens would, I am ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... more ludicrous than the self-satisfaction, the abnormal conceit of this remark, made by that shrivelled piece of mankind, in a nervous, hesitating tone of voice? Polly made no comment, but drew from her pocket a beautiful piece of string, and knowing his custom of knotting such an article while ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... marched out upon the terrace under the vines, smoking a briar-root pipe with that solemn air whereby the Englishman abroad proclaims to the world that he owns the scenery. There is something almost phenomenal about an Englishman's solid self-satisfaction when he is alone with his pipe. Every nation has its own way of smoking. There is a hasty and vicious manner about the Frenchman's little cigarette of pungent black tobacco; the Italian dreams over his rat-tail ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... the mud out of his eyes, Harry felt a very comfortable self-satisfaction. It was agreeable to pity His Grace of Marlborough. For the Duke of Marlborough was still the greatest man in Europe, the greatest man in the world—credibly the greatest man that ever lived. A pleasant fool, to marry such a ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... rights have been forfeited by our wilful conduct; we retain nothing in our own right. And all we have now has been secured for us at the cost of blood; we are being carried at enormous expense. Not much room there for self-satisfaction, is there? ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... gesture of contempt indicative also of complete self-satisfaction and unalterable self-belief, shrugged his broad shoulders. His short fat fingers, covered with rings, beat a tattoo upon the ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... imperial elevation kindled no glow of pride or self-satisfaction in his meek and chastened nature. He regarded himself as being in fact the servant of all. It was his duty, like that of the bull in the herd, or the ram among the flocks, to confront every peril in his own person, to be foremost ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... inconstancy of the cause of these passions, and from the short duration of its connexion with ourselves. What is casual and inconstant gives but little joy, and less pride. We are not much satisfyed with the thing itself; and are still less apt to feel any new degrees of self-satisfaction upon its account. We foresee and anticipate its change by the imagination; which makes us little satisfyed with the thing: We compare it to ourselves, whose existence is more durable; by which means its inconstancy appears still greater. It seems ridiculous to infer ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... Brentwick nodded, twinkling self-satisfaction. "I contrived it all," he said; "neat, I call it, too." His old eyes brightened with reminiscent enjoyment. "Inspiration!" he crowed softly. "Inspiration, pure and simple. I'd been worrying my wits for fully five minutes before Wotton settled the matter by telling me about the ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... was a mirror in which I saw myself. She said little, but I understood, and my self-satisfaction was in ribbons—and something deeper than self-satisfaction. I saw now that I loved her as I had not ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... make him understand, to make him see, and if he is aware of his inferiority we may have some success. But if he is not aware of his inferiority, we soon hold our tongues and leave him alone in his self-satisfaction, convinced that there is nothing to be done with him. Every one of us has been through this experience with a mental inferior, for there is always a mental inferior handy, just as there is always a being more unhappy than we are. In ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... law of man or God. To-day their self-satisfaction has made them indifferent to anything that elevates. I had led them into a morass, and deeper in the ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... her self-satisfaction was too much for him. "I'm afraid I'm not in the mood either for comedy ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... closed by painted iron shutters fantastically cut in open-work. Everything was new. In this repaired and restored house, the fresh-colored look of which contrasted with the time-worn exteriors of all the other houses, an observer would instantly perceive the paltry taste and perfect self-satisfaction ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... ashes of that which was destroyed. Even as 'the flax and the barley were smitten; for the barley was in the ear, and the flax was bolled: but the wheat and the rye were not smitten, for they were not grown up;' so will SELF-SATISFACTION arise, after worldly pride and vanity have been withered up. Let him who has found inward peace content himself that he is arrived at the Pillars of Hercules, beyond which there is no safe way. That self-integrity ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... into a patriotic bad temper and refusing to answer that question. We British people are so persuaded of the purity and unselfishness with which we discharge our imperial responsibilities, we have been so trained in imperial self-satisfaction, we know so certainly that all our subject nations call us blessed, that it is a little difficult for us to see just how the fact that we are, for example, so deeply rooted in Egypt looks to an outside intelligence. ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... working at his translations with his moonshee, or interpreter, a Mussulman, he had much opportunity for conversation and for study of the Mahometan arguments, so as to be very useful to himself; though he could not succeed in convincing the impracticable moonshee, who had all that self-satisfaction belonging to Mahometanism. "I told him that he ought to pray that God would teach him what the truth really is. He said he had no occasion to pray on this subject, as the word of God is express." With the Hindoos at Dinapore, he found, to his surprise, that there ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... is a good working hypothesis, if by optimism we mean the open-eyed faith that force exerted is never lost. Much that calls itself faith is only the blindness of self-satisfaction. ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... seemed a great victory. Yet sometimes victories are more dangerous than defeats. They lead to self-satisfaction. This was certainly the case with this victory of the authors of Deuteronomy. The people were careful to offer up their sacrifices at the temple in Jerusalem, and very few offerings were brought to the old village shrines. But the real kernel of the ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... pleasant to a thirsty vanity, was lowering to his nature. He sank more and more towards the professional Don Juan. With a leer of what the French call fatuity, he bids the belles of Mauchline beware of his seductions; and the same cheap self-satisfaction finds a yet uglier vent when he plumes himself on the scandal at the birth of his first bastard. We can well believe what we hear of his facility in striking up an acquaintance with women: he would have conquering manners; he would bear down upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... learn this further thing, HUMILITY—to put a seal upon your lips and forget what you have done. After you have been kind, after Love has stolen forth into the world and done its beautiful work, go back into the shade again and say nothing about it. Love hides even from itself. Love waives even self-satisfaction. "Love vaunteth not itself, is not ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... world at large. Of their civilization, which goes back beyond the reputed date of the Deluge, they are intensely proud, their ancient literature, in their conception, is far superior to the literatures of all other nations, and their self-satisfaction is so ingrained that they still stand aloof in mental isolation from the world, only the most progressive among them seeing anything to be gained from foreign arts. These differences in character have given rise ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... higher aims and worthier exertion. He was not vicious, he never had been vicious, or, as somebody else said, his vices were all refined vices; but a life of mere self-indulgence although pursued without self-satisfaction, is constantly lowering the standard and weakening the forces of virtue,—lessening the whole man. He felt it so; and to leave his ordinary scenes and occupations and lose a morning with little Fleda was a freshening of his better ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... again betokened the presence of Lettice, who came to announce a warm friend of the Doctor's, one Master Eccleston. On being admitted, the latter brought with him a low, ferret-eyed personage, whose leering aspect betrayed an inward consciousness of great cunning and self-satisfaction therewith. Dee received his guests with becoming dignity, inquiring to what good fortune he ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... grows into habit, and habit is a second nature. A secret idea of fame makes his forbearance of happiness supportable to him: for he has now the self-satisfaction of considering himself raised to that highest pinnacle of fashionable refinement which is built upon apathy and scorn, and from which, proclaiming himself superior to all possibility of enjoyment, he views the whole ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... upon his career, and usually, I am glad to recall, with a note of satisfaction and approval. In his delirious phases he would most often exaggerate this self-satisfaction, and talk of his splendours. He would pluck at the sheet and stare before him, and whisper ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... life languished, as a plant droops in a close, confined place, the people were self-satisfied—though not with a joyous or noisy self-satisfaction; for there was much sadness in their minds after the great disasters [the Sleswick-Holstein War].... They rested on their laurels and fell into a doze. And while they dozed they had dreams. The cultivated, and especially the half-cultivated, public in Denmark and ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... though, he finished, and his childish delight seemed to know no bounds. He danced and shouted, ran in and out, walked round the hut, and then strutted up to us full of self-satisfaction, his tongue going all the while, and evidently feeling highly delighted at our smiles and words ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... saw that Miss Foster's tight-fitting bodice was the matter. Yes, there was something about that bodice, those teeth, that tongue, that hair, something about her, which seemed to challenge the whole system of his ideas, all his philosophy, self-satisfaction, seriousness, smugness, and general invincibility. And he thought of her continually—no particular thought, but a comprehensive, enveloping, brooding, static thought. And he was strangely jolly and uplifted, full ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... while I withdrew to a distance, that I might have her brought to me in form. I was intent and uneasy, but I had room in my heart for vain self-satisfaction that I knew something of the Ottawa speech. My proficiency in Indian dialects, for which the world praised me lightly, as it might commend the cut of my doublet, had cost me much drudgery and denial, and my moments ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... profession, and forthwith prostrate himself at the feet of ancient sculpture. His admiration for Bernini—whom of course Flaxman cordially detested—was genuine enough. The Italian's florid manner chimed in with his own French, gesticulating, mercurial notions of art. If excess of self-satisfaction prevented him from rendering due homage to the relics of the past—and possibly his early toils as a 'restorer' further tended to blind him to their value—he was careful to pay tribute to the merits ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... were affectionate and obedient; both of them were kind to the poor; and yet, a very keen observer might have discerned, that in Harriet's visits, or gifts of charity, she was actuated by a vain-glorious feeling of pride and self-satisfaction at the benefits she was conferring, which, in the sight of the All-wise Judge, must have cancelled the merit of her good action; while, on the contrary, Mary's heart turned in humble thankfulness to God for allowing her to be the instrument ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... through it, so that the two ends hung down before and behind, something like a South American poncho, or the tabard of a herald. These ends he tied together, under the armpits; and thus arrayed, presented himself once more before the captain, with an air of perfect self-satisfaction, as though he thought it impossible for any fault to be ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... his infidelity—which she made by accident—destroyed such remnants of self-satisfaction as her life might yet possess. She broke down utterly and sobbed and cried in Perfetta's arms. Perfetta was kind and even sympathetic, but cautioned her on no account to speak to Gino, who would be furious if he was suspected. And Lilia agreed, partly because she was afraid of him, partly because ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... Neptune, with a fine wreath of seaweed about his middle, blowing water through, his conch. There are two statues, the one of a general who fought in the Indian Mutiny and afterwards lived and died in the Square, the other of a mid-Victorian philanthropist whose stout figure and urbane self-satisfaction (as portrayed by the sculptor) bear witness to an easy conscience and an unimaginative mind. There is, round and about the fountain, a lovely green lawn, and there are many overhanging trees and shady corners. An air of peace the garden breathes, ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... the evidence of his bridge play alone. The tragic part of it was that he smiled and fumbled through life just as fatuously and apologetically as he did at the card-table. And behind the defensive smile and the well-worn expressions of regret there shone a scarcely believable but quite obvious self-satisfaction. Every sheep of the pasture probably imagines that in an emergency it could become terrible as an army with banners—one has only to watch how they stamp their feet and stiffen their necks when a minor object of suspicion comes ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... those which seemed to hold comfort and cheer for herself or for humble little souls like her. It was a story of the closed gentian, the title of which she announced, as she always did, loudly, and with an amusing little air of self-satisfaction. ...
— Story-Tell Lib • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... master of the house was full of abstraction and dreams, wrapped in some pursuit, some hope, some absorbing preoccupation of his own. His mother was straining at her bonds like a greyhound in a leash. Minnie, who had been the chief example of absolute self-satisfaction and certainty that everything was right, had developed a keenness of curiosity and censure which betrayed her conviction that something had gone wrong. These three were all, as it were, on tiptoe, on the boundary line, the thinnest edge which divided the known from the unknown; conscious ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... the latter do not respond to His choice. Yet I feel that I am one of them, and that it is my faults writ large which I detest in them. I feel that, with all the riches of the revelation which I possess, I have that same self-satisfaction and lack of sympathy which I loathe in others. It is my life which is the stumbling-block to my message. They have often far less light than I have, but walk in it more simply than I do. The rafter in my own eye troubles me even more than the speck in ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... the same tavern, he would in the mean time not only make preparations and procure assistants, but perhaps bring me further intelligence. As the fellow's brain seemed busy, I did not wish to rob him of the self-satisfaction of invention, and we accordingly parted, making ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... was a bit of a bully can scarcely be denied. It is difficult to combine the offices of Gabbai and Town Councillor without a self-satisfaction that may easily degenerate into dissatisfaction with others. Least endurable was S. Cohn in his religious rigidity, and he could never understand that pietistic exercises in which he found pleasure did not inevitably produce ecstasy in his son ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... ethereal in their whole nature. We have no love for asceticism; but a few hours on the column of St. Simon Stylites, or a temporary diet of locusts and wild honey, might have purified Sir Charles's exuberant self-satisfaction. For all this, he is not without a certain solid merit, and the persons by whom he is surrounded—on whom we have not space to dwell—have a large share of the vivacity which amuses us in the real men and women of their time. Their talk may not be equal to that ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... well-controlled self-satisfaction, which almost amounts to dignity, is gone like a puff of smoke, at the word "Shanghai." Poor fellow! He once had the hen-fever badly, and he don't ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... character of which, I own to you, I find impossible to understand—culminated in a burst of raucous laughter which added the final horror to this amazing adventure. Then he went out, and in the last glimpse I had of him before the door shut he wore the same look of easy self-satisfaction with which he had entered this place of death ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... determination to carry out my threat. We sent for the documents that had been prepared at Parker Chandler's, and inside of three hours these had been substituted and the several agreements entered into with Rogers formally renounced. I retired to bed that night with a chuckle of self-satisfaction, and a convincing appreciation of the truth of the axiom ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... continued his flirtation with Amy with jubilant self-satisfaction. And he kept drifting about to find Becky and lacerate her with the performance. At last he spied her, but there was a sudden falling of his mercury. She was sitting cosily on a little bench behind the schoolhouse ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... please his High Mightiness to call again. Oh! and we—we women, poor things, must stand about with our mouths open, like mossy carp in a pond, and struggle and push for such crumbs of comfort as he will deign to throw us from the full larder of his self-satisfaction!" ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... as essential an ingredient of Prussian character as conceit, indifference to the feelings of others, jealousy, envy, self-satisfaction, conceit, industry, inquisitiveness, veneration for officialdom, imitativeness, materialism, and the other national attributes that will occur to those who know Prussia, as distinct from the other ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... considered as an authentic, contemporary document, and, as has been premised, these opinions are coeval and coterminous with an admirable civic self-satisfaction. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to stipulate that in these general observations it is the frame of mind and the mode of speech of what are known everywhere as the upper classes, the more intelligent ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... My good woman, this blindness and self-satisfaction appear to show that this life of peace, which you yourself acknowledge yours has been, has gone somewhat too far—has not been altogether blessed to you. If you are really so satisfied with yourself as to be unable to see any sin ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... were uttered, and, wrapt in the mantle of self-satisfaction that they were not as other men, the company gathered in the kitchen of Ford Manor broke up, and, in the gathering ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... he left to the dominion of chance, which blew together the atoms of Epicurus. But supposing that, devoid of any higher ambition to approve himself to judicious critics and posterity, and wanting in that love of art which longs for self-satisfaction in the perfection of its works, he had merely laboured to please the unlettered crowd; still this very object alone and the pursuit of theatrical effect, would have led him to bestow attention to the structure and adherence of his pieces. For does not the impression of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... self-esteem, germs in a strong character of worthy self— respect, seemed crushed out of him. Patient, humble, silent, one could hardly recognize in this Teddy Ginniss that other Teddy, whose cheery voice, frequent laugh, positive opinions and wishes, and good-humored self-satisfaction, had been the leading features of ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... and thirsted for the moment when I should put them in practice and make myself useful to my fellow beings. Now all was blasted; instead of that serenity of conscience which allowed me to look back upon the past with self-satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures such as ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... being all mellowness and amiability, that Diary. Hone had his prejudices and dislikes and strong political opinions. In the portraits that have been preserved there is the suggestion of intolerance and smug self-satisfaction. Also life did not turn out quite so rosy as it promised in 1828, when he retired from business with a handsome competence. In 1836, during the commercial depression, he met with financial reverses ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... master, dropped the apple upon the floor, distributed a copious supply of Thames water amongst the affrighted beholders, squeezed his way through them as best he could, and, with an air of infinite self-satisfaction, resumed his place ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... them, would be an occasion for humour, if it were not an opportunity for indignation: though indeed it would take a very exceptionally sober-minded spectator not to get some fun out of the blissful self-satisfaction and unconsciousness which characterize the most negligent ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... record, and we would desire to give full credit to his admirable courage and perseverance. It was with a certain national and pardonable pride that the young Italian planned his bold exploit, feeling with a sense of self-satisfaction, which he is at no pains to hide, that he aimed at winning honour for his country as well as for himself. In a letter which he wrote to his guardian, Chevalier Gherardo Compagni, he alludes to the stolid indifference of the English people and philosophers to the brilliant achievements in aeronautics ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... there was more devotional temper, and a greater desire after a religious way of life. It might be that her fretfulness was the effect of an uneasiness of mind, which was more hopeful than her previous fierce self-satisfaction, and that her aberrations were the last efforts of old evil habits to re-establish their grasp by custom, when her heart was ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which the benefits and the pride may be common to all. True unity requires some common object, around which diverse interests may cling and crystallize. Nations, like families, need to look outside themselves, if they would escape, on the one hand, narrow self-satisfaction, or, on the other, pitiful internal dissensions. The far-reaching external activities fostered in Great Britain by her insular position have not only intensified patriotism, but have given also a certain ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... man's sense of the infinitude of his own faculties. Man learns about himself through what is objective to him, but the object only serves to bring out what is in him; his own nature becomes the absolute to him. Consciousness marks the self-satisfaction, self-perfection of man, that all truth is in him. As feeling is the cause of the outward world, or of that notion of it man has, it becomes the organ of religion. The nature of God is nothing else than an expression of the nature of feeling. As man lives ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... reflected upon himself. It was good to be in such company, and to feel that he was equal with the best. He had not always been the peer of such men. There had been an era of obscurity out of which he had slowly emerged, and therefore he had the larger pride and self-satisfaction in ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... His big presence had instant effect on Le Rossignol. Her music tinkled louder and faster. The playing sprite, sitting half on air, gamboled and made droll faces to catch his eye. Her vanity and self-satisfaction, her pliant gesture and skillful wild music, made her appear some soulless little being from the woods who mocked at man's ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... can produce. As for the wine . . . well! all I can say is that there is none better in my lord's own cellar. I have given all that willingly. I did it because I liked it. But," he added, and once again the look of self-satisfaction and sufficiency gave way to his more habitual sinister expression, "if I pay for the feast, I decide who shall be invited to ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... degrees in the social scale. Raemka was a "superintendent of works," which probably means that he was an overseer of corvee labour at the time of building the great pyramids. He belonged to the middle class; and his whole person expresses vulgar contentment and self-satisfaction. We seem to see him in the act of watching his workmen, his staff of acacia wood in his hand. The feet of the statue had perished, but have been restored. The body is stout and heavy, and the neck thick. The head (fig. 191), despite its vulgarity, does not lack energy. The eyes are inserted, ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... 'fortune-telling.' He stood dingily smiling, and breathing hard at them, with a most curious air; as if, instead of being his proprietor's grubber, he were the triumphant proprietor of the Marshalsea, the Marshal, all the turnkeys, and all the Collegians. In his great self-satisfaction he put his cigar to his lips (being evidently no smoker), and took such a pull at it, with his right eye shut up tight for the purpose, that he underwent a convulsion of shuddering and choking. But ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... my son. Dreamers are our strictly unpaid torch-bearers. They light the path for us; and we murmur 'Poor fools!' with a kind of sneaking self-satisfaction, when they ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... that this was for the moment an exceedingly unpleasant shock to his self-satisfaction is to state a sufficiently obvious fact; but Mark's character must have been very imperfectly indicated if it surprises anyone to hear that it did not take him long to recover ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... an air of the deepest self-satisfaction. Compliments from the Honourable John Ruffin ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... was a Jew: probably something financial, connected with the Stock Exchange. Coxeter of the Treasury looked at the man he took to be a financier with considerable contempt. Coxeter prided himself on his knowledge of human beings,—or rather of men, for even his self-satisfaction did not go so far as to make him suppose that he entirely understood women; there had been a time when he had thought so, but that was a ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... that such men as these were happy; that they possessed sources of enjoyment inaccessible to less gifted minds is not to be doubted, but whether knowledge and conscious ability and superiority generally bring with them content of mind and the sunshine of self-satisfaction to the possessors is anything but certain. I wonder the inductive process has not been more systematically applied to the solution of this great philosophical problem, what is happiness, and in what it consists, for the practical purpose of directing the human mind into the right road for reaching ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... them gives us the vanity of mortal things; another the sense of sin; and the remaining one describes the fear of the universe;—and in one or other of these three ways it always is that man's original optimism and self-satisfaction get ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... It was perfectly evident that the more the clerk read, the less the man with the blue apron understood about the matter. When the volume was first brought down, he took off his hat, smoothed down his hair, smiled with great self-satisfaction, and looked up in the reader's face with the air of a man who had made up his mind to recollect every word he heard. The first two or three lines were intelligible enough; but then the technicalities began, and the little man began to look rather dubious. Then came a whole string of complicated ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... a perfect fulfillment, for poor Santron, who lay motionless and unconscious up to that moment, suddenly gave signs of life by moving his features, and jerking his limbs to this side and that. The doctor's self-satisfaction took the very proudest form. He expatiated on the grandeur of medical science, the wonderful advancement it was making, and the astonishing progress the curative art had made, even within his own time. I must own that I should have lent a more implicit credence to this paean if I had ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... perfectly right, Agnes, darling. Your course has my emphatic approval. I can appreciate perfectly that it must cause you to feel wretchedly for some time; but the self-satisfaction it must eventually bring you, will gradually but surely overcome the first disappointment and regret, just as the ever-shining sun pierces and dissipates the ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw
... articulate voice to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude of their valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with cutaneous eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive hiccough of self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two sorrowfullest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, taking the deep inner significance of them, are the English mobs in the valley of Chamouni, amusing themselves with firing rusty howitzers; and the Swiss vintagers of Zurich ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... gradations are fast disappearing; the palisades of good manners, dignity, and respect, are vanishing with the hedges; the country is positively inundated with slang and vulgarity—all from the ill-breeding, presumption, and self-satisfaction ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... that to our praise Good God not only reckons The moments when we tread his ways, But when the spirit beckons; That some slight good is also wrought, Beyond self-satisfaction, When we are simply good in thought Howe'er we fail ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... the shrine of Love or Mammon. Hercules holding the distaff was but a faint type of Peter bearing the roses. He must have thought this himself, for he seemed amazed at what he had done. He backed without a word; he was going away with a husky chuckle of self-satisfaction; then he bethought himself to stop and turn, to ascertain by ocular testimony that he really had presented a bouquet. Yes, there were the six red cabbages on the purple satin lap, a very white hand, with some gold rings on the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... not feel more confidence in themselves, perhaps more self-respect, for the consciousness of being well-dressed, or, rather, when the knowledge that they are well-dressed relieves them of all consciousness upon the subject. To decide upon the costume which can secure this serene self-satisfaction is impossible. For to excellence in dress there are positive and relative conditions. A man cannot be positively well-dressed, whose costume does not suit the peculiarities of his person and position,—or relatively, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... The friar observed, that whenever he held forth to his congregation, a certain man never failed to burst into tears, and continue weeping during the sermon. Supposing he had touched the man's soul by the eloquence of his oratory, the friar, with much self-satisfaction, one day ventured to inquire why he wept. "Ah, father!" said the peasant, "I never see you but I think of a venerable goat, which I lost at Easter! We were bred up together in the same family; he was the very picture of your reverence; one would ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... Dartmouth, while Doria spoke eagerly. But the passenger felt little disposed to gratify the Italian's curiosity. Instead he asked him a few questions respecting himself and found that the other delighted to discuss his own affairs. Doria revealed a southern levity and self-satisfaction that furnished Brendon with something to think about before the launch ran ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... material strength which binds together our first and last families, increasing the pride of the latter, and diminishing that of the former until we have at last reached an average of self-satisfaction which knows no barriers of class distinction," said the Hatter. "But it wouldn't have worked if we hadn't formulated strict rules by which every household in town is governed. One of our rules is that the person ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... amongst the flowers, and selected the very finest bouquet which money could buy. The beautiful bundle being tied up in a paper, the officer remounted, giving the nosegay into the charge of his military groom, who carried it with a grin, following his chief, who rode away in great state and self-satisfaction. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... clothing. The result is that one frequently encounters men on the road wearing a Derby hat, a red blanket, tight-fitting white drawers, and straw sandals. The villager who sports a European hat or coat comes around to my yadoya, wearing an amusing expression of self-satisfaction, as though filled with an inward consciousness of inv approval of the same. Whereas, every European traveller deprecates the change from their native ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... and he could not resist a smile of self-satisfaction, but to avoid further interrogation on Biblical derivations he hastened to lead the conversation into safer alleys and ones more relative to the object of ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... more than you'll ever know." There was a sort of self-satisfaction in his voice. "It took me a long time to forget you, Lallie, and then, just as I was beginning, I saw you at the theatre—in the stalls ... with Mellowes." His brows met above his handsome eyes. "Mellowes wasn't long picking ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... regarded as meritorious in proportion as they are painful, and they are pushed to greater and greater extravagances because what becomes familiar loses the subjective force from which the ascetic person wins self-satisfaction. Asceticism then becomes a mental aberration and a practical negation of the instinct of self-preservation. It leads to insanity.[2153] If it takes a course against other persons, it explains the conduct of great inquisitors like Conrad ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... was with lawless wealth and fat with insufferable self-satisfaction, P. Sybarite, trotting by the side of his host, was dwarfed alike in dignity and in physique, strongly resembling an especially cocky and ragged Airedale being tolerated by a well-groomed ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... great degree a result of the mood we are in at the moment: anger forbids the emotion. On the other hand, it is easiest taken on when we are in a state of most absolute self-satisfaction. Ben-Hur walked with a quicker step, holding his head higher; and, while not less sensitive to the delightfulness of all about him, he made his survey with calmer spirit, though sometimes with curling lip; that is to say, he could not so soon forget how ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... of Industry has come and gone, and the world-wide Financier is going: what remains for actuality-loving art to mould into shapes of perdurable beauty? Obviously, only the immeasurable mass of a prosperity sunken in a self-satisfaction unstirred by conscience and unmoved by desire. But is that a reason why art should despair? Rather it is a reason why it should rejoice in an opportunity occurring not more than once in the ages to seize the likeness and express the significance of Arrival, the arrival ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... money for building God's houses, making strong the weak, waxing valiant in fight, and turning the world upside down. The trouble with many of our modern saints is that they seek for purity only instead of power, ecstasy instead of excellence, self-satisfaction in a garden of spices instead of a baptism that straightens them out in a garden of agony. They are seekers of spiritual joys instead of good governments, cities well policed and sewered, with every street safe ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... interpretations of human life. Rapid changes are taking place at the present time in education, in religion, and in social adjustments. The rate of progress varies in different parts of the world; there are handicaps in the form of race conservatism, local and individual self-satisfaction and independence, maladjustments and isolation; sometimes the process leads along a downward path. On the whole, however, the history is a story ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe |
